The voice of freedom. [volume], June 29, 1839, Image 1

About The voice of freedom. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1839-1848

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THE T"Ot
OF TIEEDOI
ALLEN & POLAND, Publishers. Published under the sanction of the Vermont Jlxxti-Slavery Society. CHAUNCEY L. KNAPP, Editor.
VOLUME I. MONTFEL1ER, VERMONT, JUKE S9, 1839. ' WUMBER 26,
For the Voice of Freedom.
Friend Knapp :
At the winter session of the Ferrisburg Quar
terly Meeting of Friends, a committee of men and
women were appointed on the question of Slave
ry. &c.. which renorted to the snrincr session of
that meeting as follows an abstract of which
was accepted by the said meeting :
The joint committee of men and women, Friends,
appointed by the Inst quarterly meeting to inquire
whether any and what action this meeting can
take on the subject of slavery and the condition
of the free people of color,
REPORT
That they have paid attention to their appoint
ment, and submit the following draft of a minute
which they propose to be forwarded to our next
yearly meeting to be held in New York.
This meeting has been again introduced into
near sympathy with that portion of our colored
brethren who are in bonds, and cordially unites
in the belie expressed in the address issued by
the yearly meeting in 1837, on this deeply im
portant subject, " that it is the solemn duty of
christians to do all in their power to ameliorate
the condition of mankind."
We desire to stand, aloof from those movements
of the day which are exclusively of a political
character; we would not participate with those
who are chasing a phantom of their own minds
which can never bo realized neither would we
ha lulled into satisfaction with past efforts by the
encomiums of a distinguished statesman. We
would still shrink from offering an apology to the
dealers in the living blood and muscles of their
fellow-creatures, for our confirmed opposition to
their nefarious occupation ; nor would we with
hold our efforts in the cause of humanity, howev
er feeble they may be regarded : and under a
deep sense of what is required of all, but more
especially of those who are making a profession
of Christianity, we would raise our voices against
the intolerable injustice and sin of slavery. We
do heartily accord in the belief that " we should
prove faithless to the cause of our holy religion,
and to that Gracious Being who has so bountiful
ly blessed us, were we to remain silent so long
as the land mourns under the enormous load of
guilt consequent on slavery.
On taking a view of the struggle now pending
between the advocates of this loathsome stain up
on our national character on the one hand, and of
those who are zealously engaged in promoting its
abolition on the other, we have been led into this
inquiry Do not we, while we protest against the
system as iniquitous, virtually give our counte
nance to its advocates and our support to the
slaveholder, in as much as we partake of the fruits
of slavery, as often as we use or deal in the pro
duce of the unpaid labour of the slave ? And
what will our lamentations avail him that is spoil
ed, so long as we submit to join hands with the
spoiler? Do we maintain our requisite consisten
cy when we suffer the profits of trade or our per
sonal convenience to induce us to touch the. un
clean thing ?
We would advert to the time when our Bene
zets and Woolmans could fearlessly, in their scru
pulous abstinence from the use of the productions
of slavery, in strict conformity with their declara
tions, bear a convincing testimony to their own
strict faithfulness in their exertions for the slaugh
tered and the maimed; but a fear has rested on
f vtir minds that custom, and an earnest pursuit of
the world and its enticing enjoyments have so far
blunted our tenderness for the slave, that the
question of propriety seldom occurs to us as we
handle the spoils of oppression. Can we say that
we have wiped clean our 6wn hands of the deso
lating sin, so long as we contribute to that patron
age of the slaveholder which will ever be one of
his greatest inducements to continue in his un
hallowed avocation ? Let foreign and domestic
patronage be withdrawn ; let the demand for the
produce of slave labor be wholly suspended and
the consequent abolition of slavery will be the
inevitable result, as certain as that demand cre
ates supply In any other department of the com
mercial world. But as long as we attempt to
measure the prudential character of an enterprize
by the degree of personal ease that it promises to
jts votaries, so long may we remain blind to du
ties which would otherwise be self-evident and ir
resistibly ours. '
We conceive that the tenor of our discipline is
clearly and unequivocally against our being par
takers with those who subsist on the fruits of vi
olence; and as we cannot, consistently with our
testimony against war, share in the spoils of war
so neither can we, consistently with our testimo
ny against oppression, share in the spoils of op
pression. '
It is true that Friends have broken the shack
les from off their own slaves, and doubtless there
i a latent objection tq slavery still existing among
us, but can we say we have done.all that is requi
red at our hands that we have finished "the
work allotted to us by the Supreme Judge of the
world ? Is there not a daily, an hourly respon
sibility resting upon us, in company with other
christians, so long as American slavery is upheld
by laws framed and executed by a professedly
christian people ? And is there not a wide door
open for us to remonstrate with the general gov
ernment against the continued infraction of the
constitution ?
