The Black Abolitionist Papers: Vol. I: The British Isles, 1830-1865

The Black Abolitionist Papers

Board of Editorial Advisors Irving H. Bartlett John W. Blassingame E. David Cronon Helen G. Edmonds Lawrence J. Friedman William R. Jones Leon F. Litwack William H. Pease Lewis Perry Dorothy B. Porter Benjamin Quarles Joe M. Richardson George Shepperson James Morton Smith Howard Temperley Earl E. Thorpe Charles Wiltse Robin Winks Esmond Wright

The Black Abolitionist Papers V O L U M E

I

The British Isles, 1830–1865 C. Peter Ripley, Editor Jeffery S. Rossbach, Associate Editor Roy E. Finkenbine, Assistant Editor Fiona E. Spiers, Assistant Editor Debra Susie, Research Associate

The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill and London

© 1985 The University of North Carolina Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America 96 95 94 93 92

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: The Black abolitionist papers. Contents: v. 1. The British Isles, 1830–1865. Includes index. 1. Slavery—United States—Anti-slavery movements. 2. Abolitionists—United States—History—19th century— Sources. 3. Abolitionists—History—19th century— Sources. 4. Afro-Americans—History—To 1863—Sources. I. Ripley, C. Peter, 1941- . E449.B624 1985

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ISBN 0-8078-1625-6 (v.1) This volume was designed by the editors.

The preparation of this volume was made possible in part by a grant from the Program for Editions of the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency, and by grants from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, The Florida State University, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Atlantic Richfield Foundation, and the Wausau Insurance Company.

Contents

Illustrations xv Acknowledgments xvii Abbreviations xix Editorial Statement xxv Introduction 3 Documents 1. Nathaniel Paul to William Lloyd Garrison, 10 April 1833

37

2. Speech by Nathaniel Paul, Delivered at Exeter Hall, London, England, 13 July 1833

44

3. Speech by Nathaniel Paul, Delivered at the Trades’ Hall, Glasgow, Scotland, 2 December 1834

53

4. Speeches by Moses Roper, Delivered at Baptist Chapel, Devonshire Square, 26 May 1836, and at Finsbury Chapel, London, England, 30 May 1836

60

5. Remarks by James McCune Smith, Delivered at a Meeting of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, Glasgow, Scotland, 15 March 1837

65

6. John Murray and William Smeal to James McCune Smith, 15 June 1837

68

7. Charles Lenox Remond to Charles B. Ray, 30 June 1840

71

8. Charles Lenox Remond to William Lloyd Garrison, [October 1840]

80

9. Charles Lenox Remond to Richard Allen, 7 January 1841

85

10. Charles Lenox Remond to William Lloyd Garrison, 7 March 1841

92

11. Charles Lenox Remond to Nathaniel P. Rogers, 2 October 1841

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12. Charles Lenox Remond to Richard Allen, 19 November 1841

100

13. Speech by J. W. C. Pennington, Delivered at Freemasons’ Hall, London, England, 14 June 1843

104

14. Speech by J. W. C. Pennington, Delivered at Exeter Hall, London, England, 21 June 1843

129

15. Moses Roper to the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 9 May 1844

134

16. M. M. Clark to Editor, London Patriot, 9 October 1846

138

17. Alexander Crummell to John Jay, 9 August 1848

142

18. Remarks of Alexander Crummell, Delivered at the Hall of Commerce, London, England, 21 May 1849

149

19. William Wells Brown to Elizabeth Pease, 30 July 1849

152

20. Speeches by William Wells Brown and J. W. C. Pennington, Delivered at Salle de la Sainte Cecile, Paris, France, 24 August 1849

155

21. William Wells Brown to William Allen, 2 September 1849

161

22. Speech by William Wells Brown, Delivered at the Lecture Hall, Croydon, England, 5 September 1849

168

23. Speech by William Wells Brown, Delivered at the Concert Rooms, Store Street, London, England, 27 September 1849

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24. J. W. C. Pennington to Editor, British Banner, 4 January 1850

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25. Speech by J. W. C. Pennington, Delivered at Merchants Hall, Glasgow, Scotland, 12 June 1850

185

26. A Description of William Wells Brown’s Original Panoramic Views of the Scenes in the Life of an American Slave, from His Birth in Slavery to His Death or His Escape to His First Home of Freedom on British Soil

191

27. Henry Highland Garnet to Samuel Ringgold Ward, 4 September 1850

225

28. J. W. C. Pennington to Editor, Christian News, 6 September 1850

228

29. Henry Highland Garnet to Samuel Rhoads, 5 December 1850

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Contents

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30. William P. Powell to Sydney Howard Gay, 12 December 1850

234

31. William Wells Brown to Frederick Douglass, 20 December 1850

239

32. Speech by William Craft, Delivered at the Nicolson Street Church, Edinburgh, Scotland, 30 December 1850

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33. William Wells Brown to Wendell Phillips, 31 January 1851

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34. William P. Powell to Sydney Howard Gay, 23 March 1851

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35. William P. Powell to Mary Ann Duval, 25 March 1851

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36. Speech by John Brown, Delivered at the Guildhall, Plymouth, England, 9 April 1851

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37. Francis S. Anderson to William Lloyd Garrison, 21 April 1851

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38. Speech by William Craft, Delivered at the Plymouth Theatre, Plymouth, England, 30 April 1851

271

39. Speech by Alexander Crummell, Delivered at Freemasons’ Hall, London, England, 19 May 1851

276

40. William Wells Brown to Editor, London Times, 3 July 1851

283

41. Speech by William Wells Brown, Delivered at the Hall of Commerce, London, England, 1 August 1851

285

42. An Appeal to the People of Great Britain and the World, Presented by Alexander Duval at the Hall of Commerce, London, England, 1 August 1851

290

43. J. C. A. Smith to Gerrit Smith, 6 August 1851

293

44. William Wells Brown to Frederick Douglass, 10 September 1851

302

45. Alexander Crummell to John Jay, 22 March 1852

308

46. William Wells Brown to Editor, London Morning Advertiser, 15 May 1852

312

47. William Craft to Editor, London Morning Advertiser, [September 1852] 316 48. Henry Highland Garnet and the Weims Family Purchase: Charles B. Ray to Henry Highland Garnet, 27 September 1852; Note by Henry Highland Garnet, 16 October 1852

327

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49. Ellen Craft to Editor, Anti-Slavery Advocate, 26 October 1852

330

50. Speech by Edmund Kelly, Delivered at Baptist Chapel, Dublin, Ireland, 7 April 1853

332

51. Speech by Samuel Ringgold Ward, Delivered at the Poultry Chapel, London, England, 9 May 1853

335

52. Speech by Samuel Ringgold Ward, Delivered at Exeter Hall, London, England, 16 May 1853

340

53. William Wells Brown to William Lloyd Garrison, 17 May 1853

344

54. Speech by Alexander Crummell, Delivered at the Lower Hall, Exeter Hall, London, England, 26 May 1853

349

55. William G. Allen to William Lloyd Garrison, 20 June 1853

355

56. Speech by Samuel Ringgold Ward, Delivered at Freemasons’ Hall, London, England, 21 June 1853

362

57. Speech by William G. Allen, Delivered at the Stock Exchange, Leeds, England, 29 November 1853

367

58. Speech by William G. Allen, Delivered at the Stock Exchange, Leeds, England, 1 December 1853

372

59. William G. Allen to Charles Sumner, 24 January 1854

379

60. J. C. A. Smith to Editor, Anti-Slavery Reporter, 13 March 1854

383

61. Samuel Ringgold Ward to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, 1 April 1854

387

62. Samuel Ringgold Ward to Editor, British Banner, 12 April 1854

388

63. Samuel Ringgold Ward to the Readers of the Provincial Freeman, 27 April 1854

391

64. James Watkins to Editor, Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, 18 May 1854

395

65. Speech by William Wells Brown, Delivered at the Town Hall, Manchester, England, 1 August 1854

398

66. Henry Highland Garnet to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, 2 October 1854

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67. Samuel Ringgold Ward to Frederick Douglass, January 1855

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68. Samuel Ringgold Ward to Frederick Douglass, March 1855

417

69. William G. Allen to Editor, Belfast Newsletter, 24 November 1855

423

70. Speech by John Andrew Jackson, Delivered at the Scottish Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures Connected with Architecture, Glasgow, Scotland, 2 June 1857

427

71. Narrative of Tom Wilson

430

72. William P. Powell to Maria Weston Chapman, 10 December 1858

433

73. Speech by Sarah P. Remond, Delivered at the Music Hall, Warrington, England, 24 January 1859

435

74. Speech by Sarah P. Remond, Delivered at the Red Lion Hotel, Warrington, England, 2 February 1859

445

75. Circular by Robert Campbell, 13 May 1859

447

76. William G. Allen to Gerrit Smith, 14 May 1859

453

77. Speech by Sarah P. Remond, Delivered at the Athenaeum, Manchester, England, 14 September 1859

457

78. Sarah P. Remond to Maria Weston Chapman, 6 October 1859

462

79. Speech by William Craft, Delivered at Spafields Chapel, London, England, 14 October 1859

465

80. Sarah P. Remond and the Passport Issue: Sarah P. Remond to Editor, Scottish Press, 4 December 1859; Sarah P. Remond to George Mifflin Dallas, 12 December 1859; Sarah P. Remond to Benjamin Moran, 15 December 1859

469

81. William P. Powell to Samuel May, Jr., 31 December 1859

474

82. Martin R. Delany to Norton Shaw, 13 June 1860

477

83. William Craft to Samuel May, Jr., 17 July 1860

478

84. Speech by Theodore Gross, Delivered at the Large Room, Wesleyan Centenary Hall, London, England, 28 September 1860

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85. Speech by Martin R. Delany, Delivered at the City Hall, Glasgow, Scotland, 23 October 1860

488

86. John S. Jacobs to Isaac Post, 5 June 1861

491

87. Speech by John Anderson, Delivered at Exeter Hall, London, England, 2 July 1861

494

88. Henry Highland Garnet to Julia Garnet, 13 September 1861

497

89. Henry Highland Garnet to Henry M. Wilson, 27 September 1861

501

90. J. Sella Martin to George L. Ruffin, 10 October 1861

510

91. Speech by Henry Highland Garnet, Delivered at the Music Hall, Birmingham, England, 15 October 1861

515

92. Remarks by J. Sella Martin, Delivered at the Residence of Arthur Kinnaird, M.P., 2 Pall Mall East, London, England, 22 November 1861

519

93. William Howard Day to Salmon P. Chase, 30 March 1862

524

94. Alexander Crummell to Editor, Colonization Herald, 16 February 1863

527

95. J. Sella Martin and the William Mitchell Episode: J. Sella Martin to Editor, London Patriot, 25 June 1863; Statement by William Mitchell, 3 March 1864

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96. Exchange by William Craft and Dr. James Hunt at the Annual Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, 27 August 1863

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97. J. Sella Martin to Editor, London Morning Star, 8 September 1863

544

98. J. Sella Martin to Michael E. Strieby, 4 June 1865

549

99. J. Sella Martin to Michael E. Strieby, 21 June 1865

556

100. Speech by J. Sella Martin, Delivered at the Queen’s Rooms, Glasgow, Scotland, 3 October 1865

561

101. Speech by J. Sella Martin, Delivered at the Athenaeum, Bristol, England, 27 October 1865

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102. Sarah P. Remond to Editor, London Daily News, 7 November 1865 Appendix: Black Abolitionists in the British Isles, 1830–1865 571 Index 575

568

Illustrations

1. Charles Lenox Remond

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2. Moses Roper

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3. Scene from a session of the 22–24 August 1849 Paris Peace Congress

156

4. Title page from William Wells Brown, A Description of William Wells Brown’s Original Panoramic Views

190

5. Ellen Craft in the disguise used during her 1848 escape from slavery

240

6. John Brown, the fugitive slave

260

7. Henry “Box” Brown

294

8. Alexander Crummell

528

9. William Craft

538

Acknowledgments It is difficult to acknowledge properly the individuals and institutions that contributed to this first volume of the Black Abolitionist Papers. We wish to thank again the countless people and organizations that helped us during the four-year search for documents. We called on many of you a second time as we prepared the microfilm edition and a third time for this volume. Clifton H. Johnson at the Amistad Research Center, Thomas C. Battle at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Karl Kabelac of the University of Rochester Library, Sidney F. Huttner of the George Arents Research Library, and the staffs at the Boston Public Library and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture have been enormously helpful and courteous over the years. When Alan Bell of the Rhodes House Library at Oxford transcribed by hand a document that would not reproduce, he typified the cooperative spirit we found among manuscript librarians. We owe additional thanks to the institutions that allowed us to publish the documents in this volume. A host of individuals at The Florida State University and at several federal agencies and private foundations made our work possible. At Florida State, Cory Burke, Betty Davis, and Susan Fell tried to keep the administrative paper work off my desk, and I am forever in their debt for that. William R. Jones, director of the Black Studies Program, joined with the late Robert O. Lawton to bring the project to Florida State and then supported and encouraged the project in steady and significant ways. The National Historical Publications and Records Commission helped fund the project, but equally important, the commission staff—Mary A. Giunta, Sarah Dunlap Jackson, Richard Sheldon, George L. Vogt, and particularly Director of Publications Roger A. Bruns and Executive Director Frank G. Burke—demonstrated a cooperative spirit that made it a delight to be associated with them. The National Endowment for the Humanities has been a major source of funding, first under Chairman Joseph D. Duffey and then under Chairman William J. Bennett. Harold Cannon, George Farr, and Kathy Fuller of the NEH Research Division fielded our questions and shepherded our applications. Alberta Arthurs and Lynn Szwaja at the Rockefeller Foundation and Sheila Biddle at the Ford Foundation welcomed us into their offices, listened to our needs, and supported our work. Sheila Biddle’s advice and assistance was special, and we thank her. There is no way to acknowledge adequately the contribution of the project staff. Graduate students Chris Arendt and Glenda Alice Rabby of the Department of History at Florida State compiled bibliographies, hunted down citations, and indexed research materials. Assistant Editor

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Acknowledgements

Fiona Spiers of Leeds, England, located elusive documents and research materials in Britain. Monte Finkelstein assisted in the document selection process and worked with preliminary annotation. Michael Hembree wrote notes, proofed documents, compiled indexes, and tended to a variety of editorial tasks with precision and thoroughness. Debra Susie brought order to our indexing of research materials, transcribed documents, and kept a close watch over our transcription guidelines and our editorial principles. Roy E. Finkenbine joined the project as an NHPRC editing fellow in 1981 and remained with the project as assistant editor. He brought a fresh view, new energy, and professional effort to the volume as he wrote notes and headnotes and reviewed with us the selection of documents. Associate Editor Jeffery S. Rossbach contributed to every phase of the volume, but his skills are most evident in the major historical notes and in the Afro-American biographical notes. The professional staff indulged me each time I suggested we review the documents “just once more,” tolerated my editing of their notes, listened patiently when I regularly insisted that the notes could be both shorter and more satisfying, and entertained my suggestions and plans with only an occasional grimace. I thank them for their considerable and persistent efforts. The board of editorial advisers responded promptly and wisely to our calls for counsel and assistance. William Pease of the University of Maine critiqued the introduction to the volume with the cogent insights we have come to expect from him. It is improved for his efforts. The staff at the University of North Carolina Press has been professional and patient. John W. Blassingame of Yale University, R. Hal Williams of Southern Methodist University, William Ferris of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, and Joe M. Richardson of Florida State always seemed to have the right answers to the tough questions. Jerome Stern of the Florida State Department of English arbitrated our editorial debates, walked me through two drafts of the introduction, and ran me through the difficult periods. My debts to Martha need no public expression for her to know how genuine they are. The rich support received in producing this volume is among its greatest rewards.

Tallahassee, Florida July 1983

C. P. R.

Abbreviations Newspapers, Journals, Directories, and Reference Works AA Aliened American (Cleveland, Ohio). AAM Anglo-African Magazine (New York, New York). AB Alabama Baptist (Marion, Alabama). ABG Aris’s Birmingham Gazette (Birmingham, England). ACAB James Grant Wilson and John Fiske, eds., Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 6 vols. (New York, New York, 1888–89). AHR American Historical Review. AM American Missionary (New York, New York). AP Albany Patriot (Albany, New York). AQ American Quarterly. AR African Repository (Washington, D.C.). ASA Anti-Slavery Advocate (London, England). ASB Anti-Slavery Bugle (Salem, Ohio; New Lisbon, Ohio). ASR Anti-Slavery Record (New York, New York). ASRL Anti-Slavery Reporter (London, England). ASW Anti-Slavery Watchman (Manchester, England). AT African Times (London, England). BA Boston Atlas (Boston, Massachusetts). BB British Banner (London, England). BF British Friend (Glasgow, Scotland). BHM Bulletin of the History of Medicine. BN Belfast Newsletter (Belfast, Northern Ireland). BP Boston Post (Boston, Massachusetts). BS Sun (Baltimore, Maryland). BSt Blackburn Standard (Blackburn, England). BT Bristol Times (Bristol, England). BUCP James D. Stewart, Muriel Hammond, and Erwin Saenger, eds., British Union-Catalogue of Periodicals, 4 vols. (New York, New York, 1955–58). CA Colored American (New York, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). CF Christian Freeman (Hartford, Connecticut). CG Gazette (Cleveland, Ohio). CH Church History. CHGR Colonization Herald and General Register (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). CHSB Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin.

xx CJH CN CO CP CR CSR CTWP CWD CWH CWP DAB

DAH DANB DBTB DCB

DDA DM DMH DNB

DQB

DUB E EIHC EP ESF EW FDP

Abbreviations Canadian Journal of History. Christian News (Glasgow, Scotland). Christian Observer (New York, New York). Daily Planet (Chatham, Ontario, Canada). Christian Recorder (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). Cotton Supply Reporter (Manchester, England). Chatham Tri-Weekly Planet (Chatham, Ontario, Canada). Mark Mayo Boatner, ed., Civil War Dictionary (New York, New York, 1959). Civil War History. Chatham Weekly Planet (Chatham, Ontario, Canada). Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York, New York, 1928– 36). Dictionary of American History, rev. ed., 8 vols. (New York, New York, 1976–78). Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston, eds., Dictionary of American Negro Biography (New York, New York, 1982). Brian Howard Harrison, ed., Dictionary of British Temperance Biography (Sheffield, England, 1973). George W. Brown, David M. Hayne, and Francess G. Halpenny, eds., Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vols. 1–4, 9–11 to date (Toronto, Canada, 1966–). Detroit Daily Advertiser (Detroit, Michigan). Douglass’ Monthly (Rochester, New York). Alan Warwick Palmer, ed., Dictionary of Modern History (London, England, 1962). Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee, eds., Dictionary of National Biography, 22 vols. (London, England, 1885–1901; reprint, 1921–22). “Dictionary of Quaker Biography,” typescript in the Quaker Collection, Haverford College Library, Haverford, Pennsylvania, and Library of the Society of Friends, Friends House, London, England. Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography, 3 vols. (London, England, n.d.). Emancipator (Boston, Massachusetts; New York, New York). Essex Institute Historical Collections. Evening Post (New York, New York). Elevator (San Francisco, California). Witness (Edinburgh, Scotland). Frederick Douglass’ Paper (Rochester, New York).

Abbreviations FJ FJD FM FML Fr GM GO HCP HF HHE HP HT HW I IC IHS ISHSJ JAS JBS JNE JNH JPH JQ JSH LDN LH LI Lib LM LP LS LT MA MAL MC MEB

MET MG ML

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Freedom’s Journal (New York, New York). Freeman’s Journal (Dublin, Ireland). Friend of Man (Utica, New York). Freed-Man (London, England). Friend (London, England). Gentleman’s Magazine of Fashion, Fancy Costumes, and the Regimentals of the Army (London, England). Gateshead Observer (Gateshead, England). Hartford County Press (Hartford, Connecticut). Herald of Freedom (Concord, New Hampshire). Huddersfield and Holmfirth Examiner (Huddersfield, England). Harrisburg Patriot (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania). Harrisburg Telegraph (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania). Household Words (London, England). Inquirer (London, England). Impartial Citizen (Boston, Massachusetts; Syracuse, New York). Irish Historical Studies. Illinois State Historical Society Journal. Journal of American Studies. Journal of Black Studies. Journal of Negro Education. Journal of Negro History. Journal of Presbyterian History. Journalism Quarterly. Journal of Southern History. Daily News (London, England). Leisure Hour (London, England). Leeds Intelligencer (Leeds, England). Liberator (Boston, Massachusetts). Leeds Mercury (Leeds, England). Liberty Press (Utica, New York). Liberty Standard (Hallowell, Maine). Leeds Times (Leeds, England). Mid-America. Morning Advertiser (London, England). Morning Chronicle (London, England). Frederick Boase, ed., Modern English Biography, 6 vols. (New York, New York, 1892–1921; reprint, London, England, 1965). Manchester Examiner and Times (Manchester, England). Manchester Guardian (Manchester, England). Mirror of Liberty (New York, New York).

xxii MS MVHR MWT NASS NAW

Abbreviations

Morning Star (London, England). Mississippi Valley Historical Review. Manchester Weekly Times (Manchester, England). National Anti-Slavery Standard (New York, New York). Edward T. James, ed., Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1971). NBDES Daily Evening Standard (New Bedford, Massachusetts). NC Nonconformist (London, England). NCA Northern Christian Advocate (Auburn, New York). NCAB National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 61 vols. to date (New York, New York, 1898–). NECAUL National Enquirer and Constitutional Advocate of Universal Liberty (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). NEQ New England Quarterly. NEW National Era (Washington, D.C.). NHB Negro History Bulletin. NM Nigerian Magazine. NNE New National Era (Washington, D.C.). NSt North Star (Rochester, New York). NYE New York Evangelist (New York, New York). NYH New York Herald (New York, New York). NYHi New York History. NYT New York Tribune (New York, New York). NYTi New York Times (New York, New York). NYZW New York Zion’s Watchman (New York, New York). OE Oberlin Evangelist (Oberlin, Ohio). OH Ohio History. P Philanthropist (Mt. Pleasant, Ohio; New Richmond, Ohio; Cincinnati, Ohio). PA Pacific Appeal (San Francisco, California). PDWJ Plymouth and Devonport Weekly Journal (Plymouth, England). PEB Evening Bulletin (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). Peo People (Leeds, England). PF Pennsylvania Freeman (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). PFW Provincial Freeman (Windsor, Ontario, Canada; Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Chatham, Ontario, Canada). PG Preston Guardian (Preston, England). PH Pennsylvania History. Phy Phylon. PL Palladium of Liberty (Columbus, Ohio). PMHB Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography.

Abbreviations

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PP PPL

Pine and Palm (Boston, Massachusetts; New York, New York). Public Ledger and Daily Transcript (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). PPr Press (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). PT Plymouth Times, Devonport, Stonehouse and West of England Advertiser (Plymouth, England). PtL Patriot (London, England). RA Rights of All (New York, New York). RCHS Records of the Columbia Historical Society, 53 vols. to date (Washington, D.C., 1897–). RMS Renaissance and Modern Studies. SDS Syracuse Daily Standard (Syracuse, New York). SF Standard of Freedom (London, England). SP Scottish Press (Edinburgh, Scotland). STNWM Sunday Times and Noah’s Weekly Messenger (New York, New York). SUA Soulby’s Ulverston Advertiser and General Intelligencer (Ulverston, England). TG Globe (Toronto, Ontario, Canada). TL Times (London, England). Tran Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Transactions. UM VF WAA WS WT WTr WWA

Union Missionary (New York, New York). Voice of the Fugitive (Sandwich, Ontario, Canada; Windsor, Ontario, Canada). Weekly Anglo-African (New York, New York). Warrington Standard and Lancashire and Cheshire Advertiser (Warrington, England). Warrington Times (Warrington, England). Worcester Transcript (Worcester, Massachusetts). Watchman and Wesleyan Advertiser (London, England).

Manuscript Repositories AMA-ARC American Missionary Association Archives, Amistad Research Center, New Orleans, Louisiana. DHU Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C. DLC Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. DNA National Archives, Washington, D.C.

xxiv IreDFh

Abbreviations

Religious Society of Friends in Ireland, Historical Library, Dublin, Ireland. MB Boston Public Library and Eastern Massachusetts Regional Public Library System, Boston, Massachusetts. MH Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. MHi Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts. MiU William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. MNS Women’s History Archives, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. NNC Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, New York. NN-Sc Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, New York, New York. NRU Rush-Rhees Library, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York. NSyU George Arents Research Library, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York. OClWHi Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio. OHi Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio. OO Seeley G. Mudd Center, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio. PPPrHi United Presbyterian Church in the United States, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. PSC Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. UkBPl Birmingham Public Library, Birmingham, England. UkGM Mitchell Library, Glasgow, Scotland. UkLRgeo Royal Geographic Society Archives, London, England. UkLW Dr. Williams’s Library, London, England. UkMJr John Rylands University Library, Manchester, England. UkOxU-Rh Rhodes House Library, Oxford University, Oxford, England.

Editorial Statement

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Editorial Statement The Black Abolitionist Papers Project began in 1976 with the mission to collect and publish the documentary record of black Americans involved in the movement to end slavery in the United States from 1830 to 1865. The project was conceived from an understanding that broad spans of Afro-American history have eluded scholarly attention because the necessary research materials are not readily available. Many personal papers, business records, newspapers, and other documentary sources simply have not survived. Materials that have endured are often inaccessible to scholars and an interested public because they have not been systematically identified and collected. Except for several small manuscript collections of better-known black figures (usually those that continued to be public figures after emancipation),1 the letters, speeches, essays, writings, and personal papers of black abolitionists have escaped professional attention. The same is true of antebellum black newspapers. But the publications of individual historians demonstrated that black abolitionist documents could be unearthed.2 The black documents that enriched those books and articles were not located in a single collection, repository, or newspaper in any quantity. They were found scattered in the manuscript collections of others (usually whites involved in nineteenthcentury reform movements) and in newspapers of the day (usually reform papers but also in the traditional press). Clearly, a significant 1. See Mary Ann Shadd Cary Papers, Public Archives of Canada (Ottawa, Ontario), DHU, Ontario Provincial Archives (Toronto, Ontario); Shadd Family Papers, University of Western Ontario (London, Ontario); Rapier Family Papers, DHU; Daniel A. Payne Papers, Wilberforce University (Wilberforce, Ohio); Anderson R. Abbott Papers, Toronto Public Library (Toronto, Ontario); John M. Langston Papers, Fisk University (Nashville, Tennessee); Ruffin Family Papers, DHU; Amos G. Beman Papers, Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut); Charles Lenox Remond Papers, Essex Institute (Salem, Massachusetts), and MB; William Still Papers, Rutgers University (New Brunswick, New Jersey); Jacob C. White, Jr., Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania); Frederick Douglass Papers, DLC, NN-Sc, and DHU; Alexander Crummell Papers, NN-Sc; James T. Holly Papers, General Theological Seminary (New York, New York); J. W. Loguen File, NSyU; Paul Cuffe Papers, New Bedford Free Public Library (New Bedford, Massachusetts). Of these, only the Cary, Cuffe, Remond, Douglass, and Beman Collections have significant antebellum documents. 2. A number of black abolitionist documents were reprinted before this project began its work in 1976: Carter G. Woodson, ed., Negro Orators and Their Orations (Washington, D.C., 1925); Carter G. Woodson, ed., The Mind of the Negro as Reflected in Letters Written during the Crisis, 1800–1860 (Washington, D.C., 1926); Dorothy B. Porter, ed., “Early Manuscript Letters Written by Negroes,” JNH 24:199–210 (April 1939); Benjamin Quarles, ed., “Letters from Negro Leaders to Gerrit Smith,” JNH 27:432–53 (October 1942); Philip S. Foner, ed., The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, 5 vols. (New

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Editorial Statement

body of black abolitionist documents survived, but it seemed equally certain that locating the documents would require a thorough search of large numbers of newspapers and a systematic review of a wide range of historical materials, particularly the papers of white individuals and institutions involved in the antislavery movement. An international search for documents was the first phase of the Black Abolitionist Papers Project. A four-year collection process took the project to thousands of manuscript collections and countless newspapers in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Canada as well as in the United States. This work netted nearly 14,000 letters, speeches, essays, pamphlets, and newspaper editorials from over 200 libraries and 110 newspapers. What resulted is the documentary record of some 300 black men and women and their efforts to end American slavery.3 The Black Abolitionist Papers were microfilmed during the second phase of the project. The microfilmed edition contains all the primary documents gathered during the collection phase. The seventeen reels of film are a pristine presentation of the black abolitionist record.4 The York, N.Y., 1950–75); Howard H. Bell, ed., Minutes of the Proceedings of the National Negro Conventions, 1830–1864 (New York, N.Y., 1969); Dorothy Sterling, ed., Speak Out in Thunder Tones: Letters and Other Writings by Black Northerners, 1787–1865 (New York, N.Y., 1973). Pioneer scholarship on the subject that further suggested the availability of documents includes a number of articles on antebellum black Canadian fugitive communities by Fred Landon that appeared in the Journal of Negro History and Ontario History during the 1920s and 1930s; Dorothy B. Porter, “Sarah Parker Remond, Abolitionist and Physician,” JNH 20:287–93 (July 1935), and “David M. Ruggles, an Apostle of Human Rights,” JNH 28:23–50 (January 1943); Herbert Aptheker, The Negro in the Abolitionist Movement (New York, N.Y., 1941); Benjamin Quarles, Frederick Douglass (Washington, D.C., 1948); Philip S. Foner, Frederick Douglass (New York, N.Y., 1950); Benjamin Quarles, “Ministers without Portfolio,” JNH 39:27–43 (January 1954); Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860 (Chicago, Ill., 1961); William H. Pease and Jane H. Pease, Black Utopia: Negro Communal Experiments in America (Madison, Wis., 1963); Benjamin Quarles, Black Abolitionists (London, 1969); William Edward Farrison, William Wells Brown: Author and Reformer (Chicago, Ill., 1969); Robin W. Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History (New Haven, Conn., 1971); Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, They Who Would Be Free: Blacks’ Search for Freedom, 1830–1861 (New York, N.Y., 1974); Floyd J. Miller, The Search for a Black Nationality: Black Emigration and Colonization, 1787–1863 (Urbana, Ill., 1975); Richard Blackett, “In Search of International Support for African Colonization: Martin R. Delany’s Visit to England, 1860,” CJH 10:307–24 (December 1975). Several examples of early research on black abolitionists were reprinted in John H. Bracey, Jr., August Meier, and Elliott Rudwick, eds., Blacks in the Abolitionist Movement (Belmont, Calif., 1971). 3. This project has not collected or published documents by Frederick Douglass. Douglass’s papers are being edited and published by John W. Blassingame and the staff of the Frederick Douglass Papers Project at Yale University. 4. The Black Abolitionist Papers are on seventeen reels of film with a published guide and index (New York, N.Y.: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1981–83; Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1984–). The guide contains a description of collection procedures.

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microfilmed edition offers materials that previously were uncollected, unidentified, and frequently unavailable to scholars. In its third phase, the project will publish a five-volume series of edited and annotated representative documents of which this volume is the first. Black abolitionist activities in the British Isles and in Canada will be treated in separate volumes; three volumes will be devoted to black abolitionists in the United States. The volume organization was suggested by a systematic review of the documents. The documents made clear that black abolitionists had a set of broadly defined goals and objectives wherever they were. But the documents also demonstrated that black abolitionists had a set of specific goals and actions in England, another set in Canada, and a third in the United States. The microfilmed and published editions are two discrete historical instruments. The 14,000 microfilmed documents are a rich Afro-American expression of black life in the nineteenth century. Those black voices stand free of intrusion by either editor or historian. The microfilmed edition presents the collected documents. The published volumes are documentary history. Substantial differences separate the two. The five volumes will accommodate less than 10 percent of the total collection, yet the volumes must tell the ambitious history of a generation of black Americans and their involvement in an international reform movement that spanned thirty-five years in the United States, the British Isles, and Canada. We reconstructed that history by combining documents with written history. A thorough reading of the documents led us to the major themes and elements of black abolitionist activity—the events, ideas, individuals, concepts, and organizations that made up the movement. Then we sought documents that best represented those elements. But given their limited number, the documents alone could only hint at the full dimensions of this complex story. The written history—the volume introduction, the headnotes that precede each document, and the document footnotes—helps provide a more complete rendition by highlighting the documents’ key elements and themes. The documents led us to yet another principle that governs the volumes. Antislavery was a critical and persistent aspect of antebellum black life, but it cannot correctly be separated from the remainder of black life and culture. Antislavery was part of a broad matrix of black concerns that at times seemed indistinguishable from race relations in the free states, black churches and schools in northern cities, black family life, West Indian emigration, African missionary work, fugitive slave settlements in Canada, and a host of other personal, public, and national matters. Ending slavery was but the most urgent item on the crowded agenda of the black Americans represented in these volumes. A number of considerations influenced the selection of specific documents published in the volumes. The most important was the responsi-

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bility to publish documents that fairly represent the antislavery goals, attitudes, and actions of black abolitionists and, to a lesser extent, that reveal their more personal concerns. There were other considerations as well. We wanted to present documents by as many black abolitionists as possible. We avoided the temptation to rely on the eloquent statements of just a few polished professionals. We sought to document immediate antislavery objectives (often dictated by local needs and issues) as well as broad goals. A mix of document types—letters (both public and private), essays, scientific pieces, short autobiographical narratives, impromptu remarks, formal speeches, circulars, resolutions, and debates—were selected for publication. We resisted selecting documents that had been published before our work began. But occasionally when a previously published document surfaced as a resonant black expression on an issue, topic, or incident, it was selected for publication. And, with the release of the Black Abolitionist Papers on microfilm, all the documents are more available than in the past. We often found different versions of the same document (usually a speech which appeared in several newspapers). When that happened, we selected the earliest published version of the most complete text. The cluster of documents around particular time periods and topics mirrors black abolitionist activities and concerns. The documents are arranged chronologically within each volume. A headnote introduces each document. The headnote provides a historical context for the document and offers information designed to enhance the reader’s understanding of the document and black abolitionist activities. Footnotes identify a variety of items that appear within the documents, such as people, places, events, organizations, institutions, laws, and legal decisions. The notes enrich and clarify the documents. People and events that are covered in standard biographical directories, reference books, or textbooks are treated in brief notes. We have given more space to subjects on which there is little or no readily available information, particularly black individuals and significant events and institutions in the black community. A full note on each item is presented at the first appropriate point in the volume. Notes are not repeated within the volume. Information that appears in a headnote is not repeated in a footnote. The index includes references to all notes. We have listed sources at the end of footnotes and headnotes. Source citations contain references to materials in the microfilm edition; they appear in brackets as reel and frame numbers (3:0070 reads reel 3, frame 70). The titles of some sources are abbreviated (particularly newspapers, journals, and manuscript repositories); a list of abbreviations appears at the front of the volume. The axiom that “less is better” governed the project’s transcription of

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documents. Our goal was to publish the documents in a form as close to the original as possible while presenting them in a fashion that enabled the reader to use them easily. In the letters, the following items are uniformly and silently located regardless of where they appear in the original: place and date, recipient’s name and address, salutation, closing, signature, marginal notes, and postscripts. In manuscript documents, idiosyncratic spelling, underlining, and quotation marks are retained. Words that were crossed through in the original are also retained. The project adopted the following principles for documents found in published sources (newspapers, pamphlets, annual reports, and other nineteenth-century printed material): redundant punctuation is eliminated; quotation marks are converted to modern usage; obvious misspellings and printer’s errors are corrected; printer’s brackets are converted to parentheses; audience reaction within a speech is treated as a separate sentence with parentheses, e.g., (Hear, hear.). We have let stand certain nineteenthcentury printing conventions such as setting names or addresses in capital or italic letters in order to maintain the visual character of the document. A line of asterisks signals that material is deleted from a printed document. In no instance is black abolitionist material edited or deleted; but if, for example, a speech was interrupted with material extraneous to the document, the irrelevant material was not published. The intrusive sic is rarely used. Brackets are used in their traditional fashion: to enclose information that we added and to indicate our inability to transcribe words or phrases with certainty. Some examples: we bracketed information added to the salutation and return address of letters; we bracketed material that we believe will aid the reader to comprehend the document, such as [illegible], [rest of page missing]; and we bracketed words and phrases that we believe appeared in the original but are uncertain about because of the quality of the surviving text. We have used brackets in the body of documents sparingly and only when necessary to avoid reader confusion. We have not completed words, added words, corrected spelling, or otherwise provided material in the text of manuscript documents except as noted above. Our transcription guidelines for manuscript documents differ slightly from those we used for printed sources. We took greater editorial liberties with documents from printed sources because they seldom came to us directly from a black abolitionist’s hand. Speeches in particular often had a long editorial trail. Usually reporters wrote them down as they listened from the audience; in some cases this appeared to be done with precision. For example, William Farmer, a British abolitionist and newspaper reporter, was an accomplished stenographer who traveled with William Wells Brown and took down his speeches verbatim, then made

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them available to the local press. More often, a local reporter recorded speeches in a less thorough fashion. Speeches and letters that black abolitionists sent to newspapers were apt to pass through the hands of an editor, a publisher, and a typesetter, all of whom might make errors in transcription. Because documents that were reprinted in newspapers often had sections changed or deleted, we have attempted to find the original publication of printed documents. Our transcription guidelines were influenced by the availability of all the documents in the microfilmed edition. Microfilmed copies of the original documents give the reader ready access to unedited versions of the documents that appear in the published volumes.

The Black Abolitionist Papers

Introduction

Between 1830 and 1865, black abolitionists left universities, newspaper offices, cabinet shops, pulpits, and plantations for the British Isles. Some boarded the best Cunard Line ships after elaborate farewell gatherings; others sneaked out of American and Canadian harbors just ahead of slave catchers. Many went with the practical and philosophical objectives of the international antislavery movement—spreading the antislavery gospel, building the transatlantic antislavery network, and raising the funds that kept it all going. Others crossed with specific missions, such as raising money to build a church or to purchase a family out of bondage. Fugitive slaves often went to find peace and security—”to live and get a living,” as one person described it—leaving, perhaps forever, the threat of southern slave catchers or the persistence of northern racial prejudice. Several of the fugitives who fled to England seeking sanctuary sailed back to the United States and Canada as antislavery veterans, eager to continue the struggle in North America, to take the fight back to the enemy. Most stayed just long enough to do their work; others remained for a number of years as if reluctant to leave; and a few never returned home. Several made more than one trip. Some left England for other foreign shores, carrying their missions to Europe, Africa, and the West Indies. Along the way, they kept company with the working class and with British royalty. They married and had families, lectured (some, hundreds of times in countless towns, cities, and hamlets throughout the British Isles), attended school, taught school, and wrote books, pamphlets, and slave narratives. They raised money for American and Canadian churches, newspapers, refugee settlements, and schools, and they helped to purchase friends, family, strangers, and occasionally themselves out of slavery. They struggled with proslavery critics, with antislavery friends and antagonists, and with each other. They seized any opportunity in the host country to make an antislavery point. Participation by blacks—both freeborn and former slave—in British antislavery activities was not consistent throughout the antebellum era, but rather, it changed periodically in response to conditions and events in America. A modest number of blacks went to Britain during the 1830s. A greater number followed in the next decade (many were attracted by international reform conferences). After passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, British antislavery was rich with black American assistance and optimism, but as the decade wore on, both the number and the spirit declined. The late 1850s were conspicuous for a decreased black presence in Britain. During the Civil War, large numbers of blacks

4

Black Abolitionist Papers

crossed the Atlantic to sway British public opinion to favor the Union cause and to raise funds for freedmen’s aid. Visitors of the 1830s went to Britain at a time when the American antislavery movement was maturing and the British antislavery movement was changing. Early in the decade, American organizations that called for the immediate and unconditional end to slavery came to life. Between 1831 and 1833, the New England Anti-Slavery Society was formed, the American Anti-Slavery Society was organized, and William Lloyd Garrison began publishing the Liberator, America’s best-known and most enduring antislavery newspaper. Antislavery in the United States was young, fresh, and two decades away from any significant measure of popular acceptance. In 1833—the same year in which black abolitionist Nathaniel Paul began a four-year mission to England—the British Parliament abolished slavery in the Empire. After having fought and won that protracted struggle, British antislavery societies considered their work finished. But as the decade wore on, British abolitionist sentiment revived and turned its attention to ending slavery in the American South. The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, the single organization with national stature, was organized in 1839.1 Antislavery activity increased on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the 1840s. Local and regional societies sprang up, newspapers began publishing, and citizens became curious about slavery. During the decade, there was a corresponding increase in the number of black Americans going to the British Isles. Generally, they were professional abolitionists, who, by the time of their visits, were combating slavery and racial prejudice in some consistent and substantial fashion; most were devoting their energies to antislavery agitation in the United States or to aiding fugitive slaves in Canada. They had significant antislavery experience and usually went to Britain as agents or representatives of an organization, association, settlement, church, school, or similar institution with an antislavery purpose.2 Antislavery activity peaked in the United States and in the British Isles during the early 1850s. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 made it easier 1. Gilbert Hobbs Barnes, The Antislavery Impulse, 1830–1844 (New York, N.Y., 1933), 29–64; Dwight Lowell Dumond, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America (New York, N.Y., 1961), 166–82; Howard Temperley, British Antislavery, 1833–1870 (London, 1972), 12–68. The Emancipation Act of 1833 outlawed slavery in four areas of the British Empire: the West Indies, Mauritius, Canada, and the Cape of Good Hope. Slavery continued in various forms in other British possessions, particularly in India and Ceylon. 2. Miriam L. Usrey, “Charles Lenox Remond, Garrison’s Ebony Echo: World AntiSlavery Convention, 1840,” EIHC 106:112–25 (April 1970); William Edward Farrison, William Wells Brown, Author and Reformer (Chicago, Ill., 1969), 147–49; Benjamin Quarles, Black Abolitionists (London, 1969), 131–37; John W. Blassingame, ed., The Frederick Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 2 vols. to date (New Haven, Conn., 1979-), 1:447–48; Benjamin Quarles, “Ministers without Portfolio,” JNH 39:27–41 (January 1954).

Introduction

5

than ever before for slaveholders to return escaped slaves from the free states back to bondage in the South. The law drove many fugitive slaves to Canada and Britain. It became unsafe at home. But more than that, the transatlantic antislavery network grew, expanded, and became optimistic early in the decade, partly because of the Fugitive Slave Law. Many Americans who were uncertain about slavery and abolitionist activities held strong feelings against the United States government’s becoming a partner with slave catchers.3 America, England, Scotland, and Ireland had never before experienced such antislavery activity. Countless fugitive slaves made their way to the British Isles. Many— too numerous and too historically elusive to count accurately—engaged in some antislavery activity in England. But their intent was to find a job and make a new life in the peace and security of a society unencumbered by slavery and the Fugitive Slave Law. Another group—perhaps as many as a hundred fugitive slaves prior to 1861—were drawn into the antislavery arena for reasons having to do with their own needs and the goals of antislavery organizations in the British Isles and America. The majority of both groups went to England after passage of the Fugitive Slave Law and were active at antislavery meetings and gatherings in the British Isles during the 1850s. Most never became professionals, but they lectured, were conspicuous at antislavery meetings, and served the cause as public fugitive slaves, whose stories were testimonials against American slavery. A few did become professional abolitionists as a result of their antislavery experience in Britain, where the transition from fugitive-on-the-run to antislavery practitioner could be swift.4 Abolitionist optimism faded as the 1850s wore on. The South defended the institution as never before, and the federal government showed no signs of heeding antislavery arguments. To the contrary, federal legislation and Supreme Court decisions convinced many abolitionists that the slave power conspiracy was stronger than ever. After the mid-1850s, the number of black visitors to Britain diminished along with Afro-American optimism that slavery would soon end. Some black leaders flirted with the idea of immigrating to Africa or to the West Indies, a sentiment that attracted new converts who had lost faith in antislavery and America.5 3. Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, They Who Would Be Free: Blacks’ Search for Freedom, 1830–1861 (New York, N.Y., 1974), 206–7; Leon Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860 (Chicago, Ill., 1961), 265. 4. R. J. M. Blackett, “Fugitive Slaves in Britain: The Odyssey of William and Ellen Craft,” JAS 12:41–68 (April 1978); John Brown, Slave Life in Georgia, ed. F.N. Boney (Savannah, Ga., 1972), vii–x; I, 31 May, 12 July 1851; ASRL, 5 February 1863. 5. Blackett, “Fugitive Slaves in Britain,” JAS, 56–58; Richard Blackett, “Martin R. Delany and Robert Campbell: Black Americans in Search of an African Colony,” JNH 62:1 (January 1977); Ronald Kevin Burke, “Samuel Ringgold Ward: Christian Abolitionist” (Ph.D.

6

Black Abolitionist Papers

The Civil War revitalized black optimism about the future of America. After Fort Sumter, black abolitionists concentrated on making the war a struggle for black liberation—by pushing President Lincoln and the federal government toward emancipation—and, after the Emancipation Proclamation, by meeting the immediate needs of the freedmen and planning for a future without slavery. The war increased British interest in American events. Fugitives who discussed their experiences continued to draw good crowds. Black abolitionists kept slavery before the British public to combat the Confederacy’s diplomatic efforts to gain formal recognition. Black Americans played a major role in the propaganda struggle to shape British public opinion. For the first time, black abolitionists and the American government joined in a common cause. Those were heady times. But those times were nearly three decades in the making. The idea of a black abolitionist mission to the British Isles developed throughout the 1830s and crystallized during the 1840s. After nearly a decade of visits by over twenty black Americans, antislavery reformers on both sides of the Atlantic realized that black abolitionists could make unique and significant contributions. This varied group of freeborn blacks and former slaves took with them a mix of goals, and they had a wide range of experiences once in Britain. But several of these early visitors left particularly significant imprints. The tours of Nathaniel Paul, Charles Lenox Remond, Moses Grandy, and Frederick Douglass serve as convenient connecting points to trace the development of the concept of a black abolitionist tour and to explain how the black presence in the British Isles became essential to the transatlantic antislavery network. Nathaniel Paul went to Britain to raise funds for Wilberforce, the fugitive settlement in Upper Canada. But Paul interrupted his four-year stay to challenge the American Colonization Society (ACS), whose American agent was courting British reformers with the idea that the society was antislavery and reformist—points that Paul and most black Americans disputed. The ACS struggle attracted the efforts of the British reform elite, which enlisted Paul’s participation at countless meetings. Paul’s special relationship with the British public became obvious to him and to white antislavery leaders. George Thompson and William Lloyd Garrison, who joined Paul in England in 1833 specifically to do combat with the American Colonization Society, recognized Paul’s importance to the meetings they attended together. By the time the tour ended, there was a general understanding that, in the language of one British abolidiss., Syracuse University, 1975), 85–92; WAA, 29 March 1862; John Anderson, The Story of the Life of John Anderson the Fugitive Slave, ed. Harper Twelvetrees (London, 1863), 147.

Introduction

7

tionist, “the color of [Paul’s] skin was an excellent introduction.”6 British audiences were eager to hear Paul on a range of subjects because he was black—he could speak to them from experience about northern racial prejudice; he could speak with conviction about the black American response to African colonization schemes; and he could speak with racial authority about American slavery. Paul’s experiences in the British Isles were typical of others that followed: he went with a specific mission, lectured to enthusiastic audiences on a range of issues (Wilberforce, colonization, slavery, and northern racial prejudice), and he attracted considerable interest as a black American. Charles Lenox Remond advanced the concept of a black abolitionist mission to the British Isles with his eighteen-month visit. Freeborn, well educated, and part of a family with a long antislavery tradition, Remond moved comfortably in reform circles. He was a professional abolitionist when he sailed for England in the spring of 1840, two years after accepting an appointment as the first black lecture agent of the American AntiSlavery Society. Remond went to England as one of several American delegates to the London World’s Anti-Slavery Convention. His subsequent tour of England, Scotland, and Ireland provided useful lessons for future black visitors. Divisions and friction within the transatlantic antislavery movement put Remond in a difficult situation, particularly during the English portion of his visit. But Remond eventually went his own way and ended his British visit with a triumphant tour of Ireland, which served as an inspiration and model for many who came after him. Out of a series of Irish meetings, filled “to suffocation,” came new antislavery enthusiasm and antislavery organizations. Remond formed local groups in Ireland and in the north of England that concentrated on collecting goods for the American Anti-Slavery Society’s bazaar—an annual fair that was a major source of revenue for the society.7 He was credited with doing more to advance antislavery in Ireland than any previous lecturer. Remond’s success in Ireland early in the decade demonstrated the specific and practical results that a professional black abolitionist might generate; his effort on behalf of the bazaar was a financial and organizational windfall for the American Anti-Slavery Society. Remond but6. Quoted in William H. Pease and Jane H. Pease, Black Utopia: Negro Communal Experiments in America (Madison, Wis., 1963), 59–60; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 130–31. 7. William Edward Ward, “Charles Lenox Remond: Black Abolitionist, 1838–1873” (Ph.D. diss., Clark University, 1977), 56–85; Temperley, British Antislavery, 206; Richard Webb to [William Lloyd] Garrison, 24 August 1841, in Lib, 24 September 1841; Mary Naunce to My Dear Friend, 22 April [1841], British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; Richard Allen to My Valued Friend, 11 July 1841, in Lib, 17 December 1841; Charles Lenox Remond to Richard Allen, 19 November 1841, IreDFh; Ward, “Charles Lenox Remond,” 103–4.

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Black Abolitionist Papers

tressed the ideas put in place by Paul’s visit that black Americans had real authority in the British Isles, that British audiences were eager to hear from black abolitionists on matters of slavery and racial prejudice, and that professional black abolitionists could produce results as few others could, if left to their own efforts. This last point is significant. Remond struggled with the leadership of the American Anti-Slavery Society over what his goals and course of action should be while abroad. Briefly stated, he decided to avoid a general fund-raising mission and refused to make a partisan tour on behalf of the American Anti-Slavery Society (against the rival American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and its British allies). Remond understood that British audiences were eager to hear about slavery, not about ideological divisions within the antislavery ranks, and he understood that a general fundraising drive to fill antislavery coffers obscured his message. He chose instead to organize groups committed to filling the bazaar tables with books, crafts, art objects, and other salable items. For those black abolitionists who followed Remond to the British Isles, his tour provided useful instructions: shun factional struggles within the antislavery movement; maintain a steady course of action on behalf of the slave; and concentrate on informing the British public about slavery. By so doing, Remond showed that a professional black abolitionist could have dramatic results in the British Isles.8 Moses Grandy’s tour revealed to abolitionists the value of being a former slave, and it demonstrated the kind of fund-raising activities that the British found attractive. Grandy traveled to England in 1842 to raise funds to purchase his family out of slavery. He connected with John Scoble, the secretary of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), who orchestrated Grandy’s tour and the publication of his slave narrative. Grandy lectured primarily on his slave experiences, sold his narrative at meetings, and found that British audiences were eager to hear firsthand accounts of slave life.9 His fund-raising went well in large part because of his slave past and because he sought hard currency to purchase a wife and family out of bondage—specific purposes with a set price. He did not solicit general antislavery revenue. After the idea of the tour was well established, successful black fund raisers took their cue from Grandy. They toured under the auspices of a reform-minded organization or a prominent citizen such as the BFASS or Scoble, who were capable of lending credibility to the enterprise. They avoided asking the 8. Charles Lenox Remond to [Maria Weston] Chapman, 16 November 1841, Antislavery Collection, MB; Clare Taylor, British and American Abolitionists: An Episode in Transatlantic Understanding (Edinburgh, 1974), 129–30. 9. J. B. Pearson to [John] Scoble, 12, 24 January 1843, British Empire MSS, UkOxURh; Moses Grandy, Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy (London, 1844).

Introduction

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British to contribute to the antislavery treasury but rather asked them to support a fugitive slave settlement, a newspaper, a church, a school, or to buy a friend or relative out of slavery. Frederick Douglass’s visit placed a capstone on the idea of the tour. He had no fixed mission. He fled America in 1845, weary after five years of nearly nonstop lecturing and after writing his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. The Narrative made public, for the first time, the specifics of his slave past, including the name of his old master whom Douglass feared might attempt to reenslave him. Douglass went to England seeking sanctuary. The idea that monarchical England should be the protector of refugees from republican America appealed to the British. Once in Britain, Douglass spoke hundreds of times and sold out several editions of his Narrative. His fugitive status, his imposing stature, his oratorical gifts, and his overpowering personality yielded results.10 Grandy and Douglass refined the value of a black mission to the British Isles by firmly establishing that the British were eager to hear about slavery from those who had been inside the institution. Having experienced bondage, they were able to educate the British public by lecturing and publishing their narratives—Grandy’s was the first published in the 1840s; Douglass’s was among the most popular. This was not altogether new. Fugitive slave Moses Roper had published a narrative as early as 1837, but he was not a professional when he landed in Liverpool in 1835. The professionals—such as Paul and Remond—were freeborn and could not describe witnessed events and personal experiences as slaves. But Douglass combined the special appeal of the former slave with a professional’s skills and experience. He spread the word, raised antislavery sentiment throughout the British Isles, saw money raised to purchase his freedom, and returned to America with a purse to finance his first newspaper, the North Star. By the late 1840s, the idea and the value of a black mission to the British Isles were clear to abolitionists on both sides of the Atlantic. Black Americans were a curiosity and a special attraction for British audiences. They were special for their color and for the experiences and wisdom that came from being black in America, which gave them a unique authority when addressing issues critical to the antislavery movement. No abolitionists could tell the British about slavery as powerfully as Grandy, Douglass, and the other lecturers who had endured slave life. No other reformers could make the link between the evils of slavery in the South and racial prejudice in the North as persuasively as free-state blacks. And no one else could reject colonization schemes quite as convincingly as those blacks the ACS wished to transport from America. 10. Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, 1:liii–lviii; Philip S. Foner, Frederick Douglass (New York, N.Y., 1969), 63–74.

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Black Abolitionist Papers

A complete understanding of the components of a successful mission developed as slowly as the concept of the tour itself. Black Americans first went to England without a full appreciation of the tour’s practical requirements, and they soon discovered that there was no organizational assistance to enlighten them on such matters. By the 1850s, when the number of blacks traveling to the British Isles increased significantly, abolitionists had put into place important features that sustained the black antislavery experience in Britain. Tours could be planned, objectives could be clearly stated, and British antislavery leaders and organizations could be counted on for assistance. But all that came slowly, and much of it came from black abolitionist initiatives. A black American speaker—preferably a former slave—became an essential part of any respectable antislavery gathering in England, Scotland, and Ireland. No national antislavery organization or even a network of antislavery societies greeted blacks who arrived in the 1830s. Organizations dedicated to abolishing slavery in the Empire fell idle when their task was largely completed in 1833. New or refurbished societies came out of the energy and enthusiasm of the next generation, often as the direct result of black abolitionists’ efforts. A few local groups were active. The Glasgow Emancipation Society was operating in the 1830s and was a regional power by the late 1840s. The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, England’s largest organization and the only one with claims to national status, was not formed until the late 1830s; by the mid-1840s, it had a stronghold in London, and its supporters were scattered throughout the British Isles. It was a loose confederation of like-minded citizens managed by vigorous leaders. A national society, complete with a structured network capable of providing a visiting speaker with the services necessary for a good tour, never developed. By the time of Nathaniel Paul’s visit, the generation of British abolitionists that had ended slavery in the Empire was growing old and infirm. Beginning in the 1830s, a new generation of British reformers turned its attention to abolishing slavery in America. The fresh converts included some aristocrats—the earl of Shaftesbury, the duchess of Sutherland, Lady Noel Byron, Lord Stephen Lushington among them. But the English associates of black abolitionists tended to be professionals (doctors, lawyers, publishers, manufacturers, and merchants), whose interest in antislavery grew with the general reform impulse of the 1830s and 1840s. Newly arrived blacks understood the necessity of connecting with a sympathetic British patron or an antislavery organization. This association was a practical matter at the start of a tour. Simply put, black visitors needed someone to introduce them around. As strangers in a new land, blacks needed to meet people who could attend to essentials. They needed places to stay; some needed jobs. Lecturers needed assis-

Introduction

11

tance in arranging speaking tours in England, Scotland, and Ireland. They needed lecture halls, newspaper announcements, posters, and handbills to draw good crowds, and they needed someone to persuade a local dignitary to share the dais or, better yet, to chair the meeting. And black abolitionists, charged with raising money, needed a correct introduction to patrons whose purses might be loosened for reformist causes. Over time, most of these needs became part of the conventional wisdom, particularly for the professional abolitionists. A black abolitionist hoping for a successful visit had to have his or her antislavery credentials certified. The process began with letters of introduction, which testified to the visitor’s antislavery experience and credibility and described his or her specific mission, if there was one. Black Americans carried letters from William Lloyd Garrison, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, Samuel May, Jr., Gerrit Smith, or from any of a host of other wellconnected American reformers, civic leaders, and ministers with denominational ties in Britain. Most professional abolitionists made their first stop at the home of a leading British abolitionist or at one of several antislavery societies that welcomed and interviewed new arrivals. The Glasgow Emancipation Society and the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, more than most, assumed responsibility for certifying black abolitionists from America. Blacks with ties to Garrison and the American Anti-Slavery Society were apt to stop at the Bristol home of John and Mary Estlin, the Dublin residence of Richard D. Webb, the Liverpool home of black expatriate William P. Powell, or they might contact George Thompson, who would see that they became situated. Once the review procedure was satisfactorily completed, British antislavery support varied from organizing a black abolitionist’s activities to simply supplying British letters of introduction, which served an abolitionist as he or she went about making lecture arrangements. Less wellknown blacks with plans for a brief stay often accepted the full range of support, typified by Moses Grandy’s association with the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society’s secretary John Scoble. Scoble supervised the publication of Grandy’s narrative; he organized Grandy’s tour to promote the book and to lecture on slavery; and he wrote letters to local antislavery partisans, who arranged meetings for Grandy in their cities.11 British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society support was particularly helpful because the society’s newspaper, the Anti-Slavery Reporter, reached a wide reform audience. The paper published information about newly arrived American blacks. Readers learned about a black abolitionist’s personal history, antislavery experience, and organizational ties in the United States. There was usually some mention of American letters of 11. J. B. Pearson to [John] Scoble, 12, 24 January 1843, Thomas Cheever to John Scoble, 4 October 1843, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh.

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Black Abolitionist Papers

introduction and the purpose of the visit. Lecture schedules and reports of meetings appeared regularly in the Reporter.12 The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society eventually became the major clearinghouse for black abolitionists because of the size of its organization, the circulation of its newspaper, and the energy of its leaders. Sympathetic organizations, individuals, and newspapers, particularly in England, looked to the BFASS to pass judgment on black visitors; and the society, first under John Scoble and later under Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, became very serious about that responsibility. The system worked best for professional black abolitionists, who arrived in England prepared to make good use of it. Samuel Ringgold Ward’s visit to the BFASS’s new Broad Street office in 1853 was preceded by a letter from John Scoble (by then, a past secretary of the society), who wrote from New York. He praised Ward as a former slave forced to flee to Canada, as a newspaper editor, as an antislavery society agent, and as “a pure Negro, of noble personal appearance, cultivated in mind and most eloquent and powerful as a public speaker,” who had done “excellent service,” and “who loses nothing by comparison to F. Douglass or any other colored person who has yet visited England.” Scoble touched on Ward’s religious, philosophical, and personal qualities and pronounced him worthy, except to caution about Ward’s “tendency toward a belligerent spirit.” Scoble promised that Ward would arrive with strong letters of “introduction to [the] Christian brethren in England” and would have the endorsement of the Bible Society, the missionary societies, and the Congregational Union. Scoble offered a list of “useful hints and letters of introduction to particular persons.” “I believe,” concluded Scoble, “there is no man that could be sent to you from the country who would do more service to the antislavery cause . . . than this gentleman.”13 Scoble knew how to orchestrate a tour. He was an experienced reform lecturer, and as past secretary of the society, he was experienced in evaluating black abolitionists. He understood the process in all its dimensions— he knew how to define a black abolitionist to make him or her appealing to the BFASS, and he knew what letters were necessary and from whom they should come. The BFASS welcomed Ward as Scoble requested. Lectures and fund raisers were arranged, and announcements of Ward’s mission on behalf of Canadian fugitives turned up in the press. Some notices mentioned only Ward’s mission and his letters of recommendation—the point being that it was important to let everyone know who supported Ward and for what purpose. It worked. Less than a year after Ward arrived, the British Banner evaluated his visit with high praise 12. ASRL, 2 December 1850, 1 May 1861. 13. John Scoble to the Secretary of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 2 April 1853, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh.

Introduction

13

for Ward and with news that he had raised £200 above his goal. Not incidentally, the Banner mentioned that Ward came with “good credentials.”14 The system was loosely structured and worked in a general, rather than a specifically prescribed, fashion; but by the late 1840s, the system was part of the British antislavery scene. As the BFASS sent more and more black abolitionists into Scotland, Ireland, and the English provinces with letters of introduction and kindly words in the Reporter, local abolitionists came to rely on the society as their best source of information about black abolitionists who came to them for funds and the use of lecture halls. In a typical incident, Thomas Daves of Camberwell, England, wrote to the society in the fall of 1854 for information about John Williams. Williams had approached Daves about arranging for a lecture hall. Williams described himself as a fugitive slave who had been in England for fourteen years (seven of them in Bristol, where he was a frequent lecturer), but he carried no letters of introduction. Daves asked the standard question in his letter to the secretary of the BFASS: “Is he known at your office, and will you bear testimony to his character?” Daves wanted confirmation before moving ahead with speaking arrangements.15 If the certification system developed as a practical matter, it was sustained by anxiety. British reform leaders, concerned with spotting frauds and imposters, believed that nothing discredited the cause more than a black imposter’s collecting funds and lecture fees. And a sufficient number of imposters appeared on the lecture circuit to keep anxiety levels high. Some were exposed in the press, and a few went to jail for their deceptions, but no single individual raised the concern and anger of British antislavery leaders more than Reuben Nixon. Nixon posed as a fugitive slave (which he was not), solicited antislavery funds under at least six different names, including Henry Smith, Charles Hill, William Love, Andrew Baker, and Hiram Swift, and went to jail twice for his crimes.16 Completing the certification process and collecting British testimonials were the first requirements for a good tour. Everything that followed was an endless process for the ambitious lecturer—getting speaking invitations, sorting out requests, arranging a speaking schedule, and making local arrangements. Only occasionally did a black abolitionist connect with a British patron who tended to these chores. John Scoble gave Moses Grandy that sort of assistance, and Louis Alexis Chamerovzow 14. Minutes of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 5 March 1853, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; ASA, 1 June 1853; BB, 22 March 1854. 15. Thomas Daves to the Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, 8 September 1854, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh. 16. I, 15 January 1853; ASA, May, June 1854; ASRL, 1 May 1854, 1 August 1855.

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Black Abolitionist Papers

did the same for Georgia fugitive slave John Brown. Celebrated abolitionists, such as Charles Lenox Remond, Samuel Ringgold Ward, Frederick Douglass, and Sarah Remond, never wanted for assistance. But most blacks made their own way and arranged their own tours after they collected the necessary testimonials, which were usually compiled into a book—J. Sella Martin’s was bound in red Moroccan leather. Black lecturers approached local reform leaders, ministers, and sympathetic citizens, who reviewed testimonials, located lecture halls, and helped publicize lectures. Blacks also asked area ministers to make announcements to their congregations, gave newspaper editors notice of time, place, speaker, and subject of meetings, and contacted print shops that made up handbills. Promotion was often the most complex aspect of the tour. To do it all, and do it all correctly, required a lecture schedule set well in advance, including having someone in each town who would make all the necessary arrangements before the lecturer arrived.17 A touring black abolitionist might temporarily locate in an area, secure local support, and arrange a series of meetings and lectures in surrounding towns, often dictated by what local help could be found and what connecting transportation was available. The antislavery gospel in the British Isles frequently followed the rail lines. Black antislavery lecturers were able to make good use of religious and reform meetings. Abolitionists usually shared a general interest in temperance, prison, peace, and other reforms, and they knew that reform meetings drew participants who were curious about slavery, if not active in the movement. Reform gatherings often were regularly scheduled events, which took place annually, biannually, or quarterly and thus were easy to fit into a lecture schedule. Some more renowned meetings, like the Paris Peace Congress (1849) and the Frankfurt Peace Congress (1850), were major gatherings of the world’s reform elite. Blacks were often scheduled speakers at many of these meetings, or they were asked to comment on conference aims or to make brief remarks on resolutions introduced on the floor. An American black who showed up at a reform gathering was seldom ignored and usually found an opportunity to make an antislavery point or two.18 Chance, circumstance, and any number of problems—a missed train or a touch of the flu—troubled black reformers on tour. Ellen Craft disappointed audiences in Newcastle-upon-Tyne when illness prevented 17. LM, 26 November 1853; ASRL, 1 January 1854; Peo, May 1849–May 1850. 18. ASRL, 2 December 1861; African Aid Society, The American Crisis and the Slave Trade (Birmingham, England, 1861), 6–7; Henry T. Wilson to [Joseph Stokes], 23 June 1865, Sheffield Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society Letters, UkMJr; ASRL, 1 October 1850; Ward, “Charles Lenox Remond,” 94; NC, 18 May 1853; CN, 27 February 1851; PtL, 19 June 1853.

Introduction

15

her from accompanying her husband William to a series of welcoming meetings just after their well-publicized arrival in England. In parts of reformist England, it was difficult to hold a meeting on an evening that did not conflict with another like-minded gathering. English abolitionist Eliza Wigham explained the problem: Monday and Tuesday conflicted with the anniversary gatherings of the London Missionary Society; Tuesdays and Fridays were generally bad days because of the regular meetings of “philosophical institutions”; Thursday was “the evening of the congregational meeting and all denominations”; and Saturday was “very unsuitable.” Wigham concluded that Mondays and Wednesdays offered the “only chance [for] public meetings[, but] a private [meeting] . . . could be . . . held on any day.”19 A host of other things could go wrong, and Charles Lenox Remond experienced several. Success to the point of exhaustion was common on the well-run tour. After returning to his lodgings one evening, a fatigued Remond wrote that he had just completed his “fourteenth lecture in fifteen evenings.” Local assistance was not always what it should have been. On one occasion, the person responsible for opening the hall for the early crowd had not done the job. Remond arrived to learn that many who wished to hear him speak had found the door locked and had returned home thinking that the meeting was canceled. Meetings could also be scheduled in the wrong hall. When Remond arranged four in an “unpopular chapel,” the collection hardly paid his expenses. In Ireland, he learned not even to ask the Methodists or Independents for use of their halls but to go directly to the Presbyterians or Quakers with whom he had better success.20 Proper planning and the use of promotional devices—placards and handbills, a carefully placed news story, a circular, or an advertisement—enlarged attendance and helped insure a successful tour. Other intangibles made for a lecturer’s success, and chance played a part as well. J. Sella Martin secured one lecture opportunity in Birmingham by accident when he was in the office of a local politician who refused an invitation to speak and suggested Martin as an alternative. “But for this,” wrote Martin, “I would not have been at Birmingham even as an uninvited speaker to give color to the American delegation.”21 19. E. Wigham to [?], 16 November 1853, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; NASS, 30 January 1851. 20. Charles Lenox Remond to William Smeal, 15 February 1841, Charles Lenox Remond to Richard D. Webb, 27 November 1841, Antislavery Collection, MB; Lib, 30 July 1841; Douglas Cameron Riach, “Ireland and the Campaign against American Slavery, 1830– 1860” (Ph.D. diss., University of Edinburgh, 1975), 138; William Troy, Hair Breadth Escapes from Slavery to Freedom (Manchester, England, 1861). 21. GO, 19 October 1850; John Fitzgerald, Jr., to [John Scoble], 1 June 1851, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; Minutes of the Glasgow Freedmen’s Aid Society, 25 July 1865,

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Black Abolitionist Papers

The lecture tour was a fragile business, and financing it was a delicate matter. In addition to raising funds for a specific purpose, most blacks in Britain were concerned with covering expenses for lodgings, transportation, meals, lecture promotion, and the like. Lecturing was their standard source of revenue. Usually a collection was made at the end of a meeting, and a few speakers charged admission, but it is unlikely that lecturing alone paid the bills. Most black abolitionists who avoided financial difficulties had additional support from a British patron, from a British or American organization or institution, or from the sale of a slave narrative. Sarah Remond, Charles Lenox Remond, Frederick Douglass, Moses Roper, John Brown, Moses Grandy, Henry Highland Garnet, Samuel Ringgold Ward, and J. W. C. Pennington were among those who apparently had few difficulties meeting their expenses. William Wells Brown supported himself and educated his two daughters from the proceeds of his lecturing and writing during his five-year stay.22 But he was a professional lecturer and author. William G. Allen and his wife, Mary, on the other hand, were frequently hard pressed for living expenses during their first years in Britain. Allen’s scholarly lectures did not attract large audiences.23 Yet making money, even to cover expenses, was not the main reason most blacks had come to the British Isles. The tour never developed formal procedures or a set of rules. Black abolitionists found it useful to work with one of the British antislavery societies or their leaders, but opportunities were limited. There were probably never more than eighty British societies with five thousand members over three decades. In Scotland, many towns and small cities had an antislavery society after 1833, but none, save the major centers of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, had “a continuous working existence.” Problems could result from relying too heavily on British antislavery societies. British abolitionists divided into two imprecise camps, which roughly reflected the split in the American antislavery movement. In America, a dissenting body broke with the American Anti-Slavery Society over questions of tactics, philosophy, and the leadership of William Lloyd Garrison. The “new organization”—the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society—closely allied with its British namesake, the UkGM; VF, 7 May 1851; J. Sella Martin to [Secretary of the American Missionary Association], 4 July 1865, AMA-ARC; J. Sella Martin to [Aspinall Hampson], 31 July 1865, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh. 22. WS, 29 January 1859; Peo, May 1849–May 1850; NSt, 4 January 1850; Minutes of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 28 September 1849, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; Glasgow Emancipation Society Cash Book, 17 February 1851, 18 January 1861, UkGM. 23. Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 66; William G. Allen to Gerrit Smith, 14 May 1859, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU; ASRL, 2 May 1864.

Introduction

17

BFASS. In Britain, the division between the camps was never as much ideological or tactical as it was personal. Many British antislavery leaders seemed to choose sides over their reaction to Garrison as much as anything else. All indications are that, personality aside, the causes for the split never mattered as much in Britain as they did in America. Nevertheless, after 1840, American abolitionists had to be aware of the way in which a local British society leaned. Good Garrisonians, such as William Wells Brown, Charles Lenox Remond, and William and Ellen Craft, found little comfort at the Broad Street offices of the BFASS or from its secretaries John Scoble and Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, although black Garrisonians often attended antislavery gatherings sponsored by the BFASS. Most English organizations followed the lead of the BFASS, with the exception of the Bristol and Clifton Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society and a smattering of groups in the West and North Country.24 Garrisonians were welcomed at the Edinburgh Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, led by Jane Wigham and stepdaughter Elizabeth Wigham, and at the Dublin-based Hibernian Anti-Slavery Society, under the powerful leadership of Richard D. Webb. In Glasgow, John Murray and Quaker tea merchant William Smeal made the Glasgow Emancipation Society a friendly center of Garrisonian activity, while the city’s two women’s societies were divided in their loyalties. By and large, organizations in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dublin, Bristol, and Clifton liked what Garrison had to say, had split from the BFASS, and had no affection for anyone who arrived with letters from Scoble and Chamerovzow. Garrisonians had no effective London organization until the creation of the London Emancipation Committee in the late 1850s. Cork and Belfast supported the Garrisonian “old organization,” while Limerick abolitionists formed a “new organization.”25 The personal antagonisms that plagued British antislavery were deep and enduring. Richard D. Webb, the preeminent Irish abolitionist, was an uncompromising Garrisonian who felt that meeting William L. Garrison and attending the London World’s Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 were the high points of his life. Webb described John Scoble, secretary of the rival BFASS, as a “self-willed, tyrannically minded, narrow-souled, clever bigot.”26 Webb edited the Anti-Slavery Advocate, contributed to the National Anti-Slavery Standard, and served as a main British link with American Garrisonians. His opinions counted for something if one was an American abolitionist seeking help in Dublin. 24. Temperley, British Antislavery, 192, 226; Riach, “Ireland and the Campaign against American Slavery,” 35, 126–31. 25. Riach, “Ireland and the Campaign against American Slavery,” 106, 129; C. Duncan Rice, The Scots Abolitionists, 1833–1861 (Baton Rouge, La., 1981), 39, 42; Temperley, British Antislavery, 227. 26. Quoted in Riach, “Ireland and the Campaign against American Slavery,” 118.

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Black Abolitionist Papers

Although the divisions within the British antislavery movement caused problems for visiting blacks, it is clear that these abolitionists were able to cross geographic and ideological boundaries with ease and success. Blacks were better able and more willing to follow an independent course in the British Isles than they were in the United States. They were intent upon pursuing every reasonable opportunity to promote the cause of the slave, even if that meant attending meetings of rival organizations and making their white allies nervous in the process.27 Both Douglass and Remond had to reassure Boston Garrisonians that they were not forsaking their organizational bonds by consorting with the BFASS. They only wished to do the work they went to Britain to accomplish. The significant and singular contributions blacks made to the movement made it possible for them to act independently. British concerns about antislavery factionalism were soothed by the attraction of rubbing shoulders with the black American abolitionists or the need for a black speaker at an antislavery gathering. Black abolitionists avoided the snares set by British antislavery divisions if for no other reason than that they were essential to the cause—they had no substitute. Black abolitionists in the British Isles had well-defined goals. The professional abolitionists, as well as the fugitives who were drawn into the antislavery movement once they were in Britain, developed broad and sophisticated objectives. They wanted to inform the British about slavery in America and to achieve more specific antislavery ends—from raising funds in order to purchase an enslaved relative to influencing British public opinion on slavery-related matters. As late as the early 1850s, black abolitionists found that the British public knew too little about American slavery and seemed too comfortable with proslavery arguments. Abolitionists saw clearly that the British public needed a more complete understanding of America’s peculiar institution, and blacks found that the people’s generosity and enthusiasm increased significantly the more they learned about slavery. One after another, black Americans arrived in England and recognized that exposing the nature of slavery was their first responsibility—that they had to give what Henry Highland Garnet once described a “fair definition” of bondage. Black abolitionists met Garnet’s charge when they talked to small groups (Ellen Craft did this best), gave newspaper interviews, and wrote and published public letters, slave narratives, novels, and books on black history, although lecturing was their main work. Black Americans discovered that they were usually welcomed at newspaper offices in the British Isles. They learned how to cooperate with a friendly press, which seemed eager to provide readers with information 27. See, for example, PtL, 19 May 1841.

Introduction

19

about slavery and prejudice in America. Black speakers informed local newspapers about lecture schedules in the hope that a reporter would cover the speech, and one often did. Blacks found that they could get into print any manner of material—interviews, autobiographical pieces, and public letters—meant to make an antislavery point. They were quick to take to the press any story or controversy that would advance the cause. An aggressive debate played out in the newspapers informed more people than a series of energy-sapping lectures. Sarah Remond published a series of angry letters she had exchanged with the United States legation in London concerning her citizenship as a black American. William Craft’s critique of an article on American slavery was printed in the London Morning Advertiser. Madison Jefferson’s slave narrative first appeared in the Anti-Slavery Reporter.28 Blacks made a conscious and concerted effort to send letters, speeches, newspaper reports, and assorted information back home to antislavery newspapers, particularly black papers. Garrison’s Liberator received its share of publishable information from blacks in Britain but so did the Colored American, Douglass’s newspapers, and the Provincial Freeman. The professional abolitionists understood the many values of letting everyone at home know of their welcome, of their activities, and of the dimension of their struggles and many successes. Some twenty black Americans found that book publishers were interested in their writings on slavery, racial prejudice, and black history and fiction. At least a dozen book-length slave narratives were published originally in the British Isles by abolitionists such as Samuel Ringgold Ward, Moses Roper, Moses Grandy, William Craft, John Brown, John Anderson, and J. W. C. Pennington.29 Other fugitives arrived with published narratives in hand and offered to contract for British editions. 28. Dorothy B. Porter, “Sarah Parker Remond, Abolitionist and Physician,” JNH 20:291– 92 (July 1935); see, for example, LI, 14 January 1860; BF, 2 February 1860; ASA, 1 February 1860; [Henry Morley], “North American Slavery,” HW, September 1852; Charles Dickens, Uncollected Writings from Household Words, ed. Harry Stone, 2 vols. (Bloomington, Ind., 1968), 1:13–14, 2:433–42; ASRL, 29 December 1841; see also NCA, 16 February 1853; ASRL, 1 January 1858, 1 June 1859; BF, 1 February 1861; MAL, 1 October 1852. 29. Samuel Ringgold Ward, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: His Anti-Slavery Labours in the United States, Canada, and England (London, 1855); Moses Roper, A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper (Berwick-on-Tweed, England, 1846); Roper’s Narrative went through several British and American printings; Grandy, Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy; William and Ellen Craft, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery (London, 1860); John Brown, Slave Life; Brown’s Slave Life went into a second British edition (1855) and was published in Germany (1855) and in Holland (1856); Anderson, The Story of the Life of John Anderson; J. W. C. Pennington, The Fugitive Blacksmith (London, 1849); Solomon Bayley, A Narrative of Some Remarkable Incidents in the Life of Solomon Bayley (London, 1825); Francis Fedric, Slave Life in Virginia and Kentucky (London, 1863); James Watkins, Narra-

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Black Abolitionist Papers

Josiah Henson, William Wells Brown, Henry “Box” Brown, and Frederick Douglass brought their work before the British public in that way.30 William Wells Brown published in England the story of his European experiences as well as his Clotel, the first novel by an American black.31 Sarah Remond wrote and published The Negroes and Anglo-Africans as Freedmen and Soldiers in London.32 Two book-length pieces on American racial prejudice by William G. Allen were published in England,33 and J. Ewing Glasgow found an Edinburgh publisher interested in his book on John Brown at Harpers Ferry.34 Slave narratives received the most attention. These straightforward accounts of slave life were personal stories, simply told, designed to do exactly what Garnet thought black abolitionists should do in England— give a “fair definition” of slavery. Moses Roper’s is typical in many ways. The 1837 edition is 106 pages of large-type text devoted to Roper’s experiences with several masters, the cruelty and abuses he suffered and witnessed, his various escape attempts, his ultimate success, his difficult time in the free states, and his eventual flight to England. The narratives were well received by the British press. John Brown’s Slave Life in Georgia was described as “calm, moderate, heart-stirring, interesting, easily read [and] compelling.” It is impossible to be precise about sales figures for the British narratives, but they did well, probably better than in America, as a rule. They received more attention in the popular press and were regularly sold at antislavery lectures by the authors. Moses Roper supported himself for several years by lecturing and selling his tive of the Life of James Watkins, Formerly a Chattel in Maryland, United States, Dictated to H.R. (Birmingham, England, 1853); Watkins’s Narrative went through at least eighteen British editions. 30. Josiah Henson, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave (London, 1851); William Wells Brown, Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave (London, 1849); Henry “Box” Brown, Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown (Manchester, England, 1851); Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Dublin, 1845); Douglass’s Narrative went through at least five British editions. 31. William Wells Brown, Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (London, 1853); William Wells Brown, Three Years in Europe; or, Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met, with a Memoir of the Author by William Farmer (London, 1852). 32. Sarah Parker Remond, The Negro and Anglo-Africans as Freedmen and Soldiers (London, 1864). 33. William G. Allen, Prejudice against Color: An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily the Nation Got into an Uproar (London, 1853); William G. Allen, A Short Personal Narrative by William G. Allen (Dublin, 1860). Allen also published a book on the poets Horton and Placido: William G. Allen, The African Poets, Horton and Placido (Waterford, Ireland, 1858). 34. J. Ewing Glasgow, The Harpers Ferry Insurrection: Being an Account of the Late Outbreak in Virginia and the Trial and Execution of Captain John Brown, Its Hero (Edinburgh, 1860).

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Narrative. Roper claimed that three thousand copies sold in the first two months following publication, and by 1844 he reported that “twenty-five thousand English and five thousand Welsh copies are now in circulation.” It became a standard practice for fugitive slave authors to pay their tour expenses by selling their narratives. Douglass supported himself in that way during his first trip, and John Brown’s narrative sold well. Edited by Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, who used the offices of the BFASS to distribute the book and the pages of the Anti-Slavery Reporter to promote it, Brown’s Slave Life was ordered by the dozens when Brown was out lecturing in an area.35 Black abolitionists’ success with the printing press in the British Isles demonstrates their ability to seize the opportunities offered by the British antislavery network. Chamerovzow edited, published, and distributed John Brown’s Slave Life; the Reverend Thomas Price probably worked with Roper’s; Dublin Garrisonian Richard D. Webb published British editions of Douglass’s Narrative; and London manufacturer and reformer Harper Twelvetrees edited John Anderson’s story from the transcript of his lengthy Canadian extradition hearings. William Wells Brown had the complete text of large numbers of his speeches reprinted in British newspapers because he enlisted the services and influence of newspaperman William Farmer, who recorded them stenographically and then saw to it that they were placed in local newspapers. William Craft had access to the columns of London’s second largest newspaper because Bristol abolitionist John Estlin was acquainted with the editor of the Advertiser and because William Wells Brown occasionally wrote for that paper.36 Black abolitionists in the British Isles offered their fullest definition of slavery in the thousands of lectures they gave. Blacks told about day-today life in slavery, examined the system’s origin and history, investigated its profitability and political economy, spoke of the slave trade and slave breeding, depicted slavery’s brutality and the moral degradation it caused in whites, and explained how the slave power had gained control of the American government—a control that Sarah Remond cautioned 35. ASRL, 1 August 1854, 1 March 1856; John Brown, Slave Life, vii–x, 3–4; Moses Roper to [John Tredgold], 20 October 1840, Moses Roper to the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 9 May 1844, British Empire MSS, UkOxURh; Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, 1:liv; Joseph Clark to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, 15, 21 March 1855, Edward Polk to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, 16 March 1855, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh. 36. John Brown, Slave Life, vii–x; John W. Blassingame, ed., Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies (Baton Rouge, La., 1977), xix– xxi; Frederick Douglass to Richard D. Webb, 6 December 1845, [7 December 1845], 2 March 1846, Antislavery Collection, MB; Anderson, The Story of the Life of John Anderson, v; [Josephine Brown], Biography of an American Bondman, by His Daughter (Boston, Mass., 1856), 82.

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Black Abolitionist Papers

"could not be overrated.” They focused their attention on a handful of common topics and themes that they felt revealed the nature of slavery and corrected the stereotypes, falsehoods, misinformation, and lack of information that they found even in the most cordial British audience. Some blacks made these points with sophisticated lectures based on history, statistics, and analytical reasoning, while others used the narratives of their years in slavery. Often described as “rude” or “unconnected,” these stories from slave life were effective because they were told by those who had experienced them. Theodore Gross asked his audiences if he might “address them in the same plain manner in which he was accustomed to speak back home.” Moses Roper’s lectures on his slave experiences “made the blood run cold and almost staggered belief ”; for emphasis, he displayed “several instruments of torture”—a whip, a bowie knife, and a long perforated paddle.37 Blacks presented a detailed and specific picture of the everyday workings of the American slave system. They denied that slaves were well treated or lived a life that could be compared with working-class laborers in the northern United States or in England’s industrial cities. Black abolitionists described the long hours, forced labor, poor food, rude houses, inadequate clothes, and physical abuse—the whippings, shootings, rapes, and beatings—they had experienced or witnessed. For J. Sella Martin, it was a “chronic war in which thousands of slaves were murdered outright yearly.” They assured British audiences that there was no “bright” side to slavery.38 A handful of key topics exposed the institution. A repudiation of the “contented slave” thesis was chief among them. Speakers insisted that the numbers of runaway slaves discredited the idea that slaves accepted a life of bondage. Martin reported that slaves who found decent treatment “wanted [freedom] all the more”; he argued that the very idea that a slave could become reconciled to slavery was an indictment of the system’s ability to oppress. William Craft and William Wells Brown claimed that slaves could never be happy in bondage because it excluded them from God’s “higher purposes” by walling them away from religion, family, and education.39 Black abolitionists wanted Victorian audiences to become well informed about how slavery destroyed family life and prohibited enduring slave marriages. William Wells Brown dramatically introduced the topic of familial abuses in slavery by announcing that he was a fugitive “with a 37. WWA, 3 October 1860; Lib, 30 January 1851; HCP, 7 November 1840. 38. NASS, 7 December 1861; Lib, 21 September 1849, 26 October 1843; CN, 3 January 1850. 39. PtL, 1 May 1851; Lib, 28 September 1849; BF, July 1855; CN, 26 September 1856; NC, 9 November 1865.

Introduction

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mother, brother and sister still in slavery.” Black speakers told about men and women who were forced to watch their children beaten and sold to slave traders. John Anderson refused to consider marriage to any slave woman on the plantation where he lived because he knew he “could not bear to see her ill-treated.”40 Every request for funds to purchase family members out of bondage condemned slavery for its assault on the family. These basic fund-raising appeals by men like Moses Grandy, Tabb Gross, and Lewis Smith told more about the fragile nature of family life in slavery than the carefully documented discussions offered by their more sophisticated associates. J. W. C. Pennington and William H. Day explained how slavery’s assault on the family approached genocide. Pennington insisted that the inability of slaves to have a normal family life lowered black life expectancy. For Pennington slavery was “a system of murder” that condemned to death black couples and their children. He went beyond the analyses offered by most of his colleagues when he concluded that the entire race was threatened by assaults on the slave family. Day built on Pennington’s analysis. Using birthrate statistics for St. Ann’s on Guadeloupe Island, Day compared the black population before and after emancipation to demonstrate that blacks failed to maintain normal population growth during slavery.41 Discussions of the slave family were linked to other equally resonant themes, including the exploitation of black women and amalgamation. Many black male lecturers appeared reluctant to speak about sexually abused black women. Yet they did not let the subject pass altogether. William Craft pointedly remarked that “the wrongs heaped upon [slave] women could not be told,” and Josiah Henson touched on the subject by saying that the “full enormity” of slavery had not been revealed to the British public.42 Sarah Remond did not hesitate. Throughout her lecture tour, she focused her remarks on the “sufferings perpetrated on her sisters . . . and the fearful amount of licentiousness which everywhere pervaded the Southern States.” She regularly spoke about the degradation of black women in slavery and read descriptions of “young and beautiful” slave girls placed on the auction block for inspection and sale, leaving little doubt about her meaning. She convinced audiences that women were the “worst victims” of slavery. For Sarah Remond, the “fearful licentiousness” of slavery was documented by the presence of an estimated eight hundred thousand mulattoes in the United States. She made clear that she did not oppose amalgamation but insisted that, more 40. Anderson, The Story of the Life of John Anderson, 128. 41. CN, 17 October 1850; GO, 19 October 1850; LM, 3 August 1861. 42. WWA, 3 October 1860, 27 November 1861; HHE, 8 November 1856; ASRL, 1 June 1852.

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often than not, race mixing in America resulted from immorality in white southern society.43 Black men and women often discussed amalgamation, the destruction of the slave family, or the sexual abuse of black women as symbols of southern white corruption that posed a moral crisis for all of society. Black lecturers felt it was important for the British to understand that institutional forces in America encouraged rather than remedied the moral chaos that engulfed the nation. The Protestant church came under special examination. Blacks charged the church with embracing slavery—ministers defended it on Sunday mornings and church leaders ignored the degradation of slave women and the destruction of black families. How, they asked, could northern churches continue fellowship with churches in the South that condoned slavery and not be guilty of corrupting American society?44 Black abolitionists sought to convince the British public that the American government was in the hands of a slavocracy. They often made their case by discussing laws and legal decisions that sustained slavery. Black Garrisonians pointed to the parts of the United States Constitution that supported the institution. Through the 1850s, blacks pointed to the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the Dred Scott decision and carefully explained why these were slaveholding victories. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 provided the perfect foil for black abolitionists. No single subject, save slavery itself, was more widely discussed by black abolitionists than the Fugitive Slave Law. If its provisions threatened escaped slaves at home, it made their antislavery task easier in the British Isles. One after another, escaped slaves took the podium and described themselves as fugitives from American slavery, fugitives who would be legally chained and returned to bondage should they leave England for the United States. Personalized lectures on the Fugitive Slave Law had a good effect in England. Discussions of laws and legal decisions about slavery led naturally to the laws and customs that gave expression to northern racial prejudice. Blacks informed the British about their lives in the free states. They told personal stories about discrimination in housing, jobs, education, the courts, transportation, and in civil and political rights—discrimination that underscored the pervasiveness of northern racism and that severely hindered black social and economic development. Sarah Remond spoke of racism as depriving blacks of all political and social rights “for no 43. WT, 5 February 1859; Lib, 18 February 1859; ASA, May 1859; MWT, 7 September 1859; SUA, 19 January 1861; LT, 10 December 1853. 44. FDP, 31 July 1851; HHE, 8 November 1856; ASRL, 14 June 1853; CN, 26 September 1853.

Introduction

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crime but merely the fact of complexion.”45 Professional black abolitionists made clear that there was a “close and intimate” relationship between slavery in the South and prejudice in the North. They argued that the existence of three million slaves profoundly affected the treatment of free blacks. The progress of free blacks would significantly affect slaves and slavery, they reasoned; yet free black progress could not take place as long as blacks were walled away from educational, cultural, and political privileges.46 Samuel Ringgold Ward explained the self-fulfilling nature of white prejudice. He pointed out that racism restricted black advancement and achievement; whites then used the lack of black achievement to justify their racist attitudes and behavior, including slavery.47 With the start of the Civil War, black abolitionists joined in the propaganda struggle that everyone in America knew to be critical to the war effort. As the fighting dragged on and began to favor the Union, it became clear that the Confederacy could survive only with English recognition and support. Black Americans had a powerful influence on diplomatic matters. They kept the slavery issue before the British public as a natural way to win favor for the Union side and to discourage English recognition of the Confederacy.48 By 1865 blacks had accumulated a generation of experience in influencing the British. They knew how to work with the press, how to approach civic and reform leaders, and how to fill lecture halls in order to make their message heard. Black abolitionists went to Britain with high expectations. Over the years, they presented an ambitious assortment of antislavery goals to the British. Blacks understood that they were engaged in a struggle to control popular opinion, and they asked the British public to exert its moral force against American slavery and racial prejudice. Blacks also asked the British to take more direct action against slavery, to behave in certain ways, to challenge (or at least avoid) organizations and institutions with a proslavery taint and to embrace movements and ideas with an antislav45. Robert Campbell to the Board of Managers of the Franklin Institute, 12 November 1856, Robert Campbell to Alfred Cope, 17 November 1856, Miscellaneous MSS, PSC; [Robert Douglass, Jr.] to My Dear Parents, Sister and Brother, 29 April 1840, in PF, 11 June 1840; CA, 28 September 1839; NASS, 8 December 1855; George Forbes, Biographical Sketch of James McCune Smith, Antislavery Collection, MB; MWT, 7 September 1859; Carol V. R. George, “Widening the Circle: The Black Church and the Abolitionist Movement, 1830–1860,” in Antislavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists, ed. Lewis Perry and Michael Fellman (Baton Rouge, La., 1979), 82–83. 46. ASRL, 2 June 1851; PL, 26 May 1853. 47. PtL, 19 May 1853; I, 21 May 1853. 48. Quarles, “Ministers without Portfolio,” 28–30.

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ery purpose. And, finally, they asked the British to underwrite a variety of causes with cash and with material goods. Sarah Remond told the Ulverton Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society that she and her “coadjutors” were in the British Isles “to gather up public sentiment and pour it like hot lead on the Americans.”49 Remond and her sophisticated associates knew that British culture influenced American thought and action, and in marshaling British public opinion, they could seize a powerful instrument for shaping behavior in America. The consistent goal of the black men and women who journeyed to Britain for over three decades was to persuade the British public to place its moral support behind the crusade to end American slavery. American blacks were mindful that British public sentiment had a variety of uses within Britain itself. British opinion could, for example, challenge proslavery advocates who traveled in Britain. William H. Day warned the Birmingham Ladies’ Negroes’ Friend Society against the “inroads of pro-slavery spirit,” which he feared might “roll in upon the country.” Black speakers could refute the proslavery utterances of American tourists (estimated at forty thousand per year), but an informed British public could support the abolitionists and invalidate the proslavery advocates. 50 Altering public opinion in Britain could also help shape the racial attitudes that British emigrants carried with them to America. Urban blacks from Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were familiar with the antagonism between free blacks and immigrants in northeastern cities, many of whom ended up in the proslavery Democratic party. Black lecturers hoped that changing opinion in the British Isles would have the right effect in America. In 1851 Henry Highland Garnet told a Belfast audience that “it was necessary for [him] . . . to speak to the people of [Ireland] on the subject of American slavery” because Ireland was “intimately connected” to slavery through the three thousand Irish who arrived in New York City weekly during the height of Irish emigration and who, Garnet implied, normally aligned themselves with proslavery forces in America. He hoped that by cultivating a vigorous antislavery sentiment in Ireland future Irish immigrants would arrive ready “to break off [the slave’s] yoke.” 51 Black abolitionists also realized that a well-developed British antislavery sentiment gave British reform leaders greater authority to influence their government. Blacks did not expect the British government to take direct action against American slavery, but they wanted the government 49. SUA, 19 January 1861. 50. ASRL, 2 December 1861; see also WT, 5 February 1859; ASA, April 1859. 51. BN, 22 January 1851; PtL, 3 July 1843.

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"to learn from the facts and truth” of slavery and then to speak out and use its international influence when possible. Blacks appealed to British reformers and citizens to pressure their government on a host of issues: enforcing the slave trade prohibition, rescuing kidnapped black sailors, refusing to extradite fugitive slaves from Canada, and making certain that England did not recognize the Confederacy.52 British reformers welcomed black abolitionists because of their special ability to shape public opinion. As British abolitionists turned their energies to ending American slavery, they understood the limited ways in which they might affect American institutions and settled on the primary goal of directing British public opinion against the institution of slavery. The considerable attraction that the British public felt for black abolitionists made black Americans essential to the transatlantic antislavery network; blacks influenced opinion on slavery as no other group could, including other American abolitionists and home-grown reformers.53 Spreading the word about slavery and creating a popular sentiment were parts of a process, which included a call for more direct action. Black abolitionists asked the British to reject the American Colonization Society and its schemes for relocating black Americans in Africa. Nathaniel Paul and Charles Lenox Remond led that effort. They told British audiences that black Americans considered the United States their home and regarded the society’s colonization plan as a hypocritical attempt to rid America of free blacks and to insure that only slaves remained. Paul and Remond convinced the British that the ACS did not represent American free blacks and helped defeat the society in its two strongest efforts to enlist the moral and financial support of reform-minded British society.54 Similarly, blacks explained how the relationship between slavery and churches in America made the church an ally of the slaveholders. They did this in the hope that churchgoers in Britain would pressure the British church hierarchy, which, in turn, would change the thinking of their proslavery brethren in America. Black ministers from America (of which there were many) regularly spoke against proslavery American churches from British pulpits, and black abolitionists never passed an opportunity to attend a meeting of a religious organization or to involve themselves in church affairs. Time after time, blacks entered into debates involving religious, missionary, bible, and church societies with a slave holding contact or a proslavery bias and asked members to correct their 52. PtL, 3 July 1843; LS, 8 February 1843; ASA, 1 September 1861; ASRL, 1 December 1861; MET, 5 August 1854. 53. Temperley, British Antislavery, 195; Riach, “Ireland and the Campaign against American Slavery,” 77; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 67. 54. Ward, “Charles Lenox Remond,” 92–93.

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ways.55 Controversies, friction, and confrontations that kept antislavery alive were sought as opportunities to excite popular opinion and to point out proper antislavery behavior. Black abolitionists were pleased and flattered by their ability to advance antislavery in these ways. But they went to Britain with a host of additional objectives as well. They asked the British to support economic and emigrationist plans that were attempting to end slavery. The free produce movement had American advocates, but the notion that slavery could be made unprofitable, and thus ended, by boycotting products made by slave labor took hold in England. The movement never wanted for black enthusiasts in the British Isles. William Wells Brown, William Craft, Alexander Crummell, J. W. C. Pennington, and Samuel Ringgold Ward attempted to build on the foundation of English free labor support first laid down by Nathaniel Paul, Charles Lenox Remond, Frederick Douglass, and particularly Henry Highland Garnet. These men described the connection between the price of slaves and the demand for slave produce. They argued that, by purchasing slave goods, every seven British families employed one slave. Black abolitionists asked their listeners to boycott slaveproduced rice, sugar, and cotton with claims that such action would lower the price of slaves and dry up slavery’s profits.56 British free labor commercial interests were a ready market for blacks with emigrationist and missionary goals. English cotton merchants and manufacturers were enthusiastic about black plans for African settlements that would produce cotton primarily. In the late 1850s and into the next decade, William H. Day, Martin R. Delany, Robert Campbell, Alexander Crummell, and William Craft promoted free labor cotton settlements in West Africa and found British sponsors for these efforts. Some British antislavery advocates were so taken with the idea of a free labor counterpoint to America’s southern slave economy that they tried to enlist the services of fugitive slaves to teach cotton growing in Africa.57 Nearly every black visitor encouraged the British to become active in antislavery societies and were themselves instrumental in forming and invigorating these organizations. James McCune Smith was an office holder in the Glasgow Emancipation Society and contributed to the soci55. Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, 1:204–5; George Shepperson, “Frederick Douglass and Scotland,” JNH 38:313 (July 1953). 56. GO, 28 September, 7 December 1850; ASRL, 1 November 1850, 2 June 1851, 1 November 1861; NC, 2 January 1850; Blackett, “Fugitive Slaves in Britain,” 52; Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, 1:lvii; Martin Burt Pasternak, “Rise Now and Fly to Arms: The Life of Henry Highland Garnet” (Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts, 1981), 104; CN, 17 October 1850. 57. John Wigham to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, 26 October 1853, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; African Aid Society, The American Crisis and the Slave Trade, 6–7; ASRL, 28 May 1859, 1 January 1864; Blackett, “Fugitive Slaves in Britain,” 55–56.

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ety’s growth in the 1830s. Charles Lenox Remond was involved at the start of the Cork Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. William Robson and William P. Powell used the successful lectures of Sarah Remond in and around Warrington, England, to create the Warrington Anti-Slavery Society. William and Ellen Craft served on the organizing executive committee of the London Emancipation Committee. Samuel Ringgold Ward and Henry Highland Garnet formed free produce societies in some locales. Pennington is credited with helping to start the Glasgow New Association for the Abolition of Slavery.58 It would be impossible to estimate the number of converts that became members of British anti-slavery organizations as a result of black abolitionist activities. Black abolitionists were seldom disappointed when they asked the British to assume a lion’s share of the financial responsibility for the transatlantic antislavery movement. That is not to suggest that the British financed the American crusade against slavery. They did not. Fund-raising drives for general revenue had limited success. But British reform leaders recognized that an open pocketbook was one way in which they could strike American slavery from their side of the Atlantic.59 Thousands of British pounds were converted to American reform dollars. Nathaniel Paul’s four-year tour on behalf of the black settlement at Wilberforce helped define black fund raising in Britain. When Paul returned to Canada in 1835, he informed Wilberforce director Austin Steward that $8,000 had been collected. But nearly $7,000 went for expenses, and Paul’s $50-a-month salary as a Wilberforce agent left his mission $1,600 in debt. The time Paul spent lecturing against the American Colonization Society had been an expensive distraction from his Wilberforce work. And after Paul had completed the anticolonization tour with Garrison, he had to loan the Boston editor money for his return passage, which suggests that not even America’s best-known abolitionist went home laden with British antislavery funds. Black fund-raising missions tended to be more specific and less ambitious throughout the rest of the antebellum period. By 1851 Boston businessman and reformer Abbott Lawrence reported that “John Bull has many calls upon his purse and is quite careful now, how he opens it.”60 But open it they did. William Wells Brown, Alexander Crummell, William Douglass, William Mitchell, Stephen Gloucester, Josiah Henson, 58. Riach, “Ireland and the Campaign against American Slavery,” 139; Walter M. Merrill and Louis Ruchames, eds., The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 6 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1971–82), 4:552n.; Blackett, “Fugitive Slaves in Britain,” 48, 49, 53; ASRL, 1 September 1854; Burke, “Samuel Ringgold Ward,” 34–83. 59. Temperley, British Antislavery, 206–7; Riach, “Ireland and the Campaign against American Slavery,” 77. 60. Pease and Pease, Black Utopia, 60; Robin Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History (New Haven, Conn., 1971), 158–59; Abbott Lawrence to Amos Lawrence, 31 March 1851, Amos Lawrence MSS, MHi.

