My Bondage and My Freedom
thoroughly embraced the principles of justice, love, and liberty, like
the true preacher of Christianity, is less anxious to reproach the
world of its sins, than to win it to repentance. His great work on
earth is to exemplify, and to illustrate, and to ingraft those
principles upon the living and practical understandings of all men
within the reach of his influence. This is his work; long or short his
years, many or few his adherents, powerful or weak his
instrumentalities, through good report, or through bad report, this is
his work. It is to snatch from the bosom of nature the latent facts of
each individual man’s experience, and with steady hand to hold them up
fresh and glowing, enforcing, with all his power, their acknowledgment
and practical adoption. If there be but _one_ such man in the land, no
matter what becomes of abolition societies and parties, there will be
an anti-slavery cause, and an anti-slavery movement. Fortunately for
that cause, and fortunately for him by whom it is espoused, it requires
no extraordinary amount of talent to preach it or to receive it when
preached. The grand secret of its power is, that each of its principles
is easily rendered appreciable to the faculty of reason in man, and
that the most unenlightened conscience has no difficulty in deciding on
which side to register its testimony. It can call its preachers from
among the fishermen, and raise them to power. In every human breast, it
has an advocate which can be silent only when the heart is dead. It
comes home to every man’s understanding, and appeals directly to every
man’s conscience. A man that does not recognize and approve for himself
the rights and privileges contended for, in behalf of the American
slave, has not yet been found. In whatever else men may differ, they
are alike in the apprehension of their natural and personal rights. The
difference between abolitionists and those by whom they are opposed, is
not as to principles. All are agreed in respect to these. The manner of
applying them is the point of difference.
The slaveholder himself, the daily robber of his equal brother,
discourses eloquently as to the excellency of justice, and the man who
employs a brutal driver to flay the flesh of his negroes, is not
offended when kindness and humanity are commended. Every time the
abolitionist speaks of justice, the anti-abolitionist assents says,
yes, I wish the world were filled with a disposition to render to every
man what is rightfully due him; I should then get what is due me.
That’s right; let us have justice. By all means, let us have justice.
Every time the abolitionist speaks in honor of human liberty, he
touches a chord in the heart of the anti-abolitionist, which responds
in harmonious vibrations. Liberty—yes, that is evidently my right, and
let him beware who attempts to invade or abridge that right. Every time
he speaks of love, of human brotherhood, and the reciprocal duties of
man and man, the anti-abolitionist assents—says, yes, all right—all
true—we cannot have such ideas too often, or too fully expressed. So he
says, and so he feels, and only shows thereby that he is a man as well
as an anti-abolitionist. You have only to keep out of sight the manner
of applying your principles, to get them endorsed every time.
Contemplating himself, he sees truth with absolute clearness and
distinctness. He only blunders when asked to lose sight of himself. In
his own cause he can beat a Boston lawyer, but he is dumb when asked to
plead the cause of others. He knows very well whatsoever he would have
done unto himself, but is quite in doubt as to having the same thing
done unto others. It is just here, that lions spring up in the path of
duty, and the battle once fought in heaven is refought on the earth. So
it is, so hath it ever been, and so must it ever be, when the claims of
justice and mercy make their demand at the door of human selfishness.
Nevertheless, there is that within which ever pleads for the right and
the just.
In conclusion, I have taken a sober view of the present anti-slavery
movement. I am sober, but not hopeless. There is no denying, for it is
everywhere admitted, that the anti-slavery question is the great moral
and social question now before the American people. A state of things
has gradually been developed, by which that question has become the
first thing in order. It must be met. Herein is my hope. The great idea
of impartial liberty is now fairly before the American people.
Anti-slavery is no longer a thing to be prevented. The time for
prevention is past. This is great gain. When the movement was younger
and weaker—when it wrought in a Boston garret to human apprehension, it
might have been silently put out of the way. Things are different now.
