Tobias Smollett - "The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle"

Thomas Hardy - "Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with"

William Shakespeare - "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmar"

Merwin Webster - "The Short Line War"

The Conflict With Slavery, Part 1, From Vol. VII,

J >> John Greenleaf Whittier >> The Conflict With Slavery, Part 1, From Vol. VII,









FORMATION OF THE AMERICAN ANTISLAVERY SOCIETY.

A letter to William Lloyd Garrison, President of the Society.

AMESBURY, 24th 11th mo., 1863.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I have received thy kind letter, with the accompanying
circular, inviting me to attend the commemoration of the thirtieth
anniversary of the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society, at
Philadelphia. It is with the deepest regret that I am compelled, by the
feeble state of my health, to give up all hope of meeting thee and my
other old and dear friends on an occasion of so much interest. How much
it costs me to acquiesce in the hard necessity thy own feelings will tell
thee better than any words of mine.

I look back over thirty years, and call to mind all the circumstances of
my journey to Philadelphia, in company with thyself and the excellent Dr.
Thurston of Maine, even then, as we thought, an old man, but still
living, and true as ever to the good cause. I recall the early gray
morning when, with Samuel J. May, our colleague on the committee to
prepare a Declaration of Sentiments for the convention, I climbed to the
small "upper chamber" of a colored friend to hear thee read the first
draft of a paper which will live as long as our national history. I see
the members of the convention, solemnized by the responsibility, rise one
by one, and solemnly affix their names to that stern pledge of fidelity
to freedom. Of the signers, many have passed away from earth, a few have
faltered and turned back, but I believe the majority still live to
rejoice over the great triumph of truth and justice, and to devote what
remains of time and strength to the cause to which they consecrated their
youth and manhood thirty years ago.

For while we may well thank God and congratulate one another on the
prospect of the speedy emancipation of the slaves of the United States,
we must not for a moment forget that, from this hour, new and mighty
responsibilities devolve upon us to aid, direct, and educate these
millions, left free, indeed, but bewildered, ignorant, naked, and
foodless in the wild chaos of civil war. We have to undo the accumulated
wrongs of two centuries; to remake the manhood which slavery has well-
nigh unmade; to see to it that the long-oppressed colored man has a fair
field for development and improvement; and to tread under our feet the
last vestige of that hateful prejudice which has been the strongest
external support of Southern slavery. We must lift ourselves at once to
the true Christian altitude where all distinctions of black and white are
overlooked in the heartfelt recognition of the brotherhood of man.

I must not close this letter without confessing that I cannot be
sufficiently thankful to the Divine Providence which, in a great measure
through thy instrumentality, turned me away so early from what Roger
Williams calls "the world's great trinity, pleasure, profit, and honor,"
to take side with the poor and oppressed. I am not insensible to
literary reputation. I love, perhaps too well, the praise and good-will
of my fellow-men; but I set a higher value on my name as appended to the
Anti-Slavery Declaration of 1833 than on the title-page of any book.
Looking over a life marked by many errors and shortcomings, I rejoice
that I have been able to maintain the pledge of that signature, and that,
in the long intervening years,

"My voice, though not the loudest, has been heard Wherever Freedom
raised her cry of pain."

Let me, through thee, extend a warm greeting to the friends, whether of
our own or the new generation, who may assemble on the occasion of
commemoration. There is work yet to be done which will task the best
efforts of us all. For thyself, I need not say that the love and esteem
of early boyhood have lost nothing by the test of time; and

I am, very cordially, thy friend,

JOHN G. WHITTIER






THE LESSON AND OUR DUTY.

From the Amesbury Villager.

[1865.]


IN the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the unspeakably brutal
assault upon Secretary Seward slavery has made another revelation of
itself. Perhaps it was needed. In the magnanimity of assured victory we
were perhaps disposed to overlook, not so much the guilty leaders and
misguided masses of the great rebellion as the unutterable horror and sin
of slavery which prompted it.

