John Jay Chapman, William Lloyd Garrison

[134]

Chapter 6: Retrospect and prospect.

It seems to be always the case in human affairs that conditions grow better and worse at the same time. An evil reaches its climax at the very moment that the corrective reform is making a hidden march upon it from an unexpected quarter. And so this epoch of crisis in mob violence against Abolition must be recorded as the epoch during which Abolition passed from the stage of moral agitation into the arena of practical politics. The Anti-slavery men had begun by heckling the clergy; they divided up the country into districts and sent their dreaded emissaries with lists of questions which the parsons had to answer. This process rent the churches, or rather it revealed the fact that the churches were Pro-slavery. In like manner the questioning of all candidates for office was taken up by the Abolitionists. In the year 1840 there were two thousand Anti-slavery societies with a membership of [135] two hundred thousand. It is apparent that the political parties at the North were about to feel the same disruptive power run through their vitals that the churches had felt.

If you take up a history of the United States, or the biography of a statesman of this time, you will find that the author only begins to deal with Abolition in about the year 1840, that is, after it has reached the political stage. He writes perhaps a few pages, as Mr. Rhodes does, about the rise of the movement, taking for granted that the reader knows how Abolition got started, and why it was able so soon to overshadow all other questions. The same thing occurs in the history of the rise of Christianity; with this difference-that the early stages of Christianity are involved in obscurity; whereas the activities of the early years of Abolition are recorded in accessible and thrilling books. The historian, as a general rule, gives us only the history of politics. He seems not to be interested in the beginnings of things. And yet, those beginnings are the seed. The beginnings of any movement,--the epoch when it is in the stage of idea, of agitation, of moral impulse, and before it has assumed a shape [136] that can be termed political,--these beginnings show its nature. In them you find the explanation of the later political stages.

The history of the Anti-slavery struggle after 1840--that is to say, the history of political Anti-slavery — has been well analyzed and understood, and can be traced in the biographies of our statesmen. I am not going to retrace it in this essay; for I believe that Garrison's distinctive work was accomplished before 1840. I shall content myself with a few observations which apply to the whole period between 1830 and 1860, and which are equally true of the agitational era and of the political era of the struggle.

The spread of Anti-slavery sentiment was brought about through the doings of the Slave Power. From the time when the State of Georgia in 1830 offered a reward for the arrest of Garrison, till South Carolina seceded in 1860, the education of the North was due to the activity of the South. While North and South were in ignorance of this fact, the form of the reaction and inter-action between Northern and Southern elements was the inevitable form through which such a drama must pass. The Slave Power believed that Garrison, [137] with some almost superhuman agency, was moving upon it to devour it. Slavery, during the whole course of its long suicide, was, in its own view, striving to save itself from destruction. The Abolitionists brought into the conflict the element of Fate. The South knew that no form of compromise could bind Garrison. It felt this with the instinct of the hunted animal. It aimed a blow at the enemy, Abolition; and it struck free speech, it struck the right of petition, trial by jury, education, benevolence, common sense. Slavery began its death agony in 1830, and was driven from one step to another merely as a consequence of the nature of man. If the South could have smiled at Abolition, if it could have kept its temper and lent no hand in assisting the Abolitionists to bring forward their cause, then the way of the reformers would have been hard. This would have happened, perhaps, if Anti-slavery in America had been a pioneer cause, a new light leading the world. But our Anti-slavery cause was a mere means of catching up with Europe. The moral power of humanity at large prevented South Carolina from smiling at Abolition. The slave-owners trembled because they were a part of the thing [138] which criticized them. Massachusetts and South Carolina were parts of that modern world in which their heart-strings met. This solidarity between the North and the South was the cause of the anguish, and the means of the cure.

In the early days of any movement it is only the expert who can read the times correctly. The lean prophet, in whose bosom the turmoil of a new age begins, sees proofs of that age everywhere. He thinks of nothing else, he cares for nothing else. Thus the Abolitionists could see in 1830 what the average man could not understand till 1845--that the Slave Power was a Moloch which controlled the politics of the North and which, in the nature of things, could stick at nothing while engaged in perpetuating that control. Garrison or May could perceive this in 1828 by taking an observation of Edward Everett or of Daniel Webster. But the average citizen could not see it; he lacked the detachment. His obfuscation was a part of the problem, a part of the evil in the period. In 1845 it required the Annexation of Texas to show to the man in the street those same truths which the Abolitionists had seen so plainly fifteen years before. The Annexation of [139] Texas was the most educational of all the convulsive demonstrations of the South.

