Part 2 (1/2)
”Your memorialists, particularly engaged in attending to the distresses arising from slavery, believe it their indispensable duty to present the subject to your notice. They have observed with real satisfaction, that many important and salutary powers are vested in you for 'promoting the welfare and securing the blessings of liberty to the people of the United States;' and as they conceive that these blessings ought rightfully to be administered without distinction of color to all descriptions of people, so they indulge themselves in the pleasing expectation that nothing which can be done for the relief of the unhappy objects of their care will be either omitted or delayed.”
”From a persuasion that equal liberty was originally the portion, and is still the birthright of all men, and influenced by the strong ties of humanity and the principles of their inst.i.tution, your memorialists conceive themselves bound to use all justifiable endeavors to loosen the bands of slavery, and promote a general enjoyment of the blessings of freedom. Under these impressions they earnestly entreat your serious attention to the subject of slavery; that you will be pleased to countenance the restoration to liberty of those unhappy men, who, alone, in this land of freedom, are degraded into perpetual bondage; and who, amidst the general joy of surrounding freemen, are groaning in servile subjection; that you will devise means for removing this inconsistency from the character of the American people; and that you will step to the very verge of the power vested in you for discouraging every species of traffic in the persons of our fellow-men,” Annals of Congress, i, p. 1239.
This memorial was drawn up and signed by ”BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, _President_, Feb. 3, 1790.” It was the last public act of that eminent man. He died on the 17th day of the April following. It will be observed that the memorial strikes at slavery itself, on the ground that the inst.i.tution is unjust, and a national disgrace. It was so understood in Congress, and ruffled the equanimity of the representatives of South Carolina and Georgia. Mr. Jackson, of Georgia, distinguished himself in the debate by an elaborate defense of the inst.i.tution. He was especially annoyed that Dr. Franklin's name should be attached to the memorial, ”a man,” he said, ”who ought to have known the const.i.tution better.”[31]
Dr. Franklin, though confined to his chamber, and suffering under a most painful disease, could not allow the occasion to pa.s.s without indulging his humor at the expense of Mr. Jackson. He wrote to the editor of the _Federal Gazette_, March 23, 1790, as follows: ”Reading, last night, in your excellent paper, the speech of Mr. Jackson, in Congress, against their meddling with the affair of slavery, or attempting to mend the condition of the slaves, it put me in mind of a similar one made about one hundred years since by Sidi Mehemet Ibrahim, a member of the Divan of Algiers, which may be seen in Martin's Account of his Consuls.h.i.+p, anno 1687. It was against granting the pet.i.tion of a sect called _Erika_, or Purists, who prayed for the abolition of piracy and slavery as being unjust. Mr. Jackson does not quote it; perhaps he has not seen it. If, therefore, some of its reasonings are to be found in his eloquent speech, it may only show that men's interests and intellects operate, and are operated on, with surprising similarity, in all countries and climates, whenever they are under similar circ.u.mstances. The African's speech, as translated, is as follows.” He then goes on to make an ingenious parody of Mr. Jackson's speech, making this African Mussulman give the same religious, and other reasons, for not releasing the white Christian slaves, whom they had captured by piracy, that Mr. Jackson had made for not releasing African slaves.[32] There were inquiries in the libraries for ”Martin's Account of his Consuls.h.i.+p,” but it was never found. The paper may be read in the second volume of Franklin's Works, Sparks' edition, p. 518. None of Dr. Franklin's writings are more felicitous than this _jeu d' esprit_; and it was written only twenty-four days before his death.
