Slavery Attacks Humanity: An Address Delivered in Birmingham, England, on June 29, 1846
SLAVERY ATTACKS HUMANITY: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND, ON 29 JUNE 1846
Birmingham Midland Counties Herald, 2 July 1846 and London Patriot, 2 July 1846. Another text in Birmingham Journal, 4 July 1846.
After attending a series of meetings and an antislavery soirée in Edinburgh early in the month, Douglass spent the remainder of June touring Scotland and England. The auxiliary of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in Birmingham decided to hold its annual meeting on 29 June 1846, somewhat earlier than usual, in order that its members and the general public might hear the eloquent slave from America. The Midland Counties Herald noted that Ebenezer Chapel, the site of the convention, was "crowded with a highly respectable audience, who manifested the greatest interest in the proceedings." On the platform were Joseph Sturge, president of the local society, Edmund Sturge, Richard T. Cadbury, and the Reverends James Roberts, Thomas Swan, Charles H. Roe, and Joshua Hammond. Roberts presided. After the society's annual report was read and adopted, Douglass introduced a resolution mourning the death of Charles Torrey in a Baltimore prison and denouncing the laws that put him there. Douglass then spoke to good effect, concluding his remarks "amidst loud cheering" according to the Journal reporter. Douglass's resolution passed easily. The Sturges and James Buffum, among others, also addressed the meeting, which passed resolutions that rebuked the Free Church, pledged support for universal emancipation and the cause of Jamaican freedmen, and advocated an embargo of sugar from Cuba and Brazil and the opening of British ports to sugar and cotton grown by free laborers.
Mr. Frederick Douglas[s], the escaped slave from Maryland, then addressed the meeting amid loud applause. He was glad to be at such a meeting, at such a time, as he represented both the slaves of the United States and those who endeavoured to emancipate them, and particularly as they were now beset by perils such as they had never encountered before. The war with Mexico was a war for the extension of slavery, and against the spirit of anti-slavery. Such was the madness prevalent in many parts even of the northern states, that it was absolutely dangerous for any person to raise his voice in behalf of the down-trodden slave. He therefore rejoiced to find that a voice of sympathy was to go forth to the men who were thus, in dependence upon GOD, labouring amid obloquy and danger for the emancipation of their brethren.
(He moved—
"That this meeting has learned with deep regret [of] the decease of the Rev. Charles Torrey, in the Penitentiary at Baltimore, Maryland, to which he had been sentenced for a period of six years by the criminal court of that State, for having aided certain fugitive slaves in their escape from bondage. That they consider the laws of American slavery which render it necessary for free men to counsel and aid slaves in the recovery of their freedom, and in other ways to instruct and befriend them, as utterly disgraceful to a people professing republican institutions and their reverence for the righteous principles and benign spirit of Christianity; that this meeting would earnestly yet respectfully recommend to every section of the professedly Christian Church in the United States to separate itself from all participation in, or sanction of, the system of slavery, by a solemn and decisive act; and thus free itself from the charge of upholding an institution which is entirely at variance with natural justice and the laws of Christian love.")1From London Patriot, 2 July 1846.
The speaker alluded with emotion to the death of the Rev. C. Torrey, and gave a brief history of the manner in which that gentleman had aided slaves to escape, observing that Mr. Torrey had nobly chosen to endanger his own liberty and his life by extending a helping hand to his enslaved brethren. Having enabled several of the slaves to escape beyond the state line, having thus done a deed on which Heaven looked down with benignity, and which any Englishman would be proud to perform, he was seized by the slaveholders, and condemned to six years' imprisonment, it being considered a special act of mercy to him that he was not sentenced to be hanged. Mr. Torrey's constitution being delicate, the diet and discipline of the prison induced disease, of which he speedily died—murdered by the slaveholders for imitating HIM who came to "open the prison doors to them that were bound." (Applause.) He had fallen, but out of the very tears shed over him, and the feeling of sympathy evoked for him, there would come a power to sweep more fearfully over the consciences of the slaveholders than a dozen lives of Torrey could have done: slavery had gained nothing by his death; nay, that very act had but advanced its final downfall.