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Thomas Kinnard, Nathaniel Paul, J. W. C. Pennington, William Troy, and Jeremiah Asher were among those who received British money to build black churches or schools. Moses Grandy, Theodore Gross, Edmund Kelly, J. Sella Martin, Lewis Smith, James Watkins, and William Craft raised funds to purchase relatives out of slavery. Frederick Douglass, William Day, and Samuel Ringgold Ward collected funds to support black newspapers. These specific examples reflect the kind of fund raising that blacks did in Britain. The British could be generous sometimes without a direct appeal. Solicitations were made to purchase the freedom of fugitive slaves J. W. C. Pennington, Frederick Douglass, and William Wells Brown. None of them asked for money themselves, although Pennington—more than Brown or Douglass—encouraged the efforts. Concerned British patrons took the initiative to form fund-raising committees and to bring the matter to the attention of well-heeled friends.61 To be sure, the fugitives knew that talking about the need for funds with British antislavery associates would probably result in an offer by someone to do more than act as an intermediary in negotiations. Still, the money was raised without hesitation or difficulty. The British helped finance antislavery work in America as a result of appeals by black abolitionists. These appeals had a sophisticated quality, which accommodated British tolerance for fund raising and American antislavery practice. A prominent example is the Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar, a substantial source of revenue for the American Anti-Slavery Society for over three decades.62 Its success was due, in no small measure, to the efforts of black abolitionists in the British Isles. Charles Lenox Remond, William Powell, Frederick Douglass, and William Wells Brown— all good Garrisonians—used their considerable talents to promote the bazaar. They asked the British to contribute goods to sell at the fair, and they organized groups that continued to supply goods for years. Remond left Ireland dotted with groups (usually women’s auxiliaries) committed to this activity. Brown organized the wives and daughters of Garrisonian West Country families for the same purpose. During Powell’s stay in Liverpool, he served as the unofficial shipping agent for the boxes of British goods destined to fill the bazaar tables.63 To assess accurately the black contribution to the antislavery movement in the United States is to understand that proceeds from the bazaar 61. Minutes of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, 18 February 1851, UkGM; Farrison, William Wells Brown, 241–42; Lib, 25 August, 1 September 1854; Foner, Frederick Douglass, 72. 62. ASRL, 1 May 1853. 63. Charles Lenox Remond to William Lloyd Garrison, 2 October 1841, William P. Powell to Maria Weston Chapman, 30 October 1857, Antislavery Collection, MB; ASA, March, April 1858; NASS, 12 February 1859; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 61.

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helped to finance the National Anti-Slavery Standard and the American Anti-Slavery Society’s lecture agents—and newspapers and lecturers were the stock and trade of the movement. Through these efforts, black appeals to the British helped keep the American antislavery movement solvent and active. Black abolitionists became adept at forging and using certain antislavery tools. They asked for material goods rather than for money, which appealed to the British and which meant, in the case of the bazaar, for example, that they did not have to tend to details after the goods were collected and shipped. Blacks soon came to realize that such a tactic enabled them to use their organizational skills in the best way possible. It gave them the opportunity to direct the antislavery spirit that they generated in Britain to the continuing benefit of the abolitionist movement in America. Black abolitionists were clearly pleased if the antislavery enthusiasm they generated translated into new antislavery societies and new converts for the cause. Yet they seemed to favor new groups (or old groups that could be reoriented) that had a specific connection to the United States rather than to the British antislavery network. When Brown in the West Country and Remond in Ireland organized groups dedicated to the Boston bazaar, they were not alone in this practice. J. W. C. Pennington captured the Glasgow New Association for the Abolition of Slavery as a funding source of his New York State Vigilance Committee. J. Sella Martin’s success with the Glasgow Freedmen’s Aid Society supplied household items, farm tools, and material goods for freed slaves. Frederick Douglass recruited the Halifax Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society as a source of support for his newspaper.64 Black abolitionists promoted antislavery organizations with a specific goal that reached back to the United States —to the bazaar, to a newspaper, or to a vigilance committee. These farsighted efforts, which brought a regular flow of money and goods into the United States, continued long after the black abolitionists had left Britain. Black recruiters also undertook a long-standing and systematic fundraising crusade on behalf of fugitive slaves who had fled to Canada. A significant portion of the British money sent to North America made its way to black Canadian settlements and communities. That was reasonable. The Canadian appeal was well suited for the British Isles. It matched the goals of black abolitionists with British reform values, and blacks did a good job of making that clear to British audiences. By supporting fugitive slave activities in Canada with money and material goods, the British could strike at American slavery from England, Scot64. Rice, The Scots Abolitionists, 156; Minutes of the Glasgow Freedmen’s Aid Society, 25 July, 29 September 1865, UkGM; ASRL, 1 May 1860.

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and, or Ireland. Supporting a successful black sanctuary in the Canadian provinces kept the British contributions within the Empire; Canadian residents—regardless of color—lived under the same flag. And it was appealing to have one of Her Majesty’s dominions serve as an example of freedom next door to republican slaveholding America. American blacks flattered the Empire by comparing Canada with the United States. They naturally and accurately described Canada as a haven for blacks running from American slavery and racial prejudice; they spoke of two countries existing side by side, one of which “boasted of a freedom . . . it did not possess.” The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law validated these depictions as little else could have. Stories of dangerous flights to the Canadian border by slaves from the South—of slaves arriving hungry, ill, and near naked and yet acting like free men and women once on Canadian soil— were part of the Canadian appeal.65 The promises made by Nathaniel Paul, Josiah Henson, William Day, and Samuel Ringgold Ward on behalf of the Canadian settlements were timely, particularly among British groups that put great stock in education, religion, honest labor, and good works. Black abolitionists stressed that money sent to Canadian settlements would start runaway slaves on a new life of freedom, prosperity, and progress. Land, clothes, farm tools, seed, and household goods were necessary for destitute fugitives with aspirations to become middle-class farmers. Churches and schools would provide the education and religious training required of full and useful citizens. And some black abolitionists suggested that black Canadian schools and churches would train the next generation of missionaries, who would carry on the work started by British missionaries in Africa. 66 During the Civil War, J. Sella Martin, Sarah P. Remond, and William H. Jones tapped British generosity on behalf of the freed slaves who came under Union control. By 1865 there were more than forty freedmen’s aid associations in the British Isles that collected clothes, tools, and money for freed slaves in the South. Black abolitionists were involved with many of these groups. It is impossible to estimate the number of newly escaped or freed slaves who went to England during the war years. With no mission, no contacts, no jobs, and no places to lecture, many became destitute. “There is no end to the colored people here,” J. Sella Martin complained in 1861.67 Martin’s comment suggests how much 65. CN, 27 June 1850; Colonial Church and School Society, Occasional Paper, 1:8–10 (February 1854); NC, 18 May 1853; PtL, 9, 27 June 1853. 66. NSt, 2 November 1849; NC, 26 January 1851; CN, 27 June 1850; PtL, 13 March 1851; ASRL, 1 November 1861; Pease and Pease, Black Utopia, 18–20; LM, 3 August 1861. 67. J. Sella Martin to [George Ruffin], 16 October 1861, Ruffin Family Papers, DHU; Porter, “Sarah Parker Remond,” 287–93; AT, 23 December 1862; Christine Bolt, The Anti-

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things had changed for black abolitionists in England over the years. In the 1830s, there had not been a sufficient number of black Americans to meet the requests for appearances; by 1865 there were so many that they were often the object of English relief organizations whose sole purpose was to aid them. In many ways, the black abolitionist experience in Britain was a counterpoint to their life in America. Blacks found a less prejudiced society, where racial proscriptions seemed nowhere in evidence—there were no “negro pews” in churches, no restrictions on travel, lodgings, or transportation, and no racial slurs on the streets. William P. Powell eloquently reported, “The change is so sudden . . . that I can hardly believe my senses. I feel for once in my life a man indeed . . . and more the shame for my color-hating country.” William G. Allen pointed out that the change amounted to more than just being among friendly people. It had to do with being among people who acted out the “doctrine of human equality” and not in the “patronising (and, of course, insulting)” way that was common among American abolitionists.68 Blacks who stayed in Britain for a protracted period usually tempered their enthusiasm for British race relations. They came to understand that Victorian race conventions found expression in different and more subtle ways than in America. Yet most black abolitionists were cheered by what they found in Britain and returned to America with a revitalized understanding of the possibilities for improved relations between blacks and whites. Local attitudes on race made possible many successes in Britain that were unthinkable in America. In the United States, black abolitionists were outsiders, accustomed to the cooperation and hospitality of a small portion of the population and a smaller number of political, civic, and community leaders. In Britain they were accepted and supported by a broad segment of society. This acceptance meant something more than coming before groups and audiences eager to see and hear them, to learn from them, and, in many cases, to embrace them and their cause. Blacks found the homes of respected and influential citizens opened to them. They found newspaper editors and publishers eager to make their stories known. They found that the royal and the powerful welcomed them, introduced them to audiences, served on their fund-raising committees, and wished to spend time with them in stately drawing rooms. Douglass’s ironic report that he was “hardly black enough for British tastes” is characteristic of the black experience in British circles. Black abolitionSlavery Movement and Reconstruction: A Study in Anglo-American Cooperation, 1833–77 (London, 1969), 61–62, 66. 68. William P. Powell to Sydney Howard Gay, 12 December 1850, in NASS, 9 January 1851; William G. Allen to William Lloyd Garrison, 20 June 1853, in Lib, 22 July 1853.

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ists discovered a friendly and cooperative spirit among the insiders who controlled British society and culture. The ability of blacks to utilize that spirit for their cause was a major ingredient of their successes in Britain and a major difference between their experiences in Britain and in America. British support also allowed black abolitionists to pursue their goals in ways that might not have been possible in America. Black Garrisonians in particular were mindful of the philosophical and tactical restraints included in that brand of antislavery. In the United States, only limited wavering from Garrisonian tenets was tolerated. In Britain, a good deal more was possible. A number of blacks normally associated with Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society were both willing and able to promote antislavery as they saw fit. They were able to do so because of the abolitionist support available to them and because of their elevated place in the British movement. They were willing to do so because they knew that rival groups would work with them because they were black Americans and because they understood clearly what their objectives were and how best to achieve them. But there is more to say about independent black action in the British Isles. Black efforts often focused on the American black community— rather than on the white antislavery movement—and that emphasis was a striking feature of the British experience. Certainly black abolitionists informed and rallied British sentiment on behalf of the slave, and they worked hard for the Boston bazaar—noteworthy goals for any abolitionist. But most black fund raising and organizational efforts directly benefited specific Afro-American causes, individuals, organizations, and instituitions. For the first time, blacks found a national audience genuinely interested in supporting black causes. They made the most of that. Black churches, schools, newspapers, and vigilance committees in the United States and Canada were financed by the British as a result of black abolitionist appeals. Blacks were more successful in their fund-raising efforts in Britain than they had ever been in the United States. In this context, Samuel Ringgold Ward, writing from England, recalled American hostility and violence against black institutions and described the race prejudice in American antislavery societies that kept blacks subservient in the movement, kept blacks from leadership positions, and kept blacks from the editorial desks of antislavery newspapers.69 The British experience affected some black abolitionists more than others. Many left England more seasoned and capable and buoyed by their victories and the attention they received there. William Wells Brown returned home with increased personal sophistication and changed attitudes on race relations, antislavery, and emigration. Other blacks re69. Samuel Ringgold Ward to Frederick Douglass, January 1855, in FDP, 13 April 1855.

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flected changed attitudes in different ways. Samuel Ringgold Ward and Henry Highland Garnet chose to go to Jamaica rather than return to America. Alexander Crummell spent twenty years in Liberia. Sarah Remond went to Italy to study and practice medicine. William H. Day, John Jacobs, and William and Ellen Craft returned to the United States only after the start of a catastrophic civil war, which promised black liberation and a more equitable future for Afro-Americans. Blacks went to Britain both as abolitionists and as Afro-Americans. These dual roles exacted two sets of responsibilities—one on behalf of the slave and the antislavery movement and one on behalf of black life and culture in the free states. As abolitionists, blacks informed the British about slavery and race relations, marshaled British public opinion on behalf of the slave, and promoted a number of antislavery goals. The essence of the abolitionist movement on both sides of the Atlantic was to spread the word, gather converts, and collect funds for antislavery newspapers and lecture agents, and blacks in Britain did that as well as it was done anywhere, at any time. Black abolitionists aroused British public opinion and directed it against American slavery, and they collected substantial British resources that supported the American antislavery movement over a number of years. These were the ways in which black abolitionists met their obligations to the American slave and to the antislavery movement at home. As Afro-Americans, blacks had lifelong experiences which made them acutely aware that the United States was a racially divided society—a conclusion made clear to them by their unequal status in the antislavery movement at home and by their elevated status in Britain. Their attacks on northern racial prejudice and their efforts on behalf of black churches, schools, newspapers, and organizations demonstrate an understanding of the failures of American society and the corresponding necessity and value of black institutions. Blacks who advocated emigration from the United States to Africa or to the West Indies or who sponsored black communities in Canada demonstrated an even more critical view of America. Black abolitionists promoted sanctuaries outside the United States, supported black American institutions, and combated racial prejudice in the North— this was how they met their obligations as Afro-Americans.

1. Nathaniel Paul to William Lloyd Garrison 10 April 1833 During the 1830s, American abolitionists and colonizationists engaged in a protracted struggle to influence the direction of the Afro-American destiny. Immediatist abolitionists wished to end slavery and integrate blacks into American life. Colonizationists hoped to resettle blacks outside the United States. Both sought to rally the reform public to their programs. The American Colonization Society carried the struggle abroad in 1832–33 when it dispatched agent Elliott Cresson to enlist British antislavery behind colonizationist objectives. Several American abolitionists, including blacks Nathaniel Paul and Robert Purvis, combated Cresson’s efforts in Britain. As an American free black, Paul spoke against colonization to large and enthusiastic audiences. He had been in Britain a little over a year seeking funds for Austin Steward’s Wilberforce fugitive slave settlement in Upper Canada when he wrote a 4 April 1833 letter to William Lloyd Garrison, reflecting on a year of successful lecturing. By the time the letter appeared in the 22 June Liberator, Garrison had arrived in Britain and joined Paul on a tour designed to blunt Cresson. Lib, 22 June 1833; Walter M. Merrill and Louis Ruchames, eds., The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 6 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1971–82), 1:224–28, 237–39. Bristol, England April 10, 1833 MY DEAR FRIEND GARRISON:1 Having an opportunity of sending to America, I improve it in writing you a few lines. I have much to say, and I hardly know what to say first; but I will begin with that subject which, next to the salvation of the soul, I know lies nearest your heart—viz. the liberation of the helpless slave, and the elevation of the people of color from that state of degradation that they have so long been in. Let me say, then, sir, that the voice of this nation is loud and incessant against the system of slavery. Its death warrant is sealed, so far as it relates to the British West Indies.2 The advocates of slavery are trembling, for the signs of the times proclaim that the end of their oppression draweth near. The tune of the planters is changed. They formerly threatened, but they now begin to supplicate pity for themselves and their children. But how shall those who have felt no pity for others, think of exciting pity for themselves? Their entreaties come too late. The course of the people is determined, and by the help of God they will continue it until slavery shall cease. And let it rejoice your heart, sir, that no half way

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measures are to be taken. Tired of that delusive song of gradual emancipation, they have resolved to be satisfied with nothing short of total, absolute, and immediate emancipation.3 A bill will be introduced by his Majesty’s government in a few days to this effect; and as soon as this is done, the tables in both Houses of Parliament will groan beneath the weight of the Petitions that will be sent in. Men, women and children stand ready, with pen in hand, to act their part when called for. As well might the slaveholders try to stop the sun in his course, as to think of impeding the cause of liberty. The cause is God’s and must prevail. And I believe that those bright luminaries, CLARKSON4 and WILBERFORCE,5 will yet live to witness its triumph. Your Thoughts on Colonization6 are the thoughts of the people here. I only regret that your book had not come sooner. Cresson7 is now somewhere, I believe, in this country; but the people have their eyes open, and I have met with but one gentleman who did not regret that they ever countenanced his cause. Extracts from your book are published in several of the most respectable periodical publications. It has done much good. I have been engaged, for several months past, in travelling through the country and delivering lectures upon the system of slavery as it exists in the United States, the condition of the free people of color in that country, and the importance of promoting the cause of education and religion generally among the colored people. My lectures have been numerously attended by from two to three thousand people, the Halls and Chapels have been overflown, and hundreds have not been able to obtain admittance. I have not failed to give Uncle Sam due credit for his 2,000,000 slaves; nor to expose the cruel prejudices of the Americans to our colored race; nor to fairly exhibit the hypocrisy of the Colonization Society,8 to the astonishment of the people here. And is this, say they, republican liberty? God deliver us from it. And now, to contrast the difference in the treatment that a colored man receives in this country, with that which he receives in America, my soul is filled with sorrow and indignation. I could weep over the land of my nativity! I would ask those hypocritical pretenders to humanity and religion, who are continually crying out, “What shall we do with our black and colored people?” Why do ye not do them justice? What! are you better than Englishmen? Admit them to equal rights with yourselves; this is all that they ask; this is all that is needful to be done. What hinders you from doing this? Is it any thing but the pride of your hearts? Here, if I go to church, I am not pointed to the “negro seat” in the gallery;9 but any gentleman opens his pew door for my reception. If I wish for a passage in a stage, the only question that is asked me is, “Which do you choose, sir, an inside or an outside seat?” If I stop at a public inn, no one would ever think here of setting a separate table for me; I am conducted

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to the same table with other gentlemen. The only difference that I have ever discovered is this, I am generally taken for a stranger, and they therefore seem anxious to pay me the greater respect. I have had the pleasure of breakfasting twice with the venerable WILBERFORCE, and have now a letter in my pocket that I received from him, a few weeks since, which I would not take pounds for. Once I have been in the company of the patriotic CLARKSON. I must say I viewed them both as Angels of liberty. God bless and reward them. In regard to the object that brought me to this country, I would say, that, considering the peculiar state of the country, I have been quite as successful as I could expect. The object has met with the most decided approbation from all classes of people. I do not hold out the delusive idea that the whole of the colored people are going to Canada;10 but have invariably said, that in spite of all that will ever remove there, or to any other part of the world they will continue to increase in America. It is only to open the door for all such as choose to go, or that prefer Canada to the United States. When I shall return, I cannot at present say; but I think that it will not be under several months. Farewell, in the name of the Lord. Let us trust and persevere to the end, NATHANIEL PAUL11 Liberator (Boston, Mass.), 22 June 1833. 1. William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, raised by a local minister, and apprenticed to a newspaper editor at age thirteen. After working at Benjamin Lundy’s Genius of Universal Emancipation, Garrison founded the Liberator (January 1831), a Boston-based antislavery weekly dedicated to immediate emancipation. For the next thirty-four years, Garrison used the paper to present antislavery doctrines that made him among the most controversial and important abolitionist leaders in America. Throughout the 1830s, Garrison was instrumental in organizing the antislavery movement and discrediting the American Colonization Society. He helped found the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1831 and the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. During the 1840s, Garrison consolidated his control of the American Anti-Slavery Society, rejected political antislavery, promoted international antislavery cooperation (touring England in 1846), and condemned the slave power conspiracy. Although he was disheartened by proslavery government actions in the 1850s, Garrison continued his antislavery efforts until the slaves were emancipated (January 1863) and the Thirteenth Amendment was passed. After the Civil War, Garrison stopped publishing the Liberator (December 1865) and left the American Anti-Slavery Society but pursued various reform interests, including temperance, women’s rights, and free trade. DAB, 7:168–72. 2. The Emancipation Act of 1833 (more commonly known as the West Indian Emancipation Act of 1833) took effect 1 August 1834 as a compromise measure

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between growing antislavery sentiment in Britain and the refusal of West Indian colonial legislatures to undertake slave reform. Although slaves technically obtained all the rights and privileges of freedom, they actually became part of an apprentice system. Agricultural laborers had to work six years before receiving their freedom; domestic workers were to be free in 1838. Only children under the age of six were totally and immediately emancipated, although they were liable for a long-term indenture if their mother was destitute. An apprentice could purchase his or her freedom at any time by paying the former owner a predetermined sum. The apprenticeship plan was an attempt to assuage the widespread fear among whites of total and immediate emancipation. Slave owners received £20 million in compensation from the British government. Although the act did not fully satisfy most abolitionists, it was regarded as the first step toward the total abolition of slavery and was celebrated in both America and Britain on every 1 August after 1834. William A. Green, British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great Experiment, 1830–1865 (Oxford, England, 1976), 99–127; William Law Mathieson, British Slavery and Its Abolition, 1823–1838 (London, 1926), 183–242. 3. From the inception of the American antislavery movement in the eighteenth century, a continuing debate took place among gradualist and immediatist antislavery reformers about the way in which emancipation should proceed. Those that believed in a gradualist approach felt the transition from slavery to freedom should be characterized by a series of intermediary steps (apprenticeship, colonization, etc.). Gradualists dominated the early antislavery thinking. During the 1830s, the idea of immediate emancipation superseded gradualism. Immediatists advocated total, unconditional, and uncompensated emancipation. A number of immediatists initially adopted a cautious and refined immediatism, which called for the adoption of a program to eventually end slavery. Garrisonian abolitionists and, increasingly as the decade wore on, most of those that identified themselves as immediatists believed the institution should be terminated immediately and unconditionally. David Brion Davis, “The Emergence of Immediatism in British and American Antislavery Thought,” MVHR 49:209–30 (September 1962); Gilbert Hobbs Barnes, The Anti-Slavery Impulse, 1830–1844 (Gloucester, Mass., 1957), 30–31, 48–50, 59–60, 101–3; John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, Mass., 1963), 102–5, 153–54, 413–21. 4. Thomas Clarkson (1760–1846) became interested in slavery through a prizewinning Latin composition he wrote on the subject at Cambridge in 1785. Thereafter, he toured Britain, collecting information and statistics on the brutality of the Atlantic slave trade, writing antislavery tracts, testifying before parliamentary committees, holding public meetings, and distributing pamphlets. Largely due to his indefatigable efforts, British public opinion turned against slavery. Clarkson helped found the Committee for the Suppression of the Slave Trade in 1797; in 1823 he was named a vice-president of the new Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Dominion. Under the strain of constant work and traveling, his health deteriorated. But he lived to witness the culmination of his efforts—the West Indian Emancipation Act of 1833. DNB, 4:454– 57. 5. William Wilberforce (1759–1833) was born and raised in Yorkshire. After attending Cambridge, he sat in the House of Commons (1780–1825), where he

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led the parliamentary campaign against the slave trade. Wilberforce introduced the first bill for the abolition of West Indian slavery and helped organize the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Dominion in 1823. His devotion to evangelical Christianity prompted him to champion a variety of reform causes, including penal reform, electoral reform, public education, and aiding the industrial poor. In his later years, Wilberforce was respected as the interpreter of the British national conscience. DNB, 21: 208–17; John Pollock, Wilberforce (London, 1977). 6. During the first months of 1832, William Lloyd Garrison researched and wrote Thoughts on African Colonization, a 238-page examination of the American movement to return blacks to Africa. Based on extensive analyses of American Colonization Society reports and influenced by black abolitionist James Forten, Garrison refuted colonizationist claims that America could solve her racial problems by resettling free blacks and emancipated slaves in an African colony. He argued that society members condoned slavery, sought to expel free blacks from America, and denied the possibility of black progress in African freedom. Garrison’s work also underscored the unanimity of anticolonizationist sentiment among free blacks and demonstrated that blacks regarded themselves not as American aliens but as full citizens. William Lloyd Garrison, Thoughts on African Colonization, with preface by William Loren Katz (Boston, Mass., 1832; reprint, New York, N.Y., 1969); Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 4:77, 150–51, 195–96, 161, 255. 7. Elliott Cresson (1796–1854) was a wealthy Philadelphia Quaker businessman, philanthropist, and colonization advocate. In the 1820s, he was county director of black schools in Philadelphia. He became active in the colonization cause, donated substantial money to the American Colonization Society, and traveled widely in the United States and Britain as an ACS agent. In 1832–33, he canvassed the British Isles, characterizing the ACS as an abolitionist organization and trying to gain the support of the British government and British antislavery organizations for ACS activities. When his actions were attacked by leading British antislavery men—and by Garrison and Paul—he returned to the United States. He blamed the ACS leadership for his British failures and began actions that eventually splintered the ACS. Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 2:664; P. J. Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement, 1816–1865 (New York, N.Y., 1961), 125, 128, 190, 193, 216–18, 234, 238–39. 8. The American Colonization Society was founded in 1817. Its goals were to remove free blacks from the United States (particularly to its colony in Liberia) and, secondarily, to aid in manumitting slaves and suppressing the slave trade. The society lobbied for congressional endorsement of African colonization as national policy, but it never materialized. Ralph R. Gurley, longtime ACS secretary and editor of the society’s organ, the African Repository, forged the ACS into a prominent national association with hundreds of state and local auxiliaries. But during the 1830s and 1840s, strong opposition from northern free blacks and the growing abolitionist movement, the conversion of some leading members to abolitionism, competition from independent and local societies, and internal division weakened the ACS. With Liberian independence in 1847, the ACS became merely an advocate of black emigration. Although inactive after the Civil War, a skeletal organization remained into the 1960s. During its initial fifty years, the ACS

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claimed to have collected $2.5 million for Liberian colonization and transported twelve thousand blacks to Africa. Staudenraus, African Colonization Movement. 9. Northern free blacks attending antebellum white churches were generally segregated into inconspicuous sections, either in an “African corner,” a “Negro Pew,” on seats marked “B.M.” (for black members), or in a balcony or loft referred to as “Nigger Heaven.” Sabbath schools often provided separate quarters for white and black children. The “Negro Pew” most dramatically symbolized the inferior status of blacks in white churches and made separate black churches attractive to many blacks. Leon Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790– 1860 (Chicago, Ill., 1961), 191, 196–97, 206–7, 213. 10. Canada served as a haven for the American fugitive slaves and free blacks from the end of the American Revolution until the beginning of the Civil War. Six discernible waves of migration can be identified; each wave is directly connected to conditions and events in America. The first occurred after the Revolution, when more than three thousand blacks, some free and some slaves of loyalists, were transported to Nova Scotia. A trickle of blacks continued to move to the maritime provinces until the next large migration at the end of the War of 1812, when blacks again fled to Nova Scotia. By 1820 a third group of American emigrants, slave and free alike, decided they could build a better life in Upper Canada. Beginning in 1830, a fourth wave of blacks, predominantly free blacks from towns and cities in the northern states, sought refuge in Canada from the increasingly stringent enforcement of black codes and from the economic competition created by newly arrived European immigrants to America. Typical of this group were the two hundred blacks that fled from Cincinnati in 1830 and established the Wilberforce settlement near the town of Lucan in Upper Canada. The Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 sparked the largest influx of blacks into Canada—a group variously estimated at from twenty to sixty thousand, most of whom settled in Canada West (formerly Upper Canada). In 1858 a sixth wave of blacks moved to the town of Victoria on Vancouver Island. The majority were free, skilled, and literate California residents that had been forced north by a decade of restrictive state enactments. Robin Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History (New Haven, Conn., 1971), 32–279. 11. Nathaniel Paul (?–1839) was born in New Hampshire, one of five brothers of Thomas Paul, a Baptist minister and a leader of Boston’s black community during the early nineteenth century. Paul probably attended the Free Will Academy in Hollis, New Hampshire (an integrated ministerial training school run by the Free Will Baptist Church), before becoming pastor of the First African Baptist Church of Albany, New York, in 1820. From the beginning of his tenure, Paul boldly stated his antislavery convictions: he applauded the New York State emancipation law; he called for a halt to the slave trade; and he assured his congregation that slavery would be overthrown in America. For Paul, racial prejudice demonstrated white America’s inability to judge man’s moral worth, but he suggested that black sobriety, industry, and prudence could overcome racism. Paul’s anticolonization views were moderate during the 1820s. He believed that black emigration to Africa was primarily justified as an antislavery tactic and as a missionary opportunity— a position that is consistent with his attachment to the Wilberforce settlement in Canada. In 1830 Paul and his brother Benjamin were among the early settlers of the black agrarian community located several miles

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from the town of Lucan in Upper Canada. Nathaniel Paul was asked by Austin Steward, leader of the community, to travel to Great Britain to raise money for a proposed black manual labor college. Paul arrived in England early in 1832. A year later, he married an Englishwoman and began a tour of Britain with William Lloyd Garrison, rebutting the claims of American Colonization Society agent Elliott Cresson, who was in England to raise money and support for the society. For the next three years, Paul continued his speaking, fund-raising, and organizing activities on behalf of Wilberforce and American and British antislavery goals. Paul returned to Wilberforce (at Steward’s request) in 1836; he reported that he had raised over $8,000 but had used nearly $7,000 for expenses, and that, combined with his $50 monthly salary as a Wilberforce agent, left his mission $1,600 in debt. This severed Paul’s relationship with Wilberforce. He moved back to New York State, and for the remaining three years of his life, he served as pastor of the Hamilton Street Baptist Church in Albany, where he continued to promote black antislavery activity, speak out against racial prejudice, and call for black moral and educational improvement. Lib, 17 September 1831, 14 January, 12 April, 25 August 1832, 22 June, 31 August 1833, 14 March, 19 December 1835, 15 September 1836, 26 July 1839 [1:0217, 0313, 0410, 0571]; RA, 14 August, 18 September 1829 [17:0624]; FM, 22 December 1836, 14 March 1838; FJ, 20 April, 10 August 1827 [17:0457, 0497]; E, 15 September, 1 December 1836 [1:0579]; CA, 15 April 1837 [2:0027]; Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 2:53, 581; Winks, Blacks in Canada, 158–61, 263– 64; William H. Pease and Jane H. Pease, Black Utopia (Madison, Wis., 1963), 50–53, 57–61; George A. Levesque, “Black Boston: Negro Life in Garrison’s Boston, 1800–1860" (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Binghamton, 1976), 272n.; Charles Stuart, Remarks on the Colony of Liberia (London, 1832), 9; Austin Steward, Twenty-two Years a Slave, and Forty a Free Man, 4th ed. (Canandaigua, N.Y., 1867), 216–17; Minutes of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, February 1835, March 1836, UkGM.

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2. Speech by Nathaniel Paul Delivered at Exeter Hall, London, England

13 July 1833 Nathaniel Paul and William Lloyd Garrison appeared together at numerous meetings during the spring and summer of 1833 as they continued their combined efforts against the colonizationist appeal of Elliott Cresson. These efforts culminated at a public meeting held in London’s Exeter Hall on Saturday, 13 July, which was attended by two thousand people. The gathering, chaired by noted British abolitionist James Cropper and called “to expose the real character and objects of the American Colonization Society and to promote the cause of universal emancipation,” featured speeches by Paul, Garrison, George Thompson, Daniel O’Connell, and others. Paul proposed to the gathering that his color gave him special authority to speak for American blacks against slavery, prejudice, and colonization. He and other blacks that followed him to Britain effectively made this point, and the response that they elicited from reform audiences testified to the accuracy of their argument. Because of their effectiveness at meetings throughout the British Isles, British antislavery leaders came to recognize that a black abolitionist presence was essential to the development of British abolitionism. PtL, 17 July 1833; MC, 15 July 1833. In rising to address an audience of this description, I shall not offer an apology, because I consider it to be unnecessary. Nature has furnished me with an apology in the complexion that I wear, and that shall speak in my behalf. (Cheers.) Allow me to say that Mr. Garrison has, for many years past, devoted himself exclusively to the interests of the slaves and the free people of color in the United States of America. He requires, however, no commendation from me, or from any other gentleman whatever; “the tree is known by its fruits,” and “out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh.” But if there be any necessity for calling evidence in favor of that gentleman, there is an abundance, demonstrating that he has acted a most disinterested part on behalf of those whose cause he has espoused. It has been his lot to make large sacrifices, in order that he might be enabled to pursue the object of his heart’s desire. He might have swum upon the tide of popular applause, and have had the great and the noble of our country on his side, who would now have been applauding him, instead of persecuting him as the disturber of the peace and tranquillity of the nation, if he had not lifted up his voice on behalf of the suffering slaves. (Hear, hear.) To my certain knowledge, when he commenced his

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career, it was under the most unfavorable circumstances. No one stood forward in his defence, and he was under the necessity of adopting and pursuing a system of the most rigid economy, in order that he might be sustained while he was engaged in the important work he had undertaken. *

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But it is not merely the sacrifice that Mr. Garrison has made, or the rigid system of economy that he has adopted, that speaks on his behalf; but the sufferings that he has endured likewise recommend him to the attention of every philanthropist. This gentleman has suffered forty-nine days incarceration in a prison in the city of Baltimore,1 in the State of Maryland, because he had the hardihood to engage in defence of the suffering slaves in that State. The fact of Mr. Garrison’s imprisonment has been loudly sounded throughout this country. The agent of the American Colonization Society2 has seen fit to represent Mr. Garrison as a mere pamphleteer, as the editor of a negro newspaper in the United States, and as a convicted libeller. This is the manner in which this gentleman has been spoken of in this country, by the agent of the American Colonization Society. And does that agent suppose that by such mere slang he can lower Mr. Garrison in the estimation of the British public? The simpleton reminds me of another of whom I have heard, who, for some cause or other, became exceedingly exasperated at the moon, and stood the whole night angrily shaking his fist at it, but could not reach it. (Cheers.) I make no complaint against the agent of the American Colonization Society for stating the fact that Mr. Garrison was convicted, and thrown into prison in the United States; it is a fact, and he had a right to the advantage of it whenever he saw fit. I only blame him because, in stating it, he did not tell the cause why—who the persons were at whose instigation it was done—or the character of the court that condemned him. Inasmuch as that gentleman did not perform that part of his duty, if you will allow me I will undertake to discharge it for him. Perhaps it is not generally known that in the United States of America— that land of freedom and equality—the laws are so exceedingly liberal that they give to man the liberty of purchasing as many negroes as he can find means to pay for (hear, hear) and also the liberty to sell them again. In consequence of this, a regular system of merchandize is established in the souls and bodies of our fellow creatures. It so happened that a very large number of mercantile gentlemen resided in the city of Baltimore and its vicinity, who were engaged in this traffic; and Mr. Garrison had the impudence, the unblushing effrontery to state, in a public newspaper, that this traffic was a direct violation of the laws of God, and contrary to the principles of human nature. (Cheers.) This was the crime of which he was convicted. And now I will tell you the

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character of the judicial tribunal before which the conviction took place. Allow me to say, and let that suffice, that the judges of the court were slaveholders (hear, hear) and the jury likewise. Had it been the case that such men as WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, THOMAS CLARKSON, THOMAS FOWELL BUXTON,3 JAMES CROPPER,4 and in addition to these, the honorable gentleman who sits on my right (Mr. O’CONNELL)5 (cheers) and had these gentlemen in the place where Mr. Garrison resided pursued the course they have adopted in this country, they would have been indicted, convicted, and thrown into prison. In regard to my friend on my right (Mr. O’Connell), I know not what they would have done with him: he could have expected no quarters whatever. (Laughter and cheers.) I believe he has more than once arraigned the American Republic before the British community, before God, and before the world, as the most detestable political hypocrite in the world. And this is not all. I may say, in addition, that that Court and that Jury would have convicted the whole Anti-Slavery Society of this country,6 and would have transported them all to Liberia7 as the punishment of their crimes. (Laughter and loud cheers.) These are the causes and these the reasons why our friend, Mr. Garrison, was imprisoned; and as I said before, tho. I have no complaint to make against the agent of that benevolent institution, as it is called—the American Colonization Society—for stating that Mr. Garrison was cast into prison; yet I submit that, in connexion with it, he ought to have told the reason why it took place. But I shall leave this Garrison to itself. It possesses, I believe, ammunition enough to defend itself from any attack that may be made upon it, either by the agent of that Society, or the gentleman who has appeared here to plead on its behalf this morning.8 (Loud applause.) I now come directly to express my views in relation to the American Colonization Society. As a colored man, and as a citizen of the United States, it necessarily follows that I must feel more deeply interested in its operation, than any other individual present. In relation to the Society, I know not which is the most detestable in my view—its CRUELTY, or its HYPOCRISY. Both of these are characteristics of its whole operation. I brand it as a cruel institution, and one of the most cruel that has ever been brought into existence by the ingenuity of man. If I am asked, why it is cruel? I answer, in the first place, because it undertakes to expel from their native country hundreds of thousands of unoffending and inoffensive individuals, who, in time of war, have gone forth into the field of battle, and have contended for the liberties of that country. Why does it seek to expel them? Because the God of heaven has given them a different complexion from themselves. (Cheers.) I say it is a cruel institution, because it seeks to rob the colored men in that country of every right,

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civil, political or religious, to which they are entitled by the American Declaration of Independence.9 It is through the influence of that Society, to the everlasting disgrace of a land boasting of liberty and equality, that there are laws enacted which absolutely forbid the instruction of the slave, or even the free person of color, in the use of letters. I say it is a cruel institution, because in addition to this, it has also been the means of having laws enacted which prevents them from meeting together to pay homage to their Creator, and worship the God who made them. I might go on enumerating instances of cruelty, and show to this meeting that even combinations have been formed in what are called the free States,10 under the influence of this Society, not to give to the colored man employment, but to rob him of the means of gaining his livelihood, that he may thereby be compelled to leave the land of his nativity, and go to Africa. In the next place, I condemn the Society on account of its hypocrisy; and this, I believe, will be detested wherever it appears, by every honest man. And wherein does that hypocrisy consist or appear? I mean more particularly in regard to the representations which have been made of the Society in this country. It comes to Great Britain, and begins to talk about the evils of slavery, pitying the condition of the unhappy victims of cruelty and oppression in the United States of America; and it tells the British public that its object is to do away with slavery, and to emancipate those who are in bondage. What Briton’s heart is there but responds to such a sentiment as this? (Cheers.) Englishmen are seeking for the liberation of the slaves; and, giving credit to the reports which they have heard respecting the American Colonization Society, without examining its principles, many benevolent individuals in this country have come forward and freely contributed to its funds. But instead of the institution being the enemy of slavery; instead of its being formed for the purpose of annihilating the system; its object is to perpetuate it, and render more secure the property of man in man. I will show to the meeting, in a few words, that its object cannot be the abolition of slavery, because through a hundred of its organs it has over and over again denounced the proposition of liberating the slaves, except on condition of their being transported to Africa. And now let the audience understand, that, at the present time, there are upwards of 2,000,000 of slaves in the United States, and that their annual increase is more than 60,000. If slavery, therefore, is to be abolished only as those who shall be emancipated are transported from the United States to Africa, we ask, when is slavery to cease in that country? The Colonization Society, with all the efforts that it can bring to bear, cannot transport the annual increase of the slaves (hear, hear) and, therefore, if no other means be adopted for the abolition of slavery in America, its extinction will not take place until the last trumpet shall sound. (Immense applause.)

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Again I repeat, it is hypocritical, because it professes to be the friend of the free people of color, and to pity their present condition; and hence it says, “It seeks to promote their welfare.” That gentleman (Mr. Abrahams) tells us that he is acquainted with the people of North America, and that this Society is formed, in part, for the benefit of the free people of color. Does that gentleman know that when an effort was made at New Haven, two or three years since, to establish a College11 for the instruction of the free people of color—notwithstanding New Haven is within the boundaries of that part of the country which is called the “free States”—yet the supporters of the Society came forward, held a meeting, and passed the most spirited resolutions against the establishment of that institution in the city?12 (Hear, hear.) Does that gentleman know that in the same State, a white female, in endeavoring to establish a school for the instruction of colored females, has been most inhumanly assailed by the advocates of the Colonization Society, who, in town meetings, passed resolutions against her benevolent object,13 as spirited as if the cholera were about to break out in the village, and they by a single effort of this kind could hinder its devastations? They could not have acted with more promptness, and energy, and violence, than they did, in persecuting this excellent lady, because her compassion led her to espouse the cause of the suffering blacks. (Cheers.) They were ready to expel her from the country. I could relate many facts with regard to that part of the country, for which the Rev. gentleman contends, and show that, instead of the American Colonization Society seeking the welfare of the free people of color, it is their most bitter enemy. Whenever it speaks of this class, both in public and in private, it calumniates and abuses them in the most extravagant manner, as its reports will abundantly show. Wishing to be brief, and knowing that there are gentlemen present who will address you with more interest than I can (hear, hear) I will make but one remark more, and that respects the designs of this Society, with regard to Africa. O, bleeding, suffering Africa! We hear of the sad condition which that country is in; it is enveloped in darkness, infinitely deeper than the sable hue of its degraded sons. The vilest superstition there abounds; and hence this Society represents it as their object to let in the rays of the gospel, and enlighten the people. But, according to their own reports, whom do they select as instruments to spread civilization and Christianity? People not fit to live in America—people who are a disgrace to that country. (Hear, hear.) I pity Africa as much as any man; I want her to be enlightened; but let us send men who are enlightened themselves. If we mean to evangelize Africa, let us at least send Christians there to do the work. (Cheers.) Mr. Garrison has well remarked that the free people of color, in the United States, are opposed to this Society. I will venture to assert that I

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am as extensively acquainted with them, throughout both the free and slave States,14 as any man in that country; and I do not know of a solitary colored individual who entertains the least favorable view of the American Colonization Society; but, in every way they possibly could, they have expressed their disapprobation of it. They have said to the Society, “Let us alone.” The argument which is brought by the friends of the Society in favor of colonization is, that the white population of America can never amalgamate15 or live on terms of equality with the blacks. Be it so. Let it be admitted that their prejudices are strong. All that I will say is, that if such be the case, they ought not to send an agent to this country to ask assistance to enable them to gratify a prejudice of which they ought to be ashamed. (Cheers.) Speeches Delivered at the Anti-Colonization Meeting in Exeter Hall, London (Boston, Mass., 1833), 13–15. 1. As junior editor of Benjamin Lundy’s Baltimore weekly, the Genius of Universal Emancipation, William Lloyd Garrison criticized a Newburyport, Massachusetts, merchant named Francis Todd for allowing his ship, the Francis, to be used in the domestic slave trade. Todd sued Garrison for libel. In early March 1830, Garrison was brought to trial, found guilty, and assessed $100 in fines and court costs. When he could not pay, Garrison was sent to Baltimore Jail, where he remained for forty-nine days until New York businessman-abolitionist Arthur Tappan paid the $100 fee. Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879: The Story of His Life, 4 vols. (New York, N.Y., 1885– 89), 1:166–91. 2. Elliott Cresson. 3. Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton (1786–1845) joined a firm of brewers after a distinguished academic career at Trinity College, Dublin. Despite arduous business commitments, he became interested in charitable undertakings, especially those connected with education, the Bible Society, prison reform, and the condition of weavers. From 1818 to 1837, Buxton represented Weymouth in Parliament; in May 1824, Wilberforce formally invited Buxton to lead the antislavery party in the House of Commons. He was an active member of the African Institution and sought to deliver Africa from the slave trade, publishing in 1839 the famous treatise The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy. He established the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade and the Civilization of Africa, more commonly known as the African Civilization Society, and was almost bankrupted by the failure of the societysponsored Niger Expedition (1841). He retired from public life in 1843. DNB, 3:559–61; Charles Buxton, ed., The Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton (London, 1848). 4. James Cropper (1773–1841), of a devout Lancashire Quaker family, acquired a considerable fortune and became involved in many philanthropic causes, but his chief interest was the abolition of slavery in the West Indies. In 1821 he began writing a series of pamphlets to expose slavery’s inhumanity and its profitability. He concerned himself with the distressed condition of the impoverished

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Irish, actively promoted development of railways, and founded an orphanage near Warrington, where he took a personal interest in the welfare and education of the children. DNB, 5:208–9; David Brion Davis, “James Cropper and the British Anti-Slavery Movement, 1821–1823,” JNH 45:241–58, 46:154–73 (October 1960–July 1961); K. Charlton, “James Cropper and Liverpool’s Contribution to the Anti-Slavery Movement,” Tran 124:154–76 (1972); K. Charlton, “The State of Ireland in the 1820’s: James Cropper’s Plan,” IHS 17:320–39 (1971). 5. Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847), controversial Irish lawyer and member of Parliament, played a major role in Anglo-American antislavery efforts. Born at Carhen House, Ireland, he received most of his education in London. After returning to Ireland in 1796, he actively supported Irish independence, repeal of the Act of Union between England and Ireland, and passage of the “Catholic Emancipation” bill. Converted to antislavery in 1824, he divided his remaining years between these causes, marshaling the crucial Irish votes needed to pass the West Indian Emancipation Act of 1833, becoming a prominent antislavery speaker, and attempting to rally abolitionist sentiment among Irish Americans during the 1840s. John W. Blassingame, ed., The Frederick Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 2 vols. to date (New Haven, Conn., 1979–), 1:44n.; DNB, 14:816–34. 6. The Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Dominion was founded in 1823 to encourage the British government to negotiate international agreements ending the slave trade and to publicize the actions of West Indian planters that abused their slave labor force. The organization, made up of a coalition of Quakers and Nonconformists, included two generations of British antislavery leaders, among whom were Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce and newcomers James Cropper and Thomas Fowell Buxton, the association’s first president. In 1831, discouraged by the seeming failure of its efforts to influence parliamentary action, the society organized the Agency Committee—a group of antislavery lecturers hired to arouse British popular opinion and to pressure elected representatives. The committee and the society eventually split for organizational and ideological reasons but cooperated to bring about passage of the West Indian Emancipation Act of 1833. In the mid-1830s, the AntiSlavery Society supported Joseph Sturge’s successful effort to end the West Indian apprenticeship system (August 1838). After Sturge formed the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (17 April 1839), the Anti-Slavery Society was dissolved (26 April 1839). Howard Temperley, British Antislavery, 1833–1870 (London, 1972), 26, 36, 49, 62–68, 83–84. 7. Located on the west coast of Africa, the colony of Liberia was founded in 1822 by a party of American freemen, who were sponsored by the American Colonization Society. The colony was hindered by the hostility of African inhabitants and by the animosity of an overwhelming majority of free black Americans, who wanted to remain U.S. citizens and felt that the society’s rationale for founding the colony— the repatriation of Afro-Americans—was an expression of racial hostility. The colony, which was settled on land rich in timber, rubber, and iron ore, was run by ACS agents for the first seventeen years—but managed a rather tenuous existence. In 1839 the dotting of essentially coastal settlements was reorganized by the society into a commonwealth. In 1847 Liberia gained its independence. C. Abayomi Cassell, Liberia: History of the First African Republic (New

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York, N.Y., 1970), 1–205; Elsa Daggs, All Africa (New York, N.Y., 1970), 748–50. 8. Paul refers to a Rev. Abrahams, who rose to leave earlier in the meeting but stayed when assured that he could make brief remarks near the meeting’s end. Abrahams defended the American Colonization Society and African colonization. He described himself as a friend of black Americans, who was familiar with American race relations from an extended stay in the United States. Abrahams claimed that cheap Liberian cotton would ultimately destroy the southern slave economy. Lib, 21 August, 30 November 1833; Speeches Delivered at the Anti-Colonization Meeting in Exeter Hall, London, July 13, 1833 (Boston, Mass., 1833), 13. 9. Paul refers to the Declaration of Independence and its principal sentiments that governments should be formed to protect the rights of life, liberty, and property. 10. Free states is a term used to describe those states that did not allow slavery within their borders. The free states in 1833 were: Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Those free states admitted to the Union after 1833 and prior to the Civil War were: Michigan (1837), Iowa (1846), Wisconsin (1848), California (1850), Minnesota (1858), Oregon (1859), and Kansas (1861). 11. Delegates at the First Annual Convention of the People of Color, held in Philadelphia in June 1831, decided to sponsor a manual training college for blacks in New Haven, Connecticut. The specific proposal entertained by the convention was the work of Simeon S. Jocelyn, the white minister of a black congregation in New Haven. Businessman-abolitionist Arthur Tappan provided land on which to raise the proposed building. Black abolitionist Samuel Cornish of New York, who had pressed for such an institution in his newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, was appointed collection agent for the $20,000 thought necessary for construction. Convention participants were impressed with the institution’s design and objectives (as well as with their own administrative control over it—four of seven school trustees were to be black), and they considered New Haven an ideal location. But New Haven residents voted overwhelmingly to prohibit construction of the school within city limits. They claimed that abolitionists were using the school to foster antislavery sentiment, that the school was incompatible with the prosperity of Yale College, that it was “destructive to the best interests of the city,” and that it would stimulate an increase in the “unwholesome colored population” and lower moral standards. The idea of a black college continued until the New England AntiSlavery Society tried unsuccessfully to raise money for the institution. Phillip Foner, Frederick Douglass (New York, N.Y., 1969), 118–21; Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1:259–60; Howard H. Bell, “Free Negroes of the North, 1830–1835: A Study in National Cooperation,” JNE 26:449–50 (Fall 1957); Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, They Who Would Be Free: Blacks’ Search for Freedom, 1830–1861 (New York, N.Y., 1974), 136–38; Litwack, North of Slavery, 124–25; Leonard L. Richards, “Gentlemen of Property and Standing”: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (London, 1970), 38–39. 12. Nathaniel Paul’s reference is to a specific American Colonization Society meeting that passed resolutions against the black college proposed for New

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Haven. The meeting took place in Philadelphia on 23 November 1831. The resolution congratulated the “citizens of New Haven on their escape from the monstrous evil of the contemplated location in their city of a college for the classical education of the colored youth of the United States.” Garrison, African Colonization, 149; Lib, 10 December 1831. 13. Prudence Crandall (1803–1889) was born in Hopkinton, Rhode Island, received a Quaker education, and in 1831 opened a school for girls in Canterbury, Connecticut. A year later, when Crandall admitted a black girl, Sarah Harris, to the school, parents withdrew their daughters; in response, Crandall established a boarding school for black girls. The school opened in April 1833 and occasioned a furious public debate and passage of a law banning schools for nonresident blacks (the Connecticut Black Law). Crandall had abolitionist support, especially from William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. She was eventually arrested (June 1834), tried, and found guilty for violating the Black Law but appealed and won the case on a technicality. The school continued to operate until September 1834, when violence by townspeople closed it. Crandall’s heroic posture during the affair made her one of the decade’s most celebrated antislavery figures and an early catalyst of antislavery feminism. Crandall married Calvin Philleo, a Baptist minister, shortly before the closing of the school and moved with him to Illinois. After her husband’s death, she moved to Kansas, where she died in 1889. DAB, 4:503–4; Edmund Fuller, Prudence Crandall (Middletown, Conn., 1971); Helen Catterall, Judicial Cases concerning American Slavery and the Negro, 5 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1936), 4:414–16. 14. Slave states is a term used to describe those states that allowed slavery within their borders. The slave states in 1833 were: Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Missouri. Those slave states admitted to the Union after 1833 and prior to the Civil War were: Arkansas (1836), Florida (1845), and Texas (1845). 15. Amalgamation is a term that is literally defined as a process of mixing, uniting, or merging. Throughout American history, the word has had a special meaning when applied to the politics of race: it suggested the biological mixing of blacks and whites. Abolitionists were often labeled amalgamationists by proslavery critics, who suggested that abolitionists really believed that only race mixing would do away with race problems.

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3. Speech by Nathaniel Paul Delivered at the Trades’ Hall, Glasgow, Scotland

2 December 1834 With Elliott Cresson’s “overthrow” apparently complete, Nathaniel Paul toured Scotland and northern England alone during the fall of 1833 to gather support for his Canadian fund-raising mission. After returning to London, he spent most of 1834 lecturing in England, where he “contributed most materially to accomplish the glorious measure of slave emancipation in the British dominions.” Late in the year, he began his second Scottish tour, delivering a series of lectures in Edinburgh that raised £132; one local antislavery figure credited Paul’s success to his color and the powerful manner in which his speeches evoked sympathy for American blacks. On Wednesday evening, 2 December 1834, he addressed a standing-room-only crowd at Trades’ Hall in Glasgow. The meeting was chaired by William Mills, the lord provost of Glasgow, and attended by a number of area ministers and local dignitaries. Several testimonials about Paul were read to the audience, including letters from Sir John Colborne (the lieutenant governor of Upper Canada), Thomas Clarkson, and William Lloyd Garrison. Paul was then introduced by the Reverend Greville Ewing. Nathaniel Paul to William Lloyd Garrison, 31 August 1833, Antislavery Collection, MB [1:0331]; Lib, 7 February, 14 March, 19 December 1835. The Rev. Nathaniel Paul commenced by saying that he stood in the presence of that large assembly of Christians, as the avowed representative and advocate of the rights and privileges of his brethren. He expressed himself as a decided enemy of that worst of all systems—Slavery; he cared not where, nor under what Government it existed. He would not consent for one moment to make a compromise with those who encouraged it even in the mildest form. It was its entire extermination that he wished, and he was happy in addressing an assembly of Britons whose views were in unison with his own. It was pleasing also to consider that the combined energies of the people of God had awoke, for the diffusion of the light of the gospel over all the ends of the earth. But there was one portion of the world which had shared little of Christian sympathies, and that portion had the highest claims on their philanthropy. Africa, though once visited by the light of the Gospel, o’er her now brooded a moral darkness, darker than the sable tinge of her sons. But God, who could turn all things to good account, would spread his love abroad upon that country. But the darkness must remain till the standard of the cross be raised on every hill. He anticipated the time, when churches and

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chapels would be erected over that long neglected land, but as her situation did not enter into the object of the present meeting, he would leave her where he found her. Nor would he dwell on the horrors of slavery as it existed in the West Indies—thanks be to God it had there received its death blow.1 Whatever Britons had to boast of their country, their history never saw a prouder day than the first of August last. He would confine his observations to the condition of his countrymen in the United States of America. Mr. Paul then turned to the formation of the settlement under the British Government, which, he said, bore the illustrious name of Wilberforce,2 and to the education of its inhabitants. He had no pretence to eloquence; he would give them a simple statement, and he requested a patient hearing, especially as he labored under a severe cold, and was not able to speak as he could wish to do. It was well known that the United States had been designated the “Land of Liberty and Equality;” and, according to the professions of its inhabitants, the land where the principles of national liberty were best understood and practised. They boasted of a republican government, and their Declaration of Independence bore that all men were equally entitled to maintain their rights—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yet notwithstanding all these professions, there were in 1830, 2,010,572 slaves, out of a population of 12,000,000; or upwards of one-sixth of the population in slavery. He would not dwell on the physical condition of this class of our fellow-creatures, because that subject had been already fully treated of by that distinguished friend of the negro, George Thompson. (Enthusiastic applause.) Mr. Thompson both in this city and in Edinburgh, had viewed the matter in all its bearings, and he was now gone to the United States of America,3 where it was hoped he would reap the reward of his labors. Slavery in the United States had not differed much from slavery in the West Indies, as had been said by Mr. Thompson and others. In reference to the manner slaves were wrought, fed, clothed, and punished, it was the same. But there was one feature, in which it would be readily admitted the system was more atrocious; he alluded to the internal traffic of slaves.4 It perhaps was not known that in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, there was a redundancy of slaves, for which a market was had in the more Southern States; and thus a regular traffic was carried on—as atrocious as ever was carried on between the United States and Africa. At that market the slaves were disposed of in the same manner as cattle in this country. (Cries of Shame.) It was not uncommon to see a whole family of slaves brought into the market, the husband, the wife, and the children—all set up on a table, and their physical powers shown off in such a manner as to bring the highest price. He (Mr. P.) knew that there was a difference of opinion as to whether negroes were possessed of the same tender sympathies as other people. Some doubted whether among the negroes a husband could love his wife, or a mother

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her children, as well as among those of mankind, who were called the white people; but were they to witness a sale of slaves they would be satisfied that the feelings of the one class of mortals was as powerful as those of the other. The slaves must be disposed of to the highest bidder, (for they are sold by public auction) and it were enough to convince the most sceptical to witness the tears, and the supplications, that if the family should be sold, they might go together. These tears and lamentations were no more heeded than the lowing of cattle or the bleating of sheep. Mr. Paul, in support of what he stated, read extracts from Stuart’s Three Years in America,5 narrating more fully what he alluded to, respecting a sale of slaves. He then remarked, that in the southern or slaveholding States, the slaves and even the free people of color were subject to the most severe laws; for example—in Alabama, for assembling for worship, or for teaching reading and writing, the persons guilty were subjected to a penalty of from 250 to 500 dollars; and in some cases they were lashed. The question was, why should such laws be enacted? What objections should there be to learning to read and write, or to meeting in public for worship? It was the opinion in this country, that education and religion made men better; but such was the nature of the system, that it could not stand by the test of truth. The slaves would learn from reading the Scriptures, that they were the same creatures, and as accountable to God as others, and as much entitled to their liberty. With reference to their not assembling for worship, it did not form an objection to their character as slaves; at the sales, it rather formed a recommendation, and a testimony of their worth. It was there held forth, that they possessed excellent characters, and assurances were given, that they were consistent Christians. Their masters were not afraid because of their religion, but they were afraid, that while they met for religious purposes, they would devise schemes and plans by which they might effect their liberty, even to the destruction of their masters. In further alluding to the condition of the United States, Mr. Paul remarked that there were 24 States all under one government, but each capable of managing its own affairs. In 12 of those States, he said, slavery did not prevail,6 but there existed a prejudice against the colored people, so that even in the House of God they were not permitted to sit in the same part as others, nor were they allowed to sit down at the table of the Lord, till the others were served. In 1829, a law was passed in Ohio, compelling the free people of color to leave the State in 30 days, under a penalty of 500 dollars, or to give security that they would never become a burden on the public, or consent to be sold as slaves. The colored people, after deliberating, petitioned the authorities for 30 days longer, and sent a petition to Sir John Colborne,7 lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, inquiring what privileges would be granted them in his colony. An answer was returned, breathing the spirit of a noble minded Briton. “Tell

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your Republicans,” said the governor, “on your side of the line, that we royalists on this side do not know men by their color. Should you come to us, you will be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of the rest of his Majesty’s subjects.” Having received this favorable intelligence from his Excellency the Governor, they emigrated to that Province, and there established that settlement which bears the name of him, who although dead, lives in the memories of all Christians, Wilberforce. Mr. Paul then alluded to the progress of the settlement; he said, were the slaves at liberty, they would show the same industry, and anxiety to acquire an honest livelihood as others. There was no settlement [that] had made greater progress; and the reason was obvious. There was no individual there could point his finger at the colored man; he was the same as other citizens. Mr. P. related an anecdote of a slave who had absconded from an estate in Kentucky, to Upper Canada. His master followed, and endeavored to persuade him by fair promises to return. The slave addressing him, not as he did on the plantation as master, but calling him by his name, flatly told him that he had been too long with him not to know what he would do if he got him over the water, adding, that if he did not be off, he would serve him as he had been served. Another slave who had run away, was for a night in the house of a Quaker, till he got an opportunity of escaping into Upper Canada, and the feelings he afterwards expressed towards that Quaker, were proof, continued Mr. P., that the slaves were not destitute of gratitude. Alluding to the means for education in the States, he stated that there had been seminaries established, but owing to the prejudices against the colored people, young men of that class were not admitted. Some years ago, institutions for the admission of young men of color had been commenced, but had been opposed by the authorities, and since then an institution had been opened by a pious female,8 but had to be abandoned. Those in the settlement where he came from, were establishing a seminary for the education of young men of color, or others that chose to attend. There were young men willing to labor wherever God would send them, and who would no doubt be prosperous, if they could be furnished with the means of instruction. In confirmation of this, he referred them to Mr. Smith,9 who was on the platform, a young gentleman of the highest respectability and intelligence, and a man of color like himself, who had come to this country for the benefits of its institutions. When he considered the efforts that had been made by the Christian community in this country for the liberty of the bodies of the slaves, he hoped they would turn their consideration to the appeal which he had made for the improvement of their minds. Here Mr. Paul was interrupted by a noise from a crowd at the door, over-anxious to gain admittance, when the Lord Provost announced that another meeting would be held, and the noise subsided.

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Mr. Paul then said that he had detained them too long, (cries of No, No,) and in conclusion, he urged them to take an interest in the object. For 15 years, he said, he had been devoted to the cause, and as long as he lived, feeble as his talents were, they would be devoted to the relief of his suffering fellow-creatures. He expressed a wish that the blessings of the Almighty might rest on this land, and that it might never countenance slavery. He then thanked the meeting for their attention, and sat down amidst great applause. Liberator (Boston, Mass.), 14 March 1835. 1. Paul refers to the West Indian Emancipation Act of 1833. 2. The Wilberforce community was settled by approximately two hundred free blacks (primarily from Ohio) on nearly eight hundred acres of land next to the town of Lucan, Upper Canada, during 1830. Blacks emigrated to Wilberforce in the wake of increasingly stringent enforcement of Ohio’s Black Code during the late 1820s; Sir John Colborne, the lieutenant governor of Canada, encouraged their relocation. Wilberforce was a predominantly agrarian experiment, cooperative in spirit but individualistic in enterprise, which hoped to address black educational needs with a day school, sabbath school, and manual labor college. The settlement was directed by Austin Steward, former slave and Rochester, New York, grocer, who chaired the Free Colonization Board, the community’s administrative committee. Despite large expectations, the experiment’s goals were only modestly realized. Wilberforce was poorly managed and burdened with internal factional disputes, particularly between Steward and Israel Lewis, an Ohio black, who had approached Colborne with the emigration proposal and who was eventually accused of misappropriating funds raised for the community. Paul’s failure to secure funds for the college also disappointed Steward and the settlers. By late 1836, Wilberforce could no longer claim to be an organized black community. Winks, Blacks in Canada, 155–57; Pease and Pease, Black Utopia, 46–63. 3. Paul refers to British abolitionist George Thompson’s 1834–35 trip to the United States, a controversial visit that, at one point, led to Garrison’s mobbing by antiabolitionists as he waited for Thompson to lecture (October 1835). Thompson would also travel to the United States in 1851 and during the Civil War. Thompson (1804–1878), a Liverpool-born reformer, was an early advocate of slave emancipation in the British colonies and was Garrison’s most powerful British antislavery ally. In the early 1830s, he served as a lecturer for the Agency Committee—a group instrumental in forcing passage of the West Indian Emancipation Act of 1833 and, that same year, helped found the Edinburgh Society for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the World. Thompson was active in the Parliamentary Reform Association (he served in Parliament from 1847 to 1852), the Anti-Corn Law League, and vigorously promoted the production of East Indian cotton as a way of undermining American slavery. Thompson’s abolitionist efforts are said to have resulted in the formation of 150 antislavery societies. Duncan Rice, “The Anti-Slavery Mission of George Thompson to the United States, 1834–35,” JAS 2:13–31 (April 1968); Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 1:419–20, 423, 363– 66, 475, 494, 495, 525–27, 542, 549, 551.

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4. After 1820, the term “internal slave trade” usually described the flow of slaves from the eastern seaboard states of the upper South to the newly developing cotton-producing areas of the lower South, such as Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Gerald W. Mullin, Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (New York, N.Y., 1972), 14–15, 126, 129. 5. Paul is referring to Three Years in America, the provocative, two-volume travelogue published by the Scottish aristocrat James Stuart (1775–1849) in Edinburgh during 1833. Stuart responded to criticism of his work by publishing Refutation of Aspersions on “Stuart’s Three Years in North America” (London, 1834). 6. Paul refers to the free states. 7. Sir John Colborne (1778–1863), an English military leader, was appointed lieutenant governor of Upper Canada in 1828. He promoted immigration and internal improvements and supported black efforts to settle the Wilberforce community. An opponent of slavery, he refused to extradite American fugitive slaves from Canada. After resigning his post in 1839, Colborne returned to England, where he served in Parliament and attended to colonial affairs. DCB, 9:137–44; Winks, Blacks in Canada, 155–57. 8. Paul refers to Prudence Crandall. 9. James McCune Smith (1813–1865) was born in New York City, the son of former slaves who fled from Charleston, South Carolina, and settled in New York State. Smith excelled at the city’s African Free School, but was denied admission to American colleges. The Reverend Peter Williams, the black minister of New York’s St. Phillips Episcopal Church, helped him enroll in Glasgow University during 1832. Smith received a bachelor’s (1835), a master’s (1836), and a doctor of medicine degree (1837), while at the same time playing an active role in the Scottish antislavery movement as an officer of the Glasgow Emancipation Society. After a brief internship in Paris, Smith returned to New York City in 1837. He established a successful integrated medical practice and opened the first black-owned pharmacy. In 1839 Smith began his lifelong dedication to black equality within the antislavery movement when he chaired a committee of the New York City Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Association, which debated the best way for free blacks to aid the abolitionist cause and asked what white abolitionists must do to secure both black trust and participation in the movement. Throughout the 1840s, Smith pondered the validity of political antislavery. Although he rejected affiliation with the Liberty party, he consistently championed unrestricted black suffrage. During these years, Smith also continued his support for black-run organizations and for black economic and educational opportunity. He sold subscriptions for Samuel Ringgold Ward’s Impartial Citizen and Frederick Douglass’s North Star, acted as an agent for Gerrit Smith’s land scheme (1845–46), and collected funds for the integrated, abolitionist-sponsored Central College of McGrawville, New York (1850). During the 1850s, Smith became concerned about racial prejudice among white abolitionists, and he engaged in a protracted debate with Robert Purvis over the issue. He and his wife, Malvina, also faced personal tragedy when, over a six-week period in the summer of 1854, three of their four children died of illness. Smith returned to his antislavery work in April 1855 with a newfound willingness to support political antislavery. In the late spring, he cochaired the

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Syracuse convention of Radical Political Abolitionists, he called for federal intervention in southern states to end slavery, and he defended the constitution as an antislavery document. Although Smith briefly edited the Colored American in the late 1830s, he did his most important writing during the mid-1850s as New York correspondent (sometimes under the pseudonym “Communipaw”) for Frederick Douglass’ Paper. He used his column to discuss a variety of issues: defects in the antislavery movement, integration, and scientific theories of race. A partial list of Smith’s other writings shows the eclectic nature of his interests. They include an essay entitled “On the Influence of Opium on Calamenial Functions” (1844), two pamphlets entitled A Lecture on the Haytian Revolution (1841) and The Destiny of the People of Color (1843), the eloquent introduction to Frederick Douglass’s second autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), and an introductory biographical sketch of Henry Highland Garnet in Garnet’s Memorial Discourse (1865). Smith also published a number of important articles in the Anglo-African Magazine and, in the early 1860s, reaffirmed his lifelong anticolonization stance by attacking the positions of leading black emigrationist-nationalist theorists in the columns of the Weekly Anglo-African. He died of a heart ailment in 1865. George Forbes, Biographical Sketch of James McCune Smith, Antislavery Collection, MB; CA, 9 September, 28 October 1837, 9 February 1839, 15 August 1840 [2:0175, 0245, 0998, 3:0561]; NASS, 8 March 1841, 1, 8 February, 17 October 1844, 28 June 1848, 3 May 1849, 31 October 1850, 27 March, 23 August, 11 September 1851, 12 December 1854, 25 November 1865 [4:0749, 0750, 0935, 5:1085, 6:0655, 0863, 7:0077, 0092]; NSt, 4 May 1849 [5:1082]; FDP, 16, 30 July, 13 August 1852, 15 April 1853, 6 October, 3, 17, 24 November 1854, 26 January, 2, 9 February, 27 April, 18 May, 6 July, 21 September, 12, 26 October, 9 November 1855, 13 November 1856 [9:0562, 0644, 0645, 0647, 0650]; IC, 27 June 1849, 7 September 1850; Lib, 6 October 1854; E, 1 February, 20 December 1838, 17 January, 28 November 1839 [2:0369]; PF, 24 January, 10 October 1839 [2:0982]; P, 17 October 1837, 16 January, 22 May 1838, 19 January 1842 [2:0351]; AAM, May, August, September 1859 [11:0708, 0888, 12:0029]; DM, June 1859, October 1860, March 1863 [12:1022]; WAA, 5, 12, 26 January, 23 March 1861 [13:0174, 0190, 0226, 0362].

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4. Speeches by Moses Roper Delivered at Baptist Chapel, Devonshire Square,

26 May 1836 and at Finsbury Chapel, London, England

30 May 1836 British reform audiences welcomed firsthand information about American slavery. Escaped slave Moses Roper arrived in Liverpool on 29 November 1835 with that firsthand knowledge. During the next decade, the growing presence of fugitive slaves such as Roper, Moses Grandy, and Frederick Douglass increased British demand for black abolitionist lecturers, who filled lecture halls unlike any other group. Roper spoke to an antislavery meeting, held on Thursday, 26 May 1836, at Thomas Price’s chapel in Devonshire Square, London. He offered additional comments four days later at nearby Finsbury Chapel, before a 30 May gathering called to resolve a debate arising in the earlier session. The debate involved George Thompson, the featured speaker at both meetings, who censured abolitionist clergymen Rev. Francis A. Cox and Dr. James Hoby for failing to speak out against slavery during their attendance at the General Baptist Convention held in Richmond, Virginia, the previous spring. At the second session, Thompson backers in the audience objected when Roper was asked to speak. They regarded him as Cox’s protégé, because the clergyman had helped sponsor Roper’s English education. Moses Roper, A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery (London, 1837), 99; PtL, 1 June 1836. Mr. M. ROPER1 addressed the meeting, and stated a number of facts which had come under his own knowledge, demonstrative of the horrors and cruelties of American slavery. One case which he mentioned, was that of a slave who occasionally preached to his fellow-bondsmen. His master threatened that if he ever preached on the Sabbath again, he would give him 500 lashes on the Monday morning. He disobeyed the order, however, and preached, unknown to his master. He became alarmed, ran away from Georgia, and crossed the river into South Carolina, where he took refuge in a barn belonging to a Mr. Garrison. Mrs. Garrison saw him in the barn, and informed her husband of it. Mr. Garrison got his rifle and shot at him. The law required that they should call upon a slave to stop three times before they fired at him; Mr. Garrison called, but he did not stop. The ball missed him, and Mr. Garrison then struck him with the gun and knocked him down. The slave wrested it from him, and struck him (Mr. G.) with it. The slave was taken up for it;

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his master went after him; Mr. Garrison purchased him for 500 dollars, and burned him alive.2 *

*

*

*

Mr. ROPER then stood forward, and observed with considerable warmth, that Dr. Cox3 did pay a portion towards his education, but that should not hinder him from advocating the cause of his mother, brethren, and sisters, now in bondage. (Loud cheers.) He was grateful to Dr. Cox for that which he was doing for him; but at the same time his principles were not to be bought. (Cheers.) There was not a Christian Society in America, which did not hold slaves, except the Society of Friends.4 (Cheers.) In Salem, a town in South Carolina, containing perhaps 20,000 Quakers, there was not a single slave, though they were surrounded by a slave-holding population. (Cheers.) He had run away from his master, and was going to see his mother in North Carolina. He had to pass through the town of Salisbury, where there was a Quaker in gaol who was to be executed on the following Friday, for having given a slave a free pass. (Shame, shame.) Mr. Thompson had given them an account of some bad slaveholders; he (Mr. R.) would tell them of some good ones. A master with whom he once lived, Mr. Beveridge,5 in travelling from Apalache to Columbia, having to pass through the Indian nations, it was necessary for him to take arms. He was taken exceedingly ill, and could neither stand up nor sit down. He had a trunk with him containing 20,000 dollars, and he (Mr. R.) took the pistols and protected his master and his master’s property. When he arrived at Columbia, his master becoming embarrassed in circumstances, sold him on a block; that was his kindness to him (Mr. R.) for saving his master’s life and protecting his property. Another good master was Colonel M’Gillon,6 a Scotchman, who held about 300 slaves, and who used to boast that he never flogged them. His mode of punishing them was to get a rice hogshead, into which several nails were driven about a quarter of an inch through, and the slave then being fastened in, he used to roll them down a very steep hill. (Shame, shame.) At one of the Revival meetings (of which he had heard so much since he came to this country), two ladies of colour came in and took their seats in the pew for inquirers. Holding down their heads, they were not observed; but some ladies coming in, and noticing their colour, left the pew directly. (Hear, hear.) Patriot (London), 1 June 1836. 1. Moses Roper (1815–?) was born in Caswell County, North Carolina, the son of a mulatto house servant (African-Indian) and her master, Henry Roper, a planter who exchanged mother and son for slaves from a neighboring plantation when Roper was six years old. As an adolescent, Roper led a peripatetic existence, repeatedly being sold or traded throughout the South before he was re-

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turned to Caswell County in 1832. During the next two years, Roper made many attempts to escape, each time being punished, then sold or exchanged to some other plantation owner in the county. At the end of 1833, Roper was purchased by a north Florida trader, whose bankruptcy led to the eighteen-year-old slave’s employment as a steward on a New York-bound packet. Once anchored in New York, Roper jumped ship and ran for freedom—first stewarding a canalboat on the Hudson River, then working as a farmhand in Vermont, until he saw newspaper advertisements for his capture as a fugitive slave. Roper left Vermont and briefly settled in New Hampshire before moving to Boston. There he began his affiliation with the abolitionist movement by signing the constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society. But by late 1835, Roper, fearful of arrest and return to slavery, signed up as a steward on the vessel Napoleon and sailed for England. Several prominent British abolitionists assisted Roper once he arrived, especially Dr. John Morrison, John Scoble, and George Thompson, who were impressed with Roper’s desire to secure an education and to serve the African missions. With the help of these British patrons and the assistance of Dr. Francis Cox, who bore a significant part of the expense, Roper successfully attended boarding schools in Hackney and Wallingford and later spent some time at University College in London during 1836. Throughout this period, Roper also attended many antislavery meetings and gave speeches on his slave experiences to people who were as impressed by his stature (Roper was 6’5") as they were by his account—an account that was one of the first given by a former slave to British reform audiences. In the summer of 1837, Roper published a narrative of his life and used a lecture tour to promote it. The book was also printed in Philadelphia and sold in America. In 1839 Roper married an Englishwoman from Bristol; and five years later, claiming to have given “upwards of two thousand” antislavery lectures during his British stay, he moved his family (the Ropers had one child at the time) to Canada West—although he had originally hoped to use proceeds from his Narrative to finance the purchase of a farm on the Cape of Good Hope. He returned to England at least two more times, arriving in 1846 “to settle some private matters” (probably to negotiate a new printing of his Narrative) and, again in 1854, to lecture. Roper, Narrative; John W. Wayne to John Tredgold, 17 July 1840, William Chaplin to John Tredgold, 17, 24, 31 October 1840, William Pollard to John Tredgold, 5 November 1840, Wilson Armistead to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, 10 November 1854, Moses Roper to John Tredgold, 5 November 1840, 20 October 1841, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh [3:0691, 4:0271]; PtL, 16 December 1835, 13 July, 14 September 1836; PF, 19 April 1838, 29 October, 16 November 1840 [3:0709]; Constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society, 4 December 1833, American Anti-Slavery Society Papers, DLC [1:0352–64]. 2. Roper refers to an incident that occurred about 1833 near Greenville, South Carolina. A slave preacher named George escaped from his Georgia master and hid in the barn of a Mr. Garrison about seven miles from Greenville. Garrison eventually discovered George, had him jailed, and purchased him from his master for $550. Garrison then had George burned alive near Greenville “in the presence

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of an immense assemblage of slaves” gathered from the surrounding area to witness the event. John W. Blassingame, ed., Slave Testimony (Baton Rouge, La., 1977), 24–25. 3. Rev. Dr. Francis A. Cox (1783–1853) was born to a wealthy English family, studied at the University of Edinburgh, and served as Baptist pastor at Hackney from 1811 until his death. Cox was a writer and a founder of the Baptist Magazine. Although an active member of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Cox was criticized by abolitionists for his behavior at the Baptist General (Eighth Triennial) Convention held in Richmond, Virginia, during the spring of 1835. Both Cox and Dr. James Hoby, who attended the conference with him, were empowered by the Board of Baptist Ministers in and near London to speak frankly about emancipation with their American Baptist counterparts. Yet they regarded themselves as church representatives, not antislavery advocates, and avoided the slavery issue at the Richmond conference and in other American forums. DNB, 4:1336; Lib, 23, 30 May, 5 December 1835; Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 2:113. 4. The Society of Friends, popularly known as Quakers, was the most conspicuous religious antislavery group in the antebellum United States. As early as 1717, Rhode Island Quakers questioned the propriety of importing slaves. By 1800 Quakers had practically abolished slaveholding among members of their sect, were active in antislavery efforts, and supported education for free blacks. During the nineteenth century, many individual Quakers aided countless escaping blacks to reach northern cities or Canada. During the Civil War, the Friends Association for the Relief of Colored Freedmen was formed to assist black contrabands in the South. Yet few blacks were accepted as members, although color was rarely stated as a reason for rejection, and most Quaker meeting halls and cemeteries were internally segregated by race. The advent of immediate abolitionism in the 1830s created tension and division among Quakers, and several abolitionist groups split from the older, more moderate Quaker bodies. John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans (New York, N.Y., 1967), 95–96, 140, 151, 275; Larry Gara, The Liberty Line: The Legend of the Underground Railroad (Lexington, Ky., 1967), 79, 94–99; Henry Cadbury, “Negro Membership in the Society of Friends,” JNH 21:167–83 (April 1936). 5. Mr. Beveridge purchased Moses Roper in 1833 after Roper’s former master died. Beveridge lived in Apalachicola, Florida, but spent much of his time at his summer home in Marianna. Although Roper writes that he was Mr. Beveridge’s first slave, the Beveridge family had previously owned a number a slaves (fifteen). The details of Roper’s sale to his next master are different in his Narrative than in the speech. According to the Narrative, Roper and Beveridge traveled to Columbus, Georgia, where Roper became ill. On the return trip to Marianna, Beveridge became sick, and Roper helped nurse him back to health. According to the Narrative, Roper was not sold immediately—as claimed in the speech—but rather traveled with Beveridge “several months without any thing remarkable taking place.” Beveridge went bankrupt in 1834 and sold Roper to Mr. Register, whom Roper described as a “very cruel master.” Roper, Narrative, 65–69; United States Census, 1830.

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6. Although the spelling differs, the reference is probably to William McCullogh, a slaveholder (he owned twenty-five slaves), who lived in Kershaw County, South Carolina, in 1830. In his Narrative, Roper mentions a Colonel McQuiller of Cashaw County, who reportedly murdered several slaves by imprisoning them in a nail-studded barrel and rolling them down a hill. Roper, Narrative, 21; United States Census, 1830.

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5. Remarks by James McCune Smith Delivered at a Meeting of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, Glasgow, Scotland

15 March 1837 American free blacks were regularly denied access to higher education in the United States. Robert M. Johnson, Jesse Ewing Glasgow, James McCune Smith, and other free blacks traveled to Britain for further schooling. Once there, they were drawn into the British antislavery movement. Smith, the best known and most active of the group, joined the Glasgow Emancipation Society in 1833, a little over a year after he arrived in Scotland to study medicine. Smith served on the Committee of Management of the newly formed GES and became well known in Scottish antislavery circles. At a meeting of the society on 15 March 1837, he seconded a resolution offered by Rev. Patrick Brewster commending the labors of George Thompson as the society’s agent and pledging the society “never to give up the work of peaceful agitation and moral interference . . . until . . . Slavery ceases from the face of the earth.” Minutes of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, 12 December 1833, UkGM; Glasgow Emancipation Society, Third Annual Report (Glasgow, 1837), 77–79. It is with great pleasure that I second the resolution so ably moved by the distinguished clergyman of the Church of Scotland who has just addressed you.1 And the audience will, I am sure, sympathise with me, when informed that I do so at a very short notice, in consequence of the absence of another ornament of the same church,2 whose name would have given the resolution additional currency among a body of Christians whom I am most anxious to see more generally engaged in the cause of Emancipation; and whose eloquence would have claimed for the motion that respectful attention which no words of mine can command. (Cheers.) For I am unable, under present circumstances—and had months of preparation been allowed me—would still have been unable—to find expression for the feelings of gratitude which I entertain for the past exertions of Mr. Thompson; or the eager anxiety with which I look for a continuance of those exertions which have been fraught with so much good to my native land; and which, I trust, will continue to be of eminent service, not only there, but to every country wherein men are enslaved by their fellow-men. (Cheers.) Sir, there are two parties more immediately concerned in this Resolution—Mr. Thompson, and the Emancipation Society of this city.3 An offer is made, or rather renewed, to Mr. T., which he will frankly and

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gladly accept. For with bleeding humanity soliciting him on the one hand, and the enlightened Christians of this free and enlightened country urging him on the other, he cannot refuse to continue these efforts—laborious indeed—for which he is so pre-eminently fitted, and which are so congenial to his mind. (Cheers.) And with regard to the Emancipation Society here assembled, you will gladly renew your engagement with Mr. Thompson; and with that hearty acclamation, which can be given by freemen only, and in a free country, cheering on a gifted and zealous philanthropist in his endeavours to achieve the liberties of their kind, by the physically harmless, but morally omnipotent, weapons of truth and righteousness. Were other means resorted to, were physical force made use of, I would be among the first to resist them. And be assured, Sir, that if at this moment any warlike armament were to invade the United States, even for the purpose of liberating the victims of prejudice and of Slavery, the men who would strike first, and would struggle longest in defence of the American coast, would be the 800,000 free people of colour, who are Americans by birth, Americans in principle, and have proved themselves in many a field of fight, as well as by present sufferings, which I cannot recount, the most ardent lovers of the American soil. But, Sir, there is no need of physical force. The weapons used by this Society are more powerful, and will prevail. The American people know this, indeed have admitted it. They have admitted it in the person of one of the most gifted among them, and on this very platform, which is consecrated to the cause of civil and religious liberty. (Loud cheers.) For in that brilliant encounter4—in which truth so signally triumphed through the lips of your agent—America, by appearing before such a tribunal, admitted not only its right to make this moral invasion, but also by her attempt to maintain the justice of her present conduct, admits the irresistible power which you can wield over her destinies. Let me entreat you, therefore, never to forget these circumstances: forget not the agent who has placed such priceless influence in your hands: forget not incessantly to exercise that influence for the benefit of the helpless Slave. And then, Sir, I will go back to the land whence I came, happy in the thought that at a day not very distant, it may be my privilege once more to appear before you—no longer an outcast from the land of the free—no longer the victim of a cruel prejudice—no longer debarred from seats of learning, for a physical accident, no fault of mine—no longer deprived of any of the privileges of an American citizen—but that it will be my lot to tell you that AMERICA IS FREE! (Cheers.) And who knows, Sir, but that there may come with me an American Slave, whose chains shall have been broken; an American Slave-holder, whose whip shall have been destroyed; and an American Christian, whose prejudices shall have been annihilated by the means you are now using to attain these ends. (Tremendous cheer-

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ing.) And we will come, not only to thank you for what you have done, but to entreat you to re-engage your eloquent and devoted agent in those labours, which, I trust, will never cease until Slavery be banished from the face of the earth. (Cheers.) Glasgow Emancipation Society, Third Annual Report (Glasgow, 1837), 78–79. 1. Smith refers to Patrick Brewster (1788–1859). Brewster studied theology at Edinburgh University and became the minister at the Abbey Church, Paisley, upon his ordination in 1818. He remained there forty-one years. An active moral-force Chartist, he advocated the abolition of the slave trade, the repeal of the Corn Laws, temperance, a national system of education, and Roman Catholic emancipation. His polemical spirit led him to produce a long list of publications. DNB, 6:304. 2. Smith refers to George Thompson. 3. The Glasgow Emancipation Society was founded in 1833 for the immediate purpose of obtaining financial support for George Thompson’s American lecture tour. The society’s long-term objective was the worldwide emancipation of slavery, particularly in the United States and the British Empire. Although the organization became a member of the newly founded British India Society in 1839, it remained independent of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, unlike many other provincial antislavery groups. Antislavery tensions, particularly John Collin’s mission, split the society into several factions; the Garrisonian minority (led by William Smeal and John Murray) took control and ousted pro-BFASS members. By 1850 the once influential society (now burdened by debts incurred in the 1846 Scottish “Send Back the Money” campaign) was reduced to Smeal, Murray, and a small circle of friends. The GES became inactive after 1863 and, although briefly rejuvenated in 1873, was disbanded in 1876. During the interim, surviving GES members founded the Glasgow Freedmen’s Aid Society (1864). Temperley, British Antislavery, 23, 80, 102, 211, 237, 258, 265n. 4. This phrase commonly was used to describe George Thompson’s first trip to the United States during 1834–35.

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6. John Murray and William Smeal to James McCune Smith 15 June 1837 James McCune Smith’s service on the Glasgow Emancipation Society’s Committee of Management placed him in close contact with society cosecretaries John Murray and William Smeal. They, in turn, respected Smith and recognized that his presence in Scottish antislavery circles demonstrated black intellect and ability and refuted commonly held racial stereotypes. After completing his medical studies at Glasgow University, Smith prepared to sail for New York on 4 May 1837, but the captain of the brig Canonicus refused to allow him to board. Murray responded with a strong letter of protest to the captain and joined Smeal in leading an effort to insure that Smith would not be further prevented from sailing because of his color. Before he finally sailed, the two men wrote him a 15 June letter expressing their feelings about his pending departure. The following evening, Smith’s friends and fellow students honored him with a farewell dinner party at the Tontine Hotel in Glasgow to express their contempt for American racial prejudice as most recently demonstrated by the Canonicus incident. Minutes of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, 29 February, 1, 15 March 1836, Cash Book of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, 20 February 1834, UkGM; CA, 9 September 1837. Glasgow, [Scotland] June 15, 1837 Letter from the Committee of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, to James M Cune Smith Esq. M.D. Dear Friend & Brother; When you are about to leave our shores, and return to your native country, we cannot deny ourselves the gratification of tendering you a formal testimony of our esteem—in addition to all the common evidences of affection and respect for you, which it has been our privilege to give, during our intercourse for several years past. When you first appeared among us, the circumstance was in a high degree calculated to excite our sympathy on your behalf, that a young man should be found seeking, in the Institutions of Scotland, those intellectual accomplishments which he was refused an opportunity of acquiring in those of his native land, on account of his complexion not suiting the taste of a prevailing party of his countrymen. Our first feelings towards you, Dear Sir, we acknowlege were chiefly feelings of compassion. But, after a brief acquaintance, you became the object of sentiments

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much more honourable to yourself. We felt ourselves called upon to esteem you for your virtues, and to admire you for your intellectual powers and attainments: and from the contemplation of your character, we acquired additional ardour in the work of delivering your kindred from the oppression of men, few of whom, we are persuaded, equal you in whatever dignifies and adorns human nature. We did not, indeed, require to be convinced for the first time, that the man of Colour is possessed of all moral and intellectual capabilities in equal measure with the white; but you made the doctrine less a matter of abstraction to us, and impressed us with the sight & the consciousness of the present living reality. When we were struggling for the Emancipation of our own fellow subjects, we felicitated ourselves on gaining you as a Member of our Anti Slavery Committee; and we assure you that when you appeared on our platforms, and moved or seconded our Resolutions, the demonstration given to the Citizens of Glasgow—how much of a Scholar’s taste, how much of an Orator’s eloquence, how much of a Patriot’s zeal, & how much of a Gentleman’s courtesy & bearing may be found associated with a Coloured complexion—was productive of the happiest consequences, in stimulating the Abolition zeal of our population. Our West Indian fellow-subjects are deeply your debtors: but your own countrymen are more so; since not a little of the fervour of many among us, in the enterprise against American Slavery, is to be ascribed to the circumstance, that the insulted and oppressed of that land are the Kindred of James M Cune Smith. You leave us, Sir, with our earnest prayer on your behalf, that God may bless you abundantly: that He may prosper you in your profession as a Physician: but especially that He may counsel, strengthen, and protect you in your patriotic efforts for the deliverance of your brethren, and ours, from ignominy, sorrow, and oppression. We perpetuate our brotherhood, by enrolling you as an Honorary Member of the Committee of the Glasgow Emancipation Society; and, with the love and honour of brethren, bid you farewell. Sign’d in name & by appointment of the Committee, John Murray1 Secretaries William Smeal2 Minutes of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, 15 June 1837, Mitchell Library, Glasgow. 1. John Murray (?–1849) was a Scottish-born customs official, who spent his early adult years in the West Indies. After a decade as a carpenter on St. Kitts, he returned home a convinced Evangelical and an opponent of West Indian slavery. In 1833 he joined William Smeal as cofounder and cosecretary of the Glasgow Emancipation Society. Murray was highly regarded for his organizational and ad-

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ministrative talents. His religious radicalism and staunch Garrisonian abolitionism made him a leading critic of clerical moderation on the slavery issue. Garrison praised Murray and Smeal as “two of the most active and zealous abolitionists in all Great Britain.” C. Duncan Rice, The Scots Abolitionists, 1833–1861 (Baton Rouge, La., 1981), 39–45, 108–11; Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 2:398; Clare Taylor, British and American Abolitionists: An Episode in Transatlantic Understanding (Edinburgh, 1974), 106–7, 149–50, 189–90. 2. William Smeal (1793–1877) was a Glasgow Quaker and prosperous tea merchant. He coedited The British Friend with his brother Robert between 1843 and 1861. He was involved in many reform causes—temperance, peace, abolition of capital punishment, repeal of the Corn Laws, and antislavery. Smeal and John Murray were cosecretaries of the Glasgow Emancipation Society and among the leading Scottish Garrisonians. Smeal orchestrated the “Send Back the Money” campaign to impel the Scottish Free Church to return contributions from southern slaveholders. During the Civil War, he generated public sympathy for the Union cause. From 1864 to 1867, he was secretary of the Glasgow Freedmen’s Aid Society. Temperley, British Antislavery, 210–13; Rice, Scots Abolitionists, 37, 41–44, 150–55.

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7. Charles Lenox Remond to Charles B. Ray 30 June 1840 Beginning in 1840, many black abolitionists ventured abroad as delegates to international reform conventions. The first of these delegates, Charles Lenox Remond, attended the mid-June meeting of the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London. Remond and other Garrisonians refused to be seated as delegates after the convention voted to exclude women from active participation in the proceedings. Remond addressed the delegates only after the formal convention was completed. On 24 June, he and other Garrisonians attended the annual anniversary meeting of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Remond summarized his first two weeks in England in a 30 June 1840 letter to black editor Charles B. Ray. Whereas other Garrisonian delegates sent back convention reports to leading white antislavery papers, Remond chose to inform readers of the Colored American, the only reform paper directed at a black audience. CA, 3 October 1840; Miriam L. Usrey, “Charles Lenox Remond, Garrison’s Ebony Echo: World Anti-Slavery Convention, 1840,” EIHC 106:113–25 (April 1970). London, [England] June 30th, 1840 MY DEAR FRIEND RAY:1 Faithful to my promise, although in the midst of engagements, I steal a moment, not to fill this sheet, as my time will not admit, but to inform you of my safe arrival and good health at this time, and that this sheet may meet you with your wife, sisters and friends in possession of the same privilege is my best wish. In referring to the subject of anti slavery on this side the Atlantic, permit me to say, as a silent listener, I was much interested in the discussions during the sitting of the British and Foreign Anti Slavery Society2 (not World’s Convention)3 as we had fondly and anxiously anticipated, which facts, with many others, forbid my taking a seat, and participating in its deliberations. That on my arrival I learned with much sorrow of the rejection of the female delegation, I need not mention. And in few instances through life have I met with greater disappointment, especially in view of the fact, that I was almost entirely indebted to the kind and generous members of the Bangor Female Anti-Slavery Society, the Portland sewing circle, and the Newport Young Ladies Juvenile Anti Slavery Society, for the aid in visiting this country. And I can assure you it was among my most happy reflections to know, that in taking my seat in the World’s Convention, I should do so, the honored representative of three female associations, at once most praiseworthy in

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1. Charles Lenox Remond Courtesy of Library of Congress

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their object and efficient in their co-operation. And sure I am, that could the members of these associations have had even a place in the imaginations of those who voted for their exclusion, the decision would have been otherwise, far otherwise. Thanks be to Providence, I have yet to learn, that the emancipation of the American slave, from the sepulchre of American slavery, is not of more importance than the rejection of females from the platform of any Anti Slavery Society, Convention, or Conference. In the name of heaven, and in the name of the bleeding, dying slave, I ask if I shall scruple the propriety of female action, of whatever kind or description. I trust not—I hope not—I pray not, until the bastard system is annihilated, and not a vestige remains to remind the future traveller, that such a system ever cursed our country, and made us a hissing and a by-word in the mouth of every subject of every Monarch, King, Queen, Despot, Tyrant, Autocrat and Czar of the civilized and uncivilized world! My Friend, for thirteen years have I thought myself an abolitionist, but I had been in a measure mistaken, until I listened to the scorching rebukes of the fearless O’Connell in Exeter Hall, on the 24th June,4 when before that vast assemblage, he quoted from American publications, and alluded to the American declaration,5 and contrasted the theory with the practice; then was I moved to think, and feel, and speak; and from his soul-stirring eloquence and burning sarcasm would every fibre of my heart contract in abominating the worse than Spanish Inquisition system6 in my own. I almost fear, devoted country. Let it suffice to say, the meeting at Exeter Hall more than compensated me for the sacrifice and suffering I experienced in crossing the Atlantic,7 under circumstances which I shall make known at some future time. Until the facts are known, let no one envy me in my voyage or undertaking. A few words in relation to slavery’s grand handmaid, in the states proclaimed to be non-slaveholding, I mean prejudice, that acts the part to slavery of second king at arms, and exercises its authority by assisting in kidnapping the innocent and free at the capitol, disfranchises the citizens of Pennsylvania, proscribes the colored man in Rhode Island, abuses and gives him no resting place as a man in New Hampshire, which murders in Illinois, cries out amalgamation in Maine, mobs him in New York, and stones him in Connecticut. I say this hydra headed personage, thanks be to God, has but few advocates in this country, if any, I have it to learn; and if you would rouse the honest indignation of the intelligent Englishman, tell him of our school and academy exclusions. If you would enlist the sympathies of the pious, refer him to our Negro pews in the house of worship, and when you tell him of the Jim Crow car, the top of the stage coach, the forward deck of the steamboat, as the only place for colored people to occupy, he at once, turning pale, then red, inquires if this is American republicanism, if this the fruit of our many religious institu-

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tions; and as a West Indian remarked to me yesterday, that Liberty in my country was in its best estate, but the grossest licentiousness. I could not— I dare not—contradict him, as my presence in England at this time, proved too much for his argument. More hereafter. I was happy to meet R. Douglass8 and W. Jeffers,9 in the city, and especially to find William well situated in business, and his health much improved. I hope to receive a copy of the Colored American10 soon, and in the mean time I remain, desiring to be remembered most kindly to the several members of your family, and to my many friends in New York. Most truly yours, For truth and the oppressed, C. LENOX REMOND11 To the Rev. C. B. Ray. P.S. I will not mail this sheet without saying that, notwithstanding the pleasant circumstances with which I am surrounded, I long to tread again the country of my birth, again to raise my feeble voice in behalf of the suffering, again to unite with you in razing to the ground, the system which is, and ever has proved too faithfully, the fell destroyer of our race and nation. Again, yours, C. L. R. Colored American (New York, N.Y.), 3 October 1840. 1. Charles B. Ray (1807–1886) was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, the eldest of seven children. Ray’s father delivered mail to the islands off Cape Cod; his welleducated mother encouraged her children to attend the integrated public schools in nearby New Bedford. Ray worked as a farmer and a boot-maker before deciding upon a career in the ministry. After attending Wesleyan Academy in western Massachusetts, he enrolled in Wesleyan University Theological Seminary in 1832, but was forced to withdraw from the institution by white student protests and a faculty that viewed his departure as the “wisest course.” Ray moved to New York City, opened a shoe store, and began a lifetime commitment to antislavery and to home missionary work among the poorest members of the city’s black community. Ray believed in the importance of black self-discipline and economic security and was a proponent of temperance and the Grahamite diet regimen. An early abolitionist, he believed that antislavery reform restrained northern racial prejudice. During the mid-1830s, he helped found the New York Vigilance Committee, participated in the black national convention movement, and belonged to the American Anti-Slavery Society. He left the American society in 1840 because he believed in political action and became a leader of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Ray was an eloquent spokesman for a national black press. In 1837 he was hired as a traveling agent for the New York Colored American, and by early 1840, he was its sole editor and proprietor. Ray used the paper to press his political antislavery convictions (he was a vigorous proponent of black suffrage throughout the 1840s and 1850s), to rebut arguments for African colonization and Canadian emigration, and to advocate the legal rights of fugitive slaves. Ray directed his attention to domestic missionary activity in the mid-1840s, serving as

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secretary of J. W. C. Pennington’s Union Missionary Society and beginning an extended relationship with the New York City Missionary Society—an affiliate of the American Missionary Association. Ray became pastor of New York’s Bethesda Congregational Church in 1845 and, at about the same time, helped select recipients for Gerrit Smith’s black land-grant plan. In 1848 he was appointed to the Committee of Twenty-Five, a group selected by that year’s black national convention to devise a plan for establishing a black manual labor college. Ray was infuriated by passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and led a New York petition drive against it. At the Colored National Convention held in Rochester during 1853, he helped write the convention’s “Report on Social Relations and Polity,” a provocative analysis of black political economy. In 1859, as president of the New York Society for Promoting the Education of Colored Children, he focused on the need for quality black education and public school integration. In the 1860s, he was a leader of the African Society for Mutual Relief and dispensed private funds to black victims of New York’s 1863 draft riot. In 1869 Ray renewed his call for black labor solidarity (a call he first made as a member of the American League of Colored Laborers in 1850) and helped organize the National Labor Convention of Colored People. In the mid-1870s, Ray aided black men and women emigrating to the Kansas frontier. M. N. Work, “The Life of Charles B. Ray,” JNH 4:361–71 (October 1919); Florence T. Ray and H. Cordelia Ray, “Sketch of the Life of Rev. Charles B. Ray,” enclosure in Florence T. Ray and H. Cordelia Ray to William H. Siebert, 12 April 1897, Siebert “Underground Railroad” Collection, MH; NASS, 6 June 1843, 24 October 1844, 26 August 1845, 16 July 1846, 3 May 1849, 17 July 1862, 5 September 1863, 24 March 1866, 5, 19 June, 23 October 1869, 1 October 1870 [4:0940, 0582, 5:0249, 1074]; NSt, 4, 11, 18 May, 23 November 1849, 13 June, 27 July, 5 September 1850; FDP, 16, 30 October, 13 November 1851, 27 May 1852, 15, 29 July, 28 October 1853, 3 February 1854, 25 April, 25 May, 3 August, 14 September, 16 November 1855; OE, 20 December 1843; PL, 27 December 1843; LP, 14 February 1846; NEW, 20 May 1847, 6 July 1848, 2 February, 14 March 1850 [5:0422, 0698, 6:0374, 0425]; Charles B. Ray to Thomas Lafon, 16 July 1845, AMA-ARC [5:0057]; Charles B. Ray to Gerrit Smith, 22 May, 2 December 1847, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU [5:0423, 0533]; AAM, July 1859 [11:0818]; WAA, 21 April 1860, 2 February 1861, 12 April 1862 [12:0646, 13:0254, 14:0237]; DANB, 515–16. 2. During mid-April 1839, Joseph Sturge headed the group of leading British abolitionists that founded the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and, in so doing, united disparate elements of the British antislavery movement in a general crusade for worldwide emancipation. From the moment of its inception and for the next thirty years, the highly centralized society was the only antislavery organization of national stature in Britain; it was supported by provincial auxiliaries and the contributions of private donors. The society regularly convened annual meetings in London, usually during May or June. Policy decisions were made by a thirty-member executive board and were implemented by the society’s most powerful officeholder, the executive secretary. John Tredgold served as the first secretary (1839–40) and was succeeded by John Scoble (1841–51) and Louis Alexis Chamerovzow (1852–69). The secretary had many functions, chief among these was overseeing the publication of the BFASS-sponsored newspaper,

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the Anti-Slavery Reporter. The society began with approximately 230 members and grew to 850 members by 1847. Although some society members were aristocrats, most were middle-class, urban professionals or individuals related to Britain’s rising mercantile and industrial families. A majority were Nonconformists, and many were Quakers. The organization did not employ lecture agents, but it did act as a sponsor for many white and black abolitionist speakers. The BFASS hosted four successful multinational antislavery conventions in 1840, 1843, 1854, and 1867. The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society continued throughout the nineteenth century. In 1909 it affiliated with the Aborigines Protection Society to form the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society. This body still exists. Temperley, British Antislavery, 62–70, 73, 75–78, 80–84, 87–90, 147–52, 209–17, 267–69. 3. The World’s Anti-Slavery Convention met during 12–23 June 1840 at Freemasons’ Hall in London. Organized primarily through the efforts of Joseph Sturge and the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, it was the first international reform convention. Sessions were attended by 409 delegates, mostly from Britain and the empire, although small delegations also attended from France and the United States. Efforts at international unity were seriously damaged at the initial session when the majority refused to seat eight American women delegates. Thereafter, the women and several protesting male Garrisonian delegates (including William Lloyd Garrison) viewed the proceedings from the gallery. Despite this, other issues received lengthy discussion, particularly the role of churches in the antislavery crusade and endorsement of the free produce movement as a means of combating slavery. Douglas H. Maynard, “The World’s Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840,” MVHR 47:452–62 (December 1960). 4. The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society held its first annual meeting in Exeter Hall, London, on 24 June 1840. The well-attended gathering was chaired by the duke of Sussex. A number of topics were discussed, especially West Indian emancipation and apprenticeship and American slavery. The gathering was addressed by French politician François Isambert, American abolitionist James G. Birney, English jurist Sir Stephen Lushington, Irish reformer Daniel O’Connell, black abolitionist Charles L. Remond, and Jamaican missionary Rev. William Knibb. O’Connell delivered a stirring antislavery speech that criticized slavery in its international context. He particularly chastised American slaveholders and read excerpts from William Jay’s A View of the Action of the Federal Government, in Behalf of Slavery (1839) to demonstrate slave mistreatment and indict the internal slave trade. ASRL, 1 July 1840. 5. Remond refers to the Declaration of Independence. 6. The Spanish Inquisition has become a term synonymous with a religious reign of terror. It refers to the special ecclesiastical court, the Inquisition, employed by Ferdinand and Isabella in late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Spain to insure religious orthodoxy among their subjects. 7. In mid-May 1840, Charles L. Remond attempted to book passage on the ship Columbus for London and the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention, but the ship’s ticket agent refused his request until William Adams, a white abolitionist attending the convention, agreed to share a berth with Remond. The vessel’s second mate refused to allow Remond to associate with white passengers and, instead, prepared a narrow and uncomfortable bunk for him in steerage. When

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Adams protested, both he and Remond were removed from the berth for which they had paid and given “quarters” at the bottom of a gangway in the open air, where they were subjected to occasional taunts by crew members. Usrey, “Charles Lenox Remond,” 112–25; Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 2:360– 61. 8. Robert Douglass, Jr. (1809–1887), was born in Philadelphia, the son of Grace Bustill Douglass and Robert Douglass, Sr. An émigré from the island of St. Christopher in the British West Indies and a leader in Philadelphia’s black community, the elder Douglass was an early abolitionist and a vigorous advocate of black education. Robert Douglass, Jr., was schooled by the Quakers. He mastered French and Spanish, studied drama, played the guitar, and showed an aptitude for art. In the late 1820s, he opened a sign-painting shop and, at the same time, honed his skill as a portrait painter under the tutelage of famous Philadelphia artist Thomas Sully. Although Douglass probably exhibited one of his portraits at the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy, he was generally excluded from the city’s cultural institutions even as a visitor. He studied art at the British Museum and the National Gallery in 1840–41, returned to Europe on other occasions, and made two or three visits to Haiti between 1837 and 1848. The 1848 visit was made in conjunction with a commission to do sketches of missionary stations there. During the 1830s, Douglass followed his father as an antislavery reformer by joining the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society, advocating the formation of a state antislavery society, and working for black suffrage and women’s rights. When he resettled in Philadelphia after his first British trip, Douglass reopened his shop and offered a variety of artistic services to the community. He also renewed his antislavery activities; he regularly criticized racial stereotyping in Philadelphia newspapers and helped organize the North Star Association (a group of Philadelphia abolitionists who solicited subscriptions for Frederick Douglass’s reform journal). By 1856 he had become disenchanted with the American Anti-Slavery Society for a number of reasons, including his affiliation with Frederick Douglass, his continuing belief in political antislavery, and his personal dispute with Sydney Howard Gay, editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard. At the same time, Douglass also tentatively endorsed black emigration. His increasing impatience with northern racial prejudice, his displeasure with white abolitionists for failing to labor for the elevation of free blacks, and his growing friendship with Robert Campbell (who worked with Douglass’s sister Sarah at the Philadelphia Institute for Colored Youth) led him to join Campbell in embracing Martin R. Delany’s call for African emigration in 1858. Douglass could not obtain the funds necessary to join Delany’s proposed Niger Valley Exploring Party. Douglass continued to live and work in Philadelphia for the next thirty years. George C. Groce and David H. Wallace, Dictionary of Artists in America, 1564–1860 (New Haven, Conn., 1957), 186; James A. Porter, Modern Negro Art (1943; reprint, New York, N.Y., 1969), 30–35; Floyd J. Miller, The Search for a Black Nationality: Black Emigration and Colonization, 1787–1863 (Urbana, Ill., 1975), 174; Cadbury, “Negro Membership,” 192–93; Lib, 24 September 1831, 23 March, 13 April 1833, 10 April 1840, 19 June 1863 [1:0117, 0275]; NECAUL, 29 October 1836, 14, 31 January, 29 April, 3 June, 17 August, 16 November 1837 [1:0724,

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2:0248]; CA, 3 March, 16 June 1838, 28 March 1840 [2:0397, 0493, 3:0354]; PF, 11 June 1840, 31 March, 14 April 1841, 11 April, 22 August 1844 [3:0453, 4:0787]; NASS, 20 April 1848, 9 February 1849, 19 August 1852, 26 December 1857 [5:0623]; NSt, 6 July 1849; Martin R. Delany, Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party (Leeds, England, 1861), 11–12 [11:0250, 13:0311]; Anna B. Smith, “The Bustill Family,” JNH 10:638–44 (October 1925). 9. William L. Jeffers (1806–1841) was born in New York City, undoubtedly received some education at the African Free School, and is identified in Samuel Ringgold Ward’s Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro as the only “coloured clerk” Ward ever knew. Ward said Jeffers had been employed by “a well known mercantile house” on Broad Street, and Ward used Jeffers’s situation to illustrate the economic effect of racial prejudice in the United States. According to Ward, Jeffers “was never advanced a single grade, while numerous white lads have since passed up by him, and over him, to be members of the firm.” Ward’s assessment is probably accurate, but despite such treatment, the young clerk accumulated considerable property before losing it in the economic panic of 1837. Jeffers played an active role in the antislavery movement. In 1831 he served as the secretary to a society of New York City blacks that sought subscriptions for Garrison’s Liberator and Lundy’s Genius of Universal Emancipation. He also joined the New York black suffrage petition drive of 1837. Jeffers was active in the Episcopal church and a founder of the New York Philomathean Society, a black protective and self-help association. He left for the continent early in 1840, seeking both recovery from “consumption” and “an unshackeled mind and space to rise.” When he reached England, he felt well enough to work again and settled in London, where he became a confidential clerk in a British banking house. He died in London in April 1841. Samuel Ringgold Ward, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro (London, 1855; reprint, New York, N.Y., 1968), 29; Lib, 20 August 1831 [1:0103]; CA, 19 August 1837, 5 June, 18 September 1841 [2:0152]. 10. This newspaper was first published on 7 January 1837 as the Weekly Advocate by editor-proprietor Philip A. Bell. The 4 March 1837 issue appeared as the New York Colored American, edited by Samuel Cornish. The Colored American was a strong voice in the black community. It denounced slavery, colonization, and racial prejudice. It remained under the leadership of Bell and Cornish until 1838, when the paper’s general agent Charles B. Ray became coeditor. Upon Cornish’s resignation in June 1839, Ray replaced him and also undertook many of Bell’s proprietary duties. One year earlier, Stephen Gloucester also became a proprietor and general agent for Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and western New Jersey. Prominent subscription agents included Rev. Richard Allen, J. W. C. Pennington, Charles L. Remond, Samuel R. Ward, and Alexander Crummell. By 1838 the paper had eighteen hundred subscribers and the liberal financial support of white abolitionist Arthur Tappan, although this did not insure financial success. It ceased publication on 25 December 1841 and was the longest-running black newspaper to that date. Donald M. Jacobs, ed., Antebellum Black Newspapers (Westport, Conn., 1976), 207, 209, 229, 231, 451–54; Martin E. Dann, ed., The Black Press, 1827–1890: The Quest for National Identity (New York, N.Y., 1971), 18–19, 23–24, 28–29, 255– 61, 316; Benjamin Quarles, Black Abolitionists (London, 1969), 87; CA, 4 March 1837, 2, 9 June 1838, 23 May 1840.