In the midst of this period, when anti-slavery opinions were so generally held by leading statesmen, the Const.i.tution of the United States was formed. It is due to the framers of that instrument to state that the entire delegations from the Northern and Middle States, and a majority of those from Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware were inspired to a greater or less extent with these sentiments, and would have supported any practical measures that would, in a reasonable time, have put an end to slavery. South Carolina and Georgia positively refused to come into the Union unless the clause, denying to Congress the power to prohibit the importation of slaves prior to 1808, was inserted. The Northern States were not so strenuous in opposition to this clause as Virginia and Maryland.[33] State after state was abolis.h.i.+ng the inst.i.tution; anti-slavery opinions were becoming universal; and it was generally supposed at the North that slavery would soon die out. The financial and business interests of the country were prostrated. Union at any cost must be had. The words _slave_ and _slavery_ were carefully avoided in the draft, and the best terms possible were made for South Carolina and Georgia. The Const.i.tution, as finally adopted, suited n.o.body; and by the narrowest margins it escaped being rejected in all the States. The vote in the Ma.s.sachusetts Convention was 187 yeas to 168 nays; and in the Virginia Convention, 89 yeas to 78 nays.
From this examination of the subject, we see that the popular idea, that the political anti-slavery agitation was forced upon the South by the North, and especially by Ma.s.sachusetts, is not a correct one. In the second period of excited controversy, from 1820 to 1830, the South again took the lead. In 1827, there were one hundred and thirty abolition societies in the United States. Of these one hundred and six were in the slaveholding States, and only four in New England and New York. Of these societies eight were in Virginia, eleven in Maryland, two in Delaware, two in the District of Columbia, eight in Kentucky, twenty-five in Tennessee, with a members.h.i.+p of one thousand, and fifty in North Carolina, with a members.h.i.+p of three thousand persons.[34]
Many of these societies were the result of the personal labors of Benjamin Lundy.
The Southampton insurrection of 1830, and indications of insurrection in North Carolina the same year, swept away these societies and their visible results. The fifteen years from 1830 to 1845 were the darkest period the American slave ever saw. It was the reign of violence and mob law at the North. This was the second great reaction. The first commenced with the invention of the cotton-gin, by Eli Whitney, in 1793, and continued till the question of the admission of Missouri came up in 1820. The third reaction was a failure; it commenced in 1861, and resulted in the overthrow of the inst.i.tution.
In the year 1791, the date that Dr. Buchanan delivered his oration at Baltimore, the College of William and Mary, in Virginia, conferred upon Granville Sharp, the great abolition agitator of England, the degree of LL. D. Granville Sharp had no other reputation than his anti-slavery record. This slender straw shows significantly the current of public opinion in Virginia at that time. If Granville Sharp had come over some years later to visit the President and Fellows of the College which had conferred upon him so distinguished a honor, it might have been at the risk of personal liberty, if not of life.
Colleges are naturally conservative, both from principle and from policy. Harvard College has never conferred upon Wm. Lloyd Garrison the least of its academic honors. Wendell Phillips, its own alumnus, the most eloquent of its living orators, and having in his veins a strain of the best blood of Boston, has always been snubbed at the literary and festive gatherings of the College. Southern gentlemen, however, agitators of the divine and biblical origin of slavery, have ever found a welcome on those occasions, for which latter courtesy the College should be honored.
If the visitor who records his name in the register of the Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society, will turn to the first leaf, he will find standing at the head the autograph of Jefferson Davis. Whether this position of honor was a.s.signed by intention, or occurred accidentally, I can not state. But there it is, and if you forget to look for yourself, it will probably be shown to you by the attendant.
Mr. Davis, with his family, visited Boston in 1858, and was received with marked attention by all. During this visit he was introduced, and frequently came to the Athenaeum, where I made his acquaintance. Among other objects of interest in the inst.i.tution, I showed him Was.h.i.+ngton's library and this oration of Dr. Buchanan. Nothing so fixed his attention as this; he read it and expressed himself amazed.
He had heard that such sentiments were expressed at the South, but had never seen them.