The speaker proceeded to advert to the general question of slavery. It might be asked, "why do you come here to speak of slavery in America? why do you not confine your efforts to the country where it
exists?" He replied, that slavery was the common evil of humanity, and all ought to know its real character. It had been for sixty years gnawing at the very vitals of Christianity in America, as well as at the vitals of the nation, and it was a matter of importance to every Christian. He was there speaking on that subject because he could not speak upon it in the United States with safety. The last American papers contained declarations from his former master and other friends of slavery, that, if he ever set his foot in the country, he should be reduced to slavery again. Yes, in that land of the free, that home of liberty, as it was called, he was liable, if he ever returned to it, to be hunted down with bloodhounds. (Cries of "shame.")
He was there for no military purpose: he did not seek for such aid, because their's was too holy a cause for such weapons. As the "learned blacksmith" had said beautifully, the American slaveholders "might return bomb-shell for bomb-shell, bullet for bullet, but in a war like this, between truth and error, right and wrong, they have no force to meet us."2Elihu Burritt (1810–79), the "learned blacksmith," was celebrated for having taught himself several languages and various sciences while working the bellows in a smithy where he was apprenticed as a young man. Born into poverty in New Britain, Connecticut, Burritt made a career of advocating pacifism, temperance, cheap international postage, and abolitionism of the Liberty Party variety. In 1843 he unsuccessfully urged Thomas Chalmers to write a pamphlet for the New England Anti-Slavery Tract Association. A tireless champion of world peace, Burritt joined the American Peace Society in the early 1840s and went to England in 1846 where he formed the League of Universal Brotherhood, disseminated peace propaganda through his "Olive Leaf Mission," and helped organize two international peace congresses. Opposed to the American Civil War because of his pacifist convictions, Burritt earlier determined to undermine slavery by boycotting slave-grown produce and later urged schemes for compensated emancipation. During his career he edited several reform newspapers, the most notable being the Christian Citizen (1844–51). While the source of Burritt's remarks about returning "bomb-shell for bomb-shell" cannot be readily determined, Douglass's allusion to Burritt was timely, for the American pacifist had recently arrived in Britain. Merle E. Curti, ed., The Learned Blacksmith: The Letters and Journals of Elihu Burritt (New York, 1937); Peter Tolis, Elihu Burritt, Crusader for Brotherhood (Hamden, Conn., 1968); Shepperson, "Free Church and American Slavery," 133; DAB, 3 : 328–30. So long as British men, British papers, and British pulpits denounced slavery, the slaveholders could not rest. He wished to see on the north, Canada blazing all over with anti-slavery fires, and Mexico, once more strong in her love of freedom, on the south, and then the slaveholders' consciences would not be able to rest.
The Americans could not but feel disgraced at their position, since although perhaps the greatest nation of professors about freedom in the world, yet their freedom meant merely freedom for themselves to oppress their black brethren. Governor Macduffy, of Carolina, had de-
clared truly that "slavery was the corner stone of the American republic," for it had made all their presidents, diplomatic agents, and religious and military dignitaries.3Douglass actually refers to George McDuffie (1790–1851) of South Carolina. Born in Georgia of impoverished Scottish immigrants and reared by the Calhoun family, McDuffie studied at South Carolina College and practiced law in Edgefield before beginning his political career. He was a member of the state legislature, a U.S. congressman (1821–34), governor (1834–35), and U.S. Senator (1842–46). McDuffie led the movement in South Carolina to nullify the "Tariff of Abominations" of 1828 and popularized nullification by arguing that the tariff forced cotton planters to pay northern manufacturers 40 out of every 100 bales of cotton they produced. Douglass here alludes to the gubernatorial message which McDuffie sent to the South Carolina legislature in 1835, when the discovery of abolitionist pamphlets in the Charleston post office prompted demands throughout the state for the exclusion of antislavery literature from the U.S. mails. In his message McDuffie demanded that northern legislatures outlaw abolitionists and early expressed the theory that slavery was a positive good. Only racial slavery, McDuffie argued, could keep the menial classes in their proper sphere and obviate centralized governments, despotic rulers, and orders of nobility, all of which were inimical to republican liberty. "Domestic slavery," he reasoned, "instead of being a political evil, is the corner stone of our republican edifice." After he retired from public life, McDuffie slipped into a deepening melancholia and died insane. Lib., 12 December 1835; George McDuffie, "Message on the Slavery Question," reprinted in Edward Channing and Albert B. Hart, eds., American History Leaflets, no. 10 (July 1893); Eaton, Freedom of Thought, 148; William W. Freehling, Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816–1836 (New York, 1965), 144–48, 192–96, 330, 340–46; Edwin L. Green, George McDuffie (Columbia, 1936), 146–55; William S. Jenkins, Pro-Slavery Thought in the Old South (Chapel Hill, 1935), 78, 285–95; DAB, 13 : 34–36. In no part of the world had slavery ever existed in a more horrible form than in America. In its palmiest days in the West Indies, at no time was it death by law to teach a black to read the Word of GOD;4While there is no evidence that any of the slave societies in the West Indies made the instruction of slaves a capital offense, such religious instruction as was urged in metropolitan councils and in colonial assemblies did not encompass instruction in reading. Elsa V. Goveia, "The West Indian Slave Laws of the Eighteenth Century," Revista de Ciencias Sociales, 4 : 75–105 (March 1960), reprinted in Laura Foner and Eugene D. Genovese, eds., Slavery in the New World: A Reader in Comparative History (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1969), 113–37. yet in Carolina death was inflicted for the third offence of this sort, in Louisiana for the second, and in various other states the penalty was imprisonment and fine. This was certainly the darkest feature of slavery, but it was essential to its maintenance.
