RUSSWURM, CORNISH, AND WALKER
As historian Richard S. Newman has emphasized, the refusal of early white antislavery organizations to condemn colonization pushed black reformers, who were excluded from such groups as the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, “into the national spotlight.”40 Richard Allen, James Forten, and John Gloucester continued to hold protest meetings in the 1820s against the ACS in and around Philadelphia, with Allen declaring that “The land we have watered with our tears and our blood is now OUR MOTHER COUNTRY.” While there was no clear-cut continuity, black organizations opposing slavery and colonization appeared in the 1820s throughout the Northeast and Midwest. Talk of forming national organizations led in 1830 to the first meeting of the American Society for Free Persons of Color in Philadelphia. Under the tutelage of Allen and Forten, the American Society affirmed the blacks’ “firm and settled conviction” that the problems of slavery and racism could be addressed only on American soil.41
The late 1820s have been seen as the beginning of a black Renaissance, with the launching of two black newspapers, Freedom’s Journal and The Rights of All, as well as the publication of David Walker’s famous Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (which we will discuss in detail in chapter 8).42 The newspapers were the creations of John Brown Russwurm and Samuel Eli Cornish, whose lives deserve a brief summary.
A mulatto, Samuel Cornish was born in 1795 to free colored parents, probably farmers, in Delaware. After attending a small female-run Methodist school, he moved to Philadelphia, where, thanks to the guidance of black Presbyterian minister John Gloucester, Cornish underwent the lengthy and rigorous ordination process to become a Presbyterian minister. He probably attended and was certainly very familiar with the 1817 anticolonization meeting at the Bethel Church. He then worked as a missionary in Maryland and as a reformer in the slums of New York City before founding New York’s first black Presbyterian church. But it was as a journalist—no doubt the most important black journalist before Frederick Douglass—that Cornish made his major contribution. In March 1827 he became the senior editor, with Russwurm as junior editor, of the first African American newspaper, Freedom’s Journal; in 1829 he founded and edited The Rights of All, and from 1836 to 1842, the Colored American. A devoted abolitionist, Cornish was one of the founding members of the biracial American Anti-Slavery Society and held high-ranking positions in the American Missionary Association and American Bible Society.43
John Brown Russwurm was born in 1799 in Jamaica, the son of a white American merchant and his black, no doubt slave, mistress. The father not only accepted his paternity but brought John up in his household as a privileged mulatto son and sent him off to a boarding school in Quebec; the father subsequently moved to Portland, Maine, and settled down with a white wife. The father seemed proud of John, introduced him to the best society in Portland, and continued to send him to the best schools in preparation for his later admission to Bowdoin.44
Though his father died when he was sixteen, Russwurm continued to live with his stepmother, with whom he had a continuing close relationship. It was not until he went to Boston to look for work and experience that Russwurm encountered the shock of racial poverty and discrimination. Since he had long lived apart from a normal American racial identity, it was doubtless easier for him to think of leaving it. In 1826, the year of his Bowdoin graduation speech celebrating Haiti, he expressed some interest in emigrating to Haiti and also thought it “advisable,” after talking with friends, to turn down a “liberal offer” from the ACS to take a post in Liberia—perhaps in anticipation of his defection from the anticolonization cause and decision in 1829 to migrate and spend the rest of his life in Liberia, where he initially worked as colonial secretary for the ACS.45
By March 1827, when a number of prominent New York ministers and other blacks met at the home of Boston Crummell (father of Alexander Crummell) to found Freedom’s Journal, a number of pressing issues faced the black community. The Missouri Crisis of 1819–21 had suddenly exposed slavery as a critically divisive issue that could threaten the very existence of the nation, reinforcing desires to repress and avoid the subject as much as possible. There was also an inevitable tendency to blame blacks for the country’s most dangerous problem.46 The nature and future of antislavery were therefore much in doubt. Since Britain had shown that the mobilization of public opinion, largely on moral grounds, could lead to legislation outlawing the Atlantic slave trade, there was a strong inclination to look to Britain as a model, especially given the stature of such towering figures as Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce. But by the late 1820s, the British movement for the amelioration and very gradual ending of slavery, begun in 1823, was clearly not succeeding. In both Britain and America, a decline of faith in gradualism was marked in the mid-1820s by enthusiasm for a boycott of slave produce, a movement that promised to give a cutting edge to the moral testimony of individuals. It is a striking coincidence, as we will see, that both the British and American antislavery movements shifted toward “immediatism” by 1830.47
Meanwhile, Freedom’s Journal was launched when the ACS was in some ways at its peak, receiving strong clerical support and endorsement from much of the press and from most white opponents of slavery, including prominent future abolitionists. But if most opponents of slavery assumed that abolition was unfeasible in America without some form of colonization, the ACS was officially committed to voluntary emigration and therefore assumed that most blacks could be converted and made to see their own self-interest, especially if they were made more aware of how unwelcome they were in a white society (and assuming that the mortality and other difficulties in Liberia were as temporary as those associated with the founding of Jamestown and Plymouth, a repeated argument).