On referring to the history of the legal aboli
won oi me Atncan slave-trade, we una among
those -who were the most zealously engaged in
mai great work ot philanthropy, many ot our
most esteemed and valued brethren. There was
not wanting those who could, for the cause of
outraged humanity, stand forward as the bold, un
compromising advocates of justice and benevo-
lence, regardless of the sneers and frowns of a
persecuting world : the buyers and sellers of an
unoffending, seduced progeny of African negroes,
were denounced as criminals ot the hrst magni
tude, without the essay of a soft apology from the
abolitionists of that day. To know that the slave
trade was sinful, was deemed a sufficient authori
ty for a vigorous exertion of the means used in
its suppression. And why should it be otherwise
at this time ? Can the standard of riirht and
wrong be subject to variation ? Can iniquity be
less iniquitous ? Can oppression be less oppress'
t r .i i . ft.. i i
ive s ur can me amy oi ennsuans oe less in
cumbent now than formerly ?
- We apprehend that the prejudice against color
which entwines itself so closely around the insti
tutions of the South, warping justice from its le
gitimate course, and flattering the votaries of sla
very with the hope that God seeth not their trans-
gressions, does not stop at the Potomac, nor scru
ple to pass the frontier of the free states. We
strongly suspect that it is round about and in the
very midst of many of the citizens of the North,
among those even who admit in the abstract that
slavery is wrong, and concur with us in the wish
that it had no existence within our borders; for
we cannot behold the distinction made between
the white and the nominally free colored, but as
evidence in support of that suspicion. We can
not regard the classification in the congregations
assembled professedly to worship an all-wise be
ing, who has declared himself no respecter of per
sons, otherwise than as proof of the desolating ef
fect of that prejudice; and under a deep convic
tion of the incompatibility of that prejudice with
the benign, generous principles of Christianity, we
are concerned to invite Friends to a more close
and scrupulous examination of their own hearts,
to see if there is not a remnant of that unchristian
ingredient still lurking therein. But as long as
the majority of the American people are opposed
to the evidence, which i3 the legitimate fruit of
examination on this momentous question, so long
will the institution be fostered by a gain-loving,
though professedly christian community, until
God in his mercy or in judgment sweeps it away.
