History of American Christianity — Chapter XVI Conflicts of the Church With Public Wrongs, Part 2

We have already recognized the Methodist organization as the effective pioneer of systematic abolitionism in America.

[275:1] The Baptists, also having their main strength in the southern States, were early and emphatic in condemning the institutions by which they were surrounded.

[275:2] But all the sects found themselves embarrassed by serious difficulties when it came to the practical application of the principles and rules which they enunciated.

The exacting of "immediate emancipation" as a condition of fellowship in the ministry or communion in the church, and the popular cries of "No fellowship with slave-holders," and "Slave-holding always and every where a sin," were found practically to conflict with frequent undeniable and stubborn facts.

The cases in which conscientious Christians found themselves, by no fault of their own, invested by inhuman laws with an absolute authority over helpless fellow-men, which it would not be right for them suddenly to abdicate, were not few nor unimportant.

[275:3] In dealing with such cases several different courses were open to the church: (1) To execute discipline rigorously according to the formula, on the principle, Be rid of the tares at all hazards; never mind the wheat.

This course was naturally favored by some of the minor Presbyterian sects, and was apt to be vigorously urged by zealous people living at a distance and not well acquainted with details of fact.

(2) To attempt to provide for all cases by stated exceptions and saving clauses.

This course was entered on by the Methodist Church, but without success.

(3) Discouraged by the difficulties, to let go all discipline.

This was the point reached at last by most of the southern churches.

(4) Clinging to the formulas, "Immediate emancipation," "No communion with slave-holders," so to "palter in a double sense" with the words as to evade the meaning of them.

According to this method, slave-holding did not consist in the holding of slaves, but in holding them with evil purpose and wrong treatment; a slave who was held for his own advantage, receiving from his master "that which is just and equal," was said, in this dialect, to be "morally emancipated."

This was the usual expedient of a large and respectable party of antislavery Christians at the North, when their principle of "no communion with slave-holders" brought them to the seeming necessity of excommunicating an unquestionably Christian brother for doing an undeniable duty.

(5) To lay down, broadly and explicitly, the principles of Christian morality governing the subject, leaving the application of them in individual cases to the individual church or church-member.

This was the course exemplified with admirable wisdom and fidelity in the Presbyterian "deliverance" of 1818. (6) To meet the postulate, laid down with so much assurance, as if an axiom, that "slave-holding is always and everywhere a sin, to be immediately repented of and forsaken," with a flat and square contradiction, as being irreconcilable with facts and with the judgment of the Christian Scriptures; and thus to condemn and oppose to the utmost the system of slavery, without imputing the guilt of it to persons involved in it by no fault of their own.

This course commended itself to many lucid and logical minds and honest consciences, including some of the most consistent and effective opponents of slavery.

(7) Still another course must be mentioned, which, absurd as it seems, was actually pursued by a few headlong reformers, who showed in various ways a singular alacrity at playing into the hands of their adversaries.

It consisted in enunciating in the most violent and untenable form and the most offensive language the proposition that all slave-holding is sin and every slave-holder a criminal, and making the whole attack on slavery to turn on this weak pivot and fail if this failed.

The argument of this sort of abolitionist was: If there can be found anywhere a good man holding a bond-servant unselfishly, kindly, and for good reason justifiably, then the system of American slavery is right.

[277:1] It is not strange that men in the southern churches, being offered such an argument ready made to their hand, should promptly accept both the premiss and the conclusion, and that so at last there should begin to be a pro-slavery party in the American church.

The disastrous epoch of the beginning of what has been called "the southern apostasy" from the universal moral sentiment of Christendom on the subject of slavery may be dated at about the year 1833. A year earlier began to be heard those vindications on political grounds of what had just been declared in the legislature of Virginia to be by common consent the most pernicious of political evils--vindications which continued for thirty years to invite the wonder of the civilized world.

