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The General Assembly of the Free Church: An Address Delivered at Paisley, Scotland September 23, 1846

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THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE FREE CHURCH: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN PAISLEY, SCOTLAND, ON 23 SEPTEMBER 1846

Report of the Proceedings of the Great Anti-Slavery Meeting Held in the Rev. Mr. Cairns's Church, On Wednesday, 23d September, 1846, Including the Speeches of Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Esq. and Frederick Douglass, Esq. Taken in Shorthand by Cincinnatus (Paisley, Scot., 1846). Another text in Glasgow Saturday Post, 26 September 1846.

Douglass brought his crusade against the Evangelical Alliance and the Free Church back to Scotland in late September, in the company of William Lloyd Garrison. In Paisley on 23 September 1846 they "had the most crowded and enthusiastic meeting I have yet seen on this side of the Atlantic," Garrison informed the Liberator. At first the organizers rented one of the small halls in town, but upon discovering the admission tickets being resold on the streets at more than three times their face value, they moved the meeting to the largest church in Paisley, Rev. Robert Cairns's Secession Church on George Street. Several hundred attended, but many were still turned away. After brief introductory remarks by George Caldwell, the chairman, and a lengthy speech by Garrison, Douglass "addressed the audience in his usual vigorous style," the Glasgow Saturday Post reported. Rev. Patrick Brewster then moved a resolution condemning the Free Church and the Evangelical Alliance, but this occasioned attacks from Brewster's ecclesiastical enemies and an attempt by the Reverend C. John Kennedy to tone down the Free Church part of the resolution. Rev. Kennedy's amendment was voted down handily. The original resolution was carried "amidst cries of 'hurra' and cracking of thumbs." Garrison had kind words for the audience: "Commend me to the weavers and operatives of Paisley, for intelligence, sagacity, and appreciation of right sentiments." Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3 : 428, 433.

Ladies and Gentlemen—I am very glad I came to Paisley—(Cheers)—glad to be in Scotland. You know my object—I have been here before. Since I addressed an audience here last, the question of slavery has assumed not a new form, but some additional points have been started.
The Evangelical Alliance has held its sittings in the city of London—and the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland has held its meetings at Canonmills in Edinburgh. There were remarks made and speeches delivered, to which I will draw your attention for the short time I am to address you. I heard at the Free Church Assembly

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speeches delivered by Duncan,1John Duncan Cunningham,2William Cunningham and Candlish,3Robert Candlish and I never heard, in all my life, speeches better calculated to uphold and sustain that bloody system of wrong. (Cheers.) I heard sentiments such as these from Dr. Candlish—that Christians would be quite justified in sitting down with a slaveholder at a communion table—with men who have a right, by the laws of the land, to kill their slaves. That sentiment, as it dropped from the lips of Dr. Candlish, was received by three thousand people with shouts of applause.
I heard other sentiments equally objectionable to this. Every imaginable excuse for slaveholding was brought forward by these men eminent for their learning—men who claim to be the heaven-appointed instruments for the removal of all sin. I heard these men, standing up there, appealing to the sympathies of those who heard them to remember the slaveholder, and not one rose who spoke of remembering those in bonds as bound with them.4Douglass paraphrases Heb. 13 : 3: "Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them." (Great cheering.) They were called on to look on the difficulties in which the slaveholder was placed. Their manacled bondmen were not thought of for a single moment, but, like the Levite of old, they passed by on the other side.5Douglass alludes to Luke 10 : 32: "And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side." (Applause.) They had struck hands with the slaveholder in Christian fellowship. They would not listen to the voice of Scotland demanding, in tones which could not be mistaken—SEND BACK THE MONEY. (Applause.)
Dr. Duncan, for instance, who, some two years ago, stood faithfully by the cause of emancipation, stood up at Edinburgh and asked, 'Shall every Free Church have a slave stone? Have we separated ourselves from our moderate brethren to strike hands with man-stealers?6This is a conflation of remarks made by John Duncan and Henry Grey, the moderator of the 1844 General Assembly of the Free Church. It was Grey who asked, "HAVE WE SEPARATED OURSELVES FROM OUR MODERATE BRETHREN TO FORM ALLIANCE WITH MAN-STEALERS?" Wright, Dissolution of the American Union, 43. As for himself he could not eat a common meal with them, for he said it would choke him.' But the Doctor has had his organs expanded. (Cheers and laughter.) Now he can not only sit down at a common meal, but sit down at the Lord's table with the slaveholders of America. (Cheers.) But they are not slaveholders. He has coined a new name—he calls

