THE PLOT.
Our plot is as good a plot as ever was laid; our friends true and constant; a good plot, good friends, and full of expectations: an excellent plot; very good friends. * * * Why my lord of YORK commends the plot, and the general course of the action.
SHAKSPEARE.
The difficulties of writing the history of the past, are greatly enhanced by the scantiness of the materials: our own contemporaneous history on the contrary, seems clogged with their abundance. So many simultaneous events, seemingly of small consequence, yet all having an important bearing on each other, and proving, in reality, the hinges on which the more conspicuous ones turn;—so many threads, which the insufficiency of narration at once to combine, compels the writer to drop for a time, although he must finally travel back to pick them up, or the connections of things will but imperfectly appear;—no wonder if the Mexican method of preserving the memory of events by pictures, should seem preferable to our own. A succession of paintings seems capable of presenting a much clearer view of contemporaneous transactions, than any arrangement of pages. “Narrative is linear—action is solid;” and we must overcome the difficulties of conveying the latter through means of the former, as best we may.
The spirit of Freedom had, by the energy of its advent, struck terror into the world that comprehended it not. The attempts to check its advance by means of mobs, were but as the spur in a victorious charge. The policy of the foes of Freedom became more subtle. It was now their aim, by counterfeiting the voice of truth, by continually substituting a false issue for the real one, and by assuming the guise of zeal for the institutions of religion and government, to operate influentially and as a check upon the abolition mind.—Though their first attempt, developed in the preceding chapter, was, on the whole, a signal failure, owing to the devoted love of abolitionists for their cause and for each other, yet the hatred of the New England opposition seemed to deepen as the increase of light and love exposed its malignity. The position of the ministry, generally, grew more and more uneasy, as the discrepancy between their claims as ambassadors of Christ, and the character of their lives as opposed to the requisitions of his gospel, became apparent.
They had, from the very commencement of the agitation, professed themselves abolitionists in the abstract, and met the charge of inconsistency in their practice by strong disapprobation of Mr. Garrison. One might have thought, from their representations, that Mr. Garrison possessed a power over their course, by which he could actually hinder them from doing right. They addressed themselves to the work of communicating their own prejudices to the minds of their congregations, and greatly misrepresented both Mr. Garrison and the Liberator. The most false and derogatory reports were circulated as to his Christian and moral character. His blameless and excellent life nullified these efforts with all who knew him; but it is not wonderful that they should have taken effect in minds at a distance, whose only avenues to information were the ones which this malicious course choked up. It was unhesitatingly affirmed that the object of the Liberator was to abolish the office of the ministry; though its pages were searched in vain for any evidence of such an object. Nothing could there be found but proofs that slavery had disqualified the great majority of the incumbents of that office from exercising it.
It was triumphantly told that the Massachusetts Society had dropped the Liberator—that Mr. Garrison was a Fanny Wright man—an infidel—a Sabbath-breaker—a bad and dangerous man—promulgating the doctrines of the French Jacobins, &c. &c.
An outcry was raised by the enemy without the camp, which was responded to by the confederates within, that Mr. Garrison was loading the cause with a burden of extraneous topics. All the careful observers of the movement were aware of the falsity of this allegation, and testified to his habitual avoidance of such topics in Anti-Slavery meetings.
In fact, such discussions were always introduced by those who complained of them the loudest. All the anti-slavery editors were in the allowed practice of incidentally introducing their own religious and other opinions, notwithstanding their papers were the organs of State Societies, and therefore bound to more caution. But it was made a subject of accusation against Mr. Garrison when he did the same, though his paper was his own, and he introduced no subjects into it unless they had a practical bearing on the cause, and were at the same time considered debateable in all sects. Others might introduce column after column of extraneous matter: he was publicly accused, for a single line. Special efforts were made to induce men to cease to subscribe for the Liberator. It was, like Socrates, termed a corrupter of youth. Men of high ecclesiastical standing declared that they, though “as much abolitionists as any one else,” would never unite with the movement for abolition, as long as Mr. Garrison led the van.
The Rev. Joel Hawes, D. D., of Connecticut, was one of these. Judging of them from their ominous silence, when sectarianism had been most violent in its attacks on the integrity of the cause, he felt a drawing towards the Executive Committee at New York, and fancied them altogether such ones as himself.
His adhesion had been hailed with joy by abolitionists. They soon found reason to know that such adherents are more ruinous than open enemies, to the cause they espouse.
