Slavery Corrupts American Society and Religion: An Address Delivered in Cork, Ireland, on October 17, 1845
SLAVERY CORRUPTS AMERICAN SOCIETY AND RELIGION: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN CORK, IRELAND, ON 17 OCTOBER 1845
Cork Examiner, 20 October 1845 and Cork Southern Reporter, 18 October 1845. Another text in London Inquirer, 25 October 1845.
Douglass’s speech before a public meeting in Cork ’s Wesleyan Chapel on 17 October 1845 was attended by a large company of, to use Douglass‘s characterization, “highly intelligent and influential people, . . . abolitionists . . . of the true stamp." Mayor Richard Dawden chaired the meeting and several Methodist clergymen and members of the Society of Friends
were seated on the platform. After Dawden introduced him to the assembly, Douglass came forward “amidst loud applause” and spoke for nearly two hours. Several Methodist ministers thought their church more intolerant of slavery than Douglass had suggested and rose to challenge his views. Douglass's rebuttal was well received and he “resumed his seat amid loud applause.” The debate would recur. Cork Southern Reporter, 16 October 1845 (Supplement); Douglass to Garrison, 28 October 1845, in Lib., 28 November 1845; Isabel Jennings to Maria Weston Chapman, n.d., in Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 243-44; Quarles, FD, 39-41.
Mr. Douglas[s] addressed the meeting in a speech of some two hours duration, in which he graphically described the horrors of American Slavery. He said the first evil that presented itself to the mind’s eye, as growing out of Slavery, was its cruelty to the unhappy slave; but although it was the first, yet it was not the paramount evil of the infamous institution.
One of its greatest and most potent evils was its corrupting influence not alone on the institutions of the society in which the bond-master moved, but also on all that came in contact with it, or even in its vicinity; and there was no nation on the face of the Globe that more faithfully illustrated such than did America (hear, hear, hear). There, in that soi disant "land of liberty" it spread a dark cloud over the intellect of the nation, corruptng the channels of morality, poisoning the fountains of religion and perverting the beneficial objects of government. And this was the more to be wondered at, as America had started on the highest, noblest principle that ever actuated a nation—the principle of universal freedom (hear, hear).
Yes, she started and proclaimed to the world that all mankind were created freeborn; and for the maintenance of that principle she solemnly swore before high Heaven that she would vindicate and uphold it by force, at expense, at the sacrifice of life, and everything that was dear to honour and integrity. But alas! how had she carried out her pledge: what was the condition of slavery there? Did they not see it disregarding the rights of property, outraging the laws of God and nature, and setting decency and morality at nought (hear, hear)? But in no case did they see its corrupting influences more dreadfully pourtrayed than in the religious organization of the country. The Society of Friends at one period strenuously opposed the system of slavery, and made it a religious obligation
on every member of their communion to discountenance the slave dealers, who then detested them; but he regretted that of late they were influenced and corrupted by the upholders of the system; and instead of being detested, as they formerly were by the inhuman traffickers they were at present spoken of by them as being "an excellent body."1Although Quaker leader George Fox expressed concern over slavery as early as 1657, opposition to slaveholding did not pervade the Society of Friends until the middle of the next century. By the close of the American Revolution most Quakers had freed their slaves, often compensating former bondsmen. After rural antislavery activists separated from the Indiana Yearly Meeting in 1843 to form a rival body of "Anti-Slavery Friends," the majority of Quakers renounced radical abolitionism in favor of the "quiet" promotion of antislavery principles. Thomas E. Drake, Quakers and Slavery in America (New Haven, 1950), 5, 48, 68–84, 114–32, 165–69.
The Methodists of the Episcopal church had also started on the high principle of opposition to the slavery system, and, in the words of their great founder, proclaimed it the "perfection of all infamy." They stood by the principle for years, but of late they had also become influenced. (The speaker here read several extracts from American Journals justifying the infamous system of slavery by more infamous perversions and misapplications of texts from the sacred Scriptures, and then continued.)
