"you do know Christian ended western slavery ? not human secularists"
Rationalists and certain religious persuasions (Mennonite, Quaker, Methodist) all worked together to drive out slavery. Slavery was justified by scripture and practiced throughout Palestine at the time of the supposed Jesus and also practiced by many Popes who owned slaves. Those Christians who got past scripture advocating slavery and put their efforts into human rights are to be commended as are all other religious people and secularists who fought for human rights and freedoms for everyone. It is noteworthy that today only certain radical Christian sects advocate the return to slavery.
One of the great leaders of the Abolitionist Movement was the Christian, Thomas Clarkson. Some of the great secularists were notables such as Thomas Paine, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Ingersoll, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, etc. Due to political power of the church, atheists were prevented from exerting direct political influence but many secularists championed the cause and led organizations spearheading the efforts.
And remember that the entire country of France abolished slavery in 1791 as a result of atheists taking power in a revolution against the church!
There is hardly a more fitting overview of the abolitionist movement than this wonderful piece by Christopher Bell as Frederick Douglas:
dmuuc.org
Frederick Douglass
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By Dr. Christopher Bell
February 5, 2005
Frederick Douglass as portrayed by Dr. Christopher Bell
Speech to Davies Memorial UU Church
Early Freethinkers, Abolitionists, and Unitarians and how the three did meet.
Today, I shall speak to you on the subject of Early Freethinkers, Abolitionists, and Unitarians, and how the three did meet.
As you perhaps know, I was born a slave, a slave for life, right here in Maryland. I was born in Talbot County on the Eastern Shore about 100 miles due east from Prince George’s county. I don’t rightly know the year, but my best estimate is that it was in the winter of 1817. You ought to also know that when I was twenty years old, I ran away from my Master, and that much later my friends bought my freedom.
So you see I am a graduate of the American Institution of Chattel Negro Slavery, and my certificate of graduation is written on the flesh of my back by the carvings and scars placed there from the slaver’s lash.
What I have to say to you this morning is premised on most of you, having an understanding of the basic rudimentary characteristics of “Chattel Negro Slavery.” But for fear that many of you may not have a basic understanding of the rudimentary characteristics of Chattel Negro Slavery, I will quickly review just three basic characteristics with you. Please bear in mind that I do not intend to talk to you about the details of the institution of slavery itself.
1. You should know that by law and custom, the slave was considered to be property, the same as a swine, or a wagon or a horse. You should know that such property could be sold, traded, hired out or disposed of at the whim of the slaveholder and in certain instances the slave may be killed with impunity.
But today, we shall not discuss the details of the selling and buying of slaves and the accompanying inhumanity, horrors, and harshness of the frequent public slave auctions were slaves were placed on an auction block, inspected like cattle, and sold to the highest bidder. No, no we’re not going there today.
2. You should know that slavery was a big multi-million dollar business back in the 1800s. Slavery formed the backbone of the plantation economy of the southern states and as such, it was imperative that slaveholders develop “slave-controlling strategies” to motivate slaves to produce (work), and to ensure slavery’s profitability, reliability, and predictability.
However, today, we shall not describe the details of these slave controlling strategies which included: “before sun up to after sun down” work requirements, and the use of certain obedience tools such as: the bloody whip, the gag, the thumbscrew, the cat-o-nine tails, the dungeon, the bloodhounds, and of course chains and branding irons. But we’re not going to discuss these strategies today.
3.You should also know that the “field slave” was fed, clothed, and housed only to the extent necessary to keep him or her alive so that the slave-holder might realize a profit, a pleasure, or a privilege.
4. You should also know that anything that the slave acquired that would allow the slave to begin to feel or think that he was a something other than “property” had to be diligently and systematically wrestled away from him by what I call mind impoverishing practices.
I am not here to describe these mind impoverishing practices, some of which consisted consisted of: living in unsanitary, dilapidated, dirt-floor, shacks; a subsistence level of rations, less than sufficient clothing for warmth in the winter months, being forbidden, on the punishment of death, to learn to read or write; granting no recognition of the, legitimacy of slave marriages or families, and the establishment of slave-breeding farms. But we will not discuss these things today, no, not today.
