FORMATION OF THE AMERICAN ANTISLAVERY SOCIETY.
A letter to William Lloyd Garrison, President of the Society.
AMESBURY, 24th 11th mo., 1863.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I have received thy kind letter, with the accompanying circular, inviting me to attend the commemoration of the thirtieth anniversary of the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society, at Philadelphia. It is with the deepest regret that I am compelled, by the feeble state of my health, to give up all hope of meeting thee and my other old and dear friends on an occasion of so much interest. How much it costs me to acquiesce in the hard necessity thy own feelings will tell thee better than any words of mine.
I look back over thirty years, and call to mind all the circumstances of my journey to Philadelphia, in company with thyself and the excellent Dr.
Thurston of Maine, even then, as we thought, an old man, but still living, and true as ever to the good cause. I recall the early gray morning when, with Samuel J. May, our colleague on the committee to prepare a Declaration of Sentiments for the convention, I climbed to the small "upper chamber" of a colored friend to hear thee read the first draft of a paper which will live as long as our national history. I see the members of the convention, solemnized by the responsibility, rise one by one, and solemnly affix their names to that stern pledge of fidelity to freedom. Of the signers, many have passed away from earth, a few have faltered and turned back, but I believe the majority still live to rejoice over the great triumph of truth and justice, and to devote what remains of time and strength to the cause to which they consecrated their youth and manhood thirty years ago.
For while we may well thank God and congratulate one another on the prospect of the speedy emancipation of the slaves of the United States, we must not for a moment forget that, from this hour, new and mighty responsibilities devolve upon us to aid, direct, and educate these millions, left free, indeed, but bewildered, ignorant, naked, and foodless in the wild chaos of civil war. We have to undo the accumulated wrongs of two centuries; to remake the manhood which slavery has well- nigh unmade; to see to it that the long-oppressed colored man has a fair field for development and improvement; and to tread under our feet the last vestige of that hateful prejudice which has been the strongest external support of Southern slavery. We must lift ourselves at once to the true Christian altitude where all distinctions of black and white are overlooked in the heartfelt recognition of the brotherhood of man.
I must not close this letter without confessing that I cannot be sufficiently thankful to the Divine Providence which, in a great measure through thy instrumentality, turned me away so early from what Roger Williams calls "the world's great trinity, pleasure, profit, and honor,"
to take side with the poor and oppressed. I am not insensible to literary reputation. I love, perhaps too well, the praise and good-will of my fellow-men; but I set a higher value on my name as appended to the Anti-Slavery Declaration of 1833 than on the title-page of any book.
Looking over a life marked by many errors and shortcomings, I rejoice that I have been able to maintain the pledge of that signature, and that, in the long intervening years,
"My voice, though not the loudest, has been heard Wherever Freedom raised her cry of pain."
Let me, through thee, extend a warm greeting to the friends, whether of our own or the new generation, who may assemble on the occasion of commemoration. There is work yet to be done which will task the best efforts of us all. For thyself, I need not say that the love and esteem of early boyhood have lost nothing by the test of time; and
I am, very cordially, thy friend,
JOHN G. WHITTIER
THE LESSON AND OUR DUTY.
From the Amesbury Villager.
(1865.)
IN the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the unspeakably brutal assault upon Secretary Seward slavery has made another revelation of itself. Perhaps it was needed. In the magnanimity of assured victory we were perhaps disposed to overlook, not so much the guilty leaders and misguided masses of the great rebellion as the unutterable horror and sin of slavery which prompted it.
How slowly we of the North have learned the true character of this mighty mischief! How our politicians bowed their strong shoulders under its burthens! How our churches reverenced it! How our clergy contrasted the heresy-tolerating North with the purely orthodox and Scriptural type of slave-holding Christianity! How all classes hunted down, not merely the fugitive slave, but the few who ventured to give him food and shelter and a Godspeed in his flight from bondage! How utterly ignored was the negro's claim of common humanity! How readily was the decision of the slave-holding chief justice acquiesced in, that "the black man had no rights which the white man is bound to respect"!
