The Antislavery Vanguard: New Essays on the Abolitionists

518 Pages·2015·24.423 MB·English

by  Martin Duberman

THE ANTISLAVERY VANGUARD:
NEW ESSAYS ON THE ABOLITIONISTS
Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessed break.
Robert Lowell, "For
the Union Dead"
THE
ANTISLAVERY
VANGUARD:
NEW ESSAYS ON THE
ABOLITIONISTS
E D I T E D B Y
MARTIN DUBERMAN
*
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
1965
Copyright © 1965 by Princeton University Press
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
L.C. Card: 65-10824
•Φ-
Printed in the United States of America
By Princeton University Press
•Φ-
The quotation on p. ii from Robert Lowell's For the
Union Dead (New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
Inc.; copyright © 1964 by Robert Lowell) is re­
printed by permission of the publishers.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION Vll
by Martin Duberman, Princeton University
PART i: BACKGROUND
1. Slavery and Sin: The Cultural Background
by David Brion Davis, Cornell University 3
2. Who Was an Abolitionist?
by Larry Gara, Wilmington College 32
3. Who Defends the Abolitionist?
by Fawn M. Brodie 52
PART Ii: INDIVIDUALS
4. Orange Scott: The Methodist Evangelist
as Revolutionary
by Donald G. Mathews, Princeton University 71
5. The Persistence of Wendell Phillips
by Irving H. Bartlett, Carnegie
Institute of Technology 102
6. Abolition's Different Drummer:
Frederick Douglass
by Benjamin Quarles, Morgan State College 123
PART Hi: THE ABOLITIONISTS
AND THE NEGRO
7. The Emancipation of the Negro Abolitionist
by Leon F. Litwack, The University
of Wisconsin 137
8. A Brief for Equality: The Abolitionist
Reply to the Racist Myth, 1860-1865
by James M. McPherson, Princeton
University 156
9. "Iconoclasm Has Had Its Day":
Abolitionists and Freedmen in South Carolina
by Willie Lee Rose 178
Vi CONTENTS
PART IV: SIDE PERSPECTIVES
10. The Abolitionist Critique of
the United States Constitution
by Staughton Lynd, Yale University 209
11. Antislavery and Utopia
by John L. Thomas, Brown University 240
12. The Psychology of Commitment: The
Constructive Role of Violence and Suffering
for the Individual and for His Society
by Silvan S. Tomkins, City University
of New York 270
PART V: COMPARISONS
A. Foreign
13. "A Sacred Animosity": Abolitionism
in Canada
by Robin W. Winks, Yale University 301
14. The British and American Abolitionists
Compared
by Howard R. Temperley, University of
Manchester 343
B. Domestic
15. Ambiguities in the Antislavery
Crusade of the Republican Party
by Robert F. Durden, Duke University 362
16. The Northern Response to Slavery
by Martin Duberman, Princeton University 395
PART VI: CONCLUDING
17. Abolitionists, Freedom-Riders,
and the Tactics of Agitation
by Howard Zinn, Boston University 417
INDEX 453
INTRODUCTION*
FOR a long while the historical verdict on the abolition­
ists seemed settled. It had been widely agreed that
they were meddlesome fanatics, men blind to their own
motives, to the needs of the country, and even to the
welfare of the slave. It was these men, wrapped in their
self-righteous fury, who did so much to bring on a need­
less war.
Recently, re-examination of the abolitionist move­
ment has begun, and it is already clear that the old por­
trait no longer satisfies; its dictums are too categorical,
its sympathies too restricted. It is still too early for a new
synthesis of abolitionist history—itself but part of that
broader antislavery movement which also needs re-eval­
uation—and this volume of essays makes no such claim.
Its aim will have been accomplished if it offers enough
new data and new insights to demonstrate that a re-
evaluation is both possible and necessary.
The history of this collection is itself a revealing com­
mentary on current attitudes toward abolitionism. In
conceiving the volume, I had two objectives in mind:
first, to excavate and encourage the recent tendency to­
ward a more sympathetic appraisal of the movement,
•All the essays in this volume, except two, were written espe­
cially for it. Mr. McPherson's essay is a revised version of a chap­
ter in his recent book, The Struggle for Equality, Mr. Zinn's con­
tribution is part of a study he is currently working on. The authors
of two or three other essays will later use them in longer works.
A special word is due Silvan S. Tomkins, Director of the Center
for Research in Cognition and Affect, City University of New York.
In an effort to broaden the context of discussion by adding insights
from a related discipline, I prevailed upon Professor Tomkins to
undertake an essay. To do so, he has had to research deeply in
historical materials, and I am grateful for this unusual expenditure
viii INTRODUCTION
but second, to include all scholarly points of view, so
that disagreements in interpretation might be further
clarified, even if not resolved.
This second objective has been difficult to meet, largely
because one end of the spectrum of opinion—that hold­
ing to the traditional view of the abolitionists—has
shrunk considerably. This is not to say that historians
