The Underground Railroad
make no mention of two and a half millions of people perishing
in our midst without the Scriptures, can we help feeling that
something is dreadfully wrong?' This, brethren, is a most solemn
question. It is a question which I verily believe the American
Bible Society, so far as they may have yielded, directly or
indirectly, openly or silently, to a corrupt public sentiment on
this subject, will have to answer at the bar of Him who has
declared, that, 'If ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin,'
and that 'Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of
these, ye did it not to me.' The spirit of Christianity is a
spirit of universal love and philanthropy. She looks down with
pity, and, if she could, she would look with scorn upon all the
petty distinctions that exist among men. She casts her benignant
eye abroad over the earth, and, wherever she sees man, she sees
him _as man,_ as a being made in the image of God, whether an
Indian, an African, or a Caucasian sun may shine upon him. She
stoops from heaven to raise the fallen, to bind up the
broken-hearted, to release the oppressed, to give liberty to the
captive, and to break the fetters of those that are bound. She
is marching onward with accelerated step, and, wherever she
leaves the true impress of her heavenly influence, the moral
wilderness is changed into the garden of the Lord. May it never
be ours to do what may seem to be even the slightest obstacle to
her universal sway.
"But I have already written more than I intended. In bringing
this communication to a close, allow me to express to you
individually, and as a Board, my most sincere Christian
attachment. Whatever course any members may have taken in
relation to this matter, I must believe that they have acted
from what has seemed to them a sense of duty. Far be it from me
to impeach their motives. Time, the great test of truth, may
show them their course in a very different light from that in
which they now view it. I may, as a Christian, lament that their
views of duty are not more in unison with my own. I may, as a
man, feel heart-sickened at the diseased, the deplorably
diseased state of the public mind, in relation to two and a half
millions of my fellow-men in bondage. I may, as a citizen of a
Free state, blush at the humiliating fact, that not only the
tyranny, but the ubiquity of the slave power is everywhere so
manifest; that it has insinuated itself into our free domain to
such a degree that there seems to be as much mental Slavery in
the Free states, as there is personal in the Slave states. I may
feel all this, but I must not impeach the motives by which
others have been governed."
There were twenty-one managers present at the reading of this letter,
and, at its conclusion, a noble friend of the slave moved that the
resignation be not accepted; the motion was lost by a vote of fourteen
against seven. It was then moved that it be accepted 'with regret:' this
was carried by the same vote! But 'with regret' was not an empty form
for easing this action to its recipient; how much it meant is seen in
the resolution that was added by unanimous acceptance:
"_Resolved_,--That this Board are mainly indebted to Professor C.D.
Cleveland for the prominent and influential position it has attained in
the regards of this Christian community, and that they bear an earnest
testimony to the sound judgment and unwearied zeal which have ever
characterized the discharge of his duties in his responsible office."
Let this tribute, coming from the bitterest personal opposition that
ever man encountered, measure the work that extorted it. Looking at it,
it will be difficult for the reader to believe that a sacrifice was made
of the man to whom it refers by a representative Christian body, and
merely to sate for a time the inhuman slave-greed; yet it is only one
fact out of many that might be adduced, and I have brought it forward
because it is, in my father's words, "a fair exponent of the position of
the Christian Church at that time upon the subject of Slavery."
Henceforward, he ceased not to rain blows, not only at his own (the
Presbyterian) denomination, but at all the organized expressions of
Christian purpose,--the Sunday-School Union, the Tract Society, etc.
While working thus by voice and pen, he was incessantly busy in personal
rescue of the slave. Especially was this the case when it became the
duty of every lover of his kind to defy the Fugitive Slave Law. How
eagerly he then sprang to aid the escape of those against whom a law of
the land impotently tried to bar the law of our common humanity! During
the years that followed the passage of this infamous bill, the position
he had attained here was of particular service. Recognized as one, who,
being a sort of standing sacrifice, might as well continue to battle in
the front; trusted implicitly even by his bitterest foes; with such a
broad philanthropy to back his appeals; pushing straight into every
breach where work was needed; blind to everything but his one light of
moral instinct;--he became an organ for the charities of those whose
softer natures longingly whispered the cry, but could not do the cut and
thrust work, of deliverance. Dr. Furness held the same position, and
others who, like him, refused to be enrolled in the 'Underground
Committee,' or in any definite Anti-Slavery organization. These men knew
that they were of greater service to the cause by being its body-guard,
by standing between it and the public, by making the appeals and taking
the blows, and by affording access, pecuniary and other, of each to
each.
Thus the times moved on--growing hotter, more difficult and dangerous,
but always working these two results: redoubling the labors of this
noble band, and shaking the city from lethargy into ferment. Men were
compelled to take sides, and but one result could follow, (the result
which always follows when human nature is stung and quickened to find
its highest instincts,) the Party of Right steadily moved to triumph.
