Send Back the Blood-Stained Money: An Address Delivered in Paisley, Scotland, on April 25, 1846
SEND BACK THE BLOOD-STAINED MONEY: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN PAISLEY, SCOTLAND, ON 25 APRIL 1846
Renfrewshire Advertiser, 2 May 1846.
Hoping to arrange a debate with Free Church minister James MacNaughtan, Paisley abolitionists prepared handbills inviting public discussion at the meeting Douglass was scheduled to address on 25 April. On the day of the meeting permission to use the spacious High Church was suddenly withdrawn and the East Relief Church was also closed to the visiting Americans. Only two churches, the West Relief and the Secession Church, Abbey Close were available, and in order to obtain adequate seating separate meetings were held in each place on the same night. Douglass spoke first in the Secession Church and later in the Relief Church where he followed Henry C. Wright, George Thompson, and James N. Buffum on the platform. In both places he addressed audiences of roughly 1200 but only his second speech was reported. MacNaughtan, who was roundly assailed throughout the evening, failed to appear. Edinburgh Scottish Herald, 9 May 1846; Glasgow Saturday Post, 2 May 1846; Frederick Douglass to [Richard D. Webb], 25 April 1846, Anti-Slavery Collection, MB.
Mr. Frederick Douglass, who was received with loud and prolonged cheering, came forward and said, Ladies and Gentlemen, with my friend Buffum, I did not expect I would be required to say anything tonight. I have spoken in Paisley now seven times, and have managed to present some new facts on each occasion, and I am not at a loss for facts to-night, to warm your sympathies into love for the bondsman, to cheer you with the hope of ultimate success in this glorious enterprise.
A deed has been committed by a party in your land which has had the tendency to strengthen the hand of the tyrant, and to darken the prospects of the poor down-trodden slave in the United States. (Cheers.) It has been committed by professing Christians, and it has had the effect of spreading gloom over the prospects of the poor bondsman. We are here for the purpose of dispelling that gloom, and of brightening those prospects. (Cheers.)
Let us contemplate this system, holding as it does in its grasp, three millions of those for whom the Saviour died. In the midst of these there is no marriage. Wives , sisters, husbands, think of this in the midst of a people calling themselves Christians, so many living without this ordinance, without Bibles, denied the privilege of learning to read the word of God—driven like dumb cattle to the fields—robbed of their identity
with the human family. This, my friends, is the condition of three millions of people within two weeks' sail of this land. A case occurs to my mind at present, where a husband and wife were brought to the auction mart. The wife was sold to one m a n and the husband to another, and the husband looked imploringly to the man who had bought his wife. But the wife was to go one way and he another. The husband asked to shake hands with the wife for the last time. He attempted to do it. He was struck on the head, and when let go, he fell dead. His heart was broken!
Who is responsible for slavery? The Free Church of Scotland has made itself responsible for slavery, by regarding these men as the followers of the meek and lowly Jesus. Think of this, Christian men and women of Scotland! (Great-cheering.) This religious denomination, claiming the high and holy title of Free—to be the exponent of all that is good and holy in the moral and religious sentiments of Scotland, comes forward and holds up the slaveholder as being a Christian, and then when I have thrown off my fetters, found my way here , and attempted to speak on behalf of my brethren, do they say welcome, bondsman, come let us see your wrongs and we are prepared to redress them. No. Mr. Macnaughtan1 The Reverend John MacNaughtan (1807–89), a native of Greenock, translated in 1832 from the Scottish Church in Crown Court, London, to Paisley High Church. During the Disruption of 1843 he led most of his congregation out of the High Church and formed the Free Church of Paisley, where he remained as minister in 1846. He had visited Canada as a deputy of the Free Church in 1844–45, and in 1849 left Scotland for the ministry of Rosemary Street Church, Belfast. A seasoned pamphleteer and polemicist, MacNaughtan was perhaps best known for his repeated assaults on voluntaryism and the Catholic church. In a speech delivered on 21 April 1846, MacNaughtan denounced Douglass and defended the Free Church's policy of retaining the money it had collected from American slaveowners. Dismissing Douglass as an "ignorant runaway slave, who had picked up a few sentences which he was pleased to retail up and down the country," MacNaughtan expressed surprise that Paisley residents "paid a penny" to hear the black fugitive. In the wake of Douglass's speaking tour, MacNaughtan authored a pamphlet defending the Free Church against the charges of its antislavery critics. Renfrewshire Advertiser, 2 May 1846; Smith, Our Scottish Clergy, 1:215–22; Rice, "Scottish Factor," 314; John MacNaughtan, The Free Church and American Slavery: Slanders Against the Free Church Met and Answered . . . (Paisley, 1846); Ewing, Annals of the Free Church of Scotland, 1 : 252–53; Scott, Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, 3 : 173; Edinburgh Scottish Guardian, 28 April 1846; Edinburgh Witness, 25 April 1846. brands me as being a poor, miserable, fugitive slave—ignorant, fugitive slave. I would not say anything of the origin of that gentleman—I will not call attention to his rise, progress, and present position. (Great laughter.) I presume, however , I should not trace him to any extraordinary ancestors. I esteem him nothing less a man on that account. I esteem him as much as though he stood in close
relationship to Prince Albert—(great applause)—but there is a degree of audacity, such as I did not expect to witness on the part of any Free Church clergyman, in the case of Mr. Macnaughtan calling me an ignorant, degraded, fugitive slave. (Great applause.) Only let us look at it.