In other words, African American opinion was ultimately essential. But, as the ACS struggled with the problem of recruiting reluctant black volunteers, for ten years most of the white press cooperated by refusing to print resolutions passed by gatherings of blacks rejecting the ACS program.48 All of which highlights the extraordinary importance of the first black newspaper, which under Cornish respectfully but lucidly rejected colonization as a plan that would actually strengthen and perpetuate slavery. Even more important, Freedom’s Journal provided a voice for blacks, even for a very short period, on a variety of issues related to human dignity and the overcoming of negative stereotypes related to the growing white consensus that the nation would immensely benefit from the blacks’ total removal. According to historian David Swift, “If there were roughly 1,300 black subscribers by the summer of 1827, it can be concluded that several thousand black people read at least parts of a weekly issue.”49
In the initial issue of Freedom’s Journal, Cornish and Russwurm (who as junior editor took the backseat to the more dominant voice of Cornish)50 affirmed the central purpose of the journal:
From the press and the pulpit we have suffered much by being incorrectly represented. Men, whom we equally love and admire have not hesitated to represent us disadvantageously, without … discerning between virtue and vice among us. The virtuous part of our people feel themselves sorely aggrieved under the existing state of things—they are not appreciated. Our vices and our degradation are ever arrayed against us, but our virtues are passed by unnoticed. And what is still more lamentable, our friends, to whom we concede all the principles of humanity and religion … seem to have fallen into the current of popular feeling and are imperceptibly floating on the stream—actually living in the practice of prejudice, while they abjure it in theory, and feel it not in their hearts. Is it not very desirable that such should know more of our actual condition, and of our efforts and feelings, that in forming or advocating plans for our amelioration, they may do it more understandingly? In the spirit of candor and humility we intend by a simple representation of facts to lay our case before the publick, with a view to arrest the progress of prejudice, and to shield ourselves against the consequent evils. We wish to conciliate all and to irritat
e none, yet we must be firm and unwavering in our principles, and persevering in our efforts.51
During Cornish’s crucial six months as editor, Freedom’s Journal focused on such matters as colonization, racial prejudice, poverty, economic opportunity, uplift, and temperance, interspersed with curiosity pieces and items of public interest. In the discussion of political subjects, Cornish, in contrast to the later Garrisonians, affirmed, “we shall ever regard the constitution of the United States as our polar star.” Also in contrast to Garrison, Cornish assured his readers that “It ever has been our object to use the most pacific measures, studiously avoiding every thing that might tend to irritate the feelings of any.” As a Presbyterian minister and a transitional figure in the history of black abolitionists, Cornish was deferential to whites who had shown a long-standing concern for the black community, and he professed a desire to consider facts and give colonization a fair hearing—even while stressing his opposition to colonization “in principle, object, and tendency.”52 Black historian Benjamin Quarles concluded that Cornish’s newspapers “generally furnished an accurate barometer of Negro thought,”53 and he won great plaudits from such figures as David Walker in 1829 and Theodore S. Wright in 1837.54
Despite evidence of rising antiblack sentiment and racist responses to Freedom’s Journal, Cornish held firm to his central conviction that “We are unwavering in our opinion that the time is coming (though it may be distant) in which our posterity will enjoy equal rights.”55 But Russwurm, who took over editorship when Cornish left, had increasing doubts on this point and ultimately became convinced that the depth and immutability of white racism presented a permanent obstacle to slave emancipation—unless some way could be found to remove free blacks. Under his editorship, Freedom’s Journal printed more announcements for colonization, including emigration plans for Haiti, and became less vituperative toward the ACS. Nevertheless, Cornish was greatly surprised by Russwurm’s decision to move to Liberia and his parting defense of colonization in March 1829 in Freedom’s Journal.56
