Richard D. Webb to Frederick Douglass, November 7, 1851
RICHARD D. WEBB TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Dublin, [Ire.] 7 Nov[ember] 1851.
MY DEAR DOUGLASS:—
I have to thank you for a copy of your paper, in which you take me to task for my report of George Thompson’s meeting in Bristol, and for my agreement with his opinion of the Liberty Party.1In the 16 October 1851 issue of Frederick Douglass’ Paper, Douglass responded to a letter by Richard D. Webb that appeared in the 2 October 1851 issue of the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Webb reported that British antislavery activist George Thompson, a recent visitor to the United States, had soundly denounced the Liberty party upon his return to England. Douglass, in his editorial, criticized Thompson, writing that Thompson “had no more unflinching friends when in this country, than were the faithful band of abolitionists, designated ‘the Liberty Party.’ When here Mr. Thompson neither despised their sympathy nor their money; and it is not a little strange that he should, so soon after his return to his native land, exert his magnificent oratorical powers in the work of their disparagement.” I thought of replying through the Standard,2National Anti-Slavery Standard. but believe I had better address myself directly to you, and if you think my letter worth insertion, your readers will have a better opportunity of knowing what I have to say for myself, than if I published my reply in any other paper.
On refer[r]ing to my letter in the Standard of Oct. 2d,3A letter from Richard D. Webb, acting as “Our Dublin Correspondent,” appeared in the 2 October 1851 issue of the National Anti-Slavery Standard. In this letter Webb described two antislavery meetings held in Bristol, England. The first welcomed George Thompson home from his American tour, and included a debate between Thompson and meeting chair Robert Charlton over Charlton’s resolution to show “great mildness in the treatment of the slaveholder . . . on the ground of his conscience being ignorant and unenlightened.” The second meeting included a speech by the Reverend Edward Mathews on “the claims and merits of the Liberty Party,” which Thompson also debated. Webb then lauded Thompson, writing that he “has the popular ear,” and that he would be able to galvanize the British public in favor of the abolitionist movement. I find the following passage:
“Mr. Matthews4Born into a printer’s family in Oxford, England, the Reverend Edward Mathews (1812–?) immigrated to the United States around 1830. After working as a clerk in New York City, he won a scholarship to study theology at the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution. While studying for the ministry he was recruited into the abolitionist movement by Beriah Green and Gerrit Smith. After serving as a missionary in Wisconsin, Mathews became a lecturing agent for the Illinois Anti-Slavery Society in 1840. He thereafter labored throughout the Midwest as an abolitionist on behalf of both the Liberty party and the small American Baptist Free Mission Society, which had seceded from the regular Baptist missionary groups on account of the latters’ acceptance of slaveholders’ financial contributions. Sent in the late 1840s by the Free Mission Baptists into western Virginia and Kentucky to preach an antislavery gospel, Mathews was expelled from the latter state in early 1851 under threats of death. The American Baptist Free Mission Society then dispatched Mathews to the British Isles. He remained there and lectured and wrote on behalf of the abolitionist movement until after the Civil War. Edward Mathews, The Autobiography of the Rev. E. Mathews, the “Father Dickson,” of Mrs. Stowe ’s Dred (1867; Miami, 1969); John R. McKivigan, “The American Baptist Free Mission Society: Abolitionist Reaction to the 1845 Baptist Schism,” Foundations: The Journal of the American Baptist Historical Society, 21:340–55 (October–December 1978). having expressed a strong desire to explain the claims and merits of the Liberty Party, his wish was acceded to, and, on the commencement of the proceedings, he took the floor, and dilated at considerable length, on the principles and proceedings of those who devote their time to an attempt to convince the people of the U.S. that their Constitution does not mean what the people, their Judges, and their Legislatures, declare that it means, and who are trying to form a party, to swear to this document, with the intention of neglecting some of its most solemn provisions, or are intending to keep them (and so renounce the claims of justice and humanity,) until they can obtain a sufficient majority to turn the balance of political power in favor of an amended Constitution, consistent with the Declaration of Independence, and with the cardinal doctrine of the abolitionists, that “slavery is a sin that should be immediately abandoned.”5Webb quotes his own letter from the 2 October 1851 issue of the National Anti–Slavery Standard.
Now, if you had given this passage, you would have put your readers more fully into possession of what appears to be objectionable in the position of the Liberty Party.—There may be individual abolitionists, who as non-resistants, cannot conscientiously take any part in politics; but there is not, to my knowledge, any party of abolitionists which objects to straight-forward political action against slavery. You—yourself very lately belonged to the American A. S. Society, which protests both against those who swear to support the Constitution as a pro-slavery document, and those who are ready to swear to maintain it in a sense different from that in which it is understood by the people, the Legislatures, and the Law Tribunals of the United States. It was to the tortuous course of this latter class, that words “absurdity and duplicity” were applied. It seems to me, that for anybody to swear to the American Constitution with anti-slavery mental reservations, is similar to the conduct of an English member of Parliament, who should swear allegiance to the Queen, with the reserved intention of overturning the throne, and establishing a republic at the earliest opportunity.