There are unquestionably difficulties of no or
dinary character in the way of emancipation ; but
notwithstanding those difficulties are great, yet we
feel a consoling assurance that when the public
mind, being faithfully operated upon by those who
are alive to the enormity of the sinfulness of sla
very, becomes thoroughly enlightened on this sub
ject, and after honestly trying the system by the
Gospel of Jesus Christ, comes to the unreserved
conclusion that it is as we view it, exceedingly
sinful and in direct opposition to the principles of
the christian religion ; and as that conviction be
gets a prayerful disposition of the heart, and a
looking unto .Him for help who alone can turn the
wilderness into a fruitful field, and make crooked
paths straight, those difficulties will dwindle in
to insignificance,
We are strangers to any case in which the be
nevolent principles of Christianity have been faith'
fully carried out, without meeting with difficulties
of greater or less magnitude. We are reminded
of the difficulties which opposed the liberation of
the Hebrews from Egyptian bondage ; of those
which opposed the spread of the gospel in apostol
ic days; of the difficulties attending those who
protested against the assumed power of the Ro'
mish Church in the days when vital Christianity
began again to dawn on the benighlejl sons and
daughters of men; and of those which our early
predecessors encountered in the discharge of their
duties as faithful servants of Christ, when the per
secuted had become the persecutors of those who
dissented from their creeds i and on reviewing
those times we are induced to inquire, where
would have been the Hebrews, the Apostles, the
Reformers, and where would have been our own
society, If the ancient advocates of civil and reli
gious liberty had been deterred by the presence
of their difficulties from girding on the armour of
faith and resolution to encounter them ? The a-
gents.of their cause knew that their cause was
just, and that however insurmountable their dif
ficulties appeared to them, when measured by the
feeble means within their reach as mere creatures,
they ware not left without the consolation which
trust in the arm of an Almighty Father and Friend
conlerred. lo ilim they appealed in unwaver
ing faith, and to them He graciously answered by
an indubitable evidence that He was with the
and for them, and the clouds of opposition and
difficulty were dispelled like the haze of the mor
ning. And is the cause of the.American negro
of the present day less the cause of justice, of hu
manity, and of religious anxiety, or less the cause
of God's mercy and beneficence, than was that of
the Hebrews, or the African negro formerly? 0
can we believe that the judgment of Omnipotence
can be withstood by those who neglect to execute
his holy law in this day, any more than by those
formerly who rebelled against him, forwhosha
attempt to stand before His righteous indignation
when once the vials of His wrath are poured out
To whom shall we flee for safety when He wh
alone has the power to protect us is against us?
Will the mountains cover our sins, or will th
deep swallow us up out of His sight ? Will th
grave be beyond his reach, or the sepulchre a se
cret place before Him ? Can we hide ourselve
in the caves of the rocks, or flee from before His
presence on the wings of the tempest? Or wil
not His eve search us out, or His hand follow us ?
" Therefore thus saith the Lord, ye have not
hearkened unto me in proclaiming liberty, every
one to his brother and every man to"his neigh
bour, behold I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the.
Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to th
famine, and I will make you to be removed unto
all the ends of the earth."
" Knowing therefore the terrors of the Lord, we
would persuade men" we would affectionately
persuade all our members into a calm, religious
examination of the nature, ground, and root of
American slavery, of the evidence which thepres
ent position of the struggle now presents and as
has been suggested by the London Yearly Meet
ing, whether that evidence is not conclusive that
"a crisis is at hand in this momentous question
in which it will mainly depend under Divine Pro
vidence, on the faithful conduct of those who act
on christian principles, whether slavery shall be
abolished in our land by peaceful legislation, or by
confusion and violence."
We desire to unite in earnest prayer to the Fa
ther of mercies, that he would be pleased to pro
tect us in all our dangers, preserve our country in
tranquility and peace, and hasten the day. of un
versal freedom.
Trusting in the wisdom and power of Him who
suffers not a sparrow to fall to the ground unnoti
ced by His Heavenly eye, and with sincere de
sires that he will be pleased to favor us with that
share of holy help that will enable us to stand
our true allotments, we would express a hope that
the Yearly Meeting will find its way open to pe
tition Congress that that body should exercise its
constitutional powers in the abolition of slavery in
the district of Columbia and Territory of Florida,
in the suppression of the domestic slave-trade, and
the removal of those disabilities under which the
nominally free people of color continue to labor.
. Signed by one of the committee.
HENRY MILES,
Ferrisburg, 5th mo. 17th, 1839.
From the Mass, Abolitionist.
" The Chattel Principle."
Among the pamphlets on our table, from which
we hope to enrich future numbers of the Aboli
tionist, is one from the pen of Rev. Beriah Green
in which he compares ' the chattel principle' at
the foundation of American Slavery, with the
rinciples inculcated in the New Testament.
le does, as nearly as mav be. for the New Tes
tament, what Theodore D. Weld has done for the
Old. The two works make a perfect whole, and
drive slavery out ol the entire Bible as triumphant
ly as the Saviour cleared the money-changers from
the temple. 1 he book will endear the author to
the hearts of all abolitionists, and show them that
he is, at least, as well qualified for the high bust
ness to which he devoted his life, as those titled
divines who find in the New Testament justifica
tion for the worst of crimes. We are glad to see
that his argument is attracting attention in the
right quarter. A correspondent in the Andover
Theological Seminary calls our notice to it in the
following communication.