Russwurm assured readers that though he supported universal emancipation as ardently as ever, the goal was impossible “unless some door is opened whereby the emancipated may be removed as fast as they drop their galling chains, to some other land besides the free states.” Cornish and others had called for an objective consideration of the facts, and for Russwurm the facts were clear. If a state like Virginia freed its slaves, it would require their removal; in which case Northern states would pass laws prohibiting their entry. This barrier to emancipation could only be overcome by getting rid of “present prejudices,” but “It will never be in our power to remove or overcome them.” Indeed, “So easily are these prejudices imbibed, that we have often noticed the effects on young children who could hardly speak plainly, and were we a believer in dreams, charms, &c we should believe that they imbibed them with their mother’s milk.”57
Despite Russwurm’s attempt to placate opponents by reminding them of his long, hard work opposing the ACS, he was seen by many blacks as a traitor. The shock and vituperative responses from the paper’s subscribers indicate strong anticolonizationist sentiment among the black elite and probably the black community in general. After Russwurm’s defection to Liberia, the backers of Freedom’s Journal solicited Cornish to take back the editorship and continue the paper as a weekly. Cornish accepted, but given the furor over Russwurm’s last issues, the title was changed to The Rights of All (published monthly). Cornish now dealt in more strongly critical terms with what he termed the “chimerical plans” of colonization,58 assuring his readers that Russwurm had not had any effect except in inducing a need for reforming the quality of the paper. Yet much space was devoted to the racial crisis in Cincinnati, where Black laws and the violent persecution of free blacks led to a mass migration to Canada, an event that Russwurm could have used to his advantage if he had remained as an editor.59
But as mentioned, 1829 also marked the publication of David Walker’s Appeal, which Richard Newman has termed “an exclamation point after this decade of anticolonizationist black activism.” In Boston, Walker served as the local agent for Freedom’s Journal and The Rights of All.60 While dealing with a broad range of issues involving slavery and the concerns of people of African descent throughout the world, Walker’s Appeal paid tribute to The Rights of All and emphasized “the absolute necessity” of helping to circulate the paper:
I adopt the language of the Rev. Mr. S. E. Cornish, of New York, editor of the Rights of All, and say: “Any coloured man of common intelligence, who gives his countenance and influence to that colony, further than its missionary object … should be considered as a traitor to his brethren, and discarded by every respectable man of colour. And every member of that society [ACS], however pure his motive, whatever may be his religious character and moral worth, should in his efforts to remove the coloured population from their rightful soil, the land of their birth and nativity, be considered as acting gratuitously unrighteous and cruel.61
BLACKS AND GARRISON
Cornish and Walker were not only vocal black opponents of colonization but represent a broadening faith on the part of literate blacks in print culture and the effectiveness of the written word in elevating and mobilizing people of color and also overcoming white prejudice. As we have seen, by 1829 this belief already had a fairly long tradition and was related to the history of black churches and secular organizations in the Eastern cities. Walker was highly unusual in writing a pamphlet that actually reached the hands of Southern slaves, thus igniting a national furor, especially after Nat Turner’s allegedly related slave rebellion of 1831. But the words of Cornish and Walker were also read by important whites, such as the young William Lloyd Garrison,62 a would-be reformer who, in the words of historian David Blight, “came hungry and angry and in need of his own liberation as he learned about the desperation of millions that had been caused by slavery in America.”63
Cornish and Walker were by no means the only or the most influential blacks who interacted with Garrison, though Garrison’s refusal to identify such influence makes it difficult to reconstruct the exact connections between black and white reformers. As historian Julie Winch has shown, it was James Forten and his fellow black leaders in Philadelphia, including the family of his wealthy and nearly white son-in-law, Robert Purvis, who kept radical abolitionism and opposition to the ACS alive during the 1820s. Aided by the wandering but persistent white Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lundy, they also helped Garrison emerge in the early 1830s as the central if highly controversial figure in American abolitionism—the man who launched The Liberator in 1831, published an all-out attack on colonization in 1832, founded the New-England Anti-Slavery Society in 1832, and cofounded the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833.64