We saw a senator of the United States, world-known and honored for his learning, talents, and stainless integrity, beaten down and all but murdered at his official desk by a South Carolina slave-holder, for the crime of speaking against the extension of slavery; and we heard the dastardly deed applauded throughout the South, while its brutal perpetrator was rewarded with orations and gifts and smiles of beauty as a chivalrous gentleman. We saw slavery enter Kansas, with bowieknife in hand and curses on its lips; we saw the life of the Union struck at by secession and rebellion; we heard of the bones of sons and brothers, fallen in defence of freedom and law, dug up and wrought into ornaments for the wrists and bosoms of slave-holding women; we looked into the open hell of Andersonville, upon the deliberate, systematic starvation of helpless prisoners; we heard of Libby Prison underlaid with gunpowder, for the purpose of destroying thousands of Union prisoners in case of the occupation of Richmond by our army; we saw hundreds of prisoners massacred in cold blood at Fort Pillow, and the midnight sack of Lawrence and the murder of its principal citizens. The flames of our merchant vessels, seized by pirates, lighted every sea; we heard of officers of the rebel army and navy stealing into our cities, firing hotels filled with sleeping occupants, and laying obstructions on the track of rail cars, for the purpose of killing and mangling their passengers. Yet in spite of these revelations of the utterly barbarous character of slavery and its direful effect upon all connected with it, we were on the very point of trusting to its most criminal defenders the task of reestablishing the state governments of the South, leaving the real Union men, white as well as black, at the mercy of those who have made hatred a religion and murder a sacrament. The nation needed one more terrible lesson. It has it in the murder of its beloved chief magistrate and the attempted assassination of its honored prime minister, the two men of all others prepared to go farthest to smooth the way of defeated rebellion back to allegiance.
Even now the lesson of these terrible events seems but half learned. In the public utterances I hear much of punishing and hanging leading traitors, fierce demands for vengeance, and threats of the summary chastisement of domestic sympathizers with treason, but comparatively little is said of the accursed cause, the prolific mother of abominations, slavery. The government is exhorted to remember that it does not bear the sword in vain, the Old Testament is ransacked for texts of Oriental hatred and examples of the revenges of a semi-barbarous nation; but, as respects the four millions of unmistakably loyal people of the South, the patient, the long-suffering, kind-hearted victims of oppressions, only here and there a voice pleads for their endowment with the same rights of citizenship which are to be accorded to the rank and file of disbanded rebels. The golden rule of the Sermon on the Mount is not applied to them. Much is said of executing justice upon rebels; little of justice to loyal black men. Hanging a few ringleaders of treason, it seems to be supposed, is all that is needed to restore and reestablish the revolted states. The negro is to be left powerless in the hands of the "white trash," who hate him with a bitter hatred, exceeding that of the large slave-holders. In short, four years of terrible chastisement, of God's unmistakable judgments, have not taught us, as a people, their lesson, which could scarcely be plainer if it had been written in letters of fire on the sky. Why is it that we are so slow to learn, so unwilling to confess that slavery is the accursed thing which whets the knife of murder, and transforms men, with the exterior of gentlemen and Christians, into fiends? How pitiful is our exultation over the capture of the wretched Booth and his associates! The great criminal, of whom he and they were but paltry instruments, still stalks abroad in the pine woods of Jersey, where the state has thrown around him her legislative sanction and protection. He is in Pennsylvania, thrusting the black man from public conveyances. Wherever God's children are despised, insulted, and abused on account of their color, there is the real assassin of the President still at large. I do not wonder at the indignation which has been awakened by the late outrage, for I have painfully shared it. But let us see to it that it is rightly directed.
