THE CLERICAL APPEAL.
Christian. Did you know, about ten years ago, one TEMPORARY, who dwelt next door to one TURNBACK? Since we are talking about him, let us a little inquire into the reason of the sudden backsliding of him and such others. Hopeful. It may be profitable.
BUNYAN.
The re-action of the church, in consequence of such an effort as the one made by this Convention, was greater than some who had fancied themselves abolitionists were able to bear. Compelled to choose between their pro-slavery brethren of the church and ministry and their brethren of the abolition cause, they shrunk from the latter. Their efforts to justify themselves in cramping the cause, that they might avoid its reproach, constitute an era in its progress, known as the “Boston Controversy.” The plan originated with five clergymen of Boston and vicinity, the Rev. Messrs. Charles Fitch, Joseph H. Towne, Jonas Perkins, David Sandford, and William Cornell. When the ecclesiastical tumult swelled high, their hearts were stirred up with it, as the water of inland wells is said to rise and fall with the ebb and flow of the bitter ocean tide without.
Their appeal commenced with an acknowledgment of the sins of their brethren, in the use of harsh language, and an accusation of the most prominent abolitionists, of an unkind, improper and unchristian course, as such, assuming as one of the principles of action in the cause, that it must not be presented in a “brother’s pulpit,” when by so doing a brother might be aggrieved. This last assumption was in direct contradiction to the motto of every pulpit, as well as in defiance of the professed principles of every christian minister to “cry aloud and spare not” in the promulgation of truth, and “to show the people their transgressions,”—“whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear.”
The accusation of harsh language was robbed of its power by the heavily charged and indiscriminate epithets which some of the appellants themselves were accustomed to use. Having no standard within themselves by which to graduate their language, the quality of their labors was regulated by the market principle of demand and supply. The respective churches in Boston, to which two of them had been called from the country to minister, had more fame (or infamy, as the world counted it) on account of abolition, than they deserved. The appellants soon ascertained that the market was fluctuating, and they also fluctuated and fell. Ignorant of the general temperature of the abolition mind without, they fancied it in correspondence with that under their immediate observation, and took the ill-considered step of appealing before the world from the requisitions of their own acknowledged principles of action with regard to the preaching of acknowledged truth.
It must be remembered, in excuse of clergymen who in this stage of the cause put their hands to the plough and turned back, that the laudable desire of the National Society to have the field filled with agents had induced some to enter it whose preparation of heart was altogether unequal to the work. They yielded to circumstances and to entreaties, rather than to convictions of duty and love of the cause. Some too had been prematurely urged into the anti-slavery ranks by the anxiety of the women of their respective congregations to obtain the influence of their names for the cause. This practice of making those life members who are but slightly interested in the cause, however well calculated to swell the funds of popular societies, and secure the efforts of the ministry in their favor, has been productive of nothing but mischief in Anti-Slavery Societies, and it is to be hoped that no persons will hereafter be subjected to the painful alternative of accepting a testimony of regard of which they are unworthy, or of acknowledging enmity to the cause of Freedom. Let no one be constituted a life member, whose own heart has not so wrought upon his life as to make it clear that his membership is something more than a payment of fifteen dollars.
The clerical appeal was, in fact, an invitation to the leaders of the opposing host of clergymen, to come and take the direction of the Anti-Slavery cause. The former character of its signers as abolitionists—their confident tone, and the suddenness of the movement, drew general attention and remark. A lively sensation ensued throughout New England.
