An Abolitionist Measure of American Churches and The Free Soil Party: An Address Delivered in Boston, Massachusetts, May 30, 1849
National Anti-Slavery Standard, 7 June 1849. Another text in Liberator, 8 June 1849.
“The position occupied by the American Church and ministry on the question of slavery” was the central theme of the New England Anti-Slavery Society’s 1849 convention, according to Douglass’s own account. Held in Boston‘s Melodeon and in Faneuil Hall, the three-day gathering, described by Garrison as the "most interesting of all the anniversary meetings of the season," drew a larger crowd than it ever had. The Liberator portrayed the audience as consisting of “lawyers, physicians, divines, merchants, mechanics and farmers“ who could be seen “listening as for their lives” during the proceedings. The convention selected Wendell Phillips as president and numbered Francis Jackson, Eliza Kenny, and Edmund Quincy among its officers. On the first morning of meetings the business committee, which included Douglass, Parker Pillsbury, Lucy Stone, Stephen S. Foster, and Charles C. Burleigh as members and had Garrison as its spokesman, reported four resolutions. Two of its proposals used quotations from British clergymen to justify a reaffinnation of the Garrisonian belief that abolitionists must secede from American churches countenancing slavery. Although discussion of the churches occupied much of the first morning, a digression concerning the Free Soil party and a discussion of obedience to fugitive slave laws increasingly dominated the debate. On the second morning, Quincy’s proposal to return the debate to the religious issue carried and Douglass followed John Innis in addressing that topic. His speech, like those of Burleigh before and Pillsbury and Foster after him, carefully pointed out that leaving organized churches was no mark of irreligion. “Never,” wrote the Liberator, “was the Church arraigned with more fidelity.” Douglass yielded the floor briefly after Innis complained that his speech had spilled over from religious topics into an attack on the Free Soil party, but he soon received recognition to speak again, this time ostensibly on financial matters. His second brief address criticized the supporters of free soil on more pragmatic grounds than had earlier speeches by Garrison, Burleigh, and James N. Buffum. While Garrison, Burleigh, and Buffum scored the Free Soilers for abandoning principle, for supporting Martin Van Buren, and for upholding the Constitution, Douglass concentrated on the role of the Free Soil movement in drawing off the energy of abolitionist organizations and thus lessening the level of antislavery activity. PaF, 3 May, 7, 28 June 1849; NS, 8, 15 June 1849.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS was glad of an opportunity of bearing his testimony in favour of the resolutions under consideration. We were repeatedly told
by church members, by ministers and those who disliked the spirit and tone of [our] Anti-Slavery meetings, that the great reason why they could not unite with [us] in [our] movement was that [we] were so rash and radical, and intemperate in [our] language; that [we], in a word, dealt in the slang of infidelity. We had now the language of Mr. Burnet, of London, who stood well at least in England with the dissenting churches, and never had been suspected of infidelity, and he bore unequivocal testimony of the integrity of the position taken by the Abolitionists, especially of New England, with regard to Slavery.1Douglass alludes to the following resolution, introduced by William Lloyd Garrison earlier in the meeting: “Resolved, That in the language of the Rev. John Burnet of London, ‘if we are thorough Anti-Slavery men and believe that slavery is a sin against God, we believe that that is a sinful church which sanctions Slavery and we must leave it.'" NASS, 7 June 1849. We were urged, in the language ofone of the resolutions, to leave the Church.2Of the four resolutions that Garrison presented to the meeting on behalf of the business committee, Douglass probably has in mind the resolution quoting Burnet. Another of this series of resolutions also urged abolitionists to take a stand "on the firm ground of 'no union with slaveholders in Church or State.'" NASS, 7 June 1849. This was the great stumbling block in the way of those who were at all tinctured with Anti-Slavery sentiment. He had experienced the same impediment when he first discovered the sinful position of the American Church. He had been in the communion of the Methodist Episcopal Church for some dozen years before he left it. He had thought it the purest Church in the world. He had never regretted leaving it. Of course he had experienced some natural regret in leaving old associations, but the voice of duty bid him bury those feelings forever. He had once been afraid that he could not live as a Christian should without the encouragement of a Christian Church; but he believed now that it was clearly possible for a true man to have such confidence in principle, such an attachment of righteousness as to be able to stand alone in any community, and stand uprightly too.