The hanging of a score of Southern traitors will not restore Abraham Lincoln nor atone for the mighty loss. In wreaking revenge upon these miserable men, we must see to it that we do not degrade ourselves and do dishonor to the sacred memory of the dead. We do well to be angry; and, if need be, let our wrath wax seven times hotter, until that which "was a murderer from the beginning" is consumed from the face of the earth. As the people stand by the grave of Lincoln, let them lift their right hands to heaven and take a solemn vow upon their souls to give no sleep to their eyes nor slumber to their eyelids until slavery is hunted from its last shelter, and every man, black and white, stands equal before the law.
In dealing with the guilty leaders and instigators of the rebellion we should beware how we take counsel of passion. Hatred has no place beside the calm and awful dignity of justice. Human life is still a very sacred thing; Christian forbearance and patience are still virtues. For my own part, I should be satisfied to see the chiefs of the great treason go out from among us homeless, exiled, with the mark of Cain on their foreheads, carrying with them, wherever they go, the avenging Nemesis of conscience.
We cannot take lessons, at this late day, in their school of barbarism; we cannot starve and torture them as they have starved and tortured our soldiers. Let them live. Perhaps that is, after all, the most terrible penalty. For wherever they hide themselves the story of their acts will pursue them; they can have no rest nor peace save in that deep repentance which, through the mercy of God, is possible for all.
I have no disposition to stand between these men and justice. If arrested, they can have no claim to exemption from the liabilities of criminals. But it is not simply a question of deserts that is to be considered; we are to take into account our own reputation as a Christian people, the wishes of our best friends abroad, and the humane instincts of the age, which forbid all unnecessary severity. Happily we are not called upon to take counsel of our fears. Rabbinical writers tell us that evil spirits who are once baffled in a contest with human beings lose from thenceforth all power of further mischief. The defeated rebels are in the precise condition of these Jewish demons. Deprived of slavery, they are like wasps that have lost their stings.
As respects the misguided masses of the South, the shattered and crippled remnants of the armies of treason, the desolate wives, mothers, and children mourning for dear ones who have fallen in a vain and hopeless struggle, it seems to me our duty is very plain. We must forgive their past treason, and welcome and encourage their returning loyalty. None but cowards will insult and taunt the defeated and defenceless. We must feed and clothe the destitute, instruct the ignorant, and, bearing patiently with the bitterness and prejudice which will doubtless for a time thwart our efforts and misinterpret our motives, aid them in rebuilding their states on the foundation of freedom. Our sole enemy was slavery, and slavery is dead. We have now no quarrel with the people of the South, who have really more reason than we have to rejoice over the downfall of a system which impeded their material progress, perverted their religion, shut them out from the sympathies of the world, and ridged their land with the graves of its victims.
We are victors, the cause of all this evil and suffering is removed forever, and we can well afford to be magnanimous. How better can we evince our gratitude to God for His great mercy than in doing good to those who hated us, and in having compassion on those who have despitefully used us? The hour is hastening for us all when our sole ground of dependence will be the mercy and forgiveness of God. Let us endeavor so to feel and act in our relations to the people of the South that we can repeat in sincerity the prayer of our Lord: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," reverently acknowledging that He has indeed "led captivity captive and received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them."
CHARLES SUMNER AND THE STATE-DEPARTMENT. (1868.)
THE wise reticence of the President elect in the matter of his cabinet has left free course to speculation and conjecture as to its composition.
That he fully comprehends the importance of the subject, and that he will carefully weigh the claims of the possible candidates on the score of patriotic services, ability, and fitness for specific duties, no one who has studied his character, and witnessed his discretion, clear insight, and wise adaptation of means to ends, under the mighty responsibilities of his past career, can reasonably doubt.
