Antislavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists

364 Pages·1981·7.362 MB·English

by  Lewis Perry

ANTISLAVERY
RECONSIDERED

ANTISLAVERY
RECONSIDERED
New Perspectives
on the Abolitionists
Edited by
LEWIS PERRY
and
MICHAEL FELLMAN
LOUISIANA STATE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Baton Rouge and London
Copyright C 1979 by Louisiana State University Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Design: Dwight Agner
Typeface: VIP Trump Mediaeval
Composition: Graphic Composition, Inc.
Printing: Thomson-Shore, Inc.
Binding: lohn H. Dekker & Sons, Inc.
"Am I No: a Woman and a Sister? " by
Blanche Glassman Hersh is adapted from
Chapter i of The Slavery of Sex: Feminist
Abolitionists in Nineteenth-Century America
(O 1978 by the Board of TYustees of
the University of Illinois), used by permission
of the University of Illinois Press.
Louisiana Paperback Edition, 1981
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Main entry under title:
Antislavery reconsidered.
Includes index.
I. Slavery in the United States—Anti-slavery move­
ments—Addresses, essays, lectures. * 2. Slavery in Great
Britain—Anti-slavery movements—Addresses, essays, lec­
tures. I. Perry, Lewis. II. Fellman, Michael.
E449.A6237 311.4V0973 78-10177
ISBN 0-8071-0479-5
ISBN 0-8071-0889-8 pbk.
CONTENTS
4
Introduction
APPROACHES
The Boundaries of Abolitionism
RONALD G. WALTERS
Controversies over Slavery in Eighteenth- and
Nineteenth-Century Scotland
C. DUNCAN RICE
RELIGION
Abolition as a Sacred Vocation
DONALD M. SCOTT
Widening the Circle: The Black Church and the Abolitionist
Crusade, 1830-1860
CAROL V. R. GEORGE
POLITICS
The Jacksonians and Slavery
LEONARD L. RICHARDS
The Forgotten Reformers: A Profile of Third Party
Abolitionists in Antebellum New York
ALAN M. KRAUT 119
INDIVIDUALS
Richard Davis Webb and Antislavery in Ireland
DOUGLAS C. RIACH 149
Heroes, Villains, Liberty, and License: The Abolitionist Vision
of Wendell Phillips
JAMES B. STEWART 168
CONNECTIONS
"Poverty Is Not Slavery": American Abolitionists and the
Competitive Labor Market
JONATHAN A. GLICKSTEIN 195
Latimer. Lawyers,^Abolitionists, and the Problem of Unjust
Laws
WILLIAM M. WIECEK 219
Women's Rights and Abolition: The Nature of the Connection
ELLEN DUBOIS 238
"Am I Not a Woman and a Sister? " Abolitionist Beginnings of
Nineteenth-Century Feminism
BLANCHE CLASSMAN HERSH 252
COLLISIONS
Rehearsal for the Civil War: Antislavery and Proslavery at the
Fighting Point in Kansas, i8$4- i8$6
MICHAEL FELLMAN 287
Proslavery and Antislavery Intellectuals: Class Concepts and
Polemical Struggle
BERTRAM WYATT-BROWN 308
Notes on Contributors 337
Index
341
INTRODUCTION
History and the Abolitionists
what is the place of abolitionism in American history? There are
signs that historians in the 1970s are working out new answers to
this perennial question. In fact, it is possible that historians' at­
titudes toward abolitionism, after veering from contempt to celebra­
tion in previous decades, may once again be changing direction. The
essays in this collection give evidence of a réévaluation—though cer­
tainly not of a return to contempt.
A brief sketch of the changing historical reputation of abolition­
ism may be appropriate at the onset. One point must be stressed:
new essays on antislavery movements are ventures into territory
that has inspired previous historians to important, often passionate
work. The explanation for the changing reputation of abolitionists is
not that the facts about them have been greatly disputed; nor is it
merely the case that scholars have allowed their judgments to waver
in the light of changing public moods. The most important explana­
tion is that interpreting abolitionism inevitably raises questions
that go to the heart of what we value in American society and takes
us into areas where the beliefs of scholars and general public cannot
be held in separation. Linked to racial oppression, sectional conflict,
and other subjects central to the historical consciousness of Ameri-
vii
viii INTRODUCTION
cans, abolitionism has long captured the interests of a general read*
ing public. As an issue fraught with public implications, abolition­
ism disturbs the tidy balances professional historians prefer to strike
between narrative and analysis, between moral judgment and dis­
passionate research. Antislavery scholarship instructs us on the ex­
perience of some Americans a century ago; it betokens periodic
changes in the modem community of professional historians; and it
provides signals of the moral ties between that profession and the
community as a whole.
The essays in this book respond most directly to the many-sided
reassessment of abolitionism that historians carried out in the
1960s. The essays respond as well to negative evaluations from the
preceding forty years that scholars in the 1960s sought to overturn.
All these waves of revision, moreover, derived basic terms and in­
quiries from public attitudes toward abolitionism; they usually took
it for granted that the movement exercised great influence in its
own time. They also joined in according great significance to the
inner history of abolitionism—the disputes over matters large and
small that fill so many of the records antislavery men and women
left behind.
The abolitionists themselves confronted the problem of their
place in history. As disruptive interlopers in social and political life,
abolitionists were nearly compelled to justify themselves in relation
to history. Some tum-of-the-century abolitionists offered the
same defense as those accused of religious heresy—God was casting
"further light" over the earth and launching a time of innovation.
