Progress and Divisions of Anti-slavery: An Address Delivered in Glasgow, Scotland, on February 14, 1860
PROGRESS AND DIVISIONS OF ANTI-SLAVERY: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN GLASGOW, SCOTLAND, ON 14 FEBRUARY 1860
Glasgow Daily Bulletin, 15 February 1860; Glasgow North British Daily Mail, 15 February 1860; and Glasgow Morning Journal, 15 February 1860. Another text in Liberator, 23 March 1860.
At 1:00 P.M. on 14 February 1860, very respectable assembly” filled “the lower part” of the John Street United Presbyterian Church in Glasgow to hear Douglass compare the programs of the various competing antislavery organizations in the United States. The Reverend William Anderson, pastor of the church and himself a veteran abolitionist and celebrated orator, convened the meeting with a prayer. The Reverend Henry Batchelor, who presided, introduced Douglass by approving, according to the North British Daily Mail, “the principle of non-intervention in political matters” while also urging “the duty of moral meddling with respect to other nations.” The Glasgow audience accepted Douglass’s address on “The Present Position of the Slave Question in America,” but British Garrisonians refuted his conclusions. Richard D. Webb, editor of the London Anti-Slavery Advocate, accused Douglass of taking “special pains . . . to discredit” the American Anti-Slavery Society, whose members constituted “the great majority of the most distinguished and devoted friends of the American slave.” Webb questioned how “any intelligent colored man can advocate a Union which holds millions of his own race in abject slavery and crushes them back into it if they attempt to escape.” The Liberator published Webb’s rejoinder for circulation in the United States. See Appendix A, text 5, for précis of alternate texts. Glasgow Scottish Guardian, l6 February 1860; London Anti-Slavery Advocate, 1 March 1860; DNB, 1: 394—95.
[FREDERICK DOUGLASS] said that he esteemed it a great privilege to address such an assembly, in behalf of his enslaved fellow-countrymen. He, however, always experienced a difficulty in this country in speaking to a public audience.†Here the Glasgow Daily Bulletin reads: “In the United States he was accustomed to meet with opposition, and he knew that he was speaking to men who were direcly responsible for the oppression of his down-trodden people, so that there was ever a spur to his utterance which he could not have in this land. Nevertheless there were some things fully open for the anti-slavery advocate, and one of these was that which he now proposed—the present state of the question of slavery in the United States. As onlookers upon this mighty conflict, who were placed at a distance from its scene, it was natural that they should fail to observe some of the points which would come more directly under the observation of those who mingled in the strife. Those who had read the newspapers of the United States, within the last
few months, must have seen that that country is in a most critical situation, as being at the most trying crisis in her history. It remained to be seen how she would weather the storm. This morning's papers stated that for two months they have been ballotting in the House of Representatives for the election of a Speaker, and all to no purpose. Anger had been shown by the gravest of representatives; they had been actually causing their bowie knives to gleam and their pistols to click in the halls of legislature. His friends would have heard how ministers had been driven from their homes in the Slave States and been threatened with being tarred and feathered. and burned alive at the stake, for no other cause than that they expressed convictions hostile to slavery. such opinions which his friend the chairman had just uttered, and which caused the heart to leap with emotion. They had also seen that slavery in the States could not afford—leaving the merits of the question of the Harper‘s Ferry insurrection aside altogether—to let John Brown live. It would also be seen that there was a reign of terror throughout the South; that there was an espionage in the fifteen Southern States that would put the espionage of France, and the despotism of Russia, to the blush. Moreover, there were signs of a dissolution of the union. The minority were, contrary to the constitution, saying to the majority, ‘if you vote for your candidate we will not submit.’ Whence was all this struggle, and how had it grown to its present gigantic stature? It dated from the very settlement of America. The evil seed was then sown. When the good husbandman had sown good wheat, the devil came and sowed tares." (In the United States he was accustomed to meet with much
opposition, and to feel, when he was presenting the claims of his enslaved and down-trodden people, that he was speaking to men and women who were directly responsible for their enslavement, and for the outrages committed upon them—he was anticipating their objections, meeting their prejudices, and combatting their arguments and this gave a certain spur to his utterances which he could not have in this land. for here he felt that his profoundest conceptions of the evil, the guilt, the deep criminality of slavery were transcended by their clearer views and more enlightened understandings.
