These men, strong anti-slavery men as they were, were affected. One member of the committee foresaw and feared the result. He felt and suggested that the course proposed conceded the whole question. The majority thought, on the whole, that it was best to postpone the subject. The committee reported that the applicants, for reasons satisfactory to themselves, had withdrawn their papers.
The next year, in 1839, the subject was resumed; and it was again urged that the Assembly should take high, and decided, and unmistakeable ground; and certainly, if we consider that all this time not a single Church had emancipated its slaves, and that the power of the institution was everywhere stretching and growing and increasing, it would certainly seem that something more efficient was necessary than a general understanding that the Church agreed with the testimony delivered in 1818. It was strongly represented that it was time something was done. This year the Assembly decided to refer the subject to Presbyteries, to do what they deemed advisable. The words employed were these: “Solemnly referring the whole subject to the lower judicatories, to take such action as in their judgment is most judicious, and adapted to remove the evil.” The Rev. George Beecher moved to insert the word moral before evil; they declined.*
This brought, in 1840, a much larger number of memorials and petitions; and very strong attempts were made by the abolitionists to obtain some decided action.
The committee this year referred to what had been done last year, and declared it inexpedient to do anything further. The subject was indefinitely postponed. At this time it was resolved that the Assembly should meet only once in three years. Accordingly, it did not meet till 1843. In 1843, several memorials were again presented, and some resolutions offered to the Assembly, of which this was one (Minutes of the General Assembly for 1843, ).
Resolved, That we affectionately and earnestly urge upon the Ministers, Sessions, Presbyteries, and Synods connected with this Assembly, that they treat this as all other sins of great magnitude; and by a diligent, kind, and faithful application of the means which God has given them, by instruction, remonstrance, reproof, and effective discipline, seek to purify the Church of this great iniquity.
This resolution they declined. They passed the following: —
Whereas there is in this Assembly great diversity of opinion as to the proper and best mode of action on the subject of slavery; and whereas, in such circumstances, any expression of sentiment would carry with it but little weight, as it would be passed by a small majority, and must operate to produce alienation and division; and whereas the Assembly of 1839, with great unanimity, referred this whole subject to the lower judicatories, to take such order as in their judgement might be adapted to remove the evil; — Resolved, That the Assembly do not think it for the edification of the Church for this body to take any action on the subject.
They, however, passed the following: —
Resolved, That the fashionable amusement of promiscuous dancing is so entirely unscriptural, and eminently and exclusively that of “the world which lieth in wickedness,” and so wholly inconsistent with the spirit of Christ, and with that propriety of Christian deportment and that purity of heart which his followers are bound to maintain, as to render it not only improper and injurious for professing Christians either to partake in it, or to qualify their children for it, by teaching them the “art,” but also to call for the faithful and judicious exercise of discipline on the part of Church Sessions, when any of the members of their Churches have been guilty.
Three years after, in 1846, the General Assembly published the following declaration of sentiment: —
1. The system of slavery as it exists in these United States, viewed either in the laws of the several States which sanction it, or in its actual operation and results in society, is intrinsically unrighteous and oppressive; and is opposed to the prescriptions of the law of God, to the spirit and precepts of the Gospel, and to the best interests of humanity.
2. The testimony of the General Assembly from A.D. 1787 to A.D. 1818, inclusive, has condemned it; and it remains still the recorded testimony of the Presbyterian Church of these United States against it, from which we do not recede.
3. We cannot, therefore, withhold the expression of our deep regret that slavery should be continued and countenanced by any of the members of our Churches; and we do earnestly exhort both them and the Churches among whom it exists to use all means in their power to put it away from them. Its perpetuation among them cannot fail to be regarded by multitudes, influenced by their example, as sanctioning the system portrayed in it, and maintained by the statutes of the several slaveholding States wherein they dwell. Nor can any mere mitigation of its severity, prompted by the humanity and Christian feeling of any who continue to hold their fellow-men in bondage, be regarded either as a testimony against the system, or as in the least degree changing its essential character.
4. But while we believe that many evils incident to the system render it important and obligatory to bear testimony against it, yet would we not undertake to determine the degree of moral turpitude on the part of individuals involved by it. This will doubtless be found to vary, in the sight of God, according to the degree of light and other circumstances pertaining to each. In view of all the embarrassments and obstacles in the way of emancipation interposed by the statutes of the slaveholding States, and by the social influence affecting the views and conduct of those involved in it, we cannot pronounce a judgment of general and promiscuous condemnation, implying that destitution of Christian principle and feeling which should exclude from the table of the Lord all who should stand in the legal relation of masters to slaves, or justify us in withholding our ecclesiastical and Christian fellowship from them. We rather sympathise with, and would seek to succour them in their embarrassments, believing that separation and secession among the Churches and their members are not the methods God approves and sanctions for the reformation of his Church.