From observation he was fully convinced that those impressed with Anti-Slavery views who remained in the Church, soon became so interested in the affairs of the Church as to neglect the Anti-Slavery cause, and give up its advocacy almost entirely. They, as Abolitionists, should draw a clear line of demarkation between them and the Church. The only way to convert the Church to their views was to come out and stand aloof from it. They should take the broad ground that a Church countenancing or fellowshipping Slavery in any of its aspects was not a Christian Church, but a sinning Church, and consequently should not receive their support. This
was the only way they could make men respect them. He could no more worship in one of the so-called Christian Churches than he could in the hold of a pirate ship. When he went into any of them he went as a spy in order that he might more clearly exhibit their hypocrisy and inconsistency. They should not grow tired of reiterating their sentiments on this question even if they were old. They should persevere in well doing.
As he saw the time for the consideration of the subject of finances had arrived, a word with reference to it before concluding. There was a great lack of energy and effort he thought at the present time in behalf of the Anti-Slavery cause which required that they should renewedly go to work. This was the case particularly in those States where the Free Soil movement had been most strenuously supported. It was the case in the State of New
York.
Mr. INNIS3John A. Innis resided in Salem, Massachusetts, during the 1850s. His profession in 1850 was listed as "dry goods" but by 1859 he had become a "newspaper and book agent." Describing himself as both a staunch Free Soil man and a friend of the New England Anti-Slavery Convention, Innis spoke earlier in the meeting about the Free Soil party's prospects in Salem and elsewhere. Adams, Salem Directory, 1850, 84; Salem Directory, 1859, 116. here requested that Mr. Douglass should speak to the resolutions and not on the Free Soil movement.
The PRESIDING OFFICER, stated that as the hour for the consideration of the finances had arrived Mr. D[ouglass] had better give way.
Mr. PHILLIPS from the Business Committee in the absence of the chairman reported the following resolution:
“Resolved, That the friends of the cause be earnestly requested to place in the hands of the Board of Managers of the Massachusetts Society funds sufficient to carry on their usual series of One Hundred Conventions with official reference to the Western counties of this State, to Vermont and Western Connecticut in cooperation with the plans of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and with this view those representing town or other Societies are invited to pledge not only for themselves but in behalf of those societies.”
A collection was then taken up, Mr. Douglass at the same time addressing the Convention on the question of finances, by request of the presiding officer.
He had been saying, he remarked, when interrupted, that the Free Soil movement had left the public mind in many places in a dead and torpid state with regard to the Slavery question. Abolitionists on whom they had relied
for aid in every emergency, had been swept away from their platform by the movement and had lost their zeal for the cause. This Free Soil movement had seduced the Liberty Party papers from their high position. It had weakened the tone of that press, and in many instances, had swallowed the Liberty Party papers entire, reducing them to mere Free Soil organs. The Free Soilers in their canvass had employed but very few of the old agents of the Liberty Party,4The Free Soil party made its strongest showing in Vermont, Wisconsin, and New York, where its 26% of the vote helped defeat Lewis Cass, and in Ohio where its vote prevented a Taylor victory. Liberty party delegations to the August 1848 Free Soil convention in Buffalo, New York, faced the alternative of supporting their old antagonist Martin Van Buren and a variously circumscribed antislavery platform, or forming another and still smaller antislavery political party. Assured by Joshua Leavitt that the Liberty party was not dead but simply “translated” into a more effective form, most Liberty men supported the Free Soil effort. Douglass himself backed the movement in its early stages and, along with Henry Bibb, addressed the Buffalo convention. Prominent converts to Free Soil from the ranks of political abolitionism included Gamaliel Bailey, Henry B. Stanton, and John Greenleaf Whittier. Most Liberty party newspapers also endorsed the Free Soil ticket. Gamaliel Bailey's Washington (D.C.) National Era was a leading Free Soil organ and Leavitt's Emancipator changed its title to the Emancipator and Free Soil Press. In the wake of the 1848 election the moribund Liberty party survived only in the form of a tiny splinter group led by Gerrit Smith and known as the Liberty League. Douglass evaluates the Free Soil party's impact more fully in a North Star editorial of 25 May 1849. Sewall, Ballots for Freedom, 152-69.and they had occupied the ground in their stead, unsettling the minds of Abolitionists as to the best means of operating against Slavery, and, upon the whole, he thought it had done a serious injury in preventing old organized, straight-forward, concentrated Anti-Slavery action. He (Mr. D[ouglass]) had no doubt that their course would always be followed by some kind of party claiming alliance with the Anti-Slavery movement. Looking at these things, in this light, it was manifest that the cause rested upon their shoulders—the hopes of the slave were bound up in their triumph. It was our duty then to promote the success of the work in every possible way. They should make issue with the prejudice against colour on board the steamboat, in the hotel, and upon every opportune occasion.