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11. Charles Lenox Remond (1810–1873) was born in Salem, Massachusetts. He was the eldest son of John and Nancy Remond, who had eight children. John Remond immigrated to America from Curaçao in 1798 and became a successful hairdresser and merchant-trader. He also founded the Salem African Society (a mutual aid association), establishing himself as a community leader, and helped desegregate the town’s public schools. Charles Remond was educated in those schools and by a private tutor. He also had a rich array of experiences while being raised in a comfortable and exciting household that was often filled with visiting reform leaders. Both Remonds were early members of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and Charles eventually signed the constitution of the American AntiSlavery Society. A year after Charles Remond first spoke at an abolitionist gathering (the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society in 1837), he was appointed as a fulltime lecture agent for the Massachusetts society. He helped organize antislavery societies throughout Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island between 1838 and 1840. In the spring of 1840, he attended the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London and then undertook an eighteen-month British sojourn, which was instrumental in revealing some of the most fundamental organizational elements of the black lecture tour abroad. It also forged an essential link between women abolitionists in Britain and the women in America who directed the Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar. Remond’s appearance at the London convention was a dramatic and influential moment in the antislavery movement. He refused to participate in the proceedings because women delegates were not seated, and he delivered a powerful address rebuking female exclusion and attacking slavery. Remond returned home in December 1841 and resumed his antislavery activities. At the Buffalo National Convention of Colored Citizens, held in 1843, Remond and Frederick Douglass led the opposition to Henry Highland Garnet’s muted call for slave violence. Remond and Douglass toured together irregularly from 1841 and remained friends until 1850 but later engaged in a protracted and bitter dispute over a variety of personal and ideological differences. In the late 1840s, as president of the Essex County (Mass.) Anti-Slavery Society, Remond temporarily embraced political antislavery but returned to the Garrisonian view of political action by the early 1850s. In the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott decision, Remond radically altered his views on nonresistance. In August 1858, he spoke in favor of slave insurrections and, a year later, at a black citizens’ convention held in Boston, claimed American slavery would “go down in blood.” Declining health restricted Remond’s activities during the Civil War, but he did recruit black troops for the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth Regiments. When the war ended, Remond, who wanted the American Anti-Slavery Society to continue its reform work, divided with Garrison over the issue (once again returning to fellowship with Frederick Douglass). After attending the American Equal Rights Association meeting in New York City during 1867, Remond ended his formal relationship to reform activities. During the last years of his life, Remond worked as a stamp clerk at the Boston Customs House. Usrey, “Charles Lenox Remond,” 113–25; William Edward Ward, “Charles Lenox Remond: Black Abolitionist, 1838–1873” (Ph.D. diss., Clark University, 1977), 1–262.

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8. Charles Lenox Remond to William Lloyd Garrison [October 1840] Most black abolitionists traveled to Britain with specific objectives but often developed additional goals once there. Charles Remond went as a delegate to the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840, stayed on with a general antislavery tour, and, like many of his colleagues, found an unexpected challenge that modified the original intention of his mission. Remond’s challenge came from Ralph R. Gurley, secretary of the American Colonization Society, who was in England seeking British support for colonizationist aims. Remond, a committed anticolonizationist, wrote an October 1840 letter to Garrison, noting Gurley’s presence and outlining his intention to counter Gurley’s efforts. Remond’s free black status invested him with the authority to inform British audiences of widespread black opposition to colonization schemes. Lib, 13 November 1840; Ward, “Charles Lenox Remond,” 92–93. FRIEND GARRISON: Prior to your departure from England, you were informed of the arrival of the gentleman whose name heads this communication.1 Of his movements in England up to his appearance in Glasgow, I am unable to speak; but, by the slip cut from one of many cards sent to different gentlemen in Glasgow, and which I have appended (and as you may suppose), I am put not a little upon the nettles. MR. GURLEY, Secretary of the American Colonization Society, Will explain the views of that Institution as promotive of African civilization, and give an account of the present condition and prospects of the Colony of LIBERIA, in Western Africa, at the Royal Exchange,2 on Thursday next, at 3 o’clock, P.M. You are very respectfully invited to attend. Let the card be printed in the largest type, and a hundred extra Liberators3 struck off and charged to me, and forwarded to the nominally free people of color in every village, town, and city of our country; and let them forthwith call public meetings, and pass resolves, demonstrative of their views and feelings respecting the American Colonization Society; and let the same be forwarded to me, together with the work of my friends Wright4 and Cornish 5 on the same subject, with all possible dispatch. While I can find means to travel, and bread and water to live upon, and as God shall give me health, and strength, and speech, all shall be exerted to the best of my ability in counteracting such influence as the

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accredited Secretary of the American negro-haters’ scheme of cruelty and extirpation may exert in its favor. Let the people of color and our friends distinctly understand, that if I am promptly responded to, and sustained, there is little doubt of success in thwarting him, with their resolves and remonstrances. I ask but a fair chance, and no favors of Mr. Gurley, before a British audience. George Thompson lives, and is willing now, as ever, to enter the arena with the Rev. Mr. Gurley, and contest inch by inch the high-handed injustice done the colored population from the moment the Society came forth haggard and deformed, as it ever has been, from its secret session-room, some twenty years ago, a bastard child; and it has never lost its first impressions, although it has appeared in a thousand garbs. I am happy to state, upon unquestionable authority, that Mr. Gurley’s meeting in Glasgow was a total failure,6 having some fifteen or twenty persons only present to hear his explanation, and account of the condition and prospects of Liberia. The name of the gentleman or Society seems to have explained the people away—if there was any explanation about it. Such a scheme would meet a similar reception in any other country, save the one from which he comes. I also learn, upon the best authority, that Mr. Gurley intends revisiting London, and hopes to make a favorable impression. I hope to be there, and trust it may be favorable to his return to the land of slavery and prejudice. Friend Thompson unites with me in much love to you and friends across the water. In haste, as usual, I subscribe myself, Ever affectionately yours for the suffering, C. LENOX REMOND Liberator (Boston, Mass.), 13 November 1840. 1. Ralph Randolph Gurley (1797–1872) was born in Lebanon, Connecticut, and educated at Yale. In 1822 he moved to Washington, D.C., became affiliated with the American Colonization Society, and served successively as agent, secretary, vice-president, and life director, remaining with the society until his death. He lectured widely on colonization in the United States and Britain, visiting the latter in 1840. A Presbyterian clergyman, Gurley frequently preached in black churches and worked among the black poor in Washington. DAB, 8:56–57. 2. The Royal Exchange, Glasgow, was a marketplace for local merchants. 3. William Lloyd Garrison began publishing the Liberator in Boston on 1 January 1831 and, with the intermittent assistance of Edmund Quincy, Maria Weston Chapman, Oliver Johnson, and others, edited the paper for the next thirty-five years. During its first year, a majority of the Liberator’s subscribers were located in the black communities of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. But by October 1834, over twenty-three hundred copies were published and distributed weekly; it became the most controversial, the best-known and most widely read antislavery newspaper. In addition to espousing immediatist abolitionism, the paper

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at various times supported anticolonization, free produce, disunionism, antiSabbatarianism, nonresistance (including opposition to political antislavery), and women’s rights and generally gave a sympathetic hearing to most other mid-nineteenth-century reform causes. It informed readers of American and British antislavery meetings and activities, published letters from abolitionists and their critics, reviewed antislavery literature, reported federal government actions vis-à-vis slavery, and reprinted “atrocities” culled from southern newspapers. During the Civil War, considerable space was devoted to war correspondence and reports. Garrison terminated publication of the Liberator with the 29 December 1865 issue. John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, Mass., 1963), 114, 127–43, 165–67, 181, 436; Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 1:587, 2:xxvi, 2, 3:3, 466, 4:37; Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1:327, 430–33, 2:39, 113, 122, 199, 238, 259, 331, 3:155, 4:86. 4. Theodore S. Wright (1797–1847) was born in New Jersey (probably in the New Brunswick area) and was the son of R. P. G. Wright, one of the first black abolitionists and an early black opponent of the American Colonization Society. Theodore Wright attended New York City’s African Free School, where he was taught by Samuel E. Cornish, his lifelong friend and mentor. During Wright’s second of three years at Princeton Theological Seminary, he earned the enmity of fellow students, faculty, and administrators by serving as an agent for Cornish’s fledgling newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, and thereby joining Cornish’s crusade against colonization. Both men maintained their anticolonization convictions throughout their antislavery careers and collaborated on one of the better-known rebuttals to colonizationist arguments entitled The Colonization Scheme Considered, Its Rejection by the Colored People (1840). In 1828 Wright settled in New York City to replace the ailing Cornish as pastor of the First Colored Presbyterian Church. The congregation (founded in 1822 by Cornish) prospered under Wright’s tutelage, was renamed Shiloh Presbyterian Church, and became one of the two most important black congregations in the city with over four hundred members. Wright was an active minister, concerned with temperance, black self-help, and education. He organized the Phoenix Society to promote black progress in “morals, literature and the mechanical arts,” and he founded a church-affiliated temperance society. During the mid-1830s, he enrolled black youths from the city in Gerrit Smith’s manual labor school at Peterboro, New York, and served as a trustee of the Phoenix High School for Colored Youth—an institution he helped found in 1836. But Wright’s antislavery work was his most enduring contribution to reform. He attended the formative meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, served (with his father) on the society’s executive committee, and continued as a leader of the society throughout the 1830s. While attending a New England Anti-Slavery Society meeting in 1835, Wright became the first black speaker to address an integrated antislavery gathering. When the American society factionalized in 1840, Wright became a leading black member of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society for many reasons, including his friendship with Lewis Tappan and ideological disagreements with Garrison. Wright was instrumental in forming the New York Vigilance Committee. He was a founder and leader of the New York Association for the Political Elevation and Improvement of Colored People

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(1838) and led the struggle for black voting rights in New York State during the 1840s. Wright was active in the black convention movement. In 1843, when the Buffalo National Convention of Colored Citizens divided over Henry Highland Garnet’s call for slave violence, Wright (who was a close friend of Garnet’s) acted as peacemaker. Always as concerned with racial prejudice as he was with slavery, Wright cautioned white abolitionists that they “must annihilate in their own bosoms the cord of caste.” During his life, Wright frequently battled ill health, but by 1845, the severity of his illnesses forced him to curtail his reform activities. Wright died in the spring of 1847. David E. Swift, “Black Presbyterian Attacks on Racism: Samuel E. Cornish, Theodore S. Wright and Their Contemporaries,” JPH 51:433–70 (Winter 1973); Bella Gross, “Freedom’s Journal and the Rights of All,” JNH 27:241–86 (July 1932); NYE, 24 September 1836 [1:0704]; FM, 27 October 1836 [1:0720]; NYZW, 7 January 1837 [1:0894]; HF, 4 November 1837 [2:0255]; CA, 8 July, 5 August, 16 September, 2 December 1837, 6 October 1838, 11 May 1839, 18 April, 26 December 1840, 18 January, 26 June, 2 October 1841 [2:0104, 0134, 0189, 0290, 0607, 3:0056, 0389, 0757, 0758, 0808, 4:0078, 0231]; E, 27 September 1838, 17 January 1839, 25 March 1847 [3:0904, 5:0386]; NASS, 24, 31 December 1840, 25 April, 12 October 1844, 1 April, 3 June 1847 [3:0794, 0940]; LS, 5 November 1846 [5:0279]; LP, 19 November 1846 [5:0282]; Theodore S. Wright to Gerrit Smith, 4 September 1834, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU [1:0524]; DANB, 675–76. 5. Samuel Cornish (ca. 1796–1858) was born free in Sussex County, Delaware, moved to Philadelphia in 1816, was educated by black minister John Gloucester, and eventually taught at Gloucester’s African School. Cornish was licensed to preach in 1819 and ministered two years in Maryland before moving to New York City as pastor of the First Colored Presbyterian Church (later Shiloh Presbyterian Church), where he remained until 1828, when illness and other responsibilities forced him to relinquish the post to his protégé, Theodore S. Wright. Cornish’s first years in New York reveal many of the ideas that framed his future reform activity. He opposed colonization, and though he flirted with emigration, he rejected it as a solution to black problems. He believed that education, moral reform, and self-help were the means to improve the condition of free black Americans but never hesitated to censure white prejudice. Cornish’s first public forum came as senior editor of the Freedom’s Journal, the first black American newspaper, which was established by Cornish and John Russwurm in 1827. Cornish remained with the paper until its demise in March 1829 and, in two months, established the short-lived Rights of All (May–October 1829). Cornish also devoted his energies to black organizations that sponsored practical programs for black improvement. He supported the black citizens’ movement during the early 1830s and worked as an agent for the Phoenix Society of New York—a black protective association that sponsored the Phoenix High School in New York. He was one organizer of the American Moral Reform Society. In 1833 he helped Lewis and Arthur Tappan establish the New York Anti-Slavery Society, and two years later, he became a member of the executive committee of Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society, a position he held until 1840. In March 1837, he founded the Colored American, the most successful of the early black newspapers. During the late 1830s and early 1840s, Cornish’s positions on antislavery and

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black self-help led him into a series of conflicts and controversies. In June 1839, he was attacked for his opposition to the idea of an antislavery political party, and as a member of the executive committee of the New York Vigilance Committee, Cornish forced the resignation of David Ruggles as the committee’s secretary because of Ruggles’s use of extralegal activities to free fugitive slaves. Cornish was also involved in the schism within the American Anti-Slavery Society, objecting to William Lloyd Garrison’s anticlerical tone and his stance on the role of women in the movement. Although he did not support an antislavery political party, he did believe in political action in the name of abolition and supported the right of black suffrage. For those reasons as well as his longtime friendship with Lewis Tappan and his anger with the American Anti-Slavery Society for its 1838 decision to drop agents assigned to educate free blacks, Cornish helped organize the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in May 1840 and became a member of its executive committee. By the mid-1840s, Cornish was isolated from many of his associates in the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society over the issue of an antislavery political party. But Cornish did not allow antislavery controversies to interfere with his role in the black church. He helped J. W. C. Pennington organize the Union Missionary Society (1841), assisted Lewis Tappan when he reorganized the society into the American Missionary Association (1845), and served as pastor to Presbyterian churches in New Jersey and the Emmanuel Church of New York City. Cornish continued as an active antislavery reformer well into the 1850s. William H. Pease and Jane H. Pease, Bound with Them in Chains (Westport, Conn., 1972), 140–61; Swift, “Black Presbyterian Attacks,” 433–70; Benjamin Quarles, Black Abolitionists (London, 1969), 6, 33, 68, 79–80, 109; Howard Bell, “The American Moral Reform Society, 1836–1841,” JNE 27:34–40 (Winter 1958); Gross, “Freedom’s Journal,” 241– 86; Bell, “Free Negroes,” 447–55; Pease and Pease, They Who Would be Free, 12, 24– 26, 31, 71, 79–84, 113, 122, 133–34, 136, 175, 194–95, 209–11, 257–58, 291–92; Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 82–84; DANB, 134–35. 6. After pleading the colonization cause for two months in London, American Colonization Society spokesman R. R. Gurley spent October 1840 in Glasgow advocating African colonization schemes. While there, he devoted considerable energy to organizing a public meeting on colonization by distributing circulars and personally courting local figures. Despite this, he only drew an audience of fifteen to thirty people. R. R. Gurley, Mission to England, in Behalf of the American Colonization Society (Washington, D.C., 1841), 13, 51, 68; John Scoble to [John] T[r]edgold, 30 October 1840, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; Lib, 6, 27 November 1840.

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9. Charles Lenox Remond to Richard Allen 7 January 1841 The splintering of the American Anti-Slavery Society in the spring of 1840 left the organization financially crippled. That fall the society sent its agent John A. Collins on a general fund-raising mission to England. Collins joined Charles Lenox Remond, who had no enthusiasm for a joint tour designed to promote the American Anti-Slavery Society but reluctantly agreed to it. Personal relations between the two deteriorated, and early in 1841, with their efforts a failure, Remond and Collins separated. Unlike Collins, Remond recognized that general fund raising and partisan ideological posturing were counterproductive in Britain. Collins’s behavior strained Remond’s relations with a number of influential British antislavery leaders, particularly those who supported the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in its dispute with William Lloyd Garrison and his American adherents. Like other black abolitionists that followed him abroad, Remond understood that his primary obligation was to the slave. When necessary, he antagonized a white American colleague like Collins by taking an independent course in Britain. Remond sought to recoup his flagging lecture tour by organizing a series of speaking engagements in Ireland, where antislavery leaders like Richard Allen, Richard D. Webb, and James Haughton remained supportive. Ward, “Charles Lenox Remond,” 73–97. 6 Queen Street [Place] London, [England] January 7, 1841 Richard Allen Esq.1 R. D. Webb Esq.2 My Dear Friend, I feel it duty to [firstly] to confess my guilt in not answering your very kind favor addressed to me during my indisposition while at the kind & hospitable home of my dear friend John Murray Esq. on the Clyde. Soon after my arrival in Scotland, and I beg you accept the following as my apology, as soon as my health was sufficiently restored, I commenced travelling & talking in connexion with our mutual friend G. Thompson, his efforts more particularly in behalf of injured India, mine in behalf of my enslaved brethern in America, and continued this course until the unexpected arrival of John A. Collins Esq.3 from the United States. Up to this time I had been in the weekly expectation of visiting Ireland & not unlikely in conjunction with Mr. Thompson he having on more than one occassion expressed himself to this effect, and as I was laboring under his

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auspices I delayed writing you from the want of information definite as to the probable time of my visit to Ireland, and as a consequence the fault is not mine that I have not shaken the warm hands, of my Irish friends long ere this. Many times since our separation have I wished to be among them again, and to advocate in my poor but I trust honest manner the present & future prospects of my Enslaved country men & women, and it affords me no small amount of pleasure in saying that the prospect now is of my doing so very shortly & should my friend Collins be disappointed from his limited time in accompanying me, I shall [word crossed out] start alone in the course of a few weeks. We have been in this city much of the time for the last four weeks & I am sorry to say that opposite influence to his important mission from the committee of the British & Foreign Anti Slavery Society has been such as to retard in a very great degree the prosecution of his mission. Mr. Collins is now in correspondence with the committee they having declined his first application & what the second decision will be, I am utterly unprepared to pass an opinion, but sure I am thus far the committee have acted without that knowledge of the institution he represents & comes duly defended from & to my mind it is strange that a body of men possessing so much intelligence, cannot make the distinction between the action & deliberations of the American A. S. Society in its associated capacity as such, and the acts or views entertained by some few members who act on their individual capacity and for whose views the Society are no more responsible than the East India company4 and I hesitate not in saying that the Am. Society would deem it equally reasonable, equally rational, equally just & equally philanthropic should the Broad Street committee5 charge the E. I. company as themselves, with the entertaining of either Mr. Garrisons, or Mr. Collins, or Mrs. Chapmans6 or Mrs. Motts7 views on any subject conflicting with the Constitution of the American A. S. Society;8 and I really think that the conduct of this & every other body having the name of Anti Slavery & treating the appeals of the Am. Society with indifference because of the views of Mr. Garrison,9 will ere two years shall elapse appear in the estimation of all liberal men Childish in the extreme. Why I never attended a nonresistance10 meeting in my life & shall I be shunned because Mr. Garrison is such. Yet such is the principle upon which many in this country base their opposition to the A. A. S. Society. Some few friends advise the calling of a public meeting at either Freemasons11 or Exeter Hall12 & in the event of securing Your own free spirited Liberator. D. O’Connell Esq. friend Thompson and [me] have other influential men to take part in its deliberations and thereby place Old13 and New Organisation14 in its true light before the British public. G. Thompson no doubt would willingly consent & if for no other reason as a means of putting the troublesome question at rest and surely the genuine philanthropists of Great Britain have no good

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wish to act from Ex parte information. Then let the truth be known & read of all men. And many think could Mr. D. Connell be made master of the circumstances in the case his master mind will not decline an expression. With this hurried & imperfect note I shall mail one copy of the Ipswich Express15 to Yrself & one to my friend Mr. Haughton,16 which contains a very imperfect report of Mr. Collins speech & from which you may gather a slight view of things in America regarding the subject to which I have adverted. You will have the kindness to tender to the friends in Dublin the expression of my affectionate regards & believe me to be Ever Your attached & obliged Friend, C. Lenox Remond N.B. Friend Allen I received a letter from a female friend in America a few days since wishing to know if I had seen Capt. C. Stuart saying at the same time that from the account given him by a friend she would be most happy of an acquaintance with him & asks if he is expected to visit the United States soon. And as she is a warm friend of Mr. Garrisons to carry out the joke I shall forward her by the earliest conveyance those numbers of the Irish Friend17 which contain friend Stuarts Letters.18 Again wishing yrself family & friends good health and A very Happy New Year. I am &c, C. L. Remond M.N. I must beg pardon for confusing yours with the name of friend Webb: having left your letter in my [word omitted] in Scotland. C. British Empire Manuscripts, Rhodes House Library, Oxford. Published by permission. 1. Richard Allen (1803–1886), a committed Dublin Quaker, actively supported Middle Eastern missionary work, peace, temperance, British India reform, and Garrisonian antislavery. In 1828 he married Anne Webb. He attended the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840 and successfully resisted attempts to induce Irish laborers to the West Indies once black apprenticeship ended. Allen visited America in 1883, only to be distressed by the condition of the freedmen and by the continuation of racial prejudice, particularly in churches. DQB, n.p.; H. M. Wigham, A Christian Philanthropist of Dublin: A Memoir of Richard Allen (London, 1886), 40– 41, 56, 63, 213–25. 2. Richard Davis Webb (1805–1872), a moderately successful Dublin printer and bookseller, advanced the antislavery cause by publishing and editing the AntiSlavery Advocate (1855–63) and by writing and distributing antislavery pamphlets. Webb led the Irish Garrisonians, cofounded the Hibernian Anti-Slavery Society, and dominated the Dublin antislavery circle that included James Haughton and Richard Allen. Webb functioned as a major link between Ameri-

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can and British Garrisonians by maintaining a frequent transatlantic correspondence, coordinating Irish contributions for the Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar, welcoming visiting abolitionists to his home, and helping organize their tours of Ireland. Although raised as a Quaker, he resigned his membership in 1855. Webb cooperated closely with Irish temperance advocate Father Matthew. DQB, n.p.; Douglas Cameron Riach, “Ireland and the Campaign against American Slavery, 1830–1860” (Ph.D. diss., University of Edinburgh, 1975), 393–96, 542. 3. John A. Collins (1810–1879) was born in Vermont, educated at Andover Theological Seminary, and became a general agent for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. In late 1840, he was sent to England as an American Anti-Slavery Society agent to solicit operating funds for the society and its newspaper, the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Charles Lenox Remond joined Collins in those efforts, which proved to be unsuccessful in large part because Collins’s partisan Garrisonian attacks antagonized members of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Collins returned to the United States in early 1841 with $1,000. He briefly edited the antislavery Monthly Garland, but his increasing attraction to Fourierism brought abolitionist reprimands and led to his resignation as general agent of the Massachusetts society. Collins founded a Fourierist commune at Skaneateles, New York. When it failed in 1846, he moved to California, where he remained until his death. DAB, 4:307–8; Ward, “Charles Lenox Remond,” 75–83. 4. The East India Company was founded in 1599 by a charter from Elizabeth I. Initially created as a trading concern, it soon expanded its area of economic influence and became a military and commercial power. By the mid-nineteenth century, the company had ceased its trading activities and acted only as an agent for the colonial government of India. The company was disbanded in 1858. 5. The Broad Street Committee was the centralized administrative body that, in essence, controlled the operations and policies of the British and Foreign AntiSlavery Society. It was so named because it was headquartered at 27 New Broad Street in London. Temperley, British Antislavery, 67–68, 78. 6. Maria Weston Chapman (1806–1885), the daughter of Ann and Warren Weston of Weymouth, Massachusetts, spent several years in London before returning to Boston in 1828 to serve as principal of Ebenezer Bailey’s Young Ladies High School. In 1830 she married Boston merchant Henry Grafton Chapman, with whom she shared an antislavery commitment and four children. He died in 1842. Chapman became a prominent figure in Boston abolitionist circles and helped organize the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, the Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar, and the National Anti-Slavery Subscription Anniversary—major Garrisonian fund-raising devices. She held positions in several state and local societies and served on the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society. At different times during the 1830s and 1840s, Chapman edited the Boston female society’s annual report, Right and Wrong in Boston, and helped edit the Non-Resistant, the female antislavery annual Liberty Bell, the National Anti-Slavery Standard, and the Liberator. In 1848 she took her children to Paris for their education but returned to Boston in 1855. She worked during the early Civil War years in her son Henry’s New York City brokerage office, then retired to Weymouth. NAW, 1:324–25; DAB, 4:19; ASA, 1 October 1861. 7. Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793–1880) was born to Massachusetts Quaker par-

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ents. She was educated in Boston public schools and at the Friends Boarding School at Nine-Partners near Poughkeepsie, New York, where she served for two years as an assistant teacher. She married James Mott, and they had six children. She was a liberal Hicksite Quaker, an eloquent speaker, and an advocate of temperance, peace, women’s rights, black rights, and antislavery. In 1833 she attended the organizational meetings of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia and later helped form both the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society and the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women. Mott was denied delegate status at the 1840 World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in London because of her sex. She worked to organize the Seneca Falls, New York, women’s rights conference in July 1848. In 1857 Mott moved to a farm outside Philadelphia, where she remained until her death in 1880. She served as vice-president of the Pennsylvania Peace Society, continued to press for black suffrage through the Civil War years, and supported education projects for black children through the Friends Association for the Relief of Colored Freedmen. DAB, 7(2):288–90; NAW, 2:592–95. 8. The American Anti-Slavery Society—a national organization designed to coordinate and promote local antislavery societies in the free states—was founded at a convention held in Philadelphia during December 1833 by William Lloyd Garrison and abolitionists from nine states. The society became the most influential and active abolitionist association in the United States and remained in existence until 1871. The Emancipator was its official organ. Between 1836 and 1840, a series of general debates about the nature of antislavery reform, as well as disputes about political antislavery and the role of women in the movement, fragmented the society and culminated in May 1840 with the formation of the rival American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. In the wake of the split, the older society became a completely Garrisonian organization. It sponsored publication of the New Yorkbased National Anti-Slavery Standard (1840–70), admitted women into full participation, shunned direct political antislavery action, and championed anticolonization, nonresistance, and disunion. Garrison resigned from the American Anti-Slavery Society after the Civil War, but Wendell Phillips and others used the association to press for black suffrage. Lib, 4 January 1834; Louis Filler, The Crusade against Slavery (New York, N.Y., 1960), 66, 72, 129–36; Thomas, Liberator, 171–76, 246–48, 269–70, 362–66, 431–35; Aileen S. Kraditor, Means and Ends in American Abolitionism: Garrison and His Critics on Strategy and Tactics (New York, N.Y., 1969), 5, 38. 9. Between 1835 and 1841, William Lloyd Garrison’s evolving ideas on reform became the focus of a protracted and divisive debate within the abolitionist community. Although the debate was about fundamental reform principles, the conflict focused on Garrison’s criticism of the churches’ failure to champion black freedom, his opposition to antislavery political action, and his support for significant participation by women in the movement. By 1840 the antislavery consensus over which Garrison had initially presided fragmented. Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Women’s Rights Movement in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), 40–45; Kraditor, Means and Ends, 39–141; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 171–206. 10. For most nineteenth-century American reformers, nonresistance suggested a commitment to personal nonviolence. The New England Non-Resistance So-

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ciety, the major American nonresistance organization, was founded in 1838. It opposed all manifestations of force, including violence, voting, and political antislavery activity. Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca, N.Y., 1973), 5, 55–56, 61–62, 70–73, 88–91, 231, 261–63; Peter Brock, Radical Pacifists in Antebellum America (Princeton, N.J., 1968), 77–105, 116–18, 132–64. 11. Freemasons’ Hall and apartments were located behind the Tavern in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, in London. The masonic meeting place was occasionally used for public dinners, meetings, and concerts. J. Elmes, A Topographical Dictionary of London (London, 1831), 198. 12. Exeter Hall in the Strand, London, opened in 1831 and, because of its seating capacity of three thousand, was used for the annual May meetings of philanthropic and religious societies. With Freemasons’ Hall and the Crown and Anchor Tavern, it was the “recognised temple of modern philanthropy” and was often used for antislavery rallies. Henry B. Wheatley, London Past and Present, 3 vols. (London, 1891), 3:26. 13. “Old organization” refers to the American Anti-Slavery Society. 14. “New organization” refers to the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which was founded in May 1840 by Lewis Tappan and some thirty other dissatisfied American Anti-Slavery Society members, including Samuel Cornish, Theodore S. Wright, J. W. C. Pennington, and five other leading black abolitionists. The association hoped to expand the arena of abolitionist activity by endorsing the idea of antislavery political action. Although the AFASS met annually throughout the 1840s, the society did not flourish. The organization was administratively top-heavy, lacked vigorous local affiliates, was financially troubled, did not sharply define its goals, and failed to attract a large membership. The AFASS’s white leaders divided over whether or not the organization should attach itself to a political party. Black leaders were alienated by the association’s eventual support for a third political party and its 1852 endorsement of African settlement. Finally, the society never developed an effective newspaper. In 1855 Tappan abandoned the virtually defunct AFASS and joined with William Goodell and Gerrit Smith to form the American Abolition Society. Gerald Sorin, Abolitionism: A New Perspective (New York, N.Y., 1972), 61, 87, 92, 101; Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War against Slavery (Cleveland, Ohio, 1969), 193–200, 249, 252, 282, 279, 332, 213, 215, 315, 516; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 41, 73– 79, 80–85, 196, 259; Kraditor, Means and Ends, 7, 52–57, 63, 107, 118, 129, 141, 142, 148, 152. 15. The Liberal Ipswich Express was established in 1839. It advocated civil and religious reform and unrestricted free trade. Published by Stephen Piper and owned by a company of local merchants, the Express incorporated with the East Anglian Daily Times in 1874. Newspaper Press Directory, 1846 (London, 1846), 152; British Museum, Catalogue of the Newspaper Library, Colindale, 8 vols. (London, 1975), 2:454. 16. James Haughton (1795–1873), of Dublin, Ireland, was a successful commodities broker until retiring in 1850. Active in the antislavery movement and many other reform causes, including temperance, pacifism, vegetarianism, and the Irish independence movement, he penned several antislavery tracts and sup-

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ported freedmen’s aid efforts during the 1860s. DNB, 9:168; Temperley, British Antislavery, 259. 17. The Irish Friend was a monthly periodical devoted chiefly to the interests of Irish members of the Society of Friends. It was edited by William Bell and published in Belfast from 1837 to 1842. In 1843 it was succeeded by the British Friend of Glasgow, Scotland. BUCP, 2:552; BF, January 1913. 18. When American Anti-Slavery Society agent John Collins arrived in Britain during the late summer of 1840, British abolitionist Charles Stuart began to write and speak against his fund-raising mission. Stuart penned letters critical of Collins and the AASS, published them as a circular, and widely distributed it throughout British antislavery circles. During the winter of 1840–41, Stuart’s letters were reprinted in many British reform journals. Gilbert Hobbs Barnes, The Anti-Slavery Impulse, 1830–1844 (Gloucester, Mass., 1957), 281n.; Rice, Scots Abolitionists, 109; Lib, 7 May 1841.

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10. Charles Lenox Remond to William Lloyd Garrison 7 March 1841 After parting company with John A. Collins in mid-January 1841, Charles Lenox Remond spent several months on an antislavery lecture tour in the north of England. Headquartering in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, he addressed large audiences there and in North Shields, South Shields, and Sunderland during the winter months. While there, Remond learned that American Colonization Society secretary Ralph R. Gurley, whom he had successfully countered in Glasgow, was lecturing in London on behalf of the colonization cause. Remond postponed his northern tour and hurried to London to blunt Gurley’s designs. Meanwhile, the ACS agent left for the Isle of Wight off the coast of the south of England. Remond returned to Newcastle and penned a 7 March letter to William Lloyd Garrison confirming the Boston abolitionist’s earlier fears (expressed to Remond in August 1840) that Gurley would attempt to sway British abolitionists toward colonization as Elliott Cresson had tried to do eight years earlier. [John Morgan] to John Tredgold, 20 February 1841, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; Lib, 13 November 1840. NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE, [England] March 7, 1841 MY VERY DEAR FRIEND: I take advantage of the sailing of the next packet to forward a line or two, informing you that, in connexion with this sheet, I mail the London Chronicle,1 containing a report of meetings held by Messrs. Gurley and Cresson, from which you will learn that the fears entertained by me, at the time of the departure of yourself and friend N. P. Rogers,2 from this country, were not altogether groundless. That Mr. Gurley has placed his standard high, no one will deny; that he will attain to it, is quite another question. On Sunday, 21st ultimo, I was informed by a friend in Newcastle, that Mr. Gurley was to have a fourth meeting in favor of his wicked scheme; and, although engaged to lecture in Sunderland, 15 or 20 miles distant on the following (Monday) evening, I resolved, if possible, to be in London on the evening of his meeting. At the time of appointment, I appeared before a very large and intelligent assembly, in the Flag Lane Chapel, Sunderland.3 After addressing the audience 30 minutes, I gave them to understand why I wished to be in London on the Wednesday evening following; and, in order to do so, must beg to be excused, which

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excuse was readily granted by the usual demonstration. By the kindness of my friend Wm. Richardson,4 whose horse and gig were in waiting at the chapel door, I succeeded in reaching the depot for the 8 o’clock train, which immediately set off, and, at 8 o’clock on Tuesday evening, by travelling night and day, I was landed safely at the house of our friend Mrs. Moore,5 Queen-street Place; but, strange to tell, Mr. Gurley had left town that day for the Isle of Wight, in company with a sick friend. His return being a matter of much uncertainty, in two or three days I retraced my steps to this place, which has been for five weeks my head quarters of operations. Prior to starting for London, I had spoken twenty-three evenings out of thirty on the several subjects of slavery, temperance, prejudice, and colonization. At this time, I stand engaged to give a course of lectures in Sunderland and Durham, and am disappointed in doing so, from loss of voice and strength; but being in the hands of many kind and hospitable friends, I hope soon to be about again. From causes of which you doubtless are aware, I have not, for the past three months, been able to be heard (through the mist of new organization) for the poor slave, but hope now, during the remainder of my stay, to act unhampered. Mr. Collins and myself separated in Darlington some six weeks since. I believe he is about proceeding to Ireland soon, if not already gone. Nobly do our Irish friends contest for truth and justice. I expect to go over in a few weeks to Ireland, and, before going, I hope to see a recent Liberator, or Standard.6 Either would be a treat. If either has been sent me for the last two months, I have failed in its receipt. What can the Rev. N. Colver7 mean by sending such letters across to this country? Does he mean to brand every man as a scoundrel, who differs from him in sentiment or opinion? And would he charge infidelity upon every one who attended the convention recently held in Boston?8 Surely, such letters would lead me directly to question the genuineness of his christianity, as well as the saneness of his mind, to say nothing of his spirit. To cap the climax of absurdities, a printed letter is going the rounds of this country, over the signature of Capt. Charles Stuart,9 respecting myself. The charge is, first, that I am delegated to this country to collect aid for the American Anti-Slavery Society; and, secondly, that I am of the Garrison party! From this it would appear, that what was great, and good, and noble, and christian, and philanthropic, and anti-slavery —in 1835, has become small, and evil, and mean, and infidel, and slavish, and pro-slavery—in 1841! Indeed, may we not exclaim, “How have the mighty fallen!” Surely, such inconsistency will never proselyte me to new organization at home, much less abroad. If the house, (old organization) is built upon the sand, it will fall; if upon a foundation of rock, it will stand; and that, too, in defiance of all the missiles

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envy, malice, sectarianism, calumny, falsehood and persecution can hurl against it, by those who wield such weapons even with remarkable dexterity. In view of the conflict which appears to be waxing hotter and hotter at home, I can only trust and pray that the colored people will be true to themselves; and the Standard, around which they should rally as one man, will appear to them as plain as if written with a sunbeam upon yonder sky, if they are looking to the signs of the times. A crisis is fast approaching, when decision will indeed be necessary, and action the most prompt in character unavoidable. If they cannot trust their best friends in fair weather, they surely will be wanting in the hour of danger and of storm. If our people had spoken as they should have done, at the time of holding the first convention in Philadelphia,10 a work would have been done worthy of them and the cause they love. There is yet time for its accomplishment. We need more radicalism among us, before we can speak as becomes a suffering, oppressed and persecuted people. We have been altogether too fearful of martyrdom—quite too indefinite in our views and sentiments— too slow in our movements. These failings (I will not call them faults) the oppressor and the persecutor, together with the negro-hating colonizationist, have taken advantage of. Let every case where legal rights are withheld, be legally investigated. Let every colored man, called upon to pay taxes to any institution in which he is deprived or denied its privileges and advantages, withhold his taxes, though it costs imprisonment or confiscation. Let our motto be—No privileges, no pay. I had hoped to reach home in time to be present during the anniversaries in May.11 In this, I shall be disappointed, from causes beyond my control. Wishing to be kindly remembered to your family, and to the friends who may enquire after me, and with wishes for your continued health, welfare, and success, believe me to remain, truly, Your affectionate friend, in bonds for truth and the oppressed, C. LENOX REMOND Liberator (Boston, Mass.), 21 May 1841. 1. The Morning Chronicle, a London daily established in 1770, advocated moderate Whig interests, including support for the manufacturing industries, free trade, constitutional liberalism, state education, and improved education for workingclass children. The paper stopped publication in 1862. H. R. Fox Bourne, English Newspapers: Chapters in the History of Journalism, 2 vols. (New York, N.Y., 1966), 2:242. 2. Nathaniel Peabody Rogers (1794–1846) was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, graduated from Dartmouth College, and practiced law in Portsmouth for two decades. In 1838 he became editor of the Herald of Freedom,

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a Concord, New Hampshire, antislavery newspaper, and the official organ of the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society. Active in the New England Non-Resistance Society, Rogers opposed all forms of organization, even formal meetings. NCAB, 2:320. 3. Shortly after leaving John A. Collins, Charles L. Remond began “lecturing to very large audiences” in the north of England. On 22 February 1841, Remond spoke at Flag Lane Chapel, a Primitive Methodist church located in Sunderland and opened in 1824. Ward, “Charles Lenox Remond,” 82; Temperley, British Antislavery, 7–10, 170–72; Lib, 5 February 1841. 4. Remond probably refers to a member of the prominent Richardson reform family of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, which included Henry and Anna Richardson. 5. Remond probably refers to Mrs. Moore, the wife or the mother of Mark Moore, the proprietor of a boardinghouse at 6 Queen Street Place, Upper Thames Street, London. 6. The National Anti-Slavery Standard began publishing on 11 June 1840 in New York as the organ of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Plagued by continuing financial problems, the Standard nevertheless established itself as a leading Garrisonian paper with a fairly wide circulation. The Standard published weekly and covered abolitionist news and events as well as a vast range of subjects, including foreign affairs. Originally edited by James C. Jackson, the paper had a number of editors, a fact best explained by Garrison’s constant influence; these editors included Nathaniel P. Rogers (1840–41), Lydia Maria Child (1841–43), David Lee Child (1843–44), Sydney Howard Gay (1844–58), and Oliver Johnson (1858–65). Associate editors included Edmund Quincy and Maria Weston Chapman. The Standard ceased publication in 1871. Joseph Anthony Del Porto, “A Study of American Anti-Slavery Journals” (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State College, 1953), 184–88; Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 2:xxvi, xxviii, 553, 577, 660, 662, 681, 694, 704, 708, 719, 725, 729, 730, 3:2, 27, 161, 163, 175–76, 305–6, 309–14, 340–42. 7. Nathaniel Colver (1794–1870) was a Baptist minister and lecturer for the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1839 Colver split with the Garrisonians over the woman question and nonresistance. During November and December 1840, Colver wrote letters to Britain insinuating that Garrison and his followers were religious infidels and social radicals. Between 1839 and 1852, he served as pastor of the First Free Baptist Church in Boston (Tremont Temple). Colver helped end the Latimer fugitive slave affair by purchasing Latimer from his master and, in 1850, urged disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Law. After the Civil War, he established the Colver Institute for the training of black ministers in Richmond, Virginia. “Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society,” 27–28 January 1841, UkMJr; DAB, 4:324; John L. Myers, “Organization of the Seventy: To Arouse the North against Slavery,” MA 48:29–46 (January 1966); Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 2:336, 412, 415, 3:17, 23. 8. The reference is to the ninth annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, held in Boston at Marlboro Chapel on 27–28 January. Lib, 5 February 1841. 9. Charles Stuart (1783–1865) was born in Jamaica, served with the British army, and was later influential in Anglo-American antislavery circles. Stuart sided

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with the new organization against the Garrisonians after 1840 and toured Britain on behalf of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in an attempt to combat the fund-raising mission of John A. Collins. He later moved to Canada and became a corresponding secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada. Temperley, British Antislavery, 13, 21, 195; Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 19n., 128– 30, 163–64, 375; D. L. Dumond, Anti-Slavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America (New York, N.Y., 1961), 169, 173. 10. The reference is to the founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia in December 1833. 11. During each May, most Anglo-American benevolent and reform societies held annual gatherings, which also served as annual business meetings. Between the 1830s and 1870, major American anniversary weeks were held in both New York and Boston. The New York meetings included national health-reform conventions, the American Tract Society, missionary societies, the American Bible Society, Sunday school unions, the YMCA, American Seamen’s Friend Society, American Peace Society, American Education Society, Prison Discipline Society, American Anti-Slavery Society, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, American Colonization Society, and others. The anniversaries were an opportunity for organizations “to compare notes, hold meetings, and raise money.” All utilized a similar format, beginning with several religious services and anniversary sermons on a Sunday, followed by a week of organizational annual meetings; four to five concurrent meetings were not unusual. Clifford S. Griffin, Their Brother’s Keepers: Moral Stewardship in the United States, 1800–1865 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1960), 28, 34, 36, 40, 64; William Edward Farrison, William Wells Brown: Author and Reformer (Chicago, Ill., 1969), 422–23; Lib, 3, 17 May 1834, 17 May 1836, 19 May 1837, 18 May 1838, 20 May 1842, 9 May 1845, 26 May 1848, 1 June 1849, 10 May 1850, 16, 30 May 1851, 25 May 1855, 29 May 1857, 10 June 1859, 25 May 1860; E, 29 May 1840, 13 May 1841, 1 June 1843, 15, 29 May 1844, 14, 27 May, 4 June 1845, 17 May 1848.

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11. Charles Lenox Remond to Nathaniel P. Rogers 2 October 1841 Charles Lenox Remond’s Irish lecture tour vindicated his earlier independent course of action. Begun in late May 1841, it proved to be the most successful phase of his seventeen-month stay in Britain. Dublin abolitionist Richard D. Webb reported to William Lloyd Garrison that Remond’s Irish lectures were “triumphant.” Remond delivered many speeches to receptive and overflowing crowds in churches, town halls, and commercial buildings throughout Ireland. After beginning with a series of six meetings in Dublin, he spent much of the summer in the southwest, lecturing in Wexford, Waterford, Limerick, County Clare, and other locations. From there, he proceeded to Belfast and Dublin, returning to England in mid-November. Remond’s 2 October report to Nathaniel P. Rogers on his Irish visit reflects his pleasure with the tour and his recognition of Ireland’s importance to American antislavery—a significance understood by many later black abolitionists in Britain. NASS, 14 October 1841; Ward, “Charles Lenox Remond,” 102; Lib, 24 September, 19 November 1841; Charles L. Remond to Richard Allen, 19 November 1841, IreDFh [4:0302]. Richard Allen’s 62 High Street Dublin, [Ireland] October 2d, 1841 My Very dear Friend. I neither intend or pretend this as a letter to You. In view of the vast amount I should be delighted to write both favorable & unfavorable respecting our cause in America & the part I honestly believe Old Ireland is destined to take in the matter and as I took my pen for the purpose of giving You the name of a subscriber for Your paper.1 Must be content with doing so inasmuch as my limited time will not permit me to do more than add that never during my little Anti Slavery experience have I seen so much to rejoice over as the prominance our Enterprise is obtaining with the public mind both at home & abroad—especially in England & Ireland—& the latter country I am fully convinced is capable of exerting an influence more direct & important[,] more open & important than thousands of intelligent persons have been wont to imagine. I have visited some six or seven important cities & towns in Ireland. In all of [them] I have held Anti American Slavery meetings and never in my life have I seen deeper interest Exhibited in proportion as the Irish people become Enlightened. I little supposed on crossing I should so prolong my visit among this

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warm-generous-hospitable & liberty loving people. But believing I have done the cause of my Enslaved Countrymen some little I will not allow myself to count upon or regret the consumption of time. Altho. I frankly confess to you friend Rogers that I never knew what self denial was before, the separation from my dear parents & sisters2 much longer would be more than I could possibly sustain and I feel that dear as the cause is to my heart I am not at liberty to distress our family in their feelings by my protracted stay in this distant country. In fact nothing short of a consciousness of duty—originating in my belief of the greatness—goodness & justness of our cause would have induced to remain. And I thank God & take courage in being spared to see so much accomplished for the advance already made. For the past ten years I have been sanguine in my Expectations—and may I not say that up to the present hour they are more than realised. And while You friend Rogers together with Your coadjutors in Your State like the not to be cast down fearless & faithful pioneer Garrison with his coadjutors in the Old Bay State have much—quite too much for the credit of the community & country to contend with—you have evrything to Encourage. Evrything to Stimulate—Evrything the christian should need to sustain—and I conclude by saying let the “Herald” be true to its trust and You may with safety say “Fortiter fideliter feliciter.” We will carry this question God helping the right, the bleeding & the dumb. I hope to see you & yours soon after my return home. Until [then?] I remain with the best of wishes Yours affectionately, Charles L. Remond N. B. I have received the subscription & postage for the Herald of Freedom for one Year from date and you will be good enough to forward the paper immediately directed to Miss Mrs. Mannix.3 Dike parade Cork. Ireland And immediately upon my arrival I will forward the amount according to your request. I have regretted not a little you have not sent the Herald from time to time but persume it escaped your memory. One other request & I have done. Don’t publish any part of this scrambled & imperfect communication as I am writing on my legs & one or two friends are waiting for me in the parlour. You [are] too well acquainted & appreciate the dublin friends too highly to make it necessary that I speak or write to their praise. In fact no language could be in too high commendation of such Men & families as those of R. Allen[,] Jas Haughton[,] R. D. & JH.4 Webb Etc. May their number increase & heaven bless & prosper & succeed them is the unfeigned prayer of Yours Truly, CLR Nathaniel P. Rogers Collection, Haverford College Library, Haverford, Pa. Published by permission.

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1. The Herald of Freedom was founded in Concord, New Hampshire, in 1836 as an organ of the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society. Joseph H. Kimball, the original editor, was succeeded by Nathaniel P. Rogers, who built the Herald’s reputation as a Garrisonian journal. Published weekly, its circulation was never large, and its financial position remained precarious. In 1844 a dispute over the paper’s ownership developed, in part as a result of Roger’s antipathy toward any type of organization, political or abolitionist. Rogers lost the struggle, resigned his post, and, in December 1844, was replaced by Parker Pillsbury. Two years later, the Herald of Freedom merged with the Pioneer, edited in Lynn, Massachusetts, and, in time, became the Pioneer and Herald of Freedom, owned by Christopher Robinson. Del Porto, “American Anti-Slavery Journals,” 163–70; Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 3:120–21, 163–70, 197, 285–88. 2. Charles L. Remond’s family included his parents Nancy and John, six sisters, of whom Sarah Parker, Caroline, and Elizabeth are well known, and one brother. Ward, “Charles Lenox Remond,” 9. 3. Mrs. [Mary?] Mannix of Dyke Parade, Cork, was one of the secretaries, with Isabel Jennings, of the Cork Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. The County and City of Cork Almanac, 1842 (1842). 4. The initials “J. H.” are those of Richard Webb’s brother James H., who was also a Dublin abolitionist.

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12. Charles Lenox Remond to Richard Allen 19 November 1841 One important result of Charles Lenox Remond’s British lecture tour was the acquisition of household goods, craft items, and other commodities, to be sold at the Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar. Remond was the first of several black abolitionists to collect British contributions for the bazaar. These goods proved to be popular at the Christmas week festivities and increased both the number of visitors to the bazaar and the profits earned by its sponsor, the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. In ensuing years, the display and sale of foreign items helped make the Boston bazaar a chief source of funding for the American Anti-Slavery Society. Remond discussed the collection and shipment to Boston of goods for the bazaar in a 19 November 1841 letter to Irish abolitionist Richard Allen. Ward, “Charles Lenox Remond,” 103–5. 15 Lever Street Manchester, [England] November 19th, 1841 Richard Allen My Very Dear Friend, On my return from Liverpool last evening I found Your welcome, anxious, & zealous favor in writing and I confess it delighted me, but I am unwilling at the same to admit You are or can be more anxious & zealous & interested for the timely arrival of the Boxes in Boston than myself & be assured I am not acting either indifferently or unadvisedly, & wind & weather permitting I will convey them Myself to their place of destination in due time. Some of the Boxes did not arrive until Yesterday noon & if they had all arrived on the same day with those from Dublin the time was too late for them to be received on board of Steamer. I have together with Mr. Thompson written by the Steamer of today to Mrs. Chapman intimating the circumstance & that they may depend & calculate upon my arrival & their receipt by the Columbia which sails on the 4th. december and now dont give yourself any uneasiness I beg. The contribution will be advertised & with an ordinary Chance I shall be one week in advance of the Bazaar.1 No meetings in either Manchester, Liverpool or any other place would have detained me a single hour. Im ready to go, willing to go, pray to go, and would have gone if possible, “Vincit [illegible] patiae.” And on Monday we go again to Liverpool. Shall [enter] the Boxes, take my passage & have all things in readiness. If it had been my happiness to get off by the Acadia it would have been joyful to see Yourself & dear Mrs. Allen2 and any others of the dear friends from

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Dublin but as I was disappointed I am as a matter of course thankful You did not come over especially at this season. I did not look for it & it would have [been] more than I Expected. Heaven knows I want no additional demonstration of the [interest] of my beloved Irish friends & may God bless & prosper them for it & this last altho. by no means least, raises them still higher in my regard & affections. I shall continue my meeting a little longer here as you will [perceive] by the Enclosed & then have one, two or three in Liverpool & all over. I found lots of letters from kind friends in the care of Mrs. Hodgson & Riley3 and many of them intended for passage reading & I find it great self denial to refrain from the perusal of them. Like the little boys coppers they burn my pocket & I long to enjoy their contents. 15 Lever Street is just now full of fanaticism. Thompson, Moore, Curtis & Remond domiciling together.4 American slavery. B[ritish] India Slavery. Repeal of the Corn Laws.5 War. Peace. Teetotalism Etc. Etc. Etc., all rebelled against & advocated under one & the same roof. “Very Good,” “Never say die,” “Alls Right.” Now dont Exclaim as I half fear You will “Alls wrong.” It would be unwise to risk the chance of a sailing vessel, for with a tolerable passage they could be hardly landed in season. So once more I beg You give yourself no unnecessary anxiety of mind. I will write You again & in the meantime if can in replying to this worse than scrawled sheet make me up some few facts and statistics on the progress of Teetotalism in Ireland6 & which favor it was my intention to ask you before. You will do me a great kindness. And with unaltered & affectionate remembrance the Entire family & friends with the noble band of Coadjutors. Believe me in union with my worthy brothers G. T.[,] R. R. R. M., M. Curtis7 to Remain always—Everwhere & under all circumstances Your Affectionate & Truly Obliged Friend, C. Lenox Remond Friends Historical Library, Dublin. Published by permission. 1. The idea of an antislavery bazaar, an event at which clothing, home articles, ornaments, and other items could be sold to raise funds to support antislavery activities, was conceived by members of the new Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1834. Held just before Christmas that year, the first fair raised $300 and became a traditional and essential fund-raising source for Garrisonian abolitionists and the American Anti-Slavery Society. By the mid-1840s, the fair (then known as the Anti-Slavery Bazaar) was often held in a large meeting place like Boston’s Faneuil Hall. Entertainment was provided, refreshments were available, and abolitionists came to regard the bazaar as a significant social event and a place to renew friendships, win converts to the cause, and hold preliminary strategy sessions before the annual January meeting of the Massachusetts AntiSlavery Society. The $65,000 collected from 1834 to 1857 served as a source of

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power and influence for the women abolitionists who supported the Massachusetts and American societies, assisted black institutions (i.e., the Infant School for Colored Children and the Samaritan Asylum for Indigent Colored Children), and sponsored lectures, legal actions, and abolitionist publications like the Liberator and the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Many abolitionist societies throughout the United States and England took their cue from the Boston society and held similar fairs. Antislavery fairs remained popular into the 1860s, although the Boston bazaar ceased after 1857. Lib, 3 May 1839; Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 2:4, 10, 195, 408, 420, 699, 716–17, 3: 135–36, 228, 239, 242, 397, 400, 452, 469, 517, 539; Benjamin Quarles, “Sources of Abolitionist Income,” MVHR 32:63–76 (June 1945). 2. Anne Allen, the wife of Dublin abolitionist Richard Allen, actively supported the American Anti-Slavery Society and collected goods for the annual Boston AntiSlavery Bazaar. Her prominence in Irish abolitionist circles waned in the 1850s. Riach, “Ireland and Campaign against Slavery,” 533. 3. Remond refers to Mrs. Adam Hodgson and Margaret Cropper Riley (often spelled “Ryley”) of Liverpool. Hodgson was the wife of a Liverpool maritime merchant, who had joined the abolitionist ranks after observing slavery during an 1819–20 trading voyage to the United States. Upon returning, he penned A Letter to M. Jean-Baptiste Say, on the Comparative Expense of Free and Slave Labour (1823), which convinced British abolitionists of the unprofitability of slavery. During the 1830s, he chaired the Committee of the Liverpool Anti-Slavery Society. The Hodgsons were close friends of leading British abolitionist James Cropper. Riley, a sister to Cropper, was the wife of Liverpool sailmaker James Riley (1768–1845). The Rileys were Quaker antislavery acquaintances of William Lloyd Garrison and entertained the Boston editor on his 1833 visit to Liverpool. Betty Fladeland, Men and Brothers: Anglo-American Antislavery Cooperation (Urbana, Ill., 1972), 153–54, 163; Edith F. Hurwitz, Politics and the Public Conscience: Slave Emancipation and the Abolitionist Movement in Britain (London, 1973), 67; Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 31n.; Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 1:234, 343. 4. Remond refers to his abolitionist acquaintances George Thompson, Robert Ross Rowan Moore, and Mathew Curtis. Moore (1811–1864), a Dublin attorney and political economist, was a member of the Irish Anti-Slavery Society. In 1841, after Thompson introduced him to free-trade advocate John Bright, he joined the Anti-Corn Law League and took an active part in the movement. Curtis, a Manchester machine manufacturer, served on the Manchester town council in 1839 and as the city’s mayor in 1860–61 and 1875–76. It is likely that Remond, Thompson, and Moore were “domiciling” at Curtis’s Manchester residence. Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 95; MEB, 1:794. 5. The Corn Laws of 1815 protected British landed society by effectively prohibiting the import of all foreign grains, but they soon came to symbolize aristocratic misrule. Beset by the economic depression of 1837–39, a group of Manchester industrialists (led by Richard Cobden) urged Corn Law repeal. The Anti-Corn Law League, a well-organized pressure group led by Cobden and Quaker manufacturer John Bright, successfully attracted broad support with carefully tailored appeals. In 1846 the Irish potato famine’s effect on food supply prompted Parliament to repeal the Corn Laws.

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6. The temperance movement in Ireland was led by Franciscan friar Theobald Matthew (1790–1856), who founded the Total Abstinence Society of Cork in 1838. Father Matthew is credited with converting millions of Irish to teetotalism. After his death, the movement declined rapidly. Robert Dunlop, Daniel O’Connell (New York, N.Y., 1900), 340; Justin Huntley McCarthy, Ireland since the Union (London, 1887), 112–13. 7. Remond refers to George Thompson, Robert Ross Rowan Moore, and Mathew Curtis.

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13. Speech by J. W. C. Pennington Delivered at Freemasons’ Hall, London, England 14 June 1843 J. W. C. Pennington arrived in England during early June 1843 as a Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society delegate to the London World’s Anti-Slavery Convention (13–20 June). The convention, which assembled at Freemasons’ Hall, was attended by a number of other prominent American antislavery figures, including fugitive slave Moses Grandy and New York Vigilance Committee secretary William Johnston. Pennington addressed the assembly at the 14 June morning session, which was chaired by Richard Peek. The session opened with a reading of the previous day’s minutes and an exchange on the subject of African missionaries. Pennington later offered remarks as part of a larger discussion of the condition of free blacks in the United States. Like many black visitors to Britain before and after him, Pennington described the northern free black population and its struggle with racial prejudice. ASRL, 21 June 1843; Temperley, British Antislavery, 154–56; I, 24 June 1843; J. F. Johnson, ed., Proceedings of the General AntiSlavery Convention (London, 1844; reprint, Miami, Fla., 1969), 41–61. As we1 are not privileged to present our case before a world’s Convention2 every day in every year, I shall have to beg your indulgence, and even if I should prove tedious, I hope I shall be permitted to proceed, because I regard it of great importance that the prominent facts connected with the condition and prospects of my people should be brought out in a meeting like this. By the last census, that of 1840,3 it will be seen that there are in the United States 386,235 free persons of colour, of different ages and sects. These are spread over thirty states and territories, in various numbers. The first question which I suppose a distant inquirer would start in regard to the free people of colour is, whether, in the United States, they are civilized. If, by civilization, is meant in general pursuing the same conduct, and following the same avocations that white persons of European descent do, then it must be answered, that they are civilized so far as circumstances and means will permit. We have indeed, as a body, so eagerly adopted all the forms of civilization as far as we can, that we have sometimes been very unkindly accused of aping and imitating the manners of the whites. The wisest and the best of men among the free people of colour felt themselves called upon as early as the year 1830, before there was any great movement among our white friends, to assemble a general Convention, the great object of which was to devise ways and means for the improvement and elevation of their

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condition. From that time, Conventions have been held with this view in the different states.4 The last general Convention was held in the city of New York, in the month of June, 1834, and I will read an extract or two from a declaration of sentiment that it put forth. That this Convention earnestly deplore the depressed condition of the coloured population of the United States; and they have in vain searched the history of nations to find a parallel. They claim to be the offspring of a parentage that once, for their excellence of attainment in the arts, literature, and science, stood before the world unrivalled. We have mournfully observed the fall of those institutions that shed lustre on our mother-country, and extended to Greece and Rome those refinements that made them objects of admiration to the cultivators of science. We have observed, that in no country under heaven have the descendants of an ancestry once enrolled in the history of fame, whose glittering monuments stood forth as beacons, disseminating light and knowledge to the uttermost parts of the earth, been reduced to such degrading servitude as that under which we labour from the effect of American slavery and American prejudice. The separation of our fathers from the land of their birth, their earthly ties, and early affections, was not only sinful in its nature and tendency, but it led to a system of robbery, bribery, and persecution, offensive to the laws of nature and of justice. Therefore, under whatever pretext of authority these laws have been promulgated or executed, whether under parliamentary, colonial, or American legislation, we declare them, in the sight of Heaven, wholly null and void, and should be immediately abrogated. That we find ourselves, after the lapse of two centuries, on the American continent, the remnants of a nation amounting to 3,000,000 of people, whose country has been pillaged, parents stolen, nine generations of which have been wasted by the oppressive cruelty of this nation, standing in the presence of the Supreme Ruler of the universe and the civilized world appealing to the God of nations for deliverance. Surely there is no people on earth whose patriotic appeals of liberty and justice possess more hallowed claims on the just interposition of Divine Providence to aid them in removing the most unqualified system of tyranny and oppression under which human beings ever groaned. We rejoice that it is our lot to be the inhabitants of a country blessed by nature with a genial climate, and where the liberty of speech and the press is protected by law. We rejoice that we are thrown into a revolution where the contest is not for landed territory, but for freedom; the weapons not carnal, but spiritual; where the struggle is not for blood, but for right; and where the bow is the power of God, and

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the arrow the instrument of Divine justice; while the victims are the devices of reason, and the prejudice of the human heart. It is in this glorious struggle for civil and religious liberty, for the establishment of peace on earth, and good-will to men, that we are morally bound, by all the relative ties we owe to the Author of our being, to enter the arena, and boldly contend for victory. Our reliance and only hope is in God. If success attend the effort, the downfall of Africa, from her ancient pride and splendour, will have been more glorious to the establishment of religion; every drop of blood spilt by her descendants under the dominion of prejudice and persecution, will have produced peaceful rivers, that shall wash from the soil of the human heart the mountains of vice and corruption under which this nation has long withered. I had the honour of being a member of the Convention that put forth these sentiments.5 I may add, that the day before I sailed for this country, I signed a call for a similar Convention, which is to assemble in the month of August, with the same object in view, that of devising ways and means for the elevation and improvement of the coloured people, and at the same time co-operating with the friends of abolition for the good of the slave of the South.6 These Conventions you will see are not, and have not, been intended to excite commotion or insurrection, but, on the contrary, by every peaceful means, to improve the moral and intellectual condition of my people. Another great question now comes up, and, perhaps, the greatest question. It may still be asked, have the coloured people made such progress in their improvement, as to justify the conclusion that they are capable of complete elevation? There are some in all countries, we mourn to say, who are still in the habit of throwing away all that may be said to them on the mere score of humanity on behalf of the black man, and of leaping hastily and headlong to the conclusion that still he is a nigger. Pardon me if I recur to an American “Jim Crow” definition for illustration— ———Do what you will, The nigger will be a nigger still. How often have I heard from the lips of respectable white people the following, “Take a nigger, cut off his head, boil him, broil him, throw him into an oven, roast him, he will be a nigger still.” This is an Americanism. You will see that this is worthy of the doings of Nero;7 it is a convenient way of changing a man’s moral condition to cut off his head, and throw him into the fire—quite characteristic of the influence of American slavery. But is it true after all, that the black man is capable of complete elevation, or does the question admit of a doubt? If it is not true that he is capable of complete elevation, why, then, I need report no

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further; I must throw my paper under the table, and go home. I am one of those, however, though a black man myself, who have long since adhered to the conclusion that he is capable of improvement equally with the white man. But I must come to facts, and they shall be taken from the history of prominent states in different parts of the country. I will commence, then, at the seat of government—Washington city. I have a paragraph or two in regard to the condition of the free people of colour there. “A Washington correspondent communicates to us the following facts respecting the moral condition of the coloured people in that city: ‘There are about 7,000 people of colour now in the city, two-thirds of whom are free. A large portion of the slaves are hired from other places in the vicinity, chiefly from Maryland. As regards their religious privileges, there is little practical difference between the free and the slaves. A large portion of both classes, being at service, can attend public worship only in the evening; and generally only on Sabbath evening. Their congregations, therefore, are not full in the morning, very thin in the afternoon, and crowded in the evening, when the services continue to a late hour. There are six coloured churches in the city: two Episcopal Methodist, two Bethel, one Zion, and one Baptist. The Bethel and Zion Methodist sects are very much alike. The last is anti-episcopal. Both separated from the Old School Methodists, on the ground of the unequal treatment of their ministers and members, on account of their colour. I am not accurately informed as to the number of their churches, but believe it is about 150. In the six churches there are not far from 1,100 members. The evening congregations may average 1,800 or 2,000. There is a considerable number, perhaps 500, who are Roman Catholics. One side gallery, in each church, is appropriated to them. A small number attend the Episcopal churches, and a larger number the Presbyterian. In Mr. S M I T H ’ S church8 they have pews on the floor of the house under the singing gallery, separated by the aisle from the rest of the congregation. A few only are found in other churches. On the whole, considerably more than one-half the people of colour may be set down as enjoying the means of grace, such as they are. Of those who are without the reach of these means, a large proportion are very vicious and degraded.’” We now pass to Baltimore, though with a different object to what the British army had when it passed there. I may also state here, that it is remarkable, that the largest free coloured population to be found in any one city in the Union, is in Baltimore.9 That may account for the fact, that Maryland has decreased her number of slaves. There are rather more than 62,000 free people of colour in this city. Mr. B R E C K E N R I D G E , the editor of a Literary and Religious Magazine,10 has taken considerable pains, though he is a coloniser, to make a record of the number of societies, the object of which is, the improvement of their condition. I have a paragraph from his book11 before me, but as it contains nothing more than

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the names of the societies, it will not be necessary to read it. He has recorded thirty, all embarked within the range of religious benevolence and education. Passing from Baltimore, we come to Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. Take a single district, where there are about 5,000 free persons of colour. There are 20,000 in all. We have erected six schools, six Methodist churches, two Presbyterian churches, three Baptist churches, I think two, but I am certain one Episcopal church. We have a record of the fact, that they pay over 4,000 dollars annually for taxes in that one district, while they do not draw 2,000 dollars annually for the support of the poor. Mr. A. BUFFUM.12 That is poor-rate only, while their own paupers cost but half that amount. Rev. J. W. C. PENNINGTON. They pay rents exceeding 100,000 dollars. They have sixty benevolent societies, two Tract societies, two Bible societies, two female literary societies, one moral reform society, one library company. It is estimated that their own real estate exceeds one million of dollars, and it appears that they have about one thousand mechanics. From my own knowledge of that city I am prepared to say that that statement is far within the truth. We come next to New York, where there are about 25,000 free people of colour. Here we report seven excellent schools; six Methodist, two Baptist, two Presbyterian, and one Episcopal church. The other societies are about the same as in Philadelphia. I have now a few statements to make in regard to Boston, Massachusetts. A report of Rev. R U F U S S PAU L D I N G to the Boston Auxiliary13 of the American Union for the relief of the Coloured Race,14 present the following items. By the late census it appears that the entire coloured population of the city is 1757; making a decrease, within the last five years, of 118. The number visited by M r. S P A U L D I N G , living by themselves in families, was 1310. The above 1310 are thus classed: Married persons, 398; widowers, 26; widows, 123; single men, 104; single women, 53; men connected with churches, 91; women connected with churches, 166; boys under ten years of age, 164; boys over ten and under twenty-one years, 111; girls under ten years, 104; girls over ten and under twenty-one years, 105; girls twenty-one years, and over, having parents, 32; children who can read, 169; children attending schools, 238; children connected with churches, 8; boys learning mechanical trades, 3. But few of the parents can read, and of the children reported as able to read, and as attending Day and Sunday schools, some discount must be made for irregular attendance, though in most instances they were reported as attending regularly. Their occupations are said to be: Mariners, 171; labourers, 112; barbers (exclusive of apprentices), 32; keepers of

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clothing shops, &c., 23; waiters or tenders, 25; cartmen, 8; tailors, 6; keepers of boarding houses, 5; boot polishers, 4; blacksmiths, 3; ordained preachers, 2; stevedores, 2; victuallers, 2; carpenter, 1; whitewasher, 1; whitesmith, 1; shoemaker, 1; blacking maker, 1; painter, 1; paper hanger, 1; soap boiler, 1; measurer, 1; cobbler, 1; chimney sweep, 1; servants not at service, 7. I have a few statements in regard to the city of Cincinnati, Ohio. It may be proper to state that this is one of the places where the coloured people have been most cruelly persecuted. The whole number of coloured people in Cincinnati is about 2500. The statement below embraces but one out of several districts. The number of families is put at 53; of individuals, 258; of heads of families, 106; of professors of religion, 16; at school, 53; of newspapers taken, 7. The amount of property in real estate, 9,850 dollars. Number of individuals who have been slaves, 108; heads of families who have been slaves, 69; heads of families who have purchased themselves, 36. Whole amount paid for themselves, 21,513 dollars. Average price (a fraction off) 597 dollars. Number of children purchased by the same families, 14. Whole amount paid for them, 2,425 dolls. 75 cents. Average, 173 dolls. 27 cents. Total amount paid for parents and children in this particular district, 23,940 dolls. 75 cents. The district here referred to was examined without the least reference to its being exhibited separately. It is believed to be a specimen of the coloured city population at large. According to this statement of the whole coloured population of Cincinnati, 1,129 have been in slavery; 476 have purchased themselves, at the total expense of 215, 522 dollars 04 cents; averaging for each, 452 dollars 77 cents. The coloured people in Cincinnati have three churches—two Methodist and one Baptist; numbering about 450 members. They have four Sabbath schools, with each a small library; and three Bible classes. A female benevolent society has been organised, with 40 members. Their meetings are held regularly, and the time spent in working for the poor. A society for the relief of persons in distress, called the Cincinnati Union Society, also numbers about 100 male members. Its contributions are about 250 dollars annually. Another similar institution likewise exists in the city, with about 30 members. They have also a temperance society on the principle of total abstinence, with about 230 members.15 I have thus taken these prominent facts, and glanced at the history of our prominent states. The statements which have now been made are a fair specimen of the state of things throughout Connecticut, Maine, Rhode

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Island, New Jersey, and all the free states. My intimate knowledge of the people enables me to state this; but you will ask how facts such as these, and others, of which I have a pocketful to present to the Convention, are disposed of? I can hardly tell you, except it be by relating what I call my brickbat anecdote. Some years ago, when I was a young man, I lived with an excellent Friend in Pennsylvania.16 He was a farmer, and had an ox that was exceedingly troublesome; he would go into whatever lot he chose, and jump over whatever fence he pleased. One day I saw him in a lane, and perceived that he was disposed to go over a fence. I said to him, If you pass me, you will have to carry your weight in brick-bats. I met him near a pile of brick-bats; filled my hand with them, intending to throw them at his head, and then retire to the pile. I met him: he just curved his head up and came forward, when I let on with my brick-bats till they were all exhausted. I then returned to the pile, and let on again; but he kept his head turned, passed me in gallant style, and jumped over the fence. Our opponents treat these facts as the ox treated the brickbats—they receive them on their head, and leap over the arguments; they do not meet the facts honestly. There are two places in which to carry facts: one is in the heart, and the other in the head; but they take them on the latter. It may be interesting to state what denomination of Christians prevails amongst the free people of colour. Generally speaking, they are Methodists. There are two independent bodies of Methodists among them; one called the Bethel, and the other the Zion.17 I hold in my hand the discipline of the Bethel Methodists.18 It would take up too much time to read, but it opens up the history of the circumstances which brought them out of the old Methodist church. Any one, by referring to it, will see that it was a train of oppression, grinding them from time to time, that compelled them to come out, and form an independent body. Their design, at the commencement, was to remonstrate with their brethren in order to obtain better accommodation in their churches. Sometimes they were aroused from their knees while at prayer, and put out to make room for others. This was repeatedly done in the cities of Philadelphia and Baltimore. They set forth that this was the case. This oppression increased upon them until they found that there was no help except by forming themselves into an independent body. They therefore selected one of their number, under the encouragement of the late venerable Bishop W H I T E , of Pennsylvania.19 R I C H A R D A L L E N ,20 who has since deceased, was ordained their bishop, and they have now two bishops. I have a copy of their church organ,21 and on the 79th page they set forth that in the Baltimore Conference they had 2993 members; Philadelphia, 4828; New York, 1454; Canada, 444; Indiana, &c., 1194; Ohio, 2615; making in the whole 13,528 members. They have, generally speaking, a pious and improving ministry. I have had the privilege of being acquainted with a number of their ministers, and can bear testimony to

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their being a body of pious, praiseworthy, and persevering men. In the Zion connexion they have not a bishop, but a superintendent; and I had an interview with him a few days before I sailed. I hold a copy of their last minutes. They have about 100 churches; about the same number of ministers; and rather a larger membership than the Bethel connexion. With respect to the coloured Baptists, though they have a few separate churches, yet their ministers hold connexion with their white brethren. This is the case also with the Presbyterian, Congregational, and Episcopal churches. In regard to the Baptists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists, we are prepared to say that as denominations we have mainly but two faults to find with them. First, they keep up the negro pew system; and, secondly, the non-intercourse system with coloured ministers. Our churches, as a general rule, are respectably represented in their bodies, and coloured pastors are permitted to sit and deliberate.22 In the Methodist and Episcopal bodies, however, it is difficult. Rev. J. BIRT.23 If coloured churches keep up a connexion with white persons, do the white churches admit the members of coloured churches to commune at the Lord’s table? Rev. J. W. C. PENNINGTON. On the negro pew system. Rev. J. BIRT. They call themselves by the same name, and keep up a connexion; but it does not seem that it is recognised by the white churches. Rev. J. W. C. PENNINGTON. Not in good faith. Rev. J. BIRT. Nor do they admit Christians of colour to the Lord’s table? Rev. J. W. C. PENNINGTON. They do not admit them on the same terms, “Come in and take your seat there.” Dr. RITCHIE.24 The man of colour and the white man do not, in fact, sit at the same place at the Lord’s table? Rev. J. W. C. PENNINGTON. They do not. A DELEGATE. They distribute the emblems at the same time? Rev. J. W. C. PENNINGTON. The general policy is to serve the whites first. Rev. J. BLANCHARD.25 The friends will be glad to learn that there are exceptions to this general rule, and that they are increasing. Rev. W. MORGAN.26 I understand there is a large connexion taking up the broad principles of equality on church government. Rev. J. W. C. PENNINGTON. It is the case in many sections. In some Congregational churches, they take right ground, and carry it out; but I speak with respect to general bodies. To bring forward exceptions, would be a much more pleasant duty to us. The next point of inquiry would be with respect to the political disability of the coloured people. The process of changing our state constitutions, with a view to admit coloured people as citizens, is very slow. In many of the states, you are aware, that we

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are constitutionally disfranchised; that is, the word white existing in the constitution strikes off every coloured man from the ballot-box, and from all fair rights and privileges. There is no way of amending this but by striking out the word “white,” and giving the qualification to all citizens of such an age. Rhode Island, the smallest of the states, has received a new constitution;27 and in that, coloured citizens have been righted. So far we report with pleasure. With regard to the judicial department, the Petty Courts28 are suspicious, and rather unsound in practice. For instance, if a coloured man is brought before some magistrates or some Petty Courts, on claim of being a slave, he is generally in danger. But we are pleased to say that the higher courts are looking to justice. It will be recollected that last summer, a most brutal outrage was committed in Philadelphia on the free coloured citizens, in which they were the losers of a Temperance Hall, one Church, and a Benevolent Hall. Since that, the noble judges in the Supreme Court have awarded to the sufferers, in the case of the Benevolent Hall and the Church, the worth of their property.29 We report this progress with great pleasure, because the voice of these noble judges, that sit under the shadow of Penn, will not be in vain. We also report progress on this subject in Ohio, which derives great importance from the fact, that the free coloured people have been greatly persecuted there. A paragraph from a paper states that, An important judicial decision has lately been made in Ohio, in relation to coloured people, by Judges L A N E and B I R C H A R D , one of whom is a Whig and the other a Democrat. The decision asserts the principle, that the legislature of Ohio “have no power to make distinction among citizens of other states, who may settle in this.”30 And the principle is asserted in reference to the case of a coloured citizen of Louisiana, who had emigrated to, and settled in the state. By this decision, all the laws of the state making distinctions on account of colour, whether in relation to giving security, to educational privileges, or to testimony, are rendered null and void, so far as they affect any coloured citizen of other states who may have emigrated, or may emigrate to Ohio. We regard that as a decision of great importance in the destinies of the free people in the whole country. With respect to legislation, its standard in the free states has been decidedly changed for the better during the past year; and I am not aware that a single new obnoxious law has been passed in any one of the free states, with regard to the coloured people; on the other hand, several noble attempts have been made to repeal obnoxious laws already existing. It is true, however, that an attempt made in the state of New York to repeal the Jury Trial Law was a fail-

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ure;31 I believe the bill passed the Assembly, but not the Senate, and was laid aside. Mr. JOHNSTON.32 It passed the Assembly, and went to the Senate; but on account of the press of business, they did not reach it during the session. Rev. J. W. C. PENNINGTON. It is, after all, perhaps, a matter of opinion; but I have met with others, who think they did not reach it through design. The Governor’s message recommended the measure, but that did not make it certain that it would pass. With respect to public conveyances, we are about equally divided. About one-half the railroads, the stage coaches, and the steam boats, make no odious distinction as to colour; but the other half do. Mr. JOHNSTON. The distinction is certainly kept up very generally. Rev. J. W. C. PENNINGTON. I am about to present a case, that of an esteemed ministerial brother in the Methodist connexion, with whom I am personally acquainted; it is extracted from the Liberator:33 Providence April 18th, 1843 DEAR FRIEND GARRISON: Knowing you to be a friend of humanity, and a lover of mankind, I hasten to lay before you the following matter of facts, to dispose of them as may best suit yourself. I am pastor of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, for the cities of Providence and Boston. I have charge of the Bethel church, in West Centre-street, Boston, but make the city of Providence my principal place of residence. On the 27th of March I left this place for Philadelphia. I arrived in the city of New York, on board the steamer Mohegan, about three o’clock P. M., Wednesday, March 26th. Between four and five o’clock in the afternoon of the same day, I went to the ticket office of the Jersey city railroad company, and purchased a ticket of the agent or clerk of the company, for a passage to Philadelphia. I gave him four dollars for the ticket, the same that all others gave, for which I found no fault, after I had asked the agent if I could be accommodated with a comfortable seat in the cars. He answered me in the affirmative, and satisfactorily assured me that I should be as well accommodated as any other gentleman. I find no fault with him; he gave me all I asked. I crossed the river with a ticket he gave me for that purpose, and about half-past five o’clock I was seated in the car for Philadelphia, by the conductor of the train. I took my seat in the most secluded part of the car, in order to be out of the way of my neighbours as much as possible, and so I passed over a

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part of the road quite comfortably, and unmolested, while the then present conductor remained on the train. Somewhere on the road we changed conductors, and I fell into the hands of another before we reached Trenton, N.J. Some time after we left Trenton, we came to another stopping-place, and when the cars were about to move again, the conductor came to me and said, “Here, old fellow! you must come out of that.” I asked him why. He said, “That is none of your business.” I answered him, “I cannot move until you assign me your reason for it.” He rejoined, “I shall not reason with you about it. All you have to do is to come out; and if you don’t, I’ll pitch you out.” I answered, “Well, sir, you will have it to do; for I cannot move myself until you give me a reason for it.” I said no more, and this I said as calm and easy as possible, to be heard in the noise and bustle that were going on at the time. For some minutes he stood and said much not worth mentioning. I said nothing. At last he became much agitated, seized me by the throat, threw me down, and being unable to pitch me out himself, left me on the floor. In a few minutes, before I could regain my seat, he returned with four others; there may have been more, I am sure not less. With violence they fell upon, and beat me. From the beginning I had said not a word, only what I have already named, except to cry for help, after so many had fallen upon, and beat me, until I had altogether despaired of life. I was gagged, had handkerchiefs crammed into my mouth, was beaten with their fists and caned, was stamped in the stomach, and beat until almost unable to speak, and was finally thrown into the car where the men go to smoke, &c., &c., nearly helpless, and without a friend I knew, except the R e v. N . C O LV E R , of Boston, and one other gentleman, whose name I do not know. To them I wish to return thanks in this letter, for their kindness to me. Some time after we arrived in Philadelphia, and I was placed under the care of a physician. Since then, I returned to this city, and am now labouring under the influence of the ill-treatment I received upon that occasion. I made no attempt to defend myself, by entering into violent combat, because I believed it to be wrong. The servant of the Lord must not strive. I did not enter suit against the conductor or company for the injuries I sustained, for this plain reason, and many others: I believe there is a just God, who is, and will be the avenger of all those that do wrong. “Vengeance is mine: I will repay, saith the Lord.” I believe he “hath appointed a day, in which he will judge the world in righteousness, by the man Christ Jesus.” That day I believe not far distant, and then I expect to meet them at the tribunal of God. God himself will award them according to their works. “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” I am sure that he will, and with

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this assurance I have committed myself, and all that I have, into his hands, trusting that the day will come, when every man shall be rewarded according to his works. I am yours, for the cause of truth, J A B E Z P. C A M P B E L L 34 Rev. J. LEAVITT. Mr. C O LV E R gave me an account of this transaction on his return from Philadelphia, confirming in all its particulars the statement of this minister, who has had the charge of a congregation in Boston for a considerable time, and is highly esteemed as a worthy minister of Jesus Christ. There is no exaggeration, I am satisfied, in this statement. Rev. J. W. C. PENNINGTON. I am happy to say, that such an instance as this is now an extreme case; yet the fact that lies in its foreground is common. I have travelled considerably in New England, and I take pleasure in saying, from observations that I have made, that about every other railroad, steam boat, and coach, is doing what is right with reference to coloured passengers, while others continue something of the treatment described in this case. I hold in my hand a letter addressed to me by the coloured citizens of Hartford, Connecticut; it is a specimen of those received from other places, which I have unfortunately mislaid. It shows the sentiments of the coloured people with regard to abolition, and is to the following effect: 35

At a meeting of the coloured citizens of Hartford, Connecticut, held on Monday evening, April 24, in the Talcott-street schoolroom, the house was called to order by Deacon H E N R Y F O S T E R .36 Prayer by Deacon J A M E S M A R S .37 On motion, Deacon J A M E S M A R S was appointed chairman. After stating, that in view of having the coloured people represented in the world’s Convention, which is to be holden in the city of London (England), this meeting was called, A committee of five was appointed, consisting of the following gentlemen, to draft resolutions: I S A A C C R O S S , 38 D E A C O N H E N R Y F O S T E R , W I L L I A M S AU N D E R S , 39 H E N RY N O T T , 40 G A D W O R T H I N G T O N , 41 who, after a short recess, reported to the meeting the following resolutions, which were unanimously adopted. Resolved, That we hail with joy the approaching world’s Convention, which is to be holden in the city of London (England), in June next; and that our prayer to the Father of mercies is, that his wisdom may guide its deliberations, and use the friends of freedom, who shall then gather together from the different portions of the earth, as instruments in his hand to work the universal overthrow of the vile system of slavery.

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Resolved, That the nominally free coloured citizens of the United States of North America, identified, as we are, with our brethren who are groaning in chains and slavery, and overburdened with the most unrelenting prejudice; nevertheless, feel that God has espoused our injured cause, and will, ere long, call up the sons of freedom of all the earth, to be the benefactors of those who pine in bondage. Resolved, That the judicious labours of the abolitionists abroad operate very favourably upon the condition of the oppressed in this country. Resolved, That the abolitionists of America, who are labouring by moral and political means to consummate the overthrow of slavery, have our hearty and cheerful support and co-operation. Resolved, That we, the citizens of Hartford, recognise the Rev. J. W. C. P E N N I N G T O N , pastor of the first coloured Congregationalist church, Talcott, Hartford, delegate from the Connecticut State AntiSlavery Society,42 as a worthy, and an accepted representative of the coloured people. (Signed) J A M E S M A R S , Chairman I S A A C C R O S S , Secretary Mr. J. STURGE43 suggested to Mr. PENNINGTON the propriety of adverting to the subject of African colonization. Rev. J. W. C. PENNINGTON. Let me close by an affectionate appeal to you as the congregated representatives of the world. I have no statistics with me bearing on that subject; but our public opinion is our statistics; our piety is our statistics; and to a man, in heart, and soul, and feeling, and sympathy, we are opposed to that system. Any one who will refer to W I L L I A M L L O Y D G A R R I S O N ’s Thoughts on Colonization will there find documents abundant to show that we have expressed our opinion again and again in opposition to this system, and that we regard it as the handmaid of slavery. These opinions, as there expressed, are unchanged. We appeal to you to help us; and do you ask how? I reply, first, through the channel of emigration; for the world is pouring its surplus population into America. Let your emigrants come with right principles. Again, when any of you visit the United States, do not forget that there is a certain man there that has fallen among thieves and robbers. When you come there as visitors, please to come also as good Samaritans. You can help us much in this respect. If a stranger comes from Great Britain, France, Holland, or Germany, let him drop a kind word, and make an affectionate inquiry in regard to the condition of the free people of colour; for it has weight on the American mind. Again, Americans visit your country frequently, and you can aid us in this respect. When distin-

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guished Americans come here, present to them the subject of slavery— catechise them: for that weighs upon the American mind, upon the American feelings, and upon their prejudices. Several of our clergymen, who have visited this country, have gone back regenerated on this subject. I know of cases, where they have told their people that they were besieged on the subject; inquiries were pressed upon them; and one beloved clergyman said, that the question was reduced to a unit, and he could not turn the point. He had to meet the appeal, and he had to change his sentiments. I can bear testimony that his visit to England had the effect of regenerating his sentiments on the subject of slavery. We feel that the world owes us a debt of justice. Where is the nation on the face of the earth that has not been concerned in the plundering of Africa? Here we ask for simple justice; here we urge the claim. Give us justice—and we live, we triumph, we rejoice; deprive us of justice—and we pine, we mourn, we die. The question of American slavery and prejudice, I deem to be a vital question. It is called in America a domestic question, but I deny that it can be domesticated. There is a universal law of morals to which slavery is opposed, and that law of morals gives to the world a right of opinion in the matter. On the basis of this law of morals I make my appeal. I am not then to be charged as a renegade, or hater of my country, because I appeal to the representatives of the world. I have the right of appeal. No nation under the sun has a right to abuse humanity; no nation can legalize a law which abuses humanity; or if they dare to do it, humanity has the right of appeal. Fellow-citizens! I make this appeal today. As America has dared to make laws—a system to abuse humanity, I appeal from those laws, and my appeal is to this tribunal of the world. I ask then for simple justice. Sometimes it is said, What is the black man capable of doing in regard to literature? We feel that this is an important subject; and now and then we do what we can to promote it. I hold in my hand a printed sermon—a little book—which I am authorized to present to the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, for their library. J. F. Johnson, ed., Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention (London, 1844; reprint, Miami, Fla., 1969), 45–52. 1. J. W. C. Pennington (1807–1870) was born to slave parents and was raised on a farm along Maryland’s eastern shore. Pennington remained with his family until November 1828, when a series of confrontations with his master led him to seek freedom. After a short stay in Pennsylvania, Pennington (whose slave name was James Pembroke) settled on Long Island in 1829 and initially earned his living as a blacksmith. After acquiring a fundamental education, he was hired to teach at an all-black school on Long Island. In the early 1830s, Pennington attended black citizens’ conventions and gained sufficient speaking skills to present a major address to the Fourth Annual Convention of Free Colored People in New York City during 1834. In 1835 he moved to Connecticut, where he continued his

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antislavery activity and first displayed his considerable ability to organize effective reform associations by cofounding the Connecticut State Temperance Society. At the same time, Pennington continued his religious studies. He sat in on courses at Yale but was barred from regular admission to the divinity school. In 1840, two years after ordination, he became minister to the Fifth (Colored) Congregational Church of Hartford. Within a year, he had established the Union Missionary Society, a black-run abolitionist organization created to assist the Mendi African captives of the slave ship Amistad and the forerunner of the American Missionary Association. Pennington wrote one of the earliest books on black American history (A Textbook of the Origin and History of the Colored People), often exchanged pulpits with white ministers in the Hartford area, and was a vigorous advocate of black self-help and education, writing a series of articles for the Colored American to instruct black citizens about ways to establish an effective school system. In 1843 Pennington made the first of four trips to Great Britain as a Connecticut delegate to the London World’s Antislavery Convention. When he returned to America, he renewed his political antislavery efforts in Connecticut (he had helped set up the state’s Liberty party just before going abroad) and edited the Clarksonian, a short-lived reform newspaper. By the mid-1840s, reflecting fugitive slave concerns, Pennington inspected possible locations for emigration in the West Indies and solicited funds for the purchase of his family members still in bondage—a lengthy effort only partially successful when he bought his brother Stephen’s freedom in 1854. Pennington resigned from his Hartford pastorate in 1848 and was appointed pastor of the Shiloh Presbyterian Church in New York City. Within a year, he returned to England and sought funds to build a school adjacent to his congregation. While abroad, he published his narrative, The Fugitive Blacksmith or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington, visited France and Germany, and was awarded an honorary doctor of divinity degree from the University of Heidelberg. Passage of the Fugitive Slave Law forced him to remain in Britain longer than he had planned and to obtain $150 to purchase his freedom. On returning to New York, Pennington joined other prominent black New Yorkers to form the Committee of Thirteen (an anticolonization association) and assisted William H. Day as a contributor to Day’s Cleveland newspaper, the Aliened American. Pennington held staunch integrationist beliefs, and he accepted election as moderator of New York’s Third Presbytery in the face of some criticism from black community leaders. He also successfully challenged New York’s segregated public-transportation law in 1855. In 1853 he went to England for the third time and helped organize the Glasgow New Association for the Abolition of Slavery, enlisting its women’s auxiliary to provide funds for the New York State Vigilance Committee. Late in the decade, Pennington returned to Long Island to serve a small congregation. In October 1861, Pennington made his fourth trip to England. He met escaped slave J. H. Banks and wrote Banks’s biography, A Narrative of Events of the Life of J. H. Banks. During the Civil War, Pennington supported the enlistment of black troops in the Union army, continued to advocate black suffrage, and rejected emigrationist theories propounded by African Civilization Society members. After the Civil War, Pennington ministered to an African Methodist Episcopal church in Natchez, Mississippi. From 1867 until

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1870, he served the Fourth (Colored) Congregational Church in Portland, Maine. Pennington died in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1870. J. W. C. Pennington, The Fugitive Blacksmith, 3d ed. (London, 1850); CF, 6 January, 7 April, 22 June, 10 August 1843, 12 February 1844; PF, 3 March 1841, 7 October 1847, 3 April 1851; CA, 1 September 1838, 14 November 1840, 17 July 1841; PtL, 7 August 1843, 31 October 1850; NSt, 19 May, 10 November 1848; Lib, 21 June 1834, 20 June 1851, 8 June 1855, 12 June 1863; FDP, 9 June 1854, 21 September 1855, 15 July, 2 September 1853; NCA, 19 April 1851, 21 December 1853, 31 May 1854; WAA, 5 November 1859, 5 May 1860, 19 October 1861, 15 March 1862, 12 June 1863; ASR, 19 April 1843, 1 April 1846, 7 October 1847; Henry Niles to John Scoble, 21 July 1850, Mary Muir to John Scoble, 7 February 1851, William Smeal to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, 16 April 1853, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; Herman Edward Thomas, “An Analysis of the Life and Work of James W. C. Pennington, a Black Churchman and Abolitionist” (Ph.D. diss., Hartford Seminary Foundation, 1978), 58–103. 2. The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society sponsored a second world gathering in London on 13–20 June 1843. The meeting, held at Freemasons’ Hall, was attended by a total of 275 delegates, including fifteen Americans. Two sessions were held on most days. Thomas Clarkson presided. The proceedings began with a review of the progress of antislavery since the 1840 convention. In ensuing sessions, delegates were addressed by many speakers on a variety of issues, ranging from the condition of free blacks in America to the progress of Portuguese antislavery efforts. They debated the effectiveness of the free produce movement, passed resolutions on the conduct of the American church regarding slavery, and discussed the slave trade, the “capacity” of the “coloured races,” and whether or not emigration was a suitable response to racial prejudice by American free blacks. The convention drafted an “Address to White Professing Christians of the United States.” Johnson, Proceedings of General Anti-Slavery Convention (1844), 2–345. 3. The sixth federal decennial census of the United States was compiled in 1840. The first census to enumerate the mentally ill and mentally retarded, it reported the proportion of “insane and idiots” to be nearly eleven times higher among free blacks than among slaves. These figures provided southern proslavery congressmen with documentary “proof ” of the benefits of black slavery and gave official credence to popular pseudoscientific notions of black unsuitability for freedom. Critics of the census discovered substantial errors, including figures for many northern towns in which the number of reported insane blacks exceeded the total black population. In 1844 the American Statistical Association submitted to Congress an enumeration of the errors found in the insanity tables. But proslavery apologists (led by John C. Calhoun) successfully resisted these attempts, and the 1840 census remained unaltered. Litwack, North of Slavery, 40–46; Gerald N. Grob, “Edward Jarvis and the Federal Census: A Chapter in the History of Nineteenth-Century American Medicine,” BHM 50:9–10 (Spring 1976). 4. In mid-September 1830, Philadelphia’s African Methodist Episcopal Bishop Richard Allen issued a formal call for a national convention of free blacks to meet in that city during 20–24 September. Twenty-six freemen from seven states responded. The convocation began a series of five annual meetings of free blacks (1830–35) and set in motion the first phase of the black convention movement

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in America. The meetings generally focused on the issues of antislavery, anticolonization, and northern racial prejudice, but some promoted special projects. The black convention movement of the 1830s is best characterized by its commitment to black self-help, moral regeneration, and conventional entrepreneurship as the best means to total assimilation into white society. It also spawned a militant black leadership in the 1840s and established a set of black priorities to be achieved by concerted black action. Bell, “Free Negroes,” 447–55; Howard H. Bell, ed., Minutes of the Proceedings of the National Negro Conventions, 1830–1864 (New York, N.Y., 1969); Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, “Negro Conventions and the Problem of Black Leadership,” JBS 2:29– 44 (September 1971). 5. J. W. C. Pennington was a delegate from Newtown, Long Island, to the Fourth Annual Convention of the Free People of Colour in 1834. Pennington served on an omnibus committee, which was meant to oversee and edit reports from the various committees appointed by the convention. Minutes of the Fourth Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Colour . . . (New York, N.Y., 1834), 8 [1:466]. 6. Several northern black leaders met in New York City on 9–10 May 1843 to consider calling a national black convention. A call was issued and signed by fifty persons, including J. W. C. Pennington. It was then published in the Troy (New York) United States Clarion. The convention met in Buffalo, New York, on 15–19 August; fifty-eight delegates attended. Minutes of the National Convention of Colored Citizens: Held at Buffalo (New York, N.Y., 1843), 3–24 [4:0633–43]. 7. Nero (38–68 A.D.), emperor of the Roman Empire from 54 A.D. until his death, was considered cruel and corrupt. 8. Pennington refers to the Fourth Presbyterian Church at Ninth Street, Northwest, in Washington, D.C. Rev. John C. Smith was pastor of the congregation throughout the antebellum period. Although the congregation was organized in 1828, the church structure Pennington discusses was erected in 1840. In addition to segregated seating for services, the church operated a segregated Sunday school during the 1840s. In 1841 several black parishioners left the congregation and formed the black Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. RCHS, 27:23n. (1925), 29–30:28 (1928), 60–62:211–12 (1960–62); Thomas Froncek, ed., The City of Washington: An Illustrated History (New York, N.Y., 1971), 172; Andrew E. Murray, Presbyterians and the Negro: A History (Philadelphia, Pa., 1966), 38. 9. The free black population of the state of Maryland was 62,078 in 1840; of that total, 21,453 free blacks lived in Baltimore County. James M. Wright, The Free Negro in Maryland, 1634–1860 (New York, N.Y., 1921), 88. 10. Robert J. Breckinridge (1800–1871) was born to a powerful Kentucky family. An active member of the American Colonization Society, he toured Britain in 1836 and engaged in a much-discussed, five-day debate with George Thompson on the merits of abolition and colonization. Throughout his professional life, Breckinridge, trained in the law and a member of the Kentucky legislature (1825–28), held a number of religious and educational positions and repeatedly aroused controversy with his views on religion and colonization. He was a prolific writer and edited three journals, including the Literary and Religious Magazine, during the 1840s. DAB, 3:10–11; Lib, 3 September 1836; Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 1:165–67, 170–71.