Now that I have reminded you or in some instances informed you of some of these rudimentary characteristics of “Negro Chattel slavery”, I may now proceed with my intended message. However, I ask your forgiveness if I evince no elaborate grace in preparing an ostentatious introduction. And I trust your indulgences and patience as I speak bluntly and plainly and lay my thoughts before you.
The Idea of the Abolition of Slavery:
Where did the idea of “slave abolition” come from? Just the thought of the “abolition of slavery”, in the early 1700s and 1800s in America was a contrary and wayward idea. This was because such an idea differed radically from the social ethos and the acceptable acculturation of the young American nation.
In addition, the fact that from time immemorial up through the 1700s, and 1800s, “slavery” had been an acceptable means by which civilized nations managed their labor resources. And generally such labor management practices had been blessed and approved by the religious and educational authorities in the societies in question. In other words, in the early 1800s slavery was a “normal” thread in the social fabric of most civilized nations and especially so in America.
So the idea of “slavery abolition” (the idea that all men (including slaves) should be free) was a foreign concept to most societies in the early 1800s. (Chuckle) Now I am certain that the slaves themselves might have always had this idea in mind.
The idea of Slavery abolition (of freeing slaves) began in Europe during the so-called Age of Enlightenment or the Age or Reason. The historians date this period from the early 1600s to the early 1800s.
This Age of Enlightenment was a time:
Wherein men became involved in societal class warfare and social revolutions leading to the overthrow the feudal system and thus allowed the average man greater freedom of physical movement and freedom to enter discourse about the world and the reasons for living, and man’s relationship with God;
Wherein men acquired new scientific information about the physical world and such information clashed and challenged the old ideas about the physical world and about the nature of man;
Wherein new teachings about reasoning and logic challenged orthodox religious faith and superstitions, and where the idea of human rights, including the notion that all men should be free sprang forth.
It was an age wherein the common man began to feel and think that he was a worthwhile being and that he had a right to the fruits of his own labors; and men became suspicious of their churches and governments, as these institutions effected his personal freedom.
Enter the Free-thinkers
So out of the Enlightenment Age there sprang forth here and there, persons who referred to themselves as Freethinkers. Others referred to themselves as Secularists or humanists.
Most Freethinkers believed that “morality” (Right and Wrong or Good and Evil) should be based solely on regard to the wellbeing of mankind in the present life.
Most Freethinkers had theological beliefs that differed from the dogma espoused by the orthodox, conventional Christian Churches. Freethinker ranged from those persons who were truly anti-religious to persons who may have adhered to a private, unconventional faith revering some form of God, but at odds with the orthodox religious authority.
Most Freethinkers were convinced that the affairs of human beings should not be governed by faith in the supernatural, but by a reliance on reason and evidence adduced from the natural world.
Many Freethinkers were secularist and believed that the church and the civil government should be kept separate.
Enter the Unitarians:
Out of these various groups of Freethinkers arose a religious/spiritual community who called themselves “Unitarians.” These Unitarians were a religious/spiritual community that emerged in Europe during the Enlightenment Age and many of the proponents of this new way of believing found their way to America. Beginning in the late 1700s many New England Puritan-founded Congregationalist churches began transforming into much more liberal and rationalist Unitarian fellowships.
These Unitarians shared the general philosophy of the other freethinkers and as a spiritual community, they rejected a wide variety of orthodox Christian tenets, including the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.
In my day and time: Unitarian congregations expressed a spirituality of Freedom and Liberty; a spirituality which refused to accept authoritarian “revelations” or “dogmas” which contradicted the revelations they found in their own experience.
In my day and time: Unitarians opposed the reliance of superstition in arriving at spiritual truths and purport that their religion or spirituality lay in a deep reverence for the power of the human mind, and the value of human doubt.
In my day and time: Unitarian espoused the notion that their spirituality did not accept “authoritarian” revelations or dogmas which contradicted the revelation they found in their own experiences.
In my day and time, Unitarians as a group believed in freedom of the mind in the continuing search for truth.
It is my unconfirmed opinion that Unitarians today think similarly to the Unitarians of my day and time.
The Response of the Christian Orthodox Church to Freethinkers and Unitarians.