When (about 1833) a Presbyterian minister in Mississippi, the Rev. James Smylie, made the "discovery," which "surprised himself," that the system of American slavery was sanctioned and approved by the Scriptures as good and righteous, he found that his brethren in the Presbyterian ministry at the extreme South were not only surprised, but shocked and offended, at the proposition.

[278:1] And yet such was the swift progress of this innovation that in surprisingly few years, we might almost say months, it had become not only prevalent, but violently and exclusively dominant in the church of the southern States, with the partial exception of Kentucky and Tennessee.

It would be difficult to find a precedent in history for so sudden and sweeping a change of sentiment on a leading doctrine of moral theology.

Dissent from the novel dogma was suppressed with more than inquisitorial rigor.

It was less perilous to hold Protestant opinions in Spain or Austria than to hold, in Carolina or Alabama, the opinions which had but lately been commended to universal acceptance by the unanimous voice of great religious bodies, and proclaimed as undisputed principles by leading statesmen.

It became one of the accepted evidences of Christianity at the South that infidelity failed to offer any justification for American slavery equal to that derived from the Christian Scriptures.

That eminent leader among the Lutheran clergy, the Rev. Dr. Bachman, of Charleston, referred "that unexampled unanimity of sentiment that now exists in the whole South on the subject of slavery" to the confidence felt by the religious public in the Bible defense of slavery as set forth by clergymen and laymen in sermons and pamphlets and speeches in Congress.

[278:2] The historian may not excuse himself from the task of inquiring into the cause of this sudden and immense moral revolution.

The explanation offered by Dr. Bachman is the very thing that needs to be explained.

How came the Christian public throughout the slave-holding States, which so short a time before had been unanimous in finding in the Bible the condemnation of their slavery, to find all at once in the Bible the divine sanction and defense of it as a wise, righteous, and permanent institution?

Doubtless there was mixture of influences in bringing about the result.

The immense advance in the market value of slaves consequent on Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin had its unconscious effect on the moral judgments of some.

The furious vituperations of a very small but noisy faction of antislavery men added something to the swift current of public opinion.

But demonstrably the chief cause of this sudden change of religious opinion--one of the most remarkable in the history of the church--was panic terror.

In August, 1831, a servile insurrection in Virginia, led by a crazy negro, Nat Turner by name, was followed (as always in such cases) by bloody vengeance on the part of the whites.

"The Southampton insurrection, occurring at a time when the price of slaves was depressed in consequence of a depression in the price of cotton, gave occasion to a sudden development of opposition to slavery in the legislature of Virginia.

A

measure for the prospective abolition of the institution in that ancient commonwealth was proposed, earnestly debated, eloquently urged, and at last defeated, with a minority ominously large in its favor.

Warned by so great a peril, and strengthened soon afterward by an increase in the market value of cotton and of slaves, the slave-holding interest in all the South was stimulated to new activity.

Defenses of slavery more audacious than had been heard before began to be uttered by southern politicians at home and by southern representatives and senators in Congress.

A panic seized upon the planters in some districts of the Southwest.

Conspiracies and plans of insurrection were discovered.

Negroes were tortured or terrified into confessions.

Obnoxious white men were put to death without any legal trial and in defiance of those rules of evidence which are insisted on by southern laws.

Thus a sudden and convincing terror was spread through the South.

Every man was made to know that if he should become obnoxious to the guardians of the great southern 'institution' he was liable to be denounced and murdered.

It was distinctly and imperatively demanded that nobody should be allowed to say anything anywhere against slavery.

The movement of the societies which had then been recently formed at Boston and New York, with 'Immediate abolition' for their motto, was made use of to stimulate the terror and the fury of the South....

The position of political parties and of candidates for the Presidency, just at that juncture, gave special advantage to the agitators--an advantage that was not neglected.

Everything was done that practiced demagogues could contrive to stimulate the South into a frenzy and to put down at once and forever all opposition to slavery.

The clergy and the religious bodies were summoned to the patriotic duty of committing themselves on the side of 'southern institutions.'