It is not probable that the distinguished statesman now at the head of the State Department will, under the circumstances, look for a continuance in office. History will do justice to his eminent services in the Senate and in the cabinet during the first years of the rebellion, but the fact that he has to some extent shared the unpopularity of the present chief magistrate seems to preclude the idea of his retention in the new cabinet. In looking over the list of our public men in search of a successor, General Grant is not likely to be embarrassed by the number of individuals fitted by nature, culture, and experience for such an important post. The newspaper press, in its wide license of conjecture and suggestion, has, as far as I have seen, mentioned but three or four names in this connection. Allusions have been made to Senator Fessenden of Maine, ex-Minister Motley, General Dix, ex-Secretary Stanton, and Charles Sumner of Massachusetts.
Without disparaging in any degree his assumed competitors, the last-named gentleman is unquestionably preeminently fitted for the place. He has had a lifelong education for it. The entire cast of his mind, the bent of his studies, the habit and experience of his public life, his profound knowledge of international law and the diplomatic history of his own and other countries, his well-earned reputation as a statesman and constitutional lawyer, not only at home, but wherever our country has relations of amity and commerce, the honorable distinction which he enjoys of having held a foremost place in the great conflict between freedom and slavery, union and rebellion, all mark him as the man for the occasion. There seems, indeed, a certain propriety in assigning to the man who struck the heaviest blows at secession and slavery in the national Senate the first place under him who, in the field, made them henceforth impossible. The great captain and the great senator united in war should not be dissevered in peace.
I am not unaware that there are some, even in the Republican party, who have failed to recognize in Senator Sumner the really wise and practical statesmanship which a careful review of his public labors cannot but make manifest. It is only necessary to point such to the open record of his senatorial career. Few men have had the honor of introducing and defending with exhaustive ability and thoroughness so many measures of acknowledged practical importance to his immediate constituents, the country at large, and the wider interests of humanity and civilization.
In what exigency has he been found wanting? What legislative act of public utility for the last eighteen years has lacked his encouragement?
At the head of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, his clearness of vision, firmness, moderation, and ready comprehension of the duties of his time and place must be admitted by all parties. It was shrewdly said by Burke that "men are wise with little reflection and good with little self- denial, in business of all times except their own." But Charles Sumner, the scholar, loving the "still air of delightful studies," has shown himself as capable of thoroughly comprehending and digesting the events transpiring before his eyes as of pronouncing judgment upon those recorded in history. Far in advance of most of his contemporaries, he saw and enunciated the true doctrine of reconstruction, the early adoption of which would have been of incalculable service to the country.
One of the ablest statesmen and jurists of the Democratic party has had the rare magnanimity to acknowledge that in this matter the Republican senator was right, and himself and his party wrong.
The Republicans of Massachusetts will make no fractious or importunate demand upon the new President. They are content to leave to his unbiased and impartial judgment the selection of his cabinet. But if, looking to the best interests of the country, he shall see fit to give their distinguished fellow-citizen the first place in it, they will feel no solicitude as to the manner in which the duties of the office will be discharged. They will feel that "the tools are with him who can use them." Nothing more directly affects the reputation of a country than the character of its diplomatic correspondence and its foreign representatives. We have suffered in times past from sad mismanagement abroad, and intelligent Americans have too often been compelled to hang their heads with shame to see the flag of their country floating over the consular offices of worthless, incompetent agents. There can be no question that so far as they are entrusted to Senator Sumner's hands, the interest, honor, and dignity of the nation will be safe.
In a few weeks Charles Summer will be returned for his fourth term in the United States Senate by the well-nigh unanimous vote of both branches of the legislature of Massachusetts. Not a syllable of opposition to his reelection is heard from any quarter. There is not a Republican in the legislature who could have been elected unless he had been virtually pledged to his support. No stronger evidence of the popular estimate of his ability and integrity than this could be offered. As a matter of course, the marked individuality of his intense convictions, earnestness, persistence, and confident reliance upon the justice of his conclusions, naturally growing out of the consciousness of having brought to his honest search after truth all the lights of his learning and experience, may, at times, have brought him into unpleasant relations with some of his colleagues; but no one, friend or foe, has questioned his ability and patriotism, or doubted his fidelity to principle. He has lent himself to no schemes of greed. While so many others have taken advantage of the facilities of their official stations to fill, directly or indirectly, their own pockets or those of their relatives and retainers, it is to the honor of Massachusetts that her representatives in the Senate have not only "shaken their hands from the holding of bribes," but have so borne themselves that no shadow of suspicion has ever rested on them.