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11. The book to which Pennington is most likely referring is Breckinridge’s Hints on Colonization and Slavery (n.p., 183?). 12. Arnold Buffum (1782–1859) was a Providence hatter and reformer. He served as both president and lecturing agent for the New England Anti-Slavery Society and helped organize the American Anti-Slavery Society. During the early 1840s, Buffum traversed the antislavery lecture circuit in Ohio and Indiana and founded the antislavery New Garden (Indiana) Protectionist. About that time, he adopted political antislavery principles, rejecting his earlier Garrisonianism. DAB, 3:241–42. 13. In 1835 Rufus Spaulding, a Methodist clergyman and former colonization advocate, was appointed agent of the Boston auxiliary of the American Union for the Relief and Improvement of the Colored Race to collect data on the population, family life, employment, education, and property of the Boston black community. Spaulding completed his survey by May 1836 and presented a written report of his findings to the American Union. The Colored American criticized Spaulding’s report, which reached a broad audience through the Boston Recorder, for inaccurately characterizing the condition of Boston blacks as degraded. Lib, 31 January, 7, 28 March, 20 June 1835; Report of the Executive Committee of the American Union at the Annual Meeting of the Society, May 25, 1836 (Boston, Mass., 1836), 17; CA, 25 March 1837; AR, March 1837. 14. The gradualist American Union for the Relief and Improvement of the Colored Race was established during January 1835 by a Boston gathering of 102 northern antislavery moderates and disillusioned colonizationists. The founders were primarily anti-Garrisonian Boston Congregationalists, although delegates and black observers attended from throughout New York and New England. During early 1835, the union widely distributed a manifesto stating union objectives: convincing slaveholders to end slavery, initiating the religious and secular education of slaves, and promoting dispassionate discussion of American and West Indian abolition. It generated little public support. The union also collected empirical data on the northern free black community and southern slavery. Plagued by immediatist criticism and limited membership, the union held its last official meeting during May 1836. James R. Stirn, “Urgent Gradualism: The Case of the American Union for the Relief and Improvement of the Colored Race,” CWH 25:309–28 (December 1979); Lib, 7 March 1835; Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 138–42. 15. Antebellum Cincinnati blacks formed a number of moral improvement and self-help societies. Although frequently ephemeral in name, structure, and purpose, they performed a significant role. In 1836 local black leaders organized an Education Society. Several relief organizations (including a branch of the African Masonic Lodge of Ohio) and frequent black-sponsored fairs benefited the impoverished. Moral-improvement societies were most prominent. The Cincinnati-based Moral Reform Society of the Colored Citizens of Ohio called for, among other things, “the suppression of intemperance, licentiousness, gambling, sabbathbreaking, blasphemy, and all other vices.” The Cincinnati Literary Association collaborated with similar societies throughout Ohio to promote moral reform and mental improvement during the mid-1840s. Local black religious education was promoted by the 180-member Sabbath School or Youth’s Society. A quarter of the Cincinnati black population belonged to temperance organizations, particu-

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larly the Total Abstainance Temperance Society, which reached a membership of 450 during the 1840s. Richard W. Pih, “Negro Self-Improvement Efforts in AnteBellum Cincinnati, 1836–1850,” OH 78:183, 185 (Summer 1969); PL, 2 March 1844; Wendell P. Dabney, Cincinnati’s Colored Citizens: Historical, Sociological and Biographical (Cincinnati, Ohio, 1926; reprint, New York, N.Y., 1970), 39. 16. From late November 1827 until sometime in March 1828, J. W. C. Pennington lived with a Quaker, later identified by Pennington as “W. W.” “J. K.,” a Quaker farmer and the one to which Pennington most likely refers, allowed him to stay in his East Nautmeal, Chester County, Pennsylvania, home from March 1828 until October. Pennington, Fugitive Blacksmith, 5, 12–16, 40–42, 49–50. 17. The African Methodist Episcopal (often called Bethel Methodists) and African Methodist Episcopal Zion churches were the leading black denominations during the antebellum period. These denominations came to life when discriminatory seating practices prompted black parishioners to withdraw from individual Methodist congregations in Baltimore (1787), Philadelphia (1792), and New York City (1796) and to establish their own semi-independent black Methodist churches. In 1816, seeking greater black control over congregational affairs, two of these congregations joined yet other black churches in the middle-Atlantic states to establish the AME church. Five years later, the New York City (Zion) congregation seceded from the Methodists, due to a perceived loss of lay control over congregational property, and joined five other black religious societies to form a new organization, which became the African Methodist Episcopal Zion church. The two denominations differed little in theology. While the AMEZ grew slowly during the antebellum period, the AME spread rapidly, soon establishing foreign missions and a thriving publishing program for its religious materials. Several unsuccessful attempts were made to merge the AME and AMEZ both before and immediately after the Civil War. After emancipation, each actively competed for converts among black Methodists in the South and dramatically increased their numbers and influence. By the 1970s, the AME claimed one million members, and the AMEZ numbered over eight hundred thousand. W. Augustus Low and Virgil A. Clift, eds., Encyclopedia of Black America (New York, N.Y., 1981), 32–36; Carol V. R. George, Segregated Sabbaths: Richard Allen and the Rise of Independent Black Churches, 1760–1840 (New York, N.Y., 1973), 51–119; Clarence E. Walker, A Rock in a Weary Land: The African Methodist Episcopal Church during the Civil War and Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, La., 1982), 4–5, 8–15, 19, 46–81, 99–103. 18. Pennington refers to the African Methodist Episcopal Church Discipline— a published volume that represented the official denominational statement and reference for questions of theology and practice. Compiled by Richard Allen, the Discipline was adopted in 1816 and revised in 1836. George, Segregated Sabbaths, 86–87, 111; Low and Clift, Encyclopedia of Black America, 33. 19. William White (1748–1836) was the presiding bishop of the Episcopal church and rector of Christ Church in Philadelphia. After the American Revolution began, White forged the colonial Anglican churches into a distinctly American body. He also welcomed blacks into Episcopal churches. DAB, 20:121–22; George, Segregated Sabbaths, 38. 20. Richard Allen (1760–1831) was born in Philadelphia to slave parents and was raised a slave near Dover, Delaware. With his master’s permission, Allen

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joined the local Methodist society, taught himself to read and write, and presided over local religious meetings. In 1777 Allen’s master allowed him to purchase his freedom, and he returned to Philadelphia. With black preacher Absalom Jones, he began to hold prayer meetings in 1786 for black members of St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. The following year, Allen and Jones forged this group into the Free African Society—a black mutual aid organization. Allen continued to teach and preach under the direction of the Methodist elder at St. George’s until 1792, when discriminatory seating practices prompted him to lead black parishioners out of the congregation. This group soon formed their own semi-independent Methodist congregation and, under Allen’s direction, constructed and maintained their own church (Bethel). Allen was ordained a Methodist deacon in 1799 and soon became an elder. A leading figure in black Methodism, he convened delegates in 1816 from five black Methodist congregations to form the African Methodist Episcopal denomination. From its formation until his death, Allen served as the presiding bishop of the AME. In addition to being a respected religious figure, Allen became a prominent local and national black secular leader, organizing a black day school, an educational society, a moral improvement society, and a short-lived black insurance company. During the War of 1812, Allen, Jones, and James Forten led twenty-five hundred blacks in constructing defenses for Philadelphia. Most of Allen’s secular leadership efforts were in the antislavery cause. In 1799 and 1800, Allen and Jones twice led local blacks in petitioning the state legislature for the immediate abolition of slavery and in 1800 petitioned Congress. Allen’s activism took the form of opposition to the American Colonization Society, support for local anti-slavery societies and the black paper Freedom’s Journal, and advocacy of the free produce movement. He also performed a primary role in organizing the 1817 and 1830 national black conventions. DANB, 12–13; George, Segregated Sabbaths, 18–159; Charles Wesley, Richard Allen: Apostle of Freedom (1935; reprint, Washington, D.C., 1959); Milton C. Sernett, Black Religion and American Evangelicalism: White Protestants, Plantation Missions, and the Flowering of Negro Christianity, 1787–1865 (Metuchen, N.J., 1975), 117. 21. Pennington refers to the African Methodist Episcopal Church Magazine, a journal of the African Methodist Episcopal church, “devoted to a defence of . . . [AME] Doctrine, Economy and Usages, . . . Practical Religion and Moral Reform.” First published in September 1841 and edited by George Hogarth, the journal struggled financially until it ceased publication by 1849. CA, 25 September 1841; Daniel A. Payne, History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (Nashville, Tenn., 1891; reprint, New York, N.Y., 1968), 131, 147–52, 219. 22. Black ministers within Baptist, Presbyterian (before the 1840s), Congregationalist, and other denominations rarely were allowed to exchange pulpits with white pastors, participate at denominational conventions, or study at denominational seminaries during the antebellum period. By the 1840s, northern Presbyterians admitted black churches to denominational presbyteries and synods, seated black delegates at denominational conventions, and tolerated black students at Union Theological Seminary. Litwack, North of Slavery, 204. 23. Rev. John Birt of Manchester and Salford. 24. Dr. John Ritchie was a minister of the United Secession church of Edinburgh. He helped found the Edinburgh Emancipation Society in 1833 and sup-

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ported the temperance, suffrage, and educational reform movements. After the antislavery schism of 1840, Ritchie became a prominent local Garrisonian. Rice, Scots Abolitionists, 36, 48, 110, 129, 158, 205, 207. 25. Jonathan Blanchard (1811–1892) was born in Vermont and trained for the ministry at the Andover and Lane theological seminaries. He served as pastor of the Sixth Presbyterian Church of Cincinnati (1838–45) and as president, first, of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and, then, of Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Blanchard became an antislavery advocate while at Lane and published the Christian Era, one of four religious journals with which he was affiliated throughout his career. DAB, 2:350–51. 26. Five Morgans attended the convention as delegates. It is likely that this is William Morgan of Birmingham, who was not a clergyman but served as one of the five secretaries of the convention and read the report of the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 during the morning session on 13 June 1843. The Reverends Thomas Morgan and T. H. Morgan of Birmingham also attended. Johnson, Proceedings of General Anti-Slavery Convention (1843), 9, 11, 51, 346. 27. Prior to 1843, Rhode Island restricted suffrage to a white property-holding elite. In 1841, an urban, white political-reform movement arose, led by Thomas Dorr, which sought to extend the franchise to all white males only—a movement that the state’s three thousand blacks opposed for obvious reasons. During the winter of 1841–42, Frederick Douglass and many other abolitionists joined local blacks (including Alexander Crummell) in laboring for the extension of the ballot across racial barriers. When a new state constitution was written in the fall of 1842, blacks were rewarded for their opposition to Dorr by receiving the same suffrage rights as whites. William G. McLoughlin, Rhode Island: A Bicentennial History (New York, N.Y., 1978), 127–35. 28. This term refers to civil or criminal court sessions conducted by justices of the peace, who were empowered to try minor cases without a jury or formal indictments and pleas. 29. On 1 August 1842, a “chiefly Irish” working-class mob attacked a West Indian Emancipation Day procession of the Young Men’s Vigilant Association— a black temperance society centered in the Moyamensing section of Philadelphia. Two days of rioting ensued. Blacks were beaten, their homes looted, and the African Beneficial Hall and Second Colored Presbyterian Church burned to the ground. Order was restored by the Pennsylvania militia. Pennsylvania law held Philadelphia County liable for damages to the black-owned structures, but a local jury placed blame on the provocative nature of the black procession. In response, the owners of the hall and church sued the county for full recovery and were awarded damages by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Ironically, a third black hall was destroyed in the same month by legal means when white property owners in the vicinity of the unscathed black Temperance Hall petitioned the local Court of General Sessions to declare the building a nuisance that might attract future mobs. The court concurred and ordered the building’s demolition. PPL, 2, 3, 4 August 1842; Elizabeth M. Geffen, “Violence in Philadelphia in the 1840’s and 1850’s,” PH 36:387 (October 1969); Litwack, North of Slavery, 102; Lib, 26 August 1842. 30. Pennington refers to the December 1842 Ohio Supreme Court case of Edwill Thacker v. John Hawk and Others. In April 1841, the Gallia County Court

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of Common Pleas refused to accept Thacker’s vote in a local election, arguing that men of partial black ancestry were not legal voters. Thacker appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court, which reversed the Gallia decision. Speaking for the majority, Chief Justice Ebenezer Lane cited earlier cases to demonstrate that blacks and mulattoes were entitled to full citizenship rights in Ohio. Lane was supported in this decision by Justice Matthew Birchard. Edwin M. Stanton, ed., Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio, in Bank, vol. 11 (Columbus, Ohio, 1843), 376–85. 31. On 6 May 1840, Governor William H. Seward signed a bill insuring New York blacks that were seized as fugitive slaves the right to counsel, the right to a jury trial, and the right to a writ of habeas corpus hearing. Early in 1841, Virginia, South Carolina, and Mississippi reacted to the New York statute by passing laws to restrict commerce with New York. A year later, an attempt to repeal the jury trial law failed in the New York legislature. Leo Hersh, “The Negro in New York, 1783 to 1865,” JNH 16:398–402 (October 1831). 32. William Johnston was born in England, immigrated to the United States, and settled in New York City. Johnston was an early member of the New York Anti-Slavery Society. In November 1835, Johnston joined David Ruggles and others as a founder (and the first treasurer) of the predominantly black New York Committee of Vigilance—an organization formed to assist fugitive slaves and to protect free blacks from kidnapping by slave agents. The committee lost its vigor in the mid-1840s but was reorganized as a statewide association in 1848 with Johnston as its secretary. Johnston is sometimes confused with William Purnell Johnson, a New York black businessman and community leader, who was an abolitionist and, after 1840, also raised funds for the vigilance committee and served with Johnston on the organization’s executive committee. Johnson, Proceedings of General Anti-Slavery Convention (1843), 55–60, 71, 79–80, 105, 113, 203; First Annual Report of the New York Committee of Vigilance (New York, N.Y., 1837), 6; ML, July 1838; CA, 25 August 1838, 24 October 1840, 22 May 1841; Lib, 5 October 1838; David Ruggles, A Plea for a Man and a Brother (New York, N.Y., 1839); NASS, 15 September 1842; NC, 21 June 1843; Remonstrance against the Course Pursued by the Evangelical Alliance on the Subject of American Slavery (New York, N.Y., 1847), 16. 33. The following letter appeared under the heading “Diabolical Outrage” in the 28 April 1843 issue of the Liberator. 34. Jabez Pitt Campbell (1815–1891) was born to free black parents, Anthony and Catherine Campbell, at Slaughter Neck in Sussex County, Delaware. At age ten, a Christmas-day conversion experience began his lifelong involvement with religion and the African Methodist Episcopal church. Soon after his conversion, he was mortgaged by his father to a local white man. He was later abandoned by his father, the mortgage was foreclosed upon, and an attempt was made to sell him into slavery. When rumors of the plan reached the boy, he escaped to Philadelphia, where he lived with his mother for several years. Licensed to preach in 1837, he served first in eastern Pennsylvania and, after four years, as an AME missionary in New England. Following ordination as a deacon, he concurrently served congregations in Providence, New Bedford, and Boston. In Providence, Campbell met Stella Medley, whom he married in 1844. When she died a decade later, he married Mary Ann Shire of Philadelphia (1855). Campbell was reassigned

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to the New York Annual Conference in 1843, ordained an elder, and then successively served many congregations in New York State. In 1854 Campbell moved to the Philadelphia area and served churches there for the next decade. For several years, he was also book agent of the AME Book Concern. From 1854 to 1858, Campbell edited the Christian Recorder, an AME organ. While in Philadelphia, Campbell developed an active interest in temperance and antislavery. During the early years of the Civil War, he became a vocal critic of the Lincoln administration’s inertia in emancipating the slaves. He left Bethel Church in 1863 and transferred to the Baltimore Annual Conference. The following year he was elected an AME bishop and spent the remainder of his life supervising the administrative affairs of regional episcopal districts, primarily in the South. Campbell sailed to California in 1865 and established the first AME conference there. During Reconstruction, he shepherded AME mission work among former slaves in the Mississippi Valley. That experience apparently disillusioned him with southern race relations, and he briefly flirted with emigrationist schemes. In 1876 he became a vice-president of the American Colonization Society. During the 1880s, Campbell established AME conferences in Santo Domingo, Haiti, and Bermuda. He simultaneously labored to improve the educational facilities of the church and, from 1883 until his death, chaired the board of trustees of Wilberforce University. An elder statesman of the AME, Campbell was sent as a delegate to the Wesleyan General Conference in England in 1876 and 1879. He also was recognized in later life with honorary doctorates from Wilberforce and the University of Pennsylvania. B. W. Arnett, “Biographical Sketch [of Bishop Jabez Pitt Campbell],” CR, 20 August 1891; Alexander W. Wayman, Cyclopaedia of African Methodism (Baltimore, Md., 1882), 6–7; Charles Spencer Smith, A History of the African Methodist Church (Philadelphia, Pa., 1922; reprint, New York, N.Y., 1968), 39, 71–72; Lib, 23 December 1859; Walker, Rock in a Weary Land, 34–35; August Meier, Negro Thought in America, 1880–1915: Racial Ideologies in the Age of Booker T. Washington (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1963), 66. 35. Joshua Leavitt (1794–1873) was born in Massachusetts and educated for both the law and the ministry. Leavitt was an early abolitionist and a founder of the New York Anti-Slavery Society, the American Anti-Slavery Society, and, later, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Throughout the 1830s and 1840s, Leavitt was the vigorous antislavery editor of two reform newspapers, the Evangelist (1831–37) and (after moving to Boston) the Emancipator (1837–48). He supported the Liberty and Free Soil parties. In the mid-1840s, Leavitt resurrected the bibles-for-slaves movement. Leavitt returned to New York City in 1848 as an editor for the Independent—a position that he held for twenty-five years. DAB, 6(1):84– 85; Wyatt-Brown, Lewis Tappan, 64, 162, 169, 193–94, 314–15. 36. Henry Foster was a Hartford, Connecticut, free black and a prominent leader of both the local and state black community. A deacon of the Talcott Street Church and apparently well educated, he was an antislavery activist from the beginning of the immediatist movement in the 1830s. He served as the Hartford subscription agent for Garrison’s Liberator, was a staunch anticolonizationist, and, for several years, was president of the Connecticut State Temperance Society. Throughout the 1840s, Foster pressed for the black elective franchise in Connecticut and represented Hartford at the state suffrage convention organized by blacks and held in New Haven during mid-September 1849. Foster’s reform career sug-

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gests a commitment to black self-help and to a broad vision of antislavery’s role in freeing slaves and assisting northern freemen. Foster believed that “business qualification, professional skill, enterprise, perseverance, and high moral principle” would do much to end white racial prejudice. For this reason, he vigorously advocated a black press and especially supported the Colored American and Douglass’s North Star. Foster also applauded the Massachusetts Abolition Society’s attempt to develop a black employment office as part of its antislavery program. Lib, 31 July 1831, 30 July 1836 [1:0093, 0678]; CA, 24 July 1838, 29 June, 9 November 1839, 14 April 1840 [2:0560, 3:0127, 0260, 0388]; PtL, 2 October 1843 [4:0674]; NSt, 3 March, 10 October 1848; James deT. Abajian, Blacks in Selected Newspapers, Censuses and Other Sources: An Index to Names and Subjects, 3 vols. (Boston, Mass., 1976), 1:708. 37. James Mars (1790–ca. 1870) was born in North Canaan, Connecticut, to slave parents; his father, Jupiter Mars, was a Revolutionary War veteran. In 1798 Mars’s parents and sister were emancipated by their owner, but as part of the arrangement, Mars and his brother were indentured until their twenty-fifth birthdays. Mars served a Norfolk, Connecticut, farmer until 1815 and continued to do farm labor before moving to Hartford, Connecticut, in the early 1830s with his wife and two children. In Hartford, Mars became a leader of the black community. He initiated a successful suit to prevent the slave Nancy from being forced to relocate in Virginia when her owners decided to move there; he was an organizer and deacon of the Talcott Street Church; and he undoubtedly helped locate the North African School of Hartford at the church. Mars and his wife had six more children while living sixteen years in Hartford. In the late 1840s, the family moved to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Within four years, Mars’s wife and sixteen-year-old son died of illness. In 1864 Mars published his narrative, Life of James Mars, a Slave. Two years later, Mars’s leg was severely injured in an accident, and he moved to New York, where a Quaker family cared for him. James Mars, Life of James Mars, a Slave (Hartford, Conn., 1864), 1–38; David O. White, Connecticut’s Black Soldiers, 1775– 1783 (Chester, Conn., 1973), 50–51; David O. White, “Hartford’s African Free Schools, 1830–1868,” CHSB 39: 47–51 (April 1974); Abajian, Blacks in Selected Newspapers, 2:573. 38. Isaac Cross (ca. 1813–?) was a Hartford, Connecticut, free black shoemaker and the son of Abraham and Elizabeth Cross. At the time of Pennington’s first trip to Britain, Cross was a deacon at the Talcott Street Church and active in the state temperance society. By 1866 Cross had become the clerk of the Talcott Street Church. Abajian, Blacks in Selected Newspapers, 1:502; White, “Hartford’s African Schools,” 50; Barbara W. Brown and James M. Rose, Black Roots in Southeastern Connecticut, 1650–1900 (Detroit, Mich., 1980), 98. 39. William Saunders was a Hartford, Connecticut, free black tailor. Saunders apparently had strong abolitionist sentiments but only a marginal affiliation with formal antislavery organizations, briefly serving as an agent for the Liberator. Saunders provided tailor apprenticeship opportunities for black youths in New England. His own two sons, Thomas and Prince, became tailors and continued the family business in Hartford. Abajian, Blacks in Selected Newspapers, 3:263, 264; Lib, 14 January, 11 August 1832, 27 July 1833. 40. Henry Nott (1805–?) was a Hartford, Connecticut, free black laborer and a member of Pennington’s Talcott Street Church. He was active in the social life

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of Hartford’s black community as well as a leader, throughout the 1840s, in efforts to gain black suffrage in Connecticut. Along with Selah M. Africanus and Henry A. Thompson, Nott drafted his “Address to the Colored Men of Connecticut”—a document issued by the mid-September 1849 state black suffrage convention at New Haven, which eloquently outlined the case for black civil rights. Nott was married and had at least two children. White, “Hartford’s African Schools,” 49; Abajian, Blacks in Selected Newspapers, 2:689, 749; Lib, 12 October 1849; United States Census, 1850. 41. Gad Worthington (1819–1885) was a Connecticut free black waiter, who was probably born in Colchester and was a member of the Colchester First Church. By 1843 Worthington had settled in Hartford and was probably affiliated with the Talcott Street Church. He married Sarah Warmsley in Lebanon, Connecticut, on 8 December 1844. They had at least three children. Brown and Rose, Black Roots, 450; CG, 13 June 1885; Abajian, Blacks in Selected Newspapers, 3:735; United States Census, 1850. 42. Pennington refers to the Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society, which was founded at a Hartford convention on 21 February 1838. Delegates drew up a constitution, composed a declaration of sentiments, and elected the society’s officers, board of managers, and executive committee. The society hierarchy was a mix of Connecticut’s leading white business, academic, political, and religious figures. John T. Norton, a successful farmer, was the society’s first president, and Samuel S. Bolles was its first secretary and editor of the organization’s newspaper, the Charter Oak. The Connecticut society was affiliated with the New England Anti-Slavery Society and, after 1840, sided with the Garrison-directed American Anti-Slavery Society. The Connecticut society’s position on political action estranged some leading black abolitionists such as Pennington and Amos G. Beman, who helped found the state’s Liberty party and actively sought the right of suffrage for blacks. By the mid-1840s, the Connecticut society was inactive and “some hundreds of dollars in debt.” Lib, 2, 23 March 1838, 26 April 1839, 3 January 1840, 23 May 1845; Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 2:340, 346, 377, 506, 556, 565, 582; George L. Clark, A History of Connecticut, 2d ed. (New York, N.Y., 1914), 375–77. 43. Joseph Sturge (1793–1859) was born in Elberton, Gloucestershire, and became a prosperous grain broker. In 1822 Sturge moved to Birmingham, became active in politics, and began a lifelong commitment to peace, temperance, and antislavery reform. Sturge helped secure passage of the West Indian Emancipation Act (1833) and the end of the oppressive apprenticeship system. In 1839 Sturge moved British antislavery in the direction of universal emancipation as the chief organizer of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. He condemned southern slavery in A Visit to the United States. For a time in the late 1840s, Sturge directed his attention to concerns other than antislavery, but by the early 1850s, he was again a leading force in the movement, hosting lectures at his home, chairing meetings throughout England, and supporting the free produce effort and the reformist London Morning Star newspaper. DNB, 19:130–31; Temperley, British Antislavery, 34–41, 69–83, 140, 156–57, 170–73, 194–97, 209–10.

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14. Speech by J. W. C. Pennington Delivered at Exeter Hall, London, England 21 June 1843 One day after the London World’s Anti-Slavery Convention closed, J. W. C. Pennington joined other convention delegates and observers at the fourth annual meeting of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which convened at Exeter Hall on the morning of 21 June 1843. The participants included members of British royalty, British religious and political leaders, a few colonial administrators from the West Indies, and a sprinkling of European antislavery activists. The gathering was notable for the “large party of ladies” present, including the duchess of Sutherland and Lady Noel Byron. Several “gentlemen of colour” attended. Meeting chairman Lord Morpeth (George William Frederick Howard) entered the hall at eleven o’clock and was enthusiastically cheered. During a discussion of the British government’s plan to transport African workers to the West Indies, Pennington was greeted by loud applause as he rose to offer a resolution. Pennington’s remarks typified the tendency of black abolitionists to turn public discussions on any issue into a forum for considering slavery. The resolution was seconded by Rev. J. H. Hinton, and following its approval, the meeting adjourned. PtL, 3 July 1843. [Resolved:] That this meeting deeply regrets the sanction given by her Majesty’s Government to a scheme of emigration from Africa to the West Indies,1 as of dangerous tendency, inasmuch as, in their judgment, it is not called for by existing circumstances, and can only be carried into effect at an enormous expense, to be borne chiefly by those whose interests it will seriously affect, for the benefit of the planters and non-resident proprietors, and which is, moreover, open to serious objections, on account of the disparity of the sexes which it allows to be introduced into the colonies; and, inasmuch, also, as it affords a pernicious example to slave-holding states to people their territories and colonies with nominally free, though really enslaved Africans; thus creating a new form of slavetrading, which no treaties can reach and no laws can cure. That this meeting equally regrets the relaxation of the restrictions placed on the export of Indian labourers to Mauritius,2 which though henceforth subject to Governmental control, is open to most of the objections urged against emigration from Africa to the West Indies, and is obnoxious to the charge of allowing the unlimited importa-

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tion into that island of the male sex only—an arrangement, against which they earnestly protest as immoral and alike injurious to the native and the imported labourers. I have consented to move this resolution, with the understanding that any remarks shall have some latitude. To one who has been in the habit of calm observation, it must be evident that the world is approaching a great crisis. (Hear, hear.) Commotion seems to be the order of the day; one strange and dreadful event appears to tread rapidly on the heels of another. Remedies are multiplied, but diseases, political and moral, seem to fasten upon the very vitals of society. Hence, the philanthropist, the politician, and the Christian, are continually inquiring what is the matter, and what is the remedy. Remedies, I have said, are multiplied, but the failures are almost equally numerous. Hence, it is apparent that in a great degree society is disorganised; and it behoves us to inquire into the cause. It originates in the dismemberment of those portions of the human family who have been long and cruelly disfranchised. (Hear, hear.) The human family, taken as a whole, are like the body. Each class is a limb; every limb sustains its appropriate relation. Strike off a limb, and you injure the whole body. (Cheers.) To treat any one class of the human family without a respect to the relationship they sustain, is to do injury to the entire body, and to diffuse pain throughout it. Here is the exact position of that limb of the human family which I represent today. For hundreds of years it has been dismembered from the trunk, and hence mutual pain, mutual disease, mutual agony, mutual trouble throughout the whole body. Again, I ask, What is the remedy? It is direct, it is close, it is reasonable. Restore the dismembered limb. (Cheers.) I have great pleasure in moving this resolution, because it will call upon you to protest against all the petty policy that has been pursued with respect to Africa, from the days of Charles the Fifth of Spain3 down to the present moment. I protest against the scheme of emigration from Africa, because it involves a line of policy inadequate to meet the necessities of that country, and unworthy of being adopted by one nation towards another. I protest against it, because that country has an ample extent of land; it has splendid rivers; it has exhaustless resources; it abounds in gold dust, in ivory, in palm oil, and furnishes room enough for all its inhabitants. (Cheers.) There is no use, therefore, in transporting them from its shores. I protest against it, because I would first call upon the nations to do justice to those portions of the family of Africa whom they have already stolen and enticed away, before they think of the removal of others. Let the United States emancipate all that are found within her territories. Let Great Britain educate and refine the 800,000 freemen in her colonies. She has already enough to whom to do justice, ere she entices others

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away. (Cheers.) I have said that the dismemberment of society is the occasion of all its troubles and pains. Let me fasten your attention on this view of the subject. I am not one of those who would maintain that portions of society which have long been in possession of power and privilege have had their energies exhausted; but I do maintain that we have arrived at a great crisis in the course of time and events; that the hand of Providence has been placed on the car, and that the mandate is, that it shall proceed no further till all the passengers are in. (Hear, hear.) Or, if you choose to change the figure, suppose the case of a ship, about to sail with 100 passengers, all of whom have been registered, and have paid their fare. Fifty only are on board; shall the ship sail without the rest? I am persuaded, that if the noble Lord were the commander of that ship, he would not weigh anchor till all were on board. (Cheers.) But I rejoice to know that God is the Commander of the ship, and that he says that the anchor shall not be weighed, a sail shall not be hoisted, until all the passengers are embarked. (Cheers.) My race constitutes the rejected passengers, and the mandate of Providence is, that the ship shall not depart without them. There is mutiny among the passengers, and if the noble Lord were among the fifty, he would protest against the sailing of the vessel until the remainder were on board. (Cheers.) And on board they must go, or the ship cannot sail. I have been much pleased with the remarks made by his Lordship with regard to English and Irish emigrants to America; and more especially that he referred to the fact that Irish emigrants are amongst the most inveterate foes to human rights. It is greatly to be lamented that the subjects of the British empire do not carry their principles with them to America. (Applause.) When I came to this country, two of my fellow passengers were slave-holders, one a Briton, and the other an Irishman. The latter told me more than once that he knew his slaves in Kentucky had more to waste than his friends in Ireland had to live upon. (Laughter.) I appeal to the audience, never at the peril of liberty to countenance the idea that we are to have perpetual slavery. I wish to make known today, before heaven and earth, that if you are to have perpetual slavery, you cannot have the black man for a perpetual slave. (Immense cheers.) I am prepared to abide by this position. I say it advisedly, that our servitude, which has been a submissive and a bloody one, is nearly out, and therefore, if slavery is to be perpetual, the question comes—who are to be the slaves? (Cheers.) Who shall settle this question? Will the British Government, the British nation, or any other government or nation, undertake the settlement of this question? I imagine that I see an individual enter the door before me; he throws his eye around the audience; he advances and delivers a message; the message is brought to the noble chairman, who announces to the meeting that the man designs to take some one from this hall and make

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him a slave, and the meeting are to decide who that individual shall be. I ask your Lordship4 and your fellow citizens, would any one be prepared to stand up and assign a reason why I should be that slave. (Cheers.) I believe the audience intended to respond in the negative, I then ask, why treat my people so? (Renewed cheers.) I am the representative of that people, and what I gain anywhere and everywhere, I gain for every manacled slave in America, and for every benighted African in the world. (Loud cheers.) Allow me to say, in conclusion, that I do not stand here to recriminate. Though I have a country that has never done me justice, yet I must return to it, and I shall not therefore recriminate. It has pleased God to make me black and you white, but let us remember, that whatever be our complexion, we are all by nature labouring under the degradation of sin, and without the grace of God are black at heart. (Hear, hear.) I know of no difference between the depraved heart of a Briton, an American, or an African. There is no difference between its colour, its disposition, and its self-will. There is only one mode of emancipation from the slavery of sin, from blackness of heart, and that is by the blood of the Son of God. (Hear, hear.) Whatever be our complexion, whatever our kindred and people, we need to be emancipated from sin, and to be cleansed from our pollution by the all-prevailing grace of God. I bless his name, that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, Barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free, but all are one. (Long continued applause.) Patriot (London), 3 July 1843. 1. In late 1842, the British secretary of state for the colonies approved a plan for the emigration of African laborers from Sierra Leone to the West Indies. The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society opposed the scheme in a petition to the House of Commons. The society felt that there was no real demand for more labor in the West Indies, that any genuine labor needs could be met with surplus labor from other regions in the hemisphere, and that the scheme would stimulate the international slave trade. British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Annual Report (London, 1843), 93–100. 2. Immigration of indentured Indian laborers to Mauritius to work for British planters was first permitted in 1839, but abuses, including mistreatment of laborers, led the colonial government of India to prohibit Indian immigration to Mauritius the following year. In 1841 the governor of Mauritius requested that the ban on immigration be lifted, and with support of the governor of India, this led to the passing of Act XV of 1842, which permitted immigration of “coolies” to Mauritius from Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay under certain conditions but guaranteed their return passage upon expiration of their indenture. C. Kondapi, Indians Overseas, 1838–1949 (Bombay, 1951), 8–10. 3. Charles V (1500–1568) was emperor of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. He began the transatlantic African slave trade when he established the Asiento— an import license that formalized the commercial slave traffic into the Spanish New World colonies.

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4. Pennington refers to George William Frederick Howard (1802–1864), the seventh earl of Carlisle, who was educated at Eton and Oxford and became Lord Morpeth in 1825. Noted for his liberal views, he sporadically served as a Whig in Parliament and held various other political posts until he was appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland (1855–64). Morpeth’s various reform interests included anti-slavery; he wrote a preface to an English edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. DNB, 28:19–21.

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15. Moses Roper to The Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society 9 May 1844 The lecture experiences of former slaves Moses Roper, Moses Grandy, and Frederick Douglass refined the definition of a British black abolitionist tour by shaping the expectations of British audiences. The British reform public continued to be fascinated by any black speaker from America, but after listening to Roper, Grandy, and Douglass, they displayed an increasing appetite for firsthand accounts of plantation life by former slaves. To some degree, the success of Roper’s pointed presentation of his life story suggests this newfound hunger. His 9 May 1844 letter to The Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society briefly reviewed his antislavery activities during eight years in Britain and gave notice of his intention of abandoning antislavery lecturing to settle at the Cape of Good Hope, then a British colony in southern Africa. Roper, Narrative, vi, 74–75. Sheaf Street Daventry, [England] May 9, 1844 To the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society 27 New Broad Street London, [England] Gentlemen, I have been in England now rather more than eight years, and have employed myself during that period partly in pursuing my studies and partly lecturing through the country, & by the sale of my book1 (the only remuneration I received for my lectures), have paid for my education and supported myself, I have addressed meetings in upwards of two thousand towns and villages as I often lectured twice in one day. There are numbers of places that I have not visited, which I do not intend visiting, if I can only obtain the means to leave England for the Cape of Good Hope, which is my object in addressing the committee of the Anti Slavery society. I have about eighty pounds in my possesion all of which it will take, to pay the passage of my Wife, Child,2 and myself to the Cape, we should then have nothing to begin with. I should feel ever and most grateful if the Committee will render me some assistance. If you will kindly pay my passage out, and I should have something to begin with, the money could be paid to the owner or agent of the ship. I have been working very hard to get the means to leave with, but if I cannot get any

Moses Roper to the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society

2. Moses Roper From Moses Roper, Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery (London, 1846)

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assistance, shall have to publish another edition, which will detain me a year or two, or longer in lecturing and disposing of them. Besides twenty five thousand English, and five thousand Welsh copies are now in circulation, many of which have been disposed of through booksellers, which of course I did not realy much try. I have only three hundred now on hand, and hope they will be sold in two or three weeks. I shall then wait your reply before I take any further steps. I sincerely trust Gentlemen, you will kindly assist me. I shall then be able to settle and make myself useful. I have been brought up to Cultivating, Cotton, Tobacco, Indian corn (and to farming) and which I find from a work recently written by Mr. Chase3 on the Cape, they will grow very well at the Cape of Good Hope, and I am very anxious to settle in some part of Africa, as I have a strong desire to be useful to that race. My Wife has received a good and rather accomplished education, and could teach in a School if required, her Parents resident in Bristol whom I could refer you to, are not now being in years, able to assist us much at present, but I have no fear, if we can only get out, with what we have free, that we shall then get on. We have given up our house some time back, as we intended leaving but could not obtain the means. We have been for the last year and more lodging with a highly respectable Independent Minister to whom I can refer you. Most persons I meet with in different parts of the country, have said after they have heard my address, say they never heard a lecture more calculated to enlighten the public on the subject. Very few places that I lecture in, That near all the people can gain admittance, and I particularly notice, that the appeal on behalf, (Brown), that nearly every Chapel I have lectured in sign the memorial to send to America. Thousand I have addressed in remote places, did not know there was such a curse as Slavery in America. This I have written [unfriended?], and [unassisted] mearly stating the facts of my case. I shall feel extremely grateful for an answer [three words illegible] of the committee, and beg to subscribe myself Gentlemen, Your most Obedient Servant, Moses Roper British Empire Manuscripts, Rhodes House Library, Oxford. Published by permission. 1. Moses Roper’s Narrative was first published in London in the summer of 1837, approximately eighteen months after his arrival in England. Roper’s narrative was typical of other slave writings; it focused on the author’s experiences as a slave—from age six or seven (Roper was uncertain) through his escape from slavery in July 1834 and his subsequent arrival in Liverpool in November 1835. The narrative was well received but ran into difficulties when the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society objected because its address appeared on the title page. A dispute also developed between Roper and Dr. Thomas Price, who contributed a preface to the first edition. By 1840 Price asked that his preface be removed from future printings of the narrative because he was offended by Roper’s plans

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to stay on the antislavery lecture tour rather than do African missionary work. Whatever its publication problems, Roper’s narrative sold well. Nearly three thousand copies were sold in the first two months following publication, and in 1844 Roper claimed that twenty-five thousand English copies and five thousand Welsh copies had been purchased from him and the various booksellers he had engaged to market the work. Ten editions appeared between 1837 and 1846, selling in England for two shillings and in the United States for fifteen cents. Roper used most of the proceeds to support his family but hoped to use some revenues to buy a farm in Africa. Roper, Narrative; Thomas Price, Slavery in America; Notes of the Present State of Slavery and the Slave Trade throughout the World (London, 1837), 316–18; William Chaplin to John Tredgold, 16, 24, 31 October 1840, Moses Roper to the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 9 May 1844, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; PtL, 9 October 1837; Lib, 30 March 1838; Gara, Liberty Line, 123; PF, 29 October 1840. 2. On 29 December 1839, Roper married an Englishwoman from Bristol. They evidently had at least one child by 1844. Roper, Narrative, 73. 3. Roper refers to John Centlivres Chase’s The Cape of Good Hope and the Eastern Province of Algoa Bay, &c. &c.; with Statistics of the Colony (London, 1843), which was edited by Joseph S. Christophers and published by Pelham Richardson.

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16. M. M. Clark to Editor, London Patriot 9 October 1846 M. M. Clark traveled to Britain in late August 1846 as the African Methodist Episcopal church representative to the international meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in London. The alliance was an interdenominational attempt by missionary-minded European and American Protestant churches to coordinate their efforts through an umbrella organization. A controversy, which eventually destroyed alliance efforts, developed when American delegates refused to debate the question of slavery and refused to exclude churches with slaveholding members. The meeting was further disrupted when William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass criticized the alliance and censured Clark for his participation. Like black Presbyterian clergyman Stephen H. Gloucester one year later, Clark found that black antislavery moderates fared poorly in the intense abolitionist atmosphere of the British Isles. At a 25 September Norwich gathering of British alliance delegates, Clark outlined his antislavery views. The day after his presentation, William Brock, a noted British abolitionist and a participant at the Norwich meeting, wrote the London Patriot accusing Clark of “making a formal defence of American slavery.” Clark responded to Brock, Garrison, Douglass, and his British critics in a 9 October letter to the Patriot. Lib, 11 December 1846; ASRL, 1 October 1846; M. M. Clark, Tract on American Slavery (Bradford, England, 1847), 4–8; NASS, 26 November 1846. Brighton, [England] October 9, 1846 Sir:1 I regard the circumstance of my visit to England as an important era in the history of my life, respecting particularly the subject of American Slavery. I have not been accustomed in America to view the subject in exactly the same moral light in which I see it is viewed in this country.2 This is accounted for by the different medium through which it is viewed in the immediate vicinity of Slavery, and that of perfect freedom from such darkening influence. I confess I have been benefited in my views of Slavery and slaveholding since I came to this country; and I regard the discussion which has arisen as providential, tending much to inform the public mind upon the subject, as well as to give me clearer views of what is Christian duty regarding Slavery. It is true that there is no law of the United States against the emancipation of the slaves; but there is that which amounts almost to a practical prohibition of immediate emanci

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pation in the law that freed slaves must leave the slave States within a given time, or they would be seized, imprisoned, and sold, perhaps forever.3 This is a practical difficulty which amounts, in very many instances, to positive prohibition, especially as such slaves, if they had the means, could not be transmitted by any public conveyance. No coloured man can travel by the public conveyances in the slaveholding states of America, without the personal testimony of a white man, as to his being free. No manumission certificate is sufficient. The difficulty of a slave obtaining such white testimony amounts to obstruction; to say nothing of wicked men in the slave states through which they have to pass, robbing freed men of their papers, and immediately selling their persons into perpetual bondage; and the poor sufferer has no redress. They must steal away and pursue their flight by night. It is very romantic to talk of their following the North Star. This might be done by one in five thousand; but not by the mass—the aged, the infirm, and the young; but, especially in the States which are more distant from the free States. It was to such circumstances I publicly referred, and which have not been understood. Therefore, lest I should appear before the public of this country as one, in any degree palliating the crime of slaveholding, I feel it my duty to state, explicitly and unhesitatingly, that, while a man holds his fellow-man in Slavery, he sins against the laws of God; and the Gospel exhorts all sinners to immediate repentance. In regard, however, to the duty of the Christian Church respecting the admission of slaveholders to its communion, I find, in this country, various opinions among the best informed. But, viewing it myself in the clearer moral light enjoyed in this free country, it does appear to me, that slaveholding must, on the one hand, inflict an evil and impose a blot on churches receiving slaveholders into communion; or on the other hand, cause a privation to be felt by those whose difficulties in ridding themselves immediately of slaveholding are insuperable. I see clearly that the latter consequence is to be preferred. It is far better, in any case, that the slaveholder should endure the privation of communion, than that the Church of Christ should even appear to connive at sin. My own mind is, that the churches in America ought to use the whole weight of their influence against the practice of slaveholding; and one way in which they might powerfully exert their influence, would be to determine by the Scriptures, which they can easily do, that slaveholding is a sin against God; and he that continues in habitual known sin, can be, and ought to be, subjected to the rules of the Church, as in the case of other known sins. In this, the Church would be doing nothing more than acting out her legitimate functions—coming out from the world, and placing herself upon a high hill, where her light could be seen, and where she would teach the world this lesson, that she could not give her influence—could not sanction or connive, in the least degree, at the sins of the world. The world would soon begin to feel and

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acknowledge her moral power, and gradually submit to her authority. But, while she connives at it, and cherishes it in her bosom, she compromises with the slaveholder, casts away her own power and influence, and is found shaking hands with the world. I am, Sir, yours respectfully, &c., M. M. CLARK4 National Anti-Slavery Standard (New York, N.Y.), 26 November 1846. 1. Josiah Conder (1789–1855), a bookseller, popular poet, and the author of On Protestant Nonconformity, edited the Patriot, a biweekly London newspaper, founded in 1832. The paper was Nonconformist and abolitionist with close ties to the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. It dealt primarily with religious questions during the 1830s. Later printed and published by John Howat, it became the English Independent in 1867. Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 1:247, 3:417; Bourne, English Newspapers, 2:45; Newspaper Press Directory, 1860 (London, 1860), 29. 2. William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and various British Garrisonians censured M. M. Clark during 1846–47 for allegedly defending slavery. Although specific documentation is limited, it appears that Clark never defended slavery but merely questioned whether churches should exclude slaveholders from fellowship. Although he struggled with the issue, by October 1846 Clark clearly favored excluding slaveholders, and in later years he supported stronger black church policy on the subject. The problem continued in Britain when he gave the impression of equivocating on the issue in an antislavery lecture at Edinburgh during May 1847. Clark delivered a number of antislavery lectures in Britain, and before returning to the United States, he published Tract on American Slavery, a concise but sophisticated statement of his antislavery thought. The pamphlet reviewed the political economy of slavery and suggested a political means for abolishing the institution. Clark assured readers that he opposed slavery, believed slaves to be shamefully mistreated, and concluded that the institution fostered racial prejudice against free blacks. Lib, 9 July 1847; Payne, African Methodist Episcopal Church, 335–45; Clark, Tract on American Slavery, 5–14. 3. The southern states permitted relatively unrestricted slave manumission practices during the post-Revolutionary decades, but by the mid-1830s most required slave owners to obtain judicial or legislative permission to free slaves and demanded that those freed leave the state. Even those states that did not restrict an owner’s right of manumission stipulated that freed blacks either migrate or risk deportation or reenslavement. Ira Berlin, Slaves without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York, N.Y., 1974), 138–39. 4. Molliston Madison Clark (ca. 1794–1874) was born to free parents in Delaware. During the early 1830s, Clark attended Jefferson College (located near Pittsburgh), where he shared lodgings with Martin R. Delany for a time. Clark taught briefly in Buffalo, New York, entered Oberlin College to prepare for the ministry in 1836, and, a year later, returned to teaching in Cleveland. He soon became active in Ohio antislavery efforts. The state’s black citizens appointed him their petition agent—a position that required him to travel around the state collecting signatures protesting Ohio’s black laws. Between 1837 and 1840, Clark acted as the chief agent for the School Fund Institution (an organization founded

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by blacks to coordinate and finance a statewide school-building program for their children). He was ordained by the African Methodist Episcopal church and became the general book steward for the AME. He left that position within a year to serve a Washington, D.C., congregation. In 1846 Clark was appointed as AME delegate to the Evangelical Alliance, which met in London. Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison censured Clark for attending the Evangelical Alliance meeting because of the organization’s initial willingness to accept slaveholding churches as members. Clark recanted his support for the short-lived organization, conducted a successful yearlong lecture tour of Britain, and, before returning to America, published Tract on American Slavery, in which he denounced race prejudice and called for immediate emancipation. In 1849 Clark was appointed as a trustee for Avery Institute. Clark was reappointed AME book steward in 1852 and also edited the church’s newspaper, the Christian Recorder. He left both positions in 1854. In 1858 Clark and Daniel A. Payne established the Repository of Religion and Literature and of Science and Art—a quarterly review sponsored by literary societies organized with the district conferences of the AME “to diffuse useful knowledge” among black citizens. During the late 1850s, Clark became increasingly committed to black emigration and supported the African Civilization Society. Clark sought a post as an African missionary from the American Missionary Association in 1859 and, two years later (possibly after a brief stopover in England), traveled to Africa. During the mid-1860s, Clark settled in St. Louis and led black efforts to develop a school system. Clark died in Alton, Illinois, in 1874. Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, 1:447–48; Delany, Condition of Colored People, 122; Victor Ullman, Martin R. Delany: The Beginnings of Black Nationalism (Boston, Mass., 1971), 20, 21, 25, 54, 70, 86; M. M. Clark to M. E. Strieby, 6 December 1864, AMA-ARC [15:0612]; P, 20 January, 12 May, 24 September 1837, 22 October 1839 [3:0205]; Lib, 1 October 1847; PL, 27 December 1843, 8 January, 21 February, 26 June, 2 October 1844 [4:0761]; ASRL, 1 October 1846; NASS, 24 November 1842, 29 March, 6 April 1843, 9 October 1846 [5:0296]; FDP, 23 December 1853 [8:0525]; CR, 23 May 1854, 1, 19 February, 6 March, 11, 22 May 1859, 18 September 1864 [8:0920, 11:0577, 0593, 0623, 0727, 0746, 15:0524]; WAA, 7 April 1860, 5 October 1861; Penelope Bullock, The Afro-American Periodical Press, 1838–1909 (Baton Rouge, La., 1981), 40–48.

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17. Alexander Crummell to John Jay 9 August 1848 The rapid growth of his Church of the Messiah in New York City prompted Alexander Crummell to go to Britain during January 1848 to raise funds for a building to house his congregation. Once there, Crummell began a frequent correspondence with his antislavery friend and patron, New York jurist John Jay. Thus, when Crummell was offered the opportunity to obtain an English education in the summer of 1848, he penned a series of letters to Jay seeking advice. Crummell was urged by members of the Committee of Management (formed to handle contributions to his church fund) and others to take advantage of the educational opportunities available to him. His 9 August 1848 letter to Jay discussing the advantages and disadvantages of obtaining an English university degree reflects the struggle of a number of black abolitionists abroad to harmonize personal opportunities with professional objectives. With the help of his English patrons, Crummell later enrolled in a baccalaureate program at Queens College, Cambridge University. Luckson E. Ejofodomi, “The Missionary Career of Alexander Crummell in Liberia, 1853–1873” (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1974), 43–82. Everton, Liverpool, [England] August 9th, 1848 Dear Sir1 I beg to acknowledge yrs. of ——— wh. reached me at Bath. I was at Cheltenham at the time it was delivered and when I recd. it, it was then too late for a reply to reach you at Glasgow. I thank you for the kind attention & thought you have bestowed upon the peculiar & important offer made me.2 The same opinions you express in relation to it, with reference to my family & [me] have already been suggested to my own mind, as likewise several other hindrances wh. before I shall conclude I will make mention of. On the other hand there are great general advantages connected with this offer, not merely personal, wh. I wish to be weighed, one against the other, by thoughtful discriminating friends and then a judgment to be formed, as to the preponderating value & importance. You say yourself that you have not been able to bestow all the thought upon this subject wh. it requires, and you give me permission to communicate with you in reference to it. I avail myself gladly of yr. kindness and in as succint and definite a manner as possible, will try to present the two different ways in wh. this offer may be viewed. Before doing so I may state in the most positive manner that I have

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come to no decision in the premises and am unbiased. I think that I have my mind open to the many advantages of the a university course to myself, my people & my race; yet not so much as to prevent my seeing the partial disadvantages to my people of my absence from them some three & a half years. The evident advantages of a university education at Cambridge or Oxford are these—I will commence with the lowest: 1st The very fact of English Philanthropists interesting themselves so much in a B black man (and he [29] years and already in the ministry) cannot but have a lively and startling influence among the prejudiced and the proslavery at home, especially in our CH. You know how prominent has been my own case, how I have been kept from the fountains of knowledge, how [leading]—our most prominent Bishops have disciplined me— I will use no stronger language for desiring and aiming to get in the “Seminary.” Will not such a marked contrast between the two countries presented in the same individual too have a powerful—nay a decisive influence? 2nd. The fact presented to the sight of [American] ecclesiastical dignitaries in my own case of being allowed social intercourse for years with the flower of England’s Youth not only merely with permission but with favor, nay even as right; can that be without influence? 3. You know the English English [sic] universities are superior to our Colleges. An English degree is of great value in America. Shd. I prove a faithful student and pass honorably thro. an English University (not to take honors—that wd. be out of the question with my lack of early scholastic training) wd. not the learning of an English University in my own person and an English University degree, place me in a position among American Clergymen, wh. wd. shame contempt, neutralize caste —yea even command respect & consideration? And wd. not all this be of service to the cause wh. has so interested yr. Father3 & yrself, wh. greatly needs its black representatives, refined and cultivated men, and tend to the elevation of my degraded race. 4. Is it not a matter of importance that the standard of learning among the African race, in America shd. be raised? There is not a learned black minister in the whole U.S. A very considerable portion of our ministers (among the negro race) are men who can neither read nor write. Besides, of what very great service cd. I not be as a Classical teacher in New York, as the Head of a Seminary for Colored Youth especially, as for training young men for the Ministry? There is not such an Instn. in the whole country. And wd. not the partial temporary disadvantages be almost nothing compared with the permanent advantages for years to come (God sparing me) to my people and my race in America. Here let me say—my wife4 too, meanwhile will be preparing herself for like duty & service. I forgot to mention in my note to you or else you did not notice

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it—that the offer to me is connected with the offer to her by an English Lady5 of support for herself and children in England during my stay here; and instruction in English—French & in Music so that both of us cd. be preparing to make our future household in New York, the fountain head, whence with God’s blessing might flow knowledge, learning & intelligent religion to many of the youth of our race for generations yet to come. Is it wrong for me to look at my own family comfort and my children’s welfare? This arrangement wd. be of great value in this respect. The wives of bl intelligent colored men in America are far behind their husbands in culture. It is a great disadvantage in many respects. My own wife is sadly deficient, and no one is more aware of it than herself, more anxious to overcome it. Without vanity without boastfulness but only in justice, I think I can say that she is a woman of first-rate capacity. But she has had no advantages. She went to the common school for black girls in New York was the first scholar in the school, took off all the prizes, in Reading, Arithmetic and Grammar, and for the same was afterward made Teacher. But you know how limited is the instruction in these schools, and the fact that there are no opportunities for higher instruction, for colored girls, in the country. Her improvement wd. be of great importance for myself, for my family as a family6—and with my own culture and improvement—wd. secure the education of my children. I may mention here that my wife is either 26 and I am 29 yrs. old: so I think we have time, humanly speaking, for improvement. Our two children are quite young as yet the older being 3 yrs. old and the younger 1. You will excuse me for saying that I do not think the objection you make viz.—that the people—the class I minister to are [word crossed out] unlearned and uncultivated people—a strong one. And for these reason— that in missions to the heathen, first-rate men are sought out, that it is found that the abilities and learning of missionaries must often be inversely to the capacities of the people to whom they minister—that true learning leads to simplicity. Besides in a large city like New York, altho. there is no learning among the my people, yet there is a great deal of mental activity, a great deal of intellectual inquisitiveness & questioning, no little infidelity. My own congregation has in it two thirds of the black and colored school teachers—illiterate men and women it is true, but to supply them I have to study, while I have but few materials with wh. to study. I sd. that I was not blind to the disadvantages connected with the offer they are these: 1st Absence from my congregation. I wd. be obliged to absent myself from them some three or four years, wh. wd. be a great disadvantage to them inasmuch, as they cd. not get any colored men to minister to them

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in the interim, and they prefer a colored minister. Besides it is difficult to get any white clergyman to officiate for my people. 2. The danger that we may get weaned from America [&?] get attached to the freedom of English life and society, and ultimately be unwilling to return to the U.S. I do not fear it. I do indeed thank God for the providence that has brot me to this land, and allowed me, for once in my life, to be a freeman. Oh the acquisition to one’s mind & heart and soul—the consciousness in all its fullest that one is a man! I never had it before I came to England. I use to think I had, but I was mistaken. But now I know it. Yet I am not intoxicated. I know it is not permanent. I wd. not have it permanent. If I know anything of myself I am identified with my race in America in all their trials, sufferings, struggles, hopes, aspirations, and endeavors. The distinct undoubted provinces of God may yet [unperilously] lead me from the U.S., to some other quarter of the globe; but I want, I desire from my inmost heart, to help upbuild my people in the U.S. And you will suffer to me to say that this is the reason that I have suffered persecution injury poverty, hunger, almost nakedness—(absolute hunger & nakedness had not you and yr. relations generously aided & relieved me at times when you know not of my distress)—rather than leave & go to the [letters crossed out] West Indies or Africa, where I had liberal offers made me. Since I have been in England I have had a chaplaincy offered me with a large salary & undoubted prospective comfort. I declined it. My mind has not wavered in this respect since I have been in the Kingdom; and altho., knowing the weakness of human nature, yet I do not fear myself. God thro. Jesus X Your Lord, favoring and blessing and favoring me. I have some fears for my wife, I confess; for she has been begging and entreating me for years to leave the U.S., because she saw no hope for us as a family, & none for our children in the future. But a glorious work is going on in America; and the change of things there and an a course of education, purposely to fit her to be of service in elevating her race, will I think tend to beget a sense of duty to God & her people in America, wh. will may entirely neutralize the other feeling. I may say here in conclusion that I have decided upon one thing most definitely—that after I have done collecting for my CH. I shall spend one year in study in the event I do not go to the University, and at the same time have my wife under instruction here in Engd. I have liberty to accept the offer for myself & family in this modified way, if I choose. I wait however the advice of more matured Judgement than my own, the opinions of my vestry, and the further indications of the Divine Mind. Be pleased Sir at yr. earliest convenience to give me yr. further mind upon this subject, for yr. opinions are of importance not only in enabling me to decide, but being an America[n], of importance to some of my

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English Friends at Bath, who altho. anxious for my going to the University, defer much to an American’s views & feelings, particularly as to the supposed influence of the whole measure upon Americans, in the fact itself and my standing on return. With many prayers for Mrs. Jay’s7 & yr. own safety, and happiness, I beg to subscribe myself very truly Your Servant, Alex Crummell8 P.S. Please direct as before—32 Surrey St. Strand London. I forgot to mention that I met with [illegible word crossed out] abundant success in Bath. I left there with between 150 & 200 pounds. While there I had a beautiful silver watch presented me, & chain, and near 130 valuable standard volumes. Jay Family Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, N.Y. Published by permission. 1. John Jay (1817–1894) was the grandson of Chief Justice John Jay and the son of Judge William Jay. He practiced law in New York City for twenty years. Jay had an enduring interest in reform. He managed the New York Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society, worked to gain admission of the black St. Philip’s Church to the Protestant Episcopal Convention, represented fugitive slaves, helped organize the Republican party in New York City, promoted civil service and customs house reform, and supported various freedmen’s issues. Jay served as minister to Austria from 1869 to 1874. DAB, 5(2): 10; NYT, 6 May 1894; NYTi, 6 May 1894. 2. Crummell refers to the offer made by a committee of prominent English philanthropists, citizens, and clergy in Bath, England (known as the Bath Committee), to support him while he attended Cambridge University. Committee of Management, Anglican Church, Improvement of the Negro Race in the United States of America (Bath, England, 1848), 1–3. 3. William Jay (1789–1858) was a New York judge, who wrote widely on reform issues. He favored immediate emancipation over colonization and gradual emancipation, worked for the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, contributed to the Emancipator, and helped organize the New York City Anti-Slavery Society. Jay was a president of the American Peace Society and a founding member of the American Bible Society. DAB, 5(2): 11–12; NYT, 16 October 1858. 4. Little is known about either of Alexander Crummell’s wives. The first, whose name is unknown, married him prior to or during 1843. She was three years younger than Crummell. She attended a common school for black women in New York, served as a teacher there, and continued her education in England. After the death of his first wife, Crummell married Jennie M. Simpson on 23 September 1880. Alexander Crummell to John Jay, 9 August 1848, Jay Family Papers, NNC [4:0715, 5:0731]; Alexander Crummell to John Scoble, 25 November 1848, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; Jennie M. Crummell to John W. Cromwell, 3 September 1898, Jonathan Wesley Cromwell from Walter B. Hayson, 13 Sep-

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tember 1898, Alexander Crummell, Marriage Certificate, 23 September 1880, Crummell Collection, NN-Sc. 5. The offer to educate and assist Mrs. Crummell was made by an unidentified lady in Bath, who was “well-known for her diligence and ability in the education of young females.” Committee of Management, Improvement of the Negro Race, 1–4. 6. In August 1848, the Crummell family consisted of Alexander, his wife, and two young sons. In June 1849, a daughter, Frances, was born to the Crummells. Another daughter was born in 1853. It is possible that a third daughter was born in the mid-1860s. Of these children, one son died in 1851, but the daughters were still living in 1865. Sidney Crummell, the other son, survived his father. Alexander Crummell to John Jay, 9 August 1848, 29 June 1849, 12 September 1851, 15 April 1853, Jay Family Papers, NNC; John Ketton to Alexander Crummell, 10 February 1866, Alexander Crummell to [?], 20 April 1865, Sidney Crummell to Alexander Crummell, [n.d.], Walter B. Hayson to John Wesley Cromwell, 13 September 1898, Crummell Collection, NN-Sc. 7. Eleanor Kingsland Field of New York City married John Jay on 23 June 1837. Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 4:633. 8. Alexander Crummell (1819–1898) was born free in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Boston, was a modestly prosperous small businessman, who was active in New York’s black community and helped found the reformist black newspaper Freedom’s Journal. Crummell attended the African Free School (1826) and the Canal Street High School (1831), which had been established to teach black students classical studies. Along with friends Henry Highland Garnet and Thomas Sidney, Crummell enrolled at William Scales’s Noyes Academy in Canaan, New Hampshire (1835), but was forced to leave the school by an anti-integrationist mob. Crummell graduated from Beriah Green’s Oneida Institute in 1839. The same year, he was refused admission to the General Theological Seminary of New York City because of his race. With the help of William and John Jay, Crummell secured a tutorial with Rev. Alexander Vinton of Providence, Rhode Island, and was ordained to the diaconate in 1842. Crummell moved to Philadelphia and, two years later (1844), was ordained an Episcopal priest but was refused permission by Philadelphia Bishop Henry Onderdonk to apply for a seat in the local Episcopal convention. Crummell became pastor to the Church of the Messiah in New York City and, four years later (1848), journeyed to Britain to raise funds for construction of a new chapel. In the spring of 1849, Crummell entered Queens College at Cambridge University and graduated four years later with a bachelor of arts. During Crummell’s enrollment, he was active in British antislavery circles and promoted the use of free labor products. Crummell’s father was an abolitionist, and he was raised on the fringes of antislavery reform, but his formal participation in the movement began during his tutorial with Vinton and continued throughout the 1840s when he attended many black citizens’ conventions and supported New York black efforts for suffrage. In 1847 he attended the National Negro Convention held in Troy, New York, and spoke in favor of a vigorous black press and the establishment of a national college for blacks; he also discussed the possibility of settling in Liberia. When he finished his education in Britain during 1853, he accepted an

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appointment from the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society as an Episcopal missionary to that country. Crummell lived in Liberia for twenty years, first serving as pastor to the Trinity Church in Monrovia and, after 1866, as pastor of St. Peter’s Church in Caldwell. He was also appointed principal of Mount Vaughan High School and taught at Liberia College in the early 1860s. Crummell had immigrated to Liberia, partially from interest in his African heritage, but, more so, to inculcate Western standards of morality and culture. He left Liberia discouraged by the lack of response to his mission, disappointed when Liberian elites failed to support the “civilization” of the remaining populace, and disheartened by the country’s internal political dissension. In 1873 Crummell was appointed pastor of St. Luke’s Church in Washington, D.C., and directed the congregation until his death in 1898. During this period, he played an active role in the community’s cultural life (he helped found the American Negro Academy in 1896), pressed for black civil rights, and continued to stress the importance of black self-help, education, and moral improvement. Ejofodomi, “Missionary Career of Alexander Crummell,” 30–230; Wilson J. Moses, “Civilizing Missionary: A Study of Alexander Crummell,” JNH 60: 229–51 (April 1975); Kathleen O’Mara Wahle, “Alexander Crummell: Black Evangelist and Pan-Negro Nationalist,” Phy 29:388– 95 (Winter 1978); DANB, 145–47.

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18. Remarks of Alexander Crummell Delivered at the Hall of Commerce, London, England 21 May 1849 By the late 1840s, the free produce movement began to attract popular support among British reformers. This component of the antislavery movement—which, for many, was an expression of moral contempt for slavery—asked the British people to reduce the profitability of slavery by refusing to purchase slave-produced goods. Henry and Anna Richardson and their Newcastle Ladies’ Free Produce Association sparked enthusiasm by recruiting black lecturers Henry Bibb and Henry Highland Garnet to speak in Britain. Other black abolitionists, including Alexander Crummell, assisted the movement in less formal ways. At the tenth annual meeting of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, held in the Hall of Commerce, London, on 21 May 1849, Crummell introduced a resolution calling for abstinence “from the use of slave-labour produce.” ASRL, 1 May 1848, 1 June 1849; BB, 23 May 1849; Joel Schor, Henry Highland Garnet: A Voice of Black Radicalism in the Nineteenth Century (Westport, Conn., 1977), 111. Resolved—That, in the opinion of this meeting, the abolitionists of this and other countries have a great personal as well as collective duty to perform towards the suffering and oppressed millions of mankind, now in bondage, in abstaining, as far as practicable, from the use of slave-labour produce, and in the encouragement of that alone which is grown and manufactured by the compensated labour of freemen; they would, therefore, earnestly recommend all the opponents of slavery to set a worthy example themselves, and also to encourage and sustain every well-directed effort to induce the public at large to adopt similar views and practice, as one great and powerful means for securing the universal abolition of slavery. The report1 which has been read presents you with the deplorable fact, that notwithstanding all the efforts and sacrifices that have been made, multitudes of our brethren yet remain in cruel bondage, in this age of wide-spread civilisation and Christianity. It is a matter of congratulation that in this matter your reputation is secure—that nothing can rob you of the honour of what you have done as a nation. Every one knows something of slavery, but no one has a full knowledge of it but the slave. One of its peculiarities is, that wherever it exists it produces a demand for slaves—a slave-trade; a fact not seen till recently in this country, and perhaps it was important in the discipline of the national mind that it should not be known. But now it is seen that to put down the slave-trade

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you must abolish slavery—that the whole system must be destroyed. There are many means by which it is hoped to effect this—by the course pursued by Societies like this, by the operation of missionary agencies, and by a system that has been recently devised, that of abstinence from slave produce.2 I spoke of this as a new principle; but it is rather an old one revived. At the time that this country was shaken to its centre by the slavery question, 300,000 Englishmen resolved, as an expression of their abhorrence of slavery, to abstain from the use of slave-grown sugar. It is the reproduction of this system to which I now wish to call your attention, and would endeavour to enforce. The simple fact is, that Great Britain is still the great supporter of slavery, by her immense consumption of slavegrown produce. You use two-thirds of the whole American cotton crops. Let your Lancashire mills stop working, let your Manchester factory people be standing still, and the effect on the American cotton-growers is wonderful. But let your markets be active, let the price of cotton rise here, and, immediately it is known across the Atlantic, the price of slaves rises, droves of human beings are sent up to our slavemarkets, men in their strength, women in their prime, are sold and separated, and sent to Baltimore or Kentucky. Tell the planters that you will no longer, by buying the produce of their slaves, suffer them to get rich by the sweat, and agony, and blood of your fellow-creatures—that you will reduce them from affluence to poverty and bankruptcy, and immediately the system will come to an end. The sugar of Brazil and Cuba is also chiefly used in Great Britain. You have extensive possessions for the production of those commodities; and thus you could benefit yourselves, while you destroy an accursed system, and liberate millions of your fellow-creatures. I trust the subject will be thought of and acted upon as a most sacred duty. Anti-Slavery Reporter (London), 1 June 1849. 1. Earlier in the meeting, Secretary John Scoble of the British and Foreign AntiSlavery Society read the society’s annual Report of the Committee. The report included a census of slaves in Latin America, Africa, and the United States; the Report of the Select Committee on the Slave Trade in the House of Commons on coolie importation into British colonies; a review of international abolitionist activities during the year; and the BFASS annual financial statement. BB, 23 May 1849. 2. Proponents of the free produce movement theorized that the organized boycott of slave-produced goods would reduce the profitability of slavery and thus destroy the institution. The concept arose among American Quakers during the late eighteenth century but had its earliest success with the British boycott of slave-produced West Indian sugar. Encouraged by the British efforts, the American Anti-Slavery Society, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and many local societies approved the technique between 1833 and 1840. The movement eventually failed in America in no small measure because the lack of readily

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available free labor goods destroyed abolitionist enthusiasm. Yet the constancy of Quaker and black support kept the Anglo-American free produce movement active during the late 1840s and early 1850s. Lecture tours by black abolitionists Henry Highland Garnet and others heightened British interest. Anglo-American support for the free produce concept declined rapidly after the mid-1850s, but it remained an important component behind West African immigration and cotton production schemes. Carleton Mabee, Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 through the Civil War (London, 1970), 185–204; Ruth Ketring Nuermberger, The Free Produce Movement: A Quaker Protest against Slavery (Durham, N.C., 1942); Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 74–75; Schor, Henry Highland Garnet, 116–18; ASRL, 1 May 1848, 1 June 1849; Fr, 1 May 1848; Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 112, 193, 206, 220–22.

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19. William Wells Brown to Elizabeth Pease 30 July 1849 William Wells Brown went abroad in 1849 to attend the Paris Peace Congress and to lecture in Britain for the antislavery cause. He arrived in Liverpool during the afternoon of 28 July 1849, following a ten-day voyage on the Cunard steamship Canada. After debarking, Brown registered at Brown’s Temperance Hotel, where he spent his first three nights in England and prepared for a 1 August trip to Dublin. Before leaving Liverpool, Brown wrote to British abolitionist Elizabeth Pease, seeking an introduction into British antislavery circles. He enclosed letters from American abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Charles Spears to establish his credentials with Pease. Brown’s immediate effort to present his references to a prominent British antislavery figure underscores his awareness of British certification procedures. Farrison, William Wells Brown, 142–46. Brown’s [Temperance Hotel] Liverpool, [England] July 30th, 1849 Elizabeth Pease1 Esteemed friend, Though I am not personally acquainted with you, yet, the familiarity with which your name is used in the anti-slavery circle of America, seems to give me an acquaintance with you, without seeing you. And with this seeming acquaintance I take the liberty of addressing you. Enclosed, is a letter from our friend Garrison, also one from our friend Spear.2 As it is not probable that I shall be in your place soon, I thought I would send them by mail. I shall go to Dublin tomorrow for the purpose of getting out [another] edition of my book.3 After the Peace meeting in Paris,4 I shall commence lecturing. As I am a stranger, and wish to consult the friends of the slave, upon my future course, any suggestions from you, will be gratefully received and highly appreciated. I shall be in London on about the 20th of Aug. Also, soon after the adjournment of the peace convention. Respectfully yours for the slave, Wm. W. Brown5 Antislavery Collection, Boston Public Library, Boston, Mass. Published by courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library. 1. Elizabeth Pease (1807–1897) of Darlington, England, was a leading North Country Garrisonian. She shared an interest in antislavery and British India with

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her father, Joseph Pease. In 1853 she married Professor John Pringle Nichol of Glasgow University and was disowned by her Quaker brethren for marrying outside her faith. Working from within the circle of her home, she embraced Chartism, Italian unification, women’s rights, and befriended European exiles. Pease entertained and helped many visiting American abolitionists. After her husband’s death in 1859, she moved to Edinburgh, where she continued her antislavery work. DQB, n.p.; Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 11, 438; GM, November 1859; A. M. Stoddart, The Life of Elizabeth Pease Nichol (London, 1899). 2. Charles Spear (1801–1863) was an Abingdon, Massachusetts, minister, whose lifelong concerns were criminal rehabilitation and the abolition of capital punishment. In 1850 Spear carried his campaign to England and, while there, attended the London Peace Congress. Spear’s international reputation as an expert on penal-reform issues proved insufficient to attract attention or financial support to his crusade against capital punishment. DAB, 17:438–39. 3. The Narrative of William Wells Brown was first published in 1847, thirteen years after his escape from slavery. Within two years, the Narrative was reprinted three times and sold eight thousand copies. Brown’s Narrative was well within the slave narrative tradition—a clearly written examination of slave life. Brown details the rituals of slave existence, discusses the brutalizing effects of the institution on his own family life, and conveys a sense of the continuing anguish of a sensitive man over his slave status. The Narrative earned Brown a modest income, was translated for European sale, and launched his successful life of letters as playwright, historian, and the first black American novelist. Whatever the personal or public value of the work, it did, as one of its first readers noted, draw a “terrible picture of slavery.” Robin Winks, ed., Four Fugitive Slave Narratives (Reading, Mass., 1969), ixxvii; Charles H. Nichols, ed., Black Men in Chains: Narratives of Escaped Slaves (New York, N.Y., 1972), 7, 139. 4. The Paris Peace Congress convened at the Salle de la Sainte Cecile on 22–24 August 1849. Largely arranged by American pacifist Elihu Burritt and Henry Richard, secretary of the London Peace Society, it was chaired by Victor Hugo and attended by eight hundred delegates from western Europe and the United States. Black abolitionists William Wells Brown, Alexander Crummell, and J. W. C. Pennington participated. Their speeches violated the conditions set by the Paris police that the delegates refrain from discussing specific political or diplomatic questions. The congress was characterized by support for a Congress of Nations and by greater prominence of economic arguments against war. Merle Curti, The American Peace Crusade, 1815–1860 (Durham, N.C., 1929), 173–77; Farrison, William Wells Brown, 147–49. 5. William Wells Brown (ca. 1814–1884) was born in Lexington, Kentucky, the son of Elizabeth, a slave woman, and a white relative of her owner. After twenty years as a slave, Brown escaped to freedom in January 1834. He spent the next two years working on a Lake Erie steamboat and running fugitive slaves into Canada. In the summer of 1834, he met and married Elizabeth Spooner, a free black woman; they had three daughters, one of whom died shortly after birth. Two years after his marriage, Brown moved to Buffalo, where he began his career in the abolitionist movement by regularly attending meetings of the Western New

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York Anti-Slavery Society, by boarding antislavery lecturers at his home, by speaking at local abolitionist gatherings, and by traveling to Cuba and Haiti to investigate emigration possibilities. Brown’s abolitionist career was marked by a turning point in the summer of 1843 when Buffalo hosted a national antislavery convention and the National Convention of Colored Citizens. Brown attended both meetings, sat on several committees, and became friends with a number of black abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass and Charles Lenox Remond. Brown joined these two in their appeal to the power of moral suasion, their rejection of black antislavery violence (particularly the course espoused by Henry Highland Garnet in his “Address to the Slaves”), and their boycott of political abolitionism. Brown’s expanded service to the antislavery movement, his increasing sophistication as a speaker, and his growing reputation in the antislavery community brought an invitation to lecture before the American Anti-Slavery Society at its annual meeting in New York City; in May 1847, he was hired as a Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society lecture agent. Brown moved to Boston and, by the end of the year, he had published the successful Narrative of his life. In October 1849, he began a lecture tour of Britain and remained abroad until 1854. The length of his stay was conditioned by personal and political motives. He was exhilarated by the tour, had time to write, and enjoyed the benefits of reform circle society. He was also trying to recover from the dissolution of his marriage. Quite as important, once the Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850, it was dangerous for the escaped slave to return to America. Concern for Brown’s safety prompted British abolitionists to “purchase” his freedom in 1854. When Brown did return, he had written Clotel, the first novel published by an Afro-American, and was finishing St. Domingo, a work that suggests Brown’s growing antislavery militancy. The publication of those works as well as a travelogue, a play, and a compilation of antislavery songs established his reputation as the most prolific black literary figure of the mid-nineteenth century. During the remainder of his life, Brown lived in the Boston area and produced three major volumes of black history. During the last ten years of his life, he continued to travel, lecture, and write. He completed his last book, My Southern Home: Or, the South and Its People, in 1880. Farrison, William Wells Brown.

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20. Speeches by William Wells Brown and J. W. C. Pennington Delivered at Salle de la Sainte Cecile Paris, France 24 August 1849 Black abolitionists often turned a variety of reform meetings into antislavery forums. William Wells Brown, J. W. C. Pennington, and Alexander Crummell were among the twenty American delegates that attended the Second General Peace Congress held in Paris, 22–24 August 1849. The final session of the congress convened at the Salle de la Sainte Cecile at noon on Friday, 24 August, and concluded at about six o’clock. Midway through the afternoon’s proceedings, Brown was recognized and spoke briefly. He likened slavery to a war against blacks. Brown argued that war and slavery were so compatible that “to demand the abolition of slavery was to work for the maintenance of peace.” When Brown concluded, Parisian clerical activist Athanase Josue Coquerel summarized Brown’s remarks in French. Later in the proceedings, Pennington appeared on the platform and advocated passage of a resolution urging clerical activism in behalf of peace. He confirmed Brown’s thesis that slavery was war. But he assured his pacifist listeners that slaves sought no retaliation against their captors. BB, 29 August 1849; Farrison, William Wells Brown, 147–51.

Speech by William Wells Brown At so advanced a stage of the proceedings, I should not have thought of taking up the time of the meeting, were I not extremely desirous to protest, at the Peace Congress at Paris, against the existence of the war element, which condemns three millions of men in the United States to the degradation and sufferings of slavery. I was myself a slave for twenty years, and I can therefore speak from experience on this point. I can utter my sentiments with perfect freedom in Paris, but if I were to do so in the United States, my life would be in danger. Slavery has now been abolished in almost every country of Europe; but to her shame be it spoken, it still exists in America. By the revolution of 1848, France not only set her inhabitants at home free, but also emancipated the slaves in Martinique and Guadeloupe.1 Now, I wish to see the same thing done in the United States. But how can this be effected? It is impossible to maintain slavery without maintaining war. If therefore we can obtain the abolition of war, we shall at the same time proclaim liberty throughout the world, break in pieces every yoke of bondage, and let all the oppressed go free.

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3. Scene from Paris Peace Congress, 1849 From London Illustrated News, 1 September 1849

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Speech by J. W. C. Pennington Mr. President and gentlemen of the Congress! The sixth resolution, “invites the ministers of religion to endeavour to eradicate from the minds of all, in their respective countries, both by means of a better education of youth, and by other practical means, those political prejudices and hereditary hatreds which have too often been the cause of disastrous wars.” By adopting this resolution the Congress will act wisely for the advancement of the great object it has in view, and will also pay a flattering compliment to the influence of the ministers of religion. The Master whom we serve and of whom we teach, is styled T H E P R I N C E O F P E A C E . He was announced to the world at his birth by the heavenly host, who sang “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, and goodwill to all men.” If goodwill existed among men there could be no war among them. War originates not so much from bad faith between nations in the keeping of treaty engagements, as it does from the existence of bad feelings. It is true, these feelings may not discover themselves until some slight cause of irritation occurs, and then the ostensible cause (bad faith) is made to stand out, and to float upon the bosom of the real cause (bad feeling), like a bubble that just makes its appearance upon the face of the angry waters. A war party almost always bases its movements upon the existence of political prejudices, and often seizes upon those hereditary hatreds as fuel for the flame, and then alleges that the result is inevitable. The resolution admits the premises, but denies the conclusion; or at least proposes a just remedy against it, a remedy which is founded in the gospel of peace and goodwill. In responding to the invitation, the ministers, it is true, will meet with one or two obstacles. The first of these obstacles is the difficulty of applying the principles of peace and goodwill to nations. This can be met, however, by consistency. They go to the extent of peace principles as applied to individuals. They reprove and condemn wrath, malice, and ill-will between man and man. They solemnly enjoin and enforce forgiveness, forbearance, and love of enemies. Is it any thing more than simple consistency to apply the same principle to nations? Another obstacle will arise from the commonly received notion of patriotism. Few things are more prominent in the character of man than patriotism—love of country. He is an unfortunate man who has no country; and he is an anomaly of humanity, who having a country does not love it. It is a blessing to have a country, and it is a virtue to love it; no man wishes to be without this virtue. But this love of country is capable

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of great abuse. It is generally held that no man loves his country patriotically, unless he will fight for it; unless he be ready to meet all encroachments and to avenge all wrongs. This very naturally leads a man to take it for granted that others are always ready to wrong his country, and consequently that he must always be ready to fight for it. Mere politicians act upon the principle, that defensive war will be indispensable while man is man. They hold it to be certain that the occasion for war will be enforced upon us by the wrongs of others; and hence they conclude, that as patriots we must stand ready to meet them in defence of our country. Here lies their grand fallacy, Why should we take this for granted? Is it not equal to taking it for granted that the gospel is not adapted so to change men, that they will not aggress upon each other? And what is this but infidelity? They seem to forget that it requires more moral courage to keep the peace, than it does of physical courage to break the peace and to fight battles. And the former is the kind of courage ministers of religion need to teach the principles of peace in the face of the war-spirit of the age. My friend, Mr. W. Brown, has said that slavery in the United States is an element of war. I quite agree with him, and I moreover hold that we cannot have universal peace till that system is abolished. For in no case does the maxim of the New Testament—”First pure, then peaceable,” apply more forcibly than in this. It is, and will ever be while it exists, the cause of discord, strife, and ill will among men. But this element of war is not to be found in spirit of that class of the human family which I represent here. We are wronged, but we do not wrong others. In our character you will find an element of Peace, which naturally accords with the spirit of the resolution—nay with that of the Gospel, we E N D U R E our wrongs. We have cause of complaint, we have temptation, if not occasion, to disturb the peace of society. No class of the family of man has suffered more unqualified and unprovoked wrongs than we. We have pressing upon our minds the recollection of centuries of oppression, including the loss of time, wealth, education, character, and every thing that man holds dear. We are now, even at this moment, when all other sections of the human family are striding onward in the march of liberty, lying under the accumulation of these wrongs. Surely then, if being robbed of all of one’s rights is a justification for disturbing the peace of society, we have that justification. Our wrongs are far greater than those of many who have set us the example in disturbing the peace. Nor can any one who takes a candid view of the whole subject, doubt that we have it in our power to disturb the peace of society. Look for one moment at the numerical strength of the negro on the Western Continent, where most of his disabilities are felt. We constitute full one-fifth of the whole population of the Western Continent:

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3,500,000 2,500,000 4,500,000 1,500,000 12,000,000

More than one-half of this number are now in servitude to the whites. Can it be supposed that twelve millions of men, burning with aspirations of freedom, can do nothing to disturb the peace of about 40,000,000 among whom they live? While the justice of our cause is perfectly obvious, we are not ignorant of our physical strength. The present sway is not held over us by justice, nor could it be at all secure in point of physical force, if we trusted in our own. We take a higher and broader view of the subject. That element of peace in our character gives us a more substantial ground of hope. We rely upon the immutable justice of God. We, all things considered, prefer to keep the peace, and choose God as our arbiter. The sword settles nothing. Physical force, however powerful, substantiates nothing. But the arm of God does. The noise of revolutions that has greeted our ears from all parts of the world has not moved us from our fidelity to the principles of peace.2 We would cultivate and adhere to the spirit of peace, even at the expense of our own peace and just claims. We believe that the human family is on the march; and, as a grand division of the family, a first-class division in point of numbers and intellectual intelligence, we are on the way to our proper destiny. Nor can the sword either help or yet hinder us from that destiny. The goodwill we bear to all mankind, even to our oppressors, can do more to aid us to our high destiny of civilization, than all the physical force in the world can do to hinder us. We invite the great nations of the earth to come under the influence of this principle. Cherish goodwill to their enemies, keep the peace of the world’s community; and, so far from ever hearing the roar of the cannon again, we shall soon hear that the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our God, and of his Christ. If the gospel be true, our course is right, and must prevail. If the gospel is to make further progress, its next step must be to destroy the sword. The principle upon which the sword is used is the grand obstacle to the progress of the gospel. It is the antagonism of the gospel: it is not true that there is any evangelizing power in the sword; on the contrary, it is the instrument of barbarity. Wherever the sword holds sway, it holds the gospel in check: every battle throws society back into the labyrinths of barbarism. The question of war and peace we consider to be a question of gospel and no gospel. If the gospel contains the highest form of civilization, and is also adapted

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to bring in a glorious millenial state, then the sooner and the more implicitly we entrust this great work to it the better. We do not see how it is, that we can have the gospel in all its blessed fulness, professing to believe that it is all we need for civilization and evangelization, and yet hold that the sword must be used to aid the gospel a few years. This is itself an impeachment of the truth of the gospel. It seems to me, that those nations claiming to be Christian and civilized, lie under a weight of responsibility in reference to the interests of the peace cause. They have the Bible, and all institutions of Christianity and civilization, and yet, instead of throwing their character fully into those, so as to perfect the peace of the world, they rather throw the weight of their character and influence into the scale with the sword, thus tempting the weaker nations to do the same. But it is said that universal peace is only a question of time. Who has decided that? The Bible, the high code of civilization, decides the principle. It does not license the use of the sword up to 1849, or 1850, or to any other point of time. It decides the principle that it is wrong and wicked; and dooms it to be beaten into a ploughshare. Who shall assume the responsibility to preserve it for five, ten, or twenty years longer? We shall not be found fighting against God, even though all the swords in the world were at our service. Report of the Proceedings of the Second General Peace Congress, Held in Paris, on the 22nd, 23rd and 24th of August, 1849 (London, 1849), 77–78, 83–86. 1. The French revolutionary government abolished slavery in 1790, but Napoleon reintroduced it in 1803 on the West Indian islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Following the French revolution of February 1848, the provisional government emancipated nearly 150,000 slaves on the two islands. The government later partially compensated slaveholders for their losses. Shelby T. McCloy, The Negro in the French West Indies (Lexington, Ky., 1966), 141–59. 2. The reference is to the European revolutions of 1848.

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21. William Wells Brown to William Allen 2 September 1849 After the close of the Second General Peace Congress, William Wells Brown attended two receptions for the delegates. The first, given by French Foreign Minister Alexis de Tocqueville and Madame de Tocqueville in the Hotel des Affairs Étrangères on 25 August, honored the various diplomatic legations then in Paris. The second, a breakfast gathering at Versailles on 27 August, was given by British delegates to honor “their American brethren.” Richard Cobden, M.P., presided; some six hundred people attended, including black abolitionists Alexander Crummell and J. W. C. Pennington. The breakfast soon turned into a rump session of the congress and was addressed by a number of speakers, including the Reverend William Allen, an American delegate from Massachusetts. In his brief remarks, Allen claimed that the American slave states, not the federal government, were solely responsible for slavery’s existence. Brown, like other black abolitionist colleagues in similar situations, used the incident to generate antislavery publicity, correct misinformation, and spread the antislavery gospel in the British press. His 2 September 1849 rebuttal of Allen appeared in the London Standard of Freedom. Farrison, William Wells Brown, 152–53. 22, Cecil-street Strand London, [England] Sept[ember] 2, 1849 REV. WM . ALLEN, D. D. 1 NORTHAMPTON,

[ M A S S A C H U S E T T S ],

U N I T E D S TAT E S

SIR: I should not address you through a public journal had you not taken advantage of the few moments allowed you to speak at the breakfast given on the 27th ult., at Versailles, by the English to the American delegates,2 to apologize for American slavery. I would have replied to you at the time, had I had an opportunity of doing so; but as I could not do so then, this seems to be the only way in which I can reach the ear of those who heard you on that occasion; and as your speech has been published in many of the London papers, I am the more anxious that some reply should be made. In your speech you said, “Slavery was alluded to in the Peace Congress; and I am sorry that many of our English brethren in Europe do not understand that our general government in America has nothing to do with slavery, and has no power or authority over it. The responsibility of slavery belongs to the slave States only. We in the free States have abolished that institution.”

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No, Sir! If you know any thing about the government of the United States, you must know that no institution has received so much protection at the hands of the government as that of chattel slavery. You must be aware that the Florida war,3 which lasted six years, and cost the nation a vast expenditure of blood, and sixty millions of dollars, was waged at the instance of the slaveholders, for the purpose of recovering a few hundred slaves, who had taken refuge amongst these generous and hospitable savages. You must know that whatever may have been the pretence for the unrighteous and costly war lately concluded between Mexico and the United States,4 it never would have began if Mexico had not abolished slavery, and that it has resulted in depriving that country of a vast portion of her territory, into which the slaveholders are now extending what they call their “peculiar institution,” the “best cornerstone of republican institutions”—that is, slavery and the slave-trade. The district of Columbia, which is entirely under the control of the United States Congress, has upon its statutebooks some of the most barbarous laws that can be found against the coloured people in the United States. One of its enactments is, that if any coloured person shall be convicted of arson, he shall be hung by the neck until he is dead, and the head severed from the body, and the body quartered, and each quarter put up in some public place in the district where such act was committed. Another is, that if any free coloured person visits the capital of the United States without free papers, or in company with some white man, by whom he can prove his freedom, he is to be imprisoned a certain length of time, and then to be sold to the highest bidder, and the money to be paid into the United States treasury. The Marshal of the district, in his report to Congress, in 1836, stated that he had sold thirteen coloured persons within the five preceding years, and that seven out of the thirteen had proved that they were free, but that they were unable to pay their gaol fees. A mother and her daughter were sold so lately as the 3d of July, 1847, and the money paid into the treasury of the United States. And since you left America, the following advertisement made its appearance in the National Intelligencer,5 the organ of the government at Washington: N O T I C E . Was committed to the gaol in Washington Co., D.C., on the 10th of May, 1849, as a runaway, a negro man calling himself Edward Brooks. He is of a dark colour, with whiskers under his chin, about 30 years old, five feet six and a half inches high, has a scar on the side of the fore-finger on the left hand; had on when committed, a dark cloth frock coat, black bombazine vest, striped cassinet pantaloons, and a fur cap. He says he is free, and was born in this city. He says he has been absent from this city

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fifteen or sixteen years, and that before he left here, he was known to Samuel Redfern,6 James Eslin,7 and Richard Butt;8 and in Richmond, Va. by James Evans,9 Esq., and by D. Carter, clerk in the bank of Virginia, and has a pass purporting to be from him, stating that he is free, and has lost his papers. The owner or owners, if any, of the above-described negro man, are hereby requested to come forward, prove him, and take him away. T H O M A S A. H AW K E , 10 for R . W A L L A C E , Marshal D. C.11 There is a law in the district of Columbia, made by Congress, that grants to any person who may wish for it, for the sum of 400 dollars per annum, the right to trade in human flesh under the very eyes of the Capitol.12 The law, passed by the Congress of 1793,13 guarantees to the slaveholders the right of pursuing the fugitive slave into any of the so-called free States, and if he can catch him, to drag him back into bondage. And any one who feeds such slave while trying to make his escape, shall, upon conviction, pay a fine of 500 dollars and the cost of prosecution. I refer you to the case of Thomas Garrett,14 of the State of Delaware, who so recently as last autumn was fined four thousand five hundred dollars for feeding a family who were making their escape from slavery. And lastly, after I had made up my mind to visit England, France, and probably the continent, I applied to the Secretary of State, the Hon. John M. Clayton,15 for a passport. I received no reply, but the following soon made its appearance in the newspapers, which told me too plainly that I could receive no protection from the United States government: Department of State Washington, [D. C.] June 9, 1849 E DWA R D H U R S T , Esq. Philadelphia, Pa. SIR: Your letter of the 7th instant, soliciting for Henry Hambleton,16 coloured man, a passport or protection, is received, and in reply I have to inform you, that passports are not granted by this department to persons of colour, and that protections are only given to them when they are in the service of diplomatic agents, &c. of the United States going abroad. Hambleton’s certificate of nativity is herewith returned. I am, Sir, respectfully, your ob’t serv’t, J O H N M. C L A Y T O N

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Thus you will see, that I could not even get what the hon. secretary calls a protection, unless I was coming to Europe as the boot-black of some agent of the United States government. Now, Sir, all this cannot be new to you: you must have known some of this when you declared in your speech, that the government of the United States had nothing to do with slavery. But as ignorant as you supposed the people of Europe to be upon the subject of American slavery, I think that the disapprobation with which your remarks were received by the entire audience—Americans included— must have satisfied you that you could not make such declarations in their presence with impunity. No one regretted more than I did that a single American could be found in the Peace Congress willing to apologize for American slavery, and that one a native of the State of Massachusetts, where the efforts of American abolitionists have been most nobly manifested. The cause of the American slave has more to fear from those who come to this country from the free States of America, than from any other class of persons who visit Europe. It is really remarkable that clergymen especially, with but few exceptions, throw the entire weight of their influence in favour of slavery as soon as they reach this country. Are they then really the ministers of Jesus Christ, who so darken the doctrine that he taught? As an American slave, identified as I am with the millions that are clanking their chains in the Southern States of America, I could not allow your declarations to go forth to the public without at least making an effort to counteract their influence. I remain, the friend to truth and humanity, W. W E L L S B R O W N , An American Delegate of the Peace Congress Standard of Freedom (London), 8 September 1849. 1. William Allen (1784–1868) was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and graduated from Harvard College in 1802. He served as president of Dartmouth College and Bowdoin College (1819–38). A lifelong Democrat, with an occasionally irascible disposition, Allen retired to Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1839 and pursued literary and reform interests. DAB, 1:209–10. 2. Twenty delegates from the United States attended the Paris Peace Congress in 1850. William Wells Brown, William Allen, Joseph Allen, Albert Brown, Elihu Burritt, Henry Clapp, James Freeman Clarke, Elnathan Davis, G. W. Messinger, Cyrus Pierce, Nathan Richardson, Amasa Walker, and A. C. White attended from Massachusetts. The remainder of the American delegation included Asa Mahan and Hamilton Hill of Oberlin (Ohio), Wisconsin congressman Charles Durkee, Rev. W. Hurlburt of South Carolina, Philip Berry of Maryland, and black abolitionists Alexander Crummell and J. W. C. Pennington. Farrison, William Wells Brown, 151–52; Le Congrès des amis de la paix universelle compte rendée (Paris, 1850), 58; I, 8, 22 September 1849; Curti, American Peace Crusade, 172, 174.

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3. The three Florida (or Seminole) wars, fought between 1817 and 1858, resulted from Seminole Indian raids into the United States, American territorial expansion into Florida, the Seminole policy of aiding fugitive slaves, and the government’s policy of forcibly removing Indians from their homelands. When the third war ended, the government possessed all of Florida and had forced most Seminoles to emigrate west. Henrietta Buckmaster, The Seminole Wars (New York, N.Y., 1966). 4. Soon after Texas was admitted to the Union in February 1845, Mexico broke diplomatic relations with the United States and engaged in a boundary dispute with Texas. The United States wanted to settle the Texas dispute but also sought to control the lucrative “Santa Fe Trade” in the northern Mexican province of New Mexico and to pressure Mexico over the question of California annexation. In early 1846, President James K. Polk attempted to purchase the disputed Texas territory, but the attempt failed and Polk opted for a military solution by moving American troops into the disputed border area. When Mexican troops unexpectedly engaged American troops, Congress declared war on 13 May 1846. The war ended after U.S. forces captured Mexico City in September 1847. By the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (February 1848), Mexico ceded California and New Mexico to the United States and accepted the Rio Grande as the Texas boundary; in return, the United States paid Mexico $15 million and assumed responsibility for claims by its citizens against Mexico. 5. The National Intelligencer was founded in 1800 by Samuel H. Smith in Washington, D.C., and was edited, for most of its existence, by Joseph Gales, Jr., and William Winston Seaton. In return for federal funding, the paper publicized federal government activities and built support for the policies of the dominant congressional party. From 1850 until its demise in 1869, the politically conservative Intelligencer failed to attract major party support and suffered a gradual decline in prestige. William E. Ames, A History of the National Intelligencer (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1972). 6. Samuel Redfern (1796–?) was a successful Washington, D.C., English-born grocery merchant. United States Census, 1850. 7. James Eslin (1794–?) was a Washington, D.C., brickmaker. Eslin was born in Maryland. United States Census, 1850. 8. Richard Butt resided in the District of Columbia in 1830. United States Census, 1830. 9. James B. Evans (1822–?) of Richmond was a Virginia-born clerk, who owned $2,000 worth of real estate in 1850. United States Census, 1850. 10. Thomas A. Hawke (1813–?) was born in Washington, D.C. He still lived there in 1850. United States Census, 1850. 11. Richard Wallace (1811–?) was born in the District of Columbia and served as a United States marshal there in 1850. United States Census, 1850. 12. A statute passed by the Corporation of the City of Washington required slave dealers to pay a $400 license fee in order to legally ply their trade. The statute was overturned and declared unconstitutional in the summer of 1847. William T. Laprade, “Domestic Slave Trade in the District of Columbia,” JNH 11:30 (January 1926). 13. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 set up a fugitive slave rendition process that allowed slaveholders to pursue and arrest fugitive slaves and to return them to

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slavery after a rather casual hearing before a U.S. judge or a local magistrate. Antislavery northerners were upset because they believed the law gave slaveholders too much police discretion and made it too easy for them to kidnap free blacks. A number of northern states responded with statutes known as personal liberty laws, which protected free black residents from being falsely identified as slaves and kidnapped into bondage. Slaveholders objected to the more elaborate state system, claiming the new safeguards reduced the effectiveness of the federal statute. Debate over the issue culminated in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), when the United States Supreme Court upheld the 1793 law and decided that states did not have the power to legislate on fugitive slaves. Although the court did not address what role state authorities should play in enforcing federal laws, many antislavery advocates believed that the Prigg decision released state officials from any obligation to assist owners in capturing their runaway slaves. Massachusetts responded with a new law (1843) that prohibited state officials from participating in fugitive slave cases and from using state jails for incarceration, thus spawning a second generation of personal liberty laws. C. W. A. David, “The Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 and Its Antecedents,” JNH 9:18–25 (January 1924); Stanley W. Campbell, The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850–1860 (New York, N.Y., 1968), 7–10, 94, 168–84, 186; Joseph C. Burke, “What Did the Prigg Decision Really Decide?” PMHB 93:73–85 (January 1969); Norman L. Rosenberg, “Personal Liberty Laws and Sectional Crisis, 1850–1861,” CWH 17:25–44 (March 1971); Thomas D. Morris, Free All Men: The Personal Liberty Laws of the North, 1780–1861 (Baltimore, Md., 1974). 14. Thomas Garrett (1789–1871) was born in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, to a Quaker family. Garrett’s first antislavery act was to secure the release of a free black woman kidnapped from his father’s home. In 1818 he joined the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and, two years later, moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where, in the midst of strong proslavery sentiment, he used his home as a refuge for fugitive slaves. Garrett was convicted in 1848 of helping slaves to escape. A heavy fine and business failures bankrupted Garrett, yet he continued to aid fugitives and is credited with having helped more than two thousand escaped slaves. After the Civil War, Garrett was active in other reform movements, including women’s suffrage. DAB, 7:164–65; William Still, The Underground Railroad (Philadelphia, Pa., 1872), 623–41. 15. John M. Clayton (1796–1856) was born in Dagsborough, Delaware, and studied at Yale and Litchfield Law School. Clayton held several political offices in Delaware before being elected to the U.S. Senate as a National Republican in 1829 and as a Whig in 1845. In February 1849, Clayton was appointed secretary of state by President Zachary Taylor—a post he held until July 1850. In this position, he reversed former Secretary of State James Buchanan’s policy of granting “special certificates” to blacks instead of passports. Clayton ruled that neither certificates nor passports should be issued to blacks and that only blacks who were servants of U.S. diplomats would be given American protection overseas. Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Executive Branch, 1774–1977 (Westport, Conn., 1971), 62. 16. Henry Hambleton was a Philadelphia free black. On 7 June 1849, white Philadelphian Edward Hurst wrote Secretary of State John M. Clayton soliciting

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a passport to allow Hambleton to visit Europe. Clayton refused and explained that past black applicants, such as Robert Purvis and Peter Williams, had been issued passports only under unusual circumstances. Past black applicants generally had only been granted limited “protections,” not standard passports. NSt, 24 August 1849; PF, 16, 23 August, 6 September 1849.