He was coming down the Hudson River the other day with two English ladies under his charge, in the steamboat Alida, Captain Frederick T. Stone, when hearing the dinner-bell ring, he took the ladies into the dining saloon and sat down with them at the table. Some of the passengers immediately arose, and the steward and officers of the boat came and told him that he must not eat with the white passengers. Upon rising to go away the passengers gave three cheers at their great and glorious triumph over a
poor coloured man.5The English women traveling with Douglass on the Alida were Julia and Eliza Griffiths, who, after a brief tour of Europe, had arrived in New York City in early May and had attended many of the anniversary week’s meetings with him. He had met the sisters during his stay in the British Isles, and Julia, who was to settle in Rochester for nearly six years while she attended to much of the financial business of Douglass's newspaper. had visited him and his family in 1847. On 24 May, Douglass and the Griffiths sisters boarded the Alida at Albany, New York, where they may have attended the antislavery meeting held by Henry Highland Garnet and Samuel Ringgold Ward the day before. Douglass elsewhere mentions that they were joined on board the steamer by one Rev. Melancthan B. Williams, a white Presbyterian minister from Cincinnati “deeply interested in the antislavery cause and . . . the condition of the free colored people." When the elder sister protested the party's treatment, the Alida's captain, actually named Frederick W. Stone, reportedly informed her that "white females who had no more respect for themselves than to associate, and to walk, arm-in-arm, with negroes, were not entitled to the usual civilities of life." Douglass relates the entire incident to his readers in NS, 15 June 1849. See also NASS, 31 May 1849; Lib., 13 July 1849; Albany Evening Journal, 21 May 1849; Albany Express, 21, 22 May 1849; London British Banner, 4 July 1849; Glasgow Christian News, 2 August 1849; Birmingham (Eng.) Mercury, n.d., in NS, 31 August 1849; G. M. to Anti-Slavery Bugle, n.d., in NS, 20 July 1849; Presbyterian Church of the United States, Minutes of the General Assembly, 1849, 249. He did not see one single individual who appeared to sympathize for his situation; not one opened his mouth in his behalf. If he had been a coloured servant he might have stayed and taken dinner with the ladies, after the other passengers had retired, but being a coloured gentleman he was not allowed even to sit with his friends after all the white passengers had finished their dinner.
It was only those Abolitionists who were willing daily to make issue with this pro-slavery spirit, that could be relied upon in the day of trial, or at any other period. The pathway of the true Abolitionist was strewn with sacrifices. They should go to work with renewed zeal and vigour. The peculiar situation of the cause at this precise time demanded it. In the State of New York there were as many as three hundred towns in which an Anti-Slavery lecture had never been delivered. There was not now a single Anti-Slavery lecturer in the State to his knowledge except Mr. Glymn,6Probably Elijah M. K. Glen of Minaville, Montgomery County, New York. Glen had been an agent of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society in the 1830s and had run for the state senate in 1840 on the Liberty party ticket. Glen was still lecturing for the Liberty party in 1849 and had shared a platform with Douglass at an antislavery meeting in Penn Yan, New York, on 20 February of that year. New York Emancipator, 20 August, 22 October 1840; Alice H. Henderson, "The History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society" (Ph.D. diss.. University of Michigan, 1963), 273, 319, 347. of the Liberty League, who was occupied mainly in discussing the Land Reform, Slavery only being spoken of occasionally. He called upon the friends of the cause to come up and work anew. Their every effort was needed, and they should work as if the salvation of every slave depended upon their efforts.