How slowly we of the North have learned the true character of this mighty
mischief! How our politicians bowed their strong shoulders under its
burthens! How our churches reverenced it! How our clergy contrasted the
heresy-tolerating North with the purely orthodox and Scriptural type of
slave-holding Christianity! How all classes hunted down, not merely the
fugitive slave, but the few who ventured to give him food and shelter and
a Godspeed in his flight from bondage! How utterly ignored was the
negro's claim of common humanity! How readily was the decision of the
slave-holding chief justice acquiesced in, that "the black man had no
rights which the white man is bound to respect"!

We saw a senator of the United States, world-known and honored for his
learning, talents, and stainless integrity, beaten down and all but
murdered at his official desk by a South Carolina slave-holder, for the
crime of speaking against the extension of slavery; and we heard the
dastardly deed applauded throughout the South, while its brutal
perpetrator was rewarded with orations and gifts and smiles of beauty as
a chivalrous gentleman. We saw slavery enter Kansas, with bowieknife in
hand and curses on its lips; we saw the life of the Union struck at by
secession and rebellion; we heard of the bones of sons and brothers,
fallen in defence of freedom and law, dug up and wrought into ornaments
for the wrists and bosoms of slave-holding women; we looked into the open
hell of Andersonville, upon the deliberate, systematic starvation of
helpless prisoners; we heard of Libby Prison underlaid with gunpowder,
for the purpose of destroying thousands of Union prisoners in case of the
occupation of Richmond by our army; we saw hundreds of prisoners
massacred in cold blood at Fort Pillow, and the midnight sack of Lawrence
and the murder of its principal citizens. The flames of our merchant
vessels, seized by pirates, lighted every sea; we heard of officers of
the rebel army and navy stealing into our cities, firing hotels filled
with sleeping occupants, and laying obstructions on the track of rail
cars, for the purpose of killing and mangling their passengers. Yet in
spite of these revelations of the utterly barbarous character of slavery
and its direful effect upon all connected with it, we were on the very
point of trusting to its most criminal defenders the task of
reestablishing the state governments of the South, leaving the real Union
men, white as well as black, at the mercy of those who have made hatred a
religion and murder a sacrament. The nation needed one more terrible
lesson. It has it in the murder of its beloved chief magistrate and the
attempted assassination of its honored prime minister, the two men of all
others prepared to go farthest to smooth the way of defeated rebellion
back to allegiance.

Even now the lesson of these terrible events seems but half learned. In
the public utterances I hear much of punishing and hanging leading
traitors, fierce demands for vengeance, and threats of the summary
chastisement of domestic sympathizers with treason, but comparatively
little is said of the accursed cause, the prolific mother of
abominations, slavery. The government is exhorted to remember that it
does not bear the sword in vain, the Old Testament is ransacked for texts
of Oriental hatred and examples of the revenges of a semi-barbarous
nation; but, as respects the four millions of unmistakably loyal people
of the South, the patient, the long-suffering, kind-hearted victims of
oppressions, only here and there a voice pleads for their endowment with
the same rights of citizenship which are to be accorded to the rank and
file of disbanded rebels. The golden rule of the Sermon on the Mount is
not applied to them. Much is said of executing justice upon rebels;
little of justice to loyal black men. Hanging a few ringleaders of
treason, it seems to be supposed, is all that is needed to restore and
reestablish the revolted states. The negro is to be left powerless in
the hands of the "white trash," who hate him with a bitter hatred,
exceeding that of the large slave-holders. In short, four years of
terrible chastisement, of God's unmistakable judgments, have not taught
us, as a people, their lesson, which could scarcely be plainer if it had
been written in letters of fire on the sky. Why is it that we are so
slow to learn, so unwilling to confess that slavery is the accursed thing
which whets the knife of murder, and transforms men, with the exterior of
gentlemen and Christians, into fiends? How pitiful is our exultation
over the capture of the wretched Booth and his associates! The great
criminal, of whom he and they were but paltry instruments, still stalks
abroad in the pine woods of Jersey, where the state has thrown around him
her legislative sanction and protection. He is in Pennsylvania,
thrusting the black man from public conveyances. Wherever God's children
are despised, insulted, and abused on account of their color, there is
the real assassin of the President still at large. I do not wonder at
the indignation which has been awakened by the late outrage, for I have
painfully shared it. But let us see to it that it is rightly directed.
The hanging of a score of Southern traitors will not restore Abraham
Lincoln nor atone for the mighty loss. In wreaking revenge upon these
miserable men, we must see to it that we do not degrade ourselves and do
dishonor to the sacred memory of the dead. We do well to be angry; and,
if need be, let our wrath wax seven times hotter, until that which "was a
murderer from the beginning" is consumed from the face of the earth. As
the people stand by the grave of Lincoln, let them lift their right hands
to heaven and take a solemn vow upon their souls to give no sleep to
their eyes nor slumber to their eyelids until slavery is hunted from its
last shelter, and every man, black and white, stands equal before the
law.