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22. Speech by William Wells Brown Delivered at the Lecture Hall, Croydon, England 5 September 1849 After returning to London from the Paris Peace Congress in early September 1849, Brown began his first British antislavery lecture tour at a 5 September meeting in the developing middle-class London suburb of Croydon, Surrey. The well-attended gathering was held at the Lecture Hall and drew a number of antislavery notables. George Thompson introduced Brown, assuring listeners that the black lecturer was a “bonafide” representative of the American slave. Then Brown rose, briefly applauded the antislavery influence of British popular opinion, and asked that it be used to censure American proslavery apologists in Europe. Lib, 28 September 1849; SF, 8 September 1849; NSt, 5 October 1859. Mr. B R O W N , in coming forward, was greeted with warm applause, which having subsided, he said, that, in coming before a British public as the advocate of the American slave, he had nothing to commend himself in the way of educational attainments, having been brought up under the institution of slavery, without schooling, or the opportunity of obtaining that which every good citizen should possess, and be desirous of attaining— education. When speaking in America of the friends of the slave in England, every heart that was capable of beating for freedom leapt for joy. There was in the United States a higher appreciation of the advocacy of the friends of freedom in this country than they themselves probably supposed. The people of Great Britain had already done a great deal for the cause of emancipation in America. Let even a small meeting of the friends of the slave be held in England and it was immediately published in America, and men who cared nothing about the cause of abolition there, would talk about such a meeting as a matter of consequence. But the people of this country had not only already accomplished much for the American slave, but they had it in their power to effect a great deal more. (Hear.) Let an American slaveholder be warmly received in any part of Europe, and the whole body immediately rejoice that one of their number had met with such an honourable reception; but let him be received here as every man should be who robbed a large portion of his countrymen of their liberties, and the Americans immediately take that reception to heart, and it exercises great influence upon them. No meeting could be held in this country, no matter for what purpose, but especially of a moral and religious character, to which the slaveholders of America were not anxious to send representatives. (Hear.) If a World’s

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Evangelical Alliance1 was projected, or a World’s Temperance Convention2 was held in England, slavery was sure to be represented. (Hear.) If a Peace Congress was called together in Paris, slavery was present. And why was that? Because the slaveholders wished to make slavery appear before the world as good and tolerable a thing as possible. Among the first persons whom he (Mr. Brown) saw upon the floor of the Paris Peace Congress were two slaveholders from America,3 who had come over to England in the same steam-vessel as himself. Whether they were or were not delegates he could not say; but they sat among, and had the same badge or card of admission as the delegates; and yet it was known to a number of the members of Congress that those men were slaveholders. (Hear, hear.) Now had those individuals been received in Paris as they should have been received consistently with their true characters—as men-stealers—it would have created a great stir in the United States. Had they been regarded in the same manner as people would unhesitatingly look upon a horse-thief, or one who committed a lighthanded act of injustice against his fellowmen, they would not have dared to remain in the Congress; but, as it was, they continued there as any other member, until the close of the sitting. He (Mr. Brown), however, thanked God that the anti-slavery cause had made such progress within the last twenty years, that if slaveholders were sent over to represent the United States in a World’s Evangelical Alliance, some Garrison would make his appearance on the outside when the meeting was adjourned,4 and let the friends of freedom throughout Europe know that slaveholders had been there; and thus they would be prevented accomplishing that which they had designed. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) If at a great Temperance Convention slaveholders were sent here to represent America, some Douglass5 would there make his appearance,6 and create such a stir as would defeat their purposes; and if they got up a World’s Peace Congress, some fugitive slave, like himself, would break loose from his chains, make his appearance upon the platform, and let the people know that slavery was still in existence in the United States, and that it was not that respectable thing in reality which some American delegates would fain have it appear. (Cheers.) Although an American himself, he (Mr. Brown) received more protection in England than he should in the United States. The people of England had but a very faint idea of what slavery was. They had, no doubt, many of them heard and read a great deal about slavery in America; but when the friends of freedom came before a British audience they had to pick and cull from the mass of evidence the least disgusting details which the auditory would be willing to listen to. He dare not bring before them the horrors of the slave-trade in America, or what he himself had witnessed of slavery; their own moral feeling would not allow of the detail, or, if it would, he for one would not be willing to go into those revolting statements. But it was common in Europe to ask,

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"Were not the slaves in America better off in their supply of food and clothing than the poorer classes in Europe?” He (Mr. Brown) would not stop to inquire whether they were or were not better off as far as food and clothing were concerned; he protested against American slavery, because it enslaved man, and brought the human being down from the high position which God intended him to occupy, and placed him upon a lower level than the beast of the field. Suppose the slaves in America did in fact get enough to eat and wear—grant it all—what compensation was that for being robbed of every right as men? Look at the three millions of slaves in America; witness the slave-trade as carried on in the capital of the United States, in Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, and those places where slaves were raised for the supply of the southern market: look at the internal slavetrade, and then ask whether food and clothing was any compensation whatever for the deprivation which the slaves underwent? He (Mr. Brown) had not seen a poor man, woman, or child since he landed upon the British soil who was worse off than the slaves in the United States. What was food and clothing to a man as long as he knew that he was a chattel slave—the property of another person? What was the utmost amount of food and clothing to a man when he knew that he might be placed upon an auction-stand, sold to the highest bidder, and torn from his wife and children and everything that was dear to him? Then look at the mental degradation of the slave. If a man handed a copy of the Bible to a slave, or taught him to read the truths it contained, he was severely punishable by law. Why, only a few weeks before he (Mr. Brown) left America, a clergyman thought he was doing service by establishing Sabbath schools in one of the northern slave States, by merely getting a dozen slaves together, and teaching them what he conceived to be the principles of Christianity; and yet that very minister of religion was taken up, and received for the Christian act thirty lashes upon his bare back under the sanction of the laws of the country.7 (Hear.) No, no, he (Mr. Brown) would rather be a beggar in England than the best conditioned slave in America. (Cheers.) If he were to die of hunger, however, let him perish at least free, without manacles upon his limbs. “I,” said Mr. Brown, “have felt the chains upon my own limbs, and I have never seen a single moment since I escaped from slavery in Missouri that I would exchange for the best portions of slavery which I have left behind. And yet, since I made my escape from slavery, I have had to struggle for existence as hard as the poorest man in England, having come out from under the institution of slavery destitute of education or friends, in the coldest winter season, without a penny in my pocket or any friend to appeal to. And yet I had rather grope my way along, and try to get my living under the most disadvantageous circumstances than serve a single moment under the institution that I have left behind me.” (Cheers.) It was a principle in the slave-holding states that the negroes must be kept

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in degradation in order to be retained in slavery. In 1844 a clergyman from the North proposed to send a ship-load of Bibles,8 and missionaries to teach the slaves to read them, but he was told that if he did so he must send with them another vessel freighted with soldiers, muskets, and bayonets, for the purpose of protecting the planters, for if the slaves had education they would no longer be retained in subjection—(hear)—as it wanted nothing but the power of knowledge to liberate them. When the people in this country read of some slave having been whipped to death or hung, with only a sham trial before two or three slaveholders, they were horrified; and yet these were nothing more than the circumstances naturally incident to slavery. Instead of vainly seeking to better the condition of the slave, let them then seek to knock off the chains from his limbs, and not be content with anything short of that. The government of the United States was on the side of slavery instead of being the friend of freedom. In its very capital men could obtain the privilege of buying and selling human beings, and of trading in human flesh, for the sum of 400 dols. per annum; and right in sight of the capital might be seen negro-pens and warehouses where slaves were kept for sale. And yet the men who practised that traffic were the professed followers of the meek and lowly J E S U S ! Christians in good and regular standing in some of the churches of America! (Hear.) Within the last twenty years the American government had used its influence for the spread of American slavery; and even where it was abolished in Mexico it had been reinstated by the United States.9 If a negro made his escape from a slave to a free State, and a Christian man gave him a crust of bread and a cup of cold water, that good man was for that very act subject to a fine of 500 dollars. When he (Mr. Brown) was making his escape he had nothing whatever to eat, except a few ears of corn which he plucked by the way; and yet, sick and weary as he was at last, and almost ready to die, he dared not ask relief until he saw a Quaker come by.10 (Cheers.) Some of the most heroic attempts had recently been made by slaves to obtain their freedom. One man, to gain his liberty, had travelled in a railway carriage upwards of 300 miles, packed in a little box, breathing God’s air only through small gimlet holes.11 Were he (Mr. Brown) about to depict the true character of American slavery, if he could, he would pluck a feather from the wing of some fallen angel, dip it in the wailings of despair, and write upon the blackened walls of perdition in characters which would frighten the hyena out of his ferocity. What justice was there in America for the slave? A woman was recently tried for causing the death of a negro girl; she was acquitted, on the ground that it was her slave-woman who actually committed the deed. The slave-woman was afterwards tried and acquitted, on the ground that she committed the murder on the authority of her mistress!12 (Hear.) If a coloured man went to Washington without free papers, he would be thrown into gaol, there to remain

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until he had paid the gaol fees; if unable to do so, he was sold, to raise the amount of such fees, and the balance of the produce of sale actually went to swell the treasury of the United States government. He (Mr. Brown) thanked God, however, that there was an asylum still left for the slave, and that the Canadas, at the present moment, was the land of refuge for more than 20,000 escaped bondmen. (Cheers.) Nor could he convey to that meeting the feelings which came over him when he landed at Liverpool and felt that he was really free. Then he could indeed adopt the language of the poet, and say— Old England! old England! thrice blessed and free, The poor hunted slave finds a shelter in thee; Where no blood-thirsty hound ever dares on his track: At thy voice, old England, the monster falls back. Go back, then, ye blood-hounds, that howl in my path; In the land of old England I’m free from your wrath. And the sons of Great Britain my deep scars shall see. Till they cry, with one voice, “Let the bondman be free!” Mr. Brown concluded a long and eloquent speech amidst loud applause. Standard of Freedom (London), 8 September 1849. 1. Over nine hundred delegates from the United States, Canada, Britain, and Europe met in Freemasons’ Hall, London, from 19 August until 22 September 1846 to establish a permanent Evangelical Alliance of Protestants. Early sessions of the meeting produced unity about a broad doctrinal statement, but the proceedings floundered over a resolution that called for slaveholders to be excluded from membership. The meeting then degenerated into a debate on slavery with most of the seventy-seven American delegates consistently voting to prevent the alliance from excluding slaveholders. Ernest R. Sandeen, “The Distinctiveness of American Denominationalism: A Case Study of the 1846 Evangelical Alliance,” CH 45:222–28, 230, 234 (June 1976). 2. The World Temperance Convention of 1846 was held 4–8 August at the Covent Garden Theatre in London. Foner, Frederick Douglass, 67. 3. The only two individuals listed as conference delegates from the South are Rev. W. Hurlburt of South Carolina and Rev. Phillip Berry of Maryland. It is unclear whether these are the persons to whom Brown refers. He may refer to Thomas Withers Chinn, a slaveholding planter, physician, and former judge and congressman of West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana. Chinn, who attended the 22 August session of the Congress, was a fellow passenger with Brown on the steamer Canada during the transatlantic voyage. He had recently been appointed U.S. minister to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and was en route to his new post. Le Congrès des amis de la paix, 58; Farrison, William Wells Brown, 148–49n. 4. William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass attacked the Evangelical Alliance in a series of speeches throughout Britain during September and October.

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In response to this pressure, British alliance delegates met in Manchester on 4 November 1846 and nearly unanimously resolved to exclude slaveholders from membership. Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, 1:229n., 348n., 359n., 380, 407, 410n., 421–22n., 437–38, 447n., 455n.; Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 3:348n., 369n., 393, 397–98, 401, 404–5, 412, 427–28, 435, 437, 440, 447, 464n. 5. Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was born in Maryland and named Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. Douglass (the name he assumed after escaping slavery) was the son of an unknown father (possibly his master) and a slave mother, Harriet Bailey. In 1825 Douglass was sent to Baltimore, where he was employed first as a house servant and later as a ship’s caulker. During his years in Baltimore, Douglass acquired the rudiments of an education. Early in September 1838, on his second attempt, he escaped slavery. He traveled to New York City, married Anna Murray, a free Baltimore black who had encouraged his flight, and settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Late in 1841, Douglass was appointed as a lecture agent for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and he began a long and sometimes controversial career in antislavery reform, eventually being regarded by many as the leading black abolitionist spokesman in America. Douglass’s rapid development as a gifted orator and his growth as an antislavery thinker during the first four years of his career (1841–45) led many to doubt his slave origins. To allay their doubts, Douglass wrote The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), the first of three autobiographies and the most widely read and highly acclaimed piece of slave literature in the nineteenth century. After publishing it, Douglass made a well-received tour of Great Britain (1845–47) and, during the tour, acquired funds to purchase his freedom and to begin an antislavery newspaper. In spite of contrary advice from many Garrisonians, Douglass founded the reformist weekly North Star (1848– 51), a journal that was succeeded by Frederick Douglass’ Paper (1851–59) and Douglass’ Monthly (1859–63). Between 1848 and 1853, Douglass continued to refine his abolitionist thinking and parted with essential Garrisonian doctrine by advocating political antislavery and by interpreting the U.S. Constitution as an antislavery document. Like many of his black colleagues, Douglass called for resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law (1851) and rejected the Dred Scott decision (1857). He was one of the few abolitionists to support John Brown’s attempt to stir an insurrection at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Although Douglass had criticized those blacks who advocated emigration during the 1850s, he briefly embraced the idea in 1860. At the start of the Civil War, Douglass urged Lincoln to enlist black soldiers in the Union army and to emancipate slaves as a war measure. He became a recruiting agent for the first two black regiments, the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth. During the 1870s, Douglass moved to Washington, D.C., edited the New National Era (1870–74), became an active member of the Republican party, and served as the district’s marshal (1877–81). He also continued to address the major issues of racial injustice that faced black Americans. During the 1880s, Douglass served as the city’s recorder of deeds (1881–86) and, at the end of the decade, was appointed consul general to Haiti (1890–91). DAB, 5:406–7. 6. Although Frederick Douglass was not an official delegate, he attended the World’s Temperance Convention of 1846. At the 7 August session, Douglass

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yielded to “loud and repeated calls from the audience” and gave an address. He departed from the tone of the meeting when he criticized the American temperance movement’s relationship to slavery. He observed that he could not unite fully with temperance delegates when three million slaves were held in slavery and free blacks were mistreated. American delegates to the convention criticized Douglass’s comments. Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, 1:339–41. 7. Brown refers to the Reverend C. W. Robinson of Shelby, Kentucky. Robinson was cowhided by the town sheriff because he had established a Sunday school of “certain negroes under his control, and such others as had permission from their masters to attend.” The whipping took place on a Sunday at Robinson’s classrooms and reputedly was instigated by the town’s trustees. Lib, 13 July 1849. 8. It is difficult to pinpoint the clergyman to whom Brown is referring because a number of ministers advocated dissemination of the Scriptures among slaves in the year 1844. The two leading exponents of the effort to send Bibles to slaves in the mid-1840s were Joshua Leavitt, the abolitionist newspaper editor, and Henry Bibb, the fugitive slave. Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, 2:87n.; E, 14 January 1844; DAB, 6(1):84–85. 9. Hoping to reverse policies that had previously encouraged American immigration to Texas, Mexican President Vincente Guerrero issued a decree abolishing slavery in Mexico in 1829. The Mexican constitution formally abolished slavery in 1857. 10. William Wells Brown escaped from slavery on the night of 1 January 1834 after accompanying his master, Enoch Price, to Cincinnati on the steamer Chester. For the next eight days, he battled starvation, the elements, and illness. On the ninth day, as he hid beside a road, Brown was noticed by an older man in Quaker garb, who asked him if he was a fugitive slave. Brown trusted the stranger, and the man, named Wells Brown, sheltered and fed Brown for the next two weeks before Brown resumed his flight to freedom healthy, refreshed, and with a name that combined the one he had been forbidden to use as a slave and that of his Quaker benefactor. Farrison, William Wells Brown, 48–59. 11. This refers to Henry “Box” Brown (ca. 1815–?), who had himself crated and shipped to freedom. Brown was one of seven children born to slave parents on a plantation near Richmond, Virginia. He was employed as a house servant until he was fifteen, when his master’s death caused the division of his family among the master’s four sons. Brown was sent to Richmond to work in a tobacco factory. While living in Richmond, Brown married and had three children. The sale of his family to a Methodist minister from North Carolina during 1848 so enraged him that he vowed to escape slavery. In 1849 he conspired with a Richmond shopkeeper named Samuel A. Smith (a man eventually imprisoned seven years for assisting Brown), and Smith’s freeborn black employee J. C. A. Smith to be sealed in a box and “mailed” north to freedom by Adams Express. On 29 March 1849, Brown began a harrowing, twenty-seven-hour journey to Philadelphia—at one point spending some time turned on his head and coming close to fainting. Brown was received in Philadelphia by William Still, the black abolitionist and underground railroad agent, and by James Miller McKim—both of whom were members of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee. During the next few months, Brown traveled the antislavery lecture circuit, narrating the story of his life and

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displaying the famous box. Late in 1849, he was joined on the lecture circuit by J. C. A. Smith. Passage of the Fugitive Slave Law and an attempt (30 August 1850) by two slave agents to take him back to slavery prompted Brown’s flight to England that fall. He was accompanied on the trip by Smith and carried with him the panorama they had used during their American appearances, which depicted scenes from slavery and from Brown’s own escape. It had been commissioned by Brown and painted by Boston artists on a canvas that apparently was fifty thousand square feet in size. Once in England, Brown published his narrative and began four years of lecturing throughout the British Isles. Brown separated from Smith a few months after their arrival in England. During the tour, Brown sold his narrative and instructed British audiences about American slavery by lecturing and by singing a variety of slave and antislavery songs. He also had himself “mailed” between two British towns to publicize his tour. But the panorama, entitled “Mirror of Slavery,” was the central feature of his presentation. Henry “Box” Brown, The Narrative of Henry “Box” Brown, Written by Himself (Manchester, England, 1851); Still, Underground Railroad, 81–86; IC, 23 January 1849; NSt, 15, 22 June, 31 August 1849, 25 January, 1 March 1850; NASS, 7, 14 June, 25 October 1849, 7 February, 20 March, 19 September 1850, 20 November 1851, 3 March, 27 October 1855; ASB, 26 July 1856; Lib, 2 February, 31 May 1850, 28 February 1851; LDN, 6 November 1850; ASRL, 13 March 1854; E, 7 June 1849; Henry “Box” Brown to Gerrit Smith, 1 February 1850, J. C. A. Smith and Henry “Box” Brown to Gerrit Smith, 13, 15 September 1850, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU [6:0376, 0577, 0578]. 12. During September 1847, Ann Tanner of St. Louis, Missouri, and her slave Cornelia were tried and acquitted for the murder of Sarah, a nine-year-old slave girl belonging to a local slaveholder named Cordell. Sarah had been hired out to Edwin and Ann Tanner and had been punished for supposed insolence by whipping, starvation, and being bound and exposed to the elements. Returned to her owner in a deteriorated physical condition on 2 August, she died within eleven days. A coroner’s inquest ascertained that Sarah died as a result of injuries suffered during her punishment. Ann Tanner and Cornelia were indicted for murder; Tanner was acquitted. Cornelia was then tried and admitted to abusing Sarah but said she had been compelled to do so by her mistress. For this reason, she was also acquitted. NYH, 23 August, 12 October 1847; William Wells Brown, Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave (Boston, Mass., 1848; reprint, Reading, Mass., 1969), 61–62.

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23. Speech by William Wells Brown Delivered at the Concert Rooms, Store Street, London, England 27 September 1849 William Wells Brown was formally welcomed to Britain by a 27 September 1849 meeting held at the Concert Rooms on Store Street in London. The gathering, attended by many religious and reform leaders, was punctuated by a series of exchanges between George Thompson and George Jones, a member of the audience. Upon interrupting Thompson’s introduction of Brown, Jones was asked to make his comments from the speaker’s platform. He objected to Thompson’s statement that “in the Eastern States of America the prejudice against color was quite as galling . . . as slavery itself.” Thompson refused “to retract or modify” his comments. The two men clashed again when Jones attempted to blame Britain for planting slavery in North America and implied that southern slavery would die a natural death unless continued abolitionist criticism strengthened the resolve of slaveholders to keep the institution. Both Thompson and Jones appealed to Brown for mediation. As a former slave and professional abolitionist, Brown could speak with authority and sophistication on the points under debate. Brown supported Thompson. Lib, 19, 26 October, 2 November 1849. Sir, I wish to make a remark or two in seconding the resolution which is now before the meeting. I am really glad that this meeting has produced this discussion, for I think it will all do good; in fact, I know it will, for the cause of truth. Reference has been made to slavery having been carried to America by the sanction of this country.1 Now, that is an argument generally used in America by slaveholders themselves. (Hear, hear.) Go to the United States; talk to slaveholders about the disgrace of slavery being found in a professedly Christian republic, and they will immediately reply, “England imposed it upon us; Great Britain was the cause of it, for she established slavery in America, and we are only reaping the fruits of her act.” Now, gentlemen, I would reply to our friend here,2 as I have replied to Americans again and again—If you have followed England in the bad example of the institution of slavery, now follow her in the good example of the abolition of slavery.3 (Cheers.) Some remarks were also made by that gentleman respecting the Americans having abolished the slave trade.4 It is true that they did pass a law, but not in 1808, that the slave trade should be abolished: they passed a

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law in 1788 that they would only continue the slave trade for twenty years longer, and at the end of that period there should not be any more slaves imported into the United States. They said, “We will rob Africa of her sons and daughters for twenty years longer, and then stop.” (Hear and laughter.) But why did they determine that the slave trade should be put an end to? The honorable gentleman has not told you that. Why, it was to give to Virginia, Kentucky and Maryland a monopoly in the trade of raising slaves to supply the Southern market. (Cheers.) That was the reason, and the only reason, why they abolished the foreign slave trade in America. They allowed the foreign slave trade to be carried on for twenty years from that time, and during the whole of that period made those who were engaged in the internal slave traffic pay a duty of ten dollars for every slave brought into the country, the whole of the money going into the exchequer of the United States. The Government said, “We will have a tariff of so much per head upon God’s children that are stolen from Africa, and the revenue derived therefrom shall be the support of the republican institutions of the United States.” (Hear, hear.) Do the Americans claim credit for an act like that? Claim credit for abolishing the foreign slave trade, in order that they might make a lucrative domestic slave trade! (Cheers.) Why, ladies and gentlemen, only a few years since, 40,000 slaves were carried out of the single State of Virginia, in one year, and driven off to the far South, to supply the market there. Claim credit for abolishing the slave trade! Claim credit for husbands torn from their wives, and children from their parents! Claim credit for herds of human beings carried off in coffle gangs, and to be worked to death in the rice and cotton fields! That is the character of the domestic slave trade now carried on, even in the capital of America. No, no; the people of the United States can claim no credit on that score. They can find no apology in the fact of slavery being a domestic institution. A pretty “domestic institution,” truly! (Hear, hear.) Why, in 1847, only two years since, a woman and her daughter were sold in the very capital of America, in the very city of Washington, by the U.S. marshal, on the 3d day of July, the day before the national anniversary of the glorious Declaration of Independence, by which all men were declared free and equal, and the product of the sale of these immortal beings was put into the treasury of the United States. That is one specimen among many of the working of the “domestic institution” of America. (Cheers.) It dooms me, for example, to be a slave as soon as I shall touch any part of the United States. (Hear, hear.) Yes, Sir, it is indeed domestic enough; it is domesticated all over the country; it extends from one end of America to the other, and is as domesticated as is the Constitution of the United States itself; it is just as domesticated as is the territory over which the United States Government have jurisdiction. Wherever the Constitution

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proclaims a bit of soil to belong to the United States, there it dooms me to be a slave the moment I set my foot upon it;5 and all the 20,000 or 30,000 of my brethren who have made their escape from the Southern States, and taken refuge in Canada or the Northern States, are in the same condition. And yet this American slavery is apologized for as a “domestic institution”! I am glad that our eloquent friend, Mr. Thompson, has impressed the fact upon your minds, that slavery is a national institution, and that the guilt of maintaining it is national guilt. I am anxious that that circumstance should be understood, and that Englishmen should know, that the slave is just as much a slave in the city of Boston; of which this gentleman is just as much a citizen as he is in Charleston, South Carolina: he is just as much a slave in any of the Eastern States as he is in the Southern States. If I am protected in my person in the city of Boston, and if I have been protected there for the last two or three years, and the slaveholder has not been able to catch me and carry me back again into slavery, I am not at all indebted for that privilege to the Constitution of the United States, but I owe it entirely to that public sentiment which my friend Mr. Thompson, at the peril of his life, so nobly helped to create in America. (Loud cheers.) I am indebted to the anti-slavery sentiment, and that alone, when I am in Boston itself, for the personal protection I enjoy. I cannot look at the Constitution or laws of America as a protection to me; in fact, I have no Constitution, and no country. I cannot, like the eloquent gentleman who last addressed you, say—”I am bound to stand up in favor of America.” (Hear.) I would to God that I could; but how can I! America has disfranchised me, driven me off, and declared that I am not a citizen, and never shall be, upon the soil of the United States. Can I, then, gentlemen, stand up for such a country as that? Can I have any thing to say in favor of a country that makes me a chattel, that renders me a saleable commodity, that converts me into a piece of property? Can I say any thing in favor of a country, or its institutions, that will give me up to the slaveholder, if he can only find out where I am, in any part of America? Why I am more free here tonight, in monarchical England, than I should be in my own republican country! Whatever our friend from Boston may do, I would that I could say with him, “I must, in honor, stand up in favor of America.” And yet I love America as much as he does. I admire her enterprising and industrious people quite as ardently as he can; but I hate her hideous institution, which has robbed me of a dear mother, which has plundered me of a beloved sister and three dear brothers, and which institution has doomed them to suffer, as they are now suffering, in chains and slavery. Whatever else there may be to admire in the condition of America, at all events, I hate that portion of her Constitution. I hate, I fervently hate, those laws and institutions of America, which consign three millions of my brethren

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and sisters to chains for life. Talk about going to the slaveholders with money! Talk about recognizing their right to property in human beings! What! property in man! property in God’s children! I will not acknowledge that any man has a right to hold me as property, till he can show his right to supersede the prerogative of that Creator whose alone I am. (Cheers.) Just read the letter which you will find in the preface to my narrative, where my own master has very kindly offered to sell me to myself for half price.6 (Laughter.) He imagines that the anti-slavery movement has depreciated his property in me, and therefore he offers to take half price for his runaway property. (Renewed laughter.) My answer to him was, that he should never receive a single dollar from me, or any one else in my behalf, with my consent. (Cheers.) I said so, because I am not willing to acknowledge the right of property in man under any circumstances. I believe that the same God who made the slaveholder made the slave (hear, hear) and that the one is just as free as the other. Before resuming my seat, I would say to our friend from Boston,7 as I said to another gentleman a short time before I left America,8 who talked in a similar manner about the slave States, and the good treatment the slaves received, and so forth. At the close of a meeting, that gentleman rose, and requested permission to ask me some simple questions, which were as follows: Had I not enough to eat when I was in slavery? Was I not well clothed while in the Southern States? Was I ever whipped? and so forth. I saw that he only wanted a peg on which to hang a pro-slavery speech, but I answered his questions in the affirmative. He immediately rose and made a speech, in which he endeavored to make his audience believe that I had run away from a very good place indeed. (Laughter.) He asked them if they did not know hundreds and thousands of poor people in America and England, who would be willing to go into the State of Missouri and there fill the situation I had run away from. (Cries of Oh, Oh!) A portion of the assembly for a moment really thought his plea for slavery was a good one. I saw that the meeting was anxious to break up, in consequence of the lateness of the hour, and therefore that it would not do for me to reply at any length, and I accordingly rose and made a single remark in answer to this pro-slavery speech. I said, the gentleman has praised up the situation I left, and made it appear quite another thing to what it ever appeared to me when I was there; but however that may be, I have to inform him that that situation is still vacant, and as far as [I] have any thing voluntary to do with it, it shall remain so; but, nevertheless, if that gentleman likes to go into Missouri and fill it, I will give him a recommendation to my old master, and I doubt not that he would receive him with open arms, and give him enough to eat, enough to wear, and flog him when ever he thought he required it. (Loud cheers and laughter.) So I say to our friend from

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Boston, to-night, if he is so charmed with slavery, he shall have the same recommendation to my old master. (Loud cheers.) Liberator (Boston, Mass.), 2 November 1849. 1. Brown refers to the fact that slavery was introduced to North America during the period of British colonial rule in the seventeenth century. 2. Brown refers to George Jones, an “Englishman by birth,” who attended the 27 September gathering and offered impromptu remarks. Jones described himself as a naturalized American citizen and a “personal” friend of Daniel Webster. He had lived in the United States for twenty years—eighteen in Boston and two in Virginia. Lib, 26 October 1849. 3. This is a reference to the West Indian Emancipation Act of 1833. 4. Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution prohibited Congress from limiting the importation of slaves prior to 1808. Congress abolished the legal African slave trade by the Act of 1807, which became effective 1 January 1808. Initially, an estimated ten to twenty thousand slaves continued to be smuggled in annually. In 1820 Congress attempted to limit smuggling by redefining the African slave trade as piracy, punishable by death. The illicit slave trade temporarily slowed but, due to poor enforcement, revived in the following decades, reaching a second climax in the 1850s. Nearly three hundred thousand slaves were imported into the United States from Africa between 1808 and 1860. Between 1854 and 1860, southern radicals pushed to reopen the legal African slave trade, but the coming of the Civil War effectively ended the practice. Daniel P. Mannix and Malcolm Cowley, Black Cargoes: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York, N.Y., 1962), 190, 196, 204, 271–73; Warren S. Howard, American Slavers and the Federal Law (Los Angeles, Calif., 1963), 3. 5. Although the Constitution nowhere mentioned slavery by name, Brown gives expression to the Garrisonian tenet that it was a proslavery document. Three constitutional provisions dealt directly with black servitude. Article I, Section 2, the three-fifths clause, provided that three-fifths of the slave population should be counted in apportioning taxes and representation in the House of Representatives. Article I, Section 9, prohibited Congress from interfering with the importation of slaves until 1808. Article IV, Section 2, provided for the return of fugitive slaves. This clause, which seemingly left enforcement to the states, was refined in 1793 when Congress enacted a statute to supplement state machinery for returning fugitives. Alfred H. Kelly and Winifred A. Harbison, The American Constitution: Its Origins and Development, 3d ed. (New York, N.Y., 1963), 262–63. 6. Enoch Price, William Wells Brown’s final owner, was a St. Louis, Missouri, commission merchant and steamboat owner. On 10 January 1848, Price wrote to Edmund Quincy, the Massachusetts abolitionist who had reviewed William Wells Brown’s Narrative before publication. In the letter, Price acknowledged the receipt of a copy of the Narrative and offered to let Brown buy his freedom for $325. Brown refused the offer and printed Price’s letter in the third edition of his Narrative (October 1848). Farrison, William Wells Brown, 42–43, 46, 112–14, 120, 133–34. 7. George Jones.

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8. The “gentleman” to whom Brown refers is A. W. Quimby of Hanover County, Virginia, who owned fifty to sixty slaves and was a proslavery apologist (writing frequent letters to the Liberator rebutting abolitionist arguments). He rose, following a Brown speech, at a Hingham, Massachusetts, antislavery meeting during the evening of 30 June 1847 and defended slavery. Brown and Rev. J. L. Russell rebutted Quimby. Lib, 25 November 1842, 9 October 1846, 30 July, 6 August 1847.

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24. J. W. C. Pennington to Editor, British Banner 4 January 1850 Opportunities for black achievement existed in Europe that were often denied in the United States. Black abolitionists were quick to recognize and take advantage of their availability. When J. W. C. Pennington attended the Paris Peace Congress in August 1849, he met Professor Friedrich Wilhelm Carove, vice-president of the congress and a member of the theological faculty at the University of Heidelberg. Carove was impressed by Pennington’s remarks to the delegates and his contributions to the antislavery cause. During the conference, Pennington asked Carove to help him secure an honorary doctorate from Heidelberg. Pennington claimed that he sought the degree not “on account of any personal merits nor for personal distinction [but] to encourage the entire colored population of the United States.” Carove agreed. Citing Pennington’s reason and the need for Europe to atone for a “terribly heavy guilt” in robbing Africans of their “sacred human rights,” the professor appealed to his faculty colleagues. Carove convinced them to award Pennington the degree in December. Pennington’s 4 January 1850 letter to the British Banner outlines his reasons for seeking the degree. Thomas, “Life and Work of Pennington,” 94–97, appendix I; AB, 30 September 1843. London, [England] Jan[uary] 4th, 1850 SIR:1 I am quite aware, that it is not usual for a gentleman, on receiving an honorary title, to take any notice of it through the newspaper press. But having just received, from the Faculty of Theology at the University of Heidelberg, a diploma, conferring upon me the honorary title of D.D., I believe the circumstances will justify me in departing from the usual course. 1. It is proper to notice this as the first instance in which this method of encouraging Sacred Literature has been applied to my people. For although I am informed, that the degree was conferred, “with full cognizance of my writings, personal character, and merits,” yet I know I am only to be regarded as receiving it in trust for my People, and as an encouragement to the Sons of Ham2 to rise with others in the acquisition of learning: in this view I accept of it in behalf of the Negro Race throughout the world, and especially in America, where we are, at this moment, passing through a crisis, and maintaining a conflict of the most fearful character, where our opponents are attempting to doom us to eternal bondage upon Biblical authority.

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2. We consider ourselves especially fortunate in having received this first mark of distinction from a faculty of such high repute as that at Heidelberg. Germany stands high in our affections, not only on account of her literary fame, but because of the fidelity her sons in America have ever shown to the cause of human liberty. Of many German farmers I knew in our native State not one was a Slaveholder. In Pennsylvania, the great passage-way of the flying bondman on his way to Canada and the North, the German Settlers, next to the Friends, give him the most secure protection. In Missouri, the great compromise Slave State,3 where there are ten thousand Germans more, fresh from Germany, not a man of them is a Slaveholder, and, moreover, such is their stern hatred of the system, that it is believed they have given it the death-blow in that State. The singular consistency of the German people, therefore, gives a double value to this act of the Faculty of Theology at Heidelberg. J. W. C. PENNINGTON, Pastor of the Shiloh Presbyterian Church New York, [New York] British Banner (London), 9 January 1850. 1. John Campbell (1795–1867), a former London congregational minister, edited the British Banner, the British Standard, and the British Ensign. Campbell was an active abolitionist and one of the first to propose that British abolitionists raise money to purchase Frederick Douglass’s freedom. The Banner, published in London (1848–58), was both liberal and anti-episcopal and had considerable influence among moderate Seceders from the Church of England. Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, 1:415–16; DNB, 8:389. 2. Pennington uses the commonplace nineteenth-century identification of the sons of Ham with the descendants of Africa. According to the Bible (Gen. 9 and 10), Noah’s third son, Ham, looked at his father as he lay drunk and naked in his tent. When Noah awoke, he was angered and cursed Ham’s son, Canaan, and all of Canaan’s descendants to be the “servant of servants.” Although church fathers such as St. Jerome and St. Augustine connected the curse to slavery, they did not link it to the black race. By the seventeenth century, the interpretation of the curse had changed and was used to account for the color of the African race but not to justify slavery. In the nineteenth century, many proslavery ministers fused both interpretations in defense of African slavery. Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1968), 17–20. 3. Pennington refers to the Compromise of 1820 or Missouri Compromise. In 1819, during the congressional debate over Missouri’s application for statehood, an amendment was introduced to prohibit the growth of slavery in Missouri and to provide for the gradual emancipation of those slaves already there. A political debate ensued about how to maintain the numerical balance of northern and southern states—admission of Missouri would upset the balance by giving the

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South two more seats than the North in the U.S. Senate. Maine’s application for statehood complicated the debate. The Senate broke the impasse by combining the two statehood bills without prohibiting slavery in Missouri. After an amendment was attached to the bill banning slavery in all remaining portions of the Louisiana Purchase north of Missouri’s southern boundary (36° 30'), Speaker of the House Henry Clay guided House passage of the measure.

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25. Speech by J. W. C. Pennington Delivered at Merchants Hall, Glasgow, Scotland 12 June 1850 Throughout the spring and early summer of 1850, J. W. C. Pennington toured Scotland to raise funds to build a schoolhouse near his church and to solicit contributions for the New York State Vigilance Committee. He gave particular attention to Glasgow and Edinburgh, where leading Free Church clergymen helped him promote a series of successful antislavery gatherings. Pennington’s presence in Glasgow provided him with an opportunity to help organize the Glasgow New Association for the Abolition of Slavery. He recruited its women’s auxiliary, the Glasgow Female Association for the Abolition of Slavery, as a funding source for the New York State Vigilance Committee. Pennington addressed two of the association’s formative meetings during June 1850, including the organization’s first official meeting on 12 June at Merchants Hall. His actions mirrored the efforts of a few of his black colleagues, who helped create local British antislavery societies and made them sources of support for projects in North American black communities. CN, 13, 27 June 1850; BB, 27 March 1850; AB, 17 April 1850; ASRL, 1 August 1850. It was with great pleasure, he said, that he rose to address them on the allimportant and absorbing question of American slavery. Assuming it to be true that American slavery would not continue to exist much longer, then their attention was very naturally called to the means by which it was to be brought to a termination. It must be terminated in one or other of these three ways. First, by a due course of legislation, it was said—a legislation which must include the idea of compensation,1 or must be unconditional. The world, he thought, ought at once to be disabused with reference to any expectation that the American slaveholder would receive any compensation for his slaves. There were obstacles in the way of such a compensation. The free states would object, and justly object to be called upon to pay the southerners, to give up their stolen property when they had given up theirs, without fee or reward. Again, the enormous amount demanded by the planters made it utterly impossible that the liberation of the slaves could be a matter of purchase. The year after the West Indian emancipation, the Hon. H. Clay2 entered into an estimate of the value of the slaves, which he fixed at 1,200,000,000 federal dollars; and during the past winter another member from the south had increased the estimate to 1,600,000,000 of dollars, equal to £230,000,000 sterling. Now, who was going to pay

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that? Who was to meet that bill? If they should mortgage every inch of personal and real estate in America they could not do it. In the second place, it is said the slaves must be emancipated by physical force, in which they themselves should assert their rights, or some foreign power accomplish it for them. He must be allowed to say most distinctly, that this was not his choice. Thirdly, the slaves must be emancipated as they were emancipated in Egypt—they must make a grand exodus.3 He need not tell them that he had acted on this plan himself—and that he recommended it heartily to his brethren in bondage. The mind of the slaves, as well as the free people of colour in America, was rapidly expanding, and coming more and more into contact with those great principles of truth and civil and religious liberty which had fired the hearts and minds of the Anglo-Saxons in other times. If they took the entire population of Scotland, and added to it 95,000, they had slavery statistically. His mind sometimes staggered at the thought that in the midst of 22,000,000 of people boasting of liberty there was the large minority of 3,095,000 in chains. What an anomaly for the 19th century! What an anomaly to exist in a republic claiming to be Christian, and claiming to be the model republic of the world! The rev. doctor, after combating the statement of Governor Hammond4 and J. C. Calhoun,5 that slavery was the cornerstone of the Republic, proceeded to say that the institution was producing the most disastrous results, showing the truth of the general principle, that he that leadeth into captivity goeth into captivity. This was illustrated in many ways. The soil of the South was one of rich and maiden virtue; now it grins in poverty at the sun. The mails are carried at great expense, and when they arrived at their destination, the bags were found empty. Education had been proscribed to the negro, and they themselves were sinking into the lowest depths of ignorance. They dragged away all who had black blood in their veins, but thereby the descendants of the white man were also brought under the lash. Although there were many differences existing among the various classes of abolitionists they all agreed on the necessity of providing a shelter for the fugitive slaves. Canada is at present the great refuge for these parties. There had thus been given to the British crown an accession of 30,000 loyal subjects during the past few years. This was corroborated by a recently published letter from Dr. Burns6 of Toronto, to the excellent Dr. Grey of Edinburgh.7 In that communication it was mentioned that the Presbyterian Church had by a resolution of the Synod formed a society, called the “Elgin Association8 for promoting the benefit of Coloured People in Canada.” Two-thirds of the whole number of escaped slaves made their way to it. They were as comfortable there as circumstances would permit, but the long and severe winters tried their constitutions greatly. If they could get a superior Canaan for them, they would be able

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either to bridge or gulf across the Red Sea that kept them from it. He had never given up the darling thought that perhaps they might yet secure some of the beautiful West Indian Islands for that purpose, where the climate and temperature were more congenial. Some of them had emigrated from Canada to Jamaica.9 He was in the latter place in 1846,10 and was honoured by an interview with the then Governor-General, the Earl of Elgin,11 whom he (Dr. Pennington) was delighted to hear say that such constituted the most interesting and best class of the negro population. The tide of negro emigration from the South to the North would still roll on. No power would be able to arrest it. It was propelled by the philosophy of human nature, of common sense, civilisation, and of Christianity: and should they not give the negro a crust of bread on his flight, and a blanket to cover his nakedness, or a place to shelter him. The heart of the people of this country was sound. There were large gushing hearts in America, too, willing to show kindness. The Vigilance Committee was doing its work well; and its anniversary meeting, though marred by disturbances, had done much good.12 He rejoiced in the privilege of being present at the formation of an association there that night to help forward the work. He trusted it would be effectual for its object, and that soon the time would come when they might raise the chant, “Jehovah hath triumphed, his people are free!” Christian News (Glasgow), 27 June 1850. 1. From 1790 until the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, the idea of a compensated emancipation—reimbursing slave owners for the loss of their slave property—was raised repeatedly by antislavery advocates hoping to end the institution without destroying the southern economy. Ironically, compensation proposals were uncompromisingly rejected by slaveholders and immediate abolitionists alike. The most serious compensation effort took place in 1856 and 1857, when peace crusader Elihu Burritt organized a national convention on compensated emancipation in Cleveland during August 1857. In April 1862, Congress passed an emancipation bill for the District of Columbia that included funds to pay slaveholders a maximum of $300 for each slave freed and provided money to pay freedmen’s resettlement expenses. President Abraham Lincoln’s emerging commitment to emancipation initially included the idea of compensation, but he dropped the proposition in the face of growing congressional criticism and his own reservations. Fladeland, Men and Brothers, 56, 174, 186–87, 194, 206–7, 225, 309–10, 375, 391; Hans L. Trefousse, ed., Lincoln’s Decision for Emancipation (Philadelphia, Pa., 1975), 31–33. 2. Henry Clay (1777–1852) was born in Virginia but settled in Kentucky, where he became a wealthy, slaveholding landowner. Clay was in the forefront of American politics for thirty years. He served in the Kentucky legislature, in the U.S. House of Representatives, and in the U.S. Senate, and he made two unsuccessful efforts for the presidency. His most enduring contribution to American

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political life was his negotiation of two Union-preserving compromises (1820, 1850) between proslavery politicians and their adversaries. DAB, 2(2): 173–79. 3. This is a reference to the emancipation and exodus of Jewish slaves from ancient Egypt (ca. 1290 B.C.). Exod. 12:29–32. 4. The controversial James Henry Hammond (1807–1864) of Columbia, South Carolina, was a leading antebellum intellectual and proslavery apologist. After earlier careers as a lawyer, a cotton planter, and editor of the pronullification paper Southern Times (1830–31), he served in the U.S. Congress (1834–36 and 1859– 60) and as governor of South Carolina (1842–44). Hammond was an early proponent of secession and southern nationalism. DAB, 8:207–8. 5. John Caldwell Calhoun (1782–1850) was born in South Carolina, practiced law as a young man, and in 1810 was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Throughout his national political career, which included service as vice-president and senator, Calhoun led the struggle to protect the South and slavery with an aggressive states’ rights position. He popularized the nullification principle—a theory that sought to justify a state’s right to declare a federal law unconstitutional. DAB, 3:411–19. 6. Robert Burns (1789–1869) was born in Barrowstowness, Scotland, and was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1811. He left the Church of Scotland in 1843 for the Free Church. Active in Scottish missionary organizations and publications, he accepted an 1845 call to preach at Knox Church, Toronto, Canada West, and to teach theology at Knox College. He became a leader of several Canadian reform causes, including home missions, temperance, opposition to the clergy reserves, and antislavery. He accompanied William King on an 1860 fund-raising tour of Britain on behalf of Canadian blacks. DCB, 9:104–8. 7. On 20 April 1850 Toronto clergyman Robert Burns penned a letter informing his Edinburgh Free Church acquaintance Henry Grey about the condition of black fugitives in Canada West, particularly those at William King’s Elgin settlement. Burns estimated that, in 1845, approximately twenty thousand fugitives lived in Canada West and that the number increased constantly. He reminded Grey of the role of the Scottish Free Church in the formation of the Elgin Association (a jointstock company established for the support of the Elgin settlement) and praised the work of Elgin founder William King, who originally went to Canada West as a missionary for the colonial committee of the Free Church. Burns called for further support and encouraged Grey to attempt to raise £40–50 among his friends. EW, 8 June 1850. 8. The Elgin Association was the most successful effort to build a black, agricultural-based settlement in Canada. The community was organized by William King, a Scotsman and Presbyterian missionary to Canada. King initiated the project in October 1849 when he bought forty-three hundred acres south of Chatham, Canada West. By the late 1850s, two hundred families (over one thousand persons) cultivated fifteen hundred acres and kept five hundred head of livestock. Elgin land was purchased by a legally incorporated joint-stock company and was resold in fifty-acre lots to black settlers, who were responsible for developing their own property. Although the community was based on the philosophy of self-help, King encouraged a cooperative spirit among its residents and urged them to participate in the political life of Elgin and Canada West. Elgin was tightly regulated and well planned. The settlement developed a model education

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system, diversified its economy to attract black artisans and mechanics and, despite the dominance of King’s Presbyterian-sponsored mission, avoided sectarianism by requesting other denominations to establish congregations in its midst. The community lost residents and declined during the American Civil War but continued to function until 1873. Pease and Pease, Black Utopia, 84–108. 9. Relatively few blacks emigrated from Canada West to the West Indies during the decades preceding the American Civil War, although some black abolitionists demonstrated an interest in Jamaica. Peter Gallego and Henry Bibb endorsed immigration to the West Indies, and William P. Newman and S. R. Ward settled in Jamaica. Agents for both Jamaican and Haitian immigration periodically courted Canadian blacks with little success. Winks, Blacks in Canada, 163– 67; Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 111, 232–49; VF, 3 December 1851 [7:0210]; PP, 31 August 1861 [13:0715]. 10. J. W. C. Pennington traveled to Jamaica in mid-December 1846 to assess the impact of freedom on the black population there and the effectiveness of American Missionary Association efforts among the freed slaves, both of which he reported on positively. Pennington toured the island and spoke about the importance of education at the request of the island’s governor general, Lord Elgin. Pennington’s Jamaican trip also seems to have been motivated by a desire to examine emigration possibilities for fugitive slaves. Pennington returned to Hartford in the spring of 1847. CF, 18 December 1845; J. W. C. Pennington to Amos Phelps, 26 February 1846, Antislavery Collection, MB; AP, 6 May 1846; UM, May, June 1846. 11. James Bruce (1811–1863), eighth earl of Elgin and twelfth earl of Kincardine, was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, and was elected to Parliament from Southampton in July 1841. In March 1842 he was appointed governor of Jamaica. His efforts at modernizing Jamaican agriculture and improving educational opportunities for blacks were successful and his administration so satisfactory that in 1846 the Whig party appointed him governor-general of Canada, where he remained until late 1854, despite difficulties. He was primarily responsible for negotiating the Canada–United States Reciprocity Treaty of 1854. In 1855 Elgin declined several key positions and spent most of the remainder of his life in Asia in government service. DNB, 3:104–6. 12. The New York State Vigilance Committee was the interracial successor to the New York Committee of Vigilance—an association founded in November 1835 primarily by city blacks to assist fugitive slaves. The state committee was founded in 1848. Pennington refers to the mob that tried to disrupt the state committee’s second anniversary meeting held at Pennington’s Shiloh Presbyterian Church on 8 May 1850. A group of agitators taunted the speakers (they repeatedly interrupted a speech by Samuel Ringgold Ward) and briefly seized the rostrum. This disturbance was one of a series of incidents indirectly promoted by two antiabolitionist newspapers, the New York Globe and the New York Herald, which sought to prevent the American Anti-Slavery Society from completing its sixteenth annual meeting at the city’s Broadway Tabernacle. NSt, 16 May 1850; Report of Committee of Vigilance, 3–4, 13–15; Dorothy B. Porter, “David Ruggles, an Apostle of Human Rights,” JNH 28:31–33, 43 (January 1943); Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 208–11.

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4. Title page from William Wells Brown, A Description of William Wells Brown’s Original Panoramic Views Courtesy of Boston Athenaeum

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26. A Description of William Wells Brown’s Original Panoramic Views of the Scenes in the Life of an American Slave, from His Birth in Slavery to His Death or His Escape to His First Home of Freedom on British Soil Black lecturers were successful in Britain partly because they imaginatively promoted and creatively presented their antislavery message. Three black abolitionists, William Wells Brown, Henry “Box” Brown, and J. C. A. Smith, toured Britain with antislavery panoramas during the early 1850s. These were illustrated presentations containing a series of scenes portraying slave life. Panoramas used by the two Browns were particularly effective because they included scenes of their own escapes. While living in London, William Wells Brown noticed that an exhibit depicting the India Route attracted considerable public attention. Acting on an idea he had developed three years earlier, Brown commissioned “skilled artists” to paint a panorama on American slavery. By September 1850, the artists had completed a twenty-four-scene canvas based largely on Brown’s firsthand knowledge of the peculiar institution. Brown composed a forty-eight-page pamphlet which was to be used in tandem with the panorama and which contained a preface and a brief narrative description of each scene. It was published in London during October and was entitled (in typical nineteenth-century fashion) A Description of William Wells Brown’s Original Panoramic Views of the Scenes in the Life of an American Slave, from His Birth in Slavery to His Death or His Escape to His First Home of Freedom on British Soil (London, 1850). Brown first exhibited the panorama in Newcastleupon-Tyne during late October. Farrison, William Wells Brown, 174–76. PREFACE During the autumn of 1847 I visited an exhibition of a Panorama1 of the River Mississippi, which was then exhibited in Boston, United States. I was somewhat amazed at the very mild manner in which the “Peculiar Institution” of the Southern States was there represented, and it occurred to me that a painting, with as fair a representation of American Slavery as could be given upon canvass, would do much to disseminate truth upon this subject, and hasten the downfall of the greatest evil that now stains the character of the American people. I, therefore, commenced collecting a number of sketches of plantations in the Slave States, illustrating the life of the Slave, from his birth, to his death in bondage, or his flight from the “Stars and Stripes” to the British possessions of North America. After considerable pains and expense, I succeeded in obtaining

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a series of sketches of beautiful and interesting American scenery, as well as of many touching incidents in the lives of Slaves. These drawings have been copied by skillful artists in London, and form the subjects of the Panorama now submitted to public inspection. While I have endeavoured to give a correct idea of the “Peculiar Institution,” I have refrained from representing those disgusting pictures of vice and cruelty which are inseparable from Slavery; so that whatever may be said of my Views, I am sure that the Slaveowners of America can have nothing to complain of on the score of exaggeration. Many of the scenes I have myself witnessed, and the truthfulness of all of them is well known to those who are familiar with the Anti-slavery literature of America; and if the Exhibition shall be instrumental in aiding the American Abolitionists in their noble efforts to abolish Negro Slavery, the main object for which it was brought forward will have been accomplished. WILLIAM WELLS BROWN 22 Cecil-street Strand, London DESCRIPTION OF

WILLIAM WELLS BROWN’S PANORAMIC VIEWS OF

AMERICAN SLAVERY.. View First Plantation in Virginia—A Slave Speculator We commence our series of Views with a plantation in the State of Virginia; the oldest Slave State in the Union. Slaves were first brought from the Coast of Africa, in the year 1620, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when Virginia was a colony of Great Britain.2 It is known to most, that of the Thirty American States, Fifteen are Slave States, and the remainder are only nominally free; as the Slaveowner has the legal right (which is continually acted on) to pursue a runaway Slave into any of the States or Territories of the American government, and to seize him and take him back into Slavery.3 As the climate, in most of the Slave States, is unsuited to the profitable cultivation of cotton, sugar, and rice, and as the foreign demand for these products is very great, the Slaves are made to labour so hard, that the average life of a slave in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Georgia, is said to be only seven years. And when it is known that very few Slaves are born in these States, it will be readily seen that a vast number must be im-

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ported into the Slave-consuming States to supply the demand for labourers. This being the case, many of the more northern Slave States (and especially those in which the soil has been exhausted by wasteful agriculture, or by the cultivation of tobacco) have turned their attention to the raising of slaves, to supply the cotton, rice, and sugar-growing States. Amongst the States of the Model Republic, which owe a principal portion of their wealth to the infamous traffic in human flesh and immortal souls, Virginia takes the lead. Yet Virginia is one of the proudest and most aristocratic States in the Union, and assumes to itself the title of The Old Dominion. It has been estimated that above one hundred thousand Slaves are annually carried from the Northern Slave States to the Southern Slave Market; and of this number it has been asserted, and upon good authority, that one fourth are taken from Virginia. This will not seem an exaggeration, when it is known that above forty thousand were carried out of that State in one year. The Slaves in the view now before us are at work in a Virginia tobaccofield. The man on horseback is a Slave-dealer; probably, the agent of one of the wholesale dealers in Washington. The man standing by him, is the owner of the farm. Here we see Slavery in its mildest form; there being no overseer or driver. The master merely gives out the task to the Slaves, and leaves them to do their work, or goes occasionally into the field and looks after them. You will observe, by the way in which the Slaves before you watch the Slave-trader, that they fear he may succeed in purchasing some of them from their present owner. Whatever may be said of the good treatment of Slaves in those States where it exists in its mildest form, the continual fear of being sold and separated from their nearest and dearest friends, makes it bad at best. View Second Two Gangs of Slaves Chained and on Their Way to the Market—Cruel Separation of a Mother from her Child—White Slaves We have now before us a gang of Slaves on their way to the City of Washington. You see that they are chained together. The white men in the foreground of the view are the agents of the notorious Franklin and Armfield,4 of Washington, one of the largest slave-dealing houses in the United States. The house before us is an Inn. The agents have been in different directions purchasing slaves, and have joined their gangs together in this place. On the right of you, you see a woman who will not go on, and a slave in the act of taking away her young child. She has been separated from it,

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and they are now whipping her to make her proceed without it. You readily recognise two Slaves as being nearly white. It is not uncommon to see slaves as white as their masters, and a great deal better-looking, chained and driven as the beasts of the field. It was in reference to a scene like this, which is one of continual occurrence in America, that the poet Whittier5 wrote the following spirited lines: What, ho! our countrymen in chains! The whip on Woman’s shrinking flesh! Our soil yet reddening with the stains Caught from her scourging, warm and fresh! What! mothers from their children drive! What! God’s own image bought and sold! Americans to market driven, And bartered, like the brutes, for gold! View Third The Capitol of the United States—A Public Meeting to Sympathise with the French Revolution We have now arrived at the City of Washington. The large building before us is the Capitol of the United States; and the concourse of people on the right of it, are holding a meeting to sympathise with the French Revolution of 1848.6 You will also observe, on the left of the Capitol, a gang of Slaves. These are the same that we saw in the last view. Although it is very common to see Slaves chained and driven past the Capitol, yet the managers of this meeting are very reasonably disconcerted at having a gang of Slaves driven so near them, at the very time that they are making speeches and passing resolutions in favour of Republicanism in France. Nothing can more forcibly show the hypocrisy, or the gross inconsistency, of the citizens of the United States than their pretended sympathy for people in foreign countries, while they chain, whip, and sell, their own countrymen. View Fourth A Government State Prison—Slave-pen of Franklin and Armfield—Sale of a Free Man of Colour This view presents to us one of the numerous Slave “pens” at the City of Washington. Many of them belong to the government of the United

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States, and are let out to persons who wish to deal in human beings. The government also grants a license to any person who may wish to engage in this nefarious traffic. In front of the prison is a sale by auction of Slaves and Free people of colour. The man now on the auction-stand is a Free man who happened to be in the city without Free papers. Although he succeeded in proving his freedom, he was unable to pay the costs of arrest and imprisonment, and is now sold for his gaol-fees. The following advertisement, taken from the National Intelligencer, the official organ of the government at Washington, will show how Free coloured persons are treated when found without Free papers: N O T I C E ! Was committed to the gaol of Washington County, District of Columbia, as a runaway, a negro woman, by the name of Polly Seiper, and her infant child William. She says she was set free by John Cambell, Esq., of Richmond, Va., in 1828. The owners of the above-described Slaves—if any—are requested to come and prove them, and take them away, or they will be sold for their gaol-fees and other expenses, as the law directs. T E N C H R I N G G O L D ,7 Marshall It will be observed, it is said in the advertisement, that the “owner, if any, must come and prove his slaves, and take them away.” It is probable that the woman is, as she declares, free; but American law holds all coloured persons to be Slaves until they prove their freedom. Such is American justice. We will give one more instance of these atrocities: N O T I C E ! Will be sold at the prison of Washington County, District of Columbia, on Monday, Oct. 31, 1844, at 10 o’clock, a negro man who calls himself Jesse Harris. He is above 5 feet 6 inches high; had on, when committed to the gaol, a blue pair of pantaloons, coarse roundabout, and straw hat. He says he is free, and was raised in Virginia. He is a dark mulatto, stout, and thick set, and about 30 years of age. The said negro was committed as a runaway. The owner—if any—is hereby notified to come and prove property, and take him away, or he will be sold for his gaol-fees. ROBERT BALL Keeper of the Prison Washington On the left of the Capitol is the Slave prison of Franklin and Armfield. These are among the most extensive Slave-dealers in the United States. We will conclude the description of this view, by giving an advertisement or two of the Washington Slave-dealers:

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Cash for five hundred Negroes, including both sexes, from 10 to 25 years of age. Persons having likely servants to dispose of, will find it to their interest to give us a call, as we will give higher prices in cash than any other purchaser who is now or may hereafter come into the market. F RA N K L I N & A R M F I E L D , Alexandria Cash for three hundred Negroes. The highest cash price will be given by the subscribers for negroes of both sexes from the ages of 12 to 28. W I L L I A M H. W I L L I A M S , 8 Washington Cash for four hundred Negroes, including both sexes, from 12 to 25 years of age. JA M E S H. BI R C H , 9 Washington City Cash for Negroes. We will at all times give the highest prices in cash for likely young negroes of both sexes, from 10 to 30 years of age. J. W. NE A L & CO .,10 Washington Here are advertisements in one day for twelve hundred negroes, by three different traders in human flesh, and a fourth advertises for an indefinite number. All these enormities take place in the capital under the jurisdiction of the National Legislature.11 Instead of being a spot to which every American might triumphantly direct the attention of the whole civilised and uncivilised world, as the sanctuary of republican liberty, we are mortified by the fact, that the finger of scorn is pointed at us, even by the semibarbarian, for our inconsistency. A foreign writer remarked many years since, that “if there is anything truly ridiculous, it is for an American, with the Declaration of Independence in one hand, reading, ‘all men are created equal,’ and with the other brandishing a whip over the back of his trembling Slave.” But more shamefully overwhelming is the thought, that all the horrors of the African Slave-trade are perpetrated in the national domain, the capital of which is honoured with the cherished name of Washington; and that those who are engaged in this disgraceful traffic, are licensed by the authority of the Federal Government for 400 dollars a year each.

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View Fifth Alexandria—Brig Creole—Schooner Pearl—Schooner Franklin12 We have here a distant view of Alexandria, the nearest seaport to Washington. The brig before us is the Creole. This vessel sailed from Richmond, Virginia, in 1842, laden with Slaves. Three days after sailing, the Slaves arose, took possession of the vessel, and carried it into Nassau, New Providence, one of the British West India Islands. The Slaves were, of course, free, as soon as they set foot upon British soil. Thus were one hundred and thirtyfour persons made free by the intrepidity of one slave. The schooner in the distance is the Pearl. It was in this vessel that seventy-seven Slaves made an attempt to escape from Slavery in the spring of 1848, at the very time when the Slave-holders were holding a great meeting to express their sympathy with the Republicans of France. The vessel in the foreground of the view is the schooner Franklin, owned by the Slave-dealers, Messrs. Franklin and Armfield, of Washington; has on board a cargo of Slaves; and is bound for the Southern Slave-market of New Orleans, or Charlestown, South Carolina. View Sixth The City of Washington—the Navy-yard13—the Frigate Constitution14 Let us now suppose ourselves standing opposite the United States navyyard, and taking a view of the city of Washington. You will readily recognise the Capitol on the right. The large white building on the left— commonly called the “White House”—is the official residence of the President of the United States. The vessel lying in front of the navy-yard is the frigate Constitution, commonly called “Ironsides.” In the last war between Great Britain and the United States, the Constitution was the most distinguished vessel in the United States Navy. View Seventh New Orleans—the Chain Gang—Public Buildings We have here a view of the City of New Orleans, from the middle of Picayune ferry, on the opposite side of the river. We have a commanding view of the new Custom House, the St. Charles Hotel, the Episcopal Church, and many other of the public buildings. In the foreground of the painting is the chain-gang, partly made up of Free coloured persons who are found in the city without Free papers. They are first put into a prison called the Calaboose,15 until they can prove their freedom. Should they fail to do so in a given time, they are then put into the chain-gang, where they are worked under a driver. Slaves whom their owners wish to pun-

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ish severely, are also put into the chain-gang. The individuals composing it are chained separately, and have iron collars on their necks. They are sometimes let out to persons who wish for their services. Sometimes this gang numbers as many as two hundred. If a person undertakes a job of work, and wishes to get a number of hands, he can hire them out of the chain-gang much cheaper than elsewhere. It should be generally known that in New Orleans, as well as in many other American ports, coloured seamen are taken out of the vessels on their arrival from New York and Boston, and shut up in the Calaboose; and even English seamen, if coloured, are served in the same manner. When the vessel leaves the port, the captain is bound to pay the expense of the imprisonment of his coloured sailors, and to take them away. It sometimes happens that captains, to save this expense, and also to avoid paying the poor man what would be due to him on his return to the port from whence he sailed, leave the man in prison. Two or three cases of this kind have occurred, and are well known to the people of the United States. I have myself seen, at one time, three Free coloured men in the Calaboose at New Orleans; one of whom could not prove his freedom, and was afterwards sold and carried to a cotton plantation. You will observe that this gang is made up, indiscriminately, of men and women. View Eighth The New Orleans Calaboose—Sale of Slaves—Mode of Punishment One of the oldest and most celebrated public buildings in New Orleans, is the Calaboose. This building is built mainly of stone and iron, and is very large and strong. Some parts of the building are let out to Slavetraders, who use it as a depository for their slaves; although the building is the public property of the city. You here see the mode of punishing slaves. If an owner wishes his slaves whipped, he can have it done to “order,” by sending them to the Calaboose, and paying a fee of one dollar. I was once sent to be whipped in this way (see Narrative of W. W. Brown, page 56) but escaped the infliction.16 The sale before us is a sale of Slaves, although that woman on the auction-stand who is now being sold, together with the other who is standing among the bystanders, is perfectly white. Unfortunately for these poor girls, their mother was a Slave; and therefore they are also Slaves by the Slave-laws of all the American Slave States. These are the facts as regards the two white girls now before us. A young physician from one of the Free States went to New Orleans, to commence the practice of his profession. On arriving in the city, he took lodgings at a house, where he observed occasionally waiting on the mis-

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tress, a young woman apparently white; and knowing that white persons seldom or never acted as servants in the Slave States, he was induced to make some inquiries respecting her. He was much astonished to learn that she was a Slave. Not being accustomed to see persons in a state of Slavery, he felt very much interested in her behalf. This feeling eventually warmed into love; and he determined to purchase the Slave and to make her his wife. He saw the owner, and ascertained that he was actually the father of the girl, and on this account professed some feelings of paternal affection. When he found the purpose for which the young physician wanted her, he sold her, as an especial favour(!) under the circumstances, for 800 dollars, which he gladly paid, and they were united in marriage. They resided in the city of New Orleans, and spent many years in the happy enjoyment of each other’s company, in wealth and affluence. At length they both died, and the physician’s brother came down to see to his estate, on behalf of two beautiful and handsome daughters whom they had left behind them. He found that his brother’s estate was heavily involved in debt; and the case coming before the Courts, the barristers discovered, amongst his papers, the document of the purchase of his wife for 800 dollars. He had failed to manumit his wife from slavery, to save the fact of her having been a slave from becoming known to his friends, and thus causing them probably to look upon her with less kindly and friendly feelings than they otherwise did. The laws of the United States provide, that, if a Slave should be sold out of Slavery, and live for many years a life of freedom, notwithstanding the fact of her becoming married and living in perfect freedom, yet, if the documents of manumission17 are not taken out, she is still a Slave in the eye of the law, and all the children are Slaves also. Well, the consequence was, that the schedule of the property was handed back to the brother, with an information that he had not given a correct return of his brother’s property, and requiring him to amend it, under the penalties of the law. On inquiring where the incorrectness of the return lay, he was told he had not entered his brother’s Slaves; and on his replying that he had none, he was coolly referred to these two girls. “Why,” said he, “they are my brother’s daughters.” Nevertheless, they were, he was told, his brother’s Slaves. The document was handed to him; and for the first time the painful fact of their mother having been a Slave was made known to her beautiful daughters, accompanied with the still more painful reality that they were, in the eye of the law, Slaves also. The brother was compelled to enter the girls in the schedule as property, with a heavy amount to each as their value; and there not being assets sufficient to cover the debts, the brother tried hard to raise the purchase-money to release them from their unhappy position. But the sale was hurried on before he could do so; and these handsome but unfortunate girls were placed on the auction-stand, and sold; one for 1,500 dollars and the other for 2,000 dol-

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lars. For what purpose such high sums were given all those who were acquainted with the iniquities of American Slavery will readily suspect. The following advertisements, taken from the New Orleans Picayune,18 will give some idea of the American internal Slave-trade, now in active operation: (From the New Orleans Picayune.) Slaves for Sale. H O P E H. S L A T T E R ,19 who has retired from the trade, has sold to me his establishment in Baltimore, and leased for a number of years his old stand at the corner of Esplanade and Moreau streets, at which place I shall keep up a large and general assortment of Slaves for sale, imported direct from Maryland and Virginia. W A LT E R L. C A M P B E L L ,20 Successor to Hope H. Slatter Negroes—Negroes. Just received, and for sale at No. 7, Moreau Street, Third Municipality, a large and likely lot of Negroes, consisting of field hands, house servants, and mechanics. Will be receiving new lots regularly from Virginia during the season. W M . F. T A L B O T T Negroes for Sale on Time. Nine valuable and well trained Negroes, consisting of men, women, and boys, for sale on a credit of four to six months. P E G R A M & B RYA N 21 View Ninth A Cotton Plantation—Slaves Picking Cotton— the Whipping-post Punishment The “picking season,” as it is called, is the hardest time for slaves on a cotton plantation. As the cotton must be picked at a certain stage of ripeness, the slaves are usually worked, during this season of the year, from fourteen to sixteen hours out of the twenty-four. We here have before us a cotton plantation with slaves picking cotton. The usual task for a man is eighty pounds per day; for a woman, seventy pounds; but they often work them far above this task. During the task time, if a slave fails to accomplish his task, he receives five cuts with the cat-o’-nine-tails, or the negro whip, for every pound of cotton that is wanting to make up the requisite number. In the distance you observe a woman being whipped at the whipping-post, near which are the scales for weighing the cotton. It should here be borne in mind, that a large portion of this cotton is consumed by the people of Great Britain and other countries in Europe.22

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View Tenth A Sugar Plantation, with Slaves Cutting Cane— Steam Sugar-mill I have often thought that if a great portion of the people of Europe, who sweeten their coffee with American sugar, were aware of the sufferings endured by the slaves who produce it, they would not relish it as much as they do. The view now before us is one of a sugar plantation. This is the cane-cutting and sugar-boiling season. This is the hardest period of the year on a sugar plantation. The large farm-house in the distance is the dwelling of the owner. The small houses on either side are the negro quarters. The largest house among these is the dwelling of the driver or overseer. The large building on the other side of the negro quarters, is the steam sugar-mill. In the foreground of the view are slaves at work cutting the sugar-cane. The black man with the whip in his hand is the overseer’s driver. All large plantations keep one of the slaves as a driver. These black drivers are usually well treated as long as they please the overseer; but if a black driver displeases his owner or overseer, he is immediately put to work with the other slaves, and another slave takes his place. The whipping is mostly done by the black driver in presence of the white overseer. View Eleventh Slaves Burying Their Dead at Night by Torchlight The view now before us needs little or no explanation. You will see, at a glance, that it is a funeral. Slaves are not permitted to bury their dead during the day, except in some of the better portions of Virginia, Kentucky, and Maryland.23 View Twelfth First View in the Life of W I L L I A M W E L L S B R O W N The view now before us is the first scene in which the writer is represented in this Panorama. The writer, on account of severe treatment, had been induced to absent himself from the premises of Major Freeland, to whom he was at that time hired, in the City of St. Louis. While in the woods one day, he heard the barking of dogs, and, in a very short time, became satisfied that they were upon his track; and knowing that all possibility of escape was now out of the question, he determined to climb a tree to save himself from being torn to pieces. He had not been in safe position in the tree but a few minutes, before the dogs came up, and, soon after, two men on horseback. He was then ordered to descend, and, on doing so, was tied and taken home.

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The following, from American newspapers, will show that hunting slaves with dogs is a common practice: The St. Francisville (La.) Chronicle,24 of Feb., [?],1839, gives the following account of a “negro hunt,” [in] that parish. Two or three days since, a gentleman of this parish, in hunting runaway negroes, came upon a camp of them in the swamp, arrested two of them, but the third made fight; and upon being shot in the shoulder, fled to a sluice, where the dogs succeeded in drowning him. The Rev. Francis Hawley, pastor of the Baptist Church in Colebrook, Ct., lived fourteen years in N. and S. Carolina. He says: “Runaway slaves are frequently hunted with guns and dogs. I was once out on such an excursion, with my rifle and two dogs. I trust the Lord has forgiven me!” H U N T I N G M E N W I T H D O G S . A negro, who had absconded from his master, has been apprehended and committed to prison in Savannah. The editor who states the fact, adds, that he did not surrender till he was considerably M A I M E D B Y T H E D O G S . New York Com. Advertiser,25 June 8, 1827. It is common to keep dogs on the plantation, to pursue and catch runaway slaves. N E H E M I A H C A U L K I N S , 26 W AT E R F O R D , C T ., who lived in North Carolina. There was a man living in Savannah, when I was there, who kept a large number of dogs for no other purpose than to hunt runaway negroes; and he always had enough of this work to do. R E V . H. M O U LT O N Marlbro’, Mass. From the Livingston County (Alabama) Whig, 27 of Nov. 16, 1845: NEGRO DOGS. The undersigned, having bought the entire pack of negro dogs (of the Hays and Allen stock), he now proposes to catch runaway negroes. His charges will be three dollars per day for hunting, and fifteen dollars for catching a runaway. He resides three and a half miles north of Livingston, near the lower Jones Bluff Road. W M . G A M B R E L L 28 Nov. 6, 1845 Again. Notice. The subscriber, living near Cassaway Lake, on Hoe’s Bayou, in Carroll Parish, sixteen miles on the road leading from

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Bayou Mason to Providence, is ready with a pack of dogs to hunt runaway negroes at any time. These dogs are well trained and are known throughout the parish. Letters addressed to me at Providence will secure immediate attention. My terms are five dollars per day for hunting the trails, whether the negro is caught or not. Where a twelve hours’ trail is shown and the negro not taken, no charge is made. For taking a negro, twenty-five dollars, and no charge made for hunting. J A M E S W. H A L L Richmond, La. Madison Journal29 Nov. 26, 1847 View Thirteenth Tanning a White Boy T H E R E V . G E O R G E B O U R N E , in his Picture of Slavery,30 says—”Some years since, a white boy, about seven years old, was stolen from his parents. He was tattooed, painted, and tanned; every other method was also adopted, which wickedness could devise, to change the exterior appearance of the unfortunate creature into one uniform dark tinge. In this wretched and forlorn condition, he grew up to maturity; driven, starved, and scourged, like the coloured people with whom he was obliged to associate. He was a genuine nondescript; neither of the white, Indian, nor African species of man. At length some friends of freedom, compassionating his anguish, mercifully contrived to procure his escape to his parents in Ohio, who had lost this boy about twelve or fourteen years previous, when about to remove from Virginia, and of whom no vestige could be discovered. Like the patriarch Jacob, they had been constantly bewailing their child,31 without, however, the additional pungency of knowing the desperate sufferings which were his constant portion.” The view now before us presents the case of two men in the act of tanning a white boy, that he may more readily be retained in slavery. It is not an uncommon occurrence for a white boy of poor parents to be reduced to a state of chattel slavery, in a Slave State. The writer was personally acquainted with a white boy in St. Louis, Missouri, who was taken to New Orleans and sold into slavery.32 (See Narrative of W. W. Brown, page 60.) The Slave in the foreground of the view, at work with a spade in his hand, is one who has been much abused, and is addicted to running away; and, to prevent this, an iron collar has been put upon him. In the distance you will also see a woman and a girl chained together. This woman was sold to a slave-trader and taken to Natchez, Mississippi.

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One day, while at work on the quay, piling steam-boat wood, she was recognised by a Free coloured young man whom she had known in Virginia, and to whom she was engaged to be married. The young man, who was the steward of the boat, did not make himself known to her until after dark, when he contrived to get her on board the steamer clandestinely, and succeeded in secreting her and bringing her to Cincinnati, Ohio, and from thence to Canada, where she is now free. The collar worn by this woman at the time of her escape, was given to the writer in the summer of 1843, and can be seen at the close of each exhibition of the Panorama. View Fourteenth An Attempt of a Slave to Escape with His Wife and Child—They Are Attacked by Wolves The view now before us is from a scene in the life of Henry Bibb,33 a fugitive slave. In the published narrative of his life, page 124, he says, “We made our bed that night in a pile of dry leaves which had fallen from off the trees. We were much rest-broken and wearied from hunger and travelling through briers, swamps, and cane-brakes; consequently we soon fell asleep after lying down. About the dead hour of the night I was aroused by the howling of a gang of blood-thirsty wolves, which had found us out, and surrounded us as their prey—there, in the dark wilderness, many miles from any house or settlement! My dear little child was so dreadfully frightened that she screamed loudly with fear. My wife trembled like a leaf on a tree at the thought of being devoured, there, in the wilderness, by a gang of ferocious wolves. The wolves kept howling, and were near enough for us to see their glaring eyes and hear their chattering teeth. . . . I had no weapon of defence but a long bowie-knife with a blade about two feet in length and two inches in width. I rushed forth with my knife in hand to fight off the savage wolves.” This description gives us some idea of what an American fugitive Slave has to endure in making his escape from Slavery. The view now before us shows the inhumanity of man to his fellowman in compelling him, if he would be free, to run the danger of being torn to pieces by wild beasts. This poor man, with his wife and child, although they succeeded in escaping the fangs of the wolves, were afterwards overtaken and carried back into Slavery.

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View Fifteenth Ride and Tie, a Clever Mode of Escaping from Slavery—A Witty Reply In 1846 two Slaves were seen passing an inn on the public road between Lexington, Ky., and Covington, on the banks of the Ohio River. One of them was on horseback, while the other was tied with one end of a rope; the other end of which the man on horseback held in his hand. In this way he was apparently driving the slave before him to his master’s home or to a distant market. A white man, at the inn, on seeing them, came out and asked the rider what he was doing with that negro; his reply was, “He is a runaway nigger, massa, and I have got him fast; and if massa ever get him, he will cook his dinner for him nicely.” Of course they were permitted to pass on without further question. When they reached a forest, or got out of the sight of dwellings, the man on horseback would suffer himself to be tied while the other took his place on horseback. In this way they travelled on until they reached the Ohio, when the horse was turned loose and told to “go home,” while the Slaves crossed the river and made good their escape to Canada. We need not inform the reader, that the whole was an ingenious mode of eluding inquiry, and more readily making their escape out of Slavery. Had they been travelling on the highway, as travellers do in Great Britain, they would have been asked for their Free papers, or a pass; and in the event of not producing either, they would have been seized as runaway Slaves. The view before us is a representation of those Slaves passing the inn. In the distance is a woman with a piggin of water on her head. This woman, you will perceive, is nearly white. The following advertisement from an American newspaper will show that the Slave laws of that country make no difference on account of colour: One hundred dollars reward. Ran away from the subscriber, a Slave named Sam; with light sandy hair, blue eyes, ruddy complexion, and is so white as easily to pass for a free white man. E DW I N P E C K Mobile, Alabama View Sixteenth Escape of Leander, the Heroic Slave During the year 1831, an insurrection of a very serious character occurred in Southampton, Va.34 This being the most successful attempt that had ever been made, it created no little sensation amongst the Slaveholders, and is even remembered and talked of at the present time as

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"Nat Turner’s Insurrection.” In this revolt many persons lost their lives, both white and black. Among those who took part in the early stages of the attempt, was a Slave about twenty years old, named Leander. Although he was amongst the first to suggest some plans for the Slaves in that part of Virginia to get out of Slavery, he was, from the commencement, averse to shedding blood. His proposition was, that the Slaves should all, at a given time, set out in the night for Canada, and that they should march off peaceably; and then, if their owners should attempt to take them back into Slavery, it would be right in the Slaves to resist, even to the shedding of blood. The others who were in the secret of a plan of escape being contemplated, were desirous of taking vengeance upon their oppressors, and were in favour of resorting to fire and sword—a plan which Leander would by no means consent to, although from no want of courage on his part, as we shall subsequently show. After the majority had decided to wreak their vengeance upon the whites, Leander retired from their meetings, and would have nothing more to do with them; but though he could not join in their plans, he would not betray them. The meetings of the conspirators were, of course, held in secret places, as Slaves are not permitted to hold meetings for any purpose, not excepting religious assemblies, unless in the presence of two Slave-holders.35 The insurrection at length took place. It was promptly suppressed, and many of the leaders were hanged and burnt. A great number were sold out of the State; and among the latter was Leander, who was sold to a Slaveholder about to emigrate to Kentucky. Leander was very much attached to a Slave girl on an adjoining plantation, who had agreed to marry him as soon as they could make their escape from Slavery; for he had been often heard to say, “I will never marry while I am a Slave. These Slave-holders shall never own a child of mine.” His being sold and taken out of the State, of course separated him from the object of his affections. Leander found his new home in Kentucky a much better one, and his new owner a kinder man than his former master had been. But Leander had a great desire—as all Slaves have—to be free; and a comparatively kind master was of but little consequence to him, as long as he was liable to be sold or given away at the caprice of an owner. After living with his new master in Kentucky about three years, Leander formed an attachment to a Slave girl on a plantation five or six miles distant, and also laid a plan for their escape to Canada. This seemed easier than when he was in Virginia, for he was now nearer the borders of the State of Ohio—one of the Free States; but this plan had scarcely been formed, ere it was discovered; and, to save himself from being sold to a Slave-trader, Leander had to attempt an escape without Matilda, the girl to whom he was attached. Leander left his master’s farm under cover of night, and was compelled to remain hid away in the woods for some nights, as his master and others were on the

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look out for him, and a large reward was offered for his apprehension. After remaining in the woods long enough, as he thought, to elude pursuit, he started on his journey. In his first night’s travel he fell in company with another runaway Slave, and they determined to journey together. A few days after, while they were lying by in the woods, waiting for nightfall, they heard the barking of a dog in the woods near them. This convinced them that their retreat was unsafe. The dog, together with three men, soon appeared, and the chase commenced. Leander, who was a very fast runner, made for a neighbouring stream of water, and, leaping into it, swam for the opposite shore. The other Slave was seized by the dog, who held him fast until the men came up, and as soon as they had secured him, the dog started after Leander. The Slave-owner, who was armed with a gun, fearing that Leander would escape from the dog, fired at him; but instead of shooting the man, he shot the dog, and thus the Slave succeeded in reaching the opposite bank, and made his escape to Canada. In the autumn of 1835 the writer was employed on board of the steamer Townsend, plying between Buffalo and Detroit, on Lake Erie; and among the privileges that he had as a servant on the boat, was that of taking on board any fugitive Slave and conveying him to Buffalo or Detroit, from either of which cities he could readily reach Canada.36 One night, about ten o’clock, the boat landed at Cleveland, Ohio, and the writer was immediately informed that a fugitive Slave was in town, and that his master and some of the city officers were in search of him. The Slave-owner and officers came on board the steamer, and kept a watch, lest the fugitive should escape on the boat. The bell was about to ring as a signal for starting, and the passengers were seen coming on board in great numbers; and among these was a tall lady, dressed in deep mourning, with her face completely enveloped in a veil, and leaning on the arm of a gentleman. They went into the cabin with the other passengers, and the boat soon after started for Buffalo. As soon as the boat was outside the harbour, the lady in black removed her veil and her long gown; and, after washing the paint from her face, appeared in proper character as the Fugitive Slave Leander. The history of Leander, while in Slavery, was given by him to the writer, while on that very passage from Cleveland to Buffalo. The view now before us is a representation of Leander escaping from the Slaveholders. We shall have occasion to speak of him hereafter.

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Document 26 View Seventeenth St. Louis—Second Scene in the Life of W I L L I A M W E L L S B R O W N —Boat on Fire

We have here a view of the city of St. Louis, Missouri, by moonlight. This is one of the most important inland towns in the United States, being at the head of navigation of the great Mississippi. By the aid of moonlight, and the light from the boat on fire, we are enabled to see some of the prominent buildings in the city from the Illinois shore, where we may now imagine ourselves to stand. The dome of the large Presbyterian Chapel, the Planters’ Hotel, the Markethouse, and the Town or City Hall, are to be seen. The steamboat in the foreground of the view is the Chester, commanded by Capt. Enoch Price. The boat is just leaving St. Louis for New Orleans. The two persons in the small boat just astern of the Chester, are the writer and his mother,37 attempting to escape from Slavery. See Narrative, page 66. The boat on fire is a flat boat; or, as they are called on the Mississippi, “bro[a]d horns.” These boats are seen in great numbers floating down the rivers Ohio and Mississippi. With the exception of an oar at each end, by means of which they are steered, they are entirely at the mercy of the current of the river. These boats are usually laden with pork, flour, cattle, and corn, and generally lie by at night. The man in the water, is one who has escaped from the burning boat. View Eighteenth Leander’s Return to Kentucky, and His Wonderful Escape with Matilda We have already given a history of Leander and his escape into Canada; and we also gave the reader to understand that he had left behind him a Slave girl whom he had engaged to marry, and by whom he was beloved. At their last meeting, previous to his escape, he promised her that he would never rest contented until he should succeed in effecting her escape also, and told her that she might soon expect him to return for her. After reaching Canada he began to plan the escape of Matilda; and after making several attempts to hire white men to go to Kentucky for this purpose, and failing in his desires, he determined to return for her himself, against the remonstrances of many who wished him to forego the attempt. At length he started for Kentucky in May, 1836, and proceeded to Cleveland, where he found a boat on the Ohio Canal that was to leave in a few hours for Chillicothe, a town on the banks of the Ohio. In nine days from that time he was in the vicinity of his former slave home, near Frankfort, Ky. As we have before said, Matilda lived about five miles from this place, and Leander proceeded immediately in search

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of her. As he had travelled by night, and lay by during the day, ever since he entered the borders of the State, he had had no opportunity of meeting with the girl or of communicating with her in any way. After remaining in the neighbourhood three days, during which time he lived entirely upon the raw Indian corn, and feeling very much the want of proper food, he heard, about nine o’clock at night, the singing of a company of Slaves who were going to a “corn-shucking;”38 and as the Slaves are usually invited from the farms within four or five miles to assist in this operation, which takes place by night, in the open air, Leander thought he might safely join this gang without being discovered. He therefore joined the company as they passed his hiding-place, and united in the singing; although he felt more disposed to weep than to sing. During the evening he obtained from one of the Slaves such information as he desired respecting Matilda, and the result was that the next night he met her as she was going on an errand, and succeeded in inducing her to attempt to escape along with him. Two nights after, Leander and Matilda were travelling towards freedom, with the North Star as their guide. They journeyed by day, and lay by at night, until they got out of their masters’ neighbourhood; but, unfortunately, in the last day that they expected to be in Kentucky, and whilst only twelve or fifteen miles from the State of Ohio, a dog, belonging to two men who were hunting, came upon them in the woods, and they were compelled to leave their hiding-place and take to the public road. The dog leading on the men by its barking, they were very soon in sight of the fugitives. By this time the Slaves had reached, and were passing by, a house where a horse was standing tied to a fence. Leander, seeing all hope of escape on foot out of the question, and that no one was near the horse, mounted him; and, taking Matilda up with him, they made for the river. The fugitives had scarcely mounted the horse, ere the white men, who were also on horses, were close behind them; but Leander and Matilda, being on a fleet horse, put spur to him, and succeeded in reaching the banks of the river, some distance ahead of the men who were in pursuit of them. They found, at the river side, a ferryman with a small boat; but although he belonged to the Ohio side, he refused to take them over, well knowing that the law made him liable to fine and imprisonment for aiding a slave to escape. Leander, seeing there was no time to be lost, thrust the owner aside, seized the boat, took the girl in, and pushed off from the shore. Their pursuers came up just in time to be thoroughly disappointed. The fugitives succeeded in gaining the Ohio side, and made good their escape to Canada. The view now before us, is a representation of Leander and Matilda on horseback, and of the men in pursuit of them.

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Document 26 View Nineteenth W. W. B R O W N and His Mother Arrested, and Taken Back into Slavery

In a former view we have shown the writer and his mother escaping in a boat from St. Louis to the Illinois side. Although they succeeded in reaching a Free State, they were not beyond danger. After travelling by night about 150 miles, they were taken up and returned to their masters. (See Narrative, page 70.) The view now before us—which is as close a representation of that scene as the writer could make it—shows that a fugitive slave has no security whatever that he will not be returned to his owner, until he shall succeed in escaping to Canada, or some other territory over which the United States Government has no control. The Constitution of the Model Republic (that is to say, the solemn written compact, by which the several States are united into one confederacy, for all matters which affect their political intercourse with other countries) gives to the Slave-owners the right of pursuing their runaway Slaves into any State or Territory within the pale of the American Union, and of taking them back into Slavery. View Twentieth Escape of a Woman—Fearful Passage of the River In the month of February, 1848, a Kentucky Slave-owner one morning discovered that his Slave woman had, during the preceding night, taken herself off, carrying with her her child, a few months old. The master immediately started towards the Ohio River, the direction in which he suspected the woman to have gone. As he resided but a short distance from the river, he soon came in sight of it, where he saw the woman at a distance standing upon its banks. Although the river had been frozen over for some weeks previously, a south wind, together with the current, had broken up the ice the day before, so that no one could cross upon it, as might before be done. The woman, on reaching the river, found the ice moving slowly down near the Kentucky side; but it would occasionally stop from the large, thick cakes getting wedged together. In this situation she remained for some hours, afraid to attempt to cross the river, and every moment expecting the arrival of her master. She had just finished her last morsel of “ash cake,”39 and was pressing her child closer to her breast to shelter it from the cold wind, when she saw, in the distance, a man on horseback; and from the speed at which he was coming, she was convinced that it was her master. The woman looked at the ice, and then at the man in pursuit of her; and her love of freedom predominating over her fears, she stepped upon it; and although

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it cracked under her feet, she still went from mass to mass. As she neared the Ohio side, the ice was found much stronger. The Slave had left the Kentucky side but a few minutes when the ice again commenced moving slowly down the river. The Slave-holder, on reaching the shore, sprang from his horse with the intention of following the woman and fetching her back; but on reaching the ice, and seeing it move, his courage failed him, and he could proceed no further. The fugitive was now approaching the Ohio side, where two white men and one black were standing, having been attracted to the spot from seeing a human being in so perilous a situation. As the men on the Ohio side were Abolitionists, the fugitive was soon conducted to a place of safety, while the Slave-holder had to return home without his Slave. The view before us is a representation of the fugitive, with her child in her arms, crossing the river. View Twenty-first Last Scene in the Escape of W M . W. B R O W N If there is one thing more than another that clearly proves the good feeling and hospitality of the English over the Americans towards the oppressed, it is the fact, that the English Government furnishes an asylum for the hundreds of fugitive Slaves that escape yearly from the Slave States. We have before us a representation of the writer, as he appeared on a cold winter’s night, in the month of January, 1834 (see Narrative, page 98) travelling in the direction of the North Star. As all Slaves who make their escape as the writer did have to secrete themselves during the day, and to travel at night, and the North Star being their only guide, they find great difficulties in cloudy nights. The writer is of opinion that he travelled many miles out of the way while escaping from Slavery, on account of not being able to discern the North Star in dark and cloudy nights. And many days, while lying in the woods, he could have said: Star of the North! while blazing day Pours round me its full tide of light, And hides thy pale but faithful ray, I, too, lie hid, and long for night. View Twenty-second Rescue of a Fugitive Family—A Battle for Freedom One Sabbath morning, in the autumn of 1836, the writer of this, who was at that time residing in Buffalo, N.Y., was aroused by the news that a family, consisting of a man, woman, and child, had been kidnapped during the previous night from Canada, and taken over into the state of

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New York. The coloured population of Buffalo, being chiefly Fugitive Slaves, the news that a brother Fugitive and his family had been seized and dragged from their home at dead of night, spread rapidly, and created no little sensation amongst that class of the community. No time was lost by the coloured people in getting horses, and going in different directions in search of the fugitives. After travelling some twelve or fifteen miles, one party of the pursuers came up with the kidnappers at an inn, and had little or no difficulty in retaking the Slaves. The whole party, after getting possession of the family, returned to Buffalo, where, after giving the fugitives some refreshment, they started with them for Black Rock, from where they could easily be conveyed to Canada. But they had gone only a short distance towards Black Rock, before they found themselves surrounded by a party of white men. These men were mostly persons who were engaged in working on the canal, and were headed by the sheriff, this officer having been employed by the Slaveholder to recapture the Slaves. The result was that a terrible conflict ensued; and although the whites were twice the number of the blacks, they were unable to retake the fugitives. The writer of this feels, at the present time, a degree of pleasure at the recollection of having been one of those who saved that family of Slaves from being taken back into Slavery.40 The View now before us is a representation of the conflict that took place on that occasion. Among those who took a prominent part in this recapture was Leander. After his return from Kentucky with Matilda, Leander resided in St. Catharines, in Canada; and it was he who brought the news to Buffalo that the fugitive family had been kidnapped. He is a tall, strong man, and you will readily recognise him in the View before us, represented as he is behind the carriage, in contest with a white man. View Twenty-third Crossing the Niagara River—Another Battle at the Ferry In the preceding view we have seen the fugitive family on their way from Buffalo to the Black Rock Ferry. The view before us now is a continuation of that journey. On our arrival at the ferry, we found both friends and foes, the latter being superior in point of numbers; but the fact that our cause was just, together with the cries of the fugitives on the one hand, and the cheers of our friends on the other, gave us fresh courage, and each one seemed to have made up his mind to die, rather than to suffer the Slaves to be taken back. The ferry-boat was a small one, propelled by two blind horses, and this we found had been taken charge of by our friends, as well as our

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enemies, previous to our arrival on the ground. The friends of the Slaveholder swore that the boat should not move from the shore; while the friends of the Slaves declared that it should. While the two parties were thus disputing, a renewed attempt was made by the sheriff ’s gang to retake the Slaves; and while this conflict was going on, the Slaves were pushed on board the boat, and the boat unfastened, and the swift current of the Niagara soon bore it from the shore. As the boat was seen moving from the dock, a rush was made by the blacks to get on board; while the friends of the Slave-holder who were on board, seemed as anxious to get off. Two or three persons were either pushed or jumped into the river, but none were drowned. As the boat floated down the stream, one loud and long acclamation burst forth from the blacks on the American side, which was answered by the friends of the Slaves on the opposite shore. By the aid of the current, and the machinery being put in motion, the boat was soon alongside of the landing on the Canada side, and the fugitives, with their friends, were soon standing upon soil where they were not only free, but where no Slave-holder dare set foot for the purpose of claiming a human being as property. View Twenty-fourth The Fugitive’s Home—A Welcome to the Slave— True Freedom You have now accompanied the fugitive, amidst perils by land and perils by water, from his dreary bondage in the Republican Egypt41 of the United States to the River Niagara. You must now imagine yourselves as having crossed that river, and as standing, with the Slave, upon the soil over which the mild sceptre of Queen Victoria42 extends; that sceptre not more the emblem of regal authority than of freedom and protection to the persecuted Slave. Before you are those whom you have seen in the last two Views. They are now on British soil, and are exulting in their triumphant escape from their heartless oppressors. A white man—an Englishman—is extending his hand to his coloured friends, giving them, at the time, the comforting assurance that, on British soil, they are safe from the “hunters of men.” O, Britons! whose proud boast it is, that “Slaves cannot breathe in England,” continue to cherish and extend that spirit which has, in its influence, melted the fetter of the Slave in your own islands,43 and consecrated to freedom every rood of territory governed by your laws, from the spot on which we stand, to the utmost verge of the earth! Still let it be the privilege of your countryman, in whatever country or clime he raises his voice, to assert the dignity and rights of humanity, in the language of your immortal Curran:44 “I speak in the spirit of the British Law, which makes liberty commensurate with, and inseparable from, the British soil—which proclaims,

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even to the stranger and the sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of Universal Emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; no matter what complexion incompatible with freedom an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him; no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of Slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible Genius of U N I V E R S A L E M A N C I PAT I O N .” CONCLUSION If any, touched by contemplating the wrongs of the American Slave, should feel a desire to hold out to him a helping hand, they may be assured that opportunity is not wanting. For many years Societies for the Abolition of Slavery have existed in the Free States of the Union. Boston, in Massachusetts, can especially boast of a noble band of men and women who are devoting their lives, amid personal dangers and ceaseless opposition, to the cause of emancipation.45 One of the instrumentalities they employ is a Bazaar, upon a very extensive scale, held annually, for a whole week, in Boston. To this the Anti-slavery inhabitants of the United States make large contributions; but its greatest attraction is found to consist in the presents of stationery, basket-work, toys, Honiton lace and other British manufactures, elegant and fashionable articles of wearing apparel, fancy-work, drawings, autographs, &c., sent from Dublin, Cork, Edinburgh, Perth, Glasgow, Bristol, Leeds, and occasionally from other towns. This Bazaar is frequented not only by Abolitionists, but by numbers of wealthy and educated inhabitants of Boston and other towns, who take no interest in the movement, but are ready purchasers of the goods offered for disposal. A considerable sum of money is thus realised; this does not, however, constitute the chief value of the Sale. It serves the great purpose of drawing public attention to the question of Slavery, to the evils of which the mass of American society are unhappily, indifferent, if not favourable. The energy exhibited by a small body of their countrymen in getting up so large a Bazaar, induces some to examine into the object which has called it forth; while it is especially found that the beauty and costliness of the articles transmitted from this side the Atlantic cause others to reflect upon the character of an institution

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which is regarded by so many residents in England, Scotland, and Ireland, as alike disgraceful to a Republican Government and a Christian Community. As the opinion of the English nation exerts much influence upon the people of the United States, it is important for these sentiments to be thus significantly expressed; while, to the Abolitionists themselves, the sympathy in their holy aims and unwearied labours evinced by the contributions of British friends, affords a support and comfort which they need as much as they deserve. Much misapprehension exists in this country as to the views and operations of the Abolition Societies of the United States. They advocate no particular scheme of emancipation. Light indeed would be their task were no obstacles in the way but those connected with a change from slave to free labour. Their more difficult mission is to induce their countrymen to desire the removal of Slavery. It is not the way, but the will, that is wanting. They are striving to awaken the national conscience to the fact that “Slavery is a sin”—to urge upon the churches of America the duty of withdrawing the sanction and support which they now afford to this enormity; to persuade both ministers and people, that to sell human beings for the support of theological seminaries or ecclesiastical establishments, cannot be a sacrifice acceptable to God; that to purchase Bibles for the heathen of distant lands, and refuse them, under the heaviest penalties, to three millions of their own countrymen, is hypocrisy; that, with the Declaration of Independence, Freedom, and Equality on their lips, to rob one-sixth of the population of liberty and the wages of their daily labour, is rendering their country a by-word among the civilised nations of the earth. To enlighten and arouse the people of America on these momentous topics can only be accomplished by the machinery of Anti-slavery publications, lectures, and public meetings, for which purpose pecuniary aid is much needed. The proceeds of the Boston Bazaar are principally devoted to sustaining the New York Anti-slavery Standard;46 a weekly newspaper, conducted with much ability, which furnishes complete details of the Abolition movement, and is the organ of the “American Anti-slavery Society.” Whoever, then, is desirous to promote the efforts of the Abolitionists may efficiently do so by forwarding to any of the friends mentioned below (some of whom have long been annually engaged in this benevolent service) articles of the description previously referred to. The price should be affixed to each contribution, and (if not objected to) the name and residence of the donor. Donations in money will be laid out in such articles of British or French manufacture as are known to be most saleable at Boston. After each annual sale a “Gazette” is published and widely circulated

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among contributors, giving details of the Bazaar, describing the articles sold, particularising those that were most attractive, and specially acknowledging all money donations. The following Ladies47 will undertake to forward to Boston any contributions received by them, not later in the year than the 25th of September: Birmingham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs. Harry Hunt, Edgbaston Bridgwater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Miss Browne Bristol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs. H. Thomas, 2, Great George-street Chelmsford . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Miss A. Knight Cheltenham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs. Furber Cork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Misses Jennings Darlington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Miss E. Pease Dublin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs. R. D. Webb Edinburgh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs. J. Wigham Evesham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Misses Davis Glasgow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Miss Catherine Payton Isle of Wight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs. Kell Kidderminster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Miss Talbot Leeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs. J. Lupton, Blenheim-sq. Limerick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Miss S. Fisher, Lifford London . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs. H. Bevan, 20, Finsbury-circus Miss Esther Sturge, New Kent-road Manchester . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs. R. Longden Neath and Swansea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs. Rowland Newcastle-on-Tyne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs. John Mawson Nottingham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs. W. Enfield Oxford . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs. Hemmings Plymouth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs. Odgers Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs. J. Huntley Sidmouth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Miss Leigh Southampton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs. Harman and Mrs. Clark Warrington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mrs. R. Gaskell Waterford . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Miss M. Waring Wrexham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Misses Hilditch Any donations entrusted to W. W. B R O W N will be thankfully received, and transmitted to the Managers of the Bazaar. William Wells Brown, A Description of William Wells Brown’s Original Panoramic Views of the Scenes in the Life of an American Slave, from His Birth in Slavery to His Death or His Escape to His First Home of Freedom on British Soil (London [1849]), iii–iv, 5–42.

