Part 16 (1/2)

Certainly good was accomplished by the transient whirlwind of the ”Was.h.i.+ngtonian” 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sembly, 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 st.u.r.dy 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 appet.i.te 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.