May 20th, 1S39.
Brother Wright-I have just finished the peru
sal of the 7th No. of the Anti-Slavery Examiner,
containing an article entitled 1 the New Testament
against .Slavery, An article which should be
thoroughly examined by every professed believer
in the IMew l estament. It exhibits in a clear and
unequivocal light, what the views and feelings of
.Christ and his apostles, upon the subject of hu
man responsibilities, were, and it affords, in con
nexion with ' Weld s Bible Argument, an amount
of Bible doctrine against American slavery too
l 1 r i 1 i . . ' .
overwhelming lor a canaiu mina to resist.
The following extract is one among the many
rich specimens which might be given from ' The
New Testament against Slavery,'
Yours truly, Junius.
. " What, in describing the scenes of the final
judgment, does our Saviour teach us? By what
standard must our character be estimated, and the
retributions of eternity be awarded ? A standard,
which both the righteous and the wicked will be
surprised to see erected, From the 1 offscouring
of all things,' the meanest specimens of humani
ty will be selected a ' stranger' in the hands of
the oppressor, naked, hungry, sickly; and this
stranger, placed in the midst of the assembled uni
verse by the fide of the sovereign Judge, will be
onenlv acknowledged as his representative. ' Glo
ry, honor, and immortality,' will be the reward of
those who had recognized and cheered their Lord
through his outraged poor. And tribulation and
anguish and despair, will seize on ' every soul of
man, who had neglected or despised them. But
whom, within the limits of our country, are we
to regard especially as the representatives of our
final Judge ? Every feature of the Saviour's pic
ture finds its appropriate original in our enslaved
countrymen.
1. They are the least of his brethren.
2. They are subject to thirst, and hunger, un
able to command a cup of water or a crumb of
bread.
3. They are exposed to wasting sickness,
without the ability to procure a nurse or employ
a physician.
4. They are emphatically ' in prison,' restrain
ed by chains, goaded with whips, tasked, and un
der keepers. Not a wretch groans in any cell of
the prisons ot our country, who is exposed to a
confinement so rigorous and heart-breaking as the
law allows theirs to be continually and permanent
ly. 5. And then they are emphatically, and pecu
liarly, and exclusively, strangers -strangers in
the land which gave them birth. Whom else do
we constrain to remain aliens in the midst of our
free institutions ? The Welch, the Swiss, the
Irish ? The Jews even ? Alas, it is the ne?ro
only, who may not strike hi3 roots into our soil.
Every where we have conspired to treat him as a
stranger every where he is forced to feel him
self a stranerer. In the stage and steamboat, in
the parlor and at our tables, in the scenes of busi
ness and in the scenes of amusement even in the
church of God and at the communion table, he is
regarded as a stranger. The intelligent and re
ligious are generally disgusted and horror-struck
at the thought of his becoming identified with the
citizens of our republic so much so.that thousands
of them have entered into a conspiracy to send
him off ' oufcof sight,' to find a home on a foreign
shore ! And justify themselves by openly alleg
ing, that a ' single drop of his blood, in the veins
of any human creature, must make him hateful to
his fellow citizens ! I hat nothing but banishment
from ' our coasts,' can redeem him from the scorn
and contempt to which his ' stranger' blood has
reduced him among his own mother's children !
Who, then, in this land ' of milk and honey,'
is 'hungry and athirst, but the man irom wnom
the law takes away the last crumb of bread and
the smallest drop of water ?
Who ' naked, but the man whom the law strips
of the last rag of clothing?
Who ' sick,' but the man whom the law deprives
of the power of procuring medicine or sending for
a physician ? ;
Who ' in prison,' but the man who, alt his l:le,
is under the control of merciless masters and cru
el keepers ? . .
Who a ' stranger, but the man who is scornful
ly denied the cheapest courtesies of life who is
treated as an alien in his native country?
lherei3one point in this awful description
which deserves particular attention. Those who
are doomed to the left hand of the Judge, are not
charged with inflicting positive injuries on thei
helpless, needy and oppressed brother. 1 heirs
was what is often called negative character. What
they had done is not described in the indictment
Their uegletl of duty, what they had not done,
was the ground ot their ' everlasting punishment.