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1. Panoramas were paintings stretched about the inside wall of a circular building called a rotunda. The term was also used interchangeably with the diorama— a continuous strip of canvas about twelve feet wide, cranked from one roller to another across a stage to produce a primitive motion picture. Both were popular Anglo-American entertainment forms from the 1790s to the Civil War. They were usually accompanied by lectures, music, and detailed program notes. A number of black antislavery panoramas appeared during the 1850s. J. N. Still of New York City toured in 1855 with scenes from Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In 1858 famous fugitive Anthony Burns traveled with an exhibition named the Grand Moving Mirror, including scenes depicting slavery, as an aid in selling his narrative. Russel Nye, The Unembarrassed Muse: The Popular Arts in America (New York, N.Y., 1970), 186–88; Lib, 31 May 1850, 13 August 1858 [11:0320]; PG, 18 January 1851; BSt, 22 January 1851; NASS, 3 March 1855; ASRL, 1 April 1854 [8:0713]; Brown, Original Panoramic Views, 1–37; FDP, 24 August 1855. 2. The first twenty African blacks brought into what is now the United States were landed at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619 by a Dutch frigate. Although these blacks were listed in early census counts as indentured servants, some black Virginians had become slaves by 1640, and the practice was recognized by Virginia statute in 1661. Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, 56–57. 3. Brown refers to provisions in the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. 4. Franklin and Armfield of Alexandria, Virginia, was one of the major slavetrading firms in the South from 1828 to 1836. It was owned by Isaac Franklin and John Armfield. Armfield bought slaves in the Chesapeake area and forwarded them to the New Orleans and Natchez markets, where Franklin sold them. They owned a slave jail in Alexandria, where slaves were kept prior to shipment, and a fleet of three ships, which sailed to New Orleans biweekly. By 1834 the firm sent ten to twelve hundred slaves a year to the Old Southwest and earned $1,000,000 in annual income. Franklin and Armfield sold their business in late 1836. Frederic Bancroft, Slave Trading in Old South (1931; reprint, New York, N.Y., 1959), 50, 58– 60, 64, 275. 5. John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892), a well-known nineteenth-century American poet, was born to Quaker parents in Massachusetts. He edited several New England papers during the early 1830s. Although a founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, he broke with the Garrisonians in 1840 and joined the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Whittier lectured on antislavery, edited the antislavery Pennsylvania Freeman (1838 to 1840), ran for Congress on the 1842 Liberty party ticket, and edited several Massachusetts Liberty party organs. In 1847 he became a correspondent of the antislavery Washington National Era and, after the Civil War, was a frequent contributor to the Atlantic Monthly and Independent. DAB, 20:173–76. 6. A four-day revolt by the Paris proletariat during February 1848 forced the abdication of the aging monarch Louis Philippe and brought about the creation of the Second French Republic. 7. Tench Ringgold was a prominent public figure in early antebellum Washington, D.C. He served on the commission that supervised the reconstruction of District public buildings destroyed during the War of 1812, was marshal of the District of Columbia from 1818 to 1831, and was appointed a justice of the peace in

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1836, a position he held well into the 1840s. RCHS, 5:280 (1901), 10:92–93 (1906), 22:154 (1918), 24:69 (1920). 8. William H. Williams was the leading slave trader in Washington, D.C. Williams’s complex of business buildings in southeast Washington, known as the “yellow house,” was one of the most infamous slave-trading establishments in America. Bancroft, Slave Trading in Old South, 50, 56, 58, 274. 9. Along with William H. Williams and Joseph W. Neal, James H. Birch was one of the most prosperous slave traders in antebellum Washington, D.C. Birch was well known among antislavery advocates as the trader who purchased the kidnapped free black, Solomon Northrup. When Northrup was freed in January 1853, he charged Birch with kidnapping, but Birch was found not guilty. Bancroft, Slave Trading in Old South, 50, 51, 57; Solomon Northrup, Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northrup, in Gilbert Osofsky, ed., Puttin’ On Ole Massa (New York, N.Y., 1969), 240–54, 401. 10. Joseph W. Neal and Company was a prosperous Washington, D.C., slavetrading firm in the 1830s. Bancroft, Slave Trading in Old South, 50, 54–55, 207, 277–78, 285. 11. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution empowered Congress to “exercise exclusive Legislation” over a future federal district. By the Act of 1802, which organized the government in the resulting District of Columbia, Congress promised not to interfere with the domestic institutions and the property rights of residents in the areas ceded by Virginia and Maryland. Yet congressional jurisdiction over slavery in the district became a point of conflict during the mid1830s. Abolitionists flooded Congress with petitions and memorials calling for an end of the institution in the nation’s capital, while southern congressmen argued that the Act of 1802 prohibited federal interference with slavery in the district. The Compromise of 1850 abolished the D.C. slave trade, and Congress ended slavery in the district in April 1862. Kelly and Harbison, American Constitution, 356–57, 372, 375, 433. 12. All three vessels, the brig Creole, the schooner Pearl, and the schooner Franklin, had notorious connections to American slavery. The Creole was a slaver that left Richmond, Virginia, for New Orleans on 30 October 1841 with a cargo of tobacco and 135 slaves. On 7 November blacks took possession of the ship and sailed it to Nassau and the British island of New Providence, where they landed on 9 November. British authorities refused to extradite any of the slaves to the United States. The Pearl was a vessel used by Captain Edward Sayres and his crewman Daniel Drayton to assist the escape of seventy-seven slaves from Washington, D.C. The ship was eventually captured on Chesapeake Bay, Sayres and Drayton were imprisoned, and most of the slaves were sold south. The Franklin was one of the ships owned by the well-known Virginia slave-trading firm of Franklin and Armfield. It was used to transport slaves from Alexandria, Virginia, to New Orleans and other southern parts. Bancroft, Slave Trading in Old South, 58, 275–76, 304; Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 3:51, 237, 246; Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, 2:119n. 13. The Naval Yard, a shipbuilding and ordnance facility in nineteenth-century Washington, D.C., was located on the banks of the Anacostia River. 14. The USS Constitution (nicknamed “Old Ironsides”) was a forty-four-gun frigate launched in 1797. It won notoriety through successful action against the

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Barbary pirates (1803–4) and during the War of 1812. In the 1850s, it patrolled the West African coast against slave traders. 15. Brown refers to New Orleans City Jail, which was nicknamed the Calaboso (from the Spanish term for jail). Evidently built during the French colonial period, the structure housed police headquarters, violent criminals, debtors, runaway slaves, and accused persons awaiting trial. A section was rented to slave traders to hold slaves for sale, and local slaveholders could, for a small fee, send slaves there to be whipped. The city council constructed the Orleans Parish Prison in 1837, and thereafter, the Calaboso served only as a place of temporary confinement. Liliane Crete, Daily Life in Louisiana, 1815–1830 (Baton Rouge, La., 1978), 56–57; Lyle Saxon, Fabulous New Orleans (New York, N.Y., 1928), 206; Albert A. Fossier, New Orleans: The Glamour Period, 1800– 1840 (New Orleans, La., 1957), 170–72. 16. In his Narrative, Brown mentions such an incident taking place in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Slave trader James Walker, to whom Brown had been hired out, sent him to the local jail to be whipped. Brown carried a note with Walker’s instruction and a dollar to pay the jailer. To avoid punishment, Brown gave the dollar and note to a young black man and deceived him into going to the jail on an errand. The young man entered and was severely whipped. When he reappeared, Brown denied knowledge of the note’s contents, purchased the certificate acknowledging the whipping, and returned to Walker feigning tears and pain. Brown, Narrative, 21–23. 17. Throughout the antebellum period, all southern manumission laws mandated the issuance of freedom papers to identify freed blacks. The documents served as proof of the bearer’s status but were easily forged. Berlin, Slaves without Masters, 93. 18. The New Orleans Picayune was founded in 1837 and renamed the Daily Picayune one year later. In 1914 it merged with the New Orleans Times-Democrat to become the Times-Picayune. Louisiana Historical Records Survey, Louisiana Newspapers, 1794–1940 (University, La., 1941), 168–70. 19. Hope H. Slatter was a leading slave trader in Baltimore, Maryland, during the 1830s and 1840s. Slatter was one of the traders to whom some of the slaves who attempted to escape on the Pearl (1848) were consigned for shipment south. Bancroft, Slave Trading in Old South, 38, 121, 372–74. 20. Walter L. Campbell and his brother B. M. Campbell were the best-known resident slave traders in Baltimore during the 1850s and were well connected with the New Orleans slave-trading establishment. The Campbells altered conventional New Orleans slave-selling practices by refusing to sell their slaves at reduced prices once the spring market ended to avoid losing slaves to illness during hot New Orleans summers. The Campbells stored their slaves in a healthier climate on a plantation north of the city and returned them to New Orleans once the fall auction began. Bancroft, Slave Trading in Old South, 25n., 121, 316–17. 21. Joseph Bryan, the son of a Georgia planter, became one of the state’s largest slave traders, monopolizing the trade in Savannah, Georgia, and north Florida. Bancroft, Slave Trading in Old South, 223n., 233–34, 378. 22. After 1803, the American South supplied most of the raw cotton consumed in Europe. During the 1850s, Britain imported an annual average of 796,240,000 pounds of U.S. cotton—a figure that represented more than 70 percent of Ameri-

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can cotton exports. D. A. Farnie, The English Cotton Industry and the World Market, 1815–1896 (Oxford, England, 1979), 137, 149, 180. 23. Evidence suggests that a majority of slave funerals occurred at night, particularly in the South Carolina and Georgia low country and other areas of high black density and African cultural continuity. Although some former slaves insisted that slave funerals were held at night because masters refused to allow time during the day, slaves frequently preferred to bury their dead after sundown to perpetuate African patterns and allow friends from neighboring farms and plantations to attend. Freedmen continued the practice long after emancipation. Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, N.Y., 1972), 197. 24. The St. Francisville Louisiana Chronicle published weekly from 1838 through 1854. Louisiana Historical Record Survey, Louisiana Newspapers, 202. 25. The New York Commercial Advertiser (also briefly named the Globe and Commercial Advertiser) was a business daily founded in 1797. The paper merged with the New York Sun in 1923. Winifred Gregory, American Newspapers, 1821–36 (New York, N.Y., 1937), 467. 26. Nehemiah Caulkins (1800–?) was a Connecticut-born mechanic who resided in East Lyme, Connecticut, in 1850. United States Census, 1850. 27. The partisan Sumter County Whig was published weekly in Livingston, Alabama, from 1841 through 1856. Thomas M. Owen, comp., Check List of Newspaper and Periodical Files in the Department of Archives and History of the State of Alabama (Montgomery, Ala., 1904), 20. 28. William Gambrell (1807–?) was a Sumter County, Alabama, farmer and landowner. Born in Virginia, he moved to western Alabama between 1837 and 1841. United States Census, 1850. 29. The Madison Journal of Richmond, Louisiana, published weekly from 1845 to 1849. Louisiana Historical Record Survey, Louisiana Newspapers, 205. 30. William Wells Brown is referring to George Bourne’s antislavery publication Picture of Slavery in the United States (Middletown, Conn., 1834). Bourne (1780–1845) was an English-born Presbyterian minister, whose experiences as the pastor of a South River, Virginia, congregation prompted him to write The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable (1816), one of the first American works to call for slavery’s “total and immediate abolition.” Bourne eventually settled in New York City, helped organize the American Anti-Slavery Society, and was an ardent Garrisonian. Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1:see Postscript (following xiv), 206–7, 222, 232, 306, 342, 398, 461, 2:130, 159, 238, 357; Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 1:172, 222, 273, 3:35–36, 88, 290; Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 184, 219. 31. This is a reference to the biblical account of the selling of Joseph, the favored younger son of the ancient Israelite patriarch Jacob. Because of jealousy, Joseph’s ten older brothers sold him into slavery and then convinced Jacob that Joseph had been devoured by a wild animal. According to the story, Jacob was grief stricken and “refused to be comforted.” Gen. 37:1–36, 39:1. 32. In late 1833, Brown accompanied his owner Enoch Price on a visit to New Orleans, where he met a thirteen-year-old white slave boy named Burrill. The youth informed Brown that he belonged to a poor white family of St. Louis. To

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help support the family, Burrill did chores for a local storekeeper named Riley, who sold Burrill into slavery and informed his mother that he had died of yellow fever. Brown, Narrative, 26. 33. Henry Bibb (1815–1854) was the eldest of seven children born to the Kentucky slave Mildred Jackson. Bibb’s father was a slaveholding state senator named James Bibb. When he was “young and small,” Bibb was separated from his mother and hired out for several years to a succession of cruel masters. During this service, Bibb acquired the rudiments of education. Bibb met and married the slave Malinda; they eventually became parents of Mary Frances. In 1835 Bibb made the first of six escape attempts from the first of the six masters who owned him. Two years later, Bibb again fled slavery and briefly settled in Perrysburg, Ohio. Determined to rescue his family, he returned to Kentucky in June 1838, was captured, escaped again, and fled back to Perrysburg. On another rescue foray, Bibb was again taken, and his family was shipped to New Orleans. Bibb endured a journey that took him into Texas and Indian territory, where he was sold again to a part-Indian owner from whom he made his final, successful flight to freedom. When he learned that his wife and child had been sold and that he would be forever separated from them, Bibb settled in Detroit in January 1842. He briefly attended a school for blacks run by Rev. William C. Munroe and increasingly involved himself in antislavery and Liberty party efforts. By the mid-1840s, Bibb was employed as an antislavery lecturer, had joined Joshua Leavitt’s Bibles-for-slaves crusade, and was fast becoming, along with Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, and J. W. C. Pennington, one of the most dynamic ex-slave abolitionist speakers. Bibb married Boston abolitionist Mary Miles in January 1848. In October 1849, he published the highly regarded Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave. In the fall of 1850, passage of the Fugitive Slave Law forced Bibb to flea to Canada. He and his wife soon established the Voice of the Fugitive (January 1851)—an anti-slavery weekly with an immigrationist message, which was meant to serve the burgeoning black community of Canada West. Working with black abolitionists James Theodore Holly and J. T. Fisher, Bibb organized a convention of North American blacks in Toronto during September 1851, which led to the founding of the North American League— an organization meant to serve as a central authority for blacks in the Americas as well as an agency for promoting immigration to Canada and aiding blacks once they arrived. The league was short-lived, but Bibb, in January 1852, again tried to institutionalize his efforts by joining with Michigan philanthropists to form the joint-stock Refugee Home Society—an association whose purpose was to acquire thousands of acres of Canadian land for sale to black immigrants. Friction between Bibb and other black Canadian leaders doomed the society. Bibb died on West Indian Emancipation Day in 1854. Henry Bibb, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, 3d ed. (New York, N.Y., 1850); DANB, 44. 34. On 21 August 1831, Nat Turner, a thirty-one-year-old field hand who had earned a considerable reputation among his fellow slaves as a preacher, initiated in Southampton County, Virginia, the most significant slave insurrection in American history. In two days, Turner and his cadre (which swelled to some sev-

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enty participants) sacked fifteen homesteads and killed approximately sixty whites. By the evening of 23 August Virginia and North Carolina militiamen under Brigadier General Richard Eppes had quelled the revolt. Within a week, forty insurrectionists were captured, and an estimated 120 innocent blacks were killed. By 10 September, four of Turner’s lieutenants had been tried and hung. Turner remained free until 30 October. He was tried on 5 November and hanged six days later. During his imprisonment, Turner dictated a statement of his motives for the assault (the noted Confessions of Nat Turner) to Thomas Gray, his court-appointed attorney. In all, fifty blacks were tried for participating in the raid, twenty-one were hanged, and ten had death sentences commuted pending their removal from Virginia. It is estimated that from twenty to thirty other related black executions took place in surrounding counties. Stephen B. Oates, The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner’s Fierce Rebellion (New York, N.Y., 1975). 35. Antebellum southern laws generally prohibited slave assemblies. Although enforcement varied, planters in some locales allowed slaves to hold religious services, balls, and barbecues under certain conditions. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 40. 36. From spring 1834 through summer 1836, William Wells Brown worked on several Lake Erie steamers operating out of Cleveland. During this time, he covertly transported several fugitive slaves to Detroit and Buffalo so that they could easily cross into Canada West. In 1836 Brown moved to Buffalo and continued to work on lake steamers. While there, he frequently hid in his home fugitive slaves en route to Canada West and helped many cross over into the province. Between 1 May and 1 December 1842, for example, Brown helped sixty-nine fugitives escape across the Niagara border. Farrison, William Wells Brown, 61, 66, 72–75. 37. Brown’s mother was a slave named Elizabeth. She had no surname but apparently was the daughter of a Virginia slave and Revolutionary War veteran Simon (or Simmons) Lee and his black wife. Originally a field hand owned by Dr. John Young of Kentucky, Elizabeth eventually bore seven children by seven white masters. Young moved to St. Charles County in Missouri Territory in 1816 and in 1827 to St. Louis, where Elizabeth was hired out. By 1830 Young had sold her to Isaac Mansfield, a tinner with “a large manufacturing establishment” in St. Louis. Brown persuaded his mother to accompany him in escaping to Canada in 1833, but they were recaptured and returned to St. Louis. Elizabeth was then resold and taken farther south. Farrison, William Wells Brown, 3–5, 9–10, 17, 20, 36–40. 38. Corn-shuckings were major antebellum plantation social events and provided slaves with an opportunity to enjoy an evening away from the quarters, meet other slaves, tell tall tales, and sing traditional work songs. At the invitation of a planter, slaves gathered during the night at his barn and removed the husks from harvested corn. In return for their labor, those who attended received liquor and a big meal. John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (New York, N.Y., 1972), 52–53. 39. Ashcakes are a southern bread made from cornmeal, grease, and water, which is mixed, wrapped in cabbage leaves, and cooked among smoldering fireplace logs.

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40. Brown helped to thwart the attempted abduction of a black couple named Stanford and their six-week-old child, who had settled in Saint Catherines, Canada West. Bacon Tate, a Nashville slave trader, visited Buffalo in the autumn of 1836 to recapture escaped slaves. Assisted by a black informant, Tate located the Stanfords and had them kidnapped and transported across the Niagara at Black Rock Ferry into New York. News of the kidnapping aroused the Buffalo black community, and fifty men (including Brown) pursued the kidnappers, overtook the party, freed the Stanfords, and escorted them back toward the border. The kidnappers appealed to the sheriff of Erie County, and the black entourage was intercepted by a posse but not before the fugitives successfully recrossed into Canada West. Forty of the rescuers were willingly arrested and charged with breaking the peace of the Sabbath and unlawful assembly. Twenty-five eventually received fines, and one died nearly three months later of wounds incurred in the rescue. Farrison, William Wells Brown, 70–71. 41. This refers to the slaveholding South. 42. Queen Victoria (1819–1901) ruled England from 1837 to 1901. 43. Brown’s reference is to the emancipation of British West Indian slaves as a result of the West Indian Emancipation Act of 1833. 44. John Philpot Curran (1750–1817) was a noted Irish jurist, parliamentarian, poet, and orator. DNB, 5:332–40. 45. From the end of the eighteenth century, a number of antislavery societies offered modest programs for ending slavery. But it is likely that Brown refers to the immediatist antislavery groups that flowered in the North beginning in the 1830s. The earliest and most vigorous of these organizations was the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (New England Anti-Slavery Society), founded in Boston in 1832. Filler, Crusade against Slavery, 10–28. 46. This refers to the National Anti-Slavery Standard. 47. The British antislavery women who collected for the 1850 Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar defy strict categorization, but several comfortable generalizations can be made. Although located in cities spread throughout the British Isles, the majority represented English Garrisonian North and West Country groups. Many, like Hannah Webb (Dublin), Esther Sturge (London), Jane Wigham (Edinburgh), Mrs. Joseph Lupton (Leeds), Mrs. Emily Gaskell (Warrington), Mrs. Jacob Odgers (Plymouth), Mrs. H. Bevan (London), Mrs. E. Kell (Isle of Wight), and Mrs. R. Longdon (Manchester), were the wives, daughters, or sisters of prominent antislavery men; others, like Mary Thomas (Bristol), Chelmsford Quaker Anne Knight, Isabel and Jane Jennings (Cork), Catherine Paton (Glasgow), Darlington Quaker Elizabeth Pease, Maria Waring (Waterford), and S. Hilditch (Wrexham), were active abolitionists in their own right. Several had collected contributions for the bazaar for a number of years. The Jennings sisters and the Cork Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society had forwarded items to the Boston fair since Charles L. Remond’s 1841 visit. S. Hilditch began organizing contributors in Wrexham in 1846. Most continued to collect contributions for the bazaar long after 1850, and twenty-two of the thirty-two still performed that service through 1857, the final year of the bazaar. After the bazaar’s demise, some, like Mary Thomas, secretary of the Bristol and Clifton Anti-Slavery Society, collected for the National Anti-Slavery Subscription Anniversary. Rice, Scots Abolitionists,

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43–44, 105–6, 158, 166–67; Temperley, British Antislavery, 243; Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 41, 94, 158, 253, 295, 298; Christine Bolt, The Anti-Slavery Movement and Reconstruction: A Study in Anglo-American Cooperation, 1833–77 (London, 1969), 48n., 73n.; ASA, October 1852, March, August 1853, August 1854, 1 August 1855, 1 August 1856, 1 August 1857, 2 November 1858. 225

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27. Henry Highland Garnet to Samuel Ringgold Ward 4 September 1850 Henry Highland Garnet, the leading black spokesman for free produce in the United States, was invited by Henry and Anna Richardson, leaders of the British free produce movement, to lecture on the subject in Britain. The Richardsons welcomed Garnet to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, in August 1850. Garnet’s British free produce tour reinvigorated the movement in Britain. On the eve of his tour, he penned a 4 September note to second cousin and black abolitionist colleague Samuel Ringgold Ward, who edited the Impartial Citizen. Garnet promised to occasionally provide him with “free produce documents and facts” to inform his readers of the progress of the movement in Britain. Schor, Henry Highland Garnet, 111–12. N E W C A S T L E - O N -T Y N E , [England] Sept[ember] 4, 1850 D E A R C O U S I N S. R . W A R D : I am permitted to say, by Mrs. Henry Richardson,1 that she will take pleasure in furnishing you with “free produce documents and facts,” from time to time, if you will feel free to publish them in the Impartial Citizen.2 I took the liberty to mention your paper to her, because I knew that you feel friendly towards this movement, which to us is one of the most important instrumentalities for the overthrow of negro slavery. I should not be surprised to learn that, through the medium of investigation, and by the aid of the Divine Spirit, you have made rapid progress. I have ventured to go so far as to assure Mrs. Richardson that you would not slight any document which she might send to you. I am annoyed to see any one who, like you and I, has tasted the bitter cup of slavery, withholding his influence and talents from this good cause. Yours truly, HENRY H. GARNET3 Impartial Citizen (New York, N.Y.), 5 October 1850. 1. Anna Atkins Richardson (1806–1892) married Henry Richardson of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1833. A member of the Society of Friends, she was involved in many reform causes, especially antislavery, peace, and aiding European emigrants. Anna Richardson belonged to the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. In 1846 she was instrumental in the purchase of Frederick Douglass’s freedom; her continued support of Douglass and her friendship with Julia Griffiths, Douglass’s associate, made her suspect among British Garrisonians. She attended the Paris Peace Congress in 1849. In the 1850s, Anna Richardson and her husband helped lead the free produce movement in England and recruited black lec-

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turers Henry Bibb and Henry Highland Garnet to popularize it. Between 1851 and 1854, the Richardsons published The Slave, a penny newssheet devoted to disseminating free produce information. DQB, n.p.; Annual Monitor, n.s. 51 (1893): 104; A. O. Boyce, Records of a Quaker Family: The Richardsons of Cleveland (London, 1899); Temperley, British Antislavery, 245; Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 300–301, 336; FDP, 1:481–82. 2. The Impartial Citizen, a semimonthly antislavery and reform newspaper, began publication in Syracuse on 14 February 1849. It was the product of a merger between Samuel Ringgold Ward’s Cortland, New York, True American and black activist Stephen Myer’s Albany Northern Star and Colored Farmer; Myer’s affiliation with the Citizen ended in June 1849. At that time, Ward made the paper a weekly Liberty party organ. By the end of its first year, the Citizen had seventeen hundred subscribers (out of the two thousand Ward thought necessary to insure its success), but delinquent subscribers created continuing financial problems, which were only partially alleviated by donations from abolitionist Gerrit Smith and women’s antislavery fairs. Despite these problems, Ward and his assistant Seymour King published the paper in Syracuse through 19 June 1850, suspended publication briefly, but resumed on 10 July 1850 in Boston. Ward considered merging the Citizen with Frederick Douglass’ Paper but instead discontinued publication by October 1851, declared bankruptcy, and soon went to Canada. Although Jermain W. Loguen, a former subscription agent for the Citizen, accused Ward of defrauding paid subscribers, Ward noted that the paper had failed because less than one-tenth of the subscribers had paid, and many stopped subscriptions “without paying up arrearages.” IC, 28 February, 14 March, 17 June, 25 July, 5 December 1849, 13 February, 19 June, 14 September, 7 December 1850; Ronald K. Burke, “The Impartial Citizen of Samuel Ringgold Ward,” JQ 49:759–60 (Winter 1972); NSt, 5 June, 30 October 1851; PF, 19 June 1851; FDP, 26 June, 30 October 1851; VF, 29 July 1852 [7:0677]; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 88. 3. Henry Highland Garnet (1815–1882) was born in Maryland to slave parents. In 1824 Henry’s father, George Garnet, led ten family members to freedom in the North, finally settling in New York City. Between 1826 and 1833, Garnet received an intermittent education in New York’s African Free School, enrolled in the High School for Colored Youth, and met Rev. Theodore S. Wright, a leader of New York’s black community, who became his mentor. In 1835 Garnet, Alexander Crummell, Thomas Sidney, and four other blacks were driven from Rev. William Scales’s integrated Noyes Academy in Canaan, New Hampshire, by an anti-integration mob. After graduating from Beriah Green’s Oneida Institute in 1839, Garnet began an eight-year residence (1840–48) in Troy, New York, where he ministered to a black congregation (the Liberty Street Presbyterian Church), edited two shortlived reformist newspapers, the Clarion and the National Watchman, and founded a school for black children in nearby Geneva. Garnet also assisted the suffrage struggle of New York blacks and was active in Liberty party deliberations. His considerable reputation as an antislavery reformer was enhanced at the Buffalo National Convention of Colored Citizens (1843), when he gained notoriety as a strident black voice for freedom by delivering his “Address to the Slaves of the

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United States”—a speech generally perceived as a call to arms for slaves. A supporting resolution was narrowly defeated. In 1850 Garnet’s support of the free produce movement brought an invitation from Henry and Anna Richardson, leaders of the British movement, to lecture on the subject. After a two-year stay in Great Britain, Garnet accepted an appointment by the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland to serve as a missionary in Jamaica. During his stay on the island (1853–55), Garnet established two elementary schools for black children and a female industrial school, which was directed by his wife, Julia. Illness forced Garnet to resign his post. He returned to New York City in 1856 to pastor the Shiloh Presbyterian Church. Although Garnet had spoken positively about limited black emigration as early as 1849, he institutionalized these beliefs in the late 1850s by helping found the African Civilization Society—an organization that did not repudiate a black presence in America but encouraged black missionary work and entrepreneurship in Africa. Garnet traveled to England again in 1861 to promote the society. During the Civil War, Garnet recruited black troops for the Union army and afterward became the first black man to preach a sermon in the House of Representatives (1865). In 1868, after serving the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., and directing African Civilization Society efforts to educate newly freed black children, he was appointed president of Avery College, a black college established by influential Pittsburgh cotton merchant Charles Avery. Garnet returned to his Shiloh pastorate in 1870. He was appointed U.S. minister to Liberia in 1881. Schor, Henry Highland Garnet, 3–217; Martin Burt Pasternak, “Rise Now and Fly to Arms: The Life of Henry Highland Garnet” (Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts, 1981), 1–269; DANB, 252–53. 228

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28. J. W. C. Pennington to Editor, Christian News 6 September 1850 Black abolitionists often used current American antislavery events, particularly a fugitive slave incident, to inform and arouse British reform interests. J. W. C. Pennington’s 6 September 1850 letter to the Glasgow Christian News demonstrates his willingness to communicate his anti-slavery message in this way. His letter to the newspaper discussed the mistreatment or murder of several white American abolitionists who attempted to assist escaping slaves. Pennington aimed at generating Scottish support for the New York State Vigilance Committee and its work of assisting fugitives from slavery. Schor, Henry Highland Garnet, 112; IC, 16 October 1850. Edinburgh, [Scotland] Sept[ember] 6, 1850 Sir:1 You take a lively interest in the subject of American slavery. I have noticed with gratification, that you have placed in your columns from time to time paragraphs of news bearing upon that system. Will you allow me to call the attention of your readers to the case of a recent victim. I mean William L. Chaplin,2 Esq.—who is now lodged in the felon’s prison of Washington on charge of having been concerned in assisting slaves to escape into a land of freedom. Mr. Chaplin is a citizen of New York State, proprietor of an anti-slavery newspaper, a gentleman of high respectability and intelligence. He was arrested on the 6th of August by the police of Washington city, the seat of the American government, and will be given up to the authorities of Maryland, a slave State, by whom he is to be tried on the above charge; and from what we know of the fate of the Rev. Charles Torrey3 and Captain Drayton,4 who fell into the hands of the same authorities, and were tried and condemned for the same alleged crime, it is certain he will be condemned to hard labour in the State prison of Maryland for some fifteen or twenty years. And all this will be according to law in a slave State! But is there not purity and power enough in the public sentiment of the Christian world to deliver this worthy man? Can we not bring to bear upon America a sufficient amount of righteous indignation to save W. L. Chaplin? Great progress has been made in forming a pure and just public sentiment in the northern States of America. Thousands in the States will demand the liberation of Mr. Chaplin, as he has been guilty of no crime. And if backed by a strong expression from Britain and other countries, we cannot tell what the result may be. These victims of slavery have now

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got to be so numerous and important, that it seems to be impossible to conceive how the nations of the civilised world can hold intercourse with these slaveholders and not be accessory to their deeds. Some years ago, three theological students were sentenced to the State prison of Missouri for the monstrous crime of assisting a few men to cross in a small boat.5 To the account of Missouri we must also place the death of the lamented Lovejoy,6 who was murdered in cold blood by the devotees of slavery for the crime of saying, that slavery is a sin against God and man. More recently the Rev. Mr. Fairbanks was sentenced to the State prison of Kentucky for the crime aforesaid.7 Mr. Torrey died in the Maryland prison; Drayton lies there still; and now comes the case of W. L. Chaplin, Esq. The subject is assuming a grave aspect. This monstrous destroyer is not content with the thousands it destroys in the persons of the slaves—men, women, and children; but it is found of late years that it has a peculiar relish for white men who have the heart and the talent to use the pen and the tongue against it. Amongst its white victims have been men of the highest legal, ministerial, and popular talents and acquirements, and still its bloody hand is reaching about after its prey. Where is the dismal game of death and destruction to end? Shall there be none left to speak for the dumb? Are we to hope for the day when the strength of the world’s righteous and vigorous opinion will make it too deep a disgrace for America to bear; or shall we be abandoned to the temptation of raising the arm of brute force for the deliverance of these repeated and valuable victims. The usual attempt will be made by the slaveholders and their apologists to blacken the character of W. L. Chaplin; but whatever malice may attempt, your readers may rest assured that the character of that gentleman is above suspicion; and there is no law, no solitary law in the Union, that would commission its agents to step athwart his path, but that of slavery. A system which takes its helpless victim, the slave, and robs him of his character, happiness, earnings, wife and children, and rights of consequence, will of course not be scrupulous about the characters of those who dare speak for the slave. J. W. C. PENNINGTON Christian News (Glasgow), 12 September 1850. 1. J. McDougall managed the Glasgow Christian News in 1850. The Liberal weekly was established in 1846 and advocated evangelical and practical religion and moral virtues, especially temperance. It continued publication until 1906, when it merged with the Nonconformist. Newspaper Press Directory, 1851 (London, 1851), 309; Newspaper Press Directory, 1860 (London, 1860), 89; BUCP, 1:560. 2. William L. Chaplin (1796–1871) was born in Massachusetts and educated at Harvard. In the 1830s, Chaplin abandoned his law career to serve as the general agent and corresponding secretary of the New York Anti-Slavery Society.

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After the American Anti-Slavery Society divided in 1840, Chaplin joined the Liberty party as a lecturer and as editor of the Albany Patriot, a party newspaper. In August 1850, Chaplin was arrested in Washington, D.C., for attempting to assist two escaped slaves. Gerrit Smith underwrote Chaplin’s legal expenses and headed the committee that raised the necessary bail for Chaplin’s release. Chaplin failed to appear for his trial and the bail was forfeited. After the episode, Chaplin drifted away from the antislavery movement and directed his attention to the temperance crusade. Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, 2:272, 277–78n.; Lawrence J. Friedman, Gregarious Saints: Self and Community in American Abolitionism, 1830–1870 (New York, N.Y., 1982), 97, 100–102, 114–15. 3. Charles Turner Torrey (1813–1846) was born in Massachusetts and educated at Yale and the Andover Theological Seminary. A professional abolitionist, he organized anti-Garrisonians into the Massachusetts Abolition Society and edited the Massachusetts Abolitionist. In 1842 Torrey was arrested in Maryland for abolitionist activities and was convicted and sentenced to six years’ hard labor. His weak physical and mental condition led to his death of tuberculosis in 1846. DAB, 9:595–96. 4. Daniel Drayton (1802–1857) was involved in one of the largest and one of the most celebrated slave rescue attempts undertaken in pre–Civil War America. Captain Edward Sayres of the coastal schooner Pearl and Drayton, a crew member who had executed previous slave rescues as the captain of a coastal vessel, took seventy-seven District of Columbia slaves aboard the Pearl in April 1848 and then sailed down the Potomac River to the Chesapeake Bay. The escape attempt failed. Most of the runaways were sold south, although several members of one slave family were purchased by northern antislavery sympathizers. Drayton and Sayres received long jail terms and served four years in a Washington, D.C., prison until granted a presidential pardon in 1852 by Millard Fillmore. Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, 2:119n.; Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 3:237, 246. 5. On 12 July 1841 James Burr, George Thompson, and Alanson Work were arrested near Palmyra, Missouri, for aiding slaves who were escaping to Illinois. Thompson and Burr were theological students at the antislavery Mission Institute near Quincy, Illinois, and Work lived in the town. The three men were tried and convicted of grand larceny and sentenced to twelve years in the state penitentiary. After serving three-and-a-half years, Work was pardoned and ordered to return to his native state of Connecticut. Burr was released about a year later, and Thompson was released in 1846. While Thompson later served as a West African missionary for the American Missionary Association, none of the three men became deeply involved in the antislavery movement. Clyde S. Kilby, “Three Anti-slavery Prisoners,” ISHSJ 52 (Autumn 1959):419–30. 6. Elijah Parish Lovejoy (1802–1837) was a preacher and editor, who became an abolitionist martyr when killed by an antiabolitionist mob in Alton, Illinois. Born in Maine, Lovejoy graduated from Waterville (now Colby) College in 1826, attended the seminary at Princeton, and was licensed to preach in 1833. He became editor of the St. Louis Observer that same year, then moved to Alton, Illinois, as editor of the Alton Observer. He reported extensively on the antislavery movement and organized an Illinois state auxiliary to the American Anti-Slavery Society. When proslavery mobs destroyed Lovejoy’s press, the society replaced it.

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In November 1837, while defending his press against a mob, Lovejoy was shot and killed. DAB, 11:434–35; Merton L. Dillon, Elijah P. Lovejoy, Abolitionist Editor (Urbana, Ill., 1961), 40–43. 7. Calvin Fairbank (1816–1898) was born in New York and became an abolitionist as a young man after listening to the accounts of two fugitive slaves. Fairbank claimed to have led forty-seven slaves out of Kentucky and Virginia to freedom between 1837 and 1842. Fairbank was arrested in Lexington, Kentucky, during 1842 for aiding the escape of Lewis Hayden, a slave who later became a leading abolitionist and a member of the Massachusetts legislature. Fairbank served four years (1845–49) of a fifteen-year sentence before Governor John J. Crittenden pardoned him. Fairbank continued his underground railroad activities, was arrested again (1851), and was given another fifteen-year sentence. He was pardoned in 1864, probably as a result of President Abraham Lincoln’s intercession. After the war, Fairbank, a Methodist elder, did missionary work and was superintendent of the Moore Street Industrial Institute in Richmond, Virginia. Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, 2:220n.; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 149–59, 164; Dumond, Antislavery, 314.

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29. Henry Highland Garnet to Samuel Rhoads 5 December 1850 Henry Highland Garnet lectured on free produce and the Fugitive Slave Law at antislavery meetings in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Peckham, Stoke Newington, and London during the late fall of 1850. He also maintained a steady correspondence with free produce co-workers in the United States, including his 5 December letter to Quaker, free produce advocate Samuel Rhoads. By late 1850, Anna Richardson observed that nearly twenty-six British free produce associations had been established “chiefly in consequence of the lectures of H. H. Garnet.” Garnet devoted the entire next year to delivering free produce lectures throughout Scotland, England, and Ireland, frequently at meetings arranged by these local associations. Schor, Henry Highland Garnet, 116–18. HITCHIN, ENGLAND Dec[ember] 5, 1850 Dear Friend:1 Since my last letter was written, we have been laboring with unremitting effort in the Free-Labor Cause. We have renewed occasion daily to press on in the name and strength of God. Nothing but light and information on the subject is needed to arouse the whole country to sally forth and to labor in the Anti-Slavery fields. Among the many bright signs of the times that are appearing, the interest that Capitalists take in the growth of cotton in other countries than America, is not the least important. Allowing their motives to be purely commercial, yet the effect of their movement will be the same upon slavery, and will do the thing that those benevolent people desire who base their efforts upon humane and moral principles. We have been making an attempt to establish a wholesale warehouse for Free-Labor goods in London, and have every reason to believe that it will be speedily accomplished. Our humble efforts have created an increased demand for Free grown articles and it must continue to increase. The Fugitive Slave Law2 still fills the minds of the British people with wonder and amazement. Until America wipes that foul blot from her Statute book, she will have but little or no political influence upon Europe. Every body sneers at her high pretensions to liberty, as they are set off against her practices. The people do not seem disposed to deal in strong epithets to express their disapprobation of this great outrage upon human rights, but they are astonished and grieved to see the country expose its shame and hypocrisy to mankind. It is clearly seen that the measure has a tendency to cause the people to think upon the subject of

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slavery, and to lead them to examine and see to what extent they support the system by consuming its productions. In many places in the country, resolutions have been passed at public meetings, touching this subject—a copy of those adopted at this place, I herewith send you. Others, in due time, will be forthcoming. Yours truly, HENRY H. GARNET Pennsylvania Freeman (Philadelphia), 23 January 1851. 1. Samuel Rhoads led the free produce movement in the Philadelphia area. Rhoads wrote an influential tract that prompted the formation of the Philadelphia Free Produce Association of Friends, and he managed and financed the organization and edited the Non-Slaveholder, the free produce newspaper, from 1848 to 1850. In 1847 he visited England to acquaint the British with American free produce techniques. He later edited the Friends’ Review (1856–67), a Quaker religious and literary journal. Active in other reform causes, Rhoads favored disunionism but, as a Quaker, opposed the Civil War. Nuermberger, Free Produce Movement, 35–36, 65, 105–7; Temperley, British Antislavery, 166; Mabee, Black Freedom, 142, 202, 329, 355, 363. 2. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was one of the five congressional enactments passed in September and collectively designated as the Compromise of 1850. The law was meant to address slave-owner dissatisfaction with the federal procedures for returning fugitive slaves; it created the position of United States commissioner, a federal hearing officer loosely affiliated with northern state courts, who had final authority over extradition proceedings. The law also ordered state and federal authorities to cooperate in capturing fugitives, and it imposed a $1,000-dollar fine or six-month jail sentence on anyone who aided a runaway. Most important, the law made the slave certification hearing an administrative, and not a judicial, procedure. Blacks could not testify on their own behalf and had no right to counsel or to a habeas corpus hearing; free blacks regarded it as a severe threat to their freedom. Abolitionists used the law to rouse northern antislavery sentiment and to reinvigorate fugitive slave rescue committees. Ultimately, the law and the confrontations it precipitated moved the North and the South closer to war. Campbell, Slave Catchers, 15–25.

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30. William P. Powell to Sydney Howard Gay 12 December 1850 Black visitors were overwhelmed by the apparent egalitarianism of midnineteenth-century British society. Northern free black abolitionists contrasted this with the racism and restrictions they had encountered at home. No one spoke more effectively about what it meant to be in England than William P. Powell, a successful, freeborn, black hotel keeper from New York City and a lifelong antislavery advocate. Powell’s mounting concern about the effect of racial prejudice on his family— particularly the fear that his seven children would be denied an adequate education in America—prompted him to investigate the possibility of moving to Britain. He arrived in Liverpool on 12 December 1850 and, within a week, recorded his impressions of Britain for his friend Sydney Howard Gay of the National Anti-Slavery Standard. One year later, Powell sold his New York business and resettled his family in Liverpool, where he served the antislavery cause in a variety of ways. FDP, 31 July 1851; Philip S. Foner, “William P. Powell: Militant Champion of Black Seamen,” in Essays in Afro-American History (Philadelphia, Pa., 1978), 94–98. LIVERPOOL, [England] Dec[ember] 19, 1850 DEAR GAY :1 I am here at last. Things pass so vividly before my eyes, it is difficult for this spell-bound tongue of mine to ejaculate. The change is so sudden so unexpected, that I can hardly believe my senses. Though not a chattel personal, yet socially, civilly, politically and religiously bound down in fetters equally as galling as that of Slavery in the United States itself. I feel for once in my life though under a foreign flag—a man, indeed! This is strange talk for a man of my age, just completed my forty-fourth year the day I landed on British soil, and the father of seven children, to talk of my manhood as a thing just having an existence; but so it is, and more shame for my color-hating country. Oh! my country, my country, with all thy faults I love thee none the less. O, if I could wash out the foul blot of the iniquitous system of Slavery with my tears, fain would I do it. I would lay down my life if I could with my last gasp, rid my country of this damnable sin! But enough of this for the present. British hospitality is doing the work of moral and social regeneration. One thing I know, yea two, in my own country—according to the letter and spirit of the Fugitive Slave Bill I am a—THING , but here according to British magnanimity I am a MAN.

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That modern Nero of American Republicanism, Millard Fillmore,2 still threatens to enforce (what I myself for one had supposed, in his approval, was an error of the head and not of the heart) the Fugitive Slave Bill,3 with all its provisions to the fullest extent—the fullest extent—a la Webster;4 and what is more surprising to me is, that he regrets that mere newspaper reports are not sufficient grounds for him to redress the wrongs of William and Ellen Craft,5 but I hope they are beyond the reach of the bloodhounds by this time. Wm. Rathbone, Esq.,6 one of the warmest friends of the slave that lives, tells me they are on their way to England. So the Whigs have met with a signal defeat at the fall elections all over the country.7 They have met their deserts which they richly deserve. Poor Whigs and Whig President are both in the suds. For the work they have done, one would have thought that the salvation of the Whig party was accomplished when Millard Fillmore shed the last drop of Northern conscience when he signed the Fugitive Slave Bill. What have the Whigs gained by the Clay Compromise?8 What have Northern dough-faces9 gained by surrendering their consciences and the cause of human rights into the hands of Southern despots? Nothing but disgrace, the execrations and political damnation of all parties; so might it be with all who trample on God’s poor. In a few words, dear Gay, let me assure you that I am now convinced beyond a doubt, that a dissolution of the Union is inevitable; that I am ready to go as far as the next man in the Anti-Slavery ranks for a Dissolution of the American Union. You see the state of this letter, written and blotted in a hurry for want of time. I beg you, excuse these imperfect lines, and believe me to be yours for the right and against the wrong, WILLIAM P. POWELL10 National Anti-Slavery Standard (New York, N.Y.), 9 January 1851. 1. Sydney Howard Gay (1814–1888) was born and educated in Hingham, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1833 and studied law in his father’s law office in Hingham. His strong political and antislavery views led him away from the law and into abolitionist activity. He lectured for the American AntiSlavery Society and became editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard in 1844. In 1858 Gay went to the New York Tribune and became its managing editor before taking positions with the Chicago Tribune and then the New York Evening Post. In addition to his newspaper work, Gay published a fourvolume history of the United States and a biography of James Madison. DAB, 5:195. 2. Millard Fillmore (1800–1874) was the thirteenth president of the United States. Born at Locke, Cayuga County, New York, he served in the New York state legislature and in the U.S. Congress between 1828 and 1847. With the death of President Taylor on 9 July 1850, Vice-President Fillmore became president and served through the end of Taylor’s term. DAB, 3(2):380–82.

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3. President Fillmore’s presidential message of 6 August 1850 was decisive in moving Congress to act on pending compromise measures. He urged adjustment of all outstanding controversies, particularly the Texas boundary situation, which he described in alarming terms as a threat to “domestic tranquility.” Fillmore believed that once that issue was resolved, Congress would quickly address the questions of California statehood, New Mexico’s territorial status, and fugitive slave measures. Robert L. Rayback, Millard Fillmore: Biography of a President (Buffalo, N.Y., 1959), 249–51. 4. Daniel Webster’s support of the Compromise of 1850—based on the position that preservation of the Union transcended antislavery—drew strong criticism from abolitionists and his Massachusetts constituents. Webster (1792–1852), born in New Hampshire and a graduate of Dartmouth College, served in the U.S. House of Representatives from New Hampshire and from Massachusetts. In 1827 Webster began a career in national politics as a senator, secretary of state, Whig national party leader, and frequent presidential hopeful. Webster’s political views included opposition to high tariffs, support for a national bank, and opposition to the annexation of Texas and the expansion of slavery. DAB, 19:585–92. 5. Georgia fugitive slaves William and Ellen Craft had lived in Boston for twentyone months before the Fugitive Slave Law was passed in September of 1850. In October two agents of the Crafts’ owners began legal proceedings to return the Crafts to slavery. William and Ellen were protected by the League of Freedom (a black association recently formed for that purpose), by the revitalized Boston Vigilance Committee, and by their own resolve. The slave catchers left the city after more than a week of harassment and intimidation by the abolitionist community. The Crafts’ former owners then petitioned President Millard Fill-more for federal assistance, and it was soon apparent to the fugitive slaves and their antislavery friends that they had become a symbol of the federal government’s willingness to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law and would have to leave Boston. After Theodore Parker “legally” married them on 7 November, they joined Samuel May, Jr., on a train to Portland, Maine—the first leg of their intended journey to England. At Portland they boarded a steamship for St. Johns, New Brunswick, then took another one to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where they waited two weeks and frequently experienced “low Yankee prejudice” before finally being allowed to book passage on a Cunard liner to Liverpool. William and Ellen Craft, Running a Thousand Miles to Freedom (London, 1860; reprint, Miami, Fla., 1969), 90–107; R. J. M. Blackett, “Fugitive Slaves in Britain: The Odyssey of William and Ellen Craft,” JAS 12:41– 45 (April 1978); Farrison, William Wells Brown, 134–35. 6. William Rathbone (1819–1902) of Liverpool was educated at the University of Heidelberg. In 1841 a business tour of the United States made him an “uncompromising free-trader.” He was elected to Parliament, where he was especially interested in local government, licensing laws, and prohibition. He was active in Liverpool reform causes and institutions, including the University of Liverpool and University College of North Wales. DNB, 3(2): 161–62; Who’s Who in Parliament, 2:297. 7. The Whig party generally did not do well in the elections of 1850. The party lost one Senate seat and seventeen seats in the House. Roy F. Nichols, The Demo-

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cratic Machine, 1850–1854 (New York, N.Y., 1923), 19–29; Whig Almanac, 1850 (New York, N.Y., 1850), 2–4. 8. Garnet refers to the Compromise of 1850, which was forged by Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky and other Union-loving politicians in an effort to end continually raging debates in Congress over a variety of slavery-related issues—debates that had taken the South to the brink of secession. Clay took a number of separate proposals, designed to address specific problems, and combined them into an omnibus bill, which he offered to the Senate on 29 January 1850. The bill proposed that California be admitted to the Union as a free state, that territorial governments in the remainder of the Mexican cession be formed without restriction on slavery, that Texas yield to New Mexico in its boundary dispute in return for a federal assumption of its war debts, that the slave trade (but not slavery) be abolished in Washington, D.C., and, finally, that a new, more effective fugitive slave law be enacted. The controversial compromise passed with the support of President Millard Fillmore (who succeeded President Zachary Taylor on 9 July after Taylor died) and with the able legislative management of Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. Holman Hamilton, Prologue to Conflict: The Crisis and Compromise of 1850 (Lexington, Ky., 1964). 9. This term was often used by abolitionists to characterize northern politicians, particularly Democrats, who sympathized with the principles of southern proslavery politicians. 10. William P. Powell (1807–ca. 1879) was born free in New York State and was later described on his passport application as “of a mulatto colour but of Indian extraction.” Powell’s grandmother was Elizabeth Barjova, a cook for the Continental Congress, and his father was a slave named Edward Powell, who was freed when New York abolished slavery in 1827. Powell received considerable education before serving as an apprentice sailor. He settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, married Mercy O. Haskins from nearby Plymouth (who was probably part Indian), and established a boardinghouse for sailors. Powell was an early Garrisonian abolitionist. He signed the constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society in December 1833, helped found a local anti-slavery society in the New Bedford area, and was one of the first members of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. An anticolonizationist, he believed that blacks should participate fully and equally in American society. In 1837 Powell and other free blacks appeared before the Massachusetts legislature to protest racial discrimination in the state. Their efforts began a long struggle, which culminated during the mid-1840s, when blacks won the statewide right to send their children to integrated public schools and saw an end to the Massachusetts ban on interracial marriage. Powell promoted women’s rights and black self-help. He was chairman of New Bedford’s Young Men’s Wilberforce Debating Society and supported the temperance crusade. In 1839 Powell moved to New York City and opened an employment agency and home for sailors under the auspices of the American Seamen’s Friend Society. He continued his antislavery activity by founding the Manhattan Anti-Slavery Society (1840) and by using the sailors’ home to host abolitionist gatherings. Throughout his antislavery career, Powell maintained his allegiance to the American Anti-Slavery Society and Garrisonian principles. He served on the society’s executive committee, opposed political abolitionism, and criticized

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the slaveholding American church. When the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was passed, Powell led black efforts to prevent state and local police involvement in extraditions. Powell’s concern about the law and his desire to insure an adequate education for his seven children prompted a ten-year residence in Liverpool, England. While living there, Powell worked for a trading company and continued his antislavery efforts by hosting black abolitionists during their British tours, serving as a conduit between reform allies in America and Britain, and coordinating shipment of British goods to the Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar. Powell returned home during the secession crisis. His son William, Jr., was commissioned as a surgeon for the Union army. In 1862 Powell reopened his seamen’s home in New York City; a year later, the home was ransacked and his family threatened by antidraft rioters. Powell helped found the American Seamen’s Protective Union Association (1863); he served as a delegate to the National Colored Labor Convention held in Washington, D.C. (1869); and he was chairman of the New York Civil Rights Committee (1873). He was a participant at a William Lloyd Garrison memorial meeting in San Francisco during June 1879. Foner, “William P. Powell,” 88–111; George W. Forbes, Biographical Sketch of William P. Powell, William Powell to Maria Weston Chapman, 30 October 1857, 12 January 1859, William Powell to Samuel J. May, 21 October 1859, Antislavery Collection, MB [10:0880, 11:0545, 12:0142]; Constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society, American Anti-Slavery Society Papers, DLC [1:0352]; Lib, 24 May 1834, 13 June 1835, 19 July, 27 September 1839, 21 July 1843, 7 February 1845, 13 March, 24 July 1863, 29 September 1865 [1:0456, 0609, 3:0141, 0207, 4:0613, 0987, 14:0762, 0974, 16:0236]; NASS, 6 May 1841, 24 February 1842, 28 March 1844, 3 May 1845, 10 August, 10 September, 29 October 1846, 9 January, 6 February 1851, 12 February 1859, 23, 30 July 1863 [3:1022, 4:0369, 0774, 5:0267, 1071, 6:0726, 11:0585]; NSt, 7 April 1849, 24 October 1850 [5:1051]; ASA, August 1853; WAA, 10 August 1861 [13:0685]; PP, 17 August 1861 [13:0693, 0694].

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31. William Wells Brown to Frederick Douglass 20 December 1850 Fugitive slaves William and Ellen Craft were driven from Boston by slave catchers in November 1850. They arrived in Liverpool in early December. Their old friend and colleague William Wells Brown, who was then lecturing in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, heard that they wished to contact him and wrote the Crafts on 16 December. Without awaiting a reply, he arranged a reception for them. Illness kept Ellen in Liverpool, but William Craft joined Brown in Newcastle. Brown’s 20 December letter to Frederick Douglass, written shortly before he met with William Craft, tells of their arrival in England and encloses William Craft’s brief reply to Brown’s 16 December invitation. Brown’s efforts to assist his less experienced cohort reflects the camaraderie and cooperation that characterized relations among black abolitionists in Britain. Farrison, William Wells Brown, 179. KINGSHEAD HOTEL HORTLEPOOL , [England] Dec[ember] 20, 1850 DEAR DOUGLASS : You will have seen that the press of this country has been unsparing in its denunciation of the “Fugitive Slave Bill.” Of the many acts of cruelty and injustice committed by the America Legislature against the colored people of the United States, none has done so much to crown them with infamy, and to cause the people of this country to detest and abhor the American character, as the enactment of this new law. It is an ancient fable, that the eruptions of Aetna were produced by the restless movements of the giant Enceladus, who was imprisoned beneath. As the monster turned on his side, or stretched his limbs, or struggled, the conscious mountain belched forth flames, fiery cinders, and red-hot lava, carrying destruction to all who dwelt upon its fertile sides. The slave power of the United States is the imprisoned giant of the new world; and its constant struggles for more power, have and will cause eruptions of evil to the people, in comparison with which the flames, the fiery cinders, and red-hot lava of the volcano, are trivial and transitory. “The Fugitive Slave Bill,” and its consequences, is the all-absorbing topic for conversation in this country. Within the last three weeks, I have attended several meetings upon the subject of the fugitive slave bill. Sir John Fife presided at the meeting in Newcastle; in Shields, the Mayor was in the chair. The Sunderland meeting was presided over by one of the oldest and most venerated of its

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5. Ellen Craft in the disguise used during her 1848 escape from slavery From William Craft, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom (London, 1860)

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citizens.1 At all of these meetings, stringent resolutions were passed in favor of the anti-slavery movement, and against the fugitive bill. The minds of the people of England were never in a better state to hear the question of American slavery discussed than at the present time. President Fillmore’s message has come to hand, and his approval of the new law, and his seeming determination to see it enforced is to some extent claiming the attention of the public. What words can tell the inhumanity, the atrocity, of that doctrine which, from exalted office, commends such a law to the favor of Christians, as the deliberate counsel and practical wisdom of a great and enlightened nation? What indignation from all the world is not due to the government that puts forth its powers and strength to execute such an obnoxious law? But I did not sit down to write a long letter; my only object was to give you some little account of the CRAFTS .2 I received letters from Boston some days since, informing me of their flight from that city, and their intended visit to this country. My connection with William and Ellen, on their getting out of slavery, two years since, and their attendance upon my meetings in Massachusetts, caused our New England friends to suppose that on reaching this country, they would find me out. A few days ago, while in Newcastle, I received information, in an indirect way, that the Crafts had arrived at Liverpool, and were at Brown’s Temperance Hotel,3 where you, and I, and many more of the American abolitionists have made their homes, on reaching Liverpool. I immediately wrote to William Craft, telling him that if I could be of any service to him, it would give me the greatest pleasure. Yesterday’s post brought me the following reply, written in his own handwriting: BROWN’S HOTEL LIVERPOOL , [England] Dec[ember] 18, 1850 My dear Brown: Yours of the 16th came duly to hand, for which you have my best thanks. I need not inform you that I was pleased on getting your letter, but I should have been much more so, to have seen you. We will come to you, but we cannot leave Liverpool until Thursday next, as Ellen is not very well. Hoping to see you in a few days, I remain yours most truly, WM . CRAFT When I met with William Craft, two years ago, he scarcely knew one letter from another. And although he has had to labor for his living since his escape, the composition of his letter does his head more credit than the one sent to him by the slaveholder Hughes,4 while in pursuit of this noble fugitive in Boston. I don’t know what will be their plans, as I have not yet seen them. But as I have lying before me an invitation to visit

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Scotland, I have but little doubt but that Wm. and Ellen Craft will accompany me, and that Edinboro’, the capital of the land of Burns, will be the first to give a welcome to Wm. and Ellen Craft, the first fugitive slaves who have landed in this country, chased from the land of their birth by Webster’s fugitive slave law.5 The people generally are deeply interested in the history of Wm. and Ellen Craft, and it is not at all unlikely that the fugitive slave bill has added one more mouth-piece to the anti-slavery agitation. The hearty and enthusiastic welcome that these two fugitives will get at the hands of the people of Great Britain, will cause the cheeks of the Americans to mantle with shame, if they are not entirely lost to everything of the kind. When I left Boston, in July, 1849, for this country, the Crafts accompanied me to East Boston to see me off. And as the steamer had left the wharf, I saw among the last visible objects in the crowd, on the wharf, the white handkerchief of Craft waving in the breeze, above the heads of those around him, bidding me farewell. I hoped at that time, that I should soon return and find him at his own home, as I had left him. But the Crafts were too noble specimens of our race to be permitted to dwell in peace and quietness, after the passage of the fugitive slave law. The people of the North should no longer boast of their independence of the slave power.6 And, instead of the people of Boston pointing to the Bunker Hill Monument, and boasting of the heroic deeds of their fathers, they should pull it down, and erect upon its ruins a monument to Webster, and engrave upon it in characters not to be mistaken, “No protection here for the oppressed.” When I heard of the passage of the fugitive slave bill, I had some faint hope that the people there would protect those who had fled to that city for safety. But when I heard of the flight of the Crafts, I gave up all hopes of the fugitives being safe on any soil over which the “stars and stripes” float. But I must bring this hasty letter to a close. And before doing that, I must make a single reference to the reception given to our friend George Thompson by the Bostonians.7 Those in this country who understand the position of the political affairs in America, look upon the disturbance in Faneuil Hall8 as the last and crowning act of infamy of the defeated Whig party of Massachusetts.9 But this will cause this noble friend of the slave to be more and more admired in this country. I understand a testimonial is to be presented to Mr. Thompson on his return to England. [William Wells Brown] North Star (Rochester, N.Y.), 16 January 1851. 1. Brown spent most of November and December 1850 in the north of England lecturing against the recently enacted Fugitive Slave Law. He spoke to a crowded gathering on 11 November 1850 at the Lecture Room, Nelson Street, Newcastleupon-Tyne. The session convened “to enter a protest against the efforts of the

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Americans to rescue 25,000 fugitive slaves from British soil.” Sir John Fife (1795– 1871), a local surgeon and political reformer, presided and gave a brief introductory address. By the last week of the month, Brown addressed an audience in South Shields. He stirred the gathering by declaring that he “dare not return to the land of my birth now, or if I should, I would most likely be seized by the man who claims my body as his property.” In early December, Brown delivered similar lectures in Blaydon-on-Tyne (3 December), Winlaton (7 December), and Sunderland. Lib, 13 December 1850 [6:0685]; DNB, 18:436–37; ASB, 28 December 1850; GO, 7 December 1850 [6:0683]. 2. Ellen Craft (1826–1890) was born in Clinton, Georgia, the daughter of her master and his slave Maria. At age eleven, Ellen was given to her mistress’s daughter as a wedding present and sent to Macon, Georgia, to live. There she met and married William Craft (1824–1900). Craft’s family had been sold to pay their master’s debts, and Craft had been mortgaged to a local banker and then apprenticed to a cabinetmaker. William and Ellen devised an ingenious plan to escape slavery, and on the day after Christmas 1848, they executed it. Ellen, whose complexion was nearly white, disguised herself in the clothes of a young southern gentleman. She wore tinted green glasses, put a poultice on her face, and wrapped her arm in a sling to prevent being asked for a signature. Then, in the company of William, who acted as her servant, the two slaves began a thousand-mile journey to freedom. They took a train to Savannah and then alternated trains and ships until they arrived in Philadelphia four days later. In late January 1849, the Crafts moved to Boston (where William found work as a carpenter and Ellen as a seamstress), and shortly after joining William Wells Brown on the antislavery lecture circuit, they became among the most celebrated fugitive slaves in American reform circles. In mid-October 1850, when two agents appeared in Boston to take them back to slavery, the Crafts were hidden by black abolitionist Lewis Hayden, “officially” married by Theodore Parker, and, on 7 November, fled Boston in the company of Samuel May, Jr. They traveled to Portland, Maine, and then to Nova Scotia, and finally they sailed to safety in England. They spent the next nineteen years as English residents. Early in 1851, they again joined William Wells Brown, this time for a series of lectures to British anti-slavery audiences, their narrative of daring escape serving as a counterpoint to Brown’s analysis of slavery. Between 1851 and 1854 they lived at Ockham School in Surrey, a rural vocational-training institute, where they learned to read and write in return for vocational teaching services. The first of their five children was born at Ockham. In 1854 William returned to the lecture circuit, where he aggressively championed the free produce movement. During the mid-1850s, William and Ellen settled in West London and entertained many black abolitionists who were touring England. In 1859 they helped form the Garrison-influenced London Emancipation Society and in 1860 published their narrative Running a Thousand Miles to Freedom. Throughout the 1860s, Ellen worked for freedmen’s aid societies and women’s rights associations in England. William spent a number of years in Whydah, Dahomey, as an agent for the African Aid Society, a group concerned with promoting education, trade, and free-labor cotton production. William founded a successful vocational school there in 1865 and directed it until 1867. In 1869 the Crafts returned to America and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts. By 1875

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they had established a cooperative agricultural community and school on eighteen hundred acres of land in Bryan County, Georgia—the homeland from which they had escaped twenty-seven years earlier. Craft and Craft, Running a Thousand Miles; NAW, 1:396–98; Blackett, “Fugitive Slaves in Britain,” 42–61; Still, Underground Railroad. 3. Brown’s Temperance Hotel appears under the name of William Brown in the Liverpool, England, directories for 1839 to 1855. From 1839 to 1841, it was situated in St. John’s Lane; and from 1842 to 1855, at 20 Clayton’s Square. The hotel was a favorite lodging for abolitionists visiting Liverpool. 4. Brown refers to a short note sent to the Crafts on 22 October 1850 by slave catchers Willis H. Hughes (1813–1851) and John Knight, who had been hired to return the Crafts to Georgia. Brown ridiculed the note because it was filled with misspellings and ungrammatical constructions and was a thoroughly unconvincing attempt to lure William Craft into a trap. (The note was signed by Knight, not Hughes, as Brown indicates in his letter to Douglass.) Hughes, a Macon farmer and jailer, was a business partner with Knight in a Macon bucket factory. The two men arrived in Boston on 19 October, and shortly began an unsuccessful, nine-day effort to extradite the Crafts. Hughes and Knight received little help from city authorities who were concerned about antislavery mob violence. The slave catchers were frequently taunted by abolitionist demonstrators and were arrested three times on various charges, including complaints that they made slanderous remarks about the Crafts. In the midst of these proceedings, Hughes and Knight apparently tried to contact the Crafts with the note. They wrote William Craft that if he or his wife wanted to send a message back to Georgia, they would be willing to deliver it. All Craft had to do was leave the message in “Box 44” or “come your self to morrow Eavening [sic] after tea and bring it.” NASS, 5 December 1850; E, 31 October 1850; Bibb County Superior Court Minutes, 1849–52, 5:339; Lib, 1 November, 6, 27 December 1850; BP, 26 October 1850; United States Census, 1850. 5. Daniel Webster was alarmed by the growing sectional controversy of the late 1840s. Webster’s support of Henry Clay’s 1850 compromise measures was based on the belief that the Union was being threatened by the slavery issue. For Webster, slavery was not as great an evil as disunion. Claude Moore Fuess, Daniel Webster (Boston, Mass., 1930), 2:198–246; Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago, Ill., 1979), 224. 6. Throughout the antebellum period, abolitionists used the term “slave power conspiracy” to explain what they saw as the concerted efforts of proslavery southern leaders and northern sympathizers to use their political influence to preserve and expand the institution of slavery. According to abolitionists, the alleged slave power conspiracy guaranteed slavery in the Constitution, extended the slave trade for twenty years, and added many slave states to the Union. During the late 1840s and 1850s, this abolitionist vision of a carefully designed plan to overturn freedom in the United States was confirmed by the proslavery expansionist demands of the South and repeated federal legislation and legal decisions that supported slavery. David Brion Davis, The Slave Power Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style (Baton Rouge, La., 1970). 7. George Thompson arrived in Boston early in November 1850 and was asked to address a welcome meeting to be given in his honor at Faneuil Hall Friday eve-

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ning, 15 November. The meeting, chaired by Edmund Quincy, was scheduled to hear speeches by William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass, and Thompson. Approximately four hundred people jammed onto the floor of the hall and filled its galleries. Garrison spoke first, then Phillips made some brief remarks. When Thompson stood to speak, a small but vocal group of young antiabolitionists in the front gallery shouted him down and forced cancellation of the proceedings. The meeting was rescheduled for Worcester, Massachusetts, on Saturday morning, 23 November. Lib, 15, 22, 29 November 1850. 8. Faneuil Hall is a public market and meeting hall erected in 1742 as a gift to the town of Boston by Peter Faneuil, a wealthy merchant. During the eighteenth century, the building earned the sobriquet “Cradle of Liberty” because it was the site of public protests against British measures before the Revolution. In the nineteenth century, the hall was often used as a meeting place for reformers. DAH, 2:487. 9. Daniel Webster’s support for the Compromise of 1850 weakened the Whig party in Massachusetts and virtually assured the election of Charles Sumner to the Senate in 1851. In 1849 the Whigs in Massachusetts held both Senate seats, the governorship, eight seats in the House of Representatives, and controlled both houses of the Massachusetts legislature. At the close of 1850, the party had lost ground in the House of Representatives, and had maintained the governorship by a narrower margin than in 1848. Whig Almanac, 1850, 16–17; Whig Almanac, 1851 (New York, N.Y., 1851), 16–17; Whig Almanac, 1852 (New York, N.Y., 1852), 16–17.

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32. Speech by William Craft Delivered at the Nicolson Street Church, Edinburgh, Scotland

30 December 1850 Soon after meeting in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, William Craft and William Wells Brown proceeded to Edinburgh to lecture there during the Christmas holidays. On 30 December 1850, they attended the annual meeting of the Edinburgh Ladies Anti-Slavery Society at Nicolson Street Church. Following the presentation of the society’s annual report, Brown offered an antislavery resolution and made some brief remarks about the Fugitive Slave Law. Craft then spoke and was well received, although one reporter indicated that the audience was disappointed by Ellen’s absence. William’s story of his and Ellen’s flight from slavery, and then from Boston, was made more dramatic by his status as the first refugee from the Fugitive Slave Law to appear on the British lecture circuit. His early speeches—factual accounts of slave life and the escapes from Georgia and Boston—were typical of those offered by his fugitive slave contemporaries. NASS, 30 January 1851; Lib, 24 January 1851. It affords me great pleasure to meet with you here this evening, not because I feel capable of interesting you with a speech, but because I feel myself in the midst of friends, amongst whom I can exclaim, Thank God, I am free! (Applause.) It is only two years since I escaped from Slavery, and previous to my escape I was unable to read a syllable. I hope, then, if I should speak ungrammatically, or so as not to be clearly understood, that my friends will attribute it, not to any neglect of mine or of my parents, but to that accursed system which kept me in a state of ignorance. (Hear, hear.) My wife and I escaped together from Georgia, and came on to Boston, a distance of 2000 miles. We remained quietly in Boston for about two years, till the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill. A couple of ruffians,1 who were hired by the men that claimed us as slaves2 to come to Boston and arrest us, got out warrants for our apprehension and placed them in the hands of the District Marshal,3 but, for some reason or other, the Marshal refused to execute them. He knew that we had been slaves, and that, from knowing what Slavery was, I was prepared to protect myself and my wife at all hazards against a United States Marshal or anybody else that attempted to drag us back to bondage. (Loud applause.) A Committee of Vigilance4 was formed in Boston for the purpose of protecting us and other fugitive slaves who should be claimed under the new law; but we were compelled in the end to flee to a country where we could feel ourselves in greater security. But I suppose it will be more interesting if I give an account of the manner in which we

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made our escape from Georgia. (Applause.) My wife belonged to one family and I to another, and we contrived plans for many years, both before and after our marriage, to escape from Georgia. At last we came to the conclusion that my wife should disguise herself in gentleman’s apparel (Mrs. Craft being a white woman) that I should attend her as her servant. I set to work, therefore, and collected the clothes necessary to enable us to accomplish our purpose, buying one article of dress at one time and another at another. When everything was ready my wife told her mistress that her aunt, who lived at a place about twelve miles off, was very ill, and that she was exceedingly anxious to go and see her before she died. Her mistress refused at first to let her away, but my wife, after a great deal of crying, succeeded in getting her consent. I then told the man for whom I was working, who had hired me from my master, that my wife was going to see her sick aunt, and that I wished to go along with her, and at last I was permitted to go. But my wife, instead of going to see her aunt, went to see her uncle in Philadelphia. (Laughter.) She got herself dressed as a gentleman, and pretending that she was suffering severely from inflammatory rheumatism, told the people we came in contact with, while travelling northwards, that she was going to consult her uncle, who was an eminent physician in Philadelphia. The morning after we received permission to pay a visit to her aunt, I cut her hair square off, dressed her up in the clothes I had procured, and provided her with a pair of green spectacles. A poultice was applied to her right hand, for not being able to write, we were afraid that she would be discovered when requested to register her name at the hotels, &c. We travelled first to Savannah, and then took the steamboat to Charleston in South Carolina. When we arrived there, our luggage was taken off, and we went to a hotel. When we got to the hotel we had a room to ourselves, and the first thing I did was to purchase two hot poultices, one for the face of my poor master, and the other to bind up her hand. (Laughter.) I then went to the kitchen and blackened my master’s boots. My master was asked down to dinner and took it along with a number of gentlemen, who were in the hotel, while I was sent to the kitchen to eat some scraps with a rusty knife and fork. But I did not eat very much; I was not very hungry about that time. (Applause.) After dinner I went to see how master was getting along, and it was soon time for us to go down to the steamboat again. She was so lame on account of the inflammatory rheumatism, that as we went down to the steamboat I had to hold her by the arm to prevent her from falling. (Laughter.) When we went to the steamboat office, my master asked for a ticket for herself and servant to Philadelphia. I was asked where we came from, and I said we came from Atlanta, which is distant about a hundred miles from the place we belonged to, so that if they thought of telegraphing back, they might be put on a wrong scent. When we were about to leave the office

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my wife was asked to register her name. She pointed to her poulticed hand, and requested the clerk to do it for her, but he said it was not in accordance with his duty. The captain of the boat, however, who was in the office, said he would put down the name, and accordingly entered the name “William Johnston” in the clerk’s books. We soon arrived at Wilmington, where we took the railway cars, and travelled on through Virginia. At Petersburg an old gentleman with some nice daughters got into the car along with us. The old gentleman commenced a conversation with my master, who told him we were from Georgia, and that she was going to see her uncle in Philadelphia, in order to be cured of her inflammatory rheumatism. The old gentleman said, “Ah! I know what that is: I know how to sympathize with you.” And if he did know what inflammatory rheumatism was, he knew more than my master did. After some conversation the old gentleman suggested to my master that she should lie down on the sofa at the end of the car, and asked if she would not suffer him to take off her boots, for the sake of giving her ease. She very willingly consented, so as to be freed from the necessity of talking. After she had lain down for some time, I heard one of the young ladies remarking, “this is a very nice young man, I never felt so much for a young man in my life.” (Great laughter.) After lying on the sofa for a considerable time, my master rose, and got some cakes and candies from the young ladies. They enjoyed themselves together very finely, till at last the old gentleman with his daughters got out at Richmond, Virginia; before he left us he gave my master his address, and said he and his daughters would be very happy to receive a visit from him, whenever he should find it convenient. My master, of course, thanked him very kindly and promised to give him a call when she went that way again. But I guess that she won’t go that way again very soon. (Laughter.) We went on then to Fredericksburg—from Fredericksburg we went to Washington, and thence to Baltimore, where we arrived on the third day from the time when we made our escape. At Baltimore officers were appointed to prevent fugitive slaves from escaping to Philadelphia, and as we were stepping into the cars a man accosted me and asked me where I was going. I said I belonged to a sick young gentleman who was travelling to Philadelphia. I was then told that it was against the rules to let any slaves pass along without having first been examined at the office. So we went to the railway office, and the clerk asked, “Is this your servant?” She said I was. “Well,” said he, “it is against our rules to allow any slaves to go along here, unless security is given that all is right. You must get some gentleman who knows you to certify that you have a right to take this slave along with you.” She said she had bought tickets in Charleston to carry herself and her servant through to Philadelphia, and that she was acquainted with several gentlemen, but did not know that it was necessary to bring them along with her to certify that she was master of her own

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slave. “You must stay here then,” said the clerk, “as it is against our rules to let you pass.” But in the end, after some minutes’ consultation with the other clerks, he said, “Well, I don’t know what to do about it; he is a sick young fellow, and I suppose I must tell the conductor to let him and his slave pass along.” About five o’clock next morning we arrived in Philadelphia, and went to a hotel for colored people, to which we had been recommended by a fellow passenger. After being in the house for a short time, I told the landlord who we were. He introduced us to Mr. William Wells Brown and other friends; but it was thought the safest plan that we should go on to Boston, where we resided in peace and quiet till the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill. Mr. Craft concluded by stating that he always felt embarrassed in relating the manner of their escape, on account of the deception which they were obliged to use; but he believed that the greatest portion of the guilt of that deception belonged to the system under which they had formerly groaned. National Anti-Slavery Standard (New York, N.Y.), 30 January 1851. 1. Craft refers to Willis H. Hughes and John Knight, who were employed by the Crafts’ owners to return the Crafts to slavery in October 1850. 2. William Craft was owned by Ira H. Taylor of Macon, Georgia. Ellen Craft’s mistress was Mrs. Robert Collins of Macon, who was the daughter of James P. Smith, Ellen’s father and original owner. Blackett, “Fugitive Slaves in Britain,” 41–62; Craft and Craft, Running a Thousand Miles, 2, 7, 8. 3. This is a reference to U.S. Marshal Charles Devens (1820–1891) of Boston, Massachusetts, who arrested fugitive slaves Shadrach and Thomas Sims in early 1851. Trained in law at Harvard, Devens opposed slavery but, as marshal (1849– 53), generally enforced the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Devens later served as a Union general during the Civil War and on the Massachusetts Supreme Court prior to becoming attorney general in the Hayes administration (1877–81). After 1881, he returned to the bench. NBDES, 26 October 1850; DAB, 5:260–62; James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North (New York, N.Y., 1979), 104–5. 4. The Boston Committee of Vigilance, founded in September 1846 in reaction to a local fugitive slave arrest, replaced the black Freedom Association. The committee offered a reward for information about captured fugitives, retained the services of black physician John S. Rock, and saw to it that “hunted fugitive slaves were snatched from kidnappers, sheltered, housed and fed, and forwarded with all speed and secrecy to Canada.” Led by abolitionists Charles List, Francis Jackson, Theodore Parker, and others, the organization eventually exceeded two hundred members, including prominent blacks Lewis Hayden, Joshua B. Smith, and Robert Morris. The committee apparently became moribund in the late 1840s but was reorganized after passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. It provided legal defense in the celebrated Shadrach, Thomas Sims, and Anthony Burns cases. Horton and Horton, Black Bostonians, 99–100, 104–12; Austin Bearse, Reminiscences of FugitiveSlave Law Days in Boston (Boston, Mass., 1880; reprint, New York, N.Y., 1969), 3–7, 17–28.

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33. William Wells Brown to Wendell Phillips 31 January 1851 Passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in the fall of 1850 prevented William Wells Brown’s return to America, but his lecturing, writing, and the sale of his narrative provided the income necessary to establish his family overseas. Eighteen months into his stay abroad, Brown began making plans for his daughters, Clarissa, fifteen, and Josephine, twelve, to join him. Brown believed that his daughters would receive a better education on the continent than in the United States. Brown’s 31 January 1851 letter to antislavery friend Wendell Phillips completed the arrangement of details for their passage. On 25 June, Clarissa and Josephine boarded the Royal British Mail Company steamer, America, bound for Liverpool. They were chaperoned by the Reverend Charles Spear, a Massachusetts delegate to the London Peace Congress, and by George Thompson, the noted British antislavery advocate, who was returning from a nine-month tour of America. Clarissa and Josephine were first refused passage because they were black, then were listed on the passenger manifest as servants. Farrison, William Wells Brown, 66, 73, 178, 182–93. Perth, [Scotland] Jan[uary] 31, 1851 W[endell] Phillips, Esq.1 My Dear friend, I wrote to you by the last steamer, and hope ere this you have got my letter. I stated that I should send another draft by this post for £10—for the expenses and passage of my girls,2 provided my Mr. Thompson could see to them on the voyage and my friends would see that they were on the same steamer. I send the enclosed draft for £12. This together with the £38 already sent will make £50. This I hope will be enough to pay up what outstanding debts that may be against me on account of my daughters, and to pay their passage. But should this not be sufficient, if you will advance the required sum, I will forward that sum to you by the return steamer. Should there be any over paying these demands you can send it to Mr. Thompson. Please write me a line. My best regards to my friends in and about the antislavery office3 and especially to our friend Mr. Thompson. The Crafts are well and go with me to Aberdeen next week. They wish to be remembered to all. Yours with truth, W. W. Brown

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Wendell Phillips Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Published by permission of the Houghton Library. 1. Wendell Phillips (1811–1884) was the son of a patrician Massachusetts family and was educated at Harvard College and Harvard Law School. Early in 1837, Phillips declared his commitment to the antislavery cause and to the moral suasionist principles of his friend William Lloyd Garrison. For the next twentyfour years, he made vigorous antislavery efforts, regularly speaking out against the institution, attending local, national, and international abolitionist gatherings, and denouncing the usurpations of the slave power. Phillips was a member of the Boston Vigilance Committee. In the mid-1850s, he supported aid to Kansas freestate settlers and advocated the disunion of the North and South as a way of ending slavery. After the Civil War, he opposed Garrison’s effort to disband the American Anti-Slavery Society and used the organization to support passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments. In the 1870s, Phillips devoted himself to temperance issues and to penal and labor reform. DAB, 14:546–47. 2. Brown’s daughters were named Clarissa (1836–?) and Josephine (1839–?). When Brown’s marriage to Elizabeth Schooner Brown ended in 1847, the two children remained in his custody, moved with him from Buffalo to Boston, and were enrolled in an integrated New Bedford, Massachusetts, school. Clarissa and Josephine Brown left Boston on 25 June 1851 to join their father in England. Massachusetts minister Charles Spear and British abolitionist George Thompson accompanied them on the trip. In mid-August, the girls enrolled in a seminary at Calais, France, where they remained for a year before entering the Home and Colonial School in London, a well-respected, teacher-training institute from which they graduated in December 1853. Both young women became school-mistresses— Clarissa at Berden in Essex County and Josephine at East Plumstead School, Plumstead, Woolwich. Shortly before her father returned to America in September 1854, Josephine resigned her position and returned to France to study. Josephine joined her father in America a year later and, for the next six months, accompanied him on various antislavery lecture tours in the New England area. She penned Biography of an American Bondman, by His Daughter (Boston, Mass., 1856) before returning to England in late February 1856. Clarissa married an Englishman in 1855. Farrison, William Wells Brown, 62, 91–94, 107–8, 127–28, 192–94, 197, 245, 270–75; Lib, 16 November 1855. 3. Brown probably refers to the Boston office of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.

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34. William P. Powell to Sydney Howard Gay 23 March 1851 William P. Powell and his antislavery colleagues recognized that newspapers were a chief weapon in the struggle for Anglo-American public opinion. Powell vigilantly watched newspapers and journals for proslavery or racist articles. Only a few months before traveling to Britain, Powell had engaged in a newspaper confrontation with Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune, who criticized Powell for having “the impudence to walk arm and arm through Cherry Street with a white man.” On 23 March 1851, Powell wrote a satirical letter from Liverpool to Sydney Howard Gay of the National Anti-Slavery Standard; Powell rebuked the New York Sunday Times and Noah’s Weekly Messenger for attacking him and for proposing that the condition of slaves compared favorably with the life of English factory workers. NASS, 22 August 1850; Foner, “William P. Powell,” 97–98. LIVERPOOL , [England] March 23d, 1851 FRIEND GAY : In The Sunday Dispatch of——date is an article headed “An Abolition delegate on his Travels,” and animadverting upon a letter of mine published in your paper.1 Now, in answer to this, I deny being “An Abolition Delegate,” or agent for any Institution of whatever name. I was in hopes when I embarked from New York for England that I should, at least, be permitted to travel through that country unmolested, unassailed by any of the public journals; but, as the saying is, that the man the dogs won’t bark at when walking the streets is not worth noticing, I certainly feel greatly obliged to that paper for being the first to growl. It is very fortunate that the DOG LAW is not now in force, or else this snarling, rabid cur, who is only hired to bite once a week (and that at small pay) would either have to be muzzled, or dealt with according to law, in such cases made and provided. But seriously speaking, it is high time for colored men to speak out, and not to be intimidated either by a licentious venal press, a Jesuitical, winebibbing priesthood, and the Northern cringing lickspittles, who all apologise, sanctify, make holy and constitutional when heated with wine and strong drink (witness the great Union celebration of Washington’s birth day, February 22d)2 the accursed Institution of human Slavery, “the chief corner-stone of American Republicanism.” There is one thing remarkable in all that is said by apologists in extenuation for the necessary existence of this divine Institution, that the more they stir up the disgust-

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ing evil, the more it becomes obnoxious; and instead of soothing the consciences of slaveholders by their frivolous excuses, they only make his condition worse than bad. The following extract from the article in question, is, in my humble opinion, a palpable hit at the slave-owning amalgamationists. It will never suit the market for foreign consumption, for the very reason that it is needed for home consumption; but hear him: “Show them (meaning the people of England) a Congo wench, with a face like a bull dog, and they will bow in homage to her charms, like a Hindostanee to his less disgusting idol.” Well, if the editor of The Sunday Dispatch means to compare the amiable, heroic Ellen Craft to a “Congo wench, with a face like a bull-dog,” he is certainly a very good judge of dog-flesh, “and we have a few more of the sort left.” I wonder if he ever had charge of a Southern bull-dog kennel, for he writes like one having authority, and knoweth whereof he affirms. The editor of The Dispatch has won the collar of distinction, and he ought to have it with a proper motto. Again, I should like to ask this “lilly-livered defender of SKIM-MILK DEMOCRACY ,” whether, in said letter (which he so meanly withheld from his patrons) I told an untruth. Does not Negro Slavery exist in the United States—”the vilest that ever saw the sun”? and is it not upheld, defended, and practised by both Church and State, priest and people—extended over new territory, and increased from 1776 till now from 300,000 to over 3,000,000 slaves? Does not this system of iniquity brand every free man, woman and child having a colored skin the hated object of its wrath? Has not Congress enacted a law, approved of by a degenerate son of New York (President Fillmore) subjecting every free colored person, and in many cases white persons, to its odious and hell-concocted provisions? And yet when the whole civilized world, together with Pagan China, gives us their sympathy and protection, and extends to the panting fugitive slave (just escaped from American Christianity) the right hand of human brotherhood, this cowardly recreant to the cause of Liberty and Truth (has he forgotten his sympathy and welcome to the Italian, Hungarian, and Irish fugitives from European despotism?) sneaks behind every miserable subterfuge in order to screen this guilty slaveholding, pseudo-Christian nation from the gaze of the whole world. Again, let me tell the Dispatch that it is not necessary for me to visit “the cotton factories of Manchester and Salford, the nail factories of Preston, and, above all, the coal pits in the north of England, etc., etc.” in order to make a just comparison between the two systems of free and slave labor, for they are, in effect, as far apart as the Poles. The operatives of these factories and mines are protected in their property and their persons by law; and the scale of prices for labor performed, especially for the younger branches, and the number of hours to be employed, are regulated by Parliamentary enactments; and they realize from THREE shillings sterling to TWO pounds per week for their labor; and,

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what is more, they are not chattels personal, subject to corporeal punishment, whips and chains, and separated, parents from their children, and husbands from their wives. But not so “with the sleek, oily appearance of the (Editor’s) comfortably clothed, well fed, fat and saucy southern slaves.” Are there any laws regulating the price of slave labor, forbidding corporeal punishment for non-performance of task? Are there laws punishing with death the master, overseer, or driver, for murder, rape and violence committed daily upon the defenceless slaves? And yet the American negro slaves are better off than the operatives in the cotton factories and coal mines of England? I am of the opinion, if the Editor of the Dispatch was to visit the above named places, and be introduced to the operatives as the author of the libelous article in question, that he would meet with as warm a reception as General Haynau met with from the hands of the workmen at Barclay & Perkins brewery.3 WILLIAM P. POWELL National Anti-Slavery Standard (New York, N.Y.), 8 May 1851. 1. Powell later wrote a note to the National Anti-Slavery Standard indicating that he had incorrectly criticized the New York Sunday Dispatch, meaning instead the Sunday Times and Noah’s Weekly Messenger. The Sunday Times was published in New York City from 1843 to 1892. Powell refers to “An Abolition Delegate on His Travels,” an unsigned editorial that appeared in the 16 February 1851 issue of the Sunday Times. Its author criticized Powell and Scottish antislavery clergymen for their denunciatory and ungentlemanly antislavery language. He characterized abolitionists, including Powell (whom he evidently thought was white), as extreme Negrophiles. He further urged “Brother Powell and the saintly vituperators of Glasgow” to visit British cotton and nail factories and coal mines, where he perceived that the white working class fared worse than the “comfortably clothed, well-fed, fat and saucy southern slaves.” NASS, 19 May 1851 [6:0931]; Gregory, American Newspapers, 479; STNWM, 16 February 1851. 2. On 22 February 1851, George Washington’s birthday, a large dinner, sponsored by the Union Safety Committee, was held in New York City for supporters of the Union and the Compromise of 1850. The meeting’s participants were read letters from President Millard Fillmore, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay praising their actions. Similar meetings were held in cities around the country. Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 4:53, 55; Lib, 7 March 1851. 3. Julius Jacob Freiherr von Haynau (1786–1853), an Austrian field marshal, earned the title “the Hyena of Brescia” for his ruthless suppression of the popular uprisings in Lombardy (1848–49). During an 1850 visit to London, Haynau toured the Barclay and Perkin’s brewery. There he was assaulted by an angry crowd of workers yelling “hyena.” The British government offered only tepid apologies to the Austrians for the incident. Priscilla Robertson, Revolutions of 1848, 2d ed. (New York, N.Y., 1960), 299, 304, 333, 360.

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35. William P. Powell to Mary Ann Duval 25 March 1851 After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, a number of fugitive slaves fled northern cities for Britain, fearing recapture and enslavement. Alexander Duval, who had escaped from slavery in Baltimore two years earlier and settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, left his free black wife, Mary Ann, and young daughter and sailed for Liverpool with the assistance of the Boston Vigilance Committee. He was armed with a letter of introduction from Samuel May, Jr., and was accompanied by Francis S. Anderson, another fugitive slave who had worked for six years as a waiter in Boston. Duval managed comfortably on the passage, but Anderson was continually ill. Upon their arrival in Liverpool on 25 or 26 March 1851, they were greeted by Liverpool resident William P. Powell. More than any other black abolitionist, Powell hosted newly arriving fugitive slaves. I, 31 May 1851; Lib, 13 June [6:0965], 5 September 1851; NASS, 1 May 1851; List of Fugitive Slaves Aided by the Vigilance Committee since the Passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill [1850–58], Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society Collection, MHi [6:0324]. LIVERPOOL , [England] March 25, 1851 Mrs. MARY ANN DUVAL 1 Madame: I am requested by your husband, Mr. ALEXANDER DUVAL,2 to inform you of his safe arrival in Liverpool this day, in the ship Parliament, and it was my pleasure to take him and his companion, Mr. FRANCIS ANDERSON,3 by the hand and welcome them to the land of Liberty. I hardly know how to express myself to you, knowing full well, that, the separation from your dear bosom companion is painful and heart-rending. American Slavery—American Christians—Ministers and Statesmen “have a law, and by that law” your husband must “die” a—Slave! Hence the separation and its necessity. I rejoice to say that British “Christians, Ministers and Statesmen,” have proclaimed a Higher Law,4 and have decided for all time to come, that, your husband (together with others of a like stamp) “the moment he sets his foot upon our native earth (British soil) that the ground on which he treads is holy; no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted on the altar of slavery; the first moment he touches our sacred soil (British of course) the altar and the God sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains, that burst from around

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him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation.” There is no hypocrisy in the heart of the British nation; no extradition for the crime of preferring freedom to slavery.5 I regret to say that such is the case with our own Sham-ChristianSlaveholding-Democratic-Republicanism-American Nation; who receive with hypocritical, Jesuitical magnanimity, the fugitive of the old world, with impunity, and no questions asked, as to the nature of their crimes only so they are Anglo-Saxons; yet they make it a penal offence to give even a piece of bread, or a drink of water, or a night’s lodging to the panting fugitive slave escaping from the house of bondage to the so-called Free States. My prayer to God, madam, is that, long may the British nation continue to give protection to all without regard to the color of their skin. Allow me, madam, to congratulate you and your dear children (if you have any) that your husband and their father is safe. Wait patiently and God will soon open the way for you all to meet together on the shores of old England. When I reflect that the day of our redemption must come— and by the help of God will come—and that our guilty nation must prepare for the conflict, to measure arms with Jehovah the God of the oppressed—it will not be a difficult question to answer, on which side the victory will be gained—for the Lord will triumph gloriously. Slavery must die! Man shall be free!! Then may we exclaim in the language of the poet: Oh! write the thought in living fire, And let it touch the magic wire, And let the proud oppressor see; That man throughout the world is free. Respectfully your obedient servant, WILLIAM P. POWELL Daily Evening Standard (New Bedford, Mass.), 15 April 1851. 1. Mary Ann Duval of New Bedford, Massachusetts, was the free black wife of fugitive slave Alexander Duval. They were married about 1850 and by 1851 had one child, a daughter. NASS, 1 May 1851. 2. Alexander Duval was born in Baltimore. He fled slavery in 1849 and settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he married and earned a living as a cooper. Early in 1851, Duval saw his former owner on a New Bedford street and decided to seek safety in England. Duval was assisted by the Boston Vigilance Committee (Samuel May, Jr., also gave him a testimonial letter) and, with fellow fugitive Francis Anderson, sailed to Liverpool. Both fugitives participated in antislavery meetings in the area before traveling to London in mid-April. Unlike his partner, Duval relished the opportunity to address British audiences about slavery. They attended one of London’s most significant antislavery affairs, a combined West Indian Emancipation Day and George Thompson–welcome-home meeting, held at the Hall of Commerce on 1 August 1851. The gathering was

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chaired by William Wells Brown and addressed by George Thompson and other leading British antislavery figures. In the midst of these proceedings, Duval rose and read the “Appeal to the People of Britain and the World,” an eloquent statement that outlined the nature of American slavery and asked for British assistance in destroying it. Duval’s reading was a brilliant moment in an otherwise problemfilled exile. Except for a brief employment as a gardener, he was unable to find a job during his first six months abroad and had to beg alms on the streets of London. Peter Kruse to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, 23 July 1853, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; I, 17, 31 May 1851; NASS, 1 May 1851; Lib, 13 June, 25 July, 5 September 1851; ASB, 27 September 1851; List of the Fugitive Slaves Aided by the Vigilance Committee, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society Collection, MHi [6:0323]. 3. Francis Anderson (1827–?) was born a slave in Baltimore and worked as a house servant. In 1846 he fled to freedom and settled in Boston, where he worked as a waiter and assisted other fugitives. In early 1851, fearing that he would be returned to slavery, Anderson and fellow fugitive Alexander Duval journeyed to Britain, arriving in Liverpool on 25 or 26 March. Anderson (who was given a letter of recommendation by William Lloyd Garrison) and Duval were welcomed by William P. Powell and the Reverend Francis Bishop. They attended some antislavery meetings in the Liverpool area before traveling to London in mid-April. Once in London, Anderson sought employment as a waiter and became an active member of the city’s burgeoning fugitive slave population, which was led by William Wells Brown and William and Ellen Craft. Anderson continued his anti-slavery activities throughout the spring and summer and toured on the antislavery lecture circuit with George Thompson (1852–53) before ill health forced him to abandon those efforts. From the end of 1853 to the summer of 1856, Anderson was enrolled as a student at the Voluntary School Establishment, a teacher-training institute in London. He was sponsored by the Ladies Society to Aid Fugitive Slaves, an organization founded in 1853. He later resettled in Canada and was employed by the Refugee Home Society as a teacher in Maidstone Township, Canada West. Minutes of the Ladies Society to Aid Fugitive Slaves, 1 February 1854, Peter Kruse to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, 23 July 1853, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; Report of the Ladies Society to Aid Fugitives from Slavery (London, 1855); I, 17, 31 May 1851; NASS, 1 May 1851; Lib, 13 June, 25 July, 5 September 1851; ASB, 27 September 1851; List of Fugitive Slaves Aided by the Vigilance Committee, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society Collection, MHi [6: 0323]; PFW, 18, 25 April 1857. 4. Abolitionists seized upon the doctrine of higher law as their most effective legal argument against the institution of slavery and the government apparatus that supported it, including the federal Constitution. According to abolitionist proponents, a natural law endowed men with certain natural or inalienable rights, which the laws of men could neither originate nor annul. Slavery contradicted those rights by rendering men as property and thus should be resisted. The doctrine had particular applicability to legislation such as the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. David B. Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1975), 268–96, 317–34, 401–3, 504–21; Dumond, Antislavery, 81–82, 231–33. 5. From the time of the first formal American request for the extradition of a

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fugitive slave from Canada (1829), the official Canadian response was guided by a single legal premise: a fugitive could be returned only for an offense that would have made him liable to arrest in Canada. Because slavery was not legal in Canada, “self theft” was not an offense for which a former slave could be extradited. Over the next three decades, this guiding principle was formalized by Canadian legislation and legal decisions and by Article X of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842) between Britain and the United States. Winks, Blacks in Canada, 168–74.

