THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT, THE SLAVE'S ONLY EARTHLY HOPE: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN NEW YORK, NEW YORK, ON 9 MAY 1843, at the Apollo SaloonApollo Saloon, New York City

Located at 140 Broadway, Apollo Saloon was a venue for musical performances, balls, and lectures (New York Daily Herald, 17 January 1843; 11 April 1847)

National Anti-Slavery Standard, 18 May 1343. Other texts in Liberator, 19 May 1843; New York Herald, 10 May 1843; New York Tribune, 10 May 1843; New York Morning Express, 10 May 1843.

The American Anti-Slavery Society held its tenth anniversary meeting on 9 May 1843 in New York City. The abolitionists met in the Apollo Saloon because the owner of the Broadway TabernacleBroadway Tabernacle Church

Broadway Tabernacle, 950 Sixth Avenue, New York, NY 10001 Constructed in 1836 partly for the purpose of accommodating “large bodies of Christians on anniversaries and other occasions,” the Broadway Tabernacle Church was one of the largest churches in New York City, comfortably seating 2500 persons. It was chiefly a Congregational church. The great revivalist, Charles Grandison Finney, was its first pastor. Lewis Tappan of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society was one of the more illustrious abolitionists in the congregation. It is now called the Marbridge Building. History of the Broadway Tabernacle Church . . . (New York, 1846), 3–4. , the preferred site, had closed its doors to the Society. Some 1500 people attended, a crowd which the Herald said "was chiefly composed of the fair sex.” The New York Morning Express noted the presence of Quakers and “sable-complexioned sons of Africa.” The reporter objected to the frivolity of some members of the audience. “This habit of gossiping in public assemblages

is a gross nuisance,” he complained, “and ought to be abated. Such meetings are not well calculated for furbishing up faded acquaintanceships, swapping jack-knives or carrying on semi-flirtations.” Nevertheless, the business of the meeting was conducted in sober fashion. Boston’s Francis JacksonJackson, Francis

A leading figure among Boston Garrisonians, Francis Jackson (1789-1861) was president of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society from 1837 until his death and secretary of the Boston Vigilance Committee in the 1850s. He presided over the 1841 Nantucket convention where Douglass launched his abolitionist career. Born in Newton, Massachusetts, Jackson moved to Boston as a young man to become a prosperous merchant and minor city government official. Jackson's considerable wealth was frequently put at Garrison's disposal to keep the Liberator in print. Lib., 22 November 1861; Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison, 128-31; ACAB, 3:386; NCAB, 2:318. A leading figure among Boston Garrisonians, Francis Jackson (1789–1861) was president of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society from 1837 until his death and secretary of the Boston Vigilance Committee in the 1850s. He presided over the 1841 Nantucket convention where Douglass launched his abolitionist career. Born in Newton, Massachusetts, Jackson moved to Boston as a young man to become a prosperous merchant and minor city government official. Jackson’s considerable wealth was frequently put at Garrison's disposal to keep the Liberator in print. Lib., 22 November 1861; Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison, 128-31; ACAB, 3:386; NCAB, 2:318. , a vice-president of the Society, occupied the chair. At the morning session, Douglass shared the platform with James MonroeMonroe, James (abolitionist)

James Monroe (1821-98), a young Connecticut Quaker, abandoned plans to attend college in 1839 in order to lecture for the American Anti-Slavery Society. After three years he resumed his education, first attending Yale, then transferring to Oberlin. He began teaching at Oberlin while still an undergraduate and earned a theology degree from the institution in 1849. Monroe's continued activism on behalf of African Americans led to a political career. He served in the Ohio legislature (1856-62), acted as diplomat to Brazil during the Civil War, and won a seat in Congress during Reconstruction. Catherine Rokicky, "A Life of Public Service: James Monroe of Oberlin, 1821-1898" paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Oberlin Historical and Improvement Organization, 25 April 2001; Ripley, Black Abolitionist Papers, 3:422-23. of Connecticut, Abby KelleyFoster, Abigail Kelley

