Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Here we have the Presbyterian Church, slaveholding and non-slaveholding, virtually formed into one great abolition society, as we have seen the Methodist was.

  The Assembly then goes on to state that the slaves are not at present prepared to be free — that they tenderly sympathise with the portion of the church and country that has had this evil entailed upon them, where, as they say, “a great and the most virtuous part of the community ABHOR SLAVERY and wish its extermination.” But they exhort them to commence immediately the work of instructing slaves, with a view to preparing them for freedom; and to let no greater delay take place than “a regard to public welfare indispensably demands.” “To be governed by no other considerations than an honest and impartial regard to the happiness of the injured party, uninfluenced by the expense and inconvenience which such regard may involve.” It warns against “unduly extending this plea of necessity, “ against making it a cover for the love and practice of slavery. It ends by recommending that any one who shall sell a fellow-Christian without his consent be immediately disciplined and suspended.

  If we consider that this was unanimously adopted by slave-holders and all, and grant, as we certainly do, that it was adopted in all honesty and good faith, we shall surely expect something from it. We should expect forthwith the organising of a set of common schools for the slave-children; for an efficient religious ministration; for an entire discontinuance of trading in Christian slaves; for laws which make the family relations sacred. Was any such thing done or attempted? Alas! Two years after this came the ADMISSION OF MISSOURI, and the increase of demand in the Southern slave-market and the internal slave-trade. Instead of school-teachers, they had slave-traders; instead of gathering schools, they gathered slave-coffles; instead of building school-houses, they built slave-pens and slave-prisons, jails, barracoons, factories, or whatever the trade pleases to term them; and so went the plan of gradual emancipation.

  In 1834, sixteen years after, a committee of the Synod of Kentucky, in which State slavery is generally said to exist in its mildest form, appointed to make a report on the condition of the slaves, gave the following picture of their condition. First, as to their spiritual condition, they say: —

  After making all reasonable allowances, our coloured population can be considered, at the most, but semi-heathen.

  Brutal stripes, and all the various kinds of personal indignities, are not the only species of cruelty which slavery licenses. The law does not recognise the family relations of the slave, and extends to him no protection in the enjoyment of domestic endearments. The members of a slave-family may be forcibly separated, so that they shall never more meet until the final judgment. And cupidity often induces the masters to practise what the law allows. Brothers and sisters, parents and children, husbands and wives, are torn asunder, and permitted to see each other no more. These acts are daily occurring in the midst of us. The shrieks and the agony often witnessed on such occasions proclaim with a trumpet-tongue the iniquity and cruelty of our system. The cries of these sufferers go up to the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. There is not a neighbourhood where these heartrending scenes are not displayed. There is not a village or road that does not behold the sad procession of manacled outcasts, whose chains and mournful countenances tell that they are exiled by force from all that their hearts hold dear. Our church, years ago, raised its voice of solemn warning against this flagrant violation of every principle of mercy, justice, and humanity. Yet we blush to announce to you and to the world that this warning has been often disregarded, even by those who hold to our communion. Cases have occurred, in our own denomination, where professors of the religion of mercy have torn the mother from her children, and sent her into a merciless and returnless exile. Yet acts of discipline have rarely followed such conduct.

  Hon. James G. Birney, for years a resident of Kentucky, in his pamphlet, amends the word rarely by substituting never. What could show more plainly the utter inefficiency of the past act of the Assembly, and the necessity of adopting some measures more efficient? In 1835, therefore, the subject was urged upon the General Assembly, intreating them to carry out the principles and designs they had avowed in 1818.

  Mr. Stuart, of Illinois, in a speech he made upon the subject, said: —

  I hope this assembly are prepared to come out fully and declare their sentiments, that slaveholding is a most flagrant and heinous SIN. Let us not pass it by in this indirect way, while so many thousands and tens of thousands of our fellow-creatures are writhing under the lash, often inflicted, too, by ministers and elders of the Presbyterian Church.

  * * * * * * * * *

  In this church a man may take a free-born child, force it away from its parents, to whom God gave it in charge, saying, “Bring it up for me,” and sell it as a beast or hold it in perpetual bondage, and not only escape corporeal punishment, but really be esteemed an excellent Christian. Nay, even ministers of the gospel and doctors of divinity may engage in this unholy traffic, and yet sustain their high and holy calling.

  * * * * * * * * *

  Elders, ministers, and doctors of divinity, are, with both hands, engaged in the practice.

  One would have thought facts like these, stated in a body of Christians, were enough to wake the dead; but, alas! we can become accustomed to very awful things. No action was taken upon these remonstrances, except to refer them to a committee, to be reported on at the next session, in 1836.

  The moderator of the Assembly in 1836 was a slaveholder, Dr. T. S. Witherspoon, the same who said to the editor of the Emancipator, “I draw my warrant from the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to hold my slaves in bondage. The principle of holding the heathen in bondage is recognised by God. When the tardy process of the law is too long in redressing our grievances, we at the South have adopted the summary process of Judge Lynch.”