Nevertheless, there were some things for public speakers to do in this country, and one of these was to lay before such assemblies as this the present state of the anti-slavery struggle in the United States, for, being mere on-lookers on this mighty conflict between right and wrong, between liberty and slavery, it was natural that, at this distance, they should miss or fail to observe some of the points which came more distinctly and clearly under the observation of men mingling in the strife.
Those who had noticed the newspapers for the last two months, and who had read about events transpiring in America, were aware that that nation was now regarded by all men—not merely by alarmists, but by the cool, thoughtful, and sagacious among statesmen and ministers, as in a most critical situation—as having reached the most trying crisis in her history. Only 84 years had rolled over that republic. She was yet young, and though strong, she was evidently now under the sway of mighty and conflicting passions, and it remained to be seen how she would weather the storm that was passing.
In the United States, as we learned, for two long months the national legislature had been ballotting and voting for the election of a Speaker, but it was all to no purpose—their object was not yet attained, and the members were going home again. Angry passions had arisen among the legislators of the land, the “most potent, grave, and reverend seigniors” of the House of Representatives, and they had been actually causing their bowie knives to gleam and their pistols to click in the sacred hall of legislation.1Owing to the intense sectional antagonism following the Harpers Ferry raid, northern and southern congressmen exchanged many heated words and threats between 5 December 1859 and 2 February 1860, the time it took to elect a Speaker for the new Congress. Indeed, most members took to carrying weapons into the House of Representatives in the belief that they might be needed for self-protection. Spectators in the galleries also armed themselves in order to defend their friends on the floor should a melee break out. Nevins, Emergence of Lincoln, 2: 121 —22; Potter, Impending Crisis, 386—90.
They heard also of quiet unobtrusive ministers in the Southern States having been driven from home under threats of personal violence for no other offence than that of being opposed to slavery2In the wave of panic that swept the South after John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry, a number of antislavery ministers were expelled from the region either by mob action or by the legal authorities. The best known of the ministers were John G. Fee of Kentucky and Daniel Worth of North Carolina, both agents of the pro-abolition American Missionary Association. American Missionary Magazine, 4: 58, 80—81, 106, 108 (March, April, May 1860); American Anti-Slavery Society, The Anti-Slavery History of the John Brown Year (New York, 1861), 171—83.—for holding opinions such as had dropped from the lips of their chairman,3The Reverend Henry Batchelor, pastor of the Elgin Place Congregational Church and chairman of the meeting, had delivered “a few introductory observations, in which he expressed himself strongly in favor of the extension of human liberty." Glasgow Scottish Guardian, 16 February 1860.
and which ought to cause the heart of humanity to leap up with joy when uttered in their hearing. For such sentiments quiet, unassuming ministers had been driven from their homes in fifteen States of the American Union.
And they had seen a man—grant that he was mistaken, grant that he was an enthusiast, grant all that could be claimed against the ill-fated enterprise at Harper’s Ferry—they had seen that slavery in the United States could not afford to let poor John Brown live—that he, if living, would make slavery unsafe, and in order to [guarantee?] the safety of slavery, John Brown, the hero, John Brown, the martyr, must be sacrificed to its preservation.
They saw also that there was a reign of terror throughout the South— that there was an espionage over the press of 15 States of that democratic Union, that would put even the espionage of France or the despotism of Russia to the blush. Moreover, there were threats on the right and on the
left of the dissolution of the Union, the minority saying to the majority, if you vote for your candidate and elect him, we won’t submit.
Whence all this trouble? when did it begin? how had it grown to its present gigantic stature? The answer led a long way back—it dated back to the very beginning of the settlement of America. The evil seed was sown at the very beginning of the settlement of that country. When the good husbandman had sown good wheat, the evil one, the Devil, came and sowed tares.)4From the Glasgow North British Daily Mail, 15 February 1860.
During the winter of 1620, when the May Flower, with her liberty-loving passengers, [was] buffeting the adverse waves of a wintry ocean to find their way to a land where they could find freedom to worship God according to their conscience, there was at the same time, bound to another quarter of the land, another ship with a set of passengers who had a very different destiny. It was a Dutch galley, having on board a cargo of slaves to be sold on the banks of James River, to be scattered over the hills and valleys of Virginia. The May Flower came to establish the Bible, the Magna Charta, the right of Habeas Corpus, the trial by jury, the marriage institution, equality in the eye of the law, deference for order, and all the institutions which had made Britain to flourish, and which tended to ennoble and dignify the human race.†Here the Glasgow Daily Bulletin reads: “The Dutch galley brought selfishness, the lash, and the chain. The institution peculiar to the May Flower had prevailed in 17 or 18 States of the American Union, and in their sons and daughters you could trace those passengers on board the May Flower. But in the slave States was seen the institution peculiar to the Dutch galley." (The Dutch galliot brought a cargo of slaves. Pride and selfishness were to be ministered to. The emblems of the one ship might be the Bible and the prayer book; the emblems of the other the whip and the chain.