The appellants reported that they were cheered on by nine tenths of their brother clergymen. This increased the agitation; for the abolitionists had found, from the beginning, their most active opponents among this class of men. Coming, as it did, immediately after the claim of the Mass. General Association of Ministers, for more respect and for the exclusion of agitating topics, the appeal identified its originators with the opposing ministry, and disjoined them from abolitionists. It was already seen of all, that this new principle of suppressing the truth when the truth gives offence, would, if generally adopted, completely extinguish the Anti-Slavery cause. Merchants, who had received hints that they were to be hissed off ’Change, for bringing their principles into daily practice,—lawyers, whose clients had deserted them in disgust when the pictures of kneeling slaves found room in their places of business,—women, who had been proscribed from their respective social circles for making a morning call the medium of presenting a petition,—all perceived that this case was the parallel of their own, and demanded of a clergyman that he should resist his temptations to a sinful neglect of duty as well as themselves. They also exclaimed against the unworthy idea of yielding up, on demand, those whose very faithfulness was the origin of all the outcry. A whisper was circulated by the friends of the clerical appeal, that struggle was useless, that they were sustained not only without but within the camp, that the Executive Committee at New York did not disapprove of their doings, and that it had been decided at head quarters “to cast off Garrison.” This facilitated the general movement of every eye to New York. Societies and individuals loudly protested against the treachery to the cause, the treachery to their own religious principles of action, and the treachery to their comrades of which the appeal was the vehicle.—The religious world, through all its various organs of communication with the universal public, set up a shout of triumph. From Maine to the Potomac, and from the Atlantic to the Ohio, the “Appeal” was the subject of conversation with all to whom the name of abolition was familiar. The Anti-Slavery editors in every state, discerned the spiritual peril as clearly as if it had been a combat before the bodily eye, and all spoke out for the right, except the Emancipator, the organ of the Committee at New York, and James G. Birney, then editor of the Philanthropist in Cincinnati. His misapprehension of the case was excused by those whom he condemned, and accounted for by the fact of his great distance from the seat of the conflict. The appellants, however, triumphantly claimed him as their own. Mr. Garrison, and the editor pro tem. of the Liberator, Mr. Johnson, were forcible and conclusive in their treatment of the case. Mr. Phelps, whose services as general agent of the Massachusetts Society, some members of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society forseeing this emergency, had made great exertions to secure, came boldly up, to fill the breach where his presence was so needful and desirable. The vigor of his assault quickly dislodged the appellants from their new position “in a brother’s pulpit.” But he received no thanks for his good service, from the committee at New York. Every church, every Anti-Slavery Society, was convulsed by the struggle—still no voice came from the central citadel. The Clerical appellants meanwhile went on, as diverging lines ever will, widening the distance between themselves and rectitude. The Massachusetts Association of the Ministry had, two months previously, given currency to the idea that the abolition cause had wrought deterioration in the female character. The appellants made this idea, too, their own. Mr. Woodbury, now an agent of the American Society, the same who had thrown down the gauntlet to the pro-slavery church in 1836, chimed in with the appeal, and suggested in addition, that the opinions of Mr. Garrison on other subjects were just cause of offence in him, and that their incidental expression in the Liberator was a high misdemeanor. The appellants eagerly adopted this suggestion also; and explained to the public, and endeavored to convince abolitionists, that the toleration of women as free agents in the cause—the holding George Fox’s views of the Sabbath—or embracing the principles of non-resistance, afforded a just ground for excluding the offending individuals from the Societies. “Let them go out from among us,” they said, “for they are not of us; and the Massachusetts Society must have a new organ.” Mr. Phelps, at this time standing under a load of ignominy with the leaders of his denomination, and publicly threatened by the Recorder, their periodical, that Mr. Garrison’s “brother Phelps” would soon find his present position an unenviable one, succumbed to this new shape of an attack, which, under its first guise, he had met so boldly. Like the prince of Arabian story, he yielded to the insulting outcries which burst out around him,—turned his face from the ascent, and at that moment underwent the transformation to which the prince’s change into a little black stone by the way-side, is analogous.
It is astonishing that these men should not have been aware that on the abolition platform their own sect stood but on a level with others, and that Sabbatarian or Anti-Sabbatarian, man or woman, clergyman or layman, voter or non-voter, warrior or non-resistant, must be measured by their consistency and energy in applying each his own religious views, to effect the abolition of slavery. But they had yielded to that fear of man that bringeth a snare, and suffered themselves to be overcome by pro-slavery influence, scantily disguised as sectarian zeal.
This pro-slavery influence was wielded by the leaders of the sect to which the appellants belonged, with a skill and industry which the Anti-Slavery party would have done well to imitate. This pretended zeal, stimulated as it was by the hope of securing the approbation of wealthy and influential men of business, who sustained the double character of panders of slavery and pillars of churches, was not without its reward. The leading commercial and religious journals played into each others’ hands, and, from the daily and weekly press of that period, it appears that great numbers of clergymen, of known hostility to the cause, had contrived to signify that some movement of this kind would afford them a pretence for joining it, while, at the same time, such a movement would operate as an assurance that the cause should no longer be urged forward with the speed and effect that rouses the spirit of persecution. Men who had dreaded suffering, and felt mortification at the idea of becoming followers (so they understood it) of the bold, plain, uncompromising, untitled Garrison, hoped, by means of this stepping-stone, to escape the reproach of their consciences, without sacrificing their parishes or their pride.
The active appellants were but two in number; but from time to time they kept the public informed of the encouragement they received. One, who entered into their feelings with the most ardent sympathy, was the Rev. Charles T. Torrey, then of Providence. He declared that “their appeal gave him unmingled satisfaction—that it would be sustained by others;”—and bade them “thank God and take courage, in view of the Liberator’s abuse.”
As weeks went on, it became evident, through the columns of the paper in which the clerical appeal first appeared, that the cloak of bigotry and intolerance was to be added to the garment of sectarian zeal, which had at first been employed to hide their want of attachment to the cause. There was talk of a “common ground,” which yet must not be profaned by the feet of those abolitionists who were not of one particular communion. Great preference of the National Society was expressed, (though it counted as many heretics among its numbers as did the Massachusetts Society;) because the members of the Executive Committee chanced to be members also of sects which the appellants considered Orthodox. Much exertion was made in the Theological Seminary, at Andover, to obtain recruits for this new, exclusive “common ground,” and thirty-nine young candidates for the ministerial office came up to its defence.