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them slavehavers.7During the slavery debates on 30 May 1846 in the General Assembly of the Free Church, John Duncan distinguished between the sinfulness of "slave-holding" and the innocence of "slave- having" to illustrate the point that a slaveowner could be a Christian if he were prevented by law from emancipating his slaves. "If I were to set him free," he explained, "the state would take hold of him, and bring him into the market, to retain him as property still. I do not hold that slave; I merely have that slave, and I cannot help having him." Free Church Report, 1846, 34 - 35. Oh! what delight flashed through the whole assembly when the discovery was made. (Applause.) Were I a slavehaver? Candlish smiled, so did Cunningham, and all the younglings of the Free Church opened their mouths. (Laughter and cheers.) I won't ask Dr. Duncan what has changed his heart, but what has changed his stomach? (Laughter.) He could dare to ridicule the only true antislavery man among them, who was Mr. M'Beth.8James MacBeth (Cheers.) He brought in a proposition to SEND BACK THE MONEY and dissolve the fellowship existing between the Free Church and the slaveholders of America. He did not even get a seconder. He was ridiculed. Dr. Candlish ridiculed him—Dr. Cunningham spoke contemptuously of him—Dr. Duncan said he was ashamed of the arguments he used.9At the 30 May session of the 1846 Free Church General Assembly James MacBeth argued his case for excluding slaveholding congregations and their pastors from Christian fellowship. William Cunningham later told the assembly that MacBeth's arguments were "entirely without foundation." At the same session John Duncan confessed that he "certainly was once in a position where I needed Mr. MacBeth's arguments, and was also aware of them, and of some more on the same ground; but I did not use them, because I felt that I would be ashamed to use them." Free Church Report, 1846, 34, 37-38; Rice, "Scottish Factor," 329.
Dr. Cunningham was the lion of the occasion. He was the only man in the Assembly who put forward anything like an argument. Hence, he was considered as the able man. He maintained that slaveholding was not necessarily sinful. Mr. M'Beth took the ground that it was sinful. Cunningham took the ground that it was not sinful in itself, and he would undertake to prove that the relation of master and slave might exist and not be sinful. My eyes were fixed on him. I thought he resembled me somewhat. (Cheers and laughter.) I thought I was almost as good looking as he—(Laughter)—I was anxious to hear what this man, apparently coloured, would say—I don't mean any disrespect to him. (Cheers.) I wanted to hear what he could say in defence of slaveholding not being necessarily sinful. (Continued cheering.)
Suppose, said he, that on the first of January next Parliament were to pass a law by which the domestics in every family should become the slaves of their employers. Suppose it received the Royal sanction. (Loud

