The Underground Railroad
national army, of eleven colored regiments.
When, in November, 1863, the Port Royal Relief Committee was enlarged
into the Pennsylvania Freedman's Relief Association, Mr. McKim was made
its corresponding secretary. He had previously resigned his place in the
Anti-slavery Society, believing that that organization was near the end
of its usefulness.
EMINENT ANTI-SLAVERY MEN
In the freedmen's work, he traveled extensively, and worked hard,
establishing schools at the South and organizing public sentiment in the
free States. In the spring of 1865, he was made corresponding secretary
of the American Freedman's Commission, which he had helped to establish,
and took up his residence in the city of New York. This association was
afterwards amplified, in name and scope, into the American Freedman's
Union Commission, and Mr. McKim continued with it as corresponding
secretary, laboring for reconstruction by means of Freedman's schools,
and impartial popular education. On the 1st of July, 1869, the
Commission, by unanimous vote on his motion, disbanded, and handed over
the funds in its treasury to its constituent State associations. Mr.
McKim retired from his labors with impaired health, and has since taken
no open part in public affairs. He is one of the proprietors of the New
York _Nation_, in the establishment of which, he took an effective
interest.
Mr. McKim's long and assiduous career in the anti-slavery cause, has
given evidence of a peculiar fitness in him for the functions he
successively discharged. His influence upon men and the times, has been
less as a speaker, than as a writer, and perhaps still less as a writer
than as an organizer, a contriver of ways and means; fertile in
invention, prepared to take the initiative, and bringing to the
conversion of others, an earnestness of purpose and a force of language
that seldom failed of success. In an enterprise where theory and
sentiment were fully represented, and business capacity, and what is
called "practical sense," were comparatively rare, his talents were most
usefully employed; while, in periods of excitement--and when were such
wanting? his caution, sound judgment, and mental balance were qualities
hardly less needed or less important.
WILLIAM H. FURNESS, D.D.
Among the Abolitionists of Pennsylvania no man stands higher than Dr.
Furness; and no anti-slavery minister enjoys more universal respect. For
more than thirty years he bore faithful witness for the black man; in
season and out of season contending for his rights. When others deserted
the cause he stood firm; when associates in the ministry were silent he
spoke out. They defined their position by declaring themselves "as much
opposed to slavery as ever, but without sympathy for the abolitionists."
He defined his by showing himself more opposed to slavery than ever, and
fraternizing with the most hated and despised anti-slavery people.
Dr. Furness came into the cause when it was in its infancy, and had few
adherents. From that time till the day of its triumph he was one with
it, sharing in all its trials and vicissitudes. In the operations of the
Vigilance Committee he took the liveliest interest. Though not in form a
member he was one of its chief co-laborers. He brought it material aid
continually, and was one of its main reliances for outside support. His
quick sympathies were easily touched and when touched were sure to
prompt him to corresponding action. He would listen with moistened eyes
to a tale of outrage, and go away saying never a word. But the story of
wrong would work upon him; and through him upon others. His own feelings
were communicated to his friends, and his friends would send gifts to
the Committee's treasury. A wider spread sympathy would manifest itself
in the community, and the general interests of the cause be visibly
promoted. It was in the latter respect, that of moral co-operation, that
Dr. Furness's services were most valuable. After hearing a harrowing
recital, whether he would or not, it became the burden of his next
Sunday's sermon. Abundant proof of this may be found in his printed
discourses. Take the following as an illustration. It is an extract from
a sermon delivered on the 29th of May, 1854, a period when the slave
oligarchy was at the height of its power and was supported at the North
by the most violent demonstrations of sympathy. The text was, "Feed my
Lambs:"
"And now brothers, sisters, children, give me your hearts,
listen with a will to what I have to say. As heaven is my
witness, I would not utter one word save for the dear love of
Christ and of God, and the salvation of your own souls. Does it
require any violent effort of the mind to suppose Christ to
address each one of us personally the same question that He put
to Peter, 'Lovest thou me?' * * * And at the hearing of His
brief command, 'Feed my lambs,' so simple, so direct, so
unqualified, are we prompted like the teacher of the law who,
when Christ bade him love his neighbor as himself, asked, 'And
who is my neighbor?' and in the parable of the good Samaritan,
received an answer that the Samaritans whom he despised, just as
we despise the African, was his neighbor, are we prompted in
like manner to ask, 'Who are the lambs of Christ?' Who are His
lambs? Behold that great multitude, more than three millions of
men and feeble women and children, wandering on our soil; no not
wandering, but chained down, not allowed to stir a step at their
own free will, crushed and hunted with all the power of one of
the mightiest nations that the world has yet seen, wielded to
keep them down in the depths of the deepest degradation into
which human beings can be plunged. These, then that we despise,
are our neighbors, the poor, stricken lambs of Christ.