He travelled in Massachusetts, shortly after the New England Convention of 1838, memorable as the scene of the first attempt to exclude women from membership in anti-slavery meetings.
A number of clergymen of his own denomination, headed by Mr. Torrey and Mr. Phelps, had most inconsistently labored to vote away the freedom and the rights of the female members of that Convention. So indefinite were their ideas on the whole great subject of rights, that they overlooked the obvious thought, that no general anti-slavery convocation could take such ground without denying the fundamental principle that brought them together. In the horror of their great darkness on the subject of “woman’s rights,” they trampled on human rights, and the rights of membership, in the persons of those women whom they labored to exclude.
They also deeply wounded the feelings of the great body of the men there present; few of whom but had occasion to acknowledge, with grateful affection and respect, how much a mother, wife or sister had done, in the difficult years that were past, to help and strengthen them in the labors and sacrifices of the cause.
Women are so accustomed to suffering under the many indignities which men unconsciously inflict, that in this instance they felt less keenly for themselves than did their brethren for them, the tyrannical attempt to assume their responsibilities.
The refusal of the Convention to eject them from their seats, with the excellent memorial of its Committee, Mr. Johnson, Miss Kelley and Mr. St. Clair, to the ecclesiastical associations of New-England, excited much indignation among the ministry, with which Dr. Hawes was in a state of mind to sympathize. After his return to Connecticut, he stated, in a letter to a friend, that he had recently visited Massachusetts, and conversed with several leading abolitionists there: that in reference to the doings of the New England Convention, they declared that “they could no longer work in such a team,” and that, unless the Massachusetts Society would take ground in opposition to this action of the Convention, there must and should be a new organization. Dr. Hawes added, that if he resided in Massachusetts he should be with them in favor of such a movement.
One spark of true love of Freedom—the feeblest real desire to impart it to the enslaved, would have overpowered, in his heart, this spirit of the clerical appeal, and forbade him to identify himself with any such effort to subvert the broad foundations of the cause or to exclude any who had borne the burden and heat of the earlier abolition day.
Notwithstanding all the efforts of calumny, bigotry and tyranny, Mr. Garrison still led the van. There was no help for it. It was a necessity growing out of the nature of the case, and which could not be avoided, however much the foe might desire it, and the false friends labor to accommodate them. There is an efficacy in treacherous concealment, to “be-darken and confound the mind of man,” or these Parleys and Flatterwells must have discerned the philosophical impossibility. But, failing to do so, they went on with their secret devices.
In all these efforts, the friends of the clerical appeal joined with great zeal. They had announced the intention of weeping in secret places, because of its ill success. They were better than their word; not only weeping, but laboring in secret places. Mr. Torrey, who had, in the mean time removed from Providence to Salem, was particularly active. He instituted a vigorous secret correspondence to facilitate the establishment of a new anti-slavery paper in Massachusetts. He was now the Secretary of the Essex Co. Society, and, as such, used all the influence in his power to misrepresent and injure the Liberator; he intimated that Mr. Garrison had become insufferably idle and negligent, that his paper was left to printer’s boys and any body to fill up, that it was demoralizing in its tendency and miserably deficient in talent; and in conformity with these declarations, he instructed the agents of the county society to recommend other papers in the towns where they labored. Having done this, he urged the necessity of a new paper, because there was such a prejudice against the Liberator, that it was impossible to get it into sufficient circulation, even to advertise the county meetings.
He was aided in sowing the new-paper seed, by Mr. Phelps and Mr. St. Clair. The latter will be recollected as the neophyte of the Massachusetts Annual Meeting of 1837. The apparent sincerity and heartiness of his appearance there had recommended him to an agency. His summary absolution of all the sins of the Liberator, past, present, and to come, was pardoned, as prompted by a good feeling, though too carelessly expressed.[2] It seemed impossible to believe that he was insincere, though certainly indiscreet.
In their progress through the country on anti-slavery missions, the agents of the Massachusetts Society never failed, from the beginning, to learn how hard it is to be reproached for a righteous man’s name’s sake. To appreciate the force of their temptation, let the beholder, for a moment, place himself in their situation. It is in the power of the minister in almost every parish, to procure them a hearing,—but he is in combination with his brethren to “put down Garrison.” Is it wonderful that, instead of silencing the bigot or the slanderer with the assertion “he is a good man and a faithful abolitionist, and his opinions on other subjects are no more our business than your own,” they should have striven to repel their assailants by endeavoring to draw a line of distinction between him and themselves? Parallel to this was the course of Peter; unrepented of, it deepens into the darker dye that marks a Judas.