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cheers.) I should in that case become a slaveholder by no act of my own, and he asked in triumph, would I in such a case be a sinner? That was his argument; and again the younglings clapped their hands and shouted aloud, and looked at me as I sat in the General Assembly. (Great Applause.) We have got out of this point nicely. (Laughter.) Dr. Cunningham has proved this point nicely. (Cheers and laughter.) The question arises—who makes the laws? The slaveholder is the interested person, and the lawmaker in America, and all this talk about the slaveholder being compelled to hold the slaves.
Let us examine a little further this supposition of Dr. Cunningham. Let us apply it to concubinage, if you please. Let us suppose that the law should make all domestics the concubines of their employers—that he would be bound to sustain the relation, would Dr. Cunningham do it? I consider there is nothing in his speech which leaves me to believe that he would not. (Great cheering.) I know he would not sustain the relation, because he believes it to be wrong, and that it would not be sanctioned by the morality of the religious sentiment of Scotland for a moment. (Applause.)
Is slavery less sinful than concubinage? A million and a half of women are subject to the entire control of brutal slaveholders, and dare not commit any violence in vindication of their own chastity, or they may be struck dead on the spot. Suppose a law of the land declared all domestics the slaves of their employers, I dare Dr. Cunningham to say he could be justified in being a slaveholder. Conscious of his difficulty he said, at the end of his supposition, 'if I treated them as I treated them before.' His argument means nothing. (Cheers.) If he is to give men freedom of action, education, and treat them in every way as brethren, then he is not a slaveholder. Dr. Cunningham meant that his argument might sustain something more. (Applause.)
MR. GARRISON, interrupting Mr. Douglass, read a declaration of Dr. Candlish on this point, and showed the audience what meaning it bore by substituting the words "robber and robbery" for "slaveholder and slaveholding."
MR. DOUGLASS resumed—I was going on to illustrate the argument of Dr. Cunningham. Suppose that it referred to idolatry instead of slavery. Suppose that Parliament enact a law that at the sound of a certain instrument, they should fall down and worship a golden image, and that that law should receive the royal sanction, would he fall down and worship that image? He would not. Why does he do otherwise with this

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compendium of all crimes—American slavery? (Cheers.) I tell you why he does it. He's got the bawbees. (Loud and long-continued cheering.)
Dr. Cunningham published a book—at least it is his, so far as this country is concerned—and in that book he says, Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stars of heaven ready to blast him who gains his fortune by the blood of slaves?10Douglass refers to George Bourne's A Picture of Slavery in the United States of America; Being a Practical Illustration of Voluntaryism and Republicanism (Glasgow, 1835), which William Cunningham was instrumental in getting reprinted in Scotland a year after its original publication. Cunningham wrote a brief preface for the Scottish edition. Douglass closely paraphrases the poem by William Cowper that appears as the motto on the title page of all editions of the Bourne work. He goes on to say—How are we to get rid of this system? Every slaveholder ought to be excluded from Christian communion. What has changed him?*In his preface, William Cunningham expressed shock that "professed ministers of the gospel in the United States are deeply involved in the fearful guilt and wickedness described in this book," but he stopped short of advocating the excommunication of slaveholders. It was George Bourne who said that slaveholders should be "excommunicated from the Church of G o d . " Douglass here echoes criticisms of Cunningham first made by George Thompson in a speech in Glasgow five months earlier. Recalling a breakfast meeting he had had with Cunningham to discuss the reprinting of Bourne's book, Thompson said that the Scottish minister at that time "did not hesitate to declare his conviction, that slaveholding and Christianity were incompatible and irreconcilable." Bourne, Slavery in the United States, iii-iv, 52; Glasgow Argus, 27 April 1846.11 Contact with his American brethren. What is the value of that contact? The getting of money was his only object. (Applause.) He went there to get money, and as a condition of getting it, he pledged himself to be silent with reference to this great sin. (Great applause.) He went to the Southern States—was taken by the hand by such evangelical man-stealers as Dr. Smyth.12Thomas Smyth He was there welcomed to their pulpits and their hospitality. He ate of their bread, received of their money, and brought it to Scotland. He put it into the sustentation fund. He got it that he might make out a good character for the slaveholder. Scotland is indignant at this outrage on her name. (Loud cheers.) She feels [degraded] that her soils should be stained by a single church built up by robbery and wrong. (Applause.)
The Free Church is built up by robbery and wrong—(Loud and long continued cheering)—and I am here to tell the Free Church people that we are not to be silenced, or compelled to leave the country by their dogged adherence to fellowship with the slaveholders of America. (Great cheering.) We are not to be confused and confounded by their adherence to the slaveholder. We will take counsel together, and gather