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36. Speech by John Brown Delivered at the Guildhall, Plymouth, England 9 April 1851 John Brown typified the large number of fugitive slaves who fled to Britain for sanctuary during the early 1850s and were drawn into an active role in the antislavery movement. Brown arrived in Liverpool on 10 August 1850 and proceeded to Redruth in Cornwall, where he hoped to locate Joseph Teague, leader of a party of Cornish miners for whom he had worked in upper Michigan. Brown found that Teague had died but obtained work and testimonials from Teague’s relatives and acquaintances there. After working for several months in Redruth and Bristol, Brown began lecturing, telling his slave story at Cornwall, St. Austell, Bodmin, and Liskeard, before proceeding eastward to Plymouth. On 9 April 1851, Brown spoke to a crowded meeting in Plymouth’s Guildhall. The meeting was chaired by Thomas Luscombe, who read a number of testimonials to Brown’s character. At the end of Brown’s address, Luscombe informed the gathering that Brown was willing to entertain questions, but none were asked. A collection was taken up for Brown before the meeting adjourned. John Brown, Slave Life in Georgia: A Narrative of the Life, Suffering, and Escape of John Brown, Fugitive Slave, ed. F. N. Boney (Savannah, Ga., 1972), 141–42, 196–97; PDWJ, 17 April 1851. JOHN BROWN,1 the black man, on standing forward was greeted with an encouraging cheer from the well packed audience. In language of the rudest but most impressive character, and with a manner that betokened the utmost earnestness and sincerity, he gave a full account of the most prominent among the sufferings and cruelties he had endured at the hand of his white relations in the new world. He was born in the state of “Virginny,” and, until he had reached the age of ten years, was reared for market. The name of his old “missus” was Ann Hall,2 and by her he was willed to James Davis,3 who put him to work, by the side of his mother and three more of the children, who were willed together with him. His employment with James Davis was to grub up bushes in the day time, and to burn them in the night, while his mother was made to spin cotton during the day, and, for the other portion of the four and twenty hours, partially to assist her son in his labours, and then to follow up her own previous employment. One night, said the poor fellow, his mother sat before a fire, spinning, with a small child in her arms. Overcome with fatigue and misery she fell off into a doze, the infant rolled from her lap into the grate and was severely burnt. Although in a state where they

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6. John Brown, the fugitive slave From John Brown, Slave Life in Georgia (London, 1855)

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reared people for market, this incident, said John Brown, hurt his feeling. Shortly afterwards he was sold to one Starlingfinny4 for 320 dollars, being then scarcely more than ten years of age. This Starlingfinny had in the market a long double line of slaves hand-cuffed together like felons, with a chain running between them to keep them steady and regular. This fine lot of merchandise consisted of men, women, and children, who had lost all title and respect because their skin was dark. Among them was one female, who was sold because she did not increase her family after a second marriage. By Starlingfinny he (John Brown) and his fellow slaves were driven about like cattle, from market to market, to be sold, or to accept fresh additions to their number. Among the lot he (J. B.) was sold to a creature called Thomas Stevens,5 who paid 350 dollars for the bargain. The new master was a “stiller,” and he put the new slave under the “still” to work. One day he sent Brown upon some trifling errand, telling him to look sharp. “I run all de way,” said the narrator, “but when I com back my master wanted to know why I not go quicker. I told him I run. But dat wouldn’t do for him; so he took me and beat me widout mercy, until a gemmen came aloonge and took off his ‘tention.” With this slavedriving governor poor Brown had a miserable time of it. His habits, if the regular performance of cruel tasks can be so called, were to rise in the morning at five o’clock, to breakfast, which consisted of Indian corn baked in the ashes with sometimes the luxurious addition of butter milk; at twelve o’clock, after seven hours’ hard labour; to work again until five upon the strength of the Indian corn, when a supper, composed of materials similar to the first meal, was served out. After supper work was the order of the evening, and frequently of the night too. A fellow worker, a melancholy man, much attracted the attention of John, who soon became intimate with, and questioned him narrowly. He learnt the pitiable history of the wretched fellow. He was a black, who had been reared in England, where his wife and family ties were still repining his loss.6 As a sailor he went out to Savannah in “Georgy,” but he did not come back again. He was allowed to go on shore, was forced up the country, and very quickly laid hold of by a slave driver, by whom he was sold to John’s master. In conversation with John he used to tell him of the “rules and regulations” in England; of how the English people honoured a black man, if he properly conducted himself, “as much as if he were white as snow.” John then made up his mind to run to England some day; he plainly saw that, though a man in stature, there was no chance for his becoming a man in feeling, so long as he remained in the States. He knew he was not a man even now, for he was desperately ignorant; but he would learn if they would teach him—he would strive hard to be a man in their sight, and to be of consequence to himself and his fellow creatures. When he was 17 years of age he thought he was old enough to run,7 and he made a start; but he was not cunning enough

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then, and so was quickly caught again. Referring, then, to one marked incident in his life, John made a reflection, from which politicians may gather and work out an idea. We will give the thought in John’s own words, crude as his language may be, for it is sufficiently striking to force its way through the most indistinct expression. “One master,” he said, “with two or three hundred negroes, is quite safe in his own place, and may do what he please, for de slaves must not say a word. De foreign people—de English—tink dat slavery is noting to do wid England, but dare is a great mistake. Suppose Englishman was to go to a slave state, and quarrel wid de slave owner; de slave owner may kill him or order his slaves to kill him, and no punishment eber reach him at all, for de negroes can’t testify against dair master, and must do whatever he bid to do. Dare are some rogues in de negroes, but dey are not such big rogues as de white men; for dey only make little strikes for what dey want to satisfy deir hunger, but de white man, he make one big strike all at once, and do more at dat time dan a negro do all his life. He only make little strike now and den for what he can eat.” John then related how he was made to assist in the capture of a white man who had stolen something from a planter; how he caught the unfortunate victim of Yankee spleen, and held him while the half civilized barbarian, the slave holder, shot at and killed him in John’s arms. This he mentioned by way of exemplification of the law that exists among the slave holders. He (John) knew of the murder—he had, in fact, been an unwilling party to it, and yet by the “rules” that guide in those parts, he was not allowed to break the confidence forced upon him, as a black slave of a white murderer.8 This was the sort of trouble he had to endure for days in and days out. He then related, in pathetic terms, how it happened that he became conscious of the possession of a soul. He had ever been treated as a creature without a soul. It had been decided, said he, that negroes were not endowed with a soul, and that it was not a cruel thing, therefore, to treat them with scorn, indifference, or severity; to make the most of their bodies, to work them right out, rather than attempt further to solve the great problem as to whether they really were members of the human family or not. But John Brown, amidst all his difficulties, was permitted to know that he was a being above the creatures of the earth, and that he was amenable to a higher law than any that man could enact. John’s old master became struck with the death palsy; “the whole of one side of him died right off ”; he lost the use of his tongue, but John understood him perfectly, knew his very wink or nod, and had in consequence to wait upon him. His wife was not anxious that he should live, quoth John, because “she wanted to be missus of all his property, and so his son9 wanted to be master.” The old man, lying on his death bed, seemed to have visions of all his deeds of cruelty towards the slaves. He shook with fear, and would have his gun by his side, in dread that the negroes would slay him in

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revenge. He trembled all day, and could not bear to be spoken to of the slaves. He was not easy in his mind, as the blacks were, and the event impressed the mind of John Brown with the firm belief that a superior being reigned in the hearts of men, and guided their actions for good, while an evil spirit was ever at work, studying his utmost to counteract the influence, for bad and wicked ends. But amidst all his sufferings and death struggles, John’s master never forgot to be cruel. He motioned Brown to fetch him something to eat. Brown misunderstood the indication, and proceeded to wrap up his old governor’s feet. Enraged and burning with hate, the wretched old fellow caught the fingers of his slave against the bed post, and tried to crush them with his foot and with his last mortal strain, for, said John, “sure enough he went off then.” After the old man’s death, poor Brown and his fellows suffered worse than ever at the merciless hands of the new master, the deceased’s son, who took a delight in inventing all sorts of modes by which to ill treat and punish the negroes. Worn out with toil and trouble, John Brown started off one day on the road to England.10 He came to a wide path, after much travelling and endurance, and that he thought must be the right road to England, because it was so broad. He walked and ran, and fasted for days and days together, until at length he met a white settler from the States, who, under the garb of friendship, betrayed and would have given him up; but he contrived to give his captor the slip, and had not been back there since. He strived to prosecute his journey, but could not manage it then, and so after having been nearly re-taken several times, he made bold to retrace his steps, and went with a long tale back to master again. The governor appeared to believe the account John had given of his time, and did not visit the poor fellow with any immediate punishment. But after a delay of six weeks he made his appearance one morning with several men, who forthwith, in obedience to orders, knocked John down with a fierce blow, and carried him off to the whipping post. Here the master indulged his abominable propensity, and whipped the slave till the blood rolled down his back in clots. He continually whipped him; never did he miss an opportunity of punishing him; the wretched man was the marked victim of an insatiable revenge. On one occasion John was desired to catch two little slaves who were to receive punishment. He made a pretence to run after them, but allowed them to escape, and immediately became the object of his master’s bad spirit. He jumped upon John’s back, called aloud for “Sal, Sal,” to bring him his gun. Poor John felt desperate, gave one terrible shake, shook the monster from his back and ran away. The cowardly ruffian fell on his face, and was severely injured. John reckoned himself dead by the law, and went out with the intention of drowning himself; his heart failed him however, and he returned to the reception of that certain punishment in preparation for him. He was fastened to a swing, and whipped backwards and forwards

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until his tormentors were tired. After that he was made to wear a sort of helmet, which was fixed on his head in such a way that he could not relieve himself from it. It was made of iron. Branching out from the cap part were three long horns, at each extremity of which was a bell that “tinkled” wherever he went. This he wore for some time. Another instance of the utter recklessness of this fellow, was one day evinced towards a poor negro who was suffering and moaning, and praying to God for deliverance. “What,” said the master, “do you think God can do for you?” “He could save me,” said the slave. “Can he really,” responded the governor; “now I will tie you to that tree and whip you, and you pray to the Almighty, and if he don’t help you, we shall see who is the best man then, shan’t we?” And he tied the slave to the tree, and beat him while he prayed, but God did not release him. “Now,” said he, “you see you have only one master, and that’s me.” Shortly afterwards this cruel planter was ill, and he implored the slaves to wash his hands, and thought there was blood on his whip, and died cursing himself for all his wicked deeds. Then the slaves thought there must indeed be an Almighty, and so they continued to pray. John Brown very soon made another start to England.11 He went first to Alabama, suffering as severely as he had ever done, and continually escaping detection by hair breadths. He proceeded along the Ohio River on a selfmade raft. On arriving at Kentucky, he went to the captain of the steam boat Neptune, and pretended that he had missed his master by accident, and wanted to be taken on to New Orleans to meet him. The captain believed the story, and allowed John Brown to remain on board. At New Orleans he managed to steal away from the Neptune unobserved, but found to his sorrow that he was still in a slave country. He scarcely knew what to do, and asked advice of a coloured man whom he met in the street. He was told that he would be taken to the lock up at night, and whipped every day until he confessed who his master was, when he would be sent back or fetched away. He studied then what he should do, and at length hit upon a plan. He observed a Yankee coming down the road, and as he looked like a villain he went up to him, as his only remaining chance, and told the fellow that, if he pleased he might sell him (John) and put the money in his own pocket. This he thought far preferable to being captured by his old master. The man ultimately agreed, and disposed of John to a trader named Freeman for 500 dollars; he would not give more because there was no bill of sale that could be produced. By Freeman, John was sold for 1,200, to one Jepsey James in the Mississippi state. From James he ran away to St. Louis, in the Missouri, proceeded to Illinois, and thence to Blue River, where the Friends resided.12 By them he was treated with the utmost kindness. The blessings he received at their hands were such that at times he could not believe he was himself, and would look up to the roof of a luxuriant bed room, and think he must be dreaming. After remaining

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some time with the Friends he went to Michigan, his aim being to get among the English. By accident he heard that a body of Cornish miners was proceeding up Lake Superior for the purpose of testing some mines in that district. By dint of much perseverance and trouble, John managed to join them, under Capt. Teague,13 who liked him very well indeed. Captain Teague, when he left, offered to bring John to England with him, but honest John thought he would rather come under his own hopes. He started in the August before last, and after long travelling, safely landed at Liverpool. He made haste to Redruth, but found his old master, Captain Teague, had long since died, and so his (John Brown’s) object now was to proceed to Canada, where there was plenty of land, and many means by which he could assist himself and aid his brothers in bondage. He then made an earnest appeal on behalf of his fellow creatures, and professed his need of assistance to accomplish the grand object in his view, namely his own settlement in Upper Canada as a diligent and determined worker in the cause of slave emancipation. Plymouth and Devonport Weekly Journal (Plymouth, England), 17 April 1851. 1. John Brown (ca. 1815–?) was born on a plantation in Southampton County, Virginia, to slave parents owned by different masters. Brown had several masters before becoming the slave of Thomas Stevens, a Milledgeville, Georgia, planter who, in 1834, transferred Brown to his son Thomas J. Stevens of Decatur, Georgia. Father and son treated Brown harshly. The elder Stevens forced him to be the subject of painful medical experiments conducted by Dr. Thomas Hamilton; in one, the doctor blistered Brown’s skin to examine the depth of black pigmentation. Shortly after these experiments, Brown made an unsuccessful escape attempt. During 1847, in the wake of severe punishment by Thomas J. Stevens, Brown successfully fled slavery and traveled to New Orleans, where he found a slave trader and had himself “sold” to a Mississippi planter in order to cover his escape trail. Brown remained with his new owner for three months before leaving for St. Louis and freedom. He obtained a forged pass in Illinois, then linked up with an underground railroad operation near Indianapolis. He settled in Michigan. Within a year, he was employed by a company of Cornish miners laboring in Lake Superior copper fields. Early in 1850, Brown left the miners and moved to Dawn, Canada West, where he briefly worked at the Dawn Institute sawmill before journeying to Boston. In mid-summer 1850, Brown booked passage for England, arriving in Liverpool during August. Brown first settled in Bristol and worked as a carpenter, but he soon found that “there is prejudice against colour in England” and moved on to Redruth, seeking employment with the Cornish miners, who previously had hired him in Michigan. Unable to find work, Brown undertook a light schedule of antislavery lectures to earn a living. In the spring of 1851, Brown moved to London, where he came to the attention of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and was encouraged to continue speaking. Brown remained in England and promised a free labor cotton experiment in Africa (Brown also mentioned Australia, the West Indies, and India as possible sites for the experiment) that would

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be financed by the British and run by selected Canadian fugitives. In 1854 Brown completed his narrative, Slave Life in Georgia, with the assistance of Louis Alexis Chamerovzow; it sold well enough to require a second edition but not well enough to “take him to Liberia.” Brown stayed on the lecture circuit, giving the “extraordinary details” of slavery at least until the beginning of 1857. Brown, Slave Life in Georgia; Thomas Clegg to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, 12 November 1853, Eliza Wigham to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, 16 November 1853, Charles Horsnail to Friends of the African Race, 29 September 1854, L. E. Sturge to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, 13 June 1856, John Brown, Narrative Testimony Given to London Notary Public Alexander Ridgway, 29 May 1854, British Empire MSS, UkOxURh; SP, 21 October 1853; ASRL, 1 December 1856, 1 January 1857. 2. The report of John Brown’s speech identifies Brown’s first owner as Ann Hall. But in a notarized statement (1854) and in his narrative, Brown names Betty Moore as his first owner and does not mention an Ann Hall. It is possible that the reporter who covered Brown’s speech made a mistake in transcription, but it is also possible that Brown tried to conceal Betty Moore’s identity during the first months of his antislavery speaking engagements. Elizabeth Moore was the widow of James Moore, who died in 1778. When his slaves were divided among family members, Brown and his mother were given to James Davis, the husband of the Moore’s second oldest daughter, Sarah or Sally. Elizabeth Moore kept Brown’s younger brother and sister, Silas and Lucy. Elizabeth Moore died in 1820. Brown, Slave Life in Georgia, 5–11; John Brown, Manuscript Narrative, 29 May 1854, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; PDWJ, 17 April 1851. 3. James Davis was a slave-owning farmer from Northampton County, North Carolina, who married Sarah or Sally Moore, the second oldest daughter of James and Elizabeth Moore, in December 1796. Brown, Slave Life in Georgia, 5–15. 4. In his narrative, Slave Life in Georgia (1855), John Brown writes of being purchased at age ten by a “negro speculator” (his third master) named Starling Finney. Brown probably refers to Sterling Finney, a prosperous north Georgia planter who served one term in the state legislature and who owned more than sixty slaves at his death in 1831. Brown, Slave Life in Georgia, 15. 5. Thomas Stevens purchased John Brown from the slave speculator Sterling Finney for $350 in the early 1820s. Stevens owned land in Baldwin and DeKalb counties, Georgia. When Thomas Stevens died in 1834, he willed John Brown to his son Thomas J. Stevens. Brown, Slave Life in Georgia, 21, 46. 6. Brown refers to John Glasgow. According to Brown, Glasgow was born to free black parents about 1805 in the Demerara district of British Guiana (now Guyana), worked on ships involved in the West Indian and transatlantic trade, and married an Englishwoman from rural Lancashire. He was arrested in 1830 in Savannah, Georgia, under the state’s black seamen’s acts and sold as a field hand to Thomas Stevens of Baldwin County, Georgia. Brown’s public discussion of Glasgow made his case a cause célèbre among British abolitionists in 1853. Brown, Slave Life in Georgia, 29–34, 38; ASA, November 1853. 7. In Slave Life in Georgia, Brown describes the many escape attempts he made while the slave of both Thomas Stevens and his son Thomas J. Stevens; it is not possible to determine which was made when Brown was age seventeen.

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8. Brown probably refers to the murder of John Morgan. In his narrative, Brown identifies Morgan as a “robust man from Scotland” who settled on land next to the plantation owned by Thomas Stevens. A successful farmer, Morgan paid wages instead of using slave labor. Morgan’s free-labor convictions angered local slaveholders, and they eventually forced Morgan out of the area by purchasing his land for twice its value. When the slave owners reneged on their promissory notes, Morgan took them to court but bankrupted himself with the unsuccessful litigation. Seeking to feed his family, Morgan asked a local slave to get him some corn. Brown’s owner, Stevens, found out about the deal and set a trap for Morgan at the spot where the slave was to give Morgan the corn. Stevens forced Brown to jump Morgan as he approached the site, then shot Morgan to death as he and Brown wrestled. Morgan’s wife tried to bring criminal action against Stevens but was told that Brown could not testify against his owner. Mrs. Morgan and her two children were left destitute. Brown, Slave Life in Georgia, 48–53. 9. Brown refers to his master’s son Thomas J. Stevens. 10. Brown’s comment about the “road to England” refers to the day in 1847 when he escaped the Georgia plantation of Thomas J. Stevens. For Brown, freedom and England were synonymous. They had become so when Brown met John Glasgow, a former British seaman, who was also a slave on the Stevens plantation. Brown, Slave Life in Georgia, 34, 61, 139–41. 11. John Brown made his third and final escape attempt in 1847 and traveled to New Orleans. There, in order to throw his master, Thomas J. Stevens, off the track, he turned himself over to a slave trader and was “sold” to Theodorick J. James. James, born in South Carolina in 1787, was, by the time he purchased Brown, a well-to-do cotton planter with ninety-five slaves and land in Washington County, Mississippi. Brown, Slave Life in Georgia, 106, 108. 12. After leaving Vandalia, Illinois, John Brown lived for a few weeks in a free black community near Terre Haute, Indiana, then set off for Indianapolis. On his way, Brown discovered that handbills had been circulated describing him as a fugitive slave. He was advised by a local black man to seek safety with a Quaker family near the town of Carthage, Indiana, on the Blue River. Brown stayed with the Quakers for a week before connecting with yet another Quaker-run station on the underground railroad. Brown was then taken to Marshall, Michigan, and he lived there for a year before moving to Detroit. Brown, Slave Life in Georgia, 126– 38. 13. The reference is to Captain Joseph Teague, a native of Cornwall who was the leader of a party of Cornish miners exploring the copper region on Lake Superior. Teague hired Brown as a miner’s carpenter in 1847, a position Brown held for eighteen months. Brown, Slave Life in Georgia, 139–40.

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37. Francis S. Anderson to William Lloyd Garrison 21 April 1851 The Anglo-American antislavery network operated to certify and connect fugitives fleeing abroad. Fugitive slaves Francis S. Anderson and Alexander Duval received letters of introduction from two prominent American antislavery figures to British acquaintances. Anderson found a letter waiting for him in Liverpool that had been forwarded by William Lloyd Garrison, which commended the fugitive to “the sympathy and kind consideration of the philanthropic and Christian people of England.” Duval carried a letter from Samuel May, Jr., to Rev. Francis Bishop of Liverpool; it outlined Duval’s personal history. Bishop arranged for food and lodging for the fugitives in Liverpool and directed a London friend to meet and assist Duval and Anderson upon their arrival in London. As a result, two meetings were scheduled in London to allow the fugitives to tell their stories and to raise funds. Anderson wrote Garrison one week after arriving in London to thank him and to inform him of the assistance that the letters had generated for Duval and himself. NASS, 1 May 1851; I, 17, 31 May 1851. LONDON , [England] April 21, 1851 MY DEAR FRIEND MR . GARRISON : I hardly know how to begin a letter to you, being as I am such a poor scholar; but I hope you will excuse my poor penmanship. I arrived safe in Liverpool on the 26th of last month, and I thank God for his kind mercy to me whilst crossing the sea; for, indeed, I had a very rough time of it. I was sick all the voyage over. I would have given any thing to have been at my journey’s end before I was half way; but, withal, I thank God that I am a free man. I consider myself freer than I ever was before. I can call this, with safety, the land of the free and the brave. Your kind letter arrived a fortnight ahead of us. I have not language to express my thanks to you; for your letter has carried me far in London and Liverpool; and, likewise, that from Capt. Reese to the Rev. Mr. Burnet.1 Mr. B. received me very kindly indeed. He took me to two noblemen’s houses, to see if he could not get me a situation as waiter, and thinks he shall succeed in it; and he took me to the exhibition.2 I cannot give you any idea of the things I saw there: they were so many in number, I cannot remember all. And I have seen Buckingham Palace, but have not yet seen her Majesty. She was in town when I went to the Duke of Wellington’s house,3 with a letter for a gentleman there. I got to London on the 13th of April, and was very kindly received at

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the depot by one of the Rev. Francis Bishop’s4 friends, of Liverpool. They took us to his house, and got us lodgings for that night; and the next day he took us to the house of a friend of his, and we were kindly congratulated by them also. The Bishop of London5 could not have been kinder to his own brother than to us. We had some very fine meetings while we were in Liverpool. My friend that is with me gave a lecture. I could not put confidence in myself to speak in a public meeting. I expect to speak in London tonight, (if God spares me)—but, O! I wish I had words to speak my gratitude to you for your kind letters. But there is One who can reward you better than I can. I have not forgotten to praise his holy name. No—blessed be God, I will praise him while I have breath. Although the slaveholders would not let me have a place in America to rest the soles of my feet, glory to God! I expect one day to have a place of rest, both for soul and body. I know, when I get there, the slaveholders cannot chase me—I shall be free as any white man. Is it not a blessed thing, that the poor black men have got a resting-place some where? I can tell you, my dear friend Mr. Garrison, if we should never meet in the flesh again, I expect to meet you, by the grace of God, in bright glory. Tell the slaveholders to go on, for God is about to take the poor negroes home to rest. Please to tell all the poor runaways to serve the true and living God, for he is able to deliver them safe through all trials and hard crosses. Please remember me to all my friends in Boston; the blessing of God on them is the prayer of their humble servant. Please to remember me to Captain Reese. I thank him kindly for his letter. Mr. Burnet is well, and wishes to be remembered to him. Please to tell Captain Reese that Mr. Jones has left. Your most obedient servant, FRANCIS S. ANDERSON P.S. Mr. Duval desires his respects to Mr. May,6 and feels very thankful to him for a kind letter which he received from him, containing letters of introduction, and says he had a very pleasant passage over, not having had a day’s sickness; and he desires that if any friends ask after him, that you will be so kind as to give his love to them, and tell them that he is quite as comfortable as can be expected under the circumstances in which, through divine providence, he is placed. And may the Lord bless the labors of the abolitionists! Liberator (Boston, Mass.), 13 June 1851. 1. John Burnet (1789–1862), a Congregational clergyman and leading English opponent of state-supported churches, held pastorates in Cork, Ireland, and, after 1830, in the London suburb of Camberwell. Burnet was a prominent figure in the Bible Society and the Congregational Union of England and Wales and authored several religious works. An active abolitionist, he represented the Congregational Union at the 1840 and 1843 gatherings of the World’s Anti-Slavery

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Convention in London and opposed the Evangelical Alliance (1846). MEB, 1:485– 86; Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 3:412, 416; Johnson, Proceedings of General Anti-Slavery Convention (1843), 342. 2. The Great Exhibition of 1851 was held in Paxton’s Crystal Palace in London’s Hyde Park. The seven thousand British exhibitors and an equal number from abroad demonstrated Britain’s material prosperity, showed how science could enhance national prestige, and served as a model for subsequent international exhibitions. DMH, 144. 3. Arthur Wellesley, the duke of Wellington (1769–1852), was the British army commander who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1814. Apsley House, his London residence, was located at Hyde Park Corner, Piccadilly. DNB, 20:1081–1121; Wheatley, London Past and Present, 1:56–57. 4. Francis Bishop (1813–1869) was a Unitarian clergyman and leading West Country Garrisonian abolitionist. Bishop served most of his adult life in West Country parishes, particularly Liverpool, where he also did mission work in the urban slums. He edited the Christian Investigator and authored several theological treatises. MEB, 1:290; Rice, Scots Abolitionists, 166. 5. Charles James Blomfield (1786–1857) was born at Bury St. Edmunds and educated for the Anglican clergy at Trinity College, Cambridge. Ordained in 1810, Blomfield became bishop of London in 1828—a position he retained until one year before his death. While in London, Blomfield also sat in the House of Lords. DNB, 2:691–92. 6. Samuel May, Jr. (1810–1899), was born in Boston and was educated at Harvard College. After studying theology with his abolitionist-minded cousin (Rev. Samuel J. May), he attended the Harvard Divinity School, graduating in 1833. The following year he was installed as minister of the Second Congregational Church, Leicester, Massachusetts, and became a leading local reformer and key figure in organizing the South Division Anti-Slavery Society of Worcester County. Throughout his life, May was a friend of William Lloyd Garrison and a vigorous supporter of Garrisonian antislavery doctrine. From 1847 to 1865, he served as general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and, in this capacity, arranged antislavery meetings throughout New England, secured speakers, made travel arrangements, and often lectured. These activities made him an essential figure in the antislavery movement. In 1875 May was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. NCAB, 29:244.

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38. Speech by William Craft Delivered at the Plymouth Theatre, Plymouth, England 30 April 1851 William Wells Brown and William Craft continued the lecture tour they began four months earlier in Newcastle-upon-Tyne by addressing a crowded assembly at the Plymouth Theatre on 30 April 1851. They were joined by Ellen Craft, now recovered from the illness that initially prevented her participation in the tour. The gathering, held three weeks after Plymouth citizens heard from fugitive slave John Brown, was chaired by Mayor David Derry, who introduced Brown and the Crafts and discussed the implication of the Fugitive Slave Law for their safety. After a welcome resolution was adopted, Brown addressed the audience on slavery and the Fugitive Slave Law, hinting at a new acceptance of violent means to end slavery. William Craft later stepped forward and spoke. He evidenced his growing sophistication as an antislavery speaker by relying more on an analytical critique of slavery than on a narrative of personal experiences. Craft matured into a skilled professional anti-slavery lecturer as a result of his experiences in Britain. PT, 3 May 1851. He said he felt himself that evening placed in a very curious position indeed, when he looked back and saw that it was only two years since his wife and himself were slaves in the state of Georgia; held in bondage by the laws of that country, and recognized by the constitution of the United States as nothing more than mere chattels—like the beasts of the field, subject to be bought and sold, and separated from each other at any time, and at the mere will of their master; and then when he looked at their position at the present time, and found they were as free as the freest, and that they were in the midst of friends, amongst whom there was not one who would think of returning them to the bondage they had fled from, when he thought of this great change in their position, the meeting would not wonder that he should feel strange and embarrassed. It was only two years since they had escaped from slavery. They did not know, when in bondage, how to read or write, and it would not be expected that he should know properly how to address that large, intelligent, and educated audience. But when he reflected upon what his relations, and his friends and fellow-men were still suffering in the United States, he could not help saying a few words on their behalf, even though those words should be ungrammatical. (Cheers.) He knew it had been said in this country that the slaves in America were happy—that he denied. He was in slavery for four-and-twenty years, during which time he came in contact with hundreds and thousands of slaves, and he never

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met one that was contented and happy. God forbid that there should exist any in man’s form so base, or low, so wretched, & degraded as to be content to drag out a miserable life in bondage for any tyrant on the face of the earth. (Cheers.) There was, it was true, a difference in the condition of the slaves; there was a difference between slaves in the country and slaves in the cities, and some were better fed and better clothed than others, and were not ill-used and flogged so much—but they were slaves still. (Hear.) God created man for higher purposes than the mere regard of what he should eat and drink. He has a higher destiny and should have nobler aspirations. If the masters in the slave states wished to treat their slaves well, the laws would not admit of their doing so. No slave’s word was allowed to be taken against a white man.1 A slave might be walking in the state, and any white ruffian might attack him, and strike him, and knock his eye out, or otherwise maim him, and if no white man witnessed the outrage he had no redress. He or she might go and tell his or her master, who, perhaps, might question the offender, and ask him if he struck his slave, or knocked his eye out? His reply might be, “Yes, because he insulted my wife and children”; and the master, not believing him, might sue him for damages. If no one saw it but the slave, his oath would not be taken against a white man, and his master could not succeed (hear); and even if he did recover, he got damages just as he would for an injury as to his horse or his ass, put the money into his pocket, and the poor slave had to go off with his wounds and bruises. The laws of the slave states prohibited any one from teaching a slave to read. He knew that there were some good masters who did try to instruct their slaves, who chose to take the risk and did so; but by so doing they offended against the law, exposed themselves to be frowned down by society, and lessened the value of their slaves. Yes, strange as it might seem, if a slave was known to read, he would not yield so much money when sold as if he were in ignorance. Society in the slave states frowned down the man who dared to instruct his slaves, because it felt that he was putting a weapon into the slave’s hand which, by and by, would produce its effects, and which would innoculate with the love of liberty all whom he came in contact with. (Cheers.) The man, continued Mr. Craft, with whom I was living when a boy, was not one of the worst of slaveholders, but yet he sold my father and my mother at different times and to different persons. The reason he gave for selling them was that they were getting old, and he said he was resolved to sell off his old slaves and buy young ones, or else by and by the old ones would become useless, and he would find them burdensome. He kept me and the younger slaves, but by and by he wanted money, and he sold my brother and sister,2 and put me out to learn the trade of a cabinet-maker. While he was doing this he mortgaged me and a sister to a bank, in order to raise money to buy cotton. Soon after he failed, and then he brought me and my sister to the auction-

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stand and sold us, in order to repay the bank again. He sold my sister first, and while I was standing upon the auction-block I saw a man putting her into a little cart, in order to drive her away, and so I sent a man and asked him if he would wait a few minutes, so as to allow me to see my sister, and speak to her before she went; but he said he had a long way to go, and he could not find time to wait, or he should not get home by dark. Then I asked the auctioneer if he would wait a few minutes, so that I might speak to my sister and bid her a good-bye; but he said he could not delay the sale. The man in the cart then drove off my sister, and as she went I could see, as she looked round, the tears running down her cheeks, and she was driven off to some rice or cotton plantation, for where she is gone I could never learn. I have never heard of or seen her since. (The recital of this narrative, which was told with simplicity and feeling, but without any attempt at display, produced quite a thrilling effect on the audience.) The speaker continued—There were many other ways in which the slaves suffered deeply in person and feeling, but perhaps it would be more interesting to the audience if he gave some account of the manner in which his wife and himself effected their escape from bondage. They were born slaves in the state of Georgia, but were not so in love with the degraded state of slavery as not to desire release from it. They thought of and canvassed many plans of escape before they moved, but the difficulties were so many and the distance so great, that they could not think of any mode by which to travel undetected for a thousand miles, until they hit upon that which they finally adopted. It occurred to him that his wife might pass for a sick young gentleman, and that he might assume to be his slave, appointed to wait upon and take care of him, in an attack of inflammatory rheumatism. He suggested the plan to her, and at first she thought that she would not be able to travel a thousand miles; but when she looked around her, and thought of the misery and degradation of slavery it made the very blood in her veins run cold, and then, when she reflected on the happiness of freedom, when she thought that she might go where she would be free and happy, and where she might stand erect as a woman, or humble herself before God and worship him according to the dictates of her conscience, she resolved to brave the danger, and said she would try. When he was, as he had said, learning the trade of a cabinet-maker, all the money which he earned in the day went to his master; but the man who taught him used to give him over work, and by working very hard late at night and at early morn, he managed to save up enough money to purchase the necessary disguise, and to pay the expenses of their travel to Philadelphia. He purchased the disguise at different times, in order to avoid detection; and as he bought it he used to take it to the house where his wife lived, where she was allowed a little room to herself, in which she used to lock it up. After they had got the clothes, and the means of travel, they could not think of

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any mode by which to get off; for there was no chance of their doing so unless they told their masters a very curious story. Whenever he had to relate this portion of his story, it always embarrassed him very much to think of the deception which they were compelled to practice in order to escape. He must relate it however, if only to show the evils which slavery entailed. His wife told her mistress that she had an aunt living at twelve miles distant, from whom she had just heard, and who was very sick and likely to die, and who wished her to come and see her, and she asked leave to go and stay for three or four days. Her mistress,3 at first, said she could not let her go, as she did not know how to spare her; but his wife then pretended to cry, which produced an effect on her mistress, who then consented, and gave her a ticket of leave. He then told his master4 that his wife had an aunt sick, whom she was going to see, and that he wished to go for three or four days to take her to her. His master, at first demurred, saying he could not spare him, but he begged hard for leave, and he at length yielded, but enjoined him to make haste back. He promised to return as soon as possible; but somehow he had not managed to get back since. (Applause.) Having got on thus far, he purchased a pair of green spectacles for his wife, for she thought that, as she would have to meet gentlemen, it would be better for her to have something over her eyes. At four o’clock in the morning he got her up, and she dressed in her gentleman’s clothes, and he thought that she looked very well. They then went to the railway station, where his “master” procured the tickets, saying that he wanted them for himself and his slave. The reason why he (Craft) did not get the tickets was this—no slave was allowed to ride on any railway in America unless he had a pass from his owner authorizing him to ride on such road (because if a slave escaped by railway the master could recover from the company his money value), but any white man could travel as he pleased. They procured the tickets, took their respective places, and reached Savannah at eight o’clock in the evening, from which they took steam-boat back to South Carolina. Mr. Craft then gave a circumstantial narrative of his escape, detailing the difficulties they met with, and the subterfuges to which they were compelled to resort in order to avoid detection. For instance—it is a law of the United States’ railways that where a master and a slave travel by rail, the former is compelled to subscribe his name beneath that of the slave, in order to avoid which Mrs. Craft, who was unable to write, was obliged to keep her right hand poulticed and in a sling, feigning that it was so disabled as to be unable to hold a pen. At once they were detained because the supposed gentleman had no pass for his slave. He (or rather she) explained that he was the nephew of Dr. Johnson, of Boston, and on his way to consult his uncle upon his health, and that he did not know that the pass was required so far to the north, and it was only as the train was about to start that the railway official resolved to take the risk and

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allow the “sick young gentleman” to proceed. At length they reached Philadelphia, where they threw off disguise, made themselves known, and consulted with Mr. Brown5 and other abolitionists, who advised them to go to Boston. They went to Boston, settled down, and were gaining a respectable livelihood, he as a cabinet-maker and she as a seamstress, when the fugitive bill passed. It was at Boston they became acquainted with Mr. Brown, and, after enduring many hardships at the hands of the slave hunters, protected, however, by the abolitionists, they escaped together, and made their way to England, landing at Liverpool. Thanking the audience for the attention with which his statement had been listened to, Mr. Craft sat down amid hearty and prolonged cheering. Plymouth Times, Devonport, Stonehouse and West of England Advertiser (Plymouth, England), 3 May 1851. 1. Although the laws governing slave behavior varied from state to state, slaves were generally barred from giving testimony in cases involving whites. Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, 187–90. 2. In Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, William Craft gives some details about his brother and sister but not their names. William’s brother was apprenticed as a blacksmith at the same time William was apprenticed as a cabinetmaker. When William was sixteen and his sister fourteen, their owner mortgaged them to a bank and sold the brother outright. William’s sister eventually was sold to another Georgia planter. In the mid-1850s, Craft’s mother purchased her freedom and found Craft’s sister in Mississippi. Craft’s mother wrote to William and requested him to raise money for his sister’s purchase. In 1860 William claimed to have “nearly” raised the sum necessary by lecturing, by selling an engraving of Ellen in her escape disguise, and by receiving funds from “Miss Burdett Coutts, Mr. George Richardson of Plymouth and a few other friends.” Craft and Craft, Running a Thousand Miles, 8, 10, 12. 3. Mrs. Robert Collins. 4. Ira H. Taylor. 5. William Wells Brown met William and Ellen Craft during early January 1849 at a small farmhouse thirty miles north of Philadelphia in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The Crafts took shelter at the farm shortly after arriving in Philadelphia on Christmas day, 1848, at the end of their imaginative escape from slavery. Brown, who was finishing an eight-week lecture tour in eastern Pennsylvania, contacted the fugitives and convinced them to join him in a brief lecture tour of Connecticut and Massachusetts. They attended the annual meeting of the Massachusetts AntiSlavery Society during the last week of the month. Beginning in February, Brown and the Crafts conducted a well-received, four-month tour of Massachusetts. At the end of the tour, Brown made preparations for his trip abroad, and the Crafts settled in Boston. Lib, 12 January 1849; Farrison, William Wells Brown, 136–37.

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39. Speech by Alexander Crummell Delivered at Freemasons’ Hall, London, England 19 May 1851 The shared belief that men were perfectible and society destined to progress animated Anglo-American reformers. Many black antislavery professionals, like Alexander Crummell, shared these assumptions and used them to frame their criticism of slavery and racial prejudice. Crummell’s remarks at a soirée, sponsored by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society on 19 May 1851, at Freemasons’ Hall, London, resonated the doctrine of progress. The proceedings, which began at six o’clock with refreshments and ended four hours later, were chaired by BFASS treasurer George W. Alexander and commanded a “large and respectable assemblage.” Black abolitionists Henry Highland Garnet and Josiah Henson also spoke, and J. W. C. Pennington attended. ASRL, 2 June 1851; NC, 28 May 1851. Rev. Alexander Crummell, coloured episcopal clergyman of New York, on rising, said, I am thankful for the existence of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. I am thankful for its existence, because this Society is opposed to slavery, and is pledged to continuous and unremitting efforts for its final extinction in every quarter of the globe. I am especially thankful for its existence at this particular period; for never were its exertions and its influences more needed than at the present time. There appears just now a general rising of the surges of slavery and oppression throughout the world, presaging wrath and destruction to the cherished liberties of mankind. Any one who has followed the movements of the crowned heads of Europe, during the last two or three years, cannot but have observed the “royal conspiracy” to narrow the limits of liberty, confine the boundaries of freedom, and to deprive their subjects, as far and as much as possible, of their rights.1 If you look across the Atlantic to another continent, you will see a striking manifestation of the same spirit of tyranny in the recent passing of the Fugitive Slave Law by the United States of America. Thus you will see that some of the great powers of the world seem disposed, at one and the same time, to hinder the progress of man, and to retard the advancement of the cause of freedom. Of these powers two stand out before the world with distinguished prominence—Russia and the United States; and, Sir, I verily believe, the liberties of mankind have as much, if not more, to fear from the democracy of the United States, than from the autocracy of Russia. The acts of the former of these powers are brought before us this evening, and to them I shall call your attention for a few moments; and, as

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Mr. Sturge2 has raised the question—”What can be done best to promote the emancipation of the slaves in the United States of America”—I will confine my remarks more particularly to that point. I shall not refer to some of the measures which have already been proposed. I wish rather to call attention to one other means, which has not been considered as much as I think is desirable. Sir, it seems to me that the friends of the negroes in the United States, during the last fifteen or twenty years, have partially forgotten one great fact, namely, that the origin of slavery is not, perhaps, to be found so much in any particular laws, as in the weakness, the benightedness, and the degradation of that particular class brought into slavery. It is the disposition, on the part of the strong and selfish, to use and employ the weak and miserable part of creation as their own instruments. How is this to be remedied? I cannot ignore the other plans which have been proposed and enforced here this evening; for I regard each of them as good and feasible. Yet I think there is one other plan which should not be neglected. I repeat—for myself, I do regard the employment of English influence, the free-labour movement, and other measures presented, as excellent and desirable means for the promotion of the cause of abolition. But, in addition to these means, I do think, that if you wish to free a people from the effects of slavery, you must improve and elevate their character. And the negro needs this improvement. I do not pretend to deny that the people to whom I belong in the United States are, as a whole, weak and degraded. How could it be otherwise? For upwards of two centuries they have, for the most part, been deprived of all religious instruction; debarred from all the means and appliances of education; cut off from all participation in civil and political prerogatives; shut out beyond the pale of humanity! And what could be the result of such a regimen as this, but degradation and benightedness? Sir, it is one of the marvels of the world that they still preserve so many of the high instincts of humanity as they do— that they have not become, long ere this, thoroughly brutalised and demented! But, Sir, it is full time now to begin to instruct this people, to cultivate their minds, and to instill into them good moral and religious principles. Extend to them the means of improvement, and allow them full opportunity for the development of their capacities, and oppression could not withstand the influence and the power thereof. The relation between the free coloured population of the United States and their brethren in bonds is close and intimate. The interests of the one tell strongly upon the other. The cultivation and the elevation of the one have a most decided bearing upon the other. As the free coloured population go up in the scale of intelligence, increase in mental capacity, and demonstrate their intellectual power, the whole fabric of slavery proportionably crumbles and totters. But, Sir, there are great difficulties in the way of the cultivation even of the free coloured race in America. In the Southern States it

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is forbidden by cruel and oppressive laws. In the Northern States the prejudice of the whites prevents a full participation in the advantages of schools and colleges; while, on the other hand, the poverty of the coloured people makes them unable to secure to themselves these advantages to a desirable extent. From these circumstances arises the necessity that the friends of the African in America should interest themselves in the educational interests of the coloured race in America. I do hope the friends of freedom in England may give their attention to this part of the subject. It is a matter of the last importance to the African in future times. Among the many means and agencies employed for the elevation of the negro, his culture and enlightenment should be a prime one, and it should be commenced at once; for it is a work of time. It was so in England, among the AngloSaxons. The fine monuments, the splendid and magnificent manifestations of material and mental advancement which surround one, on every side, in this great country—which excite the admiration of the whole world—which have placed England in the front rank among the nations of the earth, and which, in their choicest products, are now gathered together for comparison and competition with the choicest products of all other nations; these did not take any sudden and mysterious rise. These did not spring up in the brief period of a year or a century. No! they are the result of the long, the steadily-pursued, the unwearied and plodding industry and application of the Anglo-Saxon mind for long centuries, carried on amid many difficulties, at first faintly budding forth, then slowly progressing, at times disastrously retarded; but, amid all reverses and hindrances, carried on, gradually, but surely, until they have at length reached their present glorious manifestation. The same process must be developed and carried out in the negro race, and so they too would rise gradually into a state of higher and nobler civilisation and improvement, to the gratification of the friends of man, and to the glory of God. Mr. Sturge has desired some reference to the American colonisation scheme,3 from those of us who are from the United States. Before I conclude, I will make some few remarks in relation to this subject. Now, Sir, let me remark, in the first place, that I do not wish to say aught to the harm or hurt of my brethren who have been exiled from America to the colony of Liberia. I feel the utmost sympathy with them; for I, too, live under the influence of the same cruel prejudice, which almost broke their hearts, and drove them from their native land to the pestilential shores of Africa. Nor, Sir, would I have you suppose that I am indifferent to the evangelisation and civilising of Africa. Far from it, Sir; there is no spot, of all this wide world, to which my heart travels with more ardent affection than Africa. It is the land of my fathers. I feel the deepest interest in whatever may tend to the elevation of the mighty masses of that continent; and, Sir, although born in the United States, connected as pastor with a congregation of my own

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people in that country,4 I should think myself privileged if it had been the providence of God that I could have been a missionary to that continent, and spent the small measure of ability the Almighty has given me, in efforts for the salvation of those to whom I am connected by descent in that benighted land. For in this, under God, lies the hope of Africa—Africa is to be evangelised only by preaching the Gospel. No mere trading-institutions, no colonies, and no colonisation schemes are able to redeem and elevate the vast population of that continent. Sir, the Lord Jesus Christ intends to redeem the nations, and to save the souls of the different peoples of this earth, by the influence of the Cross, and by the power of the Holy Ghost; and not by colonies, nor by colonising schemes. And, Sir, when the Lord has evidenced this in all the results of missionary enterprise, it is surprising that men of thought, intelligence, and wisdom, should allow themselves to be beguiled and deceived into the belief that the hope of Africa is in the colony of Liberia—that the whole difficulty is now solved, and that the redeeming agency of Africa had been discovered in this colony! The idea that a colony, made up, as its advocates frequently assert, of ignorant, degraded, benighted slaves, fresh from the slave-shambles and cotton plantations of the Southern States of America, when once carried across the ocean, should become the hope of Africa! Sir, the idea is preposterous, upon their own showing, in the last degree, that men, who have been degraded for centuries—that a people who have been made base and miserable by a most galling oppression—who had been almost brutalised, and kept almost godless; that these should be the men to lay the foundations of great states on the coast of Africa, of dispelling the ignorance of the nations, and of propagating virtue. Where was there ever such a marvellous sight witnessed in all the history of the world? Take up the history of colonisation, both ancient and modern, and on which of its many pages do you discover such a result, or can you find such a precedent? For my own part, I am ignorant of the instance. What do we see in the colonies of England, where there has been no such plan and system, and where there has been the lack of intelligent oversight and guidance? Are they all such models of good and beneficent influence to the aboriginal population, as to recommend the experiment for the children of Africa, on African soil? Where, then, I ask, is the aboriginal population, in the places where AngloSaxons have colonised? and where are the signs of a blessed influence? Let the Indian of New England, the native of Van Diemen’s Land5 answer. Or, of you seek an illustration in the present time, look at the Cape of Good Hope. But it is said that black men colonising Africa will have a fellow-feeling for black men. I deny it, Sir; there is no evidence that the human nature of black men is any different, in its main features, from that of other men. And, Sir, if you will inquire into the history of Liberia, you see this fact abundantly evidenced. Sir, I say again, the true

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way to save and elevate Africa is by the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And if people in this country desire the evangelisation of that continent, let them instruct and evangelise African youth in Africa, in America, and in the West Indies; and from these would spring up men, full of an ardent missionary spirit, who would go to Africa, attempt the evangelisation of the land of their fathers, and engraft Christianity upon its nations, kingdoms, and governments; and thus, eventually, great and mighty Christian nations would arise in the midst of the institutions of heathenism. And now, Sir, let me say that although there are some things, in relation to the cause, which are indeed disheartening, all are not so. For my own part, I have no fears for the future of the African people. God has most singularly and kindly cared for this race in times past, notwithstanding all their fiery trials. I have the most trustful confidence in Him, that He will continue His care and mercy. I stand up here to-night, saddened, indeed, when I think of the pro-slavery movements in America, and the Fugitive Slave Law recently passed; but I am not disheartened. There are some facts, connected with the history of the negro, suggestive of most hopeful consideration. Wherever European civilisation has been taken in any country, it is a noticeable fact, that the natives of that country have receded and vanished away, as the morning mist before the rising of the morning sun. The Indians of America are fast fading away. The natives of Van Diemen’s Land are gone. The many millions that once peopled the clustering islands of the West Indian archipelago have vanished before the presence and the power of the white man, and shall never return again from the deep repose of the tomb, until they arise at the final day, for accusation as well as for judgment. The aborigines of the South-Sea Islands, of New Zealand, and Australia, are departing like the shadow before the rising sun of the Anglo-Saxon emigrant. It is said, that no statesmanship, no foresight, no Christian benevolence, can preserve the Sandwich Islanders. There is something exceedingly sorrowful in this funereal procession of the weak portions of mankind, before the advancing progress of civilisation and enlightenment. Amid all these melancholy facts, there seems to be one exception. The negro is an exception to the general facts. I have been noticing, Sir, the mid-passage6 alone is enough to destroy any people. It has not destroyed the vitality of the negro! They have made progress, and become, in many parts, a vigorous people. They have increased in mental and moral importance, and have made themselves felt. Yes, Sir, they have made themselves so much felt, that they have made their cause and their interests matters of great importance to the nations enslaving them. In many cases they have worked out their emancipation—for emancipation has not been merely a boon. It has been, also, an achievement on the part of the black man. These facts I take and mention as indications that Divine Providence designs this people to play an important part in the future history of the world.

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They appear to me tokens and evidences that this particular section of the human family is not doomed to destruction. Sir, the elevation and civilisation of the negro appear to me determined purposes of the Divine Mind for the future. It may be tardy in its arrival; but I believe it is sure and certain, and bids fair to be peculiarly bright and distinct in its features and characteristics from any form of civilisation the world now witnesses. Sir, I remenber, and, perhaps, you may remember, the half-prophetic lines of a lofty and profound intellect of a former generation— Bishop Berkeley:7 Westward the course of empire takes its way; The first four acts already past: The fifth shall close the drama of the day; Time’s noblest offspring is the last. I believe the expectation and prediction of the last line of this verse will be realized in the African people. When I notice the endurance of this race, their patience and hopefulness, their quiet perseverance and humility; when I contemplate their remarkable vitality and strong tenacity of life; when I see their gradual rise from degradation and enslavement, and their transition in many quarters from a state of chattelism to manhood and freedom; when I behold the capable men of this people coming forward to vindicate and redeem their brethren in Africa and in other lands; when I observe the increased interest of the Christian world and especially of Christian England in Africa, and the simultaneous interest of African chiefs, and Africans in general, in the Gospel, and all the zealous efforts of the civilised world in behalf of this people—I cannot but think that all these are the concurrent providences of God for good; that they are all tending to some great fact—some glorious manifestation of African development in the future—a FACT so high and lofty in its moral significance, that it may justly claim to be the realisation of the poet’s prediction—”Time’s noblest offspring is the last!” Anti-Slavery Reporter (London), 2 June 1851. 1. This is a reference to the Holy Alliance, an international agreement signed in 1815 by Alexander I, czar of Russia, Francis I, emperor of Austria, and Frederick William III, emperor of Prussia. The pact consequently came to be viewed as a device for enforcing reactionary policies and suppressing democratic movements in Europe following the 1848 revolutions. 2. Joseph Sturge. 3. This is a reference to the American Colonization Society’s plan to send American blacks to Africa. 4. Crummell’s congregation, the Second Episcopal Colored Church in New York City, was an Episcopal mission founded in 1836. During the following decade, its twenty members worshiped in rented rooms and frequently were forced to suspend services. Isaiah G. DeGrasse ministered to the congregation from its be-

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ginning until July 1840. Following his resignation, Alexander Frazer and other temporary clergy served the congregation. It briefly disbanded but Crummell revived it in 1845. Although initially named St. Matthew’s Free Church, it was, about this time, renamed the Church of the Messiah. Under Crummell’s guidance, membership increased from twenty to two hundred. The congregation continued to meet in various locations until 1862. Ejofodomi, “Missionary Career of Alexander Crummell,” 63, 66, 67; CA, 20 October 1838, 31 August 1839, 4 July 1840; George Walker, “The Afro-American in New York City, 1827–1860” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1975), 133–34. 5. Van Diemen’s Land, renamed Tasmania in 1853, is an island off the southeastern tip of the Australian continent, which was originally peopled by aborigines. It was a British colony from 1803 until it became part of the newly independent Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. 6. The Middle Passage is the term used to describe the Atlantic sea voyage of slaves between ports in Africa and the New World during the years of the slave trade. Because of the death, violence, malnutrition, and barbaric confinement below deck that slaves endured while on this passage, the term suggests a more generalized meaning as the first stage of slavery’s horror. Mannix and Cowley, Black Cargoes, 104–30. 7. George Berkeley (1685–1753), an Irish philosopher of English parentage, was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He spent several years promoting Christian education in North America. In 1734 Berkeley was named Anglican bishop of Cloyne, Ireland. He remains best known for his critique of Newtonian and Cartesian philosophies. DNB, 2:348–56.

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40. William Wells Brown to Editor, London Times 3 July 1851 The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 sent a burgeoning number of fugitive slaves flooding into England and led to the development of an identifiable fugitive community, particularly in London, where many blacks were reduced to begging. In the summer of 1851, William Wells Brown became concerned with the situation. On 27 June he wrote to Frederick Douglass’ Paper, warning fugitives that “if the climate in Canada is too cold, . . . go to the West Indies. But, by all means, don’t come to England.” Six days later, Brown expressed similar fears in the London Times, and he elaborated on the idea that the agricultural experience of slavery opened employment opportunities to fugitives on West Indian estates. Soon after the Times printed his advice, Brown had second thoughts. A series of conferences with West Indian proprietors and their agents left him uncertain of their motives. Rumors that some agents encouraged Canadian blacks to migrate to the West Indies on questionable terms strengthened his apprehension. Lib, 25 July 1851; Farrison, William Wells Brown, 190–92. 22 Cecil street Strand, [London, England] July 3, [1851] Sir:1 Since the separation of the American provinces from the mother country in 1776, many thousands of slaves, escaping from the Southern States, have sought a refuge and a home in Canada; and the “Fugitive Slave Law,” recently enacted by the American Congress, has already added greatly to that number, so that the fugitive population is now estimated at about 30,000; and as these people are mostly without education, and have but little knowledge of mechanical branches, they find many difficulties in the way of getting employment and thereby earning for themselves an honest living.2 This being the case, many of these people have, within the past six or eight months, come to this country, seeking employment and that liberty and protection which are denied them in their native land. On reaching England, they find similar difficulties in the way of getting employment that they had to encounter in Canada, and they, therefore, become a burden to the benevolent, or inmates of the unions.3 I wish, Sir, to call the attention of those interested in the West India estates4 to this fact, and to suggest the propriety of adopting some measures to secure the services of as many of these fugitives as may feel inclined to go to the West Indies.

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Having been a slave myself in the United States for more than twenty years, and being prevented from returning on account of the Fugitive Law, and knowing that most of the fugitive slaves have been accustomed to the raising of cotton, sugar, rice, and such other products as are raised in the West Indies, I am satisfied that a proposition of this kind would, if made upon fair terms, meet with a favorable response from my downtrodden and enslaved countrymen, and thereby be a benefit both to the owners of the West India estates and these fugitive slaves. I am, Sir, yours respectfully, WM. WELLS BROWN Times (London), 4 July 1851. 1. John Thadeus Delane (1817–1879), the politically powerful editor of the London Times from 1841 to 1877, studied at Oxford University before joining the newspaper in 1839. Founded in 1788 as the nonpartisan Times and Universal Daily Register, the Times rapidly emerged as a leading metropolitan daily. Bourne, English Newspapers, 1:254–68, 279–85, 354–62, 2:164–65, 333. 2. It is difficult to estimate the number of fugitive slaves and free blacks who fled to Canada from the United States after passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 because contemporary estimates, newspaper reports, and the Canadian census of 1861 are imprecise. The number was probably less than thirty thousand, but estimates range as high as sixty thousand. Historical records do suggest some reliable conclusions about the nature of that migration. A majority of the slaves who went to Canada were destitute male agricultural workers from the border states. Many were armed. They went by steamer and small craft across the water along the Canadian-American border between Detroit and upper New York State. Most gravitated to scattered black settlements, largely in Canada West. Some went to more formal cooperative agricultural enterprises such as Dawn and Elgin. Winks, Blacks in Canada, 142–209. 3. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, an identifiable fugitive presence emerged in England, particularly in London and Liverpool. Some fugitives were unable to obtain employment and became dependent upon relief efforts. Liverpool slum missionary Francis Bishop personally assisted a large number. In London, conditions prompted the formation of several societies to assist fugitives in finding employment or in emigrating from England to British colonies. After 1853, the Ladies’ Society to Aid Fugitives from Slavery helped blacks obtain food, lodging, and other necessities, supported the schooling of several fugitives, and placed at least one young female fugitive in a Bristol orphan asylum. Through the efforts of the Ladies’ Society and individual benefactors, a few fugitives were resettled in Canada. R. J. M. Blackett, Building an Anti-Slavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist Movement, 1830–1860 (Baton Rouge, La., 1983), 5; Lib, 5 September 1851; I, 31 May, 12 July 1851; Francis Bishop to Peter Bolton, 10, 22 November 1851, Minutes of the Ladies’ Society to Aid Fugitives from Slavery, 23 March 1855, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; Ladies’ Society to Aid Fugitives from Slavery (London, 1855), 3–6. 4. Brown refers to West Indian sugar plantations.

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41. Speech by William Wells Brown Delivered at the Hall of Commerce, London, England 1 August 1851 The influx of fugitive slaves into Britain after 1850 heightened their visibility and increased their role in British antislavery efforts. This was apparent at a unique meeting held on 1 August 1851 at the Hall of Commerce, a large meeting hall and former merchant exchange on Thread-needle Street, London. The meeting—arranged and directed by fugitive slaves—celebrated the anniversary of West Indian emancipation and the return of George Thompson from his American tour. Despite a one-shilling admission charge and a session of the London Peace Congress the same evening, nearly one thousand men and women attended, including a number of prominent British antislavery families and Americans Maria Weston Chapman, Caroline Weston, and Mary Gray Chapman. After tea was concluded, William Wells Brown, his daughters Josephine and Clarissa, Alexander Duval, Francis S. Anderson, Benjamin Benson, and several other blacks proceeded to the platform, accompanied by Thompson and several London clergymen. The blacks took seats in the front two rows on the platform; whites sat in the rear rows. Duval then rose and moved a resolution naming William Wells Brown as meeting chairman. Anderson seconded the motion, it was unanimously approved, and Brown rose and spoke. Lib, 5 September 1851. The Chairman (who upon taking the chair was received with loud applause), in opening the proceedings, remarked that, although the metropolis had of late been inundated with meetings of various characters, having reference to almost every variety of subject, yet that the subject they were called upon that evening to discuss differed from them all.1 Many of those by whom he was surrounded, like himself, had been victims to the inhuman institution of slavery, and were in consequence exiled from the land of their birth. They were fugitives from their native land, but not fugitives from justice, and they had not fled from a monarchical, but from a so-called republican government. They came from amongst a people who declared, as a part of their creed, that all men were born free, but who, while they did so, made slaves of every sixth man, woman and child in the country. (Hear, hear.) He must not, however, forget that one of the purposes for which they were met tonight was to commemorate the emancipation of their brethren and sisters in the isles of the sea.2 That act of the British Parliament, and he might add in this case with peculiar emphasis, of the British nation, passed on the

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12th day of August, 1833, to take effect on the 1st day of August, 1834, and which enfranchised 800,000 West Indian slaves, was an event sublime in its nature, comprehensive and mighty in its immediate influences and remote consequences, precious beyond expression to the cause of freedom, and encouraging beyond the measure of any government on earth to the hearts of all enlightened and just men. This act was the commencement of a long course of philanthropic and Christian efforts on the part of some of the best men that the world ever produced. It was not his intention to go into a discussion or a calculation of the rise and fall of property, or whether sugar was worth more or less by the act of emancipation. But the emancipation of slavery in the West Indies was a blow struck in the right direction at that most inhuman of all trafficks, the slave trade—a trade which would never cease so long as slavery existed, for where there was a market there would be merchandise; where there was demand there would be a supply; where there were carcasses there would be vultures; and they might as well attempt to turn the water, and make it run up the Niagara River as to change this law. It was often said by the Americans, that England was responsible for the existence of slavery there, because it was introduced into the country while the colonies were under the British Crown. If that was so, they must come to the conclusion that, as England abolished slavery in the West Indies, she would have done the same for the American States, if she had had the power to do so; and if that was so, they might safely say that the separation of the United States from the mother country was (to say the least) a great misfortune to one-sixth of the population of that land. England had set a noble example to America, and he would to Heaven that his countrymen would follow the example. The Americans boasted of their superior knowledge, but they need not boast of their superior guilt, for that was set upon a hilltop, and that, too, so high that it required not the lantern of Diogenes to find it out. Every breeze from the western world brought upon its wings the groans and cries of the victims of this guilt. Nearly all countries had fixed the seal of disapprobation to slavery, and when, at some future age, this stain upon the page of history shall be pointed at, posterity will blush at the discrepancy between American profession and American practice. What was to be thought of a people boasting of their liberty, their humanity, their Christianity, their love of justice, and at the same time keeping in slavery more than three millions of God’s children, and shutting out from them the light of the Gospel, by denying the Bible to the slave? (Hear, hear.) No education, no marriage, every thing done to keep the mind of the slave in darkness. There was a wish on the part of the people of the Northern States to shield themselves from the charge of slaveholding, but as they shared in the guilt, he was not satisfied with letting them off without their share in the odium.

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And now, a word about the Fugitive Slave Bill. That measure was in every respect an unconstitutional measure. It set aside the right formerly enjoyed by the fugitive of trial by jury—it annulled his claim to the writ of habeas corpus3—it afforded to him no protection, no opportunity of proving his right to be free, and it placed every free colored person at the mercy of every unprincipled person who might wish to lay claim to him. (Hear.) That law is opposed to the principles of Christianity—foreign alike to the laws of God and man; it had converted the whole population of the free States into a band of slavecatchers, and every rood of territory is but so much hunting-ground, over which they might chase the fugitive. But while they were speaking of slavery in the United States, they must not omit to mention that there was a strong feeling in that land, not only against the Fugitive Slave Law, but also against the existence of slavery in any form. There was a band of fearless men and women in the city of Boston, whose labor for the slave had resulted in good beyond calculation. This noble and heroic class had caused the whole country to be in agitation, until their principles have taken root in almost every association in the land, and which, with God’s blessing, will in due time cause the Americans to put in practice what they have so long professed. (Hear, hear.) He wished it to be constantly held up before the country, that the Northern States are as deeply implicated in the guilt of slavery as the South. The North had a population of 13,553,328; the South had a population of only 6,393,756 freemen; the North has 152 representatives in the House, the South only 81; and it would be seen by this that the balance of power was with the free States. Looking therefore, at the question in all its aspects, he was sure that there was no one in this country but who would find out that the slavery of the United States of America was a system the most abandoned and the most tyrannical. (Hear, hear.) With reference to Mr. Thompson’s visit to America, the Chairman proceeded: I am glad that we have upon this platform one who has recently returned from America. (Cheers.) I am somewhat acquainted with the doings of the noble friend that I have alluded to. I had some acquaintance with his connection with the anti-slavery movement before I came to this country. I have had ample opportunity of judging of his zeal in the cause of the slave since I have been here. I have myself been a frequent guest at his table, where I have met many fugitives who have been entrusted to his care, and I know that they have received from him the most friendly advice, and more than that, substantial assistance, to help them on their way in this country. I was present at the farewell Soiree given to him before he embarked this second time for America.4 I was the last to shake hands with him as he left the railway station, and the first to welcome him on his return at the same place. I watched his movements

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in every direction. I gained information from every source, public and private, from slaveholders and abolitionists, respecting the course of Mr. Thompson through the country, and I am satisfied that he gave an impetus to the cause of freedom there which it had not received for years before. His tour through the States of Massachusetts and New York, the zeal with which the people came forth to welcome him at every meeting—the fact that when he left the city of Boston, the friends in Boston accompanied him a long distance to where the steamer was moored, is enough to satisfy my mind as to the value placed upon his labors and talents by the friends of my oppressed race. I was anxious, in common with many other fugitives—those who are present as well as numbers who cannot attend this meeting—to meet together here, not only to celebrate this, the anniversary of West India emancipation, but also to welcome our friend, and thank him for his labors in the United States within the past eight months. And now I will take my seat by welcoming Mr. Thompson, and expressing to him the thanks of the fugitives in this country for the labors, co-operation and noble zeal with which he has aided the cause of the slave in the U. States. I am sure that this audience will be better satisfied with hearing remarks from him than almost any one in the meeting. And now, Sir (turning to Mr. Thompson), I beg to thank you for your noble exertions in behalf of my oppressed people (shaking Mr. Thompson by the hand, amidst the loud applause of the meeting). I had the assurance of William and Ellen Craft, two of the noblest fugitives from the United States of America, that they would be present at this meeting; but at a late hour, I received a letter from them, informing me that unfortunate circumstances beyond their control prevented their attendance. We have, I am happy to say, the presence of a noble man upon this platform, who has been lynched within the last year in the State of Kentucky, simply because he was a sharer in abolition feelings.5 Liberator (Boston, Mass.), 5 September 1851. 1. A number of meetings took place in London during late July. Delegates from Europe, Britain, and America attended a general peace convention on 22 and 24 July. The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society held its annual meeting on 21 July. The electors of the city of London convened on 24 July as did the Borneo Church Mission Society. In addition, Parliament was in session, and hundreds of people were in the city to visit the Great Exhibition of 1851. TL, 24, 25, 26 July 1851; ASRL, 1 July 1851; NC, 31 July 1851. 2. Celebrations on 1 August commemorated the end of slavery in the British West Indies. Blacks found West Indian Emancipation Day an appealing national holiday and contrasted it with slaveholding America’s Fourth of July. First of August celebrations usually included street parades with brass bands and military companies, picnics, antislavery speakers (ranging from semiliterate recent fugitives to polished professional abolitionists), dancing, and other amusements.

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These celebrations frequently included religious services. Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 116, 123–28. 3. William Wells Brown correctly stated that the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 denied fugitive slaves the right to a trial by jury and the right to seek a writ of habeas corpus. The law hoped to finally circumvent all northern personal liberty laws of the 1840s, which were designed to provide due process to fugitive slaves involved in federal extradition proceedings. But the fugitive’s right to a jury trial and the right to seek a writ of habeas corpus had been declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court eight years earlier in Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842). In Brown’s home of Massachusetts, the state supreme court had acted in accordance with the Prigg decision when it disallowed abolitionist efforts to free the fugitive slave George Latimer on a writ of habeas corpus (1846). Campbell, Slave Catchers, 7–15, 23–25. 4. Brown refers to the farewell meeting held for George Thompson at London Tavern on 17 October 1850. Lib, 15, 22 November 1850. 5. Edward Mathews (1812–?), a Welsh-born clergyman, served as a lecturing agent for the American Baptist Free Mission Society throughout the 1840s and 1850s. During 1850 and early 1851, he preached and distributed peace, temperance, and antislavery tracts in Virginia and Kentucky. In February 1851, a Richmond, Kentucky, mob assaulted Mathews, forcing him to flee to Ohio. Capitalizing on his newfound antislavery celebrity, he lectured in England during the remainder of the decade, attempting to enlist British churches in the American antislavery cause. Mathews was reputedly the model for the character “Father Dickson” in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Dred. Edward Mathews, The Autobiography of the Rev. E. Mathews, the “Father Dickson” of Mrs. Stowe’s “Dred” (London, 1866; reprint, Miami, Fla., 1969).

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42. An Appeal to the People of Great Britain and the World Presented by Alexander Duval at the Hall of Commerce, London, England 1 August 1851 When William Wells Brown concluded his remarks at the 1 August 1851 meeting, British abolitionist George Thompson delivered a lengthy address, which summarized his American tour, noted the effects of the Fugitive Slave Law, and encouraged aid to fugitives in London. Thompson’s speech generated comments from the audience. Then Alexander Duval rose and read the “Appeal to the People of Great Britain and the World,” which had been written earlier by a “Committee of Fugitives” living in London (probably including Duval, Brown, Francis S. Anderson, Benjamin Benson, and others). It was consciously and ironically written in the language of the Declaration of Independence. When Duval finished reading the “Appeal,” it was seconded in a lengthy speech by Benson, then adopted unanimously. After brief concluding remarks by Thompson and Robert Smith, the audience cheered as Thompson led the procession of fugitives off the platform. Lib, 5 September 1851. We consider it just, both to the people of the United States and to ourselves, in making an appeal to the inhabitants of other countries against the laws which have exiled us from our native land, to state the ground upon which we make our appeal, and the causes which impel us to do so. There are in the United States of America, at the present time, between three and four millions of persons who are held in a state of slavery which has no parallel in any other part of the world, and whose members have, within the past fifty years, increased to a fearful extent. These people are not only deprived of the rights to which the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, but every avenue to knowledge is closed against them, and the blessed teachings of the Savior denied them. The laws do not recognize the family relation of a slave, and extend to him no protection in the enjoyment of domestic endearments. Brothers and sisters, parents and children, husbands and wives, are torn asunder, and permitted to see each other no more. The shrieks and agonies of the slave are heard in the markets at the seat of government, and within hearing of the American Congress, as well as on the cotton, sugar and rice plantations of the far South. The history of the negroes in America is but a history of repeated injuries and acts of oppression committed upon them by the whites. It was amongst this oppressed class that we were born and brought up, and it was from under the laws which keep them in chains that we have

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escaped. It is not for ourselves that we make this appeal, but for those whom we have left behind. In their Declaration of Independence, the Americans declare that “all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Yet, one-sixth of the inhabitants of the great Republic are slaves. Thus they give the lie to their own professions. No one forfeits his or her character or standing in society by being engaged in holding, buying or selling a slave; the details of which, in all their horror, can scarcely be told. Although the holding of slaves is confined to fifteen of the thirty-one States, yet we hold that the non-slaveholding States are equally guilty with the slaveholding. If any proof is needed on this point, it will be found in the passage of the inhuman Fugitive Slave Law, by Congress; a law which could never have been enacted without the votes of a portion of the representatives from the free States, and which is now being enforced, in many of the States, with the utmost alacrity. It was the passage of this law that exiled us from our native land, and it has driven thousands of our brothers and sisters from the free States, and compelled them to seek a refuge in the British possessions in North America. The Fugitive Slave Law has converted the entire country, North and South, into one vast hunting-ground. We would respectfully ask you to expostulate with the Americans, and let them know that you regard their treatment of the colored people of that country as a violation of every principle of human brotherhood, of natural right, of justice, of humanity, of Christianity, of love to God and to man. It is needless that we should remind you that the religious sects of America, with but few exceptions, are connected with the sin of slavery— the churches North as well as South. We would have you tell the professed Christians of that land that if they would be respected by you, they must separate themselves from the unholy alliance with men who are daily committing deeds which, if done in England, would cause the perpetrator to be sent to a felon’s doom; that they must refuse the right hand of Christian fellowship, whether individually or collectively, to those implicated, in any way, in the guilt of slavery. We do not ask for a forcible interference on your part, but only that you will use all lawful and peaceful means to restore to this much injured race their God-given rights. The moral and religious sentiment of mankind must be arrayed against slaveholding, to make it infamous, ere we can hope to see it abolished. We would ask you to set them the example, by excluding from your pulpits and from religious communion, the slaveholding and pro-slavery ministers who may happen to visit this country. We would even go further, and ask you to shut your doors against either ministers or laymen who are at all guilty of upholding and sustaining this

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monster sin. By the cries of the slave, which come from the fields and swamps of the far South, we ask you to do this! By that spirit of liberty and equality which you all admire, we would ask you to do this! And by that still nobler, higher and holier spirit of our beloved Savior, we would ask you to stamp upon the forehead of the slaveholder, with a brand deeper than that which marks the victim of his wrongs, the infamy of theft, adultery, man-stealing, piracy and murder, and, by the force of public opinion, compel him to “unloose the heavy burden, and let the oppressed go free”! Liberator (Boston, Mass.), 5 September 1851.

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43. J. C. A. Smith to Gerrit Smith 6 August 1851 Occasionally, as in the case of fugitive slave Henry Box Brown and free black J. C. A. Smith, conflict developed between black abolitionist colleagues on the British lecture circuit. Brown and Smith began traveling together in New England during early 1850 with an antislavery panorama. When slave catchers attempted to kidnap Brown in Providence in August 1850, he and Smith left for Britain, arriving in Liverpool in late October. Brown and Smith dramatically publicized their panorama by reenacting Brown’s escape from slavery—he was shipped from Bradford to Leeds, then removed from the box before spectators. During the winter and spring of 1851, Brown and Smith successfully toured the north of England, including stays at Bolton, Blackburn, Darwen, Preston, the Staffordshire potteries, and West Riding. Although the reasons remain unclear, discord arose between the two, and, on 25 July, they gave legal notice that they had dissolved their partnership, with Brown keeping the panorama. Smith’s 6 August letter to his longtime friend Gerrit Smith detailed his understanding of the reasons for the separation. Smith wrote a similar letter to William Lloyd Garrison the same day. He soon obtained his own panorama, and both he and Brown toured England separately. NASS, 7 February 1850; NBDES, 26 July 1850; IC, 7 September 1850; LDN, 6 November 1850; Peo, May 1851; NCA, 25 June 1851; MG, 9 August 1851; J. C. A. Smith to William Lloyd Garrison, 6 August 1851, Antislavery Collection, MB; John Kitton to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, 7 April 1854, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh. Manchester, [England] August 6, 1851 My Dear Friend—G. Smith1 I2 now set down to write you a few lines hoping they may find you and family injoying the good blessings of health. I have been trying to make an opportunity of writing to you before this time but in consequence of many difficultys I have been prevented from doing justice to my own mind—but I now write and am sorry to say that I have nothing good to write about. Perhaps you may wonder at this Strange Story—yet it is too true to denigh—and further more it is what you never could have expected. I wrote to you for a letter when we was about to leave New York which was received—and I must also thank you for your kindness— but I did not [had] the least thought that I should ever have to witness the ean acts of the man that I wrote to you about at the same time. I mean

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7. Henry “Box” Brown From Henry “Box” Brown, The Narrative of Henry “Box” Brown, Written by Himself (Manchester, 1851)

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Henry Box Brown—whom I have done much for—but not withstanding I will tell you what he have done for me since we have been in England— and to be candid and plain with you—Brown have behave so bad that I feel ashamed to tell it. Yet it is true and it must be known therefore I will give you a few of the Out lines. During the time we were traveling to geather from december 1849 to the time the Panorama was finished I used every thing to help get the means to finish paying for the Panorama and after it was out and we commenced Exhibiting I have spared no pains nor lost any time in doing what I could for its progress—not withstanding that we arrived in England about the last of October 1850—and we commence the Exhibitions by the assistance of some of the friends—and we got a long pretty well and after we begian to make a little money and some of the friends to the Anti-Slavery Cause thought it best to save what we could. Therefore we lef[t] what we could do without with a friend in Manchester—whos name is Walton3—and who is a true friend. We went on so untill last may when he went and took nearly all the money—unknown to me and made way with it—and further more he denighs me any right or title to any Part of the Panorama: and he say that none of the anti Slavery friends in the United States—never gave him any thing. This he have told to many of the friends here—but after he had taken all the money—did he make himself contented with that—no—no—but he tryed to take all the advantage of me he could all tho. the People know from his own statement what I had done for him and know well what I was doing in respect of working the Panorama. He at length said I did not have any part in the consurne at all—and that he did not mean for me to have any thing all tho. it had been told that we were Partners & to prove his meaness here is a copy of a discharge that he give me without a cent up to the present—as follows To C. Smith June 13th 1851 I here by give you notice that I have nofuther accasion for your services and that in future I shall not supply you with meat, clothe, and other necessaries as I formerly have done as payment for your services. Signed, H. Box. Brown Now my dear sir could you have thought such a thing—but it is too true to denigh and many friends here to witness the facts any time you may wish to know. Mr. Thomas H. Barker4 52 Princess Street. H. Walton[,] James Bryce. R. Walton and Dr. Lees5—and many other friends who seem to feel an interest in the cause of humanity. To prevent an exposure and for the Sake of the Cause these and other friends went and talk to Brown to see if they could get him to terams without making it any more Public than what it was. And it was with much difficulty before they could make him confest the truth or any thing like it, all tho. they give

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him his own words. After two or 3 weeks bother he mad an acknowledgement that we were equal Partners—but the money was all made away so that I could not get it. But I must tell the truth tho. it may be [Box?] Brown has behaved very bad sence he have been here—and in deed his Character is that bad I am ashamed to tell it for he drinks smoke, gamble, sware and do many other things too Bad—to think off. The friends see the corse that Brown [i]s persuing is not to do the cause of humanity any good. They thought the best plan for me would be to stop forthwith as he had acted so bad. So the [?] made an arrangement to disolve the Partnership as they could see no way of us geting a long agreeable togeather. So you will find from an advertisement in the London Gazette of the 29th July last—of the disolution.6 So in this paper that you receive with the Letter [calld] the Manchester Guardian.7 I must beg your for giveness for this long Epistle but the friends were anxious that you and others that are doing so much for the Anti-Slavery Society and the Cause of humanity ought to know those that are not worthy to be numbered with your rank. I hope you will pardon it. I am sorry that I have nothing to write which is good—but the only good words I can express is that I was happy to hear of you and other Eloquent Speakers pleading for the rights of man. May the mighty moving [vo]ices of the brave abolitionists in the United States and other places speed the happy time that free men and true men shall govern the nation with Justice and Fraternity and love. I hope the day is not fare distant when the Chains of the Boundman shall fall—to in slave them no more. And may the god of heaven bless you and all the friends who is labering for the Wel fare of man. You will remember my kind regards to your family8 and all the friends and receive the same for your self. I hope you will be kind enough to answer this which will be of great pleasure to me and will be of much or great satisfaction to many of the Anti-Slavery friends—who have taken great in terest in this case. You will give my best respects to Rev. Saml. J. May9—and Samuel R. Ward10 and all the rest who names I do no mension. I hope you will let Friend Garrison know the same. I shall expect an answer from you. The Direction or Direct To Thomas H. Barker Esq. 52 Princess Street for James C. A. Boxer Smith at H. Waltons Manchester County of Lancashire England May the Lord Crown you with his blessings and lamp of glory shine around thy bed is the sincer wish of your Obt. Friend, James C. A. Boxer Smith P.S. I for got to say that I have not been to Birmingham since we been in

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England nor we have not seen Mr. Joseph Sturge—as yet nor I do not know what Brown have done with the letter—neither have we been up to the great Exhibition at London. No more but remain yours Obt., J. C. A. Boxer. Smith M.N. Boxer Smith [illegible] Box Brown 1851 You may wonder how such a change could have taken place with Brown. But I will tell the reason. He have got it into his head to get a wife or some thing worst and I used to be teling him that he ought to try and get his wife and children which was in slavery before he thought of any thing else. That has given some offence to him I surpose. And futher more he have been telling the people that he could not get his wife if he had the money to buy her with.11 And a number of persons asked me how was the case that Box. Brown says he could not get his wife but could buy his children if he could raise a cirtin amount of money. I did not wish to do no hurt but I could not tell a willfull lie and know it—therefore I said—that the man who owned Box. Browns wife wrote me a letter in answer to one I sent—to know what he would take for Browns wife and children. And the master of his wife said he would take $1500 for her and her children if Henry Box. Brown would promise to treat them kindly. This Brown has never acknowledge to any person, and I used to ask him why did he not tell when he was asked the name of the man that own his wife and where she lived he said be cause the abolitionist would fret the man so much that he would refuse to sell his wife. I believe that un till I knew better. He have told the people that the man who own [h]is wife wrote him word that he would not sell the woman but said he will sell the three small children for fifteen hundred dollars and all belong to the same person. And a number of persons do not belive no tale like that. And be cause I told the truth—this is the reason he have thus treated me cruel. I have the Copy of the letter the mans name & place: any time you wish to have it—for it ought to be published. I am yours Obt., James C. A. Boxer. Smith Perhaps you may wonder what I mean when I say he drinks &c—&c. I do not mean that he is with those that is generally found in the Rum and Brandy vaults. But I mean to say that he indulge in all such habits as drinking—what is calld. Rasbury wine, pop, pepermint, Sampson, Jinny Lind, soabrity, gingerrote, ginger Beer, gingerale, Blackbeer and many other things of that nature—as well as smoking pipe, segars, and chewing tobacco takin snuff—sware—and playing doman noes—dice, drafts, and Be[g]ertels—& such as I do not remember the names. This is that you may not misunderstand my meaning—for I will not tell an un truth about him—if I know it. Yours Obt., J. C. A. B. Smith Gerrit Smith Collection, The George Arents Research Library, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y. Published by permission.

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1. Gerrit Smith (1797–1874), the son of a wealthy New York landowner, used the family’s vast property holdings and influence to support a variety of reform causes. By the mid-1830s, he headed a powerful circle of New York antislavery reformers. Smith left the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1840 in favor of political action against slavery and served briefly in Congress but became disillusioned by federal support of slavery. He unsuccessfully attempted to establish a black agricultural settlement on a large tract of family land, assisted runaway slaves (participating in the famous Jerry Rescue), subsidized free-state Kansas settlers, and conspired with John Brown to incite a slave insurrection at Harpers Ferry. After the Civil War, Smith worked for black suffrage. DAB, 9(1):270–71; Ralph V. Harlow, Gerrit Smith, Reformer and Philanthropist (New York, N.Y., 1939). 2. J. C. A. Smith was a Richmond, Virginia, free black. He worked for Samuel A. Smith, a white store owner who opposed slavery, and, in his later years, claimed that he had begun to help slaves escape in 1826. During March 1849, both Smiths sealed the slave Henry Brown into a wooden crate and “shipped” him by rail to freedom in Philadelphia. Samuel A. Smith served a seven-year sentence for his part in the escape; J. C. A. Smith was released when his lawyers (retained at a personal expense of $900) successfully argued his case. In January 1850, J. C. A. Smith and Henry “Box” Brown attended the Antislavery Mass Convention of the Abolitionists of the State of New York held in Syracuse, where they spoke briefly to the convention and entertained the assemblage with a song they had written about Henry Brown’s “boxing.” After the convention, Smith and Brown joined forces on the antislavery lecture circuit. They sought funds from Gerrit Smith to help finance the construction of a panorama— a series of paintings on canvas about a topic or theme. Smith and Brown commissioned a group of Boston artists to paint scenes depicting slavery and Brown’s escape. By May 1850, they were traveling throughout New England with the exhibit that they called “Mirror of Slavery.” Occasionally, Smith and Brown were accompanied by black Bostonian Benjamin F. Roberts, who wrote a formal narration for the scenes. Brown often presented a brief narrative of his life, and the men sang slave, antislavery, and religious songs. These appearances were well received by reform-minded audiences who appreciated the novel and powerful medium that Brown and Smith selected to expose the peculiar institution. But after Brown was nearly captured by fugitive slave agents on 30 August 1850 in Providence, Rhode Island, the two fled to England in November with their panorama but without the funds to pay the cost of its shipment. To raise the money, they lectured, sang, and sold lithographs, which showed Brown leaping to freedom from his wooden crate. Once they redeemed the panorama, they began a successful English tour, but friction developed between the two men. In private letters to William Lloyd Garrison and Gerrit Smith during the summer of 1851, J. C. A. Smith criticized his partner’s behavior. The only thing certain about the disagreement between Smith and Brown is that they separated, and for the next few years, each continued to tour Britain successfully with his own panorama. ASB, 18 May 1849, 31 May, 12 December 1850, 8 March 1851; E, 7 June 1849; NASS, 7, 14 June, 12 July, 25 October 1849, 7 February 1850, 20 March, 20 November 1851, 3 March, 27 October 1855; ASRL, 13 March, 1 April 1854 [8:0713]; LDN, 6 November 1850; Henry “Box” Brown to Gerrit Smith, 1 February 1850, J. C. A. Smith and Henry “Box” Brown to Gerrit Smith, 13, 15 Sep-

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tember 1850, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU [6:0376, 0577, 0578]; J. C. A. Smith to William Lloyd Garrison, 12 July, 6 August 1851, J. C. A. Smith to Gerrit Smith, 6 August 1851, Antislavery Collection, MB [7:0001, 0034, 0036]. 3. Hannah and Rebecca Walton were shoe dealers whose business was located in Deansgate, Manchester. They assisted a number of visiting black abolitionists. Kelly’s Directory of Manchester, 1858 (1858), 364. 4. Thomas Holliday Barker (1818–1889) was the son of an English cabinetmaker from Petersborough. An indefatigable organizer and an evangelical pamphleteer, he acted as secretary of the Union and Emancipation Society—a Manchester Garrisonian organization founded in 1863 to promote the Union cause and aid suffering British cotton operatives. MEB, 4:267; Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 5:66–67. 5. Dr. Frederick Richard Lees (1815–1897) was born in Leeds and is best known for his temperance work. He founded or edited several reform newspapers, took part in marathon debates (which he often published as tracts), and lectured on a variety of reform issues. A Chartist, a vegetarian, and a political abolitionist, he visited America and took an interest in health-related reforms. MEB, 6:33; Brian Harrison, Drink and the Victorians (London, 1971), 88, 134, 154, 162, 213, 243–44, 256, 307–8, 321, 388. 6. The following notice appeared in the London Gazette and the Manchester Guardian: Notice is hereby given, that the partnership formerly subsisting between the undersigned HENRY BOX BROWN and JAMES CAESAR ANTHONY SMITH, in the business or profession of exhibitors of a moving tableau or panorama, carried on by them in different parts of England, under the firm of “Brown and Smith,” has been this day dissolved by mutual consent. The business in future will be carried on by Henry Box Brown alone, who will receive and pay all debts and sums of money respectively due to or owing by the late firm.—As witness the hands of the parties this twenty-fifth day of July, 1851. H. B. BROWN J. C. A. SMITH

MG, 9 August 1851. 7. The Manchester Guardian was a Radical organ of considerable influence founded by principal proprietor John Edward Taylor in 1821. Edited by Jeremiah Garnett, it became a daily in 1855 and advocated many reforms. Bourne, English Newspapers, 2:44, 257, 361–62. 8. Gerrit Smith’s family included his parents, Peter Smith and Elizabeth Livingston Smith; his wife, Ann Carol Fitzhugh of Rochester, New York, whom he married in 1821; and four children—Elizabeth (1822–?), who was married to Charles D. Miller, Fitzhugh (1824–1836), Ann (1830–1835), and Green (1842–?). Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 12–13, 16–17, 41, 43, 237, 307–9, 377, 408, 415–16, 423–24, 483, 489–90. 9. Samuel Joseph May (1797–1871) was born in Boston and attended Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School. From 1822 until 1867, May served several Unitarian congregations and, at the request of educational reformer Horace Mann, served as principal of the normal school at Lexington, Massachusetts. May’s interests included international peace, temperance, equal rights for women,

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and public education. He attended the organizational meetings of the American Anti-Slavery Society at Philadelphia in 1833 and acted as general agent and secretary of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. He was a close associate of William Lloyd Garrison, Lucretia Mott, and Wendell Phillips but did not consider himself a Garrisonian in antislavery attitudes. He strongly supported black education, counseled resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law (1850), was involved in the Jerry Rescue case at Syracuse, New York, in 1851, and was active in the underground railroad. DAB, 6(2): 447–48. 10. Samuel Ringgold Ward (1817–ca. 1866) was born the second son of slave parents that fled to freedom in 1820. The Ward family lived in New Jersey for six years until the threat of kidnapping by slave catchers prompted them to resettle in New York City. As a youngster, Ward received the rudiments of an education from his father, attended New York’s African Free School, and clerked for two leading black activists, David Ruggles and Thomas L. Jennings. He moved to Newark, New Jersey, during 1835 and taught school until 1839, when he and his wife relocated in Poughkeepsie, New York, where he was employed at the Colored Lancastrian School. That same year, Ward became a licensed minister in the New York Congregational Association. At the end of the year, his growing reputation as a forceful and articulate antislavery spokesman earned him an appointment as lecture agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society. When the society divided in 1840, Ward left his agency and joined the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society because he believed slavery should be attacked with political weapons as well as moral suasion. Throughout the 1840s, Ward led black New York efforts to acquire the right to vote. He returned to the ministry, first as a pastor of a church in South Butler, New York (1841–43), and then as leader of a white congregation in Cortland, New York (1846–51), all the while continuing his antislavery activity, simultaneously condemning southern slavery and northern racial prejudice. Perhaps more than any other black abolitionist, Ward was particularly angered by the hypocrisy of white reformers, and he often cautioned his listeners that there were many abolitionists “who best love the colored man at a distance.” Ward founded and edited several reform newspapers: first the short-lived True American in 1847–48 and later the more successful Impartial Citizen, which lasted from mid-1849 until well into 1851 and which allowed Ward to display his Liberty party commitment and his interpretation of the American Constitution as an antislavery document. After assisting the Syracuse Vigilance Committee, Gerrit Smith, and his longtime friend, black minister Jermain W. Loguen in rescuing the fugitive slave William “Jerry” McHenry from federal officers in October 1851, Ward moved to Canada West. He remained there for over two years, serving as an agent for the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada. Early in 1853, he founded the Provincial Freeman, a newspaper meant to serve the Canadian black community. A few months later, he accepted a commission from the society to seek British funds for Canadian fugitives, and he remained abroad for two-and-a-half years, touring successfully (he impressed British audiences with his eloquence, humor, and imposing black presence) and publishing his narrative, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: His AntiSlavery Labours in the United States, Canada and England (1855).

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When Ward left England, he did not return to Canada but sailed instead to Jamaica, where he ministered to a Kingston congregation for the next five years. In 1860 he settled on a small piece of land he had received as a gift while in England. In the wake of the Morant Bay rebellion in Jamaica (October 1865), Ward wrote Reflections on the Gordon Rebellion (1866), a critical examination of George William Gordon, the leader of the island’s black revolutionary forces. Ward, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro; Ronald Kevin Burke, “Samuel Ringgold Ward, Christian Abolitionist” (Ph.D. diss., Syracuse University, 1975), 12–98; Winks, Blacks in Canada, 206–7, 218, 227, 235, 241, 249, 255–59, 265–66, 361, 441; NASS, 2 July, 10, 17 September 1840, 11 March 1847 [3: 0478, 0612, 0619, 5:0391]; IC, 14 March, 11 April, 27 June 1850, 13, 20 February 1851 [5:1003, 1054, 6:0021, 0023, 0398, 0404]; NSt, 27 June 1850 [6: 0526]; WAA, 20, 27 August 1859 [11:0944, 0972]; DANB, 631–32. 11. The date of Henry “Box” Brown’s marriage to the slave Nancy, who was owned by a bank clerk, is not known but probably took place more than two years after Brown arrived in Richmond (1830). Nancy’s master promised that he would not sell her, but twelve months after she and Brown were married, Nancy was sold to Richmond saddler Samuel Cottrell. Cottrell required Brown to contribute $50 of Nancy’s purchase price ($650) in exchange for a verbal commitment never to sell her to anyone but Brown. He also demanded that Brown pay him $50 per year to live with Nancy. In August 1848, Cottrell reneged on his agreement with Brown and sold Nancy and their three children to a Methodist minister from North Carolina. Brown was barred by the threat of arrest from saying good-bye to his family while they awaited transportation south in a local jail. Brown, Narrative, 32–42; NSt, 28 September 1849.

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44. William Wells Brown to Frederick Douglass 10 September 1851 Black visitors to Victorian Britain were frequently awed by their Old World surroundings, as in the case of William Wells Brown’s visit to the ancient university town of Oxford. While a lecturer there, his walks about the halls of the famous colleges inspired reflection on education. Brown discussed his thoughts in a 10 September letter to Frederick Douglass. He regretted that few blacks could “find a place” in institutions of higher learning. Like many antebellum blacks, Brown believed in education as a means to overcome the barriers that American racism raised against black achievement. He was particularly convinced of the value of self-education and the discipline it demanded. Farrison, William Wells Brown, 198–99, 245. OXFORD, [England] Sept[ember] 10, 1851 DEAR DOUGLASS : I have just finished a short visit to the far famed city of Oxford, which has not unaptly been styled, the city of palaces. Aside from being one of the principal seats of learning in the world, it is distinguished alike for its religious, and political changes in times past. At one time it was the seat of popery: at another, the uncompromising enemy of Rome. Here the tyrant, Richard the Third, held his court, and when James the First, and his son Charles the First1 found their capital too hot to hold them, they removed to their loyal city of Oxford. The writings of the great Republicans were here committed to the flames. At one time popery sent protestants to the stake and [faggot]: at another, a papist King found no favor with the people. A noble monument now stands where Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer proclaimed their sentiments and faith and sealed it with their blood. And now we read upon the town treasurer’s book—three loads of wood, one load of faggots, one post, two chains and staples, to burn Ridley and Latimer, £1 5s 2p.2 Such is the information one gets by looking over the record of books written three centuries ago. It was a beautiful day on which I arrived at Oxford and instead of remaining in my hotel I sallied forth to take a survey of the beauties of the city. I strolled into Christ Church Meadows, and there spent the evening in viewing the numerous halls of learning. Much surrounds that splendid promenade. And fine old buildings they are: centuries have rolled over many of

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them, hallowing the old walls and making them gray with age. They have been for ages the chosen homes of piety and philosophy. Heroes and scholars have gone forth from their studies here, into the great field of the world, to seek their fortunes, and to conquer and be conquered. As I surveyed the exterior of the different Colleges, I could here and there see the reflection of the light from the window of some student who was busy at his studies, or throwing away his time over some trashy novel, too many of which find their way into the trunks or carpet bags of the young man on setting out for College. As I looked upon the walls of these buildings, I thought as the rough stone is taken from the quarry to the finisher, there to be made into an ornament, so was the young mind brought here to be cultivated and developed. Many a poor unobtrusive young man with the appearance of little or no ability, is here moulded into a hero, a scholar, a tyrant, or a friend of humanity. I never look upon these monuments of education, without a feeling of regret, that so few of our own race can find a place within their walls. And this being the fact, I see more and more the need of our people being encouraged to turn their attention more seriously to self-education, and thus to take a respectable position before the world, by virtue of their own cultivated minds, and moral standing. Education, though obtained by a little at a time, and that, too, over the midnight lamp, will place its owner in a position to be respected by all, even though he be black. I know that the obstacles which the laws of the land, and of society, places between the colored man and education in the Untied States, is very great, yet if one can break through these barriers, more can, and if our people would only place the right appreciation upon education, they would find these obstacles are easier to be overcome than appears at first sight. A young man once asked Carlyle,3 what was the secret of success. His reply was, “Energy: whatever you undertake, do it with all your might.” Had it not been for the possession of energy, I might now have been working as a servant for some brainless fellow who might be able to command my labour with his money, or I might have been yet toiling in chains and slavery. But thanks to energy, not only for my being to day in a land of freedom, but also for my dear girls being in one of the best Seminaries in France, instead of being in an American school, where the finger of scorn would be pointed at them, by those whose superiority rests entirely upon their having a whiter skin. But I am straying too far from the purpose of this letter. Oxford is indeed one of the finest located places in the Kingdom, and every inch of ground about it, seems hallowed by interesting associations. The University founded by the good King Alfred,4 still throws its

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shadow upon the side walk; and the lapse of ten centuries seems to have made but little impression upon it. Other seats of learning may be entitled to our admiration, but Oxford claims our veneration. Although the lateness of the night compelled me to, yet I felt an unwillingness to tear myself from the scene of such surpassing interest. Few places in any country as noted as Oxford is, but that has some distinguished person residing within its precincts. And knowing that the city of palaces was not an exception to this rule, I resolved to see some of its Lions. Here of course is the head quarters of the Bishop of Oxford, a son of the late William Wilberforce,5 Africa’s noble champion. I should have been glad to have seen this distinguished pillar of the Church, but I soon learned that the Bishop’s residence was out of town, and that he seldom visited the city, except on business. I then determined to see one, who, although, a lesser dignitary in the church, is nevertheless, scarcely less known than the Bishop of Oxford. This was the Rev. Dr. Pusey,6 a divine whose name is known wherever the religion of Jesus is known and taught, and the acknowledged head of the Puseyites. On the second morning of my visit, I proceeded to Christ Church Chapel, where the Rev. Gentleman officiates. Fortunately I had an opportunity of seeing the Dr., and following close in his footsteps to the church. His personal appearance is anything but that of one who is the leader of a growing, and powerful party in the church. He is rather under the middle size, and is round shouldered, or rather stoops. His profile is more striking than his front face, the nose being very large and prominent. As a matter of course, I expected to see a large nose, for all great men have them. He has a thoughtful, and somewhat sullen brow, a firm, and somewhat pensive mouth, a cheek pale, thin, and deeply furrowed. A monk fresh from the cloisters of Tintern Abbey,7 in its proudest days, could scarcely have made a more ascetic and solemn appearance than did Dr. Pusey on this occasion. He is not apparently above forty-five, or at most fifty years of age, and his whole aspect renders him an admirable study for an artist. Dr. Pusey’s style of preaching is cold and tame, and one looking at him would scarcely believe that such an uninteresting appearing man could cause such an eruption in the church as he has. I was glad to find that a colored young man was among the students at Oxford.8 A few months since, I paid a visit to our countryman, Alexander Crummell, who is still pursuing his studies at Cambridge, a place, though far inferior to Oxford, as far as appearance is concerned, is said to be greatly its superior as a place of learning. In an hour’s walk through the Strand, Regent, or Piccadilly streets in London, one may meet a half a dozen colored young men, who are inmates of the various Colleges in the

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metropolis.9 These are all signs of progress in the cause of the sons of Africa. Then let our people take courage, and with that courage let them apply themselves to learning. A determination to excel, is the secret road to greatness, and that is as open to the black man as the white. It was that which has accomplished the mightiest and noblest triumphs in the intellectual and physical world. It was that which has made such rapid strides towards civilization, and broken the chains of ignorance, and superstition, which has so long fettered the human intellect. It was determination which raised so many worthy individuals from the humble walks of society, and from poverty, and placed them in positions of trust and renown. It is no slight barrier that can effectually oppose the determination of the will; success must ultimately crown its efforts. “The world shall hear of me,” was the exclamation of one whose name has become as familiar as household words. A Toussaint,10 once laboured in the sugar field with his spelling book in his pocket, and the combined efforts of a nation to keep him in ignorance. His name is now recorded among the list of Statesmen of the past. A Soulouque was once a slave, and knew not how to read. He now sits upon the throne of an Empire.11 In our own country, there are men who once held the plough, and that too without any compensation, that are now presiding at the editor’s table.12 It was determination that brought out the genius of a Franklin,13 a Fulton,14 and that has distinguished many of the American Statesmen, who but for their energy and determination would never have had a name beyond the precincts of their own homes. It is not always those who have the best advantages, or the greatest talents, that eventually succeed in their undertakings, but it is those who strive with untiring diligence to remove all obstacles to success, and with unconquerable resolution to labour on until the rich reward of perserverance is within their grasp. Then again let me say to our young men, Take courage. “There is a good time coming.” The darkness of the night appears greatest, just before the dawn of day. Yours, right truly, W. W. BROWN Frederick Douglass’ Paper (Rochester, N.Y.), 2 October 1851. 1. Richard III (1452–1485) was king of England during the years 1483–85; James I (1566–1625) was king of Scotland during the years 1567–1625 and king of England during the years 1603–25; and Charles I (1600–1649) was king of England during the years 1625–49.

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2. When Mary Tudor came to the English throne in 1553, she was determined to use force to restore Roman Catholicism to primacy in England. Nearly three hundred leading Protestants, particularly clerics, were burned at the stake during her reign. Nicholas Ridley (ca. 1500–1555), bishop of London, and controversial theologian Hugh Latimer (ca. 1485–1555), bishop of Worcester, were tried for heresy and burned at the stake in Oxford in 1555. Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), archbishop of Canterbury, was burned at Oxford the following year. DNB, 13:19–31, 32:171–79, 48:286–89. 3. Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) was a renowned British essayist and historian. Born in Ecclefechan, Scotland, and educated at the University of Edinburgh, he gained distinction through his public lectures and histories of the French Revolution and Frederick the Great. Carlyle became lord rector of Edinburgh College in 1865. DNB, 3:1020–36. 4. It is an ancient fabrication that Alfred (849–901), king of the West Saxons, founded an Oxford college; he did, however, encourage learning by planting the best scholars in monasteries, which were at that time the primary institutions of learning. DNB, 1:153–62. 5. Samuel Wilberforce (1805–1873), bishop of Oxford and later of Winchester, was the third son of William Wilberforce. He was acknowledged as one of the great prelates of his era. DNB, 61:204–8. 6. Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800–1882), professor of Hebrew at Oxford and canon of Christ Church, led the Oxford Movement with John Keble (1792–1866) and John Henry Newman (1801–1890). All three were fellows of Oriel College. This movement within the Church of England (also known as Puseyism, Newmania, or Tractarianism) sought, between 1833 and 1845, to restore the high-church traditions of the seventeenth century. DNB, 47:53–61. 7. Tintern Abbey is one of the most famous ecclesiastical ruins in England. It is located in Monmouthshire on the Wye River. The abbey was founded in 1131 by Walter de Clare for Cistercian monks. 8. Although the individual to whom Brown refers remains unknown, blacks regularly attended Oxford by the 1840s. Jamaican mulattoes Peter Moncrieffe and Alexander Heslop, for example, earned master of arts degrees from Oxford in the 1840s. ASRL, 1 August 1866. 9. By the mid-nineteenth century, a significant number of young black men (primarily West Indian and African) studied in London. Until the 1870s, most black students in England attended the University of London. Local medical schools and the London-based Inns of Court also trained some black scholars in medicine and in the law. Douglas A. Lorimer, Colour, Class and the Victorians: English Attitudes to the Negro in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Leicester, England, 1978), 215. 10. Toussaint L’Ouverture (1746–1803) was born a slave in the French colony of Saint Domingue (which became Haiti in 1804). During August 1791, he led a slave revolt that set off a power struggle between blacks, whites, mulattoes, and their various European supporters. L’Ouverture eventually allied himself with the French, was appointed lieutenant governor of the island in 1796, and, by 1801, was Saint Domingue’s dictator. L’Ouverture’s independent acts prompted Napoleon to invade Saint Domingue and reassert French control. French forces captured L’Ouverture in 1802 and sent him back to France, where he died in prison.

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Thomas O. Ott, The Haitian Revolution, 1798–1804 (Knoxville, Tenn., 1973), 57– 58, 82–83, 127–29, 171–72; Robert Debs Heinl, Jr., and Nancy Gordon Heinl, Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian People, 1492–1971 (Boston, Mass., 1978), 63– 108, 110, 118. 11. Faustin Soulouque (1785–1867) was born a slave in Haiti and eventually became a general in the Haitian army. In March 1847, Soulouque became president of Haiti and, two years later, proclaimed himself Emperor Faustin I. In 1849 and again in 1855, he invaded Santo Domingo. Both incursions failed, and in 1859 Soulouque was overthrown and forced to flee the country. H. P. Davis, Black Democracy: The Story of Haiti (New York, N.Y., 1967), 119–25; Heinl and Heinl, Written in Blood; DUB, 3:1021–22. 12. Brown refers to Frederick Douglass and to Samuel Ringgold Ward, the former slave and editor of the Impartial Citizen. 13. Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), a Philadelphia printer, Enlightenment philosopher, scientist, inventor, Revolutionary War diplomat, politician, and delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, was a prominent contributor to the American intellectual and political traditions. DAB, 6:585–98. 14. Robert Fulton (1765–1815), a Pennsylvania-born inventor, perfected the practical application of steam power and helped unleash a transportation revolution during the first half of the nineteenth century. DAB, 7:68–72.

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45. Alexander Crummell to John Jay 22 March 1852 Occasionally, misunderstandings developed over black fund-raising missions in Britain. Alexander Crummell was sent to England by his New York City Church of the Messiah to raise £3,000 to £4,000 to purchase a site and erect a building. Crummell raised £1,934 (accounted for by a British committee of management consisting mainly of Anglican clergymen); he expended £358 for travel, printing circulars, and similar fundraising expenses. Other English patrons provided Crummell with £200 annually to meet his personal expenses while he attended Queens College, Cambridge. Crummell’s New York congregation failed to pay him his salary while he was abroad, erroneously believing that he had deducted it from funds raised for the church. On 22 March 1852, an anxious Crummell wrote John Jay, asking Jay to clarify the salary arrangements with the church leadership. Another conflict arose when the British committee discovered that money forwarded to the vestry for the building fund was being used to meet church operating expenses. As a result, the British committee invested the remaining £1,400 in New York 5 percent interest-bearing certificates, pending proper building arrangements, and allowed any dividends accrued to be expended for church operations. The committee of management later rendered a final, complete accounting after Crummell sailed for Liberia in 1853. [Committee of Management, Anglican Church], To British Churchmen and the British Public ([Bath, England, 1848]); “African Episcopal Church, New York” [1853], NN-Sc; [Committee of Management], Improvement of Negro Race, 2. Queens Coll[ege] Cam[bridge], [England] March 22nd, 1852 John Jay Esq. My Dear Mr. Jay It is in yr. power to do me a very great favor and I cannot doubt yr. readiness to do it. In a letter just recd. from Mr. Tyson1 I am informed that at a recent meeting of the Vestry of the CH. of the Messiah, that that Vestry wished to be informed whether I had not been appropriating £200 per annum during the 3 years from the CH. funds collected by me to the support of my family. This was put forth as a reason for not voting me a sum of money as payment for my labors for that CH. Brother Tyson desires me to clear up this point as soon as possible as my Enemies are saying all sorts of bad things about me.