When men who sought a pretence to avoid the consideration of the cause, were told that the Massachusetts Board of Managers differed as widely as themselves from Mr. Garrison’s opinions on other subjects, their intolerance forbade them to credit the statement. If the Agents ventured to cast freely off, in the name of the Society, all responsibility for Mr. Garrison’s individual opinions, and to vindicate the rectitude and energy of his abolition course from the beginning, they were obliged to endure the reproach of being “tools of Garrison,” and singing his praises, when they should rather be employed in removing such a stumbling-block out of the path of “good men.” A truly noble soul, thus spurred up to the encounter, would have exclaimed in the spirit of Bürger:—
“Thank Heaven for song and praise, that I can
Thus sing the song of the faithful man!”
The enemy, thus met, would have ceased to play so ineffectual a string; but, perceiving the weakness of the agents of this year, he never ceased to have recourse to it.
Let not those who have never been tried in such a furnace, condemn, without pardon and pity, those whose nobility of spirit was not equal to pass the assay.
There appears to have been, on the part of Mr. Phelps, and the other agents of this period, an inability to comprehend or appreciate the just and straight-forward course of the Massachusetts Board, with whom they were associated, as well as a consciousness that it would never permit its sanction to be used for their purposes. They therefore carefully kept their operations secret from the Board, while they were using its funds and sanction to carry them on, in conjunction with Mr. Torrey, and Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of the Executive Committee at New York. All the Summer and Autumn of 1838, the scheme for a new paper was thus secretly carried on. Mr. Torrey wrote afterwards to a friend, “the clergymen throughout the State have been sounded; and they are for it, to a man.”
The plan of a new paper, to be under their own dictation, and in an attitude of opposition to the man and to the paper whom their misrepresentations had made odious, could not fail to be approved by the ministry; but to abolitionists, a different form of introduction was found necessary. To them it was represented that it would aid the Liberator, and that possibly Mr. Garrison might be induced to become the editor. Its comparative cheapness, too, was an inducement to some honest minds, who were unaware of its purpose to effect a division in their ranks.
More than a year had elapsed since the clerical appeal conspiracy. Some of the appellants had become officers of county Societies. Certain of their brethren in spirit, as well as in the ministry, had taken the lead in town Societies;—a creeping movement was in this way going on among them, to get the control of the organizations; and, co-operating with it, were the young theologians who had aided the old attempt against the cause; now, some of them, as the occupants of pulpits, rejoicing in the opportunity to lend their aid to the new one.
Mr. Phelps, in whom general confidence was yet unimpaired, was every where warm in his eulogies of Mr. Torrey’s diligence in the cause. But those who had opportunities of observing his course closely, were made aware that mischief and diligence are by no means incompatible. His labors were unremitting to weaken the bonds of relationship between the County Society and the State Society. The abolitionists of Essex, generally, saw not the tendency and design of these efforts. They could be made without suspicion, as the National Society had ever been a favorite with Massachusetts men, with whom it originated, and who constitute the largest portion of its efficient members. Such men could not readily conceive of the possibility of acting in their County capacity or their National capacity, in opposition to themselves in their State capacity. But the active brains of the Secretary of the Executive Committee at New York, together with the Secretaries of the Massachusetts and the Essex County Societies, had devised and cherished the idea of such a change, though it would necessarily convert the affiliated Anti-Slavery system from a harmonious whole, into jarring and discordant divisions. A society had, before this, been formed in the western part of the State, to be directly auxiliary to the National Society. This circumstance was unnoticed at the time, except by a few, who waited for the light of future events by which to interpret its meaning.
Such disunion and derangement could not be easily effected in the region where the free spirit first laid the broad foundations of its organized action. It was necessary to cast about for some plausible ground on which to create division of feeling, and to proceed upon it with the utmost caution.
Public sentiment had become so far changed in Massachusetts by the eight years’ warfare of abolitionists, that ministers were almost as liable to public censure for an open pro-slavery course, as for an open advocacy of Freedom. They, of all men, were, in one sense, justified in the customary declaration that they were “as much anti-slavery as others;” for they kept careful watch of the times, that they might not vary from them materially. With all their prudence and caution, they found this double public a difficult monster to manage. Though, as a body, they had undergone no change of feeling, they perceived that their efforts to check the progress of Freedom, must be made more carefully than ever; and they adopted a tone of great solicitude for “the poor slave.”