It has grown too large—its friends are too numerous—its facilities too
abundant—its ramifications too extended—its power too omnipotent, to be
snuffed out by the contingencies of infancy. A thousand strong men
might be struck down, and its ranks still be invincible. One flash from
the heart-supplied intellect of Harriet Beecher Stowe could light a
million camp fires in front of the embattled host of slavery, which not
all the waters of the Mississippi, mingled as they are with blood,
could extinguish. The present will be looked to by after coming
generations, as the age of anti-slavery literature—when supply on the
gallop could not keep pace with the ever growing demand—when a picture
of a Negro on the cover was a help to the sale of a book—when
conservative lyceums and other American literary associations began
first to select their orators for distinguished occasions from the
ranks of the previously despised abolitionists. If the anti-slavery
movement shall fail now, it will not be from outward opposition, but
from inward decay. Its auxiliaries are everywhere. Scholars, authors,
orators, poets, and statesmen give it their aid. The most brilliant of
American poets volunteer in its service. Whittier speaks in burning
verse to more than thirty thousand, in the National Era. Your own
Longfellow whispers, in every hour of trial and disappointment, “labor
and wait.” James Russell Lowell is reminding us that “men are more than
institutions.” Pierpont cheers the heart of the pilgrim in search of
liberty, by singing the praises of “the north star.” Bryant, too, is
with us; and though chained to the car of party, and dragged on amidst
a whirl of political excitement, he snatches a moment for letting drop
a smiling verse of sympathy for the man in chains. The poets are with
us. It would seem almost absurd to say it, considering the use that has
been made of them, that we have allies in the Ethiopian songs; those
songs that constitute our national music, and without which we have no
national music. They are heart songs, and the finest feelings of human
nature are expressed in them. “Lucy Neal,” “Old Kentucky Home,” and
“Uncle Ned,” can make the heart sad as well as merry, and can call
forth a tear as well as a smile. They awaken the sympathies for the
slave, in which antislavery principles take root, grow, and flourish.
In addition to authors, poets, and scholars at home, the moral sense of
the civilized world is with us. England, France, and Germany, the three
great lights of modern civilization, are with us, and every American
traveler learns to regret the existence of slavery in his country. The
growth of intelligence, the influence of commerce, steam, wind, and
lightning are our allies. It would be easy to amplify this summary, and
to swell the vast conglomeration of our material forces; but there is a
deeper and truer method of measuring the power of our cause, and of
comprehending its vitality. This is to be found in its accordance with
the best elements of human nature. It is beyond the power of slavery to
annihilate affinities recognized and established by the Almighty. The
slave is bound to mankind by the powerful and inextricable net-work of
human brotherhood. His voice is the voice of a man, and his cry is the
cry of a man in distress, and man must cease to be man before he can
become insensible to that cry. It is the righteous of the cause—the
humanity of the cause—which constitutes its potency. As one genuine
bankbill is worth more than a thousand counterfeits, so is one man,
with right on his side, worth more than a thousand in the wrong. “One
may chase a thousand, and put ten thousand to flight.” It is,
therefore, upon the goodness of our cause, more than upon all other
auxiliaries, that we depend for its final triumph.
Another source of congratulations is the fact that, amid all the
efforts made by the church, the government, and the people at large, to
stay the onward progress of this movement, its course has been onward,
steady, straight, unshaken, and unchecked from the beginning. Slavery
has gained victories large and numerous; but never as against this
movement—against a temporizing policy, and against northern timidity,
the slave power has been victorious; but against the spread and
prevalence in the country, of a spirit of resistance to its aggression,
and of sentiments favorable to its entire overthrow, it has yet
accomplished nothing. Every measure, yet devised and executed, having
for its object the suppression of anti-slavery, has been as idle and
fruitless as pouring oil to extinguish fire. A general rejoicing took
place on the passage of “the compromise measures” of 1850. Those
measures were called peace measures, and were afterward termed by both
the great parties of the country, as well as by leading statesmen, a
final settlement of the whole question of slavery; but experience has
laughed to scorn the wisdom of pro-slavery statesmen; and their final
settlement of agitation seems to be the final revival, on a broader and
grander scale than ever before, of the question which they vainly
attempted to suppress forever. The fugitive slave bill has especially
been of positive service to the anti-slavery movement. It has
illustrated before all the people the horrible character of slavery
toward the slave, in hunting him down in a free state, and tearing him
away from wife and children, thus setting its claims higher than
marriage or parental claims. It has revealed the arrogant and
overbearing spirit of the slave states toward the free states;
despising their principles—shocking their feelings of humanity, not
only by bringing before them the abominations of slavery, but by
attempting to make them parties to the crime. It has called into
exercise among the colored people, the hunted ones, a spirit of manly
resistance well calculated to surround them with a bulwark of sympathy
and respect hitherto unknown. For men are always disposed to respect
and defend rights, when the victims of oppression stand up manfully for
themselves.
There is another element of power added to the anti-slavery movement,
of great importance; it is the conviction, becoming every day more
general and universal, that slavery must be abolished at the south, or
it will demoralize and destroy liberty at the north. It is the nature
of slavery to beget a state of things all around it favorable to its
own continuance. This fact, connected with the system of bondage, is
beginning to be more fully realized. The slave-holder is not satisfied
to associate with men in the church or in the state, unless he can
thereby stain them with the blood of his slaves. To be a slave-holder
is to be a propagandist from necessity; for slavery can only live by
keeping down the under-growth morality which nature supplies. Every
new-born white babe comes armed from the Eternal presence, to make war
on slavery. The heart of pity, which would melt in due time over the
brutal chastisements it sees inflicted on the helpless, must be