  The majority of the committee appointed made a report as follows: —

  Whereas the subject of slavery is inseparably connected with the laws of many of the States in this Union, with which it is by no means proper for an ecclesiastical judicature to interfere, and involves many considerations in regard to which great diversity of opinion and intensity of feeling are known to exist in the churches represented in this Assembly; and whereas there is great reason to believe that any action on the part of this Assembly, in reference to this subject, would tend to distract and divide our churches, and would probably in no wise promote the benefit of those whose welfare is immediately contemplated in the memorials in question.

  Therefore Resolved, 1. That it is not expedient for the Assembly to take any further order in relation to this subject.

  2. That as the notes which have been expunged from our public formularies, and which some of the memorials referred to the committee request to have restored, were introduced irregularly, never had the sanction of the church, and therefore never possessed any authority, the General Assembly has no power, nor would they think it expedient, to assign them a place in the authorised standards of the church.

  The minority of the committee, the Rev. Messrs. Dickey and Beman, reported as follows: —

  Resolved,

  1. That the buying, selling, or holding a human being as property, is in the sight of God a heinous sin, and ought to subject the doer of it to the censures of the church.

  2. That it is the duty of every one, and especially of every Christian, who may be involved in this sin, to free himself from its entanglement without delay.

  3. That it is the duty of every one, especially of every Christian, in the meekness and firmness of the Gospel, to plead the cause of the poor and needy, by testifying against the principle and practice of slaveholding, and to use his best endeavours to deliver the church of God from the evil, and to bring about the emancipation of the slaves in these United States, and throughout the world.

  The slaveholding delegates, to the number of forty-eight, met apart, and Resolved —

  That if the General Assembly shall undertake to exercis
e authority on the subject of slavery, so as to make it an immorality, or shall in any way declare that Christians are criminal in holding slaves, that a declaration shall be presented by the Southern delegation declining their jurisdiction in the case, and our determination not to submit to such decision.

  In view of these conflicting reports, the Assembly resolved as follows: —

  Inasmuch as the constitution of the Presbyterian Church, in its preliminary and fundamental principles, declares that no church judicatories ought to pretend to make laws to bind the conscience in virtue of their own authority; and as the urgency of the business of the Assembly, and the shortness of the time during which they can continue in session, render it impossible to deliberate and decide judiciously on the subject of slavery in its relation to the church, therefore Resolved, that this whole subject be indefinitely postponed.

  The amount of the slave-trade at the time when the General Assembly refused to act upon the subject of slavery at all may be inferred from the following items. The Virginia Times, in an article published in this very year of 1836, estimated the number of slaves exported for sale from that State alone, during the twelve months preceding, at forty thousand. The Natchez (Miss.) Courier says that in the same year the States of Alabama, Missouri, and Arkansas imported two hundred and fifty thousand slaves from the more Northern States. If we deduct from these all who may be supposed to have emigrated with their masters, still what an immense trade is here indicated!

  The Rev. James H. Dickey, who moved the resolutions above presented, had seen some sights which would naturally incline him to wish the Assembly to take some action on the subject, as appears from the following account of a slave-coffle, from his pen.

  In the summer of 1822, as I returned with my family from a visit to the Barrens of Kentucky, I witnessed a scene such as I never witnessed before, and such as I hope never to witness again. Having passed through Paris, in Bourbon County, Kentucky, the sound of music (beyond a little rising ground) attracted my attention. I looked forward, and saw the flag of my country waving. Supposing that I was about to meet a military parade, I drove hastily to the side of the road; and, having gained the ascent, I discovered (I supposed) about forty black men all chained together after the following manner: each of them was handcuffed, and they were arranged in rank and file. A chain, perhaps forty feet long, the size of a fifth-horse chain, was stretched between the two ranks, to which short chains were joined, which connected with the handcuffs. Behind them were, I supposed, about thirty women, in double rank, the couples tied hand to hand. A solemn sadness sat on every countenance, and the dismal silence of this march of despair was interrupted only by the sound of two violins; yes, as if to add insult to injury, the foremost couple were furnished with a violin a-piece; the second couple were ornamented with cockades, while near the centre waved the republican flag carried by a hand literally in chains. I could not forbear exclaiming to the lordly driver who rode at his ease alongside, “Heaven will curse that man who engages in such traffic, and the government that protects him in it.” I pursued my journey till evening, and put up for the night, when I mentioned the scene I had witnessed. “Ah!” cried my landlady, “that is my brother!” From her I learned that his name is Stone, of Bourbon County, Kentucky, in partnership with one Kinningham, of Paris; and that a few days before he had purchased a negro-woman from a man in Nicholas County. She refused to go with him; he attempted to compel her, but she defended herself. Without further ceremony he stepped back, and, by a blow on the side of her head, with the butt of his whip, brought her to the ground; he tied her, and drove her off. I learned, further, that besides the drove I had seen, there were about thirty shut up in the Paris prison for safe-keeping, to be added to the company, and that they were designed for the Orleans market. And to this they are doomed for no other crime than that of a black skin and curled locks. Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord. Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?