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strength to expose them, until they shall be divided among themselves, or divided from the slaveholder. If they continue to harden their hearts and stiffen their necks, we shall continue to persevere in exposing their wickedness to the world. (Great applause.)
I do not intend to lose a single opportunity in exposing the guilty portion of that church. (Cheers.) When I was here before I made certain charges against them. I wish to repeat them again, and again, until they become family or household words. The Free Church went to the United States in the Name of Freedom, to injure the cause of the slaves in their own country. They never raised a whisper in condemnation of the traffic, or one word of sympathy for the poor bondman. (Cheers.) They united in Christian fellowship with the slaveholder—spread around him the sanctification of Christianity—told him they had many things to learn of them—that the Scottish religionists would do well to take a lesson from them. (Cheers.)
Friends, these charges shall be rung from one end of Scotland to another, if there be any shame left in her. (Cheers.) I believe she is beyond shame. Why do they dare to stand up in Scotland to advocate this union? Your own liberties are in danger—the liberty of your own children is in danger. (Loud cheers.) For men who can defend those who embrace [enslave?] three millions of their fellow-creatures, would even reduce to slavery those who tread your own soil. He who steals a black man will steal a white man, and he who steals a white man will steal a black man. (Applause.) I look upon the slaveholders as being dastardly, infernal, in their character, but I consider the Free Church incomparably worse, for what they have done is with less temptation. Their crime is greater than even that of the slaveholders themselves. (Loud cheers.) They have taken the ground that deliberate slavery is not in itself sinful. This is awful ground, which they never would have taken but for their contact with the slaveholders.
I hope you will not allow this matter to stop with this meeting. I hope you mean what you look to mean—that you are now in earnest that no slaveholders' apologist shall be allowed to tread the soil of Scotland unattacked—and while there is a single individual left in Scotland who will dare to lift his voice in favour of the American slaveholder, he will not be allowed to go without your rebuke. (Cheers.) The Free Church, it appears, considers that Scotland might be reduced to slavery on Christian grounds. They won't deny it.
Even brother Macnaughtan won't. (Laughter.) He may do it proba-

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bly while I am not in town. He went off to Newcastle to meet me when I was at Edinburgh. (Laughter.) To meet my arguments he passed by to Newcastle. (Laughter.) We did not know. We heard of him replying at Newcastle to the speeches made in the Music Hall, Edinburgh. (Great laughter.) We were not worth his notice here. He showed off, however, to great advantage there. (Cheers and laughter.) The friends of the cause sent for me to come and see what I could do in reply to brother Macnaughtan, who has called me a poor, miserable, fugitive slave. How kind he must feel to a fugitive slave. How delighted he must be with the thought that a human being has got his liberty. (Laughter.) He does not rejoice, for a good reason. He is with the slaveholders, and not with the slave. Being with them, he cannot be with the slave. (Cheers.) Why brother Macnaughtan. (Great laughter.) Why, he is my brother. (Laughter.) You look as if I were claiming an unnatural connection. I tell you candidly Mr. Macnaughtan is my brother, and yet Mr. Macnaughtan would strike hands with men who would reduce his brother to slavery. (Great applause.) True, yet Mr. Macnaughton is my brother. (Laughter.) Brother Macnaughtan went to Newcastle-on-Tyne, and there poured out his vials of wrath on the head of George Thompson, Henry C. Wright13Abolitionist and pacifist Henry Clarke Wright (1797-1870) was one of Garrison's close associates. Reared in central New York, Wright served an apprenticeship as a hatmaker before studying at Andover Theological Seminary. After his ordination in 1823, he served as the pastor of the Congregational Church in West Newsbury, Massachusetts, as a lecture agent for the American Sunday School Union, and as a minister to children in Boston. In 1835 he joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and served as one of Theodore Dwight Weld's "seventy agents" until the executive board of the American Anti-Slavery Society removed him in 1837 because of his ultra opinions. About the same time he gave up his lecturing agency in the American Peace Society, which was also discomfitted by his radicalism, and in 1838 helped found the New England Non-Resistance Society. Nonresistance, the foundation of Wright's reform philosophy, proclaimed the sovereignty of individual conscience and opposed all forms of coercion, violence, and the dominion of man over man. In practice Wright condoned violent resistance to slavery, though he personally eschewed violence. From 1842 to 1847 he traveled in Europe, lecturing on nonresistance and abolitionism. His avowal of antisabbatarian views in Scotland and his accusations (later retracted) that Free Churchmen were "drunkards" made Thompson, Buffum, and Douglass chary of him. "Friend Wright has created against himself prejudices which I as an abolitionist do not feel myself called upon to withstand," Douglass wrote. Wright later turned to spiritualism and helped organize the Universal Peace Union in 1867. He died in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. National Standard, 27 August 1870; Advocate of Peace, September 1870, 284 - 85; Douglass to Richard D. Webb, 10 November 1845, Anti-Slavery Collection, MB; Henry C. Wright to Douglass, 12 December 1846, in Lib., 29 January 1847; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 2 : xxx-xxxi; Henry C. Wright, Human Life Illustrated in My Individual Experience as a Child, a Youth, and a Man (Boston, 1849); idem, "My First Acquaintance With Garrison and Anti-Slavery," Liberty Bell (Boston, 1846), 148-58; Peter Brock, Pacifism in the United States From the Colonial Era to the First World War (Princeton, N.J., 1968), 516 - 18, 532 - 600, 926-27; Mabee, Black Freedom, 68 - 69, 73 - 74, 77, 82, 94, 195-96, 324, 329, 345 - 46 , 359, 361, 367; Perry, Radical Abolitionism, 18 - 22 , 60 - 61, 89 - 90, 159, 222 - 29, 234 - 38 , 262, 278 - 82; ACAB, 6 : 623; NCAB, 2 : 232., and last on the head of his brother Frederick Douglass.14According to the reported version of his speech at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, on 7 July 1846, MacNaughtan made no mention whatsoever of either Thompson, Wright, or Douglass. The Newcastle Advertiser, 14 July 1846