In the early 1840’s the main orthodox churches of the country were indifferent to the institution of slavery and slavery was an acceptable social practice. The church actually took the side of the slaveholders when the issue of slavery became a matter of public discourse.
The orthodox Christian church with its various congregations made itself the bulwark of American slavery and the shield of American slaveholders. And may I say as an aside, the churches were generally opposed to women having the same rights and privileges as men.
In my day, (1840 – 1860) Doctors of Divinities in the leading congregations taught that man may properly be a slave, and that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God.
Further these Doctors of Divinities insisted that to send back an escaped slave to his master, as required by the Fugitive Slave Act was clearly the duty of all the followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In my day, Doctors of Divinities taught that the woman should be silent in the church, and should yield or be submissive to the will of her husband, or she should temper her behavior as one who is subservient, when she is in the presence of men.
And thus in my day, both the Freethinkers and the Unitarians expressed opinions that challenged the moral authority of the established church in matters pertaining to Slavery and later on, in matters related to Woman’s rights.
Therefore, during my time, it is not surprising that the orthodox or conservative churches considered the Freethinkers and the Unitarians as just another species of infidelity.
For my part, I would say if the Freethinkers and the Unitarians were just another species of infidels, then “Welcome Infidelity. Welcome anything in preference to the teachings being preached by those Doctors of Divinity. You see, in my time, Christianity had become a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man stealers, thugs, and Indian Dispossesors. And very quickly I learned to reject teachings that favored the rich against the poor.
I stepped away from a doctrine that exalted the proud above the humble.
I ran from a philosophy that divided mankind into two classes: tyrants and slaves, and said to the man in chains, stay there; and said to the oppressor, oppress on!
So I say Thank God for the Freethinkers and thank God for those outspoken Unitarians, and atheist, and agnostics and Deists and other Infidels who worked to help abolitionists like me.
What did abolitionists do?
Abolitionists gave of their time, their wealth and their energies to seek means and methods to abolish America’s chattel Negro Slavery. You see, for me and for other abolitionists, slavery was a human plague that had been conceived in greed, born in sin, cradled in shame, and worthy of utter and relentless condemnation.
However to attack slavery in my time was as unpopular as to attack private property in your time.
We abolitionists argued, exhorted, and tried to convince the general public in many public forums and discussion groups that slavery was evil.
Yes, often we wiped bad eggs off our clothes and dodged bricks, and sometimes ran for our lives from mob violence. But we stirred up men’s minds and thoughts so that never again could they rest in their old ways of thinking about slavery. We flooded the country with thousands of pamphlets and newsletter containing penetrating arguments and stories designed to gather a freedman’s sympathy to our cause.
We knew that the cause of freedom had to be imprinted as “Holy” on men’s minds. It was our task to fire men souls with the cause of freedom. We communicated with men so that they could lift their hearts toward freedom. We converted the general public to the cause of freedom for everyone and not just for themselves.
We had to show that those Doctors of Divinity were wrong in what they taught and that slavery was not ordained of God.
Several abolitionists lost their lives and livelihood as they pressed to change the conscious of the nation. And the majority of these abolitionists were White people.
Never was the Anti-slavery struggle a sure win. There were many bleak moments when we thought the successes of the Slavery forces would overwhelm us. I remember that from 1853 to 1860 the forces of the Slave power seemed to be divinely inspired.
I was sitting with Sister Sojourner Truth, a colleague, in the Anti-slavery movement. We were discussing the difficulties that lay in our paths in our abolitionist struggle and how the forces of Slavery had made large strides toward successful continuation.
(1) When we considered the arbitrary and continuing enforcement of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, we became despondent; and
(2) When we saw freedom losing in the struggle between freedom and slavery in Kansas, we wept; and
(3) Upon hearing the outcome of the Dred Scott decision that favored slavery, we began to fear for our own freedom; and
(4) When we saw the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, We trembled with fear for the future of our country, and
(5) After the failure of John Brown’s Raid at Harper’s Ferry, many of us had to go to Canada to ensure our own safety.
(6) When we witnessed the 1855 assault on Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on the floor of the Congress, our leading Anti-slavery United States Senator, we questioned God about these setbacks.