The institutions peculiar to the Mayflower had been flowing out over 17 or 18 States of the American Union; but over the other part of the Republic you traced the poor barefooted wanderer, you saw the whipping post instead of the school-house, and the slave prison. Of course, an occasional church was to be seen, but it was gloomy, barren, and desolate. In the North, education, industry, enterprise, and all those peculiar institutions which gave dignity to a nation were to be seen growing and flourishing. In the North, there was freedom of speech and the liberty of the press, and the man of prayer who occupied the pulpit did not require to ask some one in the pews who and what he should or should not pray for; in the Southern States things were different.
Now, why this present conflict?—who were the parties to it?—where should they find the germ? The Mayflower and the Dutch galliot was the answer.)5From the Glasgow North British Daily Mail, 15 February 1860. These two elements were diametrically opposed to each other as much as were light and darkness, Christ and Belial;6In the Old Testament Belial is generally used as an epithet for an evil or subversive person. However, in 2 Cor. 6: 15 it is used to identify Satan: “And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part he that believeth with an infidel?" and these two elements were now struggling for the ascendancy. In this case, the slave power was the aggressor. Being an unnatural power. and like an inverted cone, it required continual support.
In the earlier part of the history of the [United] States, this power was quite insignificant, when the slaves and their masters were not powerful enough of themselves to assume the reins of Government. Then there was a certain degree of liberty of speech. Then the leading statesmen, such as Washington, Jefferson, Munro, Adamson, Franklin, Rush, and Adams,7George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, and John Adams. lifted up their voices against the abomination, and, notwithstanding, these men could then hold office. But it was not so now. Slaveholders had now monopolised all the offices, and this, too, in a population of six millions, of which only 350,000 were slaveholders. But these were men of money—men who were accustomed to govern their fellowmen, not because they were wise in the arrangement of material forces, but because they were acute in that of social forces. Now they had engrossed all the powers of the state, and now they had put down liberty of speech in regard to slavery. Upon this subject it would be more safe for a man to go through the Southern States uttering the most vile and disgusting language, and the most fearful blasphemies against the Almighty than to go there and say, as the people of Glasgow did now say, that slavery was a sin in the sight of God.
After having subjected their own States, what next did these Southern Slaveholders desire? They demanded the right to rule the North as well. They were now, strange to say, what was called the Democratic party. They had five distinct objects in view. These were the nationalising of slavery, that was to make it prevail over the whole Union. The next was the revival of the foreign slave trade; the third, either the exportation or re-enslavement of the entire free black population of the United States; the fourth, the extension of slavery to all the territories belonging to the States,
and the annexation of the adjoining territory to the South, such as Mexico and the whole South American continent, so as to gradually extend slavery to Cape Horn; and the fifth, the suppression of anti-slavery discussion. All these purposes were opposed by what was called the Republican party. It was formerly defended as a local institution; now the two parties had carried the conflict to the congress.
In 1850, the party first described succeeded in getting the Fugitive Bill passed. But it was not passed in this country without being deservedly denounced. By that new law, a class of judges were established who were paid five dollars for every fugitive slave who was brought before them, and proved to be free; and for each of those whom they found to be slaves they received ten dollars.8Under the terms of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, the District Courts appointed fugitive slave commissioners who were responsible for the reclamation of runaway slaves. Douglass correctly describes the fee system by which these commissioners were paid. Campbell, Slave Catchers, 23—24, 41—42. That law made it an indictable offence for him who, acting in accordance with the Gospel as expounded in the 25th [chapter] of Matthew, fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and took in the stranger.9Douglass summarizes Matt. 25: 35—46. It did not matter whether the fugitive was a slave or not: he who fulfilled the duties of a Christian towards him was liable to be fined five thousand dollars, and to enjoy the sunlight through a grated window for a period of six months.