Those who told him to confine his attention to the abuses of slavery, and that slavery was not in itself a sin, showed themselves ignorant of the very principles of human nature, since the possession of irresponsible power over a fellow-man always led to oppression. The dungeon, the whip, the gallows, were necessary to keep up the system. He maintained that slavery was in itself an evil—(applause)—and that if those things were to be taken from it, the slave would walk forth free in spite of the efforts of his master.
The speaker went on to describe the manner in which, at Baltimore, the wife of his master5Sophia Auld, wife of Hugh Auld. taught him when very young to read as far as words of three syllables. That lady had not been reared in a slave state, and therefore did not know the evil she was doing to society. (Laughter.) The slaves, however, knew more than their masters were aware of, on many points, especially about Canada and England; and they had feelings towards this country of which their masters little dreamed. He had a great mind to say that, in the event of a British army landing in the States, and offering liberty to the slaves, they would rally round the British at the first tap of the drum . . . .†
(He said, when I was a little boy my master's wife began to a muse herself by teaching me the alphabet. One day my master came in while she was showing me my letters. He was very angry with missus for this. He said she did very wrong in doing so. If slaves were taught to read, it would make them discontented. (A laugh.) When they had learned to read, they would next want to learn to write; and when they had learned to write, they would then want to know something of geography. (Hear, hear.) Give them an inch, and they would take an ell. I was not in the room when this conversation took place, but I was listening, and slaves are generally good listeners. (Hear, and a laugh.) But I had now got a taste of reading, and I wanted more of it. I used to take my primer with me when I went on errands; and wherever I could get hold of a boy or two at some corner who could assist me, I out with my primer, and asked them to tell me the letters. Sometimes they would do so, sometimes not. "Oh," they would say, "that's [a] nigger; nigger can't read; nigger mustn't read." But nigger did read. They helped me on, until I could help myself without them; and so fond did I grow of reading, that with these fingers I have often raked up the very dirt in the
†Here the Midland Counties Herald reads: "His master, however, had sharply reproved his wife for teaching the speaker, 'for fear it should make him discontented'; and the speaker then got little boys in the street to teach him as he could, on pieces of paper which he picked up in the streets. He learned to write by imitating the ship carpenters, who marked pieces of wood with chalk, the first letters he learned being s and l. He took care to display his accomplishments to the boys, who, to show their superiority, went on making other letters. This was what he wanted, and some old copy-books belonging to his master's son furnished him the means of practising with the pen. He then went on to pick up some knowledge of ciphers, and then to obtain some knowledge of geography, a study which was very popular among slaves, since they wished to know where Canada and the free states lay."
ditch for records of that precious book which some who had not valued them aright had cast away. (Cheers.)
Well, when I had learned to read, I soon perceived that my master was a true philosopher, if he was not a true prophet, when he said, "Once learn a slave to read, and then he will want to write too." One day when in the carpenter's yard, stirring pitch, I observed the carpenter fit a piece of wood for a certain purpose; I observed, that on putting it aside, he took a piece of chalk from his pocket and made a mark on it, thus:—(drawing the letter S with his finger on the platform.) "What is that, Massa?" I asked, " That's the letter S, Nigger," said he. "Oh I see, it's the letter S. Aye, well, and what does the letter S stand for, Massa?" "It stands for starboard," said he. And while I was musing on the letter S standing for starboard the carpenter chopped into shape another piece of wood, and tossing it aside made a chalk-mark on it also, thus (again imitating the act,) "And what is that please, Massa?" "That is the letter L," said he, "which stands for larboard." Oh, aye, says I to myself, S for starboard and L for larboard. Well I'll remember that, and so I did; for when I used to meet the boys I told them that I could write now, that S stood for starboard, and L for larboard, and when the boys saw that I did know something of writing, they would have helped me to write too.