Just then it was, if we mistake not, that their apostasy began.

They dared not say that slavery as an institution in the State is essentially an organized injustice, and that, though the Scriptures rightly and wisely enjoin justice and the recognition of the slaves' brotherhood upon masters, and conscientious meekness upon slaves, the organized injustice of the institution ought to be abolished by the shortest process consistent with the public safety and the welfare of the enslaved.

They dared not even keep silence under the plea that the institution is political and therefore not to be meddled with by religious bodies or religious persons.

They yielded to the demand.

They were carried along in the current of the popular frenzy; they joined in the clamor, 'Great is Diana of the Ephesians;' they denounced the fanaticism of abolition and permitted themselves to be understood as certifying, in the name of religion and of Christ, that the entire institution of slavery 'as it exists' is chargeable with no injustice and is warranted by the word of God."

[281:1] There is no good reason to question the genuineness and sincerity of the fears expressed by the slave-holding population as a justification of their violent measures for the suppression of free speech in relation to slavery; nor of their belief that the papers and prints actively disseminated from the antislavery press in Boston were fitted, if not distinctly intended, to kindle bloody insurrections.

These terrors were powerfully pleaded in the great debate in the Virginia legislature as an argument for the abolition of slavery.

[281:2] This failing, they became throughout the South a constraining power for the suppression of free speech, not only on the part of outsiders, but among the southern people themselves.

The régime thus introduced was, in the strictest sense of the phrase, "a reign of terror."

The universal lockjaw which thenceforth forbade the utterance of what had so recently and suddenly ceased to be the unanimous religious conviction of the southern church soon produced an "unexampled unanimity" on the other side, broken only when some fiery and indomitable abolitionist like Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, of the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky, delivered his soul with invectives against the system of slavery and the new-fangled apologies that had been devised to defend it, declaring it "utterly indefensible on every correct human principle, and utterly abhorrent from every law of God," and exclaiming, "Out upon such folly!

The man who cannot see that involuntary domestic slavery, as it exists among us, is founded on the principle of taking by force that which is another's has simply no moral sense....

Hereditary slavery is without pretense, except in avowed rapacity."

[282:1] Of course the antislavery societies which, under various names, had existed in the South by hundreds were suddenly extinguished, and manumissions, which had been going on at the rate of thousands in a year, almost entirely ceased.

The strange and swiftly spreading moral epidemic did not stop at State boundary lines.

At the North the main cause of defection was not, indeed, directly operative.

There was no danger there of servile insurrection.

But there was true sympathy for those who lived under the shadow of such impending horrors, threatening alike the guilty and the innocent.

There was a deep passion of honest patriotism, now becoming alarmed lest the threats of disunion proceeding from the terrified South should prove a serious peril to the nation in whose prosperity the hopes of the world seemed to be involved.

There was a worthy solicitude lest the bonds of intercourse between the churches of North and South should be ruptured and so the integrity of the nation be the more imperiled.

Withal there was a spreading and deepening and most reasonable disgust at the reckless ranting of a little knot of antislavery men having their headquarters at Boston, who, exulting in their irresponsibility, scattered loosely appeals to men's vindictive passions and filled the unwilling air with clamors against church and ministry and Bible and law and government, denounced as "pro-slavery" all who declined to accept their measures or their persons, and, arrogating to themselves exclusively the name of abolitionist, made that name, so long a title of honor, to be universally odious.

[282:2] These various factors of public opinion were actively manipulated.

Political parties competed for the southern vote.

Commercial houses competed for southern business.

Religious sects, parties, and societies were emulous in conciliating southern adhesions or contributions and averting schisms.

The condition of success in any of these cases was well understood to be concession, or at least silence, on the subject of slavery.

The pressure of motives, some of which were honorable and generous, was everywhere, like the pressure of the atmosphere.

It was not strange that there should be defections from righteousness.