5. While, therefore, we feel bound to bear our testimony against slavery, and to exhort our beloved brethren to remove it from them as speedily as possible by all appropriate and available means, we do at the same time condemn all divisive and schismatical measures, tending to destroy the unity and disturb the peace of our Church, and deprecate the spirit of denunciation and inflicting severities, which would cast from the fold those whom we are rather bound, by the spirit of the Gospel, and the obligations of our covenant, to instruct, to counsel, to exhort, and thus to lead in the ways of God; and towards whom, even though they may err, we ought to exercise forbearance and brotherly love.
6. As a court of our Lord Jesus Christ, we possess no legislative authority; and as the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, we possess no judiciary authority. We have no right to institute and prescribe a test of Christian character and Church membership not recognised and sanctioned in the sacred Scriptures, and in our standards, by which we have agreed to walk. We must leave, therefore, this matter with the sessions, presbyteries, and synods — the judicatories to whom pertains the right of judgment to act in the administration of discipline as they may judge it to be their duty, constitutionally subject to the General Assembly only in the way of general review and control.
When a boat is imperceptibly going down stream on a gentle but strong current, we can see its passage only by comparing objects with each other on the shore.
If this declaration of the New-School General Assembly be compared with that of 1818, it will be found to be far less out-spoken and decided in its tone, while in the meantime slavery had become four-fold more powerful. In 1818, the Assembly states that the most virtuous portion of the community in slave States abhor slavery, and wish its extermination. In 1846, the Assembly states with regret that slavery is still continued and countenanced by any of the members of our Churches. The testimony of 1818 has the frank out-spoken air of a unanimous document, where there was but one opinion. That of 1846 has the guarded air of a compromise ground out between the upper and nether millstone of two co
ntending parties — it is winnowed, guarded, cautious, and careful.
Considering the document, however, in itself, it is certainly a very good one; and it would be a very proper expression of Christian feeling, had it related to an evil of any common magnitude, and had it been uttered in any common crisis; but let us consider what was the evil attacked, and what was the crisis. Consider the picture which the Kentucky Synod had drawn of the actual state of things among them:—”The members of slave-families separated, never to meet again until the final judgment; brothers and sisters, parents and children, husbands and wives, daily torn asunder, and permitted to see each other no more; the shrieks and agonies, proclaiming as with trumpet-tongue the iniquity and cruelty of the system; the cries of the sufferers going up to the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth; not a neighbourhood where those heart-rending scenes are not displayed; not a village or road without the sad procession of manacled outcasts, whose chains and mournful countenances tell they are exiled by force from all that heart holds dear; Christian professors rending the mother from her child to sell her into returnless exile.”
This was the language of the Kentucky Synod fourteen years before; and those scenes had been going on ever since, and are going on now, as the advertisements of every Southern paper show; and yet the Church of Christ since 1818 had done nothing but express regret and hold grave metaphysical discussions as to whether slavery was an “evil per se,” and censure the rash action of men who, in utter despair of stopping the evil any other way, tried to stop it by excluding slaveholders from the Church. As if it were not better that one slaveholder in a hundred should stay out of the Church, if he be peculiarly circumstanced, than that all this horrible agony and iniquity should continually receive the sanction of the Church’s example! Should not a generous Christian man say, “If Church excision will stop this terrible evil, let it come, though it does bear hardly upon me! Better that I suffer a little injustice than that this horrible injustice be still credited to the account of Christ’s Church. Shall I embarrass the whole Church with my embarrassments? What if I am careful and humane in my treatment of my slaves — what if, in my heart, I have repudiated the wicked doctrine that they are my property, and am treating them as my brethren — what am I then doing? All the credit of my example goes to give force to the system. The Church ought to reprove this fearful injustice, and reprovers ought to have clean hands; and if I cannot really get clear of this, I had better keep out of the Church till I can.”
Let us consider, also, the awful entrenchments and strength of the evil against which this very moderate resolution was discharged. “A money power of two thousand millions of dollars held by a small body of able and desperate men; that body raised into a political aristocracy by special constitutional provisions; cotton, the product of slave-labour, forming the basis of our whole foreign commerce, and the commercial class thus subsidised; the press bought up; the Southern pulpit reduced to vassalage; the heart of the common people chilled by a bitter prejudice against the black race; and our leading men bribed by ambition either to silence or open hostility.”* And now, in this condition of things, the whole weight of these Churches goes in support of slavery, from the fact of their containing slave-holders. No matter if they did not participate in the abuses of the system; nobody wants them to do that. The slave power does not wish professors of religion to separate families, or over-work their slaves, or do any disreputable thing — that is not their part . The slave power wants pious, tender-hearted, generous and humane masters, and must have them, to hold up the system against the rising moral sense of the world; and the more pious and generous the better. Slavery could not stand an hour without these men. What then? These men uphold the system, and that great anti-slavery body of ministers uphold these men. That is the final upshot of the matter.