Where did the motive power reside from which all these changes proceeded? Was this motive power the conscience of the Abolitionists? I do not think so. The Abolitionists stand nearer to a sense of justice, nearer to rational modern life than the rest of our compatriots of that time. But the Abolitionists were not the motive power; they were merely the point of entrance of new life into the community. Every stroke of his pulse that told an Abolitionist that something must be done about slavery, could perform its functions only by flashing down to Georgia, and coming back in the form of anger and of grief. Every argument that split a vestry, or left a mind ruined was necessary. It was essential that these things should come.

The metaphysical question was always the same, namely: “How far legal argument is valid when it contravenes human feelings?” The question assumed various forms while the fire was eating its way through society towards the powder magazine; but the substance of it never varied. The whole age-long contest in all its Protean forms is summarized in a well-known [140] legal anecdote. Judge Harrington of Vermont is said to have told the attorney for a Southern owner who was seeking to recover a fugitive slave in 1808, that his “evidence of ownership” was insufficient. “What evidence does your honor require?” “Nothing less than a bill of sale from God Almighty.” This story gives the two elements, pity and business interest, expressed in terms of constitutional argument. It summarizes the labors of our statesmen,--Webster, Calhoun, Sumner, Taney, Douglas, Lincoln,--each of whom had his bout with the problem. The unfortunate American statesmen who were obliged to formulate a philosophy upon the matter seem to me like that procession of hypocrites in Dante's Purgatory, robed in mantles of lead. They emerge, each bent down with his weight of logic, blinded by his view of the inherited curse — nursing his critique of the constitution; they file across the pages of our history from Jefferson to Lincoln — sad, perplexed men.

The solution given by Garrison to the puzzle was that the law must give way, that the Constitution was of no importance, after all. This is what any American would have answered had the question concerned [141] the Constitution of Switzerland or of Patagonia. But, for some reason, our own Constitution was regarded differently. I suppose that the politics, theology, and formal organization of the whole world are never so important as they pretend to be. The element of material interest in these matters gives them their awful weight to contemporaries. When we are dealing with a past age this element evaporates, and we see clearly that most of the importances of the world have no claim to our reverence. Now when a man has felt in this way about his own age, we call him a great man; because we agree with him. For this is the test, and the only conceivable test of greatness-that a man shall look upon his own age, and see it in the same light as that in which posterity sees it. We must concede greatness to Garrison. His early editorials upon the question of disunion show that he viewed our Constitution in true historical perspective as early as 1832.

Let us now remember some of the phases of the nightmare which, like a continuous Dreyfus case, perplexed all honest men, all thinking men in America for two generations. The Constitution was so inwoven with our social life that the conflict between [142] the letter and the spirit was ubiquitous. The restless probings went forward at the fireside, in the club, in the shop; no pillow was free from them. Slavery covered every sentiment with a cloak. Slavery was in literature, in religion, in custom. This social, daily, domestic, discussion and heartburn was the true means of regeneration. The political history of slavery was to be the outcome of this fireside discussion. The constitutional theory which any man held was, in this epoch, the outcome of his personal struggle with evil. In other words the slavery question had become the symbol Of the relation between good and evil in practical life. We notice in all this the tardiness of the political world in absorbing new ideas. The world of politics is always twenty years behind the world of thought. The world of politics lives and works in ideals which are twenty years old.

The result of all the upturnings of conscience, which went forward in millions of private breasts, was at length seen in the formation of the Republican Party. By the time that party was formed one could distinguish (as Mr. Rhodes points out), two classes of men among its members:the men actuated by pity for the slave, of [143] whom Sumner was the type; and the men actuated by resentment at being ruled from the South, of whom Seward was the type. It was, however, the Abolition tom-tom that had called both classes from the deep; and the Seward class was but an imperfect, half-awakened example of the true thing. The Seward class could never stand fire. Its courage,--for the infusion of courage was the sole function of that tom-tom,--its courage was in the head and not, as yet, in the vitals. This class was subject to splendid visitations of new idea; and yet it was also subject to the occasional panic-stricken discovery that the bottom had dropped out after all, and that one must go softly, because life could not be trusted.