The representative of their Judge, they had seen
a hungered and they gave him no meat, thirsty
ana tney gave mm no a rime, a stranger ana they
took him not in, naked and they clothed him not,
sick and in prison and they visited him not. In
asmuchas they did not yield to the claims of suf
fering humanity did not exert themselves to
bless the meanest of the human family, they were
driven away in their wickedness. But what
the indictment had run thus : I was a hungered
and ye snatched away the -crust that might have
saved me from starvation ; I was thirsty and ye
dashed to the ground the ' cup of cold water,
which might have moistened my parched lips
was a stranger and ye drove me from the hovel
which might have sheltered me from the piercing
wind : I was sick and ve scourtred me to my task ;
in prison, and you sofd me for my jail-fees to
what depths -of hell must not those who were
convicted under such charges be consigned ! And
what is the history pf American slavery but one
long indictment, describing under ever-varjinj
forms and hues just such injuries!
Nor should it be forgotten, that those who in
curred the displeasure of the Judge, took far other
views than he, ot their own past history, lhe
charges which ho brought against them.they heard
with great surprise. They were sure that they
had never thus turned awav from his necessities.
ndeed, when had they seen him thus subject to
poverty, Insult, and oppression ? iever. Ana
as to that poor friendless creature whom they left
unpitied and unhelped in the hands ol the oppres
sor, and whom their Judge now presented as his
own representative, they never once supposed that
he had any claims on their compassion nnd assist
ance. Had they known that he was destined to
so prominent a place at the final judgment, they
would have treated him as a human being, in de
ipite of any social, pecuniary, or political consid
erations. But neither their negative virtue nor
their voluntary ignorance could shield them from
the penal fire which thdrr selfishness had kindled."
From th Christian Reflector,
), Q, Adams' Second Letter,
This letter is strictlv and strikinrrlv Adnmso
man. it is like a widely extended lake, most ol
whose waters are deep and yet so clear that the
very sand at the bottom is visible, but there are
pots in that lake so shallow that the Indian s Bark
Canoe would strike. No writer has stated the
bstract principles of Human Rights and Duties
more lucidly, or, applied them to matters of fact
more correctly than John Ifuiney Aams "as
done, in general ; but in a few points, he is dark
Erebuc and (lings his arrows at ranuom.
Who over uttered sounder sentiments than the
following ? " In the moral question of the North
American Revolution, the primary source of all
the arguments on the British side, was canst (titled,
power. The arguments on the American side
' were all drawn from elementary right" " I ndn
here to the ethics of the Revolution. The sclf-ev-
ident truths of the Declaration of Independence am
still self-evident truths," &e. J hold the opinion,
that ONE HUMAN BE1NQ CANNOT BE,
MADE THE PROPERTY OF ANOTHER,
That persons and things are, by the laws of
nature and nature's GOD, so distinct that NO
HUMAN LAWS can transform either into the.
other." Here we have the substance and the sum,
of the creed of ABOLITIONISTS. And now
will not this great statesman apply those founda-i
tion principles of the morals of politics in every
case to which they are obviously applicable? We
did hope he would. - We did hope that,
when he should come in contatct with anjf"Hu-i
man Laws" which were enacted for the express,
purpose of transforming ''sons" to "things," ac
tually making " one humam being the propery of
another," as literally so as the article caught on.
the hook of the fisherman is made " property" by
sale, he would declare the absurdity and wicked-s
ness of such a law, and in the name of " Nature
and Nature's God," demand its repeal, whether
enacted by a single despot or a Republic of des-,
pots.
For what purpose did Mr Adams declare his ad
hesion to the self-evident ethics of the Revolution ?