In dealing with the guilty leaders and instigators of the rebellion we
should beware how we take counsel of passion. Hatred has no place beside
the calm and awful dignity of justice. Human life is still a very sacred
thing; Christian forbearance and patience are still virtues. For my own
part, I should be satisfied to see the chiefs of the great treason go out
from among us homeless, exiled, with the mark of Cain on their foreheads,
carrying with them, wherever they go, the avenging Nemesis of conscience.
We cannot take lessons, at this late day, in their school of barbarism;
we cannot starve and torture them as they have starved and tortured our
soldiers. Let them live. Perhaps that is, after all, the most terrible
penalty. For wherever they hide themselves the story of their acts will
pursue them; they can have no rest nor peace save in that deep repentance
which, through the mercy of God, is possible for all.

I have no disposition to stand between these men and justice. If
arrested, they can have no claim to exemption from the liabilities of
criminals. But it is not simply a question of deserts that is to be
considered; we are to take into account our own reputation as a Christian
people, the wishes of our best friends abroad, and the humane instincts
of the age, which forbid all unnecessary severity. Happily we are not
called upon to take counsel of our fears. Rabbinical writers tell us
that evil spirits who are once baffled in a contest with human beings
lose from thenceforth all power of further mischief. The defeated rebels
are in the precise condition of these Jewish demons. Deprived of
slavery, they are like wasps that have lost their stings.

As respects the misguided masses of the South, the shattered and crippled
remnants of the armies of treason, the desolate wives, mothers, and
children mourning for dear ones who have fallen in a vain and hopeless
struggle, it seems to me our duty is very plain. We must forgive their
past treason, and welcome and encourage their returning loyalty. None
but cowards will insult and taunt the defeated and defenceless. We must
feed and clothe the destitute, instruct the ignorant, and, bearing
patiently with the bitterness and prejudice which will doubtless for a
time thwart our efforts and misinterpret our motives, aid them in
rebuilding their states on the foundation of freedom. Our sole enemy was
slavery, and slavery is dead. We have now no quarrel with the people of
the South, who have really more reason than we have to rejoice over the
downfall of a system which impeded their material progress, perverted
their religion, shut them out from the sympathies of the world, and
ridged their land with the graves of its victims.

We are victors, the cause of all this evil and suffering is removed
forever, and we can well afford to be magnanimous. How better can we
evince our gratitude to God for His great mercy than in doing good to
those who hated us, and in having compassion on those who have
despitefully used us? The hour is hastening for us all when our sole
ground of dependence will be the mercy and forgiveness of God. Let us
endeavor so to feel and act in our relations to the people of the South
that we can repeat in sincerity the prayer of our Lord: "Forgive us our
trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," reverently
acknowledging that He has indeed "led captivity captive and received
gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might
dwell among them."






CHARLES SUMNER AND THE STATE-DEPARTMENT.

[1868.]



THE wise reticence of the President elect in the matter of his cabinet
has left free course to speculation and conjecture as to its composition.
That he fully comprehends the importance of the subject, and that he will
carefully weigh the claims of the possible candidates on the score of
patriotic services, ability, and fitness for specific duties, no one who
has studied his character, and witnessed his discretion, clear insight,
and wise adaptation of means to ends, under the mighty responsibilities
of his past career, can reasonably doubt.