Paul says that we must remember those that are in bonds, as bound with them. Suppose that this General Assembly had been made up of men who had been fugitives. Suppose one of them had had his daughters sent to the New Orleans slave-market, like Emily and Mary Edmondson; that another’s daughter had died on the overland passage in a slave-coffle, with no nurse but a slave-driver, like poor Emily Russell: another’s wife died broken-hearted when her children were sold out of her bosom; and another had a half-crazed mother, whose hair had been turned prematurely white with agony. Suppose these scenes of agonizing partings, with shrieks and groans, which the Kentucky Synod says have been witnessed so long among the slaves, had been seen in these ministers’ families, and that they had come up to this discussion with their hearts as scarred and seared as the heart of poor old Paul Edmondson, when he came to New York to beg for his daughters. Suppose that they saw that the horrid system by which all this had been done was extending every hour; that professed Christians in every denomination at the South declared it to be an appointed institution of God; that all the wealth, and all the rank, and all the fashion in the country were committed in its favour; and that they, like Aaron, were sent to stand between the living and the dead, that the plague might be stayed.
Most humbly, most earnestly, let it be submitted to the Christians of this nation, and to Christians of all nations, for such an hour and no doubt the other, and such a crisis was this action sufficient? Did it do anything? Has it had the least effect in stopping the evil? And, in such a horrible time, ought not something to be done which will have that effect?
Let us continue the history. It will be observed that the resolution concludes by referring the subject to subordinate judicatories. The New-School Presbytery of Cincinnati, in which were the professors of Lane Seminary, suspended Mr. Graham from the ministry for teaching that the Bible justified slavery; thereby establishing the principle that this was a heresy inconsistent with Christian fellowship. The Cincinnati Synod confirmed this decision. The General Assembly reversed this decision, and restored Mr. Graham. The delegate from that presbytery told them that they would never retrace their steps, and so it proved. The Cincinnati Presbytery refused to receive him back. All honour be to them for it! Here, at least, was a principle established, as far as the New-School Cincinnati Presbytery is concerned, and a principle as far as the General Assembly is concerned. By this act the General Assembly established the fact that the New-School Presbyterian Church had not decided the Biblical defence of slavery to be a heresy.
For a man to teach that there are not three Persons in the Trinity is heresy.
For a man to teach that all these three Persons authorise a system which even Mahometan princes have abolished from mere natural shame and conscience, is no heresy!
The General Assembly proceeded further to show that it considered this doctrine no heresy, in the year 1846, by inviting the Old-School General Assembly to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper with them. Connected with this Assembly were not only Dr. Smylie, but all those bodies who, among them, had justified not only slavery in the abstract, but some of its worst abuses, by the word of God; yet the New-School body thought these opinions no heresy which should be a bar to Christian communion!
In 1849 the General Assembly declared* that there had been no information before the Assembly to prove that the members in slave States were not doing all that they could, in the providence of God, to bring about the possession and enjoyment of liberty by the enslaved. This is a remarkable declaration, if we consider that in Kentucky there are no stringent laws against emancipation, and that, either in Kentucky or Virginia, the slave can be set free by simply giving him a pass to go across the line into the next State.
In 1850 a proposition was presented in the Assembly by the Rev. H. Curtiss, of Indiana, to the following effect: “That the enslaving of men, or holding them as property, is an offence, as defined in our Book of Discipline, ch. i., sec. 3; and as such it calls for inquiry, correction, and removal, in the manner prescribed by our rules, and should be treated with a due regard to all the aggravating or mitigating circumstances in each case.” Another proposition was from an elder in Pennsylvania, affirming “t
hat slaveholding was, prima facie, an offence within the meaning of our Book of Discipline, and throwing upon the slaveholder the burden of showing such circumstances as will take away from him the guilt of the offence.”*
Both these propositions were rejected. The following was adopted: “That slavery is fraught with many and great evils; that they deplore the workings of the whole system of slavery; that the holding of our fellow-men in the condition of slavery, except in those cases where it is unavoidable from the laws of the State, the obligations of guardianship, or the demands of humanity, is an offence, in the proper import of that term, as used in the Book of Discipline, and should be regarded and treated in the same manner as other offences; also referring this subject to sessions and presbyteries.” The vote stood eighty-four to sixteen, under a written protest of the minority, who were for no action in the present state of the country. Let the reader again compare this action with that of 1818, and he will see that the boat is still drifting — especially as even this moderate testimony was not unanimous. Again, in this year of 1850, they avow themselves ready to meet, in a spirit of fraternal kindness and Christian love, any overtures for re-union which may be made to them by the Old-School body.
In 1850 was passed the cruel Fugitive Slave Law. What deeds were done then! Then to our free States were transported those scenes of fear and agony before acted only on slave soil. Churches were broken up. Trembling Christians fled. Husbands and wives were separated. Then to the poor African was fulfilled the dread doom denounced on the wandering Jew: “Thou shalt find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest; but thy life shall hang in doubt before thee, and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have no assurance of thy life.” Then all the world went one way — all the wealth, all the power, all the fashion. Now, if ever, was a time for Christ’s Church to stand up and speak for the poor.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 716