The abstract, inscrutable nature of the contest between Freedom and Slavery first began to be revealed to the politicians in about 1850; and men then began to feel that the whole historic sequence of things was a fate-drama. Even then, everybody in politics was afraid to speak plainly about slavery. It required, for instance, notable insight as well as great political courage for Lincoln to state what was known to everyone. In 1858 he took his political life in his hands, and spoke of “the house [144] divided against itself.” His associates were scandalized by his rashness, and begged him to omit the phrase. Merciful heavens! Had not this house been divided against itself for three-quarters of a century? Yes, truly, this whole matter was a fate-drama, and in a deeper sense than Seward imagined or than even Lincoln could guess. Seward with his perception of the “irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces,” and Lincoln with his vision of the blood of white men, drawn by the sword, which should repay the blood of slaves that had been drawn by the lash — saw only the main crash of the drama. The reality of it was profounder, and the trailing consequences of it were to be more terrible than they suspected.

The intellectual and moral heritages of slavery are with us still. The timidity of our public life and of our private conversation is a tradition from those times, which fifty years of freedom have not sufficed to efface. The morbid sensitiveness of the American to new political ideas has been a mystery to Europe. We cannot bear to hear a proposition plainly put;--or let me say, we are only recently beginning to cast off our hothouse condition, and to bear the [145] sun and wind of the natural world. I do not know anything which measures the timidity of the American nation better than the moderation of Lincoln's speeches, a moderation which he was obliged to adopt in order to be listened to. He was always in danger of showing his heart; he must avoid the taint of Abolition, the suspicion of any attack upon the Constitution. He must step gingerly and remember what part of the State of Illinois he is in at the moment. Even when the war breaks out Lincoln is obliged to invent a way of looking at that war which shall place the Union cause in a popular light. He is obliged to pretend that the war is not primarily about slavery at all. He is obliged to speak about the war in such a way as would be incomprehensible to any one who is not a close student of our conditions. He must remember the Border States.

Here was a war over slavery which had been visibly brewing for more than a lifetime. The Anti-slavery party comes into power; the Slave States revolt and the question is whether the Government shall prosecute a war and extinguish slavery — or not. This is the way in which the educated foreigner viewed the matter, and he [146] was right. There were, however, in the Northern and Border States, many educated Americans who had from their cradles been taught to regard slavery as a thing almost sacred — a thing which could not rightfully become a cause of war between the States. Therefore great caution had to be used in making any popular statement of the matter. This war must be looked upon as a war, not about Slavery but about Union. Lincoln was thus obliged to befog his State papers with such careful statements as to his being for the Union without slavery, or for the Union with slavery, that the outsider really began to doubt whether, perhaps, Lincoln meant that slavery might be retained in the end. Even in this crisis no one in political life was allowed to speak in plain terms. To do so was regarded as most unwise. The misguided and halfminded man of America had been trained to believe that Slavery was sacred; but for the Union he will die. So long as you call it Union he is ready to die for humanity.

Lincoln, then, during the years of his leadership was obliged to stoop to the complex, peculiar, and inferior character of the contemporary mind. He was one of the [147] greatest political geniuses and one of the most beautiful characters that ever lived; and he managed somehow to be intellectually honest and very nearly frank while fulfilling his mission. Yet I can never read his debates with Douglas or consider his Border-State policy without being struck by the technical nature of all our history. One of Lincoln's chief interests in life, from early manhood onward, lay in emancipation. This he could not say and remain in politics; nay, he could not think it and remain in politics. He could not quite know himself and yet remain in politics. The awful weight of a creed that was never quite true — the creed of the Constitution --pressed down upon the intellects of our public men. This was the dower and curse of slavery.