It is not probable that the distinguished statesman now at the head of
the State Department will, under the circumstances, look for a
continuance in office. History will do justice to his eminent services
in the Senate and in the cabinet during the first years of the rebellion,
but the fact that he has to some extent shared the unpopularity of the
present chief magistrate seems to preclude the idea of his retention in
the new cabinet. In looking over the list of our public men in search of
a successor, General Grant is not likely to be embarrassed by the number
of individuals fitted by nature, culture, and experience for such an
important post. The newspaper press, in its wide license of conjecture
and suggestion, has, as far as I have seen, mentioned but three or four
names in this connection. Allusions have been made to Senator Fessenden
of Maine, ex-Minister Motley, General Dix, ex-Secretary Stanton, and
Charles Sumner of Massachusetts.

Without disparaging in any degree his assumed competitors, the last-named
gentleman is unquestionably preeminently fitted for the place. He has
had a lifelong education for it. The entire cast of his mind, the bent
of his studies, the habit and experience of his public life, his profound
knowledge of international law and the diplomatic history of his own and
other countries, his well-earned reputation as a statesman and
constitutional lawyer, not only at home, but wherever our country has
relations of amity and commerce, the honorable distinction which he
enjoys of having held a foremost place in the great conflict between
freedom and slavery, union and rebellion, all mark him as the man for the
occasion. There seems, indeed, a certain propriety in assigning to the
man who struck the heaviest blows at secession and slavery in the
national Senate the first place under him who, in the field, made them
henceforth impossible. The great captain and the great senator united in
war should not be dissevered in peace.

I am not unaware that there are some, even in the Republican party, who
have failed to recognize in Senator Sumner the really wise and practical
statesmanship which a careful review of his public labors cannot but make
manifest. It is only necessary to point such to the open record of his
senatorial career. Few men have had the honor of introducing and
defending with exhaustive ability and thoroughness so many measures of
acknowledged practical importance to his imrnedicte constituents, the
country at large, and the wider interests of humanity and civilization.
In what exigency has he been found wanting? What legislative act of
public utility for the last eighteen years has lacked his encouragement?
At the head of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, his clearness of vision,
firmness, moderation, and ready comprehension of the duties of his time
and place must be admitted by all parties. It was shrewdly said by Burke
that "men are wise with little reflection and good with little self-
denial, in business of all times except their own." But Charles Sumner,
the scholar, loving the "still air of delightful studies," has shown
himself as capable of thoroughly comprehending and digesting the events
transpiring before his eyes as of pronouncing judgment upon those
recorded in history. Far in advance of most of his contemporaries, he
saw and enunciated the true doctrine of reconstruction, the early
adoption of which would have been of incalculable service to the country.
One of the ablest statesmen and jurists of the Democratic party has had
the rare magnanimity to acknowledge that in this matter the Republican
senator was right, and himself and his party wrong.

The Republicans of Massachusetts will make no fractious or importunate
demand upon the new President. They are content to leave to his unbiased
and impartial judgment the selection of his cabinet. But if, looking to
the best interests of the country, he shall see fit to give their
distinguished fellow-citizen the first place in it, they will feel no
solicitude as to the manner in which the duties of the office will be
discharged. They will feel that "the tools are with him who can use
them." Nothing more directly affects the reputation of a country than
the character of its diplomatic correspondence and its foreign
representatives. We have suffered in times past from sad mismanagement
abroad, and intelligent Americans have too often been compelled to hang
their heads with shame to see the flag of their country floating over the
consular offices of worthless, incompetent agents. There can be no
question that so far as they are entrusted to Senator Sumner's hands, the
interest, honor, and dignity of the nation will be safe.

In a few weeks Charles Summer will be returned for his fourth term in the
United States Senate by the well-nigh unanimous vote of both branches of
the legislature of Massachusetts. Not a syllable of opposition to his
reelection is heard from any quarter. There is not a Republican in the
legislature who could have been elected unless he had been virtually
pledged to his support. No stronger evidence of the popular estimate of
his ability and integrity than this could be offered. As a matter of
course, the marked individuality of his intense convictions, earnestness,
persistence, and confident reliance upon the justice of his conclusions,
naturally growing out of the consciousness of having brought to his
honest search after truth all the lights of his learning and experience,
may, at times, have brought him into unpleasant relations with some of
his colleagues; but no one, friend or foe, has questioned his ability and
patriotism, or doubted his fidelity to principle. He has lent himself to
no schemes of greed. While so many others have taken advantage of the
facilities of their official stations to fill, directly or indirectly,
their own pockets or those of their relatives and retainers, it is to the
honor of Massachusetts that her representatives in the Senate have not
only "shaken their hands from the holding of bribes," but have so borne
themselves that no shadow of suspicion has ever rested on them.