Meanwhile, the claims of this clerical exclusiveness were adjudged by the great body of abolitionists, to be in an attitude of antagonism with the principles of Freedom. How can he free the slave, they argued, who is occupied in imposing fetters upon the free? How can he love liberty, who is acting in defiance of her first principles? Are not things which are equal to the same things equal to one another?
The Massachusetts Society met at Worcester, to take action upon this attempt to destroy its broad foundation of religious freedom and toleration; and, disclaiming the exercise of judgment, in their associated capacity, upon any man’s private opinions, the members deemed it their duty to brand inconsistency with one’s own standard of action, as treachery to the cause.
Amasa Walker, a man peculiarly qualified to speak to such a question, being a zealous member of the same sect as the appellants, manifested, upon this occasion, rectitude and steadfastness worthy of a sect so nobly founded, and, until the present day, so nobly sustained. He explained the causes and developed the real character of the appeal, stripping it of its mask of love for the slave, and zeal for the church of God.
Dr. Osgood, of Springfield, was disposed to admit the justice of the charge of harsh language against prominent abolitionists, but he made an exception in favor of Mr. Birney. He thought himself as thorough as it was possible for any man to be in the cause. He had labored for its success wherever he went. “I have,” said he, “pleaded for it in stage-coaches and steam-boats. I have argued in its behalf in conversation. I have never yet introduced it into my pulpit:—if I had done so, I should have grieved away some of my best people.”
A condemnation was, notwithstanding, expressed against the idea that one man’s wishes or sense of propriety, are the proper measure of the rights and duties of another.
Being thus hindered in their attempt to change the nature and foundation principles of the Massachusetts Society, the appellants strove to destroy it by forming a new organization on the basis of sectarianism, to be auxiliary to the National Society. Mr. Phelps, though somewhat disappointed at the result of the whole campaign, in the utter discomfiture of clerical abolitionism, and vexed that the Massachusetts abolitionists insisted upon evidence of repentance from the clerical appellants, before again placing confidence in them, was still not quite prepared to relinquish his hold upon the old society.
This unwillingness was strengthened by the fact, that the strings of management of the new one were not proffered to his hands. When he learned that the call for a convention to form it was not a free and general one, but limited to those who were quite decided to quit the Massachusetts Society, and that the important arrangements were all to be settled beforehand, and only the trifling details left to the discretion of the Convention; then, and not till then, he publicly warned abolitionists against putting themselves to the trouble of “doing up Mr. Somebody’s details,” and expressed the hope that the few towns in the Commonwealth that had responded to the new movement, might remain as they were, a few. Orange Scott, one of the most conspicuous of the Methodist abolitionists, exclaimed against the narrow exclusive dividing spirit which was at work, and zealously defended the common cause from its attacks.
Their advice, with the indefatigable labors of Mr. Garrison, cast a damp upon the embryo mischief. But, excited, as Mr. Phelps’s sympathies had been, for his clerical brethren, and alarmed as he had felt at the outcry of heresy they had raised against Mr. Garrison, he could not go on in the work, as aforetime, with a free, untroubled soul. He had previously entered into a correspondence with Professor Smyth, of Maine, a friend of the clerical appeal, respecting the necessity of reforming the Massachusetts Society of its characteristic freedom, and the means by which that reform could be effected without alarming the sagacious watchfulness of Mr. Garrison;[1] and at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Society, warmly opposed that part of the annual report which condemned the appeal as treacherous to the cause.
Events seldom pass for what they are worth, at the time they transpire; and these signs and tokens
“———————which denoted
A hot friend cooling,——”
seemed inconsequential to most of those who observed them. The abolitionists had reposed unbounded confidence in Mr. Phelps, and could not brook to have their souls darkened by suspicion of one so well beloved. In watching the train of human events, how often are we admonished to praise no man unreservedly while yet he lives;—to rest our hearts upon no human excellence that is not
“Hallowed, and guarded from all change by death.”
We must pause here, and settle in our memories the positions of individuals and societies at this period, if we would understand the times which come after. We must take the bearings and distances of the cause in 1837, if we would possess a chart for our safe guidance among the shoals and quicksands of 1839.