Even the enormous effrontery of the slave power in demanding for its own security that the rule of tyrannous law and mob violence by which freedom of speech and of the press had been extinguished at the South should be extended over the so-called free States did not fail of finding citizens of reputable standing so base as to give the demand their countenance, their public advocacy, and even their personal assistance.

As the subject emerged from time to time in the religious community, the questions arising were often confused and embarrassed by false issues and illogical statements, and the state of opinion was continually misrepresented through the incurable habit of the over-zealous in denouncing as "pro-slavery" those who dissented from their favorite formulas.

But after all deductions, the historian who shall by and by review this period with the advantage of a longer perspective will be compelled to record not a few lamentable defections, both individual and corporate, from the cause of freedom, justice, and humanity.

And, nevertheless, that later record will also show that while the southern church had been terrified into "an unexampled unanimity" in renouncing the principles which it had unanimously held, and while like causes had wrought potently upon northern sentiment, it was the steadfast fidelity of the Christian people that saved the nation from ruin.

At the end of thirty years from the time when the soil of Missouri was devoted to slavery the "Kansas-Nebraska Bill" was proposed, which should open for the extension of slavery the vast expanse of national territory which, by the stipulation of the "Missouri Compromise," had been forever consecrated to freedom.

The issue of the extension of slavery was presented to the people in its simplicity.

The action of the clergy of New England was prompt, spontaneous, emphatic, and practically unanimous.

Their memorial, with three thousand and fifty signatures, protested against the bill, "in the name of Almighty God and in his presence," as "a great moral wrong; as a breach of faith eminently injurious to the moral principles of the community and subversive of all confidence in national engagements; as a measure full of danger to the peace and even the existence of our beloved Union, and exposing us to the just judgments of the Almighty."

In like manner the memorial of one hundred and fifty-one clergymen of various denominations in New York City and vicinity protested in like terms, "in the name of religion and humanity," against the guilt of the extension of slavery.

Perhaps there has been no occasion on which the consenting voice of the entire church has been so solemnly uttered on a question of public morality, and this in the very region in which church and clergy had been most stormily denounced by the little handful of abolitionists who gloried in the name of infidel[285:1] as recreant to justice and humanity.

The protest of the church was of no avail to defeat the machination of demagogues.

The iniquitous measure was carried through.

But this was not the end; it was only the beginning of the end.

Yet ten years, and American slavery, through the mad folly of its advocates and the steadfast fidelity of the great body of the earnestly religious people of the land, was swept away by the tide of war.

* * * * * The long struggle of the American church against drunkenness as a social and public evil begins at an early date.

One of the thirteen colonies, Georgia, had the prohibition of slavery and of the importation of spirituous liquors incorporated by Oglethorpe in its early and short-lived constitution.

It would be interesting to discover, if we could, to what extent the rigor of John Wesley's discipline against both these mischiefs was due to his association with Oglethorpe in the founding of that latest of the colonies.

Both the imperious nature of Wesley and the peculiar character of his fraternity as being originally not a church, but a voluntary society within the church, predisposed to a policy of arbitrary exclusiveness by hard and fast lines drawn according to formula, which might not have been ventured on by one who was consciously drawing up the conditions of communion in the church.

In the Puritan colonies the public morals in respect to temperance were from the beginning guarded by salutary license laws devised to suppress all dram-shops and tippling-houses, and to prevent, as far as law could wisely undertake to prevent, all abusive and mischievous sales of liquor.

But these indications of a sound public sentiment did not prevent the dismal fact of a wide prevalence of drunkenness as one of the distinguishing characteristics of American society at the opening of the nineteenth century.

Two circumstances had combined to aggravate the national vice.

Seven years of army life, with its exhaustion and exposure and military social usage, had initiated into dangerous drinking habits many of the most justly influential leaders of society, and the example of these had set the tone for all ranks.

Besides this, the increased importation and manufacture of distilled spirits had made it easy and common to substitute these for the mild fermented liquors which had been the ordinary drink of the people.

