James G. Birney to Frederick Douglass, April 8, 1852
Letter from Hon. James G. Birney.
Mr. Douglass: Dear Sir:—Be so good as to accept of the pamphlet I send you, one that I have lately published. Its many typographical errors—especially in the latter part - a good deal mar it, but you will see that I have corrected some of the most important of them. The most important is on the 42 page, where I am represented as attributing "ignorance" to the Supreme Court. Such a thought never once entered my head. Independently that it would be presumptuous in me, every body must know that it is untrue. It should have been ARROGANCE, as it was in the manuscript; but in the little time I had for correcting the proof, I overlooked the mistake.
The pamphlet was written, not because the writer has at all lessened his estimation of human rights. If his mind has undergone any change relating to them, it is to exalt them, even more than he ever did. Indeed, it was his high estimation of them that persuaded him to write the pamphlet. The facts, he thought, forced the conclusion on this judgment, that a part of the race to which he belonged could not enjoy them here; he therefore advised them to go elsewhere, that they might do so. He thought it too weighty a matter to suffer his fancy or his wishes to influence his decisions in any measure. If these facts are misstated in any essential respect—if they are not sufficiently comprehensive, or if he has drawn improper inferences from them, no one would welcome correction more cordially than he would. —Having no ambition, that it should be acceptable to any, because he wrote it, he wishes it to be regarded only as a contribution to the cause
of TRUTH. If it should be found unworthy in any way, so far from finding fault with its exposure, he invites it. But to decry the pamphlet, as some have done, he thinks, without reading it or to impute to the writer unpopular opinions generally, or the odium of a small and so-called ultra party with which, on account of its principles, he has been, and still is connected, he does not think—come from what quarter it may—is fair dealing.
Suffer me to express my great gratification at learning from your paper, that many in this State have associated on the principle that slavery can never be legalized, or, in other words, made right. —This, I am fully satisfied is the true one, and, of course, the only one. With it, everybody may speculate as he pleases, about the constitution being pro-slavery or not, and I would not hinder one of these speculations on either side, and all who are opposed to slavery may harmoniously come together, however they may think on other subjects.
Say what we may—do what we may—we are all of the same family, Emperors, Sultans, Kings, Nobility, &c., have only similar powers or faculties with the poor and mendicant. All the distinctions here are made by our fellow mortals. MAN is the highest type
of HUMANITY, and in the life which is to come, he will be judged by what he has done as a MAN, not by the circumstances by which he may be surrounded in this world.
To do unto others as we would they should do to us, has been everywhere, at all times, and under all circumstances, the cement to bind men together. The members of the convention of '87, as highly as we rate their intelligence, and we rate it very high, in adopting that provision of the Constitution applying to "persons held to service or labor," and which we will suppose here mainly refers to slaves, had they the right to thrust aside the law of justice—the law of love—which God made part of our very nature, and put in its place the law of Hate? But superficial thinkers will say to this, there is no hate, nothing but love, between me and my slave. To such reply, you may even love the slave, deprived of his rights as a man. —This is not at all denied. But the moment he claims them you hate him. Can any one show his hate to a fellow being more certainly than by disregarding and crushing his rights?
That part of the constitution then—considering it, now as referring to slavery—never was binding on our forefathers, never could be on their descendants. To deliver up a fellow being into slavery, or, indeed, to do anything that has a necessary tendency, in the view of all intelligence, to degrade him, or intentionally to prevent him from improving the faculties given him, is unspeakably mean, for God, our example is always magnanimous, and surely as sinful as to bear false witness against our neighbor, and as clearly a violation of the law of nature as stopping the circulation of the blood would be. Even the courts, without any exception, reject as void, all immoral consideration for doing, or for not doing a particular act.
But will not the establishment of the principle, that the slave is entitled to his freedom in the States, as everywhere else, produce a dissolution of the Free Soil party, already among us, and most relied on for the final extinction of slavery: It undoubtedly would. But what of that? Is party ever to be preferred to the truth. I know that party may say, that "the slave is entitledto his freedom everywhere. This we do not deny, but only that the government has procluded itself from acting on the subject in the States.—But can this make any real difference? For if the relation of master and slave can never be rightfully set up, it can be binding no where. Does not the government demand allegiance from all who are born within her limits, and who are now in them? Do they not all owe it? Ought they not all, then, to
be protected—especially in those rights which are in the peculiar care of government? And are not duties and offices required of all, which the slave cannot perform? But besides this, while it takes from the Free Soiler his hitherto defective principle, and defective because human, is he not offered one that is properly made for the purpose, and effective because Divine?
We may well go farther, and may say it without intending any irreverence, God cannot act on arbitrary and contrary grounds.—He cannot be unjust. He is so much bound to be good as man is. If he should not be so, according to the principles which he has implanted in us all—if he can be one thing to-day and an opposite thing to-morrow, he ceases to be God to us, and, indeed, never could be to any moral being. God cannot establish slavery without being unjust—without being otherwise than good; therefore his creature MAN cannot.
I have written you a much longer letter than I intended when I began, and longer, many will think, than the occasion seemed to call for. But I am sure you will excuse it as coming from a well-wisher.
James G. Birney.