Others pointed back to heroic precedents in the Reformation and
the Glorious Revolution. The belief that God was on their side and
that his will was made manifest progressively in struggles for reli­
gious and political liberty sanctioned their new departure.1 Simi­
larly, in the 1830s, when abolitionism gained a reputation for un­
compromising militance, its champions enlisted the Reformation
and the American Revolution to justify the vehemence with which
they raised the standard of truth against the obsolete and tyrannical i
i Sec David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, ¡770-1823
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 197$)» especially the quotation from Benjamin Rush on page
183.
Introduction ix
system of bondage. Once again, the moment had arrived when God
favored his subjects who cried out for change. In a republic, born of
revolution, there was a special place for a disruptive novelty that
sought to end the incongruous persistence of slavery.
But this confident rendition of history could not entirely hide an
undertow of doubt. Even if God, or a revolutionary heritage, justified
a new departure, could it be argued that slavery had, at one time,
been consistent with God's plan and earlier states of civilization?
Was abolitionism thus based on timeless verities or merely on some
current phase of evolution which might prove evanescent? The
abolitionist William Goodell, though a believer in Christian mis­
sions to the heathen, indignantly denied that the principles sup­
porting antislavery reform related only to modem history. Too many
abolitionists, he felt, were attracted to a "lenient" view of history
that regarded slavery as having formerly been useful and defensible.
He bitterly criticized liberal comrades like Theodore Parker for any
ambiguity regarding the morally transient and expedient in past
human experience.3 Behind this theological controversy lurked an­
cient problems of authority and political presumption—what gave
man the right to tamper with the existing disposition of power
in society? In worrying over the links between past and future,
between the permanent and the transient, abolitionists brushed
against crucial questions concerning their own and the nation's so­
cial responsibilities. Which of their actions would connote asser­
tions of ageless truths; which would be false presumptions? As for
goals, what was owed an enslaved race for its contribution to the
development of America? Was antislavery a step in introducing the
African into the mainstream of modem American society, or was its
message simply one of laissez-faire, let the Negro alone? Before the
Civil War abolitionists failed to clarify these implications of their
understandings of history, but Reconstruction put them to the test.
Still another historical problem—the significance of conflicts
and disagreements among northern reformers—originated in the
abolitionists' writings. The most important historical work by an
American abolitionist, Goodell's Slavery and Anti-Slavery (1855), 2
2 New York Principia, December 3, 1839, p. 1, July 1, i860, pp. 260-61.
X INTRODUCTION
was as heavily concerned with this issue as with African and trans­
atlantic history;3 and newspaper articles and letters by other aboli­
tionists convey the same impression of the abolitionists' almost
morbid absorption in their own internal history. Though sometimes
tedious to the modem reader, reliving internal history served to
heighten solidarity and create a social and historical identity.4 In
addition, it provided a way of evaluating tactics that might broaden
the influence of the antislavery minority. With great intensity and a
surprising degree of articulateness these reformers anticipated many
of the controversies that later would divide left-wing movements in
Europe: should they strive for a broad base of support or retain the
purity of a vanguard? could reform be enacted via the ballot? were
churches antithetical to the ideal society of the future? was pacifism
a form of accommodation to the oppressors or an effective means of
overcoming them? could reforms be accomplished piecemeal or
only through a total overhaul of society? The acuteness with which
abolitionists dramatized these questions, in American terms, may
have contributed to their appeal to scholars of the 1960s. But the
attention they lavished on division in their ranks has not always
benefited their historical reputations: sometimes it has been ad­
duced as evidence of the shallowness of their commitment to the
needs of black people, South or North. Because of their lavishly re­
corded inner history, it has always been easy either to dismiss the
abolitionists as ranting blunderers or to exaggerate their role as in­
cendiaries.
It is clear, furthermore, that southern reactions gave abolitionists
part of their place in history. Powerful men in the South feared the
abolitionists' influence on white politicians and—worse, still—
black slaves. The continuation of slavery depended on its status as
an unquestioned fact of society, so much so that even the stirring up
of controversy by a handful of agitators conveyed a kind of horror.
Such considerations of their internal security led southerners to call
attention to obscure abolitionists in the 1830s, to exaggerate north-
3 William Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slaveryt A History of the Great Struggle in Both
Hemispheres¡ With a View of the Slavery Question In the United States (New York: William
Goodell, 1855).
4 )amea B. Stewart, "Garrison Again, and Again, and Again, and Again----,” Reviews In
American History, IV (1976), s39-45-