To cast one thought towards them, may well cause us to bow down
our heads in the very dust with shame. No wonder that professing
to love Christ and his religion, we do not like to hear them
spoken of; for so far from feeding the lambs of Christ, we are
exciting the whole associated power of this land, to keep them
from being fed. 'Feed my lambs,' We might feed them with
fraternal sympathy, with hope, with freedom, the imperishable
bread of Heaven. We might lead them into green pastures and
still waters, into the glorious liberty wherewith Christ died to
make all men free, the liberty of the children of God. We might
secure to them the exercise of every sacred affection and
faculty, wherewith the Creator has endowed them. But we do none
of those things. We suffer this great flock of the Lord Jesus to
be treated as chattels, bought and sold, like beasts of burden,
hunted and lacerated by dogs and wolves. I say we, we of these
Free Northern communities, because it is by our allowance,
signified as effectually by silence, as by active co-operation,
that such things are. They could continue so, scarcely an hour,
were not the whole moral, religious and physical power of the
North pledged to their support. Are we not in closest league and
union with those who claim and use the right to buy and sell
human beings, God's poor, the lambs of Christ, a union, which we
imagine brings us in as much silver and gold as compensates for
the sacrifice of our humanity and manhood? Nay, are we not under
a law to do the base work of bloodhounds, hunting the panting
fugitives for freedom? I utter no word of denunciation. There is
no need. For facts that have occurred only within the last week,
transcend all denunciation. Only a few hours ago, there was a
man with his two sons, hurried back into the inhuman bondage,
from which they had just escaped, and that man, the brother, and
those two sons, the nephews of a colored clergyman of New York,
of such eminence in the New School Presbyterian Church, that he
has received the honors of a European University, and has acted
as Moderator in one of the Presbyteries of the same Church, when
held in the city where he resides. Almost at the very moment the
poor fugitive with his children, were dragged through our city,
the General Assembly of that very branch of the Presbyterian
Church, now in session here, after discussing for days the
validity of Roman Catholic baptism, threw out as inexpedient to
be discussed, the subject of that great wrong which was flinging
back into the agony of Slavery, a brother of one of their own
ordained ministers, and could not so much as breathe a word of
condemnation against the false and cruel deed which has just
been consummated at the capitol of the nation.
When such facts are occurring in the midst of us, we cannot be
guiltless concerning the lambs of Christ. It is we, we who make
up the public opinion of the North, we who consent that these
free States shall be the hunting-ground, where these, our poor
brothers and sisters, are the game; it is we that withhold from
them the bread of life, the inalienable rights of man. As we
withhold these blessings, so is it in our power to bestow them.
The sheep then that Christ commands us, as we love Him, to feed,
are those who are famishing for the lack of the food which it is
in our power to supply. And we can help to feed and relieve and
liberate them, by giving our hearty sympathy to the blessed
cause of their emancipation, to the abolition of the crying
injustice with which they are treated, by uttering our earnest
protest against the increasing and flagrant outrages of the
oppressor, by withholding all aid and countenance from the work
of oppression."
To say that Dr. Furness, in his pleadings for the slave, was "instant in
season and out of season," is not to exaggerate. So palpably was this
true, that even some of his sympathizing friends intimated to him, that
his zeal carried him beyond proper bounds, and that his discourses were
needlessly reiterative. To these friends,--who, it is needless to say,
did not fully comprehend the breadth and bearing of the question,--he
would reply as he did in the following extract from a sermon delivered
soon after the one above quoted:
"Again and again, I have had it said to me, with apparently the
most perfect simplicity, 'Why do you keep saying so much about
the slaves? Do you imagine that there is one among your hearers
who does not agree with you? We all know that Slavery is very
wrong. What, is the use of harping upon this subject Sunday
after Sunday? We all feel about it just as you do.' 'Feel about
it just as I do,' Very likely, my friends. It is very possible
that you all feel as much, and that many of you feel about it
more than I do. God knows that my regret always has been not
that I feel so much, but that I do not feel more. Would to
Heaven that neither you nor I could eat or sleep for pity, pity
for our poor down-trodden brothers and sisters. But the thing to
which I implore your attention now, is, not what we know and
feel, but the delusion which we are under, in confounding
_knowing_ with _doing_, in fancying that we are working to
abolish Slavery because we know that it is wrong. This is what I
would have you now to consider, the deception that we practise
on ourselves, the dangerous error into which we fall, when we
pass off the knowledge of our duty for the performance of it.