Maria Weston Chapman

“ Those sacred and fundamental principles found a response in the land, though the hearts from which it came, were few and far between. The New England Anti-Slavery Society was formed; and as man after man planted himself by the side of Garrison and Knapp, a sense of duty seemed to pervade the soul of each—the duty of promulgating the truth of whose beauty and necessity his soul was then made sensible. The Liberator was not their organ, in an official sense,—but how could they conscientiously do otherwise than sustain the instrumentality which their own experience had proved so effectual? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every body was, in some way or other, actively or passively, sustaining slavery; yet every body disclaimed all responsibility for its existence, opposed all efforts for its extinction, and was ‘as much anti-slavery as any body else.’ Even the natural and kindly tide of human sympathy for [Pg 4] suffering, was turned away from the service of Freedom by the Colonization Society. The moving principles of Northern and Southern life, had become inseparably mingled below the surface of events, like the roots of giant trees beneath the soil. ”

“ The time has come for men to look their terrors for the future in the face. A little thought will show them thus much at least;—that it is no sin against an anti-slavery society, to apply, in another association, the peaceful principles by which it is proposed to abolish slavery, to the sins involved in existing governments or sacerdocies. If institutions, religious or political, are unable to stand the test of such an application, that, in the opinion of some, is the fault of the institutions. ”

“ The hostility of its founders to the Massachusetts Society—the difference it had made as to the fundamental principles, the exclusiveness of its foundation—its mathematical position, working the same derangement in the anti-slavery system as a new planet in the orbit of the earth might do in the solar system,—all forbade it fraternal greeting or long life.
The course the New York Committee should take in action, would be the measure of their own worth to the cause. So opposite were these two Societies, that one or the other must needs be unworthy of the affiliation. ”

“ Custom is never, by her nature, the handmaid of freedom; and therefore in a struggle for the extinction of slavery, if we speak only according to custom, we shall lose the unhesitating distinctness which the occasions of the cause demand. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But every thoughtful and honest mind, whether its anchor have “entered into that which is within the veil” or not, feels called by its allegiance to freedom, instantly to resist any attempt to make one man accountable to another for the progress of his mind. This same allegiance to the foundation principle of inalienable human rights, warns a man against laboring to prevent woman from standing upon it, if such should be her determination. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She may, in his opinion, be sinning against propriety—sinning against Paul, by acting in anti-slavery societies: but he himself sins against freedom in striving for her exclusion; and any act against freedom, is treason to the slave.
Men whose principles, thus imperfectly developed, are at war with each other, will, in all probability, become worse in their last state than [Pg 157] in their first, especially if they are yielding not so much to their own convictions as to the pretexts in which a public abstractly opposed to slavery, is fain to clothe its hatred to a real opposition. ”

“ May every one of them yet be enabled to see that any infringement of the principles of Freedom, is a hindrance to the emancipation of the slave, not to be removed by thousands of gold and silver, or the mightiest physical array. ”

“ These are its principles;—frank, fearless single-heartedness, the utmost freedom of thought and speech, its characteristics. If we fail to impress these on each abolition heart, our efforts are paralyzed, and our cause is lost. Pride of settled opinion, love of lifeless forms, undue attachments to sect, are its foes.
With the fullest charity for all conscientious [Pg 89] scruples, and dissenting, as I do, from the peace-views of the Liberator, I cannot see how their discussion, conducted in a Christian spirit, and with sincere love of truth, can offend the conscience of any man. ”

“ The faithful, undismayed by treachery, undeterred by obloquy and persecution, unshaken by abuse, strengthened by experience, relying neither on a pro-slavery church, government, or ministry, but on GOD, and themselves as his ready instruments, have bound themselves more firmly to the cause and to each other, and are laboring with increased ardor in the promulgation of the truth which alone can save this slaveholding people. ”

“ Even “more Anti-Slavery than any one, but hate Mr. Garrison.” Through all their various phases of Colonizationists, American Unionists, Clerical Appellants, new organizationists, their moving spirit is the same;—hatred of the freedom that defies their control. Even while professing to be laboring for emancipation, they have always been careful to express their hatred of the free spirit in which abolitionists carry on the enterprize. It must needs be so. There is eternal enmity between the spirit which prompts a man to strive for the mastery, and the spirit which calls no man master. ”

“ We have all denied that might makes right, and asserted the supremacy of moral power; and yet some are standing in terror-stricken astonishment that the “woman question” is stirred in every heart; and “other some” are persecuting and forsaking their brethren, because the examination and application of principles, though limited in the anti-slavery society by the terms of association, cannot be stayed in men’s minds or individual lives. ”