I remember how Sister Sojourner turned to me. “Frederick,” she asked, “Is God Dead?” I thought for a moment and then I responded to her and to the heavens. “No God is not dead”, and I knew then that slavery must end in blood. And you know what Davies-Memorial, my belated friend, John Brown of Harper’s Ferry fame had already made that prediction.
Public and political Legacy of Freethinker and Unitarians
I want to take time to mention several Freethinkers or Unitarians whom I shall commend to you for further study regarding their contributions to slavery abolition.
The leading and most prominent abolitionist of my time was Mr. William Lloyd Garrison. Mr. Garrison recruited me into the movement in the early 1840’s. Mr. Garrison was the editor and publisher of the Liberator, an antislavery newspaper. And he was a White man who fervently believed that all men should be free. In fact, (chuckle) Mr. Garrison even believed in the social, intellectual, and political equality of men and women. (chuckle again). And after a few conversations, he convinced me to this unique outlook on women and I agreed. Mr. Garrison introduced me to the writings of Mr. Thomas Paine.
Mr. Thomas Paine, was a Freethinker who came over to America from England. Mr. Paine was a slave abolitionist too. In his time, Mr. Paine startled the American church with his pamphlet: “Age of Reason” (1794) in which he rejected miracles and supernaturalism. Paine established the 1st Anti-Slavery Society in America. Thomas Paine was far ahead of his times.
I began working with Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony as well as Elizabeth Stanton to assist them in organizing for woman’s suffrage. Many of the first women who became abolitionist were either Quakers, Unitarians, or atheists. But they worked ceaselessly for the abolition of Slavery, and later they worked for Women Suffrage and Women’s Rights. These women worked so diligently that eventually liberal-minded, religious women and even Christian-women came aboard the Woman’s rights movement.
Other abolitionists:
Angelina and Sarah Grimke, (Quakers) who insisted on the right of women to full participation against slavery and went from city to city speaking on the subject.
Reverend John Brown: I can’t say enough about the courage and efforts of Reverend Brown of Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia
Harriet Beecher Stowe (Unitarian) wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Reverend Theodore Parker: Rev Parker was a Unitarian Minister and adamant abolitionist. And you should remember that Rev Parker was the first to utter the famous phrasing that, “the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” You should also know that President Lincoln borrowed Reverend Parker’s phrasing when Lincoln used the phrase of “Government for the people, of the people, and by the people.”
Now a word about President Abraham Lincoln the Great Liberator. I knew President Lincoln, and from my observation of him, regarding matters of abolition, it was clear to me that he was not the Great Emancipator or the Great Liberator that many in history and perhaps in this very auditorium have come to believe. Consider the following:
Mr. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and made it known that he signed it as a “war-time document” based on “military necessity”, and he acknowledged to several cabinet members that it might be successfully challenged in court at the end of the war.
Further the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free one slave and Mr. Lincoln knew it when he signed it. The Emancipation Proclamation gave freedom to “those slaves in those states and territories of the United States that were in rebellion against the federal government.” Well, if such areas were in rebellion, than the force and power of the federal government could not be brought to bear in those locations to provide for the slaves’ release from their bondage.
Further, Mr. Lincoln didn’t free the slaves in those territories that were not in rebellion against the Federal government, which he had the political and military power to do. This meant that the Proclamation didn’t free slaves in Delaware or Maryland or in several other border states or federally occupied territories.
My long range view of the situation is that the Emancipation Proclamation was a moral message to the world and it verbalized poignantly the better side of human nature, and allowed the north to assume a high moral ground in the war between the states..
We should remember that Mr. Lincoln, as President of the United States, also resisted the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act.
The above actions are not the actions of a Great Liberator, but a great politician. However, I leave it for you in the privacy of your own conscious to put a label on Mr. President Lincoln, now that you are aware of the aforementioned facts.
Now be Advised, that the Slaves were freed by the Thirteenth Amendment (which was ratified on December 18, 1865) and not by the Emancipation Proclamation.