In the Southern States it was impossible to raise one’s voice against slavery, and whoever attempted it did so at the risk of being hanged, or shot, or having his tongue cut out, and—as one of the journals of that "land of freedom" required—cast on a dung hill! As regarded the Episcopalian church, though he had suffered much at the hands of its members—and at that moment he was the property of one of its members—and though he had been subjected to every possible indignity, yet he would say nothing of them but what truth, justice, and honesty admitted him. In the year 1780, four years before the church had been organised, the conference published a declaration that slavery was contrary to the laws of God and religion, on the principle of "doing unto others as you would they should do unto you;" and they resolved on expelling from their communion all slave holders.2Douglass actually refers to the American Methodist Episcopal church. At a meeting of Methodist preachers in Baltimore, Maryland, on 24 April 1780, the chairman Francis Asbury successfully urged the meeting to adopt a resolution requiring those travelling preachers who hold slaves to give promise to set them free. The conference then resolved that slavery is contrary to the laws of God, man, and nature, and hartfitf to society; contrary to the dictates of conscience and pure religion, and doing that which we would not others should do to us and ours, and expressed disapprobation on all our friends who keep slaves, The Methodists did not actually vote to expel slaveholders until the Christmas conference of 1784, when the newly organized church required its members to emancipate their slaves according to a prescribed timetable. Methodist Episcopal Church, Annual Conference Minutes, 1780. 12; Donald G. Mathews, Slavery and Methodism: A Chapter in American Morality, 1780–1845 (Princeton, N.J., 1965), 8, 295–97 Douglass probably based his remarks on James G. Birney's The American Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery (1842: Concord, N.H., 1885), 14–15. Whilst their body
was in its infancy it adhered scrupulously to the principle, but when it extended itself, and when slave holders intermarried with its members they succeeded in rooting out the noble sentiments of humanity, and the moment the clergyman's salary became dependent on the voice of the slave holder, eked by him from the toil and sweat of the bondsman, that moment their pulpits became silent; and at that moment there were no less than 250,000 slaves in the possession of ministers and members of the Episcopal Methodist Church of America (oh).3A meeting of antislavery Methodists in Hallowell, Maine, in 1843 estimated that "there are in the M[ethodist] E[piscopal] Church 200 travelling ministers, holding 1600 slaves; about 1000 local preachers holding 10,000; about 25,000 members holding 207,963 more." Lucius C. Matlack, The History of American Slavery and Methodism From 1780 to 1849. . . (New York, 1849), Appendix, 2. How unlike the conduct of their great founder, John Wesley, who denounced the system as "the compendium of all crime and the summum bonum of all villainy" (hear, hear).
In South Carolina the Episcopalian Conference decided that slave holding was not sinful, nor contrary to religion (oh, oh).4Douglass probably refers to the actions of a South Carolina Methodist Episcopal Conference as described in Birney, American Churches, 19. The Reverend W. Martin introduced a resolution declaring that "slavery as it exists in the United States, is not a moral evil." The conference adopted a substitute resolution introduced by the Reverend William Capers which held that the subject of slavery was "not one proper for the action of the church" and pledged not to "intermeddle with it, further than to express our regret that it has ever been introduced in any form into any one of the judicatures of the church." Capers's resolution received unanimous approval after he explained that it conveyed fully and unequivocally the implication that slavery was not morally wrong. Bishop Andrews having married a woman, who had large property in slaves, was called on by several members of his church to emancipate them, on pain of being suspended from his functions, five other Bishops interfered and merely recommended Bishop Andrews to get rid of his impediment (the slaves), get rid of them perhaps by selling or transferring them (oh, oh); and he was finally restored.5Douglas refers to James Osgood Andrew (1794–1871), a native of Wilkes County, Georgia, who became an itinerant minister at the age of eighteen and served the Methodist Episcopal church in Georgia and South Carolina. Largely because Andrew owned no slaves, the Methodist General Conference elected him a bishop in 1832. By 1844, however, Andrew had acquired slaves through two marriages, and northern delegates to that year's General Conference demanded his removal from office. The Conference passed a compromise resolution instructing Andrew to "desist from the exercise of this office so long as this impediment [i.e., slaveholding] remains." The assertion that five bishops "interfered" probably refers to the unsuccessful attempt of bishops Joshua Soule, Elijah Hedding, Beverley Waugh, and T. A. Morris to postpone consideration of Andrew's case until the General Conference of 1848. The bishops proposed that in the interim or until the "cessation" of his "embarassment" Andrew could continue serving "those sections of the Church in which his presence . . . would be welcome." Although Andrew was not “finally restored" as Douglass claims, some basis for such an assertion might be found in the following resolutions adopted by the conference on 6 June 1844: that "Bishop Andrew's name stand in the Minutes, Hymn-Book, and Discipline, as formerly;" that "the rule in relation to the support of a bishop, and his family, applies to Bishop Andrew;" and that "whether any, and in what work Bishop Andrew be employed, is to be determined by his own decision and action, in relation to the previous action of this conference in his case." When southern clergymen organised the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in 1845, James Osgood Andrew was one of two bishops selected to head the new sect. "Journal of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Held in the City of New York, 1844," Journals of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 2: 82–84, 118–21, 185, 190, 202–03 (hereafter cited as Methodist Episcopal Conference Journals); Robert Athow West, ed, "Report of Debates in the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church Held in the City of New York, 1844," Methodist Episcopal Conference Journals, 2 : 185–86, 216:, John Nelson Norwood, The Schism in the Methodist Episcopal Church 1844; A Study of Slavery and Ecclesiastical Politics, Alfred University Studies, vol. 1 (Alfred, N.Y., 1923), 69n., 73n.; George G. Smith, The Life and Letters of James Osgood Andrew (Nashville, Tenn., 1882), 37, 41, 45; Mathews, Slavery and Methodism, 69–71, 115–17, 271, 279; DAB, 1 : 277–78.