I am conscious that while I have taxed your patience, I have given but an imperfect presentation of the subject. If this endeavor shall serve to incite members of the Club to investigate the subject for themselves, my object will have been attained.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The questionable morality of Gen. Was.h.i.+ngton's motto might suggest that it was not originally adopted by him. The sentiment, that ”the end justifies the means,” has been charged, as a reproach, upon the Jesuits. It was the motto of the Northamptons.h.i.+re family from which Gen. Was.h.i.+ngton descended, and was used by him, probably without a thought of its Jesuitical a.s.sociation, or its meaning.
[2] On one of the fly-leaves, written in a boy's hand, is ”Mary Was.h.i.+ngton and George Was.h.i.+ngton.” Beneath is this memorandum: ”The above is in General Was.h.i.+ngton's handwriting when nine years of age.
[Signed,] G. W. Parke Custis,” who was the grandson of Mrs.
Was.h.i.+ngton, and the last surviver of the family. He was born in 1781, and died at the Arlington House in 1857.
In the apprais.e.m.e.nt of General Was.h.i.+ngton's estate, after his death, this book was valued at twenty-five cents, and the Miscellaneous Works of Col. Humphreys, at three dollars. The boy's scribbling, in the one case, and the gorgeous binding in the other, probably determined these values. In the appendix of Mr. Everett's Life of Was.h.i.+ngton, is printed the appraisers' inventory of Was.h.i.+ngton's library. Tracts on Slavery was valued at $1.00; Life of John Buncle, 2 vols., $3.00; Peregrine Pickle, 3 vols., $1.50; Humphrey Clinker, 25c., Jefferson's Notes on Virginia, $1.50, Tom Jones, or the History of a Foundling, 3 vols., (third vol. wanting) $1.50; Gulliver's Travels, 2 vols., $1.50; Pike's Arithmetic, $2.00.
[3] The first of these tracts is ”A Serious Address to the Rulers of America, on the Inconsistency of their Conduct respecting Slavery: forming a contest between the encroachments of England on American liberty, and American injustice in tolerating slavery. By a Farmer, London,” 1783. 24 pages. 8vo. The author compared, in opposite columns, the speeches and resolutions of the members of Congress in behalf of their own liberty, with their conduct in continuing the slavery of others. I have never seen the name of the author of this tract. It was extensively circulated at the time, and had much influence in forming the anti-slavery sentiment which later existed.
Another is ”An Essay on the Impolicy of the African Slave Trade. In two Parts. By the Rev. T. Clarkson, M. A. To which is added an Oration upon the Necessity of Establis.h.i.+ng at Paris a Society for Promoting the Abolition of the Trade and Slavery of the Negroes. By J. P.
Brissot de Warville. Philadelphia: Printed by Francis Bailey, for 'the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes unlawfully held in Bondage.' 1789.” 155 pp.
8vo.
[4] These facts may also be found in Steadman's Narrative of an Expedition to Surinam, vol. 2. p. 160; in Bishop Gregoire's ”Enquiry into the Intellectual and Moral Faculties and Literature of Negroes,”
p. 153; in Edw. Needles' ”Historical Memoir of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery,” p. 32; and in Brissot de Warville's New Travels in the United States, p. 287, ed. 1792.
[5] Mr. Needles says: ”He was visited by William Hartshorn and Samuel Coates of this city (Philadelphia), and gave correct answers to all their questions--such as how many seconds there are in a year and a half. In two minutes he answered 47,304,000. How many seconds in seventy years, seventeen days, twelve hours. In one minute and a half, 2,110,500,800. He multiplied nine figures by nine,” etc., etc.
[6] Accounts of these two black men were prepared by Dr. Rush, for the information of the London Society.
[7] Works, iii, p. 291.
[8] In a letter to M. de Meusnier, dated January 24, 1786, Mr.
Jefferson says: ”I conjecture there are six hundred and fifty thousand negroes in the five southermost states, and not fifty thousand in the rest. In most of the latter, effectual measures have been taken for their future emanc.i.p.ation. In the former nothing is done toward that.