The 37th Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment and the influential leaders of that Congress that shepherded the amendment to its ratification were Unitarians and Freethinkers. Such people included:
Rep Thaddeus Steven of Penn, leader for the 13th Amendment
Sen. Charles Sumner of Mass, who led the Congressional fight for the 13th Amendment
Sen. Lyman Trumbull of Ill, who co-authored the 13th Amendment which was ratified December 18, 1865
Rep. James Ashley of Ohio
Governor John Albion Andrews of Mass (Congressional leader)
Behind the front-line abolitionists
There were many influential Unitarians, who by their utterances and writings helped to change people’s minds about slavery. Their writings and utterances gnawed and pricked at the conscious of the average non-slaver-holder and in time helped to turn the abolition of slavery into a people’s movement. A few of these influential Unitarians who were just behind the front line abolitionists in this anti-slavery effort were: Wendell Phillips, Henry Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Russell Lowell, Henry Thoreau, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Ellery Channing, Horace Mann, and Ralph Emerson. Most of these persons were Unitarians.
Preparing to Close
What does this information have to do with Today’s Unitarians? I’ll answer you in this fashion:
Now that you know that Unitarians, agnostics, atheists, and infidels contributed much to the abolition movement when most of the other churches, the established orthodox churches, were attempting to justify slavery:
Now that you know that the 13th Amendment to the Constitution and not the Emancipation Proclamation gave freedom to the slave and that the amendment was ushered along by a group of committed Unitarians in the Congress.
Now that you know that a small group of dedicated female infidels and female Unitarians initiated the Woman’s suffrage movement and the early feminist movement in America.
Now that you know these things, you know that you as Unitarians have inherited several noble and awesome legacies.
In addition, you must remember that as Unitarians, you are beneficiaries of:
a spirituality of Freedom and Liberty;
a spirituality that stands for the unhindered use of the free mind in arriving at convictions
a spirituality which refuses to accept authoritarian “revelations or dogmas” which contradict the revelations you’ve found in your own experience.
Further, you must remember that historically Unitarians have espoused the notion that “morality need not be based in religious dogma, or detailed tenets in order for life to be meaningful, or for the individual to live an inspiring and worthwhile life, or for a people to build a vibrant, caring and sharing, spiritual community.”
Church, knowing what you now know about your history regarding slavery abolition and Women rights, and given your espoused Unitarian principles, I charge you, with a “Must Do” list. This “Must Do” list is a series of tasks (struggles) that will ensure a continuance of your noble and awesome heritage:
1. You must as a spiritual community CONTINUE to be a haven to which all people who seek spiritual growth and wholeness, including religious skeptics, may come and continue their spiritual seeking without ignoring their own intellect and reasoning; and
2. You must as a spiritual community ESTABLISH yourself as a beacon light that signals to all men and women that they may come to you: to express in their own way their thankfulness for the unearned gift of life; or to receive and give the warmth of fellowship, or enjoy the freedom to seek out and meditate on their versions of those Ultimate Mysteries of the Creation which surround them, that some men revere in silence, and others name as God.
3. You MUST individually and as a community PREPARE yourselves to face the “slings and arrows” that will be flung at you from the majority of non-Unitarians churches, who may still view you as infidels. But at the same time, you must continue to speak your truths without rancor, but with vigor, reasoning, and courtesy, while maintaining your reverence for the love of justice, and continuing toward your goal of brotherhood and peace on this earth.
4. You MUST REMEMBER that individually your greatest challenges will come from Inside of you. Your greatest struggle will be to commit yourselves to your seven stated principles, as you show on the back of your church’s order of service.
Conclusion:
This “must do” list will require struggle. But these struggles you can handle. Your community may be small in numbers, but it is still in your hands and in the hands of others who are of like minds as you. You can in time literally change the world if you continue speaking your truths whenever and wherever the occasion arises.
Church, expect the going to be rough because there WILL be a struggle. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.
You see, those who profess to favor freedom of body and freedom of mind and yet do not want to cause agitation among the general population are like people who want crops without plowing up the ground; and they are like people who want rain without thunder and lightning.
Church, do not be like people who want the nearness of the ocean without the occasional awful roar of its waters.
Struggles will come and if you are true to your principles you will not only survive, but you will flourish. And I wish you good luck.
Goodbye."
Christopher Bell is author of "The Belief Factor: And the White Superiority Syndrome" and "Soldiers Do Reason Why..."