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(Applause and laughter.) He was said to have replied most successfully to the arguments we used at Edinburgh, and the newspaper came out and characterised his address as being a brilliant vindication of the truth, and a successful reply to the arguments at Edinburgh. (Laughter.) Brother don't always like to meet brother. He passed me through Edinburgh, and was very successful at Newcastle-on-Tyne. (Cheers.) I wish he would come out here, where he is best known and best loved. (Laughter.) Where he is best known he would be most likely to get an impartial hearing, because every one knows his good qualities, and would be willing to hear what he has got to say. (Cheers and laughter.) I have made these remarks because Mr. Macnaughtan has made very free with me elsewhere. He characterised me as a poor miserable fugitive slave at the time he was pocketing the money wrung from the souls of my own brethren in slavery. (Applause.) He denounces me for my ignorance. I say such a man is not worthy to be called a Christian minister, when he can speak thus of brethren deprived of their privileges. (Cheers.)
I have one other remark to make. It relates to the sending of Bibles to America. Let a subscription be raised, a vessel full of Bibles be despatched to the slave population of the United States, together with missionaries to teach them to read these Bibles. So soon as the ship appeared on the coast, the Americans would shoulder their weapons of war, and they would beat off the Bibles or else destroy them. I can tell you, however, who would receive them. You might carry them to Hindostan and circulate them there; you cannot circulate them among the slaveholders; you cannot circulate them among Duncan, Cunningham and Candlish Christians, but you may go into the very presence of Juggernaut. The slaveholder is worse than the deluded worshippers of Juggernaut, for while they disown Juggernaut they hug slavery to their communion. (Cheers.) I have to express my gratitude to you for your willingness to hear. I shall, wherever I go, remember the reception Paisley has given me. I have many kind friends, who are earnest for the overthrow of slavery, in this good town. (Applause.) Let us all unite in saying to the Free Church, SEND BACK THE MONEY.

Creator

Douglass, Frederick, 1818-1895

Date

1846-09-23

Description

Report of the Proceedings of the Great Anti-Slavery Meeting Held in the Rev. Mr. Cairns's Church, On Wednesday, 23d September, 1846, Including the Speeches of Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Esq. and Frederick Douglass, Esq. Taken in Shorthand by Cincinnatus (Paisley, Scot., 1846). Another text in Glasgow Saturday Post, 26 September 1846.

Publisher

Yale University Press, 1979

Type

Speeches

Publication Status

Published