First, let us note the position of the Executive Committee at New York. Blind to the crisis or unequal to it, they labored to preserve neutrality in a case involving the preservation or the sacrifice of principle; and pronounced the whole affair to be “entirely local—a mere Boston controversy.” Of the three tests of fidelity, they stood firm under the application of but two. They were untrue to principles in keeping silence at such a moment, but they were not positively and openly faithless to men, and they vindicated the broad platform of the original Anti-Slavery agreement. They perceived the derangement that a hostile and proscriptive organization in Massachusetts would occasion in the whole Anti-Slavery system of organized action and did not recognize any such society as a part of the affiliation. But the feebleness that marked their course, at that trying crisis, deprived them of the perfect love and confidence that had till then been felt in them by all the abolitionists. This feebleness and neutrality was, however, a recommendation to those whose estimation is a dispraise. The opposer of the cause instinctively felt that, without any change in his own position, the distance between himself and the New York Committee was somewhat lessened: while the devoted friends were made aware that that committee, notwithstanding its activity in keeping in motion the smaller machinery of the cause, and its ability in conducting the tract and book department, was yet the weak point of the whole Anti-Slavery array. All attentive beholders, whether friends or foes, were taught, by the observation of this period, that the machinery of organization, with all its systematized and mechanical helps, must be utterly unequal to obtain emancipation, unless freedom be the moving “spirit within the wheels;”—that, however efficient may be the appliances and means that money can set in motion, there are moments when one trumpet-blast of victorious truth, were worth them all. The friends in Massachusetts in vain continued to “look southward with upbraiding eye;”—there was no voice nor any that answered to their condemnation of the base metal which could not stand the furnace of the times. They therefore made their own expression of opinion the more emphatic, and their own testimony the more clear.
The Boston Female Society bore faithful witness to the truth, notwithstanding the reluctance of its President, Vice-President, Treasurer, and Recording Secretary. These officers ran well while they fancied the enterprise under the blessing and direction of a portion of the ministry. But, no sooner did it appear that they must advance alone and self-sustained, than they turned to flight, and from that moment became, in their measure, an obstacle to the cause, and a detriment to the society hitherto so active.
Let us give one more glance at the position of individuals at this period.
The appellants, recreant to the three grounds of fidelity in the Anti-Slavery cause, fidelity to the principles—to the platform—and to their comrades, were announcing their intention to weep in secret places. Mr. Phelps, faithful to the first ground, but treacherous to the two last, was endeavoring, unknown to his comrades of the Massachusetts Board, to change the original character of the Society, and at the same time to sustain the office of its General Agent. Mr. Stanton, the most prominent Agent of the New York Committee in Massachusetts, was wanting to the fundamental principle of immediateism, in keeping silence on the first ground of the appeal;—to the mutual agreement that all sects were, in the Anti-Slavery cause, on a common platform, in keeping silence on the second ground of the appeal; and to his brethren personally, in silently seeing them attacked without standing with them on the defensive. Instead of this three-fold fidelity, he was declaring it to be impossible to “screw every body up to this high notch;” and therefore it had better not be attempted, as the work would be done at last by men who had not this devoted love for the cause, from political and interested motives; and that the requisition of higher ones, would certainly occasion division. The faithful in the cause were earnestly urging him, and all who were thus wanting to the right, to insist on the most impregnable fidelity and the most unshaken constancy, as the only aid worth having, and the only means of holding the mastery over policy and selfishness; and solemnly warning him that, when that division, to which he alluded, should take place, the short-sighted, the weak, the faltering, the treacherous, the unprincipled, the base, would fall back together; while the deep-thinking, the strong, the resolute, the faithful, the well-grounded, the noble-souled, would close up and press onward.
The position of the Massachusetts Society only remains to be considered. It ceased to defray the expenses of the Liberator from its treasury, though most of the members would have rejoiced to continue to do so. But they respected the consciences of the minority, very few as they believed those to be who honestly opposed the paper, and determined, since freedom only could obtain freedom, at all events to avoid the absurdity of infringing on religious liberty.
They concurred with Mr. Garrison in the opinion that the efficacy of the paper and the consistency of the society would be best preserved by the cessation of the pecuniary connection, if it gave pain or embarrassment to the mind of a single contributor to the funds.
This did not greatly mend the matter to those who profaned the sacred name of conscience, by making it a cloak for malice and for weakness. Still Mordecai sat in the king’s gate—still it was the abolition of Massachusetts which sustained the Liberator.
The Society received the natural reward of its faithfulness, in the increase of its strength. Full of cheerful constancy, and reposing undiminished confidence in its General Agent, whose short-comings were known to but few, it pursued its course, rejoicing in freedom, with renewed determination to impart her life-giving influence to the enslaved. At the annual meeting of the National Society, an arrangement was made to obviate that clashing of the fiscal concerns and the interference of agents with each other’s track, which had been so troublesome from the first. By this arrangement, no agents were to labor in Massachusetts but in connection with the wishes of the State Board of officers, and under their direction. With this understanding, ten thousand dollars, were to be raised during the year, in this State, in quarterly payments, for the central treasury at New York. Having thus cast aside every weight and besetting sin, the society girt itself afresh, to run with patient swiftness the race set before it.