In this connection it may be proper to state that, in the event of a change in the War Department, the claims of General Wilson, to whose services in the committee on military affairs the country is deeply indebted, may be brought under consideration. In that case Massachusetts would not, if it were in her power, discriminate between her senators.
Both have deserved well of her and of the country. In expressing thus briefly my opinion, I do not forget that after all the choice and responsibility rest with General Grant alone. There I am content to leave them. I am very far from urging any sectional claim. Let the country but have peace after its long discord, let its good faith and financial credit be sustained, and all classes of its citizens everywhere protected in person and estate, and it matters very little to me whether Massachusetts is represented at the Executive Council board, or not.
Personally, Charles Sumner would gain nothing by a transfer from the Senate Chamber to the State Department. He does not need a place in the American cabinet any more than John Bright does in the British. The highest ambition might well be satisfied with his present position, from which, looking back upon an honorable record, he might be justified in using Milton's language of lofty confidence in the reply to Salmasius: "I am not one who has disgraced beauty of sentiment by deformity of conduct, or the maxims of a freeman by the actions of a slave, but, by the grace of God, I have kept my life unsullied."
THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1872.
The following letter was written on receiving a request from a committee of colored voters for advice as to their action at the presidential election of 1872.
AMESBURY, 9th mo. 3d, 1872.
DEAR FRIENDS,--I have just received your letter of the 29th ult. asking my opinion of your present duty as colored voters in the choice between General Grant and Horace Greeley for the presidency. You state that you have been confused by the contradictory advice given you by such friends of your people as Charles Sumner on one hand, and William L. Garrison and Wendell Phillips on the other; and you ask me, as one whom you are pleased to think "free from all bias," to add my counsel to theirs.
I thank you for the very kind expression of your confidence and your generous reference to my endeavors to serve the cause of freedom; but I must own that I would fain have been spared the necessity of adding to the already too long list of political epistles. I have felt it my duty in times past to take an active part--often very distasteful to me--in political matters, having for my first object the deliverance of my country from the crime and curse of slavery. That great question being now settled forever, I have been more than willing to leave to younger and stronger hands the toils and the honors of partisan service. Pained and saddened by the bitter and unchristian personalities of the canvass now in progress, I have hitherto held myself aloof from it as far as possible, unwilling to sanction in the slightest degree the criminations and recriminations of personal friends whom I have every reason to love and respect, and in whose integrity I have unshaken confidence. In the present condition of affairs I have not been able to see that any special action as an abolitionist was required at my hands. Both of the great parties, heretofore widely separated, have put themselves on substantially the same platform. The Republican party, originally pledged only to the non-extension of slavery, and whose most illustrious representative, President Lincoln, avowed his willingness to save the Union without abolishing slavery, has been, under Providence, mainly instrumental in the total overthrow of the detestable system; while the Democratic party, composed largely of slave-holders, and, even at the North, scarcely willing to save the Union at the expense of the slave interest upon which its success depended, shattered and crippled by the civil war and its results, has at last yielded to the inexorable logic of events, abandoned a position no longer tenable, and taken its "new departure" with an abolitionist as its candidate. As a friend of the long-oppressed colored man, and for the sake of the peace and prosperity of the country, I rejoice at this action of the Democratic party. The underlying motives of this radical change are doubtless somewhat mixed and contradictory, honest conviction on the part of some, and party expediency and desire of office on the part of others; but the change itself is real and irrevocable; the penalty of receding would be swift and irretrievable ruin. In any point of view the new order of things is desirable; and nothing more fully illustrates "the ways that are dark and the tricks that are vain" of party politics than the attempt of professed friends of the Union and equal rights for all to counteract it by giving aid and comfort to a revival of the worst characteristics of the old party in the shape of a straight-out Democratic convention.