The value of the epoch during which the curse was cast off is that, in reading about it, we can see thought move, and can find ourselves in sympathy with all shades of reform. Let us take an example at random, as one might take a drop of water for a sample of the ocean. In the dawn of the Abolition movement its adherents in New York State, who were responsible, educated and propertied persons, [148] were a little afraid of the Garrisonians of Boston. The principles of the New York group are well stated by William Jay in the first number of the Emancipator, and are in striking contrast to the declarations of Garrison in the first number of the Liberator, which I have quoted on a previous page. Jay writes:

The duty and policy of immediate emancipation, although clear to us, are not so to multitudes of people who abhor slavery and sincerely wish its removal. They take it for granted, no matter why or wherefore, that if the slaves were now liberated they would instantly cut the throats and fire the dwellings of their benefactors. Hence these good people look upon the advocates of emancipation as a set of dangerous fanatics, who are jeopardizing the peace of the Southern States and riveting the fetters of the slaves by the very attempt to break them. In their opinion the slaves are not fit for freedom, and therefore it is necessary to wait patiently till they are. Now, unless these patient waiters can be brought over to our side, emancipation is hopeless; for, first, they are an immense majority of all among us who are hostile to slavery; and, secondly, they [149] are as conscientious in their opinions as we are in ours, and unless converted will oppose and defeat all our efforts. But how are they to be converted? Only by the exhibition of Truth. The moral, social, and political evils of slavery are but imperfectly known and considered. These should be portrayed in strong but true colors, and it would not be difficult to prove that, however inconvenient and dangerous emancipation may be, the continuance of slavery must be infinitely more inconvenient and dangerous.

Constitutional restrictions, independent of other considerations, forbid all other than moral interference with slavery in the Southern States. But we have as good and perfect a right to exhort slaveholders to liberate their slaves as we have to exhort them to practice any virtue or avoid any vice. Nay, we have not only the right, but under certain circumstances it may be our duty to give such advice; and while we confine ourselves within the boundaries of right and duty, we may and ought to disregard the threats and denunciations by which we may be assailed.

The question of slavery in the District of Columbia is totally distinct, as far as we [150] are concerned, from that of slavery in the Southern States.

As a member of Congress, I should think myself no more authorized to legislate for the slaves in Virginia than for the serfs of Russia. But Congress has full authority to abolish slavery in the District, and I think it to be its duty to do so. The public need information respecting the abominations committed at Washington with the sanction of their Representatives -abominations which will cease whenever those Representatives please. If this subject is fully and ably pressed upon the attention of our electors, they may perhaps be induced to require pledges from candidates for Congress for their votes for the removal of this foul stain from our National Government. As to the Colonization Society, it is neither a wicked conspiracy upon the one hand nor a panacea for slavery on the other. Many good and wise men belong to it and believe in its efficacy.

These New York men are in a more rational state of mind than Garrison was. When in 1833 Samuel J. May begged William Jay to join in forming a national Anti-Slavery Society, Jay paused. I suppose he had been reading the Liberator. He dedined [151] to join, on the ground that the local Societies could do the work as well for the time being, and that the great objection to Anti-slavery societies was that they aimed at unconstitutional interference with slavery. He suggested that if a National Society was to be formed, it should show, by its constitution, that the objects were legal, that is to say, it should acknowledge the exclusive rights of the Southern States to settle the matter of slavery within their own boundaries, and claim only the right to urge Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and the territories.

The new Society did, in fact, adopt carefully drawn provisions expressive of Jay's idea, and Mr. Tuckerman, in his memoir of Jay, comments upon the circumstance as follows: “Looked at by the light of subsequent events, the importance of placing Anti-slavery upon a Constitutional basis cannot be over-rated. Upon the principles thus distinctly avowed rested the moral and political strength of the movement during the struggle of thirty years.” It is impossible not to feel the truth of this reflection. The average American mind could only deal with the slavery matter when presented in legal form. Mr. Garrison, in spite of [152] his denunciation of the Union, felt the force of this appeal to law and order. He actually signed the declarations of the new Society, which put the movement on a conservative basis, and he wrote editorially in the Liberator as follows: “Abolitionists as clearly understand and as sacredly regard the Constitutional powers of Congress as do their traducers, and they know and have again and again asserted that Congress has no more rightful authority to sit in judgment upon Southern slavery than it has to legislate upon the abolition of slavery in the French colonies.” This editorial is entirely out of key with Mr. Garrison's fundamental beliefs, as we shall see later. We have to remember, in reviewing any convulsive epoch in history, how frequently men, even great men, have been jolted forward and back between conflicting points of view. Garrison was subject to these revulsions, and was totally unconscious of his inconsistencies.