* * * * *
For a lesson to us in courage, it is worth while to ask, how these
Apostles of Freedom stood the terrible strain put upon them for so many
years. I can answer for the two of whom I write, and do not doubt that
the answer is true of the rest: This self-forgetfulness was made easy by
a love that filled and overfilled all their moral energies--the simple
love of man, as God's highest creation, and of his natural rights, as
God's best gift. Their work was not a mere result of will, not an
outcome of faculty, not an unsupported impulse of heart. It was
character living itself out, an utterance of its entire unity, something
drawn from the solemn depths of those life-convictions which all the
personal and impersonal powers of a man, aglow and welded, unite in
producing. Hence, their work was not apart from them, even so far as to
be called ahead of them; nor parallel with them; it was _one_ with them
by a necessary spiritual inclusion. Will and Duty ceased to be separate
powers; they were transfused through the whole breadth of their human
sympathies, adding to their warmth a fixity of purpose that bore them
without a falter, through thirty years of such bitter obloquy, as, in
these latter days, only the early Anti-Slavery disciples have had to
endure. These men never said, in reference to the Anti-slavery cause, _I
ought_ or _I will_, because they never needed to say them. The sun
shines without them, and life expands without them; and here were souls
as unconsciously beneficent as the one, as spontaneous in growth and
shaping as the other. Theirs was not a force that moved mechanically in
right lines, with limited objects before it. It did, indeed, sweep with
arrowy swiftness of assail on every point that offered; but when I
remember that it more often pleaded than stormed, that it penetrated
into every secret recess that mercy casually opened, and gently stirred
into fuller life those roots of human feeling that can be numbed by
apathy but not killed even by hate, I know that it was persuasive,
diffusive, inbreathing force, an influence vital in others because an
effluence vitalized from themselves.
So they stood, self-consecrated, enveloped by the love of God, permeated
by the love of man,--twin Perfect Loves that cast out all dream of fear.
And so they walked, calm as if a thousand stabs of personal insult never
brought them one of personal pain, passing through all as if nothing but
the serenest skies were above them. And, as I have said, right there is
one explanation of the anomaly; there _were_ the serenest skies above
them--heaven's love perpetually shining. Why should it not shine? all
the powers of the men were dedicated to rescuing the image of God on
this earth,--not man as he suffered physically, but the moral instinct
threatened with annihilation. It was sacred to them, this soul so sacred
to redeeming love, but too brutalized to find its way to it. Nor merely
the slave. Their love embraced, with yet more pitying fervor, the master
compelling his spiritual nature into death, and the northern apologist
letting his die; and this overmastering love of saving spiritual
integrity, was one power that made them and heart-ease hold unfailing
friends through the obloquy of those days; the other must be found in
the fact mentioned,--that neither resolve nor impulse was their spur,
but personal character moving from its depths.
From such a motive-power as this can come no parade of results. The
nature that works, proceeds from the necessary laws and forces of its
being, and is as simple and unconscious as any other natural law or
force. Hence there are no startling epochs to record in my father's
history, no supreme efforts; in filling the measure of daily opportunity
lay his chief work. I cannot measure it by our ten fingers' counting. I
can only show a life unfolding, and, by the essential laws of its
growth, embracing the noblest cause of its time. But if action means
vivifying public sentiment decaying under insidious poison; if it
includes the doing of this amid a storm of odium that would quickly have
shattered any soul irresolute for an instant; if it means incessant toil
quietly performed, vast sums collected and disbursed, time sacrificed,
strength spent; if it means holding up a great iniquity to loathing by a
powerful pen, and nailing moral cowardice where-ever it showed; if it be
risking livelihood by introducing the cause of the slave into every
literary work, and by mingling the school-culture of fifty future
mothers, year by year, with hatred of the sin; if it means one's life in
one's hand, friendships yielded, society defied, and position in it
cheerfully renounced; above all, if action means a wealth of goodness
overliving all scorns, compelling respect from a community rebuked,
fellowship from a Church charged with ungodliness, and acknowledgment of
unstained repute from a public eager to blacken with scandal; if to do
thus, and bear thus, and live thus, is action, then my father did act to
the full purpose of life in the struggle that freed the slave.
S.M.C.
WILLIAM WHIPPER.
The locality of Columbia, where Mr. Whipper resided for many years, was,
as is well-known, a place of much note as a station on the Underground
Rail Road. The firm of Smith and Whipper (lumber merchants), was
likewise well-known throughout a wide range of country. Who, indeed,
amongst those familiar with the history of public matters connected with
the colored people of this country, has not heard of William Whipper?