As respects the candidates now before us, I can see no good reason why colored voters as such should oppose General Grant, who, though not an abolitionist and not even a member of the Republican party previous to his nomination, has faithfully carried out the laws of Congress in their behalf. Nor, on the other hand, can I see any just grounds for distrust of such a man as Horace Greeley, who has so nobly distinguished himself as the advocate of human rights irrespective of race or color, and who by the instrumentality of his press has been for thirty years the educator of the people in the principles of justice, temperance, and freedom.
Both of these men have, in different ways, deserved too well of the country to be unnecessarily subjected to the brutalities of a presidential canvass; and, so far as they are personally concerned, it would doubtless have been better if the one had declined a second term of uncongenial duties, and the other continued to indite words of wisdom in the shades of Chappaqua. But they have chosen otherwise; and I am willing, for one, to leave my colored fellow-citizens to the unbiased exercise of their own judgment and instincts in deciding between them.
The Democratic party labors under the disadvantage of antecedents not calculated to promote a rapid growth of confidence; and it is no matter of surprise that the vote of the emancipated class is likely to be largely against it. But if, as will doubtless be the case, that vote shall be to some extent divided between the two candidates, it will have the effect of inducing politicians of the rival parties to treat with respect and consideration this new element of political power, from self- interest if from no higher motive. The fact that at this time both parties are welcoming colored orators to their platforms, and that, in the South, old slave-masters and their former slaves fraternize at caucus and barbecue, and vote for each other at the polls, is full of significance. If, in New England, the very men who thrust Frederick Douglass from car and stage-coach, and mobbed and hunted him like a wild beast, now crowd to shake his hand and cheer him, let us not despair of seeing even the Ku-Klux tarried into decency, and sitting "clothed in their right minds" as listeners to their former victims. The colored man is to-day the master of his own destiny. No power on earth can deprive him of his rights as an American citizen. And it is in the light of American citizenship that I choose to regard my colored friends, as men having a common stake in the welfare of the country; mingled with, and not separate from, their white fellow-citizens; not herded together as a distinct class to be wielded by others, without self-dependence and incapable of self-determination. Thanks to such men as Sumner and Wilson and their compeers, nearly all that legislation can do for them has already been done. We can now only help them to help themselves.
Industry, economy, temperance, self-culture, education for their children,--these things, indispensable to their elevation and progress, are in a great measure in their own hands.
You will, therefore, my friends and fellow-citizens, pardon me if I decline to undertake to decide for you the question of your political duty as respects the candidates for the presidency,--a question which you have probably already settled in your own minds. If it had been apparent to me that your rights and liberties were really in danger from the success of either candidate, your letter would not have been needed to call forth my opinion. In the long struggle of well-nigh forty years, I can honestly say that no consideration of private interest, nor my natural love of peace and retirement and the good-will of others, have kept me silent when a word could be fitly spoken for human rights. I have not so long acted with the class to which you belong without acquiring respect for your intelligence and capacity for judging wisely for yourselves. I shall abide your decision with confidence, and cheerfully acquiesce in it.
If, on the whole, you prefer to vote for the reelection of General Grant, let me hope you will do so without joining with eleventh-hour friends in denouncing and reviling such an old and tried friend as Charles Sumner, who has done and suffered so much in your behalf. If, on the other hand, some of you decide to vote for Horace Greeley, you need not in so doing forget your great obligations to such friends as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Lydia Maria Child. Agree or disagree with them, take their advice or reject it, but stand by them still, and teach the parties with which you are connected to respect your feelings towards your benefactors.