Britain had yet the monopoly of the glory of being the only free country in the globe. Yet meetings were held in New York to protest against the despotism of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, for imprisoning people for reading the Bible,10On 7 January 1853 an interdenominational gathering of ministers and lay people assembled at Metropolitan Hall in New York City to protest the religious persecution of Italian Protestants. The meeting specifically condemned the action against Francisco and Rosa Madiai of Florence, who had been imprisoned by the duke of Tuscany for the crime of reading a Protestant Bible. Abolitionists later noted that none of the ministers who protested the denial of the Bible to Italians had ever spoken out against the identical practice when the victim was the southern slave. Bible Society Reporter, 1: 101 (August 1851); New York Evangelist, 13 January 1853; New York Observer, 13 January 1853; FDP, 21 January 1853; British and Foreign Bible Society, Forty-eighth Annual Report (London, 1852), liii—liv. and the Americans invited Kossuth11Louis Kossuth. and other patriots to their shores. How inconsistent [were] their pretensions to freedom! For “no valley so deep, no mountain so high, no glen so secluded, no plain so boundless, no spot so sacred to freedom, as that a man upon reaching it could say, now by the law of the land, and the blessing of God I am free.”
Thank God, this law was in many parts of the [United] States but a dead letter. It could not be carried out in Boston, or in any part of Old Massachusetts. (In the State of Belmont [Vermont], a slaveowner claimed a right to a slave. He came before the judge, produced his papers, his bill of sale, all in proper form; but the judge said, “lam not satisfied—go on with your proofs.” “What will satisfy you?” said the suitor. “Before I am satisfied, you must produce a bill of sale from the Almighty.”12Douglass refers to a case heard in Middlebury, Vermont, in the early 1800s, in which Judge Theophilus Harrington (or Herrinton) rebuffed the efforts of a New Yorker to remove his runaway slave from Vermont with the declaration quoted here. Born in Coventry, Rhode Island, Harrington (1762-1813) moved in 1785 to Clarendon, Vermont, where he was a farmer and state legislator (1795, 1798—1803), serving as Speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives in 1803. Chief judge of the Rutland County Court from 1800 to 1803, Harrington was not admitted to the bar until after his election to the state supreme court in 1803, when he succeeded Judge Stephen Jacob, a former slaveholder whose own bill of sale for human property had been declared void in Vermont in an 1802 case. Harrington's decision in the Middlebury case was widely quoted, the Vermont Anti-Slavery Society officially approving his action at its annual meeting in 1836. Siebert, Vermont's Anti-Slavery Record, 3—5, 31: Henry G. Fairbanks, “Slavery and the Vermont Clergy," VH, 27: 305 (October 1959); Jacob G. Ullery, comp., Men of Vermont: An Illustrated Biographical History of Vermonters and Sons of Vermont (Brattleboro, Vt., 1894), Part 1, 178. (Hear, hear.))13From the Glasgow Morning Journal, 15 February 1860.
There was also the Dred Scott decision, which declared that no man of African descent could be a citizen of America, nor could enter a Court there, still less make an appeal. God’s Court might be open, and even the Great I Am, the Maker of heaven and earth,14The “Great I Am” is probably a paraphrase of Exod. 3: 14: “And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the Children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you." The description of God as the “maker of heaven and earth" appears in the Apostles' Creed and is also a paraphrase of various biblical passages referring to “the LORD which made heaven and earth. " Gen. 1: 1; Exod. 20: 11; 2 Chron. 2: 12; Pss. 115: 15 and 121:2; Isa. 37: 16; Jer. 32: 17; Acts 4: 24 and 14: 15, and Rev. 14: 7. upon whose volition these worlds played in space, even to Him the poor negro could come and kneel; but of the august and supreme court of the United States, it was decided, he must not enter the presence. That decision was aptly termed by Dr. Cheever, when he said that by it the whole race was morally assassinated.15During the months of March and April 1857 Congregational minister George B. Cheever, pastor of the Manhattan Church of the Puritans in New York City, preached a series of sermons attacking the Dred Scott decision. The sermons were reported and commented upon in the New York City press, and Cheever himself published excerpts from them in his regular column in the Independent. The nearest approximation to the phrase Douglass quotes is the title of Cheever's 26 March 1857 Independent column: “The Decision of the Supreme Court is the Moral Assassination of a Race and Cannot be Obeyed." New York Daily Tribune, 16 March 1857; New York Daily Times, 16 March 1857; New York Independent, 19, 26 March 1857; New York Herald, 9 April 1857; George I. Rockwood, Cheever, Lincoln, and the Causes of the Civil War (Worcester, Mass, 1936), 64—71.