Abby Kelley (1811-87) was born in Pelham village, Worcester County, Massachusetts, the seventh daughter of Wing Kelley, a farmer, and Diana Daniels, his second wife. Kelley was heavily influenced by her Quaker upbringing, but she later broke from the church because of its relative conservatism. Although her early schooling was scanty and deficient, Kelley saved and borrowed money in order to attend the New England Friends Boarding School in Providence, Rhode Island. At age nineteen she returned home and then began a career of teaching in Lynn, Massachusetts, where she became an abolitionist through the Lynn Female Anti-Slavery Society. In 1838 Kelley spoke at Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia as it was being attacked by an angry protesting mob. In the same year she joined the New England Anti-Slavery Society, previously a male-only organization. She began a career as a lecturer, at both women's and men's gatherings, especially in conservative Connecticut. Kelley married Stephen Symonds Foster, another radical abolitionist, on 21 December 1845. Traveling together on the reform circuit, they were among the most prominent antislavery lecturers in the 1840s and 1850s. Sterling, Ahead of Her Time; EAAH, 2:39-40. Perhaps the best known female American abolitionist. Abigail Kelley Foster (1810-87) was born in Pelham, Massachusetts. She was educated at the Friends School, Providence, Rhode Island, and later taught at a similar establishment in Lynn, Massachusetts. In 1837 she joined the antislavery movement and two years later, following the path blazed by Angelina Grimké, embarked on a career as an abolitionist lecturer. Her talents led Garrisonian abolitionists to choose her as an officer of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1840, provoking antifeminist abolitionists to bolt the organization. She continued to lecture and raise funds for the Garrisonians and in 1845 married Stephen S. Foster. another prominent abolitionist lecturer. In the 1850s both Fosters became outspoken advocates for women's rights in addition to abolition. Quarrels with Garrison over political action led Abby Foster and her husband to become inactive in the American Anti-Slavery Society in the late 1850s. Ill health forced her to be less active as a reformer after the Civil War, but in 1873 she attracted considerable publicity for woman suffrage by refusing to pay taxes on the family farm in protest against her disenfranchisement. The Fosters and Douglass had lectured together in Rhode Island in November and December 1841. Jane Hanna Pease, “The Freshness of Fanaticism: Abby Kelley Foster: An Essay in Reform" (PhD. diss., Univ. of Rochester, 1969); C. B. Galbreath, “Anti-Slavery Movement in Columbiana County," Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications, 30: 391-92 (1921); DAB, 6: 542-43. , William Lloyd GarrisonGarrison, William Lloyd

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was the foremost white abolitionist of the nineteenth century and was credited with the discovery of Douglass as a speaker at an antislavery meeting in Nantucket in 1841. He began his career as an apprentice printer on the Newburyport (Mass.) Herald at the age of thirteen. Garrison became editor of the Newburyport Free Press in 1826, but the paper closed within a year. He was then associated with a series of periodicals in Boston that advocated reform before Benjamin Lundy offered the young journalist the opportunity to write for his antislavery newspaper. Garrison joined Lundy in editing the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1829, during the last year of the paper's 1821-1830 run. In 1830 a libel suit against the editors forced the paper to close and landed Garrison in jail. After his release, he courted the wealthy merchants of New York and Boston in order to start the Liberator (1831-65), a weekly journal based in Boston in which he advocated an immediate end to slavery. Garrison's brand of abolition condemned any institution that would tolerate the existence of slavery, including churches, political parties. and even the United States itself and any scheme aimed at removing black people from the country. Instead, Garrison hoped to raise the public's awareness that slavery was morally wrong and thereby force its end in an almost millennial moment of emancipation. His approach appealed to both white and black antislavery advocates but earned him many enemies among those only moderately opposed to slavery and slaveholders alike. Seeing the need for greater action and organization beyond the pages of the Liberator; Garrison joined with other abolitionists to form the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1831. Two years later he helped found the larger American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 he established ties with English abolitionists after a trip to Great Britain, and he later brought the noted and notorious speaker George Thompson to the United States for a tour. Garrison also dedicated himself to women's rights, encouraging women to enter the public sphere by inviting them, via the Liberator, to form female antislavery societies. In addition to the thirty-three women's antislavery societies that flourished by 1838, Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society welcomed women as well as blacks into its ranks. However, female delegates were excluded from the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 in London. The issue of women's participation in the antislavery movement and Garrison's absolute refusal to turn to politics to end slavery caused a division in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan, who opposed women's acting as speakers and who hoped to use politics toward abolition, broke with Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society, forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, or the "New Organization" in 1841. Garrison's ideas were so closely associated with the "Old Organization" that the American Anti-Slavery Society became known simply as the "Garrisonians." With the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Garrison believed that he had accomplished his life's work and that of the antislavery movement. He then resigned from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society and closed the Liberator. Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, 4 vols. (New York, 188589); Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1998); James Brewer Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison and the Challenge of Emancipation (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1992); John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, 1963); Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York, 1928-36), 7:168-72. , and Wendell PhillipsPhillips, Wendell

Boston-born and Harvard-educated Wendell Phillips (1811-84) ranked second only to Garrison in influence in the American Anti-Slavery Society in the 1840s and 1850s. Bored with the legal profession and influenced by his antislavery fiancee, Ann Terry Greene, Phillips dedicated himself to abolitionism beginning in 1837. A highly gifted orator, Phillips was in demand as a lecturer even in nonabolitionist circles. Besides abolition, Phillips championed woman suffrage, prohibition, penal reform, Indian rights, and legislative protection for workers. When Garrison retired from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1865, Phillips assumed the post and led abolitionists until passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. James Brewer Stewart, Wendell Phillips: Liberty's Hero (Baton Rouge, La., 1986); Irving H. Bartlett, Wendell Phillips: Brahmin Radical (Boston, 1961); DAB, 14:546-47. . The described as “sensible and pertinent” Douglass’s speech on the resolution that “the anti-slavery movement is the only earthly hope of the American slave. “ Kelley, Garrison, and Phillips offered resolutions which emphasized slavery’s dependence on northern political and ecclesiastical support. Garrison to the Lib., 9 May 1843, in Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3: 156-158.