In this connection it may be proper to state that, in the event of a
change in the War Department, the claims of General Wilson, to whose
services in the committee on military affairs the country is deeply
indebted, may be brought under consideration. In that case Massachusetts
would not, if it were in her power, discriminate between her senators.
Both have deserved well of her and of the country. In expressing thus
briefly my opinion, I do not forget that after all the choice and
responsibility rest with General Grant alone. There I am content to
leave them. I am very far from urging any sectional claim. Let the
country but have peace after its long discord, let its good faith and
financial credit be sustained, and all classes of its citizens everywhere
protected in person and estate, and it matters very little to me whether
Massachusetts is represented at the Executive Council board, or not.
Personally, Charles Sumner would gain nothing by a transfer from the
Senate Chamber to the State Department. He does not need a place in the
American cabinet any more than John Bright does in the British. The
highest ambition might well be satisfied with his present position, from
which, looking back upon an honorable record, he might be justified in
using Milton's language of lofty confidence in the reply to Salmasius: "I
am not one who has disgraced beauty of sentiment by deformity of conduct,
or the maxims of a freeman by the actions of a slave, but, by the grace
of God, I have kept my life unsullied."






THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1872.

The following letter was written on receiving a request from a
committee of colored voters for advice as to their action at the
presidential election of 1872.

AMESBURY, 9th mo. 3d, 1872.

DEAR FRIENDS,--I have just received your letter of the 29th ult. asking
my opinion of your present duty as colored voters in the choice between
General Grant and Horace Greeley for the presidency. You state that you
have been confused by the contradictory advice given you by such friends
of your people as Charles Sumner on one hand, and William L. Garrison and
Wendell Phillips on the other; and you ask me, as one whom you are
pleased to think "free from all bias," to add my counsel to theirs.

I thank you for the very kind expression of your confidence and your
generous reference to my endeavors to serve the cause of freedom; but I
must own that I would fain have been spared the necessity of adding to
the already too long list of political epistles. I have felt it my duty
in times past to take an active part--often very distasteful to me--in
political matters, having for my first object the deliverance of my
country from the crime and curse of slavery. That great question being
now settled forever, I have been more than willing to leave to younger
and stronger hands the toils and the honors of partisan service. Pained
and saddened by the bitter and unchristian personalities of the canvass
now in progress, I have hitherto held myself aloof from it as far as
possible, unwilling to sanction in the slightest degree the criminations
and recriminations of personal friends whom I have every reason to love
and respect, and in whose integrity I have unshaken confidence. In the
present condition of affairs I have not been able to see that any special
action as an abolitionist was required at my hands. Both of the great
parties, heretofore widely separated, have put themselves on
substantially the same platform. The Republican party, originally
pledged only to the non-extension of slavery, and whose most illustrious
representative, President Lincoln, avowed his willingness to save the
Union without abolishing slavery, has been, under Providence, mainly
instrumental in the total overthrow of the detestable system; while the
Democratic party, composed largely of slave-holders, and, even at the
North, scarcely willing to save the Union at the expense of the slave
interest upon which its success depended, shattered and crippled by the
civil war and its results, has at last yielded to the inexorable logic of
events, abandoned a position no longer tenable, and taken its "new
departure" with an abolitionist as its candidate. As a friend of the
long-oppressed colored man, and for the sake of the peace and prosperity
of the country, I rejoice at this action of the Democratic party. The
underlying motives of this radical change are doubtless somewhat mixed
and contradictory, honest conviction on the part of some, and party
expediency and desire of office on the part of others; but the change
itself is real and irrevocable; the penalty of receding would be swift
and irretrievable ruin. In any point of view the new order of things is
desirable; and nothing more fully illustrates "the ways that are dark and
the tricks that are vain" of party politics than the attempt of professed
friends of the Union and equal rights for all to counteract it by giving
aid and comfort to a revival of the worst characteristics of the old
party in the shape of a straight-out Democratic convention.

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.