Slavery was nationalised, so far as legal enactments could make it, but de facto it was not so. There was a moral energy, a resistance in the United States, and this resistance explained the controversy and conflict that were now going on in that country.
Objections were urged to the effect that the people of this country should not take part in the discussion, because their desires would be sooner reached by silence. The Southerner who came amongst them would say, leave us to deal with this question, your interference only rivetted the fetters of the slaves. This was not the case. As regarded the peace of the slaveholder, speaking or silence would not restore peace to his conscience. God had so constituted his moral constitution that he could have no peace. (Peace and tranquility! How could a slaveholder enjoy either one or the other? He might whet his bowie knife to razor sharpness, but before it could reach the skin of his bondsman he himself could not, from the laws of immutable justice, avoid hearing at the bottom of his soul the voice of conscience, that abolition lecturer. (Applause)
I (the lecturer) was born a slave. Before my birth the lash was twisted for my back, the fetters were forged for my limbs. Before I knew my own name it was inscribed in a book along with horses, oxen, sheep, and swine.16The names and descriptions of five horses immediately follow the names of twenty-five slaves, Douglass included, in the inventory prepared prior to the distribution of Aaron Anthony’s property among his heirs. “Distribution of Negroes in Estate of Aaron Anthony, Sept. 27, 1827," folder 77, Dodge Collection, MdAHR. I bear yet on my back the marks of the scourge of the surveyor. I have borne all or nearly all the physical horrors which are attendant upon slavery, and yet I conscientiously can declare, before my God and before my fellow-men, that I would suffer those horrors over again, aye if they were ten times worse, rather than change places with the haughtiest and wealthiest slaveowner in the Southern States. (Applause.))17From the Glasgow Morning Journal, 15 February 1860.
For the sake of the slaveholder, as well as of the slave, the speaker urged upon the people of this country never to be silent upon the subject of slavery. No matter how terrible the opposition, all good men must fight on. But it was gratifying to see that the good work was making progress. Though Christians should not walk by sight, but by faith, it was pleasing sometimes to have, in addition to faith, sight as well. He was of [the] opinion that they had this in the battle of slavery. One time slavery had it all
its own way; but it was not so now. There were combinations entered into which looked hopefully for the cause of freedom in the United States. Oppression never looked stronger than just before its f all—so, he thought, it was with slavery.
When he was in this country the corn law was going on, and the people were crying for bread. The advocates for the repeal of the measure were beginning to be afraid of success, when success, as it afterwards proved, was near at hand. The same fact was apparent in the West Indian emancipation. He thought that it was the same now in the United States. But whether it came in peace or war, in mercy or in judgment, come it must. But their duty was the same, to oppose slavery.
The speaker then gave an insight into the various modes of opposition in the United States. Some said that the anti—slavery forces were unfortunately divided. He would not say they were unfortunately divided, any more than he would say that the Christian Churches were divided. Every man must work his work in his own fashion.
There was a class who opposed slavery by means of abstinence from slave produce. They were called Free Labour people, and they had published for some time a paper called “The Slaveholder. ”18The Quaker-led Free Produce Movement supported a Philadelphia periodical, the Non-Slaveholder, from 1846 to 1850 and again in 1853 and 1854. (“Will you take cream and sugar?” may be asked them. “Cream, if you please,” is the reply, “but not sugar, for my conscience will not allow me to partake of what has been produced by the bondage of my fellow-men.” Now, that also was a course of opposition in which he could not coincide. He took the gifts bestowed him as gifts from God, and he could not think that the injustice of man would justify him in refusing the bounty of his Creator. Were he indeed to admit that principle, he should have to discontinue the anti-slavery paper which he published, for that paper was printed upon rags, all of them the produce of cotton grown by slave labour.)19From the Glasgow Morning Journal, 15 February 1860.