Pity, even when unfeigned, is not principle, any more than “American Union”[3] was anti-slavery; and in this instance “poor slave” was but the synonym for hostility to the Massachusetts Society. Well has cant been called “the second power of a lie.”
The additional ground on which a division of feeling preparatory to the projected outward division was attempted, was the assertion, sedulously disseminated by Mr. St. Clair, Mr. Torrey, Mr. Stanton, and Mr. Phelps, that the Massachusetts Society was a “no-government Society.” Of this the only proof was, that it had not ostracised Mr. Garrison. It was argued that the Constitution of the Massachusetts Society required the use of every means sanctioned by law, humanity and religion; therefore Mr. Garrison and all other Non-Resistants who decline exercising the elective franchise, were, by the terms of the Constitution, excluded from the Society.
“Political action,” adverted to in the Constitution, now had a new definition affixed to it. It was defined by one of this new school to mean poll-itical action, or action at the polls.
This logic, though very efficacious among those who had rather see the battle rage round the polls than round the pulpit, produced but little effect on the real abolitionists. “Law and humanity and religion;” they said——“Well! these must, by the Constitution of the Society, conjunctively agree upon the means to be employed, and each man was of course to be his own judge of their requisitions; for there never would have been a Constitution or a Society on any other understanding. Law! Well; the law sanctions my restoration of a fugitive slave, should I deem such a propitiation of the master likely to produce a happy effect in hastening a general emancipation. Am I therefore bound to do it? No! for my humanity and religion interpose their veto. But, what if Mr. Garrison’s humanity and religion forbid him to vote? I cannot see why they should, but that’s his look-out as an individual—not mine as an abolitionist:—and the Constitution of the Massachusetts Society covers us both.”
Such plain blunt reasonings could put to flight the assumption that voting at the polls was a test of membership: but of course it did but increase the bitterness of feeling of those who sought a cause of offence against the Society, to find none.
That Mr. Garrison was personally aimed at, and the Massachusetts Society also, because it would not consent to his ignominious expulsion, no one doubted, who was at the receipt of clerical custom. The on dits were plentiful, authenticated and conclusive. “Garrison has too much influence,” said one. “We must take it down little by little.” “Have you got Garrison down yet?” said another; “we are ready to come in when he is out of the way.” “All the Massachusetts meetings are mere Garrison-glorifications,” said a third; “they forget the poor slave.” “Oh, the Massachusetts Society is the mere creature of Garrison,” said a fourth. “So many good abolitionists as there are in the State, opposed to him, why not get rid of him at once?” said the outside row. “All in good time—a new paper first, as the organ of the Society—and we can make advantageous changes in the Board of Managers also, as they wish to resign,”—replied the inner circle, that were most closely hemming round the Massachusetts Society, with hostility in the disguise of friendship.
Charitable judgment is an excellent thing. Possibly, Arnold thought that the revolutionary principles might be promoted by giving up Washington to the discontents of the factious, and the demands of the foe; and exactly the same possibility exists that these men of great professions and hitherto unattainted names, were sincere blunderers,—not treacherous apostates. An excellent thing in its place, is charitable judgment. Whether its place be to refuse to see or to sum up evidence, admits of controversy.
The accusations against the Massachusetts Society, however, appeared, on evidence, to be unfounded. Its Board of Managers had issued an address to abolitionists preparatory to the political campaign, and had concentrated their agents upon the fourth Congressional District, where the political parties were so nicely matched against each other, that the abolitionists, though but the dust of the balance, might, it was hoped, by successive defeats of the election, at length procure a candidate from one or the other party on whom they could unite. This one fact of the personal labors and concentration of effort for political effect on the part of the Managers of the Society, presented itself to every mind and neutralized the misrepresentations that were so industriously circulated. In reality, the whole force of the Society had been bent to this one point; and the Board, knowing that the County Societies were deeply pledged in the matter of funds, relied upon abolitionists in their county capacity to raise the money now due to the National Society, on the Massachusetts pledge.