Frederic [k] Douglas[s], was next introduced to the meeting. He said:—"I have myself been a slave, and I do not expect to awaken such an interest in the minds of this intelligent assembly, as those have done who spoke before me. For I have never had the advantage of a single day’s schooling, in all my life; and such have been my habits of life, as to instil into my heart a disposition I never can quite shake off, to cower before white men. But one thing I can do. I can represent here the slave,—the human chattel, the despised and Oppressed, for whom you, my friends, are laboring in a good and holy cause. As such a representative, 1 do not fear that I shall not be welcome to all true-hearted abolitionists. (Applause.)

I offer you, Mr. President, continued Douglas[s], the following resolution, and desire to say a few words in its support:

2. “Resolved, That the anti-slavery movement is the only earthly hope of the American slave.”

There is a truth, sir, asserted in this resolution that is almost everywhere, and by almost every body, denied. Instead of being regarded as a powerful aid to abolition, it is far too generally viewed as retarding that event. But this is a grievous error. I know, for I speak from experience. It has been imagined that the slaves of the South are not aware of the movements made on their behalf, and in behalf of human freedom, every where, throughout the northern and western States. This is not true. They do know it. They knew it from the moment that the spark was first kindled in the land. They knew it as soon as you knew it, sir, in your own New England. Did not petitions by thousands, immediately go forth for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and in

the territories, and for the overthrow of the internal slave trade? Heard we not that? And in the curses of our masters against the abolitionists, did we not feel instinctively that these same abolitionists were our friends? And in every form of opposition to the great cause, did we not hear it?

Prior to this moment, sir, the slave in chains had no hope of deliverance—no hope of any peace or happiness within this vale of tears. Darkness and despair rested gloomily upon his prospect, and not a ray of light was thrown across. But when he heard of this movement, hope sprang up in my mind, and in the minds of many more. I knew, I felt, that truth was above error, that right was above wrong, that principle was superior to policy; and under the peaceful and beneficent operation of abolitionism, I felt that I should one day be free. [Loud and protracted applause.)

The speaker went on to say that there was no hope for the slave in Church, or State, or in the working of society, framed as it now is; nothing whatever in any of the institutions of the day. But in the American Anti-Slavery Society, the slave sees an exposition of his true position in the scale of being. He finds that he is, indeed, a Man—admitted, recognized as such, as he is by them, and he goes on, calmly and quietly, hoping in his chains that the day may come, when by their aid, he shall be relieved from his thraldom! (Applause) For this society, sir, is above either Church or State; , daily; more and more. What do we see? Massachusetts has closed her gaols, and her courtrooms, against the slave-hunters, and has hidden them to look for no aid at the hands of her people, in this unholy work.¹In March 1343 the Massachusetts legislature, in response to a campaign launched by Garrisonian and “new organization“ abolitionists to protest the arrest of fugitive slave George Latimer in Boston, prohibited the cooperation of state officials in the seizure and detention of fugitive slaves. This was the first personal liberty law passed after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated such laws in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842). Stanley W. Campbell, The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850—1860 (New York, 1972), 1344; Martin B. Duberman, Charles Francis Adams, 1807-1836 (Boston, 1961), 80–84; Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 3 vols. (Boston, 1872–77], 1: 477–87 Thus is the great work going on!

And, sir, the slave sees that God has raised up a mighty work in his behalf, among the people of the North, when he observes the reluctance with which the slave owner now makes his tours to the North. The slave is now not taken as a part of the retinue of his master, on the boot of the stage, as before. He soon finds his “property” among the missing, if he

does: and then he comes back, and curses the abolitionists of the North; and, in answer to the question, where is Sam, or Dick, or Bill? slaves who have remained behind, hear him say, the infernal abolitionists have got hold of him, they begin to feel that they have friends, and that the time will come, when the exertions of such will be used for their liberation, as well as that of their brethren. This it is which teaches the poor slave where his hope is,—that it is in the “anti-slavery society, ”—and in the growing feeling at the North, in favor of the oppressed, and against oppression. (Vociferous applause.)

And Mr. Douglas[s] wound up this extraordinary speech, with a feeling exhortation to abolitionists to go on, in the confidence of a good cause, to the breaking of bonds, the unloosing of shackles, and the liberation of the enchained, the enthralled, and the oppressed. He sat down amidst very warm and enthusiastic applause.