The man whose pockets are lined with the gold with which I ought to have been educated, stands up charging me with ignorance and poverty. (Great applause.) The man who enjoys his share of the three thousand pounds taken from the slaveholder, and robbed from the slave, stands up to denounce me as being ignorant. (Continued cheering.) Shame on him. (Cheers.) I should like to see the inside of his breast; there cannot be a heart of flesh there. There must be a stone or a gizzard there. (Great cheering.) Let him launch out that gold and I shall undertake to educate a number of slaves, who will in a few years be able to stand by the side of Mr. Macnaughtan. I do not feel at all chagrined by the notice he has taken of me. I rather feel a degree of pride from what he has said of me. (Cheers.) I do feel a thrill of grateful pleasure, more so than I would at the most glowing panegyric which my friend Mr. Thompson2George Thompson. could bestow. I will tell you why. Macnaughtan has linked himself with the slaveholder, and he cannot therefore have any sympathy with a slave. (Great applause.) The interest of the one is antagonistic to the other. The slave runs and the slaveholder sets his dogs on him to catch him and bring him back. The slave works, and the slaveholder takes the produce of his labour. When a slave comes here to plead their cause, Macnaughtan calls him a poor, miserable, fugitive slave. (Cheers.) Macnaughtan won't get rid of us by any such statements.
The Free Church has got to SEND BACK THAT MONEY . (Applause.) There is no mistake about it. They could not deny that the delegates went to America and preached only such doctrines as would be well received. They did not utter one word of sympathy for the slave, nor a sentence of condemnation of those who held t h e m in that condition; but they clothed them in the garb of Christianity. The Free Church must SEND BACK THE MONEY. Let this be the theme in every town in Scotland. If they say an ignorant man is not a fitting advocate of the anti-slavery cause, I say SEND BACK THE MONEY. (Applause.) There is music in the words, my friends. (Cheers and laughter.) In Arbroath there was painted in blood red capitals, SEND BACK THE MONEY. A woman was sent to wash it, but the letters still remained
visible, SEND BACK THE MONEY. (Great applause.) A mason was afterwards got to chisel it out, but there still was left in indelible characters, SEND BACK THE MONEY. (Cheers.) I want men, women, and children to send forth this cry wherever they go. Let it be the talk around the fireside, in the street, and at the market-place—indeed, everywhere. It is a fitting subject even on the Sabbath day.
The Free Church is doing more for infidelity and atheism than all the infidels in Scotland combined. (Great applause.) For what says the infidel? "If Christ be not opposed to slavery it is the best reason in the world why we should not regard him as a divine being at all. " (Cheers.) By opposing the Free Church you do a work of Christianity. You do something to hasten the spread of that gospel whose tendency will be to take the chains from off the limbs of three millions of people. If we don't have that BLOOD-STAINED MONEY SENT BACK, one thing we shall have accomplished by holding these meetings—that Scotland has within her a people who disclaim all connection with those who took the money—that the majority are with the oppressed and against the oppressor. (Loud cheers.)
Dr. Chalmers has said that it would be most unjustifiable to deny the slaveholder Christian fellowship. Scotland and the slaveholder at one ! Shall it be so? (No, no.) The people are with us in Arbroath, Dundee, Aberdeen, Montrose, Greenock, Glasgow—and they will be with us in Edinburgh. (Loud applause.) We wish to have Scotland, England, Ireland, Canada, Mexico, and even the red Indians with us, and against slavery. We want to have the whole country surrounded with an anti-slavery wall, with the words legibly inscribed thereon, SEND BACK THE MONEY , SEND BACK THE MONEY. (Long continued cheering.)