The Presbyterian body also had done as much in upholding the slavery system as the Episcopalian. Indeed they went farther, for they justified it by reference to Abraham and the other patriarchs of antiquity who held slaves, and particularly instanced the act of St. Paul, who caused a runaway slave to be sent back to his master (oh, oh).6This was probably based on resolutions adopted by South Carolina’s Hopewell, Harmony, and Charleston Union presbyteries, as quoted in Birney, American Churches, 38–39. St. Paul returns Onesimus to his master in Philem. 10 : 19. And yet these men, who scourged and branded feeble women until they were saturated in their own blood, and who plundered the cradles of helpless infancy, these were the men who sent out missionaries to evangelise the world, and who turned their eyes to heaven to thank their God that they lived in a land of religion (great cries of oh, oh, and deep sensation). It was calculated that the Presbyterians in America held 90,000 slaves (oh, oh).7 In 1852 John Robinson estimated that American Presbyterians held some 70,000 slaves. John Robinson, The Testimony and Practice of the Presbyterian Church in Reference to American Slavery (Cincinnati, 1852), 168: Andrew E. Murray, Presbyterians and the Negro: A History (Philadelphia, 1966), 65.
The Baptist church, which extended from end to end of America, equally supported and countenanced the system. They at their triennial conference appointed slave holders as missionaries to preach the Gospel of Christ. At their last meeting in Baltimore Dr. Johnson, a man-thief,
preached the sermon, whilst another man-thief read the prayers, and then the congregation of slave-holders, women floggers, and cradle-plunderers all sang—"Lord what a pleasing sight; we brothers all agree" (laughter).8Douglass alludes to the Baptist Triennial Convention which met in Baltimore in late April 1841. The convention acted to appease southern churchmen angered by the organization in 1840 of an Anti-Slavery Baptist Convention. At the 1841 Triennial Convention delegates excluded abolitionists from slates of officers and elected as president Dr. William Bullein Johnson of Edgefield, South Carolina. In 1845 Johnson was chosen to head the Southern Baptist Convention, a proslavery body which he helped organize while serving as president of the South Carolina Baptist State Convention. Willie Grier Todd, "The Slavery Issue and the Organisation of a Southern Baptist Convention" (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1964), 68, 152–33, 198, 311–22; Albert Henry Newman, A History of the Baptist Churches in the United States (Philadelphia, 1915), 392, 406; AAP, 6: 163–64. On the occasion of the death of the Rev. Dr. Firman, of South Carolina, his executor or legal representative advertised his property for sale in the following terms in the public journals:—"On Monday next, will be sold, the property of the late Dr. Firman, consisting of a plantation of land in a watery swamp on the banks of the Black River; a choice Library; Twenty-seven Negroes in prime condition; one horse and old waggon" (oh, oh)!9"Dr. Firman" was actually Baptist clergyman Richard Furman (1755–1825), who began his fifty-year ministerial career in 1773. Furman fled South Carolina to escape the British during the American Revolution but later returned to help draft the state constitution. In 1792 and 1800 he received the Master of Arts and Doctor of Divinity degrees from Brown University. He became president of the first Baptist Convention for the United States, meeting in Philadelphia in 1814. AAP, 6 : 161–65. The notice concerning Furman’s estate appears in Birney, American Churches, 32.
Let them mark that—"in prime condition"; or as a paper in Cork said of himself—"an excellent specimen of the Negro."10In its report of Douglass’s October 14 speech to a public meeting in the city courthouse, the Cork Constitution of 16 October 1845 described Douglass as "a fine young negro, with espressive features, [who] speaks English with ease and correctness.” On 21 October 1845 the Constitution objected that the phrase excellent specimen was "altogether a creature of . . . [Douglass's] own imagination" and urged Douglass's local supporters to "teach him . . . to cultivate somewhat more sense and less sensitiveness." He was familiar with such epithets in America, and cared little for what their public journals said; but in Cork, in a place of enlightenment, he was not prepared for such language from a public journal: it looked like a good advertisement from a slave trader.