There was another [class] called “The Compensationists." 20In August 1857, Elihu Burritt, Gerrit Smith, and a few other abolitionists sponsored a convention in Cleveland, Ohio, that advocated compensated emancipation. Burritt himself favored a program of “national indemnification“ by which slaveholders would be compensated from the proceeds of public land sales. This proposal attracted little southern support and was condemned by most abolitionists as an abandonment of basic antislavery principles. Washington (DC) National Era, 13 August 1857; Betty L. Fladeland, “Compensated Emancipation: A Rejected Alternative." JSH, 42: 183—84 (May 1976). A prominent man amongst these was Elihu Burritt. He advocated the sale of public
lands, so as to create a fund to redeem all men in the Union from slavery[;]†Here the Glasgow Daily Bulletin reads: “The speaker had this objection to it; it came too soon; the people were not prepared for it." (for, as they said, slavery was a national curse, and it was only just that it should be wiped away by national means. To that principle he was not inclined to give his acquiescence, for it appeared to him that the plan was not yet ripe for such a course to stand a chance of being adopted, and again he though that it was shifting the question too much from the conscience to the counter.)21From the Glasgow Morning Journal, 15 February 1860.
There [were] also the Garrisonian Abolitionists. Their programme was the dissolution of the Union. They could see no other way of relieving the North from this responsibility, than by having recourse to this means. They were very logical, and stated their opinion thus: As the constitution of the United States was a slave-holding instrument, we could not support it, nor place men in office who would be required to support it. The speaker was opposed to these views, inasmuch as it would make the South like Cuba and Brazil.22The Spanish colonial government gave legal sanction and protection to slaveholding in Cuba until 1886. The Empire of Brazil, separated from Portugal in 1815, similarly upheld the institution of slavery until 1888. C. Duncan Rice, The Rise and Full of Black Slavery (New York, 1975), 372—89. He would rather draw more tightly the cords of the constitution, and thereby bring the influence of the North more to bear upon the South. Strange as it might seem, these Garrisonians were just doing what the slaveholders desired, which these also held to be the only solution of the slavery question. They were quite right, for slavery could be far better preserved in the Southern States without the Union than with it. But he was not prepared to grant that the constitution was a slave-holding document.
In regard to the rights of the white men, we took everything for granted in their favour whenever there was any law that was equivocal. He would do the same in regard to the negroes. The constitution might be searched and not one syllable from end to end would be found in favour of slavery. The word black, slave, or master, was not mentioned. The only thing like it was a clause which ordained that a man who had been in service in one State and left for another without concluding it should be returned.23Article IV, Section 2. of the U.S. Constitution. Garrison affirmed that this clause was in favour of slavery. But this concession should not be made; for as has been said when a law had two meanings, it was the rule to take that which promised to accomplish a good purpose.
There was also the Church Anti-Slavery Society.24Founded in March 1859, the Church Anti-Slavery Society was an interdenominational abolitionist organization that restricted its membership to clergymen and church members. Although many veteran abolitionists joined the new organization, its leading spokesmen were the Cheever brothers, George and Henry, both Congregational ministers. The Society‘s members lobbied their respective denominations to brand slaveholders as sinners who must be excluded from all forms of church fellowship. During the Civil War the Society shifted most of its efforts to the political sphere and actively lobbied for a federal emancipation program. Church Ant-Slavery Society, Proceedings of the Convention Which Met at Worcester, Massachusetts, March 1, 1859 (New York, 1859), 3—16, 27—28; McKivigan, “Abolitionism and the American Churches," 246—54, 275—76, 481—82. It was made up of the members of churches alone, and who did not wish to go into the organisation of others. This society was doing good work. It introduced right church action and deprived the slaveholder of church fellowship.
But he did not go with any of these particular organisations, because he acted with all. He acted on his own hook, as they said in America.†Here the Glasgow Daily Bulletin reads: “There was also the Radical Abolitionists and the American Missionary Society. It was this society which sent out the missionaries which had been recently expelled from the Southern States."
([A]nd there were likewise the Radical Abolitionists and the American Missionary Society, the latter of whom had sent those missionaries who were driven out of the Southern States, where they had established evangelical churches that would not admit slave-dealers. These and the other forms of opposition to slavery noticed were doing good, and while holding his own views on the subject, and according to these voting, writing, and speaking, he willingly wrought along with the members of these various organisations, seeing their object was the deliverance of his brethren from bondage.)25From the Glasgow North British Daily Mail, 15 February 1860. But as he had spoken so long, he said he would not speak in detail on these two organisations[.]‡Here the Glasgow Daily Bulletin reads: “nor would he say more than merely thank them for their attention."
(The lecturer concluded by thanking his audience for the patience with which they had listened to him, and in a powerful peroration invoked all to do their utmost in the cause of the wronged African. (Applause.))26From the Glasgow Morning Journal, 15 February 1860.