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Another great oratorical cover of this issue comes from the great agnostic, Robert Ingersoll who characteristically honors all compassionate and thoughtful and decent people regardless of religion or lack of same...
An Address to the Colored People
by Robert G. Ingersoll
1867
An address delivered to the colored people at Galesburg, Illinois, 1867.
**** ****
Fellow-Citizens: Slavery has in a thousand forms existed in all ages, and among all people. It is as old as theft and robbery.
Every nation has enslaved its own people, and sold its own flesh and blood. Most of the white race are in slavery to-day. It has often been said that any man who ought to be free, will be. The men who say this should remember that their own ancestors were once cringing, frightened, helpless slaves.
When they became sufficiently educated to cease enslaving their own people, they then enslaved the first race they could conquer. If they differed in religion, they enslaved them. If they differed in color, that was sufficient. If they differed even in language, it was enough. If they were captured, they then pretended that having spared their lives, they had the right to enslave them. This argument was worthless. If they were captured, then there was no necessity for killing them. If there was no necessity for killing them, then they had no right to kill them. If they had no right to kill them, then they had no right to enslave them under the pretence that they had saved their lives.
Every excuse that the ingenuity of avarice could devise was believed to be a complete justification, and the great argument of slave-holders in all countries has been that slavery is a divine institution, and thus stealing human beings has always been fortified with a "Thus saith the Lord."
Slavery has been upheld by law and religion in every country. The word Liberty is not in any creed in the world. Slavery is right according to the law of man, shouted the judge. It is right according to the law of God, shouted the priest. Thus sustained by what they were pleased to call the law of God and man, slave- holders never voluntarily freed the slaves, with the exception of the Quakers. The institution has in all ages been clung to with the tenacity of death; clung to until it sapped and destroyed the foundations of society; clung to until all law became violence; clung to until virtue was a thing only of history; clung to until industry folded its arms -- until commerce reefed every sail -- until the fields were desolate and the cities silent, except where the poor free asked for bread, and the slave for mercy; clung to until the slave forging the sword of civil war from his fetters drenched the land in the master's blood. Civil war has been the great liberator of the world.
Slavery has destroyed every nation that has gone down to death. It caused the last vestige of Grecian civilization to disappear forever, and it caused Rome to fall with a crash that shook the world. After the disappearance of slavery in its grossest forms in Europe, Gonzales pointed out to his countrymen, the Portuguese, the immense profits that they could make by stealing Africans, and thus commenced the modern slave trade -- that aggregation of all horror -- that infinite of all cruelty, prosecuted only by demons, and defended only by fiends. And yet the slave trade has been defended and sustained by every civilized nation, and by each and all has been baptized "Legitimate commerce," in the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
It was even justified upon the ground that it tended to Christianize the negro.
It was of the poor hypocrites who had used this argument that Whittier said,
"They bade the slave-ship speed from coast to coast,
Fanned by the wings of the Holy Ghost."
Backed and supported by such Christian and humane arguments slavery was planted upon our soil in 1620, and from that day to this it has been the cause of all our woes, of all the bloodshed -- of all the heart-burnings -- hatred and horrors of more than two hundred years, and yet we hated to part with the beloved institution. Like Pharaoh we would not let the people go. He was afflicted with vermin, with frogs -- with water turned to blood -- with several kinds of lice, and yet would not let the people go. We were afflicted with worse than all these combined -- the Northern Democracy -- before we became grand enough to say, "Slavery shall be eradicated from the soil of the Republic." When we reached this sublime moral height we were successful. The Rebellion was crushed and liberty established.
A majority of the civilized world is for freedom -- nearly all the Christian denominations are for liberty. The world has changed -- the people are nobler, better and purer than ever.
Every great movement must be led by heroic and self- sacrificing pioneers. In England, in Christian England, the soul of the abolition cause was Thomas Clarkson. To the great cause of human freedom he devoted his life. He won over the eloquent and glorious Wilberforce, the great Pitt, the magnificent orator, Burke, and that far-seeing and humane statesman, Charles James Fox.