While it was Lundy, a longtime friend of Forten’s, who converted Garrison to the abolitionist cause, it was Garrison’s repudiation of colonization, which Lundy supported in various forms, that won him the devotion of Forten. Forten’s continuing flow of monetary contributions kept Garrison’s The Liberator alive (it then ran for thirty-five years), helped Garrison make his fund-raising trip to England in 1833, and prepared the way for the creation of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Forten also played a major part in persuading the extremely wealthy merchant Arthur Tappan, who bailed Garrison out of jail in Baltimore, to sever his ties with the ACS. And Forten played a crucial role in rounding up the black subscribers, who made up some 75 percent of The Liberator’s subscription list in 1834. Without that continuing black support the paper could not have survived. Forten also wrote countless letters, some containing confidential and negative information on Liberia, which Garrison printed in The Liberator. Forten’s home in Philadelphia became a stopping place for scores of abolitionists of both races.65
Garrison was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, late in 1805 and was only two when his father deserted the family, putting his upbringing entirely in the hands of a strong and deeply religious mother. He
was an apprentice at a local newspaper, began writing at an early age, and by 1828 was editing a Boston paper promoting temperance. That year he met Benjamin Lundy, who since 1821 had been editing The Genius of Universal Emancipation, the first important American abolitionist paper. Lundy was in Boston to gain subscriptions to his paper and raise support for his cause—during his extensive travels he promoted manumissions in the South and assisted black emigrants to Haiti, even sailing to the island a number of times. Lundy in many ways embodied Garrison’s ideal of the reformer-editor, and their meeting opened Garrison’s eyes to the need for an all-out crusade to expose and combat the sins of slavery.
Garrison agreed to move to Baltimore in 1829 and become assistant editor of The Genius of Universal Emancipation, freeing Lundy for other priorities. There is much ambiguity regarding the influences and timing that led him to fuse a commitment to immediate emancipation with an unmitigated attack on colonization during the Baltimore years, from 1829 until his return to Boston in 1831 when he launched The Liberator.
While still in Boston, Garrison had expressed support for the ACS, while adding doubts about the efficiency of its plan, at a Fourth of July fund-raising ACS meeting. In his first edition as assistant editor of Lundy’s paper, he expressed similar sentiments, praising Liberia and hoping to see the funds for the ACS “as exhaustless as the number of applicants for removal,” while also stressing the shortcomings and inadequacies of a plan that should be viewed and supported as an “auxiliary,” not a “remedy.”
Yet even in Boston, where he had had some personal contacts with blacks, Garrison had been impressed by black opposition to colonization and was influenced in 1829 by an outdoor black celebration of the British abolition of the slave trade. He had far more interaction with blacks in Baltimore, where he lived in a boardinghouse also occupied by William Watkins, a black reformer with whom Garrison discussed colonization and abolition. Lundy also took Garrison to Philadelphia, where he met both black and white abolitionists. In addition, in Philadelphia Garrison witnessed for the first time some of the cruelties of slave markets and the physical punishment of slaves, while on a more abstract level, he absorbed the radical attacks on “moderation” in such works as George Bourne’s 1816 The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable and the English Quaker Elizabeth Heyrick’s 1824 Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition. The latter, reprinted by Lundy in The Genius of Universal Emancipation, called for “a holy war,—an attack upon the strong holds, the deep intrenchments [sic] of the very powers of darkness,” and eventually had a profound impact in both Britain and America.66
The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation Page 24