“ They had never said more, during their whole eight years’ existence as a Society, than that they would not vote for slavery; and they saw too plainly the motives of this novel demand for a resolution worded affirmatively. Neither had they been so bitterly reproached with the introduction of foreign subjects, without learning that the word “duty” or the word “ought,” in relation to forms of civil or church government, on which abolitionists so widely differ, must necessarily open the discussion of the whole vast subject of human society in all its aspects. ”

“ The minority of the Society, who were neither ignorant nor unprepared, and who neither grudged their time nor themselves wholly, when the Anti-Slavery cause called for the sacrifice, were much pained to find that into this little sluice, opened at the time of the clerical appeal, had rushed the cold and bitter waters of indifference, and sectarism and chicanery, in a flood that threatened to sink the little vessel that had, in earlier days, done good service to the cause. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When such lose their confidence in the identity of the principles of freedom, with those of order and Christianity, they are disunited in soul from those who are pressing forward with undiminished confidence; and to disguise their change of feeling they sacrifice their integrity. ”

“ For, by “hanging Garrison,” and repudiating the Liberator, they will surely condescend to take the reins of anti-slavery management into their own hands!
The plot, thus far, has been warily managed,—so as, if possible, to “deceive the very elect.” Many, we know, are already ensnared, and some, at least, who neither intend nor suspect mischief. The guise in which it is presented, is one of deep solicitude for the success of our cause. ”

“ A need may exist which I do not perceive. Brethren tell me that there is such a need. I only say that to make such a paper the organ of the Society, and to sustain it at the expense of the Society, over the head of the Liberator would have a tendency to injure the latter. I do not say that gentlemen mean it. They tell us they abjure such a thought. But it is a maxim in law, that the purpose of a man’s acts must be presumed to correspond with their manifest tendency.”
Wendell Phillips argued earnestly against the first resolution. ”

“ President, is an arduous and thankless one. He must shield his friends by movements for which they will be apt to censure him. He must save the cause by the very blows from which the apparently judicious will anticipate its annihilation. He must stand on an eminence from which he can see what other men cannot see. He must be eyes to the blind, whose want of eye-sight will lead them to make war upon their benefactor. ”

“ It would have been impossible, at this moment, to have procured the passage of any resolution whatever, on which the opposition might build enginery by which to cast reproach upon any faithful abolitionist. So plainly had they exhibited their hearts, even while professing the greatest regard for the Society and all its members, that men’s common sense forbade them to afford any facilities for such a purpose. ”

“ Discussion of collateral subjects is often salutary and necessary in our associations; but to a decision upon them, by which new tests of membership are introduced, no anti-slavery society is competent. It ceases to be an anti-slavery society from the moment it assumes to decide upon opinions respecting governments or churches.
No man is required, as an abolitionist, to endorse or oppose governments or church establishments. ”

“ Disconcerted as the exclusive councils of the framers of the new organization had frequently been by the intrusive “common people,” they took, from that experience, a hint in modelling their new constitution. Not every one who signed it was to be permitted to vote in their Society, however strictly his vote might be required of him at the polls. Only one gentleman for every twenty-five members was to have the privilege of uniting with the officers and agents of the Society in the transaction of business. ”

“ Is there a being on earth, the most degraded even of the miserable slaves, whose souls are left to perish, who cannot see the inconsistency, the absurdity, the hypocrisy of this? Is God a fool, to be thus mocked? Sir, I will raise my voice against such hypocrisy as long as I live. ”

“ All moral questions are by their nature inseparable, in any other than a mechanical sense, and while we sedulously keep them thus mechanically separate, because to do otherwise would be a sin against the freedom of others, and a betrayal of their confidence, we feel it to be no less a sin against freedom for others to impede any man’s course with reproach, on account of this eternal decree of God’s providence. ”

“ Herald of Freedom—to be issued every week to subscribers—to be exclusively confined to slavery and abolition—to urge constantly, political as well as moral and religious action—to be edited by some able, efficient man, who can conscientiously and heartily advocate all these points—and to be under the entire control of the Executive Committee of the State Society. ”

“ Friends and co-laborers for freedom! We have now a new and indispensable, though painful duty to perform. Our foes have hitherto been without the pale of the associations: we have now found the most deadly within. ”

“ In their progress through the country on anti-slavery missions, the agents of the Massachusetts [Pg 57] 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.” ”

“ It is all right. * * * The Church that does not pronounce slavery a sin, and deal with its members, who refuse to confess and forsake it, in effect, licenses slavery. It stands as the virtual endorser of the crime. If men are robbed of the Bible, and of all knowledge of letters; if parents are punished, as felons, for teaching their own children the alphabet, and the Church does nothing, then the Church, by its silence, endorses it, and declares it is all right. ”