  It cannot be possible that these Christian men realised these things, or, at most, they realised them just as we realise the most tremendous truths of religion, dimly and feebly.

  Two years after, the General Assembly, by a sudden and very unexpected movement, passed a vote exscinding, without trial, from the communion of the church, four synods, comprising the most active and decided anti-slavery portions of the church. The reasons alleged were, doctrinal differences and ecclesiastical practices inconsistent with Presbyterianism. By this act about five hundred ministers and sixty thousand members were cut off from the Presbyterian Church.

  That portion of the Presbyterian Church called New School, considering this act unjust, refused to assent to it, joined the exscinded synods, and formed themselves into the New School General Assembly. In this communion only three slave-holding presbyteries remained; in the old there were between thirty and forty.

  The course of the Old School Assembly, after the separation, in relation to the subject of slavery, may be best expressed by quoting one of their resolutions, passed in 1845. Having some decided anti-slavery members in its body, and being, moreover, addressed on the subject of slavery by associated bodies, they presented, in this year, the following deliberate statement of their policy. (Minutes for 1845, .)

  Resolved, 1st. That the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States was originally organised, and has since continued the bond of union in the church, upon the conceded principle that the existence of domestic slavery, under the circumstances in which it is found in the Southern portion of the country, is no bar to Christian communion.

  2. That the petitions that ask the Assembly to make the holding of slaves in itself a matter of discipline do virtually require this judicatory to dissolve itself, and abandon the organisation under which, by the Divine blessing, it has so long prospered. The tendency is evidently to separate the Northern from the Southern portion of the Church — a result which every good Christian must deplore, as tending to the dissolution of the Union of our beloved country, and which every enlightened Christian will oppose, as bringing about a ruinous and unnecessary schism between brethren who maintain a common faith.

  Yeas, Ministers and Elders, 168

  Nays Ministers and Elders, 13

  It is scarcely necessary to add a comment to this very explicit declaration. It is the plainest possible disclaimer of any protest against slavery; the plainest possible statement that the existence of the ecclesiastical organisation is of more importance than all the moral and social considerations which are involved in a full defence and practice of American slavery.

  The next year a large number of petitions and remonstrances were presented, requesting the Assembly to utter additional testimony against slavery.

  In reply to the petitions, the General Assembly re-affirmed all their former testimonies on the subject of slavery for sixty years back, and also affirmed that the previous year’s declaration must not be understood as a retraction of that testimony; in other words, they expressed it as their opinion, in the words of 1818, that slavery is “wholly opposed to the law of God,” and “totally irreconcileable with the precepts of the gospel of Christ;” and yet that they “had formed their Church organisation upon the conceded principle that the existence of it, under the circumstances in which it is found in the Southern States of the Union, is no bar to Christian communion.”

  Some members protested against this action. (Minutes, 1846. Overture No. 17.)

  Great hopes were at first entertained of the New School body. As a body, it was composed mostly of anti-slavery men. It had in it those synods whose anti-slavery opinions and actions had been, to say the least, one very efficient cause for their excision from the Church. It had only three slaveholding Presbyteries. The power was all in its own hands. Now, if ever, was their time to cut this loathsome encumbrance wholly adrift, and stand up, in this age of concession and conformity to the world, a purely protesting Church, free from all complicity with this most dreadful national im
morality.

  On the first session of the General Assembly this course was most vehemently urged, by many petitions and memorials. These memorials were referred to a committee of decided anti-slavery men. The argument on one side was, that the time was now come to take decided measures to cut free wholly from all pro-slavery complicity, and avow their principles with decision, even though it should repel all such Churches from their communion as were not prepared for immediate emancipation.

  On the other hand, the majority of the committee were urged by opposing considerations. The brethren from slave States made to them representations somewhat alike to these: “Brethren, our hearts are with you. We are with you in faith, in charity, in prayer. We sympathised in the injury that had been done you by excision. We stood by you then, and are ready to stand by you still. We have no sympathy with the party that have expelled you, and we do not wish to go back to them. As to this matter of slavery, we do not differ from you. We consider it an evil. We mourn and lament over it. We are trying, by gradual and peaceable means, to exclude it from our Churches. We are going as far in advance of the sentiment of our Churches as we consistently can. We cannot come up to more decided action without losing our hold over them, and, as we think, throwing back the cause of emancipation. If you begin in this decided manner, we cannot hold our Churches in the union; they will divide, and go to the Old School.”

  Here was a very strong plea, made by good and sincere men. It was an appeal, too, to the most generous feelings of the heart. It was, in effect, saying, “Brothers, we stood by you, and fought your battles, when everything was going against you; and, now that you have the power in your hands, are you going to use it so as to cast us out?”