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Neither would I, though I am quite a tomahawk sort of1 man myself.’
On the other hand, Abby Kelley, writing to G. W. Benson, censures Charles Burleigh for not2 wanting S. S. Foster sent to lecture in Connecticut, where the new-organized State Society was carrying on an active campaign and the old organization was doing nothing.
‘His [Burleigh's] manner will do much for a certain class, at certain times; but another class, and the same class, indeed, at other times, need Foster's preaching.’3
So far as the preaching was directed against pro-slavery clericalism and denominationalism, the need of it cannot be doubted for the year 1841. Dr. Channing, in his work on West India Emancipation, sorrowfully admitted the4 pro-slavery character of American ‘religion’; and Gerrit Smith, speaking to this text, said: “I do not hesitate to make the remark, infidel though it may seem in the eyes of many, that were all the religion of this land—the good, bad, and mixed—to be this day blotted out, there would remain as much ground as there now is to hope for the speedy termination of American slavery.”
Lib. 11.7. The sooner, added Mr. Garrison, this truth is realized by abolitionists,5 the better.
‘When we go into a place,’ said Wendell
1 Cf. ante, p. 5.
2 Ms. Sept. 13, 1841.
3 See Cyrus Peirce's protests against Abby Kelley's and S. S. Foster's resolutions at Fall River, Nov. 23, 1841, and against their ‘style’ generally (Lib. 12: 3, 19), with Mrs. Chapman's comment (Lib. 12: 23). Miss Kelley offered a resolution in these terms at the tenth anniversary meeting of the Mass. A. S. Society (Jan. 28, 1842): ‘Resolved, That the sectarian organizations called churches are combinations of thieves, robbers, adulterers, pirates, and murderers, and, as such, form the bulwark of American slavery’—this last phrase being probably suggested by James G. Birney's tract, “The American Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery” (published first, anonymously, in London, Sept. 23, 1840; in a second and third [American] edition in Newburyport, Mass., in 1842; and again, in Boston, in May, 1843). Phoebe Jackson wrote from Providence, Nov. 18, 1842, to Mrs. Garrison, of the recently held annual meeting of the Rhode Island A. S. Society: ‘The strong ground taken by Rogers, Foster, and a few others occasions considerable feeling among our friends. By the way, Rogers is not a favorite speaker of mine, but Foster is deeply impressive. I do not always agree with him, but he has great power. ... I do not think it wise in him to disturb the assemblies of others: it appears to me like an infringement on their rights. Neither do I sympathize in the Christian (?) course they pursue toward him and others’ (Ms.).
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