Mr. William Martin11William Martin (1772–1853), a Quaker shopkeeper of Cork, Ireland, was active in both the abolitionist and temperance movements. In 1834 he founded the Old George's Street Society to promote moderate drinking. Two years later he abandoned moderation in favor of a policy of total abstinence. Martin served with Father Theobald Mathew on the Board of Managers of the Cork House of Industry and is generally credited with converting Mathew to the temperance cause in 1838. Patrick Rogers, Father Theobald Mathew, Apostle of Temperance (Dublin, 1943), 33–41; Alfred Webb,CIB, 335; Garrison to Joseph Merrill, 12 July 1847, in Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3 : 494–95; Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 95n.; Anna Davis Hallowell, James and Lucretia Mott: Life and Letters (Boston, 1884), 155.—I see no Reporter present from that journal
(cries of "The Constitution"). Yes, it was the Constitution that wrote it; and I felt so disgusted at reading it that I instantly gave up my subscription—(loud applause).
Mr. Douglas[s] said he would not dwell on the consideration of the matter; it was too contemptible (hear, hear). He (Mr. Douglas[s]) loved and cherished the sacred principles of Christianity; but he despised the man-trapping, woman-whipping, slave-branding and cradle-robbing Christianity of America; for the minister who held forth once a week, to enlighten them and lead them to eternal salvation was paid and clothed, his very hat, boots and watch being purchased out of the sweat and groans of the oppressed slave, who was lashed and manacled, and weekly robbed of the earnings of his hard toil. Methodists, Baptists, Roman Catholics and Protestants, all were engaged in the infamous traffic in their fellow-man. The speaker next proceeded to read several advertisements of an atrocious character, inserted at the instance of American slave masters, and offering rewards for runaway slaves, whom they described to the world as being branded on the check or forehead, or bearing lacerations from the lash, and concluded by a forcible appeal to the sympathy and humanity of his audience to unite for the abolition of the soul-benighting, inhuman and infamous system of American slavery.
(The following are a few of the Notices referred to:—
Committed to Jail as a runaway, a negro woman named Martha, 17 or 18 years of age—has numerous scars of the whip on her back.
D. JUDD, Jailor, Davidson County Tenn.
Lodged in Jail a mulatto boy, having large marks of the whip on his shoulders and other parts of his body.
M. J. GARCIA, Sheriff of the Co. Jefferson.
Committed a mulatto fellow—his back shows lasting impressions of the whip, and leaves no doubt of his being A SLAVE.
J. WATSON, Rockville, Montgomery County.
Was committed to jail a yellow boy named Jim—had on a large lock chain round his neck.
W. TOLER, Sheriff of Simpson Co.
Detained at the Police jail, Nina—has several marks of lashing, and has irons on her feet.
P. BAYHI, Captain of Police.
Ran away a negro woman and two children—a few days before she went off, I burned her with a hot iron on the left side of her face: I tried to make the letter M.
MICAGAH RICKS, Nash Co., N.C.
Ran away, Sam—he was shot a short time since through the hand and has several shots in his left arm and side.
O. W. LAINS, Ark.
Ran away, my negro man Denis—said negro has been shot in the left arm, between the shoulders and elbow, which has paralysed the left hand.
R. W. SIZER, Mi.
Ran away a negro girl called Mary—has a small scar over her eye, a good many teeth missing—the letter A is branded on her cheek and forehead.
Run away, Anthony; one of his ears cut off, and his left hand cut with an axe.
STEPHEN M. JACKSON,12These were paraphrases of ads appearing in [Weld], American Slavery, 62, 63, 73, 77, 79, 81.
Even the liberty of the Press had been availed of, as an engine for the perpetuation of slavery—as the following extracts would show:—
(From the Charleston Gazette)
We protest against the assumption, the unwarrantable assumption, that slavery is ultimately to be extirpated from the Southern States.
(From the Washington Telegraph)
As a man, a Christian, and a citizen, we believe that slavery is right—and slave-holding the best existing organization of civil society.
(From the Augusta (Geo.) Chronicle)
He (Amos Dresser) should have been hung up as high as Haman, to rot upon the gibbet, until the wind whistled through his bones. The cry of the whole South should be, DEATH, INSTANT DEATH, to the abolitionist, wherever he is caught.13Extracts appear in Birney, American Churches, 11–12.
Three millions of these poor people were deprived of the light of the Gospel, and the common rights of human nature; were subjected to the grossest outrages—and the poor bondsman rattled his chain, and clanked his fetters calling upon the Christianity of the world to relieve him. There was a wide field in America for missionary operations.