In 1788 a resolution was introduced in the House of Commons declaring that the slave trade ought to be abolished. It was defeated. Learned lords opposed it. They said that too much capital was invested by British merchants in the slave trade. That if it was abolished the ships would rot at the wharves, and that English commerce would be swept from the seas. Sanctified Bishops -- lords spiritual -- thought the scheme fanatical, and various resolutions to the same effect were defeated.
The struggle lasted twenty years, and yet during all those years in which England refused to abolish the hellish trade, that nation had the impudence to send missionaries all over the world to make converts to a religion that in their opinion, at least, allowed man to steal his brother man -- that allowed one Christian to rob another of his wife, his child, and of that greatest of all blessings -- his liberty. It was not until the year 1808 that England was grand and just enough to abolish the slave trade, and not until 1833 that slavery was abolished in all her colonies.
The name of Thomas Clarkson should be remembered and honored through all coming time by every black man, and by every white man who loves liberty and hates cruelty and injustice.
Clarkson, Wilberforce, Pitt, Fox, Burke, were the Titans that swept the accursed slaver from that high-way -- the sea.
In St. Domingo the pioneers were Oge and Chevannes; they headed a revolt; they were unsuccessful, but they roused the slaves to resistance. They were captured, tried, condemned and executed. They were made to ask forgiveness of God, and of the King, for having attempted to give freedom to their own flesh and blood. They were broken alive on the wheel, and left to die of hunger and pain, The blood of these martyrs became the seed of liberty; and afterwards in the midnight assault, in the massacre and pillage, the infuriated slaves shouted their names as their battle cry, until Toussaint, the greatest of the blacks, gave freedom to them all.
In the United States, among the Revolutionary fathers, such men as John Adams, and his son John Quincy -- such men as Franklin and John Jay were opposed to the institution of slavery. Thomas Jefferson said, speaking of the slaves, "When the measure of their tears shall be full -- when their groans shall have involved heaven itself in darkness -- doubtless a God of justice will awaken to their distress, and by diffusing light and liberality among their oppressors, or at length by his exterminating thunder manifest his attention to the things of this world, and that they are not left to the guidance of a blind fatality."
Thomas Paine said, "No man can be happy surrounded by those whose happiness he has destroyed." And a more self-evident proposition was never uttered.
These and many more Revolutionary heroes were opposed to slavery and did what they could to prevent the establishment and spread of this most wicked and terrible of all institutions.
You owe gratitude to those who were for liberty as a principle and not from mere necessity. You should remember with more than gratitude that firm, consistent and faithful friend of your downtrodden race, Wm. Lloyd Garrison. He has devoted his life to your cause. Many years ago in Boston he commenced the publication of a paper devoted to liberty. Poor and despised -- friendless and almost alone, he persevered in that grandest and holiest of all possible undertakings. He never stopped, nor stayed, nor paused until the chain was broken and the last slave could lift his toil-worn face to heaven with the light of freedom shining down upon him, and Say, I AM A FREE MAN.
You should not forget that noble philanthropist, Wendell Phillips, and your most teamed and eloquent defender, Charles Sumner.
But the real pioneer in America was old John Brown. Moved not by prejudice, not by love of his blood, or his color, but by an infinite love of Liberty, of Right, of justice, almost single- handed, he attacked the monster, with thirty million people against him. His head was wrong. He miscalculated his forces; but his heart was right. He struck the sublimest blow of the age for freedom. It was said of him that he stepped from the gallows to the throne of God. It was said that he had made the scaffold to Liberty what Christ had made the cross to Christianity. The sublime Victor Hugo declared that John Brown was greater than Washington, and that his name would live forever.
I say, that no man can be greater than the man who bravely and heroically sacrifices his life for the good of others. No man can be greater than the one who meets death face to face, and yet will not shrink from what he believes to be his highest duty. If the black people want a patron saint, let them take the brave old John Brown. And as the gentleman who preceded me said, at all your meetings, never separate until you have sung the grand song,
"John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave,
"But his soul goes marching on."
You do not, in my opinion, owe a great debt of gratitude to many of the white people.
Only a few years ago both parties agreed to carry out the Fugitive Slave Law. If a woman ninety-nine one-hundredths white had fled from slavery -- had traveled through forests, crossed rivers, and through countless sufferings had got within one step of Canada -- of free soil -- with the light of the North star shining in her eyes, and her babe pressed to her withered breast, both parties agreed to clutch her and hand her back to the dominion of the hound and lash. Both parties, as parties, were willing to do this when the Rebellion commenced.