critical of the abolitionist position no longer exist. They
do, and include some of the most distinguished scholars
of the older generation. But when I invited several of
these men to contribute essays, they replied that they had
long since "had their say," that their views were already
well known and in any case had recently changed but
little, and that their presence in a volume aimed even in
part at re-evaluation would thus be of dubious fitness.
Still aiming at inclusiveness, I then searched for like-
minded replacements among the younger generation of
historians—but with little result. The younger genera­
tion, it seems—and I was surprised at the degree of con­
sensus—is not "like-minded." As one historian wrote
when I asked him to join the search for critics: "as for
'anti-abolitionists,' you are right—they are hard to find.
Naturally, I think. The attitudes which underlay'the his­
torical assault on abolitionism of thirty or forty years
ago are now decaying."
Though most of the contributors to this volume may
be said to be sympathetic to the abolitionists, they
have not seen their function as one of vindication or
special pleading. One or two of the essayists have chosen
to make explicit defenses of abolitionism, but the
large majority have dealt in neutral terms of analysis.
Yet the cumulative weight of their analysis points in the
same direction as that of the overt defenders—toward
of time and energy. He insists that he has gained from the ex­
perience as many new insights into his own field as historians may
have gained from him—which should cheer believers in inter­
disciplinary cooperation.
MARTIN DUBERMAN ix
a more sympathetic evaluation of the motives, tactics,
and effects of the movement. In this regard, the volume
accurately reflects, I believe, the dominant view of the
younger generation of historians.
It would be naive to ignore the connection between
this "new view" and the current civil rights struggle.
Committed as they are to that struggle, many historians
are now predisposed to look kindly on an earlier move·
ment of roughly analogous outlines: the scholarship of
this generation is no more immune to contemporary
pressures than scholarship has ever been. But historians
have, needless to say, a responsibility to resist those pres­
sures. If historical study is to preserve any claim to ob­
jectivity, or to remain differentiated from propaganda,
scholars must make every effort to separate past and pres­
ent. Yet the separation can never be complete, and in
one sense, it is well that it is not. For while the past
should never be distorted to meet present needs, the
focus of historical investigation will always reflect those
needs; that is, inquiry will be directed, consciously or
otherwise, toward those areas of past experience which
seem to have most pertinence for our own. Thus the
continuously shifting focus of historical study, paralleling
the shifting needs of historical generations.
An historian's deep engagement in contemporary af­
fairs, moreover, is not presumptive proof that his histor­
ical interpretations will be distorted. His involvement
may, on the contrary, allow him to share, and thereby
understand more fully, the comparable commitment of
an earlier generation. He may see aspects of their experi­
ence previously closed off to historians who lacked the
needed points of identification. Thus it is possible that
our generation, again absorbed by the "Negro Question,"
may for the first time be able to appreciate certain quali­
ties of the mid-nineteenth century experience. But this
identification carries potential dangers along with po­
tential gains. Our vision can be clouded as well as
X INTRODUCTION
sharpened by present concerns, our wish to see certain
patterns in the past can lead us to new inventions rather
than to new perceptions—dangers the contributors have
been aware of and have tried to avoid, but which they
know they cannot hope to have wholly escaped.
In one sense this volume bears depressing testimony.
Time and again it offers excerpts from past writings and
speeches which repeat almost word for word arguments
and attitudes still current today. On a variety of ques­
tions—the quality of the African past, the utility of
social protest, the meaning of race—we hear not echoes
but what are almost literal transcripts of contemporary
debates. After a hundred years—or would a thousand be
more accurate?—there are still the same shibboleths, the
same fears, the same denunciations. Perhaps men cannot
learn from past experience; it may be that each genera­
tion must always repeat the errors of preceding ones. But
perhaps we repeat the past only because we have never
really learned it. If we once understood, for example,
how much of the debate on the "Negro Question" has
already been rehearsed, we might not endlessly restage
it. The essayists in this volume will feel rewarded beyond
expectation if, by presenting the past debate, they make
any small contribution toward its present foreshortening.
MARTIN DUBERMAN
May 19, 1964
Princeton University