Was it to show their " impracticability ?" Not in,
the case of " the revolution," which was accom-i
plished by them, surely. And, if tha,t great event;
proved their practicability, why despair of
their potency in any other case? In astounding-
contradiction of himself, however, we find him
making their " impracticability" his principle nri
gument against attempting their application to,
the abolition of the American human chattel sys-.
tern,
Jt cannot be dom. Why? Because "(our
fifths" of the people are unwilling to do it. But
has Mr. Adams all at once lost sight pt the powi
er of persuasion, the power of truth on the human
mind? If so where does he ground the hope he
expresses, that Slavery may yet sometime cease
If four fifths are not willing to abolish the nefarii
ous system, why did not Mr. Adams address
" those self-evident truths" to the judgment and
conscience ol the erring and sinning multitude ia
change ahd revolutionize their sentiments ? Why
tell them that because they will not, therefore, they
can not do right, This doctrine, if heard from the,
pidpitx wou.ld be scouted as arrant autiuoiua,sismx
nay as a cloak for sin. It is saying, we can't do,
right, and therefore we need not attempt it because
we won't. In this way, the reader of Mr, Adi
ams' Letter which we are now publishing, will
see. that great and and most acute logician reasons,
in dissuading the citizens of this Republic Awn,
petitioning Congress to repeal their own Slave
laws &c. &c. True, he talks of the injustice of
Congress abolishing slavery in the ptistriot of Co
lurnbia, so long as a majority of the inhabitants of
that District nrp orpfet4 to cucK a ivioaeuro. Te
who compels those citizens to reside in thatDisi
trict ? and under whose '-' exclusive legislation"
has the Constitution of the land placed that Disi
trict? and why has the Congress been Constitu
tionally empowered to legislate for the District, if
it is not to exercise that power, except at the dic-
tationofthe dwellers there? If Congress may
never rightfully legislate for the District, but as
the majority of the citizens orders them, why not
leave the population of the District to legislate for
itself, since it would always enact laws by a mat
jority, if left to itself. There are undoubtedly
good reasons for giving to Congress exclusive jui
risdiction over the District, inasmuch as it js the
common ground of the whole nation, to be appro-i
priated and used as the will of the nation may be,
and those who choose to reside there under theso
conditions can do so, and others are at liberty to,
stay away or depart. ,
According to Mr. Adams' reasoning on thja
topic, the nation is to be governed by the District
and not the District by the nation.
Notwithstanding these obvious errors of the Lets
ter, we rejoice in its publication, In the main,
it is worthy of the highest commendation,
If we had room here, we could say a word
about the true meaning of' immediate emancipa.
tion," which, wonderful as it may seem, Mr, A,
seems not to have apprehended. We can now
only say, however, that many things ore iminedN
ate duties, which, we have reason to fear, will not
be done these many days. If nothing is to be ur
ged as as a duty to be done immediately, but that
which all men are disposed to do immediately, we
may well despair of reforming the world ; for, in
all such cases, there is the same " impracticability"
of which Mr. Adams' speaks. But this species
of impracticability can be overcome by convincing
those in error that they are wrong and inducing
them to do right. Here is the world's hope,
From the Philanthropist,
DUTIES OF THE STATES IN RELATION
TO FUGITIVES FROM LABOUR,
Dr. Bailey :-In the Philanthropist of the 14th
you have given to the public a statement of what
you call ' Another Court House Meeting,' in which
you suggest that 1 'advanced the idea that Ohio
under the Federal Constitution was not bound to
deliver up runaway slaves,' This, though correct
in the main, does not so fully express what said
on that point as I could wish; 1 remarked that the
states os parties to the federal compact woretheni.
selves judges of the time and manner of the per
lormance ol those, duties which that contract ret
uired of euch, for carrying on it operations,
.'hat tlio states respectively had reserved to thein-.
solves the power to protect, and also prevent me
abduction of any person within their jurisdiction,
and from being transported out of the state, without
the assent of such " State in pursuance of her own
aws," That the law of Congress oi tne ltn I tD.
ruary, iyj praviuiiij;, uiun:muii num
the service of their masters in oie state, and being
found in ndother stato, shall be nrrested and deliv-
ered to the claimant was unconstitutional, and in
violation of the reserved rights and sovereignty pf
the states. I hat Ohio nor no other state was
bound by the operation or force of any foreign law
to deliver up any runaway slave or person escap-.
ing from the service of their master ; that the
states were under a mnral constitutional obligation
to do so, but that they were themselves judges
when and how, they would exercise the power,