(Hear.) Let them not therefore whisper as heretofore, but speak as the tempest did, sterner and stronger. (Hear.) Let their importunities in this country be such as to give the slave-holder no peace while his hands were besmeared with human blood. Let them do this and the slaves' tears of gratitude would be their reward, and the smiles of a merciful GOD would be lavished upon them. (Cheers.))14From Cork Southern Reporter, 18 October 1845. He resumed his seat amid loud applause.
The Rev. Mr. Reily15This was probably William Reilly (?–1868), a Methodist clergyman assigned to the Cork district at the time of Douglass’s visit. C. H. Crookshank, History of Methodism in Ireland, 3 vols. (London, 1888), 3 : 352–53; Minutes of the Methodist Conferences From the First, Held in London, by the Late Rev. John Wesley . . . in the Year 1744, 10 : 37 (hereafter cited as London Methodist Minutes). rose and said, that though he loved freedom and detested tyranny, everywhere and in every shape, yet, he could not but observe that an animus was evident in the language of Mr. Douglas[s] not at all favourable to the Methodists. Now it was well known that the Methodists did everything in their power, and never ceased until they banished slavery from the British Colonies (hear, hear). The Rev. Gentleman then proceeded to read lengthy correspondence, which passed between Clergymen at home and on the foreign mission, at the period of the agitation for the abolition of Slavery, in the British Colonies, in proof of his statements, and concluded by enumerating the important services rendered by the sect to Mr. Wilberforce, who so effectively conducted the measure through the House of Commons.
Mr. W. Martin16William Martin. said he was one of the five hundred delegates of the "World’s Convention," which went to London some years ago;17The first World’s Anti-Slavery Convention brought together 518 delegates and some 5000 visitors to Freemasons' Hall, London, England, from 12 June through 23 June 1840. In attendance was nearly every prominent abolitionist from the British Isles—including Thomas Clarkson, who opened the meeting—as well as a host of reformers from continental Europe, the Caribbean, and the United States, which contributed the largest foreign delegation. Unofficially sponsored by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, the convention is chiefly remembered for its debates over the issue of women's rights, despite the broad sweep of topics which filled its agenda. The delegates overwhelmingly defeated a motion offered by Wendell Phillips to seat the women whom the Garrisonians had placed in their delegation in defiance of the wishes of the convention's organizers. When he arrived, William Lloyd Garrison refused to present his credentials and instead sat with the excluded American women delegates in the galleries. In 1843 and 1854 London again hosted World Anti-Slavery Conventions. British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention . . . (London, 1841); Temperley, British Anti-Slavery, 85–92; Merrill, Against Wind and Tide, 161–69; Louis Filler, The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830–1860 (New York, 1960), 137–38.
and at that meeting the American delegates were most anxious that the agitation should be taken up in England. He knew Mr. Douglas[s] very well, and he was firmly convinced that he meant no offence to the Methodists of England, Ireland or Scotland (hear).
Mr. Douglas[s] begged to say that the church of these countries had not been put on trial that day, as he was merely speaking of the church in his own country (hear).
The Rev. Mr. Mackey18This probably refers to Joseph W. McKay, an Irish Methodist minister first admitted into "full connexion" with the Methodist Conference in July 1844 and stationed at Cork the following year. London Methodist Minutes, 10 : 2, 188. should say that he felt offended at the language used by Mr. Douglas[s], at the meeting in the Court-House, as it was calculated to cast opprobrium on Methodists in particular, whilst the Roman Catholic and other sects were passed by; and he need scarcely remark that the majority of the audience at that meeting was composed of persons who required but little incentive to induce them to cast opprobrium on their sect (partial cries of "hear").
Mr. Douglas[s], in reply, should say that he was a fallible man; and it would be requiring too much that he should know men's religion by their faces. He meant no offence in anything he said, to any sect or religion; but he should say that, if the majority of the persons at the meeting in the Court-House were Roman Catholics, it showed they felt more sympathy with the slave than did the other sects (hear, hear, and applause). He was a Methodist himself; but he cautioned his fellow religionists how they defended their brethren of America, for in doing so they would be defending the men who scourged his (Mr. Douglas[s]'s female cousin until she was crimsoned with her own blood from her head to the floor (hear, and oh, oh). He again cautioned them how they defended the American church; and he would then say what he did not say before in public, that there was an over-sensitiveness on the part of some persons which induced them to curl up when any charge was laid to their co-religionists of another country, which decidedly was the result of a bad state of things; but it would not be so when the hearts of such few individuals were saturated with the sacred love of the cause, and not of the sect (hear, hear, and loud applause).