The truth is, we had to give you your liberty. There came a time in the history of the war when, defeated at the ballot box and in the field -- when driven to the shattered gates of eternal chaos, we were forced to make you free, and on the first day of January, 1863, the justice so long delayed was done, and four million of people were lifted from the condition of beasts of burden to the sublime heights of freedom. Lincoln, the immortal, issued, and the men of the North sustained the great proclamation.
As in the war there came a time when we were forced to make you free, so in the history of reconstruction came a time when we were forced to make you citizens; when we were forced to say that you should vote, and that you should have and exercise all the rights that we claim for ourselves.
And to-day I am in favor of giving you every right that I claim for myself.
In reconstructing the Southern States, we could take our choice, either give the ballot to the negro, or allow the rebels to rule. We preferred loyal blacks to disloyal whites, because we believed liberty safer in the hands of its friends than in those of its foes.
We must be for freedom everywhere. Freedom is progress -- slavery is desolation, cruelty and want.
Freedom invents -- slavery forgets. The problem of the slave is to do the least work in the longest space of time. The problem of freemen is to do the greatest amount of work in the shortest space of time. The freeman, working for wife and children, gets his head and his hands in partnership.
Freedom has invented every useful machine, from the lowest to the highest, from the simplest to the most complex. Freedom believes in education -- the salvation of slavery is ignorance.
The South always dreaded the alphabet. They looked upon each letter as an abolitionist, and well they might. With a scent keener than their own blood-hounds they detected everything that could, directly or indirectly, interfere with slavery. They knew that when slaves begin to think, masters begin to tremble. They knew that free thought would destroy them; that discussion could not be endured; that a free press would liberate every slave; and so they mobbed free thought, and put an end to free discussion and abolished a free press, and in fact did all the mean and infamous things they could, that slavery might live, and that liberty might perish from among men.
You are now citizens of many of the States, and in time you will be of all. I am astonished when I think how long it took to abolish the slave, how long it took to abolish slavery in this country. I am also astonished to think that a few years ago magnificent steamers went down the Mississippi freighted with your fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters, and may be some of you, bound like criminals, separated from wives, from husbands, every human feeling laughed at and outraged, sold like beasts, carried away from homes to work for another, receiving for pay only the marks of the lash upon the naked bark. I am astonished at these things. I hate to think that all this was done under the Constitution of the United States, under the flag of my country, under the wings of the eagle.
The flag was not then what it is now. It was a mere rag in comparison. The eagle was a buzzard; and the Constitution sanctioned the greatest crime of the world.
I wonder that you -- the black people -- have forgotten all this. -- I wonder that you ask a white man to address you on this occasion, when the history of your connection with the white race is written in your blood and tears -- is still upon your flesh, put there by the branding-iron and the lash.
I feel like asking your forgiveness for the wrongs that my race has inflicted upon yours. If, in the future, the wheel of fortune should take a turn, and you should in any country have white men in your power, I pray you not to execute the villainy we have taught you.
One word in conclusion. You have your liberty -- use it to benefit your race. Educate yourselves, educate your children, send teachers to the South. Let your brethren there be educated. Let them know something of art and science. Improve yourselves, stand by each other, and above all be in favor of liberty the world over.
The time is coming when you will be allowed to be good and useful citizens of the Great Republic. This is your country as much as it is mine. You have the same rights here that I have -- the same interest that I have. The avenues of distinction will be open to you and your children. Great advances have been made. The rebels are now opposed to slavery -- the Democratic party is opposed to slavery, as they say. There is going to be no war of races. Both parties want your votes in the South, and there will be just enough negroes without principle to join the rebels to make them think they will get more, and so the rebels will treat the negroes well. And the Republicans will be sure to treat them well in order to prevent any more joining the rebels.
The great problem is solved. Liberty has solved it -- and there will be no more slavery. On the old flag, on every fold and on every star will be liberty for all, equality before the law. The grand people are marching forward, and they will not pause until the earth is without a chain, and without a throne." |