But how could I get on in writing? I had my chalk in my pocket, but I wanted pens, ink, and paper. Well, it so happened that my master had a boy Tommy, who was learning to write. Tommy kept his copy-books in a cupboard, and when I came on them one day, I looked at one, and observing large blanks between the lines, I thought it was a pity to see these blanks thus wasted, and so helping myself to a copy book I managed to write up the copy book by book, until Master Tommy, had he looked at them again, would have scarcely known his own production. (Laughter.)
By the light of the tops of candles, which I managed to save when trimming during the day, I used often to write up the blanks of Master Tommy's copy-books, long before day, and after sleeping awhile on the soft side of a deal board in the attic. (Cheers.) And having thus learned to read and write, I would next try to get a little geography. (A laugh.) To help me to do this, I had to bribe the boys with bits of bread, which I used to help myself to from master's cupboard, on the principle that, as I was my master's property, and as education must improve me, there
could be no harm in giving away a piece of my master's bread, to make his property more valuable; such, at any rate, was the philosophy of my early education. Well having learned to read and write, and got a little geography, I found means to escape from slavery, and my constant aim has been, since then, both in my native land and in this country, to promote the cause of freedom.)6From London Patriot, 2 July 1846.
Only eight years had elapsed since he had made his escape, and he had had to work hard since then for the support of his wife and children, having little time to improve his mind. He had belonged to a classleader in the Methodist Church, whom he had seen tie up a young female slave, and flog her till the blood trickled down to her heels, justifying the act by quoting the passage, "He that knew his lord's will, and did it not, shall be beaten with many stripes."7Douglass paraphrases Luke 12 : 47. He himself bore upon his back the lash of the slaveowner's whip; but the injury done to his soul was far deeper, for slavery had robbed him of all the advantages of a moral and religious education in his youth.
The speaker gave a powerful description of the sale of a man apart from his wife, in the southern states, observing that such scenes were constantly occurring. Not long since a negro was actually burned alive for having defended himself from the attack of those who sought to punish him; and a judge had declared that nothing was to be done to the fiendish actors in that scene, since the people in their sovereign capacity had done it, and they were above the law.8Douglass possibly refers to Francis Mcintosh, a free black steamboat porter burned to death by a St. Louis mob on 28 April 1836 for having killed a white deputy sheriff and wounded another while resisting what appears to have been an improper arrest attempt. Judge Luke Lawless instructed the grand jury that if the lynching of Mcintosh was the act of "congregated thousands seized upon and impelled by that mysterious and metaphysical and almost electrical phrenzy which in all ages and nations has hurried on the infuriated multitude to deeds of death and destruction," then "the case . . . transcends your jurisdiction, it is beyond the reach of human law." Judge Lawless blamed the killing of the deputy sheriff and the murder of Mcintosh on "abolitionist fanatics." No members of the lynch mob were indicted. John Gill, Tide Without Turning: Elijah P. Lovejoy and the Freedom of the Press (Boston, 1959), 60–75; Merton L. Dillon, Elijah P. Lovejoy, Abolitionist Editor (Urbana, Ill., 1961), 81–82. The slavery of the United States was the corner stone of the slavery of the world; and the influence of British opinion was greater on that country than it could be on any other part of the world, owing to the identity of language, religion, habits of thought, &c.