Gradually and unobserved the nation had settled down into a slough of drunkenness of which it is difficult for us at this date to form a clear conception.

The words of Isaiah concerning the drunkards of Ephraim seem not too strong to apply to the condition of American society, that "all tables were full of vomit and filthiness."

In the prevalence of intemperate drinking habits the clergy had not escaped the general infection.

"The priest and the prophet had gone astray through strong drink."

Individual words of warning, among the earliest of which was the classical essay of Dr. Benjamin Rush (1785), failed to arouse general attention.

The new century was well advanced before the stirring appeals of Ebenezer Porter, Lyman Beecher, Heman Humphrey, and Jeremiah Evarts had awakened in the church any effectual conviction of sin in the matter.

The appointment of a strong committee, in 1811, by the Presbyterian General Assembly was promptly followed by like action by the clergy of Massachusetts and Connecticut, leading to the formation of State societies.

But general concerted measures on a scale commensurate with the evil to be overcome must be dated from the organization of the "American Society for the Promotion of Temperance," in 1826. The first aim of the reformers of that day was to break down those domineering social usages which almost enforced the habit of drinking in ordinary social intercourse.

The achievement of this object was wonderfully swift and complete.

A young minister whose pastorate had begun at about the same time with the organizing of the national temperance society was able at the end of five years to bear this testimony in the presence of those who were in a position to recognize any misstatement or exaggeration: "The wonderful change which the past five years have witnessed in the manners and habits of this people in regard to the use of ardent spirits--the new phenomenon of an intelligent people rising up, as it were, with one consent, without law, without any attempt at legislation, to put down by the mere force of public opinion, expressing itself in voluntary associations, a great social evil which no despot on earth could have put down among his subjects by any system of efforts--has excited admiration and roused to imitation not only in our sister country of Great Britain, but in the heart of continental Europe."

[287:1] It is worthy of remark, for any possible instruction there may be in it, that the first, greatest, and most permanent of the victories of the temperance reformation, the breaking down of almost universal social drinking usages, was accomplished while yet the work was a distinctively religious one, "without law or attempt at legislation," and while the efforts at suppression were directed at the use of ardent spirits.

The attempt to combine the friends of temperance on a basis of "teetotal" abstinence, putting fermented as well as distilled liquors under the ban, dates from as late as 1836. But it soon appeared that the immense gain of banishing ardent spirits from the family table and sideboard, the social entertainment, the haying field, and the factory had not been attained without some corresponding loss.

Close upon the heels of the reform in the domestic and social habits of the people there was spawned a monstrous brood of obscure tippling-shops--a nuisance, at least in New England, till then unknown.

From the beginning wise and effective license laws had interdicted all dram-shops; even the taverner might sell spirits only to his transient guests, not to the people of the town.

With the suppression of social drinking there was effected, in spite of salutary law to the contrary, a woeful change.

The American "saloon" was, in an important sense, the offspring of the American temperance reformation.

The fact justified the reformer in turning his attention to the law.

From that time onward the history of the temperance reformation has included the history of multitudinous experiments in legislation, none of which has been so conclusive as to satisfy all students of the subject that any later law is, on the whole, more usefully effective than the original statutes of the Puritan colonies.

[288:1] In 1840 the temperance reformation received a sudden forward impulse from an unexpected source.

One evening a group of six notoriously hard drinkers, coming together greatly impressed from a sermon of that noted evangelist, Elder Jacob Knapp, pledged themselves by mutual vows to total abstinence; and from this beginning went forward that extraordinary agitation known as "the Washingtonian movement."

Up to this time the aim of the reformers had been mainly directed to the prevention of drunkenness by a change in social customs and personal habits.

Now there was suddenly opened a door of hope to the almost despair of the drunkard himself.

The lately reformed drunkards of Baltimore set themselves to the reforming of other drunkards, and these took up the work in their turn, and reformation was extended in a geometrical progression till it covered the country.