The American Constitution, as understood, interpreted and administered, is horribly pro-slavery. Nobody knows this better, or feels it more keenly than yourself.
Constitutions and laws are generally whatever their recognized legal interpreters construe them to be; and it would appear a much more hopeful task to arouse the American people to a sense of their wickedness and impolicy of slavery, than to endeavor to change their minds as to the meaning of a parchment. If you cannot convince the people of the iniquity of slavery, they will continue to act on the Constitution as a pro-slavery document, no matter how clearly Lysander Spooner,6Massachusetts native Lysander Spooner (1808–87), a lawyer, writer, and uncompromising foe of slavery, first published his famous work, The Unconstitutionality of Slavery (1845), in Boston. An expanded version appeared in 1847, and it became one of the major sources of campaign literature used by the Liberty party in its later years. He also waged an unsuccessful challenge against the monopoly of the U.S. Post Office over the nation’s mails, which had the impact of forcing down federal postal charges. ACAB, 5:634–35; DAB, 17:466–67. or anybody else not legally appointed to interpret it, may lay down the law to the contrary.
With respect to the words you object to so strongly, “absurdity and duplicity,” my idea of the course of the Liberty Party, as given in the above extract from my letter, will explain the sense in which I used them. I spoke of the party, not of individual members. I have no doubt that many devoted friends of the slave are included in that party, nor have I any wish to depreciate their character or their sacrifices. I have rejoiced to learn, and from George Thompson himself, of their zeal and their labors in the anti-slavery cause.
My present views of the ground-work of the Liberty Party action, are those which you professed, and held for many years of your anti-slavery career. Have I not as good a right to retain my opinion as you have to change yours? If you can convince me that the views you have adopted after such
long investigation of the subject, are the best and the truest for an abolitionist to hold, I shall gladly adopt them. I have no “private griefs” in the matter—no money to make, no end to gain by taking any course but the right one. I think it reasonable to ask you for some intelligible and simple explanation of the principles on which the Liberty Party act; and I think your time would be better spent in giving such to the world than in fencing about words.
You seem to think because Liberty Party men prompted Geo. Thompson’s A. S. Meetings, or paid for attending his lectures on other subjects, he should feel himself precluded from expressing his opinion on the tactics of their party. I trust that few indeed will be found among that party who would thus limit any man’s free utterance of opinion.—There is not, as you seem to think, any parallel between George Thompson’s course as a politician at home,7George Thompson represented the Tower Hamlets in Parliament from 1846 to 1852, where he used his position to oppose slavery, the Corn Laws, and British colonization of India. DNB, 19:691. and the political position of the Liberty Party. His oath as a member of Parliament, binds him to nothing that he is not prepared to perform. The oath to obey the Constitution of the U. S., no consistent abolitionist could take in the sense in which it is commonly received and taken. And if he take it in a different sense, he lays himself open to the imputation of paltering with a solemn oath in the estimation of the great majority of the American people.
I attribute the existence of the Liberty Party to that faith in politics, and that thirst for political action, which characterize the Americans above all other people. In England, there is a growing conviction that until the minds of the people are enlightened and informed, there is not much use in appealing to Parliament on any particular question requiring Legislative interference. When the desired change takes place in the American mind respecting slavery, it will be much easier to persuade them to alter their Constitution, so as to make it consistent with justice and humanity, than to convince them that they have all along been mistaken as to its right interpretation.
In giving my opinion of your Party, I trust I take no unwarrantable liberty. I merely stand where you, with much more ample means of information at hand, stood for many years. The true friends of the anti-slavery cause are not so numerous that one of the most eminent victims of slavery can afford to waste his time in insulting those who have for years manifested a deep interest on behalf of the slave, and against whom personally you have no cause of complaint, except that they retain those views which you have seen fit to relinquish. I can truly say that any contemptuous reference to me, grieves me far less than your manner of alluding to George Thompson,
than whom the slave and the fugitive have no truer, more gifted, or more generous friend; whose kindness and generous hospitality you have yourself experienced:—and whose attachment to the cause of liberty is shown fully as much by his private generosity to the poor outcast, as by his wonderful eloquence in behalf of our brothers and sisters in bonds.
Your friend,
R. D. WEBB.8In response to Webb’s letter, Douglass wrote, “We can easily permit our friend Webb’s letter to go before our readers, without a word of reply.” FDP, 4 December 1851.
PLSr: FDP, 4 December 1851. Reprinted in Lib., 12 December 1851.