Mr. Douglas[s] then went on to refer to the position of the Free
Church of Scotland, in reference to slavery, observing that the acceptance by that church of the slaveholders' money had inflicted great injury upon the cause of abolition. He mentioned this here, because the dissenters of England had done much in pecuniary contributions, and more in sympathy for the Free Church.9In 1843 and 1844 English Congregationalists, Baptists, Wesleyan Methodists, and some members of the Church of England enthusiastically greeted the several fund-raising deputations which the Free Church sent to England. Committees were organized in Manchester and London to receive the deputation. In June 1843 the London Presbyterian Synod severed its connection with the Church of Scotland. More than £21,000 in contributions was raised in England during the first year of the Free Church's existence. Abstract of the Public Accounts of the Free Church of Scotland, For the Period May 18, 1843 to March 30, 1844 ([Edinburgh], 1844), 4; Brown, Annals of the Disruption, 525–43; Wilson and Rainy, Robert Smith Candlish, D.D., 330–31; Walker, History of the Free Church, 51–52. While that church would not hold any fellowship with the "Erastian" members of the residuary establishment,10The Church of Scotland after the Disruption of 1843. they went three thousand miles to strike hands with man-stealers, and hold fellowship with them as Christians. He charged them with doing this knowingly, with accepting the money on the express understanding that they were not to preach upon the subject of slavery while in the southern states.
The Free Church of Scotland and the Slave Church of America were in harmony: it was true that that church was the main support of slavery, and now the money of the man-stealer, the money of the cradle-robber, the profits of the women-flogger, were to be appropriated to the support of ministers in Scotland. He was present at the meeting of the Free Church Assembly, when the question was mooted, and there was only one minister, the Rev. Mr. Macbeath, among the four hundred, who stood up in defence of the oppressed negro.11Douglass actually refers to James MacBeth (1810—?) of Ayr, an alumnus of the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, a student of Thomas Chalmers, and the minister of the Laurieston Free Church in Glasgow. MacBeth was one of the few Free Church ministers who supported the "Send Back the Money" campaign. In two pamphlets he criticized his church's relations with the American southern clergy. Until 1846 he worked closely with the Glasgow Emancipation Society; in 1847 he became vice-president of the small Free Church Anti-Slavery Society. MacBeth spoke out against his church's slavery policy at the 1846 General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, refused to accept Candlish's justification of Free Church policy, and invoked scripture to argue that slavery and slaveholders were sinful. He suggested that the money collected in America be "sent back for the behoof of the runaway slaves" and offered a resolution urging the church to sever all ties with slaveholding churches in the United States. His resolution did not receive a second. In 1849 the Synod of Glasgow and Ayr and the General Assembly of the Free Church almost found MacBeth guilty of making "lewd approaches" toward women. An anonymous Free Church pamphleteer, with a fair show of reason, speculated that MacBeth's trial was belated retribution for his abolitionist activities in 1846. In any event, shortly after his near-censure, MacBeth emigrated to Toronto, Canada, where he joined the faculty of Knox College. James Macbeth, The Church and The Slaveholder; or, Light and Darkness (Edinburgh, 1845); idem, No Fellowship with Slaveholders: A Calm Review of the Debate on Slavery in the Free Assembly of 1846 (Edinburgh, 1846); A Real Statement of the Secret and Concluding Debate in the Assembly on Mr. Macbeth's Case (n.p., n.d.); Free Church Report, 1846, 13–49; Smith, Our Scottish Clergy, 1 : 266–71; Shepperson, "Free Church and American Slavery," 140–41; Rice, "Scottish Factor," 281n., 283, 328–31; Scott, Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, 3 : 422. The speaker went on
to criticise, with justice and effect, the apologies of Dr. Candlish, Dr. Cunningham, and others, for the slaveholder.12All the members of the Free Church's Committee on slavery who addressed the 1846 General Assembly during the two sessions devoted to slavery favored maintaining friendly relations with American Prebyterians. In arguing that the apostles had fellowshipped slaveholders, commitee member William Cunningham considerably revised his church's usual line of argument. Never before had any of the leading Free Churchmen invoked the Gospel in order to vindicate communion with slaveholders, lest scriptural interpretation also undercut their principle that slavery was a sin in the eyes of God. The abolitionists in the audience saw the significance of Cunningham's remarks immediately. No sooner had Cunningham venture dto say that "the apostles of our Lord and Master admitted slaveholders to the table of the Lord, and to all the privileges of the Church," than George Thompson interjected a " 'hear, hear' in a very sonorous voice. . . which for a time raised a slight confusion and interruption." Cunningham apparently never regained his composure. Douglass, who was sitting near Thompson at the time, remembered this moment long after he returned to America. "It was as if a granite wall had been suddenly flung up against the advancing current of a mighty river," he recalled. Free Church Report, 1846, 39; Douglass, Bondage and Freedom, 385–86; Rice , "Scottish Factor," 328–29.—The resolution was then put and carried.