Everywhere meetings were held, to be addressed by reformed drunkards, and new recruits from the gutter were pushed forward to tell their experience to the admiring public, and sent out on speaking tours.

The people were stirred up as never before on the subject of temperance.

There was something very Christian-like in the method of this propagation, and hopeful souls looked forward to a temperance millennium as at hand.

But fatal faults in the work soon discovered themselves.

Among the new evangelists were not a few men of true penitence and humility, like John Hawkins, and one man at least of incomparable eloquence as well as Christian earnestness, John B. Gough.

But the public were not long in finding that merely to have wallowed in vice and to be able to tell ludicrous or pathetic stories from one's experience was not of itself sufficient qualification for the work of a public instructor in morals.

The temperance platform became infested with swaggering autobiographers, whose glory was in their shame, and whose general influence was distinctly demoralizing.

The sudden influx of the tide of enthusiasm was followed by a disastrous ebb.

It was the estimate of Mr. Gough that out of six hundred thousand reformed drunkards not less than four hundred and fifty thousand had relapsed into vice.

The same observer, the splendor of whose eloquence was well mated with an unusual sobriety of judgment, is credited with the statement that he knew of no case of stable reformation from drunkenness that was not connected with a thorough spiritual renovation and conversion.

Certainly good was accomplished by the transient whirlwind of the "Washingtonian" excitement.

But the evil that it did lived after it.

Already at the time of its breaking forth the temperance reformation had entered upon that period of decadence in which its main interest was to be concentrated upon law and politics.

And here the vicious ethics of the reformed-drunkard school became manifest.

The drunkard, according to his own account of himself (unless he was not only reformed, but repentant), had been a victim of circumstances.

Drunkenness, instead of a base and beastly sin, was an infirmity incident to a high-strung and generous temperament.

The blame of it was to be laid, not upon the drunkard, whose exquisitely susceptible organization was quite unable to resist temptation coming in his way, but on those who put intoxicating liquor where he could get at it, or on the State, whose duty it was to put the article out of the reach of its citizens.

The guilt of drunkenness must rest, not on the unfortunate drunkard who happened to be attacked by that disease, but on the sober and well-behaving citizen, and especially the Christian citizen, who did not vote the correct ticket.

What may be called the Prohibition period of the temperance reformation begins about 1850 and still continues.

It is characterized by the pursuit of a type of legislation of variable efficacy or inefficacy, the essence of which is that the sale of intoxicating liquors shall be a monopoly of the government.

[290:1] Indications begin to appear that the disproportionate devotion to measures of legislation and politics is abating.

Some of the most effective recent labor for the promotion of temperance has been wrought independently of such resort.

If the cycle shall be completed, and the church come back to the methods by which its first triumphs in this field were won, it will come back the wiser and the stronger for its vicissitudes of experience through these threescore years and ten.

FOOTNOTES:

[264:1] "An impression was made that never ceased.

It started a series of efforts that have affected the whole northern mind at least; and in Jackson's time the matter came up in Congress, and a law was passed disfranchising a duelist.

And that was not the last of it; for when Henry Clay was up for the Presidency the Democrats printed an edition of forty thousand of that sermon and scattered them all over the North" ("Autobiography of Lyman Beecher," vol. i.

, pp. 153, 154; with foot-note from Dr. L.

Bacon: "That sermon has never ceased to be a power in the politics of this country.

More than anything else, it made the name of brave old Andrew Jackson distasteful to the moral and religious feeling of the people.

It hung like a millstone on the neck of Henry Clay").

[265:1] "A Century of Dishonor," pp. 270, 271. [266:1] "A Century of Dishonor," pp. 275, 276. [268:1] See above, pp. 203-205, 222. [270:1] Deliverance of General Assembly, 1818. [271:1] The persistent attempt to represent this period as one of prevailing apathy and inertia on the subject of slavery is a very flagrant falsification of history.