The point I would here make is that all these various and contradictory dogmas were necessary. Each one was an inevitable progression, going on in somebody's mind, and each helped to move the argument along. It is easy to see that the attitude [153] of Jay in recommending legal action only, and the attitude of Garrison in denouncing the Constitution, as he did most of the time, were both of them necessary to the working-out of the problem.

There was another element of complication which assisted in disintegrating the Anti-slavery cause. As time went on Garrison kept confiding his new developments and changes in opinion to the columns of the Liberator. His views upon Peace, No-government, Woman's Rights, Non-resistance, as they formed themselves within him, were advocated with an incredible volubility which disquieted many other Abolitionists. After one or two attempts at schism, the more conservative Abolitionists formed a new Society which went by the name of the New Organization. With whom shall we sympathize among all these contending sects? Manifestly with them all. Let us examine the case of Woman's Rights. Women had been working in the Massachusetts Society and in the National Society from the beginning. Women were among the ablest, the most effective, the most saintly, the most distinguished, of the workers in the Abolition cause. Should [154] they be admitted to equal fellowship or not? Manifestly they must be so admitted. Yet to do this identified the cause of Abolition with the theory of Woman's Rights, a conclusion most repugnant to many excellent Anti-slavery people. There must follow, then, a multiplication of sects; this was one of the logical necessities of the situation.

Now there was no person in the Abolition camp who understood these matters from a philosophic point of view. The New Organizationists were struggling to keep the cause pure, to keep it from being mixed up with other causes and ideas, such as Woman's Rights, Non-resistance, etc. Garrison was also struggling to keep the cause pure; to prevent it from being diluted, and from falling into the hands of sectarians, Presbyterians, Methodists, etc. In 1840 we find the Garrisonians chartering a steamboat, and taking several hundred men and women from Massachusetts, in order to “carry” the annual meeting in New York City for his ideas. Jay seems to have understood that the confusion was past cure, though he did not quite perceive that it was inevitable. His personal course was to resign from the Anti-slavery organizations when they veered away from Constitutional [155] methods. He again became a free lance. In 1846 he writes: “Our Anti-slavery societies are for the most part virtually defunct. Anti-slavery conventions are whatever the leaders present happen to be; sometimes disgustingly irreligious, and very often Jacobinical and disorganizing; and frequently proscriptive of such of their brethren who will not consent to render Abolition a mere instrument for effecting certain political changes having no relation whatever to slavery.”

Now let us take one step further and note this:--that at the time of the Annexation of Texas, Jay had arrived at Garrison's views as to the necessity of breaking up the Union. “Should the slaveholders succeed,” says Jay, “in their design of annexing Texas, then indeed would I not merely discuss, but with all my powers would I advocate an immediate dissolution. I love my children, my friends, my country too well to leave them the prey to the accursed Government which would be sure to follow.” And again: “A separation will be more easily effected now than when the relative strength of the South shall have been greatly augmented. Hereafter we shall be as serfs rebelling against their [156] bonds. Now, if the North pleases, we may dissolve the Union without spilling a drop of blood.”

It is impossible not to sympathize with the state of mind revealed in these last sentences — a state of mind to which Jay has been brought by the march of events. The truth is that the whole vast problem was constantly moving forward. Not only Garrison and Jay, but every soul who lived in America during these years held fluctuating views about the matter of slavery; and the complex controversy moved forward like a glacier, cracking and bending and groaning, and marking the everlasting rocks as it progressed. In the end, we come to see that the whole struggle was a solid struggle, an ever-changing Unity, an orchestra in which all the various instruments were interdependent and responsive to one another. We see also that each individual then living was somehow a little microcosm which reflected and had relations with the whole moving miracle; and that every element of the great universe was represented in him. We can perceive plainly, to-day, how necessary it was that each error should be made; that Garrison should issue his inconsecutive fulminations of dogma, and [157] that Jay should retire in gloom, when the cause entered politics. We see how inevitable it was that the cause should be betrayed and polluted, soiled and kneaded into the mire of the world, woven into the web of American life. Gradually the leaven was invading and qualifying the whole lump.