At this juncture, one of the faithful friends in Andover, was startled by the reception of a letter from Mr. Torrey, so explicit as to rouse him at once to a perception of the meaning and tendencies of things, which, till then, had escaped his notice. The letter dwelt on the great influence of Mr. Garrison in Massachusetts, and thence argued that it would not be safe to attack him or the Liberator openly;—on the great need of a new paper;—which he, (Mr. Torrey) had ascertained by sounding the clergymen throughout the State; and they were for it to a man. “Now, Brother ——, have on a full delegation at the Annual Meeting, at 10 o’clock in the morning, prepared to stay two days. Have them pledged to go for the new paper, and to spar the annual report, and we will show them how it is done.”
Upon the reception of this letter, those who had been wont to keep watch and ward over the interests of the cause in Essex, met and decided to communicate instantly with other friends, that, if possible, the evil might be subdued in this stage of its progress.
Dr. Farnsworth, of Middlesex, with whose own observation and experience their intelligence harmonized, instantly suggested to Mr. Garrison the idea of removing all their pretensions for such a paper by issuing a small cheap sheet of exclusively Anti-Slavery matter. Mr. Garrison, from whom, though in almost daily communication with Mr. Phelps, Mr. St. Clair and Mr. Stanton, their whole plan had been carefully kept, could hardly credit so treacherous a proceeding.
Had an honest desire for a new paper been entertained, he, surely, whose note of joyous exultation had welcomed the appearance of every new anti-slavery periodical, should have been among the first whose aid was sought; and, that the plan had not reached his ears, seemed to him to prove conclusively, that at least those brethren of the Society with whom he had daily intercourse, could not be engaged in it. Relying on Dr. Farnsworth’s good judgment, he, however, decided to issue the specimen number of the periodical proposed.
But, as day after day brought fresh proof of a skilfully arranged plan of secret action against the Massachusetts Society, his mind misgave him as to the efficiency of any paper he might issue, to stay its progress, and he relinquished the idea.
Dr. Farnsworth, meanwhile, receiving no information of this, continued diligently to prepare the way in Middlesex County for the expected sheet. Of these labors, the enemies of the Liberator took advantage, and artfully represented his honest efforts for a paper which should subserve the pending election, and, at the same time remove all pretence for setting on foot an influence hostile to the Liberator, as a part of their own plan.
Singular symptoms were noticed in the political management of the Fourth District. Without consulting either the Massachusetts or the Middlesex County Board, Mr. Stanton undertook the task of determining on whom the abolitionists should scatter their votes. Somewhat remarkable was his selection of the Rev. J. T. Woodbury,—the man who, in 1836, had thrown down the gauntlet to the pro-slavery church; and, in 1837, lacked the moral force to sustain the pressure of the antagonism he had impulsively sought; the man against whose commission as a local agent by the New York Executive Committee, the Massachusetts Board formally remonstrated when they found him a participant in the clerical appeal.
Deeper solicitude for the cause would have shown him that men who fail in the “cushioned seat ecclesiastical,” cannot faithfully discharge the equally weighty responsibilities of the Congressional one. The evil considerations that temptingly beset the latter, are as numerous—their angelic disguises as complete. But Mr. Stanton’s own course, during that year, had not been such as to make his soul more keenly alive to the sacred beauty of fidelity.
Dr. Farnsworth’s continually increasing knowledge of the machinations now on foot, increased his sense of the necessity of a counteracting influence; and, with a faithfulness which was undamped by the apparent neglect which had met his first warning, he continued to urge on the members of the Massachusetts Board, the necessity of a new cheap periodical, as their organ, to be edited by Mr. Garrison; monthly if they thought best, though in his judgment a weekly issue would more effectually remove the pretences of those who were laboring for the destruction of the Liberator.
When this proposition was formally presented to the Board by Mr. Garrison, Mr. Phelps chanced to be absent; but Mr. Eayrs, a member with whom Mr. Phelps was on terms of confidence which he did not extend to all the other members, remarked that it would be better to postpone any action of this kind, as there would probably be changes in the Board at the annual meeting. So innocent were some of the members of the Board of any knowledge of what was practising against them, and so repugnant was suspicion to their natures, that those of them whose eyes had not been recently opened by personal experiences, honestly supposed that such a paper might satisfy the alleged demand; and, after a few days’ delay, on account of Mr. Phelps’s absence, it was decided to issue three thousand copies of a specimen number, Messrs. Garrison, Phillips and Quincy to be an editorial committee. On learning this, Mr. Phelps said, with much agitation, that such a paper would by no means answer the demand. His words and his manner were a sufficient assurance that the plot had gone too far to be arrested by any possible effort of the Massachusetts Board, and all their energies were now bent to the painful task of hastening its complete development.