And yet by dint of sturdy reiteration it has been forced into such currency as to impose itself even on so careful a writer as Mr. Schouler, in his "History of the United States."

It is impossible to read this part of American church history intelligently, unless the mind is disabused of this misrepresentation.

[271:2] "Christian Spectator" (monthly), New Haven, 1828, p. 4. [272:1] "Christian Spectator," 1823, pp. 493, 494, 341; "The Earlier Antislavery Days," by L. Bacon, in the "Christian Union," December 9 and 16, 1874, January 6 and 13, 1875. It is one of the "Curiosities of Literature," though hardly one of its "Amenities," that certain phrases carefully dissected from this paper (which was written by Mr. Bacon at the age of twenty-one) should be pertinaciously used, in the face of repeated exposures, to prove the author of it to be an apologist for slavery!

[273:1] "Christian Spectator," 1825-1828. [273:2] Wilson, "Slave Power in America," vol. i.

, p. 164; "James G. Birney and his Times," pp. 64, 65. This last-named book is an interesting and valuable contribution of materials for history, especially by its refutation of certain industriously propagated misrepresentations.

[274:1] "Birney and his Times," chap.

xii.

, on "Abolition in the South before 1828." Much is to be learned on this neglected topic in American history from the reports of the National Convention for the Abolition of Slavery, meeting biennially, with some intermissions, at Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington down to 1829. An incomplete file of these reports is at the library of Brown University.

[274:2] Wilson, "The Slave Power," vol. i.

, chap.

xiv.

[275:1] See above, pp. 204, 205. [275:2] Newman, "The Baptists," pp. 288, 305. Let me make general reference to the volumes of the American Church History Series by their several indexes, s. v.

Slavery.

[275:3] One instance for illustration is as good as ten thousand.

It is from the "Life of James G. Birney," a man of the highest integrity of conscience: "Michael, the husband and father of the family legally owned by Mr. Birney, and who had been brought up with him from boyhood, had been unable to conquer his appetite for strong liquors, and needed the constant watchful care of his master and friend.

For some years the probability was that if free he would become a confirmed drunkard and beggar his family.

The children were nearly grown, but had little mental capacity.

For years Michael had understood that his freedom would be restored to him as soon as he could control his love of ardent spirits" (pp. 108, 109).

[277:1] "If human beings could be justly held in bondage for one hour, they could be for days and weeks and years, and so on indefinitely from generation to generation" ("Life of W. L.

Garrison," vol. i.

, p. 140).

[278:1] "New Englander," vol. xii.

, 1854, p. 639, article on "The Southern Apostasy."

[278:2] _Ibid.

_, pp. 642-644. [281:1] "New Englander," vol. xii.

, 1854, pp. 660, 661. [281:2] Wilson, "The Slave Power," vol. i.

, pp. 190-207. [282:1] "Biblical Repertory," Princeton, July, 1833, pp. 294, 295, 303. [282:2] The true story of Mr. William Lloyd Garrison and his little party has yet to be written faithfully and fully.

As told by his family and friends and by himself, it is a monstrous falsification of history.

One of the best sources of authentic material for this chapter of history is "James G. Birney and his Times," by General William Birney, pp. 269-331. I may also refer to my volume, "Irenics and Polemics" (New York, the Christian Literature Co. ), pp. 145-202. The sum of the story is given thus, in the words of Charles Sumner: "An omnibus-load of Boston abolitionists has done more harm to the antislavery cause than all its enemies" ("Birney," p. 331).

[285:1] Birney, p. 321. [287:1] Sermon of L. Bacon (MS. ), New Haven, July 4, 1830. [288:1] "Eastern and Western States of America," by J. S.

Buckingham, M. P.

, vol. i.

, pp. 408-413. [290:1] By a curious anomaly in church polity, adhesion to this particular device of legislation is made constitutionally a part of the discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

In most other communions liberty of judgment is permitted as to the form of legislation best fitted to the end sought.

CHAPTER XVII.