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Now Sir the Vestry of the CH. of the Messiah2 are as well informed about this university scheme as you are; and not one of that Vestry believes a syllable of this indirect and wicked insinuation. It is broached in a spirit of spitefulness; and it will run its course, and leave its dark impress [behind] to my injury, in many memories, and never to be effaced. I write now to request you to address a letter to the Vestry of the CH. of the Messiah informing them of the nature of the University scheme in my behalf. You will please inform them of the Circular you recd.—the character of the gentleman interested [in] it—the name of the Noble Patron, now the Earl of Shaftesbury3—the correspondence you have had with the Treasurer W. L. Blair Esq.,4 and such other particulars as may tend [to] show whence I have recd. my support while here at the University. There is no excuse for these men whatever. The whole scheme was detailed to them at the very first; and they know its nature & its extent. Neither has it been a private affair. It has been spoken of in public:—both English and American papers have noticed it as an act of English munificence. I cannot write more now. Mr. Tyson’s letter came Friday Evg.. All day Sat.y I was deeply engaged in preparation for an Examination, passed this morng.; and I am now writing late at night so as to be in time for the morng. mail, that my letter may reach Livpool [by] Wednesday. I intended to have a word or two in relation to a point mentioned in Mr. Tyson’s letter with reference to you. You have altogether mistaken the meaning of a paragraph in my last letter to him. I did not fault either you or him for asking a certificate of my State of health. But I refer you to my letter to him, wh. I presume he will show you. One thing I had better mention now, and that is, that you did charge me. If yr. health is bad, have it carefully certificated. I saw nothing [offensive] in this. I did suppose that Mr. Tyson or the Vestry had suggested this, and I was offended at the idea that they shd. do so; when they had known me to be troubled in the way I mentioned, and sometimes unable to preach in consequence of it. In this surmise I was hasty and unjust, as I have acknowledged to Mr. Tyson, and therein I did him & the Vestry wrong. I am dear Sir Most faithfully Yr. Servant, Alex Crummell PS.— Of course you will not suppose that I desire you to assume any responsibility as to my honor and integrity, nor will you think that I intend this to be the end of the matter. I knew—knew thoroughly, the character of the people with whom I was dealing when I undertook this mission. On this account I got a [Committee] appt. here who are responsible, with yrselves, for the ap-

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propriation of the Fund. I intend to have their audit for the British people and yrs. for the American. That will satisfy me & the [world] and the CH. as to the University fund. I shall get the English Comee. at Bath5 to give me a written document duly signed and at a proper time shall get you to publish it in the CH. papers of America. A.C. Jay Family Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, N.Y. Published by permission. 1. William A. Tyson was a black New York City protest leader, who was also active in Episcopal church affairs. During the late 1830s and early 1840s, he was president of the black New York Political Association and a leader of a statewide movement by blacks to attain the franchise. He served the abolitionist cause as a member of the New York Vigilance Committee and the Committee of Citizens that supervised operation of the Colored American. Tyson opposed colonization and emigration, especially as advocated by the American Colonization Society and the African Civilization Society. A strong supporter of black education, Tyson was a trustee of the New York Select Academy, a black liberal arts school conducted by Thomas S. Sidney, and was appointed by the 1847 Colored Convention in Troy, New York, to a twenty-five-person committee to devise a plan and obtain funds for a black manual labor college. NASS, 20 August 1840, 29 May 1845 [3:0566– 67, 5:0039]; CA, 19 August 1837, 13 January, 8 September 1838, 17 August, 16 November 1839, 26 June 1841, 10 May 1844 [2:0151, 0345, 3:0173, 0267, 4:0078, 0805]; WAA, 21 April 1860 [12:0646]; NSt, 21 January 1848. 2. Crummell refers to the vestry, a body of persons entrusted with the administration of the temporal affairs of his New York City Church of the Messiah, which sent him to England to raise funds for the church. [Committee of Management], To British Churchmen, 1. 3. Antony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury (1801–1885), was educated at Harrow and Christ Church, Oxford, and entered Parliament in 1826 but gradually became more concerned with philanthropic activities than with a political career. He advocated reorganization of asylums, improvement of factory and mine conditions, limitation on employment of women and children, a ten-hour workday, and better housing for Britain’s poor. Shaftesbury also called for an end to slavery in British colonies, chaired many antislavery meetings in the 1840s and 1850s, and contributed funds for the abolition of American slavery. DNB, 4:1058–62. 4. William Thomas Blair was a member of the Bath gentry. An independentminded abolitionist, he temporarily broke away from the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Beginning in 1848, he developed a close relationship with black abolitionist Alexander Crummell and served as treasurer of the Bath Committee that supported Crummell’s Cambridge education. Crummell referred to Blair as his “chiefest friend” in Bath and frequently resided at Blair’s house during his stays in the city. Blair took an active interest in Crummell’s Liberian activities after 1853. Post Office Directory of Bath, 1858–1859 (Bath, England, 1859), 61; Temperley, British Antislavery, 119, 157–58; [Committee of Management], Im-

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provement of Negro Race, 3; Alexander Crummell to John Jay, 27 January 1852, Jay Family Papers, NNC [7:0370]; W[illiam] Blair to Lord Bishop of Liberia, 24 September 1854, Crummell Collection, NN-Sc. 5. Crummell refers to the commitee of prominent Bath philanthropists (known as the Bath Committee) who supported his attendance at Cambridge University.

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46. William Wells Brown to Editor, London Morning Advertiser 15 May 1852 Black lecturers educated British audiences about the mechanics of institutional racism in the United States and its impact on northern free blacks. A key component was their indictment of the moderate stance of American churches on the issue of slavery. Even more than Frederick Douglass, who earlier criticized the policies of the Scottish Free Church and the Evangelical Alliance, Brown demonstrated the implications of the American church’s failure to indict the practice of slaveholding. Brown’s 15 May 1852 letter to the London Morning Advertiser criticized the American Sunday School Union’s unwillingness to offend southern slaveholders. ASB, 2 March 1850; BT, 13 April 1850; FDP, 31 July 1851.

22 Cecil Street Strand [London, England] May 15, [1852] Sir: As a fugitive from American slavery, I have watched with no little degree of interest the discussion carried on for some days past in your paper, relative to the appearance of the Rev. Dr. Dyer 1 on the platform of Exeter Hall, at the anniversary of the Sunday-school Union.2 The letters have nearly all been good, your own strictures admirable, and I, for one, feel thankful that you have brought the subject before the public. If American pro-slavery divines and others are allowed to come with impunity before a British assembly and speak with approbation, it enables them to spread with much greater facility their opinions in favour of slavery when they are in private circles. Although Dr. Dyer and myself come from the same country, I am not acquainted with either him or his views on the subject of slavery. But I do know something of the institution which he represents. In the year 1832, the American Sunday School Union3 published a series of small books, containing an account of some of the most interesting persons and principle events mentioned in the Old Testament. These books were written in a style adapted to the comprehension of children, and well calculated to impress the young mind with a knowledge of the history of the Israelites, from Abraham to the birth of the Saviour. One

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of these volumes was entitled, The Story of Isaac, or the First Part of a Conversation between Mary and her Mother. Commencing with the call of Abraham, it contained a sketch of his life, and that of Isaac, until the marriage of the latter with Rebekah. Jacob and his Sons, or the Second Part of a Conversation between Mary and her Mother, began with the birth of Esau and Jacob, and contained a narrative of Esau’s sale of his birthright to Jacob; of the manner in which Rebekah obtained Isaac’s blessing for Jacob; of the hatred with which Jacob’s sons regarded their brother Joseph; of their selling Joseph into slavery; of his imprisonment, and subsequent elevation to great power; and of the removal of Jacob and his family to Egypt. You will see, Sir, that the design of the book was excellent, and intended to do good. This book was stereotyped, and for more than seventeen years was one of the most popular of the series. But during 1848 a slaveholding Vice-President of the American Sunday School Union, residing in South Carolina,4 discovered that a certain passage in Jacob and his Sons was discourteous towards the “Peculiar Institution,” and immediately wrote to headquarters, and demanded that the circulation of the offensive book be instantly stopped; and strange to say, the executive committee of the American Sunday School Union, at the demand of the slave power, dropped from its catalogue a book which had run through many editions, and was a great favourite with the people. The following, which I quote from the book that lies before me, is the offensive sentence, and is the only part of the work in which slavery is mentioned: “What is a slave, mother?” asked Mary; “is it a servant?” “Yes,” replied her mother, “slaves are servants, for they work for their masters, and wait on them; but they are not hired servants, but are bought and sold like beasts, and have nothing but what their master chooses to give them. They are obliged to work very hard, and sometimes their masters use them cruelly, beat them, and starve them, and kill them, for they have nobody to help them. Sometimes they are chained together, and driven about like beasts.” “Poor things!” said Mary; “but why do they not leave their masters when they use them ill? The other day Margaret left you, mother, because she was tired of living here, though you never treated her unkindly; I wonder that the slaves stay with their masters, who are not kind to them.” “They do not like to be slaves,” answered her mother; “but they are not permitted to leave their masters whenever they wish. Servants are paid for working for their masters and mistresses, and, if they do not like to stay, they may go and live somewhere else. But

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the poor unhappy slaves are obliged to stay with their master as long as he chooses to keep them. And if the master is tired of his slaves, then he may sell them to another if he wishes to.” After it became known that the book in question had been discontinued, several of the churches in the Free States, and auxiliary societies, became dissatisfied, and the officers of the parent society written to. Mr. Frederick A. Packard,5 one of the secretaries of the American Sunday School Union, by the order of the executive committee, in a letter under date of 3d of February, 1848 (and I quote from the letter which lies before me), says, “We dropped Jacob and his Sons from our catalogue because it contained a statement which our committee considered liable to serious misconstruction.” The serious “misconstruction” here referred to was that it might be thought to mean American slavery instead of the bondage referred to in Scriptures. And here be it remembered, that the book had been in circulation seventeen years, and not until the spirit of slavery demanded its expulsion, did the committee find that it “contained a statement which was liable to a serious misconstruction.” Thus, Sir, the American Sunday-School Union is not only pro-slavery, but it becomes the apologist of slavery, it bows down to the slave power, and acknowledges the right of the southern slaveholders to be the censors of the northern press. This truckling to southern arrogance is unworthy of a benevolent and religious society, dangerous to the morals of the rising generation, and disgraceful to the nation and Christianity. The whole affair is nothing less than a demand of the slaveowner and an acquiescence on the part of the Committee to suppress a valuable book, because it defined American slavery according to the slave code and general practice of slaveholders. This society is considered so pro-slavery, that many of the Northern churches have withheld from it their contributions. The following vote of the church at Farmington, Connecticut, which I quote from its own proceedings, which are before me, will, I think, satisfy your readers that the society which Dr. Dyer represents is pro-slavery, and unworthy of confidence, if, indeed, Dr. Dyer is not himself a slaveholder: VOTE OF THE CHURCH

Whereas, the American Sunday School Union, in their recent proceedings, in suppressing one of their books, called Jacob and his Sons, on account of an expression in said book on the subject of slavery, which was regarded by their Southern friends as offensive, have done what we cannot but regard as an act of subserviency to the slave power; and whereas, upon our corresponding with them on the subject, they have failed to give us any satisfactory explanation of their course, and having refused to restore the book, upon our request, to their catalogue of publications; therefore,

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Resolved, That the American Sunday School Union be stricken from the list of beneficiaries of this Church, and that we will seek some other channel for our beneficence to this cause. I am, Sir, your obedient Servant, WM. WELLS BROWN Morning Advertiser (London), 17 May 1852. 1. Heman Dyer (1810–1900) was born in Shaftesbury, Vermont, and throughout his life was involved in educational and missionary activities. Dyer worked for the American Sunday School Union and served as general manager of the Evangelical Knowledge Society. He visited England in 1852 and attended the annual meeting of the Sunday School Union. NCAB, 4:249; ACAB, 2:286. 2. Rev. Heman Dyer spoke at the well-attended annual meeting of the Sunday School Union on 6 May 1852 at Exeter Hall, London. The London-based union (founded in 1803) sought to improve Sunday school instruction, to provide social and educational opportunities for teachers and students, and to pressure Parliament for particular education and Sunday observance laws. By 1835 the interdenominational membership included nearly eight thousand schools, one hundred thousand teachers (primarily Dissenters), and one million students. The union continued to expand well into the twentieth century. TL, 7 May 1852; Thomas Walter Laqueur, Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working-Class Culture, 1780–1850 (New Haven, Conn., 1976), 33, 36–40, 116, 118, 250–51. 3. The American Sunday School Union, founded in 1824 in Philadelphia, brought more than seven hundred state and local societies under a single organizational umbrella to promote Bible study and the growth of Sunday schools for youth. Within six years, union enrollment reached 350,000. The union published the American Sunday School Magazine as well as a series of Sunday school lessons, which emphasized individual, social, economic, and civic obligations. Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), 34, 38, 41–43, 303n., 308n. 4. There was no slaveholding vice-president of the American Sunday School Union from South Carolina. The reference may be to a slaveholding vice-president of one of the union’s state auxiliaries in the South rather than to a national officer. Edwin R. Rice, The Sunday School Movement, 1780–1917, and the American Sunday School Union, 1817–1917 (Boston, Mass., 1917; reprint, New York, N.Y., 1971). 5. Frederick Adolphus Packard (1794–1867) was born in Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard, and practiced law. After serving in the Massachusetts legislature (1828–29), Packard became editor and secretary of the American Sunday School Union. He wrote or compiled more than forty pamphlets published by the union, edited several affiliated journals, and wrote eleven volumes of the Philadelphia Journal of Prison Discipline. ACAB, 4:618; Rice, Sunday School Movement, 174–77.

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47. William Craft to Editor, London Morning Advertiser [September 1852] William Craft was one of many black abolitionists in Britain who challenged the notion that slaves were content with their status. His reaction to Henry Morley’s article “North American Slavery,” which appeared in the 18 September 1852 issue of Charles Dickens’s journal Household Words, is illustrative. “North American Slavery” drew heavily upon an article by Casimir Leconte that was published in the French journal La Revue des deux mondes. It questioned why North American slaves appeared content while slaves in the Spanish colonies to the south risked any danger for freedom. Morley concluded that North American slaves were spiritually broken and lacked character. Craft’s 1 October 1852 letter to the editor of the London Morning Advertiser rejected Morley’s findings. It is likely that Craft received some editorial assistance from his close friend William Wells Brown. Craft had had only limited education when the letter appeared, and Brown frequently wrote article-length pieces for a number of newspapers, including the Morning Advertiser. [Henry Morley], “North American Slavery,” HW, September 1852; Charles Dickens, Uncollected Writings from Household Words, ed. Harry Stone, 2 vols. (Bloomington, Ind., 1968), 1:13–14, 2:433–42; Farrison, William Wells Brown, 199–201. SIR :1 I have been informed by my kind friend, Mr. Estlin,2 of Bristol, that you would insert any article that I might write in favour of my enslaved countrymen; therefore, I avail myself of the present opportunity to reply, so far as my limited education will allow me, to an article which I have just read in Mr. Dickens’ Household Words,3 of Sept. 18, 1852, and headed, “North American Slavery.” I write this, because I believe that the article is fully capable of misleading and prejudicing the English mind against the coloured population of the United States. The first very incorrect statement which the writer makes, is the denial of the truthfulness of the work entitled Uncle Tom’s Cabin.4 He says, that the main features of slavery, “as they exist in North America, are painted in the freshest colours.” He also says, that Uncle Tom’s Cabin “is not free from the fault of over-strained conclusions and violent extremes;” and then, to smooth over these malignant slurs, he goes on to eulogise the authoress,5 but in such a manner as ought to arouse her indignation rather than elicit her approbation. I beg to inform the writer that I have read the book carefully, but have

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not met with a single expression which I think is at all an exaggeration of the enormities of American slavery. The writer tells us that “Uncle Tom and Aunt Chloe, George Harris, &c., are, no doubt, rare specimens of slaves;” but I can unhesitatingly affirm that Mrs. Shelby is a much rarer specimen of a slaveholdress than they are of slaves. I say this, because my wife and myself were both born, and served as slaves upwards of twenty years, in the cruel state of Georgia; but, previous to making our escape (in 1848), we had never met with any such humane a person as Mrs. Shelby. Neither were we blessed with the good fortune of having a Master George6 to teach us how to make g and q, or read the Holy Scriptures, as did poor Uncle Tom. I say Uncle Tom, because, alas! he died the dreadful, though victorious, death of thousands. The writer makes another grand mistake when he asserts that “It is no question, in the present day, with any man who speaks the English language, whether slavery ought to be abolished;” but every person that has visited the United States, or watched the political movement of that country, can see at once that the great mass of the American people are favourable to, or supporters of their system of slavery; in short, the late Mr. Calhoun,7 a senator from South Carolina, has repeatedly stood up in the Senate of the United States and said they must have slaves, and if they could not have black they must have white ones. And that same feeling now exists in and out of the legislative halls. The writer also says that “the only question that awaits solution now is, how to abolish it;” but I am sorry to say that that question has not been discussed in Congress for years, if ever, though, it is true, the question of slavery is often introduced there, by such men as J. R. Giddings8 and John P. Hale,9 and a few more of humanity’s pure sparks, who happen to be floating upon the great mass of American corruption; but even they are often nearly extinguished by slaveholders and their time-serving followers. But there is one thing which they have discussed, and that to my sorrow—I mean the infamous Fugitive Slave Law, which compelled my wife and myself, as well as thousands of other refugees, to sacrifice what little we had accumulated in the nominally free states, and fly the second time for our liberties. But a still stronger evidence that the Americans are generally in favour of slavery is to be found in the plundering of Mexico, and the invasion of Cuba, and spending the greater part of 1850 in discussion whether California should be admitted into the Union as a free or slave state, and after spending all that time, and throwing away a great quantity of the people’s money, they finally came to the conclusion that California should take care of herself, and the consequence is that slave holders are rapidly flocking in there, with great numbers of slaves.10 But now let us pay particular attention to another of the writer’s very absurd expressions. He says, “that the Americans deserve credit for establishing their system of slavery upon principles very much more hu-

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mane than those adopted by the Cubans.” Now, in regard to this, there can be but one opinion in the heart of every true Christian; that is, the man who steals one sheep is just as much a thief as he who steals two; or the nation that wilfully deprives the humblest human being of liberty, is just as guilty before God as if the deed were perpetrated upon the greatest man that ever lived; for Christ has said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” But from what I have read of Cuban slavery, and from the conversations which I have had with refugees from that island, I am fully convinced that slavery does not exist there in any worse form than it does in the United States. The writer then implies that the American slaves are not hunted down with bloodhounds, as is the case in Cuba. But I am fully prepared to deny that incorrect assertion, for I have frequently seen the bloodhounds on the chase of slaves and have seen the poor trembling victims, after they were caught and handcuffed, come limping through the streets of Macon; yes, limping, because they were so badly bitten and bruised, in the combat with the dogs and hunters, that they could scarcely hobble along to gaol; and if the master was not present to pay expenses, and take the slave in custody, he or she, as the case may be, were put in close confinement, and an advertisement inserted in the papers, something like the following ones: (From the Milledgeville Recorder,11 Nov. 6, 1838.) A negro man has been lodged in the common gaol of this country, who says his name is Jupiter. He has lost all his front teeth, above and below; speaks very indistinctly, is very lame, so that he can hardly walk. J. B. Randall, gaoler, Cobb Co., Georgia.12 But mark the following from the Fayetteville Observer, June 27, 1838: Taken and committed to gaol a negro girl named Nancy, who is supposed to belong to Spencer P. Wright,13 of the State of Georgia. She is about 30 years of age, and is a lunatic. The owner is requested to come forward, prove property, pay charges, and take her away, or she will be sold to pay the gaol fees. Frederick Homes, Gaoler.14 The writer also says, that the ranchero or slave catcher, of Cuba, is responsible for any damage that the slave may sustain while being captured; but that is by no means the case in the United States, for the hunters generally have instructions similar to the following: (From the Macon Georgia Telegraph.)15 About the 1st of March last, the negro man Ransom left me without the least provocation whatever; I will give a reward of 20

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dollars for said negro, if taken dead or alive; and if killed in any attempt, an advance of 5 dollars will be paid. Bryant Johnson,16 Crawford Co., Georgia. (From the Wilmington (North Carolina) Advertiser 17 of July 13, 1838.) 100 dollars will be paid to any person who may apprehend, and safely confine in any jail in this state, a certain negro man, named Alfred; and the same reward will be paid if satisfactory evidence is given of his having been killed. He has one or more scars on one of his hands, caused by his having been shot. I have no doubt but that it appears very strange to English people to see an advanced reward offered for a dead man, but American slaveholders would rather see twenty slaves killed than that one should escape from slavery; for, whenever a slave escapes, it makes all the rest of them in the neighbourhood pant with double vigour after liberty: but every one that is killed while attempting to escape strikes terror and submission to the hearts of thousands. The writer makes a very ridiculous comparison when he says, that the American slave’s condition, “as so much live stock, is good. They are, on the whole, fed as amply and are as well treated as the upper class of European horses.” Shame upon the man who dares to speak thus of God’s own image! And, aside from that, the statement is utterly untrue; for it is a well known fact, that the allowance for plantation slaves is a peck of Indian corn per week, or a like measure of rice, and, occasionally, a small portion of meat is added. But, just let us look for a moment at the great contrast between the treatment of convicts and slaves; in the American prisons the daily allowance of food is equivalent to one pound of meat, one pound of bread, and one pound of vegetables. It varies a little in some of them, but is generally equivalent to it. But let us see how it is here in England. If I have been properly informed, the daily allowance of food “in the Millbank General Penitentiary,18 is one and a half pounds of bread, one pound of potatoes, six ounces of beef, with half a pint of broth therefrom.” The preceding statements show what convicts were allowed a few years ago, but I have no doubt they are allowed more now. Now let us take a hasty glance at the rations which are allowed to the Roman slaves: “The monthly allowance to slaves in Rome, was called ‘dimensum.’ The dimensum was an allowance of wheat, or of other grain, which consisted of five modii, or a peck and a half of measure,” just double the quantity which slaves are allowed by law in North Carolina, and six quarts a week more than is allowed American slaves generally; and, in addition to this, they had a daily allowance (diarium) besides a monthly allowance of money, amounting to about one half a

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penny a day. Of course, there is a little exception to this rule—slaves employed in towns fare better than those on farms, but they are as a drop compared to the ocean. Now, the question naturally arises, how is it possible for slaves to live and multiply under such treatment? I will tell you, it is by slaves hunting in the forest at night, for racoons and oposs, and fishing by torch light, and occasionally cultivating a small portion of their masters’ old exhausted land, by working it at nights and on Sundays; this and the peck of Indian corn only, as above mentioned, is all that the great mass of American slaves have to exist upon. But were white men thus held and treated, the whole civilised world would come down like a mighty avalanche, and crush the whole system to atoms. But now let us notice another of the writers’ errors; he says, “the inherent power of reproduction” of slaves “more than balances the amount of physical decay, and it is not, therefore, found necessary to import any fresh stock from abroad.” It is true that they increase in numbers, but it is not true that there are none smuggled in; and in evidence of this fact, I will only call his attention to the following: The New Orleans Courier,19 of the 15th of Feb., 1839, says, “It is believed that African negroes have been repeatedly introduced into the United States. The number and the proximity of the Florida ports to the island of Cuba, make it no difficult matter, nor is our extended frontier on the Sabine and Red rivers at all unfavourable to the smuggler.” And Mr. Wright,20 of Maryland, also said, in a speech in Congress, that there were “15,000 slaves annually brought into the country.” And, aside from this, there are hundreds of free coloured persons kidnapped into slavery every year. The writer says that “Delaware has abolished the principle of slavery,” but that is not true, for there are hundreds of slaves in Delaware up to the present day. The writer also says “that in the majority of cases, negroes have been depressed so far towards the state of simple beasts of burden, that they have acquired the hearts and brains of horses and oxen.” In answer to this, I will only ask the gentleman whether he really thinks the American slave-holders deserve any credit for this, or is it humane treatment that has reduced three millions of human beings to that deplorable condition? He further says, that “it is the greatest horror of the slave system to our minds, when men can live contented under so complete an abrogation of their manhood.” I do not blame the writer for thus feeling, if the statement were true; but it is entirely incorrect. For I do not believe that the slaves of the United States would average one in ten thousand, who would be content to remain in slavery a moment, if they could possibly escape. Nor do I believe God would suffer man to be so reduced, as not to feel his wrongs.

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It is very true that slaves often appear contented, because they well understand, that if they should appear to the contrary, it would only make their chains pinch much harder; in fact, I never appeared more happy than I did just before my escape. But let us again think for a moment upon this expression. He says that, “They have acquired the hearts and brains of horses, and of oxen.” Now, if by any foul means the writer should be snatched from the high seas, and reduced to slavery in Morocco, or elsewhere, I do not believe that the meanest of us would throw our humble influence into the scale which would sink him deeper and deeper into degradation. The writer’s evidence that American slaves are well treated and happy is to be found in this sentence: “In the year 1850, out of three million slaves, only a thousand fled away in search of liberty.” I think that is quite a large number when we take into consideration the difficulties of escape. I wonder if the writer well understands, that whenever a slave is caught off his master’s plantation without a written order, signed by the master, any black-hearted villain that happens to be covered with a white skin can legally arrest and imprison him, and should the slave resist, the white man can blow his brains out, and all that is necessary for the murderer to say is, that the slave resists, and he is clear; and if the slave could by any means forge a pass, it would not be sufficient to pass him out of a slave state into a free one. But what makes it yet more difficult to escape is, the great rivers of the country, for no slave can cross at any bridge or ferry unless he has the pass above mentioned, but if by chance he has wound his way through the dense swamps and swam the smaller streams, which lead him to the banks of the mighty rivers that form the geographical boundary between the free and slave states,21 he there finds, to his surprise, men with their guns and bloodhounds traversing the shores night and day to seize the poor liberty-seeking fugitive; but the slave sees the promised land on the other side of the river, and draws its free air into his lungs, which invigorates him, and often a desperate struggle ensues similar to the following: Four negro men, the property of John Reves22 and David Cox,23 two citizens of that county, seduced by the advice of that notorious and infamous abolition emissary, Bacon, who has been prowling about through that county, and Russel, in this State and in Ashe and other counties in North Carolina, on the Virginia border, ran away from their masters, intending, no doubt, to make for Ohio, or some other lawless and forsworn state of the confederacy, there to be harboured and worked and worked and harboured, as occasion might allow or require. They took the course of [the] New River, intending, it is believed, to pursue that river to its mouth, there to meet the colleagues, hypocrites, and villains, of Bacon, Crooks, and

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McBride, it turned out, however, that as they travelled, and while yet in Grayson county, eight or ten miles from the Wythe line, they were fallen in with by five or six white men of Grayson, who undertook to stop and arrest them. The negroes were armed with knives, spears, and with one or two weapons made of broken English scythes. The white men had one or two guns. We are not prepared to give the particulars of the combat. The negroes assailed the whites, and the scythes were used with terrible effect. Samuel Bartlett24 was struck in the forehead and his head split open, cutting into the brain an inch or two the whole length of the head. He lived about eight hours. Alfred Bartlett,25 his brother, who had a gun, and who fired it foolishly, merely to wound, in attempting to relieve his brother, had his left wrist and hand badly cut, almost severed from the arm. Yet, after this, he knocked two of the negroes down, and left them for dead. One of the negroes thus knocked down, had stabbed a Mr. Wilcox, whom he had under him on the ground, through the neck, and was in the act of inflicting a more deadly wound, when thus prevented by the wounded Bartlett. Mr. John Clemmonts was struck by one of the negroes, who used a scythe, across the head, and his skull was cloven from temple to temple, the brain cut in upon the whole way from one to two inches, and yet there are hopes of his recovery. Mr. Wm. B. Hale26 was severely injured with rocks thrown by the negroes. Notwithstanding the terrible wounds inflicted upon the white men, two of the negroes were secured, the other two (both believed to be wounded with gun shots) made their escape, and so far as we know, are yet out, though hotly pursued. The two taken are in Grayson Gaol, and will be tried for their lives, for insurrection and murder. We call this an insurrection; it is, in a small way. This field of operation of the emissary Bacon, has but few slaves—but this only foreshadows the result when these infamous men and their God forsaken allies, political and fanatic, shall have dissatisfied and contaminated masses of slaves in large slave districts. Wyetheville Republican,27 Sept., 1851. But notwithstanding these many difficulties of escape, there are at the present time over 30,000 refugees in Canada, and who, I have no doubt, may some day prove useful to Britain, to help settle the fishery, or other questions.28 The writer speaks in a very disrespectful tone of the free coloured population of the United States, for not being willing to leave their native land and seek an asylum on the wild and sickly shores of Africa. But why is it that they are not willing to be sent to Liberia, under the auspices of

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the Colonisation Society?29 It is because that society is their deadly enemy, and every universal lover of liberty must see it in this light, when they know that its President and chief supporters are slaveholders,30 and who have never raised the weight of their finger against slavery, but have tried in every way to expel the free population, so as to have slavery on a firmer basis; and never can they get many intelligent free coloured people off to Liberia while slavery exists, because the great majority of them have friends, relatives, and even children, in slavery. Now, every person knows that it is the instinct of all animal creation to cling for a long time around the cage which confines their young; and if the writer, or the Colonisation Society, wishes the free coloured people to leave the country, they must abolish slavery, and then I have no doubt but that thousands of them will flock to the shores of their ancestors. But the strongest evidence yet that the Colonisation Society does not truly have the coloured people’s interest at heart, is the fact, that nearly every member of Congress is a member of, or in favour of, the Colonisation Society, and will not recognise Liberia as a free republic, as England and other nations have done. Neither will they recognise Hayti, who so nobly achieved her liberty from France nearly half a century ago, and has been recognised by her as a free and independent state for nearly twenty years. Hayti is of such commercial importance to the United States that the principal merchants of Boston petitioned Congress a few weeks since to have her recognised as an independent State, but the American politicians scorned the idea, merely because the Haytians are coloured.31 But I will not trespass further on your space, having extended this communication to too great a length already. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, WILLIAM CRAFT Morning Advertiser (London), 1 October 1852. 1. James Grant edited the London Morning Advertiser during the 1850s and 1860s. A London daily in publication since 1794, it was Liberal, anti-Corn Law, and advocated free trade and the abolition of capital punishment. It had the second largest circulation of any London newspaper, eclipsed only by the Times. Newspaper Press Directory, 1846 (London, 1846), 4; Bourne, English Newspapers, 2:159, 204, 224; Newspaper Press Directory, 1851 (London, 1851), 73. 2. John Bishop Estlin (1785–1855) practiced ophthalmic surgery in Bristol from 1808 until his death, devoting much of his income to humanitarian causes (such as education, temperance, and the blind asylum) and establishing a free dispensary for the treatment of eye diseases. His interest in American slavery dates from the English visit of Samuel J. May in 1843. A staunch Garrisonian, he considered the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society too sectarian and resigned from it in 1855. Estlin financed and coedited the Anti-Slavery Advocate and hosted many visiting Garrisonians and several fugitive slaves, including Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, and the Crafts. His only child, Mary, supported

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him in his antislavery activities and was one of the leaders of the Bristol and Clifton Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. DNB, 6:876–77; Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 10–11. 3. Charles Dickens (1812–1870) was the leading popular novelist in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. He toured America twice, criticized American ways, and particularly condemned slavery. Dickens also edited the successful popular journal Household Words. Published between 1850 and 1859, it sought to introduce the Victorian family to “the knowledge of many social wonders, good and evil.” Many writers contributed articles to Household Words. Wanting the journal to speak with a single voice, Dickens rewrote and edited with a strong hand. DNB, 5:925–37; Edgar Johnson, Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph, 2 vols. (New York, N.Y., 1952), 1:3–5; Dickens, Uncollected Writings from Household Words, 1:13– 14. 4. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s first novel. Initially published as forty installments in the National Era (between June 1851 and April 1852), it was soon republished as Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly (Boston, Mass., 1852). It sold over three hundred thousand copies the first year and was made into a popular stage drama. A fictionalized indictment of slavery, the book was well received in both Britain and the North and helped crystallize northern sentiment against slavery. Southern reviewers vilified Stowe as a sexually driven Negrophile and challenged the accuracy of the book’s depiction of the slaveholding system. Within three years of the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, some thirty anti-Tom novels appeared in the South. Stowe penned The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Boston, Mass., 1853) to provide evidence to rebut her attackers. David C. Roller and Robert W. Twyman, eds., The Encyclopedia of Southern History (Baton Rouge, La., 1979), 1259; NAW, 6:399; Lib, 9 September 1853; William R. Taylor, Cavalier and Yankee: The Old South and American National Character (New York, N.Y., 1961), 307. 5. Craft refers to Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896), a leading American novelist of the nineteenth century. Stowe’s antislavery trilogy, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1853), and Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), profoundly influenced public debate about slavery. Stowe, the Connecticut-born daughter of Lyman Beecher, an abolitionist minister and director of Lane Theological Seminary, married Calvin Ellis Stowe in 1836. DAB, 18:115–20. 6. Uncle Tom, Aunt Chloe, George Harris, Mrs. Shelby, and Master George are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 7. John C. Calhoun. 8. Joshua Reed Giddings (1795–1864) was born in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, and for twenty years (1838–58) represented Ohio as a militant antislavery congressman, being elected successively as a Whig, a Free Soiler, and a Republican. He opposed the spread of slavery, fought for preservation of the Union, and proposed that presidential power be used to free the slaves in event of war. In 1861 Lincoln appointed him consul general to Canada, a post Giddings held until his death. DAB, 7:260–61. 9. John Parker Hale (1806–1873) was born in New Hampshire. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat in 1842, Hale’s opposition to the expansion of slavery caused his reelection defeat in 1844, but a New Hampshire

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antislavery coalition sent him to the Senate in 1846. Hale became a leader of political antislavery forces in the late 1840s and was the unsuccessful Free Soil party presidential candidate in 1852. He returned to the Senate in 1855 and served there until appointed minister to Spain in 1865. DAB, 8:105–7. 10. Craft refers to several events that abolitionists believed demonstrated the influence of the “slave power conspiracy” in American politics. These included the conduct of the Mexican War (1846–48), the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) that ended the war, the privately sponsored Lopez filibustering expeditions into Cuba (1850–51), and the Compromise of 1850. By the Guadalupe Hidalgo agreement, Mexico ceded California and most of the present American Southwest to the United States for $15,000,000. New states to be carved from these lands threatened to disrupt the congressional balance between free and slave states. After months of debate, Congress determined in 1850 that new states formed from the Mexican cession (including California) could popularly decide whether they would be admitted as a free or a slave state. 11. The Milledgeville Southern Reporter was founded in Milledgeville, Georgia, in 1809. The paper merged with the Milledgeville Union in 1873 to become the Milledgeville Union and Recorder. Gregory, American Newspapers, 108. 12. A James B. Randall (1795–?), who lived in Cobb County, Georgia, is listed in the 1850 census as an editor. United States Census, 1850. 13. Spencer P. Wright (1805–?) was a DeKalb County, Georgia, farmer. United States Census, 1850. 14. Frederick Homes (1782–?) lived with the family of William Thompson in Dooley County, Georgia. United States Census, 1850. 15. The Macon Telegraph was founded in 1826 as a weekly, became a daily newspaper in 1831, and ceased publication in 1906. Gregory, American Newspapers, 107. 16. Craft probably refers to Bryant Johnson (1818–?), a Troup County, Georgia, planter. United States Census, 1850. 17. The Wilmington (North Carolina) Advertiser published weekly between 1835 and 1840. Gregory, American Newspapers, 510. 18. Millbank Penitentiary, in London, was built between 1813 and 1816 in accordance with the views Jeremy Bentham expressed in The Panopticon, or Inspection House (1791). The experimental prison was judged a failure and changed back to a traditional prison in 1843. Wheatley, London Past and Present, 2:546–47. 19. The New Orleans Louisiana Courier began publication in 1807 as a triweekly newspaper in both French and English. It ceased publication in 1860 as a daily. Gregory, American Newspapers, 242. 20. Craft evidently refers to Robert Wright (1752–1826), a Maryland lawyer and legislator. Wright was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1801, resigned to become governor of Maryland (1806–9), later served several terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, and was district judge of the lower Eastern Shore district of Maryland from 1823 until his death. Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774– 1971 (Washington, D.C., 1971), 1961. 21. Two major rivers separated the free from the slave states. The Ohio River served as the boundary between antebellum Virginia and Kentucky and three free states—Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The Mississippi River separated Illinois from slaveholding Missouri.

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22. John Reves, Jr. (1829–?), was the son of John Reves, a sixty-four-year-old, Grayson County, Virginia, farmer. United States Census, 1850. 23. David Cox (1790–?) was a Grayson County, Virginia, farmer. United States Census, 1850. 24. Samuel Bartlett (1817–?) was a Grayson County, Virginia, farmer. United States Census, 1850. 25. Alfred Bartlett (1821–?) was the unmarried son of William Bartlett, a sixtysix-year-old Grayson County, Virginia, farmer. United States Census, 1850. 26. William B. Hale (1811–?) was a Grayson County, Virginia, farmer. United States Census, 1850. 27. The weekly Wytheville Republican and Virginia Constitutionalist was founded in 1844; it became the Democratic Sentinel in 1856. Lester J. Cappon, Virginia Newspapers, 1821–1935 (New York, N.Y., 1936), 231. 28. Fishing rights in the maritime provinces were a long-standing issue between Canada and the United States. By 1852 the controversy was so severe that both governments sent naval ships to protect their interests. The matter was resolved by treaty in 1854. 29. Craft refers to the American Colonization Society. 30. Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky was president of the American Colonization Society until July 1852. The post remained vacant until February 1853. During 1852, eleven of the twenty-six life directors of the ACS and many of its supporters came from slave states, particularly Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Virginia. AR, January, July, December 1852, February 1853. 31. Although Haiti declared its independence in 1804 and Liberia acted similarly in 1847, the U.S. Congress repeatedly refused to grant them diplomatic recognition long after many European nations had done so. No serious action was taken until 1862, when the exigencies of war forced Congress to extend formal recognition to both black nations. Rayford W. Logan, The Diplomatic Relations of the United States with Haiti, 1776–1891 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1941), 112, 191–207, 277, 298, 302–3; James A. Padgett, “Ministers to Liberia and their Diplomacy,” JNH 22:50 (January 1937).

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48. Henry Highland Garnet and the Weims Family Purchase Charles B. Ray to Henry Highland Garnet 27 September 1852

Note by Henry Highland Garnet 16 October 1852 Henry Highland Garnet, like many of his colleagues, found that antislavery developments in America might redirect the aims of a British lecture tour. During his last few months in Britain, Garnet responded to an appeal from black associate Charles B. Ray, a cofounder and director of the New York State Vigilance Committee. On 27 September 1852, Ray wrote to Garnet seeking assistance for John Weims, a Washington, D.C., free black whose family was in slavery. The Weims family included John Weims’s slave wife and seven slave children. An eighth child, daughter Stella Weims, had escaped and was living with the Garnets in Britain. John Weims went to New York City in spring 1852 to raise the necessary funds to purchase his family out of slavery. He collected $600, but in the interval, the family was sold for $3,300 to a Washington slave trader, who resold two children and held the remainder in local “slave pens” for resale in the deep South. Weims urgently continued to raise funds in several northeastern cities and collected an additional $300 while Ray organized an American subscription drive to obtain the balance. After receiving Ray’s appeal, Garnet immediately launched a British subscription drive. In early November, Garnet reported to the North British Daily Mail that his efforts in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Glasgow, and Edinburgh had raised half the required £600 in three weeks. But the effort was only partially successful. Later in 1852, John Weims purchased his wife and two younger sons, but his three older boys were sold to slave traders. By 1855 the two other daughters were also free. Schor, Henry Highland Garnet, 111; GO, 30 October, 18 December 1852; I, 6, 13, 20 November 1852; NC, 17 November 1852; ASRL, 1 May 1853; CN, 29 January 1853; “How Ann Maria Weims Came to Be Transformed into Boy Joe,” Leeds Anti-Slavery Juvenile Series (Leeds, England, 1856), 1–7.

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Document 48 New York, [New York] September 27, 1852

Rev. H[enry] H[ighland] Garnet DEAR SIR : I write to you in behalf of John Weims, the father of the young woman who is residing with you.1 While seated by his side, a few days since, I promised him to write to you, and make a statement of his case. I think it was late in March, or early in April, that he arrived in this city, on his way to Canada, or elsewhere, in search of his daughter and her uncle, whom she accompanied from the South. His object, doubtless, was to see if he could depend upon his daughter to raise anything to help him to purchase her mother and the children, as he had always been promised by the old master, now deceased, and recently by his heirs, that he should have the privilege of purchasing them at a very low price, and towards this object he had begun to raise the money. Will you believe, that when Weims returned, he found his wife and children in the slave-pen, the heirs having sold them to the traders for 3,300 dollars! We can judge his feelings, but cannot describe them. He immediately went to work to negotiate for them. Mr.——, of Washington city, offered to loan him 1,600 dollars, if he could get the balance. After a little, he found this impossible in the time allotted him. They then offered him his wife and youngest child for 900 dollars. This he attempted to raise; and after having got together about 400 dollars at home, he came North—first obtaining three white men to petition the county of Montgomery, Maryland, to grant him a leave of absence of thirty days, with privilege of returning. He spent a short time in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York, and obtained about 200 dollars, leaving a balance of 300 to raise for the purchase of the mother and the young child. The other children, five boys and a beautiful girl of sixteen, will have to go. Mr.——, of Washington, and others, will endeavour to keep their eyes upon them, and see into whose hands they fall, with the hope of getting them back when the means shall be raised. Will you lay this case before British abolitionists, and solicit a little assistance? Yours truly, CHARLES B. RAY , President of the New York Committee of Vigilance for the Aid of Fugitive Slaves Anti-Slavery Reporter (London), 1 December 1852. Glasgow, [Scotland] October 16, 1852 The young woman referred to has been an inmate of my family a little more than two years. She was discovered in her place of refuge through

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the treachery of Dr. R. S., of Geneva, in the State of New York, while I was then a resident pastor. She was conveyed away at midnight, and was concealed till my family joined me in this country,2 where human beings are not chased and hunted like brutes, and heartbroken fathers do not have to buy their wives and children to save them from slavery and pollution. John Weims, the father of this afflicted family, is a free man, but the wife is a slave. The young woman is overwhelmed with grief, and presents in her person an object of intense mental suffering. Her distress is so great that I fear she will lose her reason. On the second day of November I expect to sail for the island of Jamaica, the future field of my missionary labour, and she will accompany my family. Whatever is done must be done quickly. No one will ever have a cause to regret that he was instrumental, in the hands of our Heavenly Father, in restoring this unhappy family to each other’s society. HENRY H. GARNET Anti-Slavery Reporter (London), 1 December 1852. 1. When Henry Highland Garnet made his first trip to England, he was accompanied by Stella Weims, a young fugitive slave from Washington, D.C. The Garnets eventually adopted Stella, and she lived with them during their stay in Britain. Stella Weims accompanied the Garnets to Jamaica in the winter of 1852. She died three years later of a “bilious fever.” Schor, Henry Highland Garnet, 111, 129– 30; FDP, 21 March 1856. 2. Garnet’s family probably joined him in Britain during the fall of 1851, when funds for their traveling expenses were provided by Gerrit Smith and at least one British women’s antislavery association. Garnet’s family members were his wife, Julia, an infant son born in October 1850, a daughter named Mary, and Stella Weims. Garnet’s seven-year-old son James Crummell Garnet had died of an illness in Geneva, New York, during March 1851. FDP, 11 March 1852; ASRL, January 1851; Schor, Henry Highland Garnet, 110, 130; Pasternak, “Rise Now and Fly to Arms,” 108, 112–13; Earl Ofari, “Let Your Motto Be Resistance:” The Life of Henry Highland Garnet (Boston, Mass., 1979), 64–65.

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49. Ellen Craft to Editor, Anti-Slavery Advocate 26 October 1852 Proslavery propagandists argued that the “peculiar institution” continued to exist in part because slaves were contented with their status. The propagandists further insinuated that emancipated blacks would be unable to endure freedom’s responsibilities. Many black abolitionists in Britain rebutted both charges. As Ellen Craft awaited the birth of her first child in the summer of 1852, a rumor circulated in London (and in southern newspapers) that she was disillusioned with freedom and wanted to return to slavery in Georgia. Craft dismissed the false accusation with a note to the Anti-Slavery Advocate, which was widely reprinted. ASA, November 1852; Lib, 17 December 1852; John Bishop Estlin to William Lloyd Garrison, 7, 11 June 1852, Antislavery Collection, MB; SDS, 16 September 1852. Ockham School near Ripley, Surrey, [England] Oct[ober] 26, 1852 Dear Sir:1 I feel very much obliged to you for informing me of the erroneous report which has been so extensively circulated in the American newspapers: “That I had placed myself in the hands of an American gentleman in London, on condition that he would take me back to the family who held me as a slave in Georgia.” So I write these few lines merely to say that the statement is entirely unfounded, for I have never had the slightest inclination whatever of returning to bondage; and God forbid that I should ever be so false to liberty as to prefer slavery in its stead. In fact, since my escape from slavery, I have got on much better in every respect than I could have possibly anticipated. Though, had it been to the contrary, my feelings in regard to this would have been just the same, for I had much rather starve in England, a free woman, than be a slave for the best man that ever breathed upon the American continent. Yours very truly, ELLEN CRAFT P.S. Mr. Craft joins me in kind regards to yourself and family. Anti-Slavery Advocate (London), December 1852. 1. Richard D. Webb and John Bishop Estlin edited the Anti-Slavery Advocate, a national British Garrisonian newspaper, which was printed monthly by Webb in Dublin from October 1852 to May 1863. The Advocate was founded during the summer of 1852 by the Anglo-American Anti-Slavery Association, an ephemeral

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Garrisonian group organized by Estlin, George Thompson, William Farmer, Robert Smith, and William Wells Brown. The monthly was financed largely by Estlin, Wilson Armistead of Leeds, and the Bristol and Clifton Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. London publishers William Tweedie (1852–61) and Henry James Tresidder (1862–63) distributed the paper; Tweedie was assisted in the early years by a small network of agents in Belfast, Liverpool, Brighton, Edinburgh, Manchester, Devonport, and Lewes. Livelier than its competitor, the staid Anti-Slavery Reporter, the Advocate regularly reported on British Garrisonian meetings and other Anglo-American antislavery news and criticized proslavery people and organizations. ASA, October 1852, January 1855, January 1862, May 1863; Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 387; Temperley, British Antislavery, 239; Rice, Scots Abolitionists, 165.

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50. Speech by Edmund Kelly Delivered at Baptist Chapel, Dublin, Ireland 7 April 1853 Several black lecturers discovered that an Irish tour could rejuvenate a flagging British antislavery mission. Beginning with Charles Lenox Remond’s 1841 visit, and including later appearances by Edmund Kelly and William G. Allen, blacks reached enthusiastic audiences in the Emerald Isle. Kelly, a fugitive slave, visited England in 1852 to raise money to complete the purchase of his own and his family’s freedom. His failure to engage a trusted official to certify the integrity of his collection efforts caused criticism and led some reformers to question his credibility. This prompted Kelly to finish his fund-raising campaign in Ireland. In the spring of 1853, he gave a series of wellreceived lectures in Dublin on American slavery. On 7 April 1853, Kelly spoke before a large audience at Baptist Chapel on Lower Abbey Street, Dublin. Kelly’s Irish tour raised the necessary funds to free himself and his family. FJD, 8, 13 April 1853. The Rev. Mr. Kelly,1 who presents a highly intellectual and gentlemanly appearance, in the course of his address, gave a short sketch of his own history. He stated that his father was an Irishman, but his mother being a slave all her children, according to the American law, became the property of the slaveholder who claimed her. When about sixteen years of age he was hired out to a schoolmaster, and being seized with a strong desire to learn, he induced some of the schoolboys by acts of kindness and small rewards to give him instruction, and so earnestly did he apply himself that at the end of twelve months he had learned to read and write. Having acquired a considerable amount of information he was engaged as a preacher by the Baptist body, of which he had become a member, and who paid, by way of compensation for his services, two pounds per month to the lady claiming him as her slave. After some time she became a bankrupt, and having received from her intimation of the fact, he proceeded to the northern states with the intention of remaining there until some arrangement could be effected with the creditors for his manumission. By his labours and strict economy he acquired nearly £500., which, together with £200. advanced to him as a loan, he paid as a ransom for his wife and children. Eight hundred dollars, or £167., was demanded as the price of his own freedom, and when he was preparing to make up this sum, the fugitive slave law came into operation, and he was compelled to fly to these countries. He has realised nearly the whole of his own purchase-money, which once made up, it is his intention to

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return to his own country and to his family. In the course of his address he gave, in feeling language, a sad account of the wretched condition of the slaves in the southern states of America. He referred to the first part of the third verse of the 13th chapter of Hebrews—”Remember them that are in bond, as bound with them;” and went on to say that in this passage all Christians were called on to sympathise with and advocate the cause of all who were suffering in slavery. In order to do that it was necessary that they should be acquainted with the condition of these slaves, and he proposed to give them some information respecting that class with which he was particularly identified, the slave in the southern portion of the United States. Of the thirty-one states comprising the American union, sixteen were nominally free states, and in the remaining fifteen slavery was sanctioned by law. A large majority of the inhabitants of the union resided in the northern states, where slavery was prohibited. According to the last census there were in the southern or slave states, 300,000 slaveholders and 3,400,000 slaves, being nearly one-seventh of the entire population. In open violation of the letter and spirit of the Declaration of Independence, the right of the coloured race to be free was denied in the southern states, in which the practice and the declaration were as far asunder as the east from the west. But that was not the only evil of which he had to complain, for there prevailed a wicked system of keeping the slave in absolute ignorance. A school had never been established in the southern states for the instruction of the slaves. Not only were they kept in barbarous ignorance, but their animal appetites and passions were cultivated and excited, so that they almost immediately became even more degraded than the beasts of the field. Having given a fearful account of the system of slave dealing, of a slave auction, and of the heartrending scenes he had witnessed on those occasions in the breaking of family ties, separating husband from wife, and children from parents, the reverend gentleman towards the conclusion of his lecture impressed upon all Christians the duty they owed humanity of assisting to effect the abolition of slavery. The discourse, which was strictly confined to the subject as announced, and which might have been delivered before any mixed audience, was listened to with great attention. We understand that the Rev. Mr. Kelly will deliver in a few days a second lecture on the same subject in some of the public buildings of the city. Freeman’s Journal (Dublin), 8 April 1853. 1. Edmund Kelly (1817–?) was born in Columbia, Tennessee, the son of an Irishman and a slave. He became the property of Nancy White but, at age sixteen, was hired out to a local schoolmaster, whose students secretly taught him to read and write. In September 1839, he married Paralee Walker, a mulatto slave. They had four children during the next seven years: Dolly Orphelia, Robert Edmond,

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William Dempsey, and Alfred. An 1838 conversion experience stimulated Kelly’s religious interests. Five years later, he became pastor of the black Columbia First Baptist Church, where he remained until 1845, when he became a missionary preacher for the Concord Baptist Association in the Kentucky-Tennessee region. White permitted this in exchange for a monthly fee from Kelly. In late 1846, White was threatened by insolvency, and fearing Kelly’s transfer to a harsher master, she arranged for his escape. Kelly preached in Ohio, New York, and Boston prior to becoming pastor of the black Second Baptist Church in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in September 1848. By the following year, he was a member of the American Baptist Missionary Convention, a black organization in whose financial, educational, and missionary ventures he played a leading role during the following three decades. During 1850–51, Kelly and a local Baptist association solicited funds to purchase his wife and children from Columbia farmer James Walker, who was Paralee Kelly’s father. The purchase was completed, but Kelly incurred an $865 loan to hire an intermediary to purchase and transport his family to New Bedford. Because he also needed money to purchase himself, he resigned his New Bedford parish to concentrate on fund raising and published a brief narrative, A Family Redeemed From Bondage (1851), to generate interest. In 1852 he sailed for England, fearing recapture by slave catchers and hoping to collect the balance of the money he required. Kelly raised £237 in London, Leeds, and Bristol, which retired the debt incurred in freeing his family but left £166 uncollected toward his own purchase. When the Anti-Slavery Advocate expressed dissatisfaction with Kelly’s collection arrangements and questioned his credibility, Kelly departed for Ireland, where he successfully completed his mission. He returned to New Bedford in the summer of 1853. By 1855, he pastored the Oak Street Church in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was a delegate to the Colored National Convention in Philadelphia that October. In 1860 he returned to the New Bedford parish, remaining there until 1868, when he traveled for nine months as a missionary preacher through Tennessee and Georgia, raising funds, delivering over 250 sermons and lectures, and distributing religious literature. A near-fatal attack in Tennessee on 17 May 1869 by an opponent of his missionary efforts caused him to halt this southern missionary venture and return again to New Bedford. By 1871 he was pastor of the Olive Baptist Church, a small black congregation in Lawrence, Massachusetts. During the following decade, he became active in various New England evangelical and temperance causes. By 1887 he was again living in New Bedford. Edmond Kelley, A Family Redeemed from Bondage (New Bedford, Mass., 1851), 2–3, 5–10, 12–13, 15–18 [6:0697]; FJD, 8, 13 April 1853 [8:0203, 0222]; GO, 31 December 1852; ASA, April 1853; WAA, 12 October 1861; William J. Simmons, Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising (Cleveland, Ohio, 1887; reprint, New York, N.Y., 1968), 295; see also the published reports of various American Baptist Missionary Convention national meetings from 1849 to 1877.

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51. Speech by Samuel Ringgold Ward Delivered at the Poultry Chapel, London, England 9 May 1853 Black Canadian antislavery agent and newspaper editor Samuel Ringgold Ward went to Britain in the spring of 1853 to raise funds for the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada. On 9 May 1853, just eight days after arriving in England, Ward was enthusiastically received by the wellattended annual meeting of the Colonial Missionary Society, an organization that supported Congregational churches in the British North American provinces and Australia. The meeting, held at the Poultry Chapel in London, was chaired by Thomas Challis, the lord mayor of London. The reading of the annual report reviewed information about the number of churches and church members in Canada West, the society’s contributions to those congregations, and missionary efforts among Indians and Canadian fugitives. Ward’s speech reacted to the report and questioned its statistical accuracy, while informing the audience in more general terms about black life in Canada. His remarks were preceded by speeches from the Reverends Henry Allon, John Angell James, and George Smith, among others. Rev. J. C. Gallaway, who had toured the Canadas for the society during the previous year, also spoke. NC, 18 May 1853. My feelings on this occasion are very peculiar, because this is the first time, upon such an occasion, that I have had the privilege of addressing an audience on this side of the Atlantic; and it certainly comes to me like a cooling, soothing balm, to have the Lord Mayor of London1 take me by the hand, introduced to him by such a man as Thomas James2—to be shaken hands with by the world-renowned Angell James3—and that brave George Smith,4 who dares to do justice to Oliver Cromwell5 (applause)— to receive attestations of kind and tender feelings, creating sentiments in my mind, which I can better feel than express. I thank you for all this, and I thank you for the many regards you have shown towards the province in which I reside.6 It is true that, fifteen years ago—and here I think the Report a little mistaken—it was fifteen years ago, that there were but nine churches in Upper Canada. It may be thought astonishing that the increase has been so great in so short a time. I will tell you the secret of that. The men you have sent there, and are in part or wholly sustaining, are men devoted to their work, and the God of the gospel grants such blessing to such devotion as he always grants in like circumstances. (Hear, hear.) They are men labouring on very small salaries. Eighty pounds a-year of your money is a large sum for us in Canada, and

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the amount received by the men who are labouring in the cause of God’s gospel in Canada does not amount to that sum. I know an instance in which a gentleman who was endeared to me was obliged last fall to sell his horse, and do his missionary work on foot, to procure the means of giving education to a child up-grown whom he could not educate earlier on account of the smallness of his salary. Sir, when you think of the self-denying men that are in Canada, you need not wonder that God blesses their labour, and that the work of God prospers. There are no black churches in Canada.7 My own family,8 I believe, is the only family of our persuasion. We attend Mr. Rolfe’s.9 (Hear, hear.) I intend, please God, to return to my country, to go to my farm, and to work for the sustenance of my small wife and large family (laughter) with my hoe, and then preach the gospel as opportunity may offer. (Hear, hear.) I have not received any salary, I do not expect any; I make no drafts upon this society or any other, and for that reason I can refer to this matter with greater liberty. In the course of my travels in Canada, I visited every Congregational church in the Upper Provinces, save four.10 I have been in the houses of the ministers, and have always enjoyed their hospitality as truly, as freely as Englishmen and Scotchmen can give it—and you all know how free that is; if you do not, I do (laughter)—and I have found them devoted to their work—I have found God’s blessing upon their labours in his work—and these are the ways the churches in Canada have so greatly flourished; and I think I can say, with a great deal of certainty, that you have only to increase your liberality, and redouble your energies, and continue your prayers, and you shall see the Church rising to that gigantic strength which shall gladden your hearts, and give to you the security in future that these provinces will rise religiously as they are growing in other respects. (Cheers.) I will not take up your time by adverting to the allusions which have been made to the Clergy Reserves.11 It is enough to say, that in Canada the Congregationalists are all right on that question. (Hear, hear.) This question of the secularization of the Clergy Reserves has a large number of advocates in what you would call here, but what we will not allow any one to call there, the Established Church. We have leading Episcopalians who have gone a great way for the secularization of the Clergy Reserves. They did not learn that in England, they learned it in Canada, and they learned it not very indirectly from the teaching of Independents. (Applause.) I take my seat, sir, thanking you for the kind sentiments you have entertained towards black people. (Go on, go on.) I am devoted to them; I have none of the prejudices against their colour that some people have (laughter); I married a black woman, sir (renewed laughter); and if you will excuse me, sir, I must say that I have seen no people, not even my own people in the United States, exhibit such marks of improvement, as these people have since they have come to Canada. (Applause.) Mr. Chairman, there

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is something in a man’s being free (loud applause)—in shaking off the shackle and the fetter that applies to him a talismanic power. It is like a sort of resurrection, and the man becomes another being altogether. There is a development and a springing forth, like Minerva from the brain of Jove, armed and equipped for the battle. (Cheers.) The blacks, whenever they have had anything like a chance, have shown as much development and improvement as any other class of men. But we never saw improvement like we did when we went to Canada. There we could understand what Harriet Martineau12 told us, that when she was travelling in the United States, an American captain told her that the most surprising thing there was the leap of the slave to the Canadian shore. Niagara poured down its mighty cascade in vain; there was one sight sublimer still—the leap of the slave to Canada (cheers)—a leap from chattelhood to manhood. (Cheers.) It was the transforming power of the sacred aegis of British laws that said to the man who was a chattel, “Be thou free—be a man!”13 Nonconformist (London), 18 May 1853. 1. Thomas Challis (1794–1874) was a prominent London political figure. Born the son of a London butcher, he entered politics in 1843, was elected alderman for the Cripplegate ward of London, served as sheriff of London and Middlesex during 1846 to 1847, and was elected lord mayor of London (1852–53) and member of Parliament for Finsbury (1852–57). MEB, 1:582. 2. Thomas Smith James (1809–1874) was the son of British abolitionist and clergyman John Angell James. The younger James was a solicitor in Birmingham from 1831 until his death. He edited a seventeen-volume collection of his father’s works and wrote a history of Presbyterian chapel and charity law. MEB, 2:53–54. 3. John Angell James (1785–1859) was born at Blandford, Dorsetshire, the son of a local linendraper and buttonmaker. James served as Dissenting pastor of the Carr’s Lane Chapel in Birmingham from 1805 until his death, gaining a considerable reputation as a preacher and theological writer. Active in secular causes, James was prominent in English educational and antislavery circles, and helped found the Evangelical Alliance (1842). DNB, 10:652–53. 4. George Smith (1803–1870) was the Congregational pastor of Trinity Chapel, Poplar, London, from 1842 until his death. Smith was also a secretary of the Congregational Union and an early antislavery critic of the American Colonization Society. MEB, 6:579. 5. Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) was an English Puritan political and military leader. He joined the parliamentary revolt against Charles I, declared a British commonwealth, and in 1655 named himself lord protector. After his death, the Commonwealth collapsed, and the monarchy was restored under Charles II. DNB, 5:155–56. 6. Ward refers to Canada West. 7. Ward’s statement is inaccurate. Although most blacks in the Canadas attended predominantly white congregations, especially before the 1840s, a number of black Canadian churches were organized prior to the Civil War. A black

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Baptist church was organized in Toronto in 1826; others soon followed in Colchester (1830) and Niagara (1831). In 1841 delegates from black Baptist churches in Amherstburg, Sandwich, and Detroit formed the Amherstburg Association. It served as an organizing body for twenty black Baptist churches in Detroit and southwestern Canada West. Methodism also made inroads among Canadian blacks. By 1826 two Methodist circuits (the Thames and Amherstburg) served blacks in western Upper Canada. In 1838 prominent Toronto black Wilson R. Abbott organized the small Colored Wesleyan Methodist Church. By 1839 African Methodist Episcopal congregations existed in Malden, Hamilton, Brantford, and Toronto. The AME organized an Upper Canadian Conference the following year. In 1852 it was reorganized into a Canadian, Ohio, and Indiana Conference. Four years later, many Canadian black churches separated from the AME and formed the British Methodist Episcopal church. A few blacks in the Canadas worshiped in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion faith. Winks, Blacks in Canada, 338, 340–43, 355– 57, 359. 8. Samuel Ringgold Ward married Emily E. Reynoldson of New York City in January 1838. The Wards had their first son, also named Samuel Ringgold, in October of the same year. The Wards’ second son, William Reynolds, died during the time Ward served as pastor of the Congregational church in Cortland, New York (1846–51). Two daughters were also born while they lived in Cortland—Emily (who died by 1855) and Alice. CA, 3 February 1838; Ward, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro, 31, 33, 52, 100; VF, 5 November 1851, 29 July 1852. 9. Ward evidently refers to Congregational minister John Roaf (1801–1862). Born in Margate, Kent, England, he went to Upper Canada in 1837 as an agent for the Colonial Missionary Society. There he founded the Zion Church of Toronto, organized Congregationalism in the province, and worked to reorganize the Congregational Union of Canada. Roaf actively supported the temperance movement and the creation of nondenominational public schools. Controversy created by church financial problems led to his removal as missionary agent and retirement in 1856. DCB, 9:663–64. 10. When Ward left America for Canada in December 1851, he was employed as a lecture agent by Thomas Henning, secretary of the newly formed Anti-Slavery Society of Canada. Ward toured Canada West for two years, speaking on behalf of antislavery and organizing auxiliary societies in London, Windsor, and Hamilton. Because the Congregationalists condemned slavery at its 1846 meeting and because some churches took an active part in opposing slavery, local Congregationalist churches were natural stops on Ward’s tour. Earl E. Sperry, The Jerry Rescue (Syracuse, N.Y., 1924), 17–19, 24, 32; W. Freeman Galpin, “The Jerry Rescue,” NYH 26:19–34 (January 1945); Anti-Slavery Society of Canada, First Annual Report (Toronto, 1851), 15; Anti-Slavery Society of Canada, Second Annual Report (Toronto, 1853), 8; VF, 19 December 1851. 11. The 1791 Constitutional Act stipulated that, as new areas were opened to settlement, lands known as the Clergy Reserves should be set aside for the endowment of the “Protestant clergy.” The reserves became controversial when reformers, particularly in the Upper Canada assembly, wanted the lands to benefit all denominations or to support education and internal improvements. The churches objected. An 1854 act allowed for the sale of the Clergy Reserves. The proceeds would support those Protestant clergy dependent upon them, with the remainder

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going for public works. Robert T. Handy, A History of the Churches in the United States and Canada (Oxford, England, 1976), 245–48. 12. Harriet Martineau (1802–1876) came from a prominent Unitarian family. An author and journalist, she became one of the leading literary figures of her day. She had already written against slavery when she visited the United States in 1834. Martineau attended abolitionist meetings, became friends with Boston Unitarians and abolitionists, and returned home a determined abolitionist. She wrote about these experiences and eulogized American abolitionists in “The Martyr Age of the United States,” which first appeared in the Westminster Review in December 1838. Martineau continued to write and travel until 1855, when a heart condition was diagnosed. Despite ill health, she took an interest in political and social events and received touring abolitionists in her Lake District home. DNB, 12:1194–99; Robert K. Webb, Harriet Martineau, a Radical Victorian (New York, N.Y., 1960), 134–74. 13. Ward refers to Lord Mansfield’s decision on the Somersett Case (1772), passage of the West Indian Emancipation Act of 1833, and Article 10 of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty.

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52. Speech by Samuel Ringgold Ward Delivered at Exeter Hall, London, England 16 May 1853 British antislavery gatherings attended by standing-room-only crowds were frequently described as “monster” meetings by the reform press. Such assemblies invariably depended on the presence of a celebrated American antislavery figure, particularly a well-publicized black personality. The fourteenth annual meeting of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society at Exeter Hall on the evening of 16 May 1853 was one such event. An estimated six thousand people crammed into a building designed to seat five thousand. Had there been room enough, one reporter observed, ten thousand people would have been there to demonstrate their abhorrence of American slavery and to see two American antislavery celebrities, best-selling author Harriet Beecher Stowe and the provocative Canadian fugitive Samuel Ringgold Ward. Stowe arrived during the proceedings and sat in the left gallery. Her husband, Calvin, later spoke briefly in support of the free produce movement. Ward preceded him at the rostrum. PtL, 19 May 1853. There were eight millions of slaves in different parts of the world at present. There were 3,300,000 in the United States, and about the same number in the Brazils. According to the estimate of Mr. Henry Clay, in 1820, it would take twelve hundred million dollars to redeem them.1 Why should the slaveholders be paid such a sum for ceasing to do evil, and learning to do well? (Loud cheers.) The Rev. gentleman then showed the antisocial tendencies of Slavery in breaking up the marriage tie, and in scattering families. To say that the Bible sanctioned such a system was, he contended, to say, that the Almighty sanctioned the violation of the moral law. He had never been “down south” since he was two years old; at that age his mother ran away with him. (Loud cheers.) But he had heard Slavery defended from the Bible in New York; and he thought that Rome, and Atheism, and Infidelity united, had not the power to do so much injury to real religion as those professors were doing who pretended to sanction their abominable system from the Holy Scriptures. (Loud cheers.) The great distinction between the false prophet and the true prophet in the Old Testament, and in all times, had been that the false prophet pandered to the vices of the nation, while the true prophet reproved them. (Cheers.) This guilty silence on the part of the Church had been the reason why Slavery had taken such deep root. The north was as guilty, if not more guilty, than the south in this matter; for in all cases, and even at the passing of the infamous Fugitive Slave Law, the

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north had a majority in Congress. He then showed the arbitrary and oppressive laws of Illinois and Indiana against free persons of colour,2 and amidst great excitement on the part of the audience, described the “negropew” system which prevailed in the churches of the north. In touching further on this point, he said, that had it not been for the influences of a truly pious mother, the conduct of the American Churches would have long since driven him to infidelity. This had been the case with one free gentleman of colour who was under religious impressions, and had gone so far as to present himself, with the permission of the clergyman, at the altar, to receive the communion. (Hear, hear.) On kneeling down, the clergyman paused, and asked him to retire till all the white persons had partaken of the Sacrament. This was the first of a series of acts which drove that man to infidelity, till at length he was accustomed to lead his children to a congregation of infidels, remarking that there black and white sat down together as brethren, which could not be said of any Church in that city. (Loud cries of Shame, shame!) It was true that matters had to some extent improved since then. Another case he witnessed, in which a pious lady gave a religious tract to a negro girl, which the girl rejected harshly, saying that these white ladies professed great anxiety after their souls, but would not condescend to sit down by them on any consideration. That was true. (Hear, hear.) After some persuasion, however, and being convinced that the lady in question was an exception to this rule, the negro girl was induced to read the tract, and it led to her conversion. (Hear, hear.) That was a brief sketch of his own wife. (Loud cheers.) He concluded by showing the obstacles to emancipation this prejudice against men of colour—which prevailed so strongly even in the north—presented, and gave an example in the fact that, coming over in the Europa, one of the Cunard steamers, it had been made a condition by Mr. Cunard3—an Englishman—(hisses)—that he (Mr. Ward) should not take his meals with the rest of the passengers. (Renewed hisses and cries of Shame!) Mr. Cunard’s reason was that “the Southerners might make a difficulty.”4 Yet he was a British subject, and Mr. Cunard was an Englishman! If Englishmen, then, had not something to do with Slavery, he did not know who had. This prejudice against the negro ought to be rooted out, and the coloured man, if worthy of it, ought to be allowed to occupy a position in society on equal terms with his white brethren. (Cheers.) Let all Christians regard this question as affecting their common humanity and their common religion, in all the efforts which were made to uproot this abominable system, until it should be true that no man suffered from the injustice of his fellow-man. (Cheers.) Patriot (London), 19 May 1853.

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1. Henry Clay apparently never offered an 1820 estimate of the cost of transporting all blacks in the United States back to Africa, but he did make an 1827 estimate (based on 1820 census figures) of the cost to transport the annual increase in the black population to Africa. By Clay’s estimate, fifty-two thousand blacks would need to be shipped to Africa each year at an annual cost of $1,040,000. Samuel M. Smucker, The Life and Times of Henry Clay (Philadelphia, Pa., 1860), 409–32. 2. Free blacks in antebellum Indiana and Illinois were assigned an inferior legal status. In Indiana, between 1816 and 1850, a series of constitutional provisions, legal decisions, and legislative enactments excluded blacks from voting, prohibited interracial marriage, banned black testimony in trials against whites, required blacks coming into the state to post a $500-dollar bond, and limited public education to white children. In 1850 blacks were barred from settling in Indiana, and black residents were required to register with county clerks. Indiana’s black laws remained in force until after the Civil War. Similar laws existed in antebellum Illinois. In 1819 the Illinois legislature enacted a comprehensive black code; it required blacks to file evidence of freedom and other family information with the circuit clerk, empowered county officials to remove blacks who failed to comply with poor law provisions, made it unlawful to bring slaves into Illinois for the purpose of freeing them, charged citizens harboring fugitive slaves or preventing their recapture with a felony, and required blacks to carry their certificates of freedom or be considered a fugitive slave. A revision in the Revised Statutes of 1845 forced free blacks to post a $1,000 bond to certify their conduct. In 1853 the Illinois legislature forbade further free black settlement in the state under penalty of fine or sale by the sheriff. The Illinois black laws were not reversed by the legislature until 1865. Emma Lou Thornbrough, The Negro in Indiana: A Study of a Minority (Indianapolis, Ind., 1957), 58, 64–69, 120–22, 125,164; Elmer Gertz, “The Black Laws of Illinois,” ISHSJ 56:463–72 (Autumn 1963). 3. Samuel Cunard (1787–1865) was born in Philadelphia and, for many years, was a merchant and the owner of whalers in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In partnership with British merchants, he formed the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Company in 1839; the British government contracted him at £60,000 per annum to convey the mails between Britain and America. In recognition of his service to the country by the establishment of the Cunard line of steamers, Queen Victoria conferred a baronetcy upon him. DNB, 13:300. 4. On his passage to England on the Cunard liner Europa in April 1853, Ward, who had purchased a first-class ticket, was requested to dine alone in his stateroom because Cunard officials feared his presence might offend southern customers. But, at the invitation of the second steward, Ward defied the order and ate with the second-class passengers. Antebellum blacks regularly encountered such discriminatory treatment on Cunard Line steamers. Cunard mistreatment of Frederick Douglass on his 1847 return voyage from Britain to the United States drew strong rebukes in the British press. Samuel Cunard, the owner of the line, responded in the London Times, that “nothing of the kind will again take place in the steam-ships with which I am connected.” But black Cunard passengers, including Henry Highland Garnet (1850), Josephine and Clarissa Brown (1851), Ward, Mary E. Webb (1856), and Caroline Putnam (1859, 1860), continued to be

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regularly denied equal accommodations and treatment. Such incidents prompted frequent abolitionist criticism of the Cunard Line. ASA, June 1853; Ward, Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro, 227–33; Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Hartford, Conn., 1881; reprint, New York, N.Y., 1962), 258; Lib, 14 May 1847, 15 August 1856, 14 September 1860; GO, 7 September 1850; WAA, 5 October 1861 [13:0798]; Farrison, William Wells Brown, 192–93; ASRL, 1 August, 1 October 1860; I, 14 July 1860.

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53. William Wells Brown to William Lloyd Garrison 17 May 1853 Whatever their own partisan predilections, most professional black abolitionists visiting Britain avoided striking either a Garrisonian or non-Garrisonian pose for their British antislavery hosts. They did not want the politics of the American antislavery movement to define their British mission. Even after divisions in the American movement began to be felt in Britain, black abolitionists tended to sidestep the debate. William Wells Brown’s 17 May 1853 letter to William Lloyd Garrison, describing the annual meeting of the British and Foreign Anti-slavery Society held the day before in Exeter Hall, London, illustrates the point. Brown’s chatty letter skirts a discussion of the meeting’s central concern—rapprochement between the BFASS and their British Garrisonian counterparts. The meeting, called by BFASS secretary Louis Alexis Chamerovzow during a revival of Garrisonian antislavery sentiment in Britain, attempted to unite the country’s competing abolitionist factions under the umbrella of the national society. Chamerovzow invited British Garrisonians to the meeting, but the landmark gathering did not effect the unity he sought. His overtures were repeatedly rebuffed prior to the meeting by choleric American Garrisonian Parker Pillsbury. When Chamerovzow, apparently without malice, seated Garrisonians at the back of Exeter Hall, Pillsbury used the opportunity to destroy any hopes of cooperation. Rice, Scots Abolitionists, 162–73. 22 Cecil Street Strand London, [England] May 17, 1853 DEAR MR . GARRISON: I forward to you, by this day’s mail, the papers containing accounts of the great meeting held in Exeter Hall last night. No meeting during this anniversary has caused so much talk and excitement as this gathering. No time could possibly have been more appropriate for such a meeting than the present. Uncle Tom’s Cabin has come down upon the dark abodes of slavery like a morning’s sunlight, unfolding to view its enormities in a manner which has fastened all eyes upon the “peculiar institution,” and awakening sympathy in hearts that never before felt for the slave. Had Exeter Hall been capable of holding fifty thousand instead of five thousand, it would no doubt have been filled to its utmost capacity. For more than a week before the meeting came off, the tickets were all disposed of, and it was understood that hundreds were applying every

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day. With those who may be classed as Mrs. Stowe’s converts, that lady was the centre of attraction for them; while the elder abolitionists came for the sake of the cause. I entered the great Hall an hour before the time, and found the building filled, there scarcely being standing room, except on the platform, which was in charge of the officials, to keep places for those who had tickets to that part of the house. At half-past six, the Earl of Shaftesbury appeared upon the platform, followed by the Committee and speakers,1 amid the most deafening applause. The Noble Earl, who has many more nobler qualities than that of a mere nobleman, made the opening speech, and, as you will see, a good one. While his lordship was speaking, Her Grace, the Duchess of Sutherland,2 came in, and took her seat in the balcony on the right of the platform, and an half hour after, a greater lady (the authoress of Uncle Tom)3 made her appearance, and took her seat by the side of the Duchess. At this stage of the meeting, there was a degree of excitement in the room that can better be imagined than described. The waving of hats and handkerchiefs, the clapping of hands, the stamping of feet, and the screaming and fainting of ladies, went on as if it had been in the programme, while the thieves were at work helping themselves out of the abundance of the pockets of those who were most crowded. A few arrests by the police soon taught the latter that there was no room there for pickpockets. Order was once more restored, and the speaking went on. Many good things were said by the different speakers, who were mostly residents of the metropolis. Professor Stowe,4 as you might expect, was looked upon as the lion of the speakers; but his speech disappointed all, except those of us who knew enough of American divines not to anticipate much from them on the subject of slavery. For my own part, I was not disappointed, for I have long since despaired of anything being done by clergymen; and the Professor’s speech at Glasgow, and subsequent addresses, had prepared me to look for but little from him.5 He evidently wishes for no agitation on the subject, and said it would do no good as long as England purchased America’s cotton. I look upon this cotton question as nothing more than to divert the public from the main subject itself. Mr. Stowe is not very young, yet he is only a child in the anti-slavery movement. He is now lisping his A, B, C, and if his wife succeeds in making him a good scholar, she will find it no easy thing. The best speech of the evening was made by our countryman, Samuel R. Ward.6 Mr. Ward did himself great credit, and exposed the hypocrisy of the American pro-slavery churches in a way that caused Professor Stowe to turn more than once upon his seat. I have but little faith in the American clergy—either colored or white; but I believe Ward to be not only one of the most honest, but an uncompromising and faithful advocate of his countrymen. He is certainly the best colored minister that has yet visited this country.

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I recognized in the audience several of our American friends. Among them was Mrs. Follen,7 Miss Cabot,8 J. Miller M’Kim,9 Miss Pugh,10 Professor Wm. G. Allen and lady,11 and Wm. and Ellen Craft. Upon the whole, the anti-slavery cause is in a more healthy state than it ever was before, and from all appearance much good will be done by the present excitement. The fact that no American clergyman has dared to appear at any of the anniversary meetings without professing anti-slavery principles, and that one at least (Rev. Mr. Prime)12 was denied a seat as a delegate at one of these meetings, shows the feeling already created in Great Britain; and I hope it will soon be understood in America, that no man will be welcomed here, unless he is an out-and-out abolitionist; and then the days of the slave’s deliverance will be close at hand. Yours, very sincerely, WM. WELLS BROWN Liberator (Boston, Mass.), 3 June 1853. 1. The anniversary meeting of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society was chaired by the earl of Shaftesbury, who was accompanied to the platform by members of the BFASS executive committee. The evening’s speakers included Samuel R. Ward, Calvin Stowe, Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, Joseph Sturge, and others. PtL, 19 May 1853. 2. Harriet Elizabeth Georgiana Leveson-Gower (1806–1868) was born into the aristocracy and married her cousin George Granville Leveson-Gower in 1823. She became duchess of Sutherland upon his succession in 1833. She was a confidant and companion of Queen Victoria and served her as mistress of the robes. The duchess turned Stafford House, her London residence, into a lively center of social and philanthropic activity. She hosted foreign celebrities, including Harriet Beecher Stowe and Garibaldi, and used her influence and resources to aid the antislavery movement. DNB, 11:1031–32. 3. Harriet Beecher Stowe. 4. Calvin Ellis Stowe (1802–1886) was born in Natick, Massachusetts. After studying at Bowdoin College and Andover Theological Seminary, he became a newspaper editor and a teacher at Dartmouth College and Lane Theological Seminary. His Elementary Instruction in Europe became a standard guide to institutional improvement in a number of states. He and his wife, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who became an international celebrity with the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, toured Europe in 1853, 1856, and 1859. Stowe retired from Andover in 1864. The Stowes spent their remaining years in Hartford, Connecticut, and at their winter home in Florida. DAB, 18:115. 5. Calvin Stowe spoke before a 15 April 1853 soirée held at Glasgow City Hall to honor the Stowes. The meeting was chaired by Senior Magistrate Bailie MacDowall and attended by a large, “highly respectable” audience. Garrisonian anti-slavery leaders were conspicuously absent. Stowe’s proclerical, moderate anti-slavery address urged moral suasion and Christian empathy as the appropriate means to eventually achieve emancipation. Stowe subsequently delivered similar lectures in Edinburgh. Brown’s criticism of Stowe reflected his ambivalence about

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the Stowe tour—a sentiment shared by many British Garrisonians. MC, 18 April 1853. 6. Ward’s speech attacked racial prejudice in the northern states and, in particular, criticized the existence of racially discriminatory laws. He also assailed the failure of northern churches to condemn slavery and denounced their biased treatment of black members. He further accused the North of sharing the guilt for the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act. To demonstrate that not all English institutions or Englishmen were immune to race hatred, Ward spoke of the prejudice he encountered on the English-owned ship bringing him to England. PtL, 19 May 1853. 7. Eliza Lee (Cabot) Follen (1787–1860) was born in Boston, the daughter of Samuel and Sarah Cabot. After receiving a superior education, Eliza’s family connections helped establish her among leading Boston literary and religious figures. In 1828 she married Charles Follen, a German refugee, who died in 1840, leaving Eliza with a ten-year-old son, strong antislavery convictions, and the need to earn her own living. She did so by producing a five-volume study of her husband’s life and works and writing children’s literature—while continuing to write and speak for the antislavery cause. DAB, 1:64; Stanley Kunitz and Howard Haycroft, eds., American Authors, 1600–1900 (New York, N.Y., 1938), 279. 8. Susan Copley Cabot (1794–1861) of Boston was the unmarried sister of abolitionist Eliza Lee Follen. She occasionally contributed articles to the Liberty Bell, a woman’s abolitionist annual. In 1853 Cabot and her sister visited England, where they attended many antislavery meetings. Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 4:529; Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 400. 9. James Miller McKim (1810–1874) was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and educated at Dickinson College. An early Garrisonian abolitionist and American Anti-Slavery Society member, McKim’s liberal theology and antislavery immediatism forced his withdrawal from the Presbyterian ministry. McKim lectured on slavery, assisted fugitive slaves, and edited the antislavery newspaper The Pennsylvania Freeman. During the Civil War, McKim urged enlistment of black soldiers and supported freedmen’s relief efforts through the Port Royal Relief Committee and the Pennsylvania Freedmen’s Relief Association. In 1865 he founded the Nation with his son-in-law Wendell Phillips Garrison. DAB, 12:103–4. 10. Sarah Pugh (1800–1884) was born in Virginia to Quaker parents and lived most of her life in Philadelphia. She began teaching in Quaker schools in 1821, but involvement in the Orthodox-Hicksite religious controversy led her to embrace a Unitarian faith and to establish her own elementary school. An 1835 George Thompson speech attracted her to Garrison abolitionism—an attraction she maintained throughout her life and as a leader of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. In 1840 Pugh attended the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention and drafted the Pennsylvania protest over the exclusion of women delegates from active participation. After the Civil War, she assisted southern freedmen and worked to secure women’s rights and educational reform. NAW, 3:104–5. 11. Mary E. King Allen was the daughter of Rev. Lyndon King of Fulton, New York. After attending New York Central College (1851–52), she became the victim of a controversy surrounding her proposed interracial marriage to Professor William G. Allen. They subsequently married in New York City in March 1853 and sailed for Britain the following month, where they evidently resided for the

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remainder of their lives. Mary Allen started a small school for girls in Islington (in greater London) in 1868, which closed by 1874. William G. Allen, The American Prejudice against Color (London, 1853), 4–6, 86; R. J. M. Blackett, “William G. Allen: The Forgotten Professor,” Civil War History 26:45, 50–52 (March 1980). 12. Samuel Irenaeus Prime (1812–1885) was born in Ballston, New York. A Presbyterian minister, Prime became a director of the American Bible Society and, for most of his adult life, edited the Observer in New York City. DAB, 7:237– 38; NASS, 1 July 1854.

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54. Speech by Alexander Crummell Delivered at the Lower Hall, Exeter Hall, London, England 26 May 1853 On 26 May 1853, only one month before sailing to Liberia, Alexander Crummell organized a final meeting to raise the balance of the approximately £4,000 required to build a church for his former New York congregation. The gathering was held in the Lower Hall, Exeter Hall, London. It was hosted by Rev. Edward Auriol, rector of the Church of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West (London) and a leader of the British Committee of Management, formed to oversee Crummell’s fund-raising efforts. Crummell used an appeal traditional among black abolitionists soliciting support for free black American institutions; he reminded his British listeners of the integral relationship between southern slavery and northern racial prejudice. Alexander Crummell, “Condition of the Black and Coloured Population of the United States,” NN-Sc; PtL, 19 May 1853. It was the request of several individuals that he should state the reasons for his coming to England to obtain funds for his church, and at the same time give an account of the civil and spiritual condition of the negro race in the United States. There were in the American Union 3,400,000 persons of his race. Of these, 3,000,000 were slaves, who were bought and sold like cattle. They were poorly fed and clothed. They were whipped and scourged. Families were separated. They were overworked. Their mental improvement was forbidden by laws of a most stringent character. In all the slave States severe laws were passed against instructing them, and in the state of Louisiana it was made a capital offence. Their spiritual welfare was uncared for; in many parts of the slave States, there were hundreds and thousands of slaves, who, according to the representations of southern ministers, were literally and absolutely heathen, and who had never heard of the plan of salvation through a Redeemer. Besides the 3,000,000 in slavery, there were 400,000 black and coloured people in a state of freedom. In the southern States their condition was but little removed from that of the enslaved. About 200,000 of the free people of colour lived in the slave States; and the laws prohibiting their instruction were just the same as those which prevented the instruction of their brethren in bonds. It might be supposed that in the United States a free man would be a free man. But unfortunately it was not so if he happened to have a black face. In Brazil, in the Levant, in the French West India Islands, &c., when a negro became relieved from the yoke of slavery, he rose immediately to the condi-

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tion of equality, and to the attainment of an unrestrained manhood. But in his own country, he was sorry to say, it was different. There was a wide gulf between the two races in that country. The white race entertained and cherished a strong dislike to their brethren of a darker hue, and carried out a spirit of exclusion of the most perfect and universal character. Caste, as strong as any that ever existed in India, met the coloured man in every relation of life. It was a spirit of perfect exclusion. It kept their children from the workshops of mechanics, and prevented them from learning trades, because white apprentices would not work with coloured lads. It kept them from the cabins of steam-boats, and drove them to the negro cars on railroads. It excluded them from the common schools, academies, and colleges. It is asked whether Christian people entertained these feelings, and acted in this manner? He had not come to England to make complaints against any portion of the Christian Church; or to render odious the character of any of the religionists of this country. He came on a mission of benevolence and Christian charity for his own people; but, sorry as he was to say it, the spirit of caste prevails as strongly among religionists in America, as among any other class of persons. In the churches negro-pews were stuck up in obscure places for the black and coloured people. At the celebration of the Holy Communion, the black had to wait until their white fellow-sinners had first communicated. The Seminaries of the Church were shut upon them, and black men had been subjected to Church censures for presuming to apply for admission to them. This, in general terms, was the condition of his race, and the treatment they received; of course there were exceptions. Honourable and distinguished bishops, ministers, and laymen, oftimes opposed these practices and principles. Some of these, in his own Church, were known in this country. But this spirit was the almost universal one. Mr. Crummell then proceeded to say, that in consequence of this state of things, education and religion were in a very low state among his brethren. He gave it as his deliberate opinion that of the whole 3,400,000 of his race in the United States, there were not 100,000 under either religious or mental instruction—not 100,000 who were receiving the least intellectual advantages, or who were placed under the influence of the Gospel of Christ. Many of the African ministers in the southern States could not read a single sentence in the Bible; while in the northern, so limited were their means of education that he and most of his brethren were but partially prepared for the ministry. In relation to his Church, Mr. C. said, that it was the second Episcopal Church in New York for black and coloured people. It was started some ten years since by one of his wardens, a black man, Mr. John Peterson,1 under the name of St. Matthew’s Church. It had had one minister, the Rev. I. G. DeGrasse,2 a coloured young man. But he, unwilling to endure this universal preju-

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dice, had left for the West Indies. The same state of things had induced the Rev. Mr. Jones3 (whom they had heard at the Anniversary of the Church Missionary Society)4 to seek another field, and a more genial atmosphere. From untoward circumstances the services of this congregation had ceased two or three different times, through poverty, want of a minister, &c. They had worshipped always in hired rooms. About three years since he was called to the ministry of that Church. Frequent efforts had been made to secure a church edifice at home, but without success. His own people (mostly poor servants) could not build one. His white brethren would not. In this extremity he was forced to come to England, to ask aid in their behalf. There was no other country to which he could go, no other people to whom he could appeal. When the vessel in which he embarked left the port, if she had gone to France, or Germany, or Italy, he could not have succeeded in his object in either of those countries. The only country which felt any interest, as a country, in extending the Gospel—the only country which cares for the interests, the elevation, and the enlightening of the negro race—is this country. If he failed in his appeal in this country, he must leave his people, and go to another land, and they must give up their design, and a most needy and neglected people must be forsaken. Mr. C. said he was anxious to remain with his brethren in the United States, and help to rebuild them; and he stood ready to suffer anything, and make any sacrifices, so that he might be one of the humblest agents in educating his brethren, raising them above degradation, and breaking down the barriers of hindrance, which now prevented their temporal and spiritual progress. Mr. Crummell concluded by the observation that efforts of this kind for the spiritual good of the coloured people in the United States, were of importance, not only to the black man, but likewise to the white. They would exert a most happy influence upon both races, and upon our common Christianity in that land. Notwithstanding some of the singularly excellent features of American Christianity, and some of the peculiar phases of American character, yet, unfortunately, the Christianity of his country lacked the great element of humanity. It needed a stronger presence of the idea of brotherhood. It was his firm conviction that this same African race, despised and scorned of men— they and they alone, could furnish this needed element to the religion and civilization of that country. They both would remain unhealthy and incomplete, until the negro race were raised up and received as brethren. No earned professions of love to God, no zeal for the heathen, would suffice. The condition of a pure, healthy, full-formed Christianity in America, manifesting alike love to God and love to man, was involved in the future condition and the full recognition of his down-trodden brethren. This he felt assured was the providence of God. For God chose the foolish things of the world, and the weak, and the base things of the

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world, and the things which are despised, yea even things which are not— nothings, to confound the things that are. And so it appeared his will that that wretched people should ever be the criterion of American religion. They were to rise up and furnish in their own distresses, in their amelioration, in their enlightenment, the needed element of humanity to the Christianity of America, and of brotherhood to the civilization thereof; and until that took place, the Christianity of his country would never meet with a full and healthy expression. And thus in helping in this and other cases to lift up and elevate and spiritualize the black man in America, English Christians were subserving the common cause of our holy religion and our common Saviour; doing a good work for their own kin on the other side of the water, as well as elevating the degraded people of colour. But, in order to this end, the negro race need the means and appliances essential to such high purposes. Their most absolute need is spiritual culture and Christian churches; and he hoped and trusted that God would dispose the benevolent, sympathizing, and Christian-minded people of this country to listen to the appeal of his congregation, and enable them to erect a temple in which to worship Almighty God, reclaim the hosts of sinful wandering ones around them, and rear up their children in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Alexander Crummell, Condition of the Black and Colored Population of the United States (London [1853]), 1-3. 1. John Peterson (1805–ca. 1886), a prominent black educator, was born to poor, free black parents in New York City. He graduated from Charles C. Andrews’s African Free School, and then, after two years of tutoring by Andrews, taught at his school (1826–32). Peterson later served as master of African School No. 1 (1832– 78) in New York City. During his tenure there, he helped organize a society to operate local, black charity schools and directed the Saturday Colored Normal School, which trained black teachers. A popular spokesman in the black community, Peterson cofounded several black literary and benevolent societies in the early 1830s and actively supported black temperance organizations. During the latter part of the decade, he was a local leader (through the Colored Citizens of New York) in the movement to enfranchise New York blacks. Although initially opposed to colonization schemes, Peterson supported black emigration by 1859. He served as treasurer and recording secretary of the African Civilization Society and in 1863 joined other black leaders in seeking federal funds for the society’s emigration schemes. When the society began to promote freedmen’s education, he labored for that cause. In 1865 he agitated for creation of a black college in Washington, D.C. Peterson was a devoutly religious man and devoted much of his energy to Episcopal church affairs, particularly at the black St. Phillip’s congregation in New York City. After being ordained an Episcopal deacon in 1865, he frequently served St. Phillip’s as assistant or interim pastor. Late in life, he established the Conference of Church Workers among Colored People (1883). Peterson was married to Elizabeth G. Glasgow from the 1840s un-

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til her death in 1874. Alexander Crummell, “Sermon on John Peterson . . .,” 2 May 1886, Crummell Collection, NN-Sc; Carleton Mabee, Black Education in New York State: From Colonial to Modern Times (Syracuse, N.Y., 1979), 39, 63–64, 105– 7, 126–27, 170; Lib, 19 April 1834 [1:0411]; ESF, 12 June 1868; E, 25 March 1834 [1:0406]; WAA, 22 October 1859, 5 May 1860 [12:0686], 8 March 1862, 12 August 1865; CA, 28 October 1837, 16 January, 26 June 1841 [2:0242, 3:0836, 4:0078]; Geo[rge] W. LeVere, Henry [Highland] Garnet, Junius C. Morel et al. to Abraham Lincoln, 25 November 1863, Records of the Secretary of the Interior Relating to the Suppression of the African Slave Trade and Negro Colonization, DNA [15:0062–71]; CR, 18 June 1864 [15:0405]; NSt, 25 May 1849; George F. Bragg, History of the Afro-American Group of the Episcopal Church (Baltimore, Md., 1922; reprint, New York, N.Y., 1968], 86. 2. Isaiah G. DeGrasse (1813–1841), the brother of noted black physician John V. DeGrasse, was born to free black parents in New York City. DeGrasse’s early education came at the city’s African Free School, where his 1828 antislavery essay attracted the attention of abolitionists, including black clergyman Peter Williams, who urged him to study for the ministry. DeGrasse then spent several years studying the classics, literature, and composition under the tutelage of Rev. M. H. Henderson (1828–30) and at the New York City Episcopal Collegiate School (1830–32) and Geneva College (1832–35). He finally completed his education at Newark College (Delaware), where he received the bachelor of arts degree with honors in 1836. After graduating, DeGrasse applied for admission to the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church of New York, but southern divinity students there objected. As a “compromise,” Bishop Benjamin T. Onderdonk agreed to allow DeGrasse to attend classes, provided he did not live on campus or seek formal admission as a student. DeGrasse rejected this arrangement, and his case became a cause célèbre among abolitionists. Failing to gain admission to the General Theological Seminary, he undertook theological studies with an Episcopal clergyman and was ordained during July 1838, after his examination “evinced ample literary and theological attainments.” The Episcopal Missionary Society immediately appointed him to serve black churches in the Long Island missionary circuit. In October he became pastor of the Second Colored Episcopal Church (St. Matthew’s) of New York City. DeGrasse gained recognition during this time as a spokesman for black education; he frequently lectured before local black beneficial societies, served on several black school supervisory boards, and published a widely distributed Sermon on Education (1839). Newark College recognized these attainments in 1840 by awarding him a master of arts degree. But DeGrasse resigned his pastorate that July and left to do missionary work in Jamaica in November. Frustrated by northern racism, he sought “the respectful treatment and sympathy he could not find at home,” but he contracted yellow fever and died within two months. CA, 22 March, 19 April, 21 July, 20 October 1838, 26 January, 13 March, 1 June 1839, 4 July 1840, 13 March, 3, 10 April 1841; FJ, 14 March 1829 [17:0597]; Mabee, Black Education in New York State, 166; Litwack, North of Slavery, 201–2; Isaiah G. DeGrasse to Theodore [Dwight] Weld, September 1837, Weld-Grimke Papers, William L. Clements Library, MiU [2:0162]; Bragg, Afro-American Group of Episcopal Church, 187; Isaiah G. DeGrasse, Sermon on Education (New York, N.Y., 1839); CO, November 1845 [5:0092].

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3. Edward Jones (ca. 1808–1864) was born in Charleston, South Carolina, to free black hotel owners Jehu and Abigail Jones. He attended Amherst College (1822–26) and graduated two weeks before John B. Russwurm, long considered the first black graduate, received his degree from Bowdoin. He also studied at Andover Theological Seminary and the African Mission School in Hartford, Connecticut, before being ordained an Episcopal priest in 1830. Jones then began a long career in African missions, arriving in Sierre Leone in 1831 to work as a schoolmaster at Kent and later on the Banana Islands. In 1841 Jones was named principal of the Fourah Bay Christian Institution, a Church Missionary Society school. He made several trips to England to raise money for the school, initiated a building program, upgraded the curriculum, and by 1848 the institution took the name “college,” offering a unique program in African languages. Jones also attempted to further West African missionary efforts; in 1853 he participated in an unsuccessful expedition to establish a CMS mission among the Ibos. Although a prominent figure in the colony, he faced a mounting controversy because of his operation of the college and in 1858 was called to England “to tender explanations on matters of a personal character.” Upon his return to Sierra Leone, Jones accepted a pastorate in Freetown and helped edit the African and Sierra Leone Weekly Advertiser. He briefly edited the Sierra Leone Weekly Times and West African in 1861, but was dismissed for political reasons. In failing health, Jones, who had become a British subject in 1845, soon sailed to England, where he lived until his death. DANB, 364. 4. The Church Missionary Society was founded in 1799 by the Evangelicals within the Church of England. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the society was under the control of Henry Venn. He aimed to evangelize the world, using CMS missionaries and native churches to win converts. After the failure of the Niger Expedition in 1841, the society evolved the tactic of educating Africans in England, then returning them to Africa. Lorimer, Colour, Class, and Victorians, 57, 61–62, 118–19; J. F. Ade Ajayi, Christian Missions in Nigeria: The Making of a New Elite, 1841–1891 (Evanston, Ill., 1965), 8, 18–19, 44, 61.

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55. William G. Allen to William Lloyd Garrison 20 June 1853 Black professor William G. Allen and his wife, Mary G. King Allen, were driven from the United States by opposition to their interracial marriage. They sailed from Boston for Liverpool on 9 April 1853 aboard the Daniel Webster. After establishing a residence in London, Allen began preparing antislavery lectures and writing The American Prejudice against Colour about the incidents surrounding his marriage. Allen responded to his first months in British society in a 20 June 1853 letter to William Lloyd Garrison. Allen shared an enthusiasm with other black American visitors, who were struck by the contrasting societies they found in Britain and America. Blackett, “William G. Allen,” 46–47; William G. Allen to Gerrit Smith, 9 April 1853, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU [8:0204]; Sarah Pugh to Mary [A. Estlin], 25 June 1853, John B. and Mary A. Estlin Papers, UkLW; ASA, 1 July 1853; PtL, 8 August 1853 [8:0395]. 26 Swinton Street LONDON, Eng[land] June 20, 1853 W[ILLIA ]M LLOYD GARRISON , Esq. DEAR SIR : I1 cannot resist the temptation to address you a few lines; if for no other purpose, certainly to thank you for the very kind letter which I found at Joseph Sturge’s. That letter was an introduction to one of the dearest men (GEORGE THOMPSON ) with whom it has ever been my lot to become acquainted. We have visited Mr. Thompson several times, and though I had heard him on the platform, and was filled (as who has not been?) with admiration of his genius and efforts in behalf of the oppressed of both hemispheres, yet it was not until I had enjoyed his home circle that I had full appreciation of the loftiness of his character, as it is evinced in his child-like simplicity. Mr. Thompson is hardly less eloquent in conversation than in public speaking, and one cannot leave his house, after spending a day or an evening with him, without feeling himself invigorated in mind and heart, and in better love with whatsoever things are beautiful and true. “Old England” is a wonderful country. There is grandeur in the looks of it. There is poetry, too—the ride from Liverpool to London taking one through a region of country all the way blossoming as the rose. The English people, too—I am in love with them. There is nobility in their hearts and dignity in their bearing. They have also a quiet repose of

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character, which is certainly a pleasing contrast to the hurly-burly of the American. That in Englishmen which most favorably impresses the colored man from America is the entire absence of prejudice against color. Here the colored man feels himself among friends, and not among enemies; among a people who, when they treat him well, do it not in the patronising (and, of course, insulting) spirit, even of hundreds of the American abolitionists, but in a spirit rightly appreciative of the doctrine of human equality. Color claims no precedence over character, here; and, consequently, in parties given by the “first people” in the kingdom may be seen persons of all colors moving together on terms of perfect social equality. Rev. SA M U E L R. WA R D , of Canada, than whom it is hardly possible to be blacker, and who is an honor to the race in intellectual ability, has been in London several weeks, and can amply testify to the fact that his skin, though “deepest dyed,” has been no barrier to the best society in the kingdom. Mr. Ward and myself were both present, by invitation, a few evenings since, at a party given by the Prussian Ambassador,2 at his residence in Regent’s Park. That which, in an American community, would startle it more than seven thunders could—i.e., the marriage (or even the surmise of it) of two respectable persons, one of whom should be white and the other colored, passes as a matter of course in England. In no party, whether public or private, to which we have been, in no walk which we have taken, in no hotel at which we have had occasion to put up, in no public place of amusement, gallery, museum, &c., have we met the cry of “amalgamation,” either outspoken, or as manifested in a well-bred sneer. This state of things, of course, evinces that prejudice against color is entirely a local feeling, generated by slavery, and which must disappear, not only as colored men rise higher and higher in the light of intelligence and virtue, but as the dominant race in America becomes wiser and more liberalized by the spirit of a true Christianity. I must not forget to tell you of what pleasant evenings we have spent with Mrs. Follen and Miss Cabot.3 They were pleasant, because spent in the society of true and noble-hearted women, warm in their sympathies and active in their efforts in behalf of the enslaved millions of America. These noble American women—how long could slavery last, did America count such by the hundreds? I must not forget to tell you, also, of a pleasant evening with Mr. ESTLIN 4—hardly a stranger to those who have read the Liberator, and a blessed good man and warm friend of humanity. Here we met many good friends of the cause from America, some of them quite recently. Mrs. Stowe has gone to Paris.5 Her visit to this country has created much sensation. The papers here criticise both the Professor and Mrs. Stowe variously, and one or two, I think, unjustly; especially those that

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intimate that she is seeking self-glorification. Mrs. Stowe has never suffered martyrdom, and, however much others may honor her, she has too much sense and piety, and is too great-hearted, to covet honors which more properly belong to those who have led on in the fore-front of this battle. J. M I L L E R M C K I M , Esq., of Philadelphia, has also gone to Paris. Miss S A RA H P U G H L eaves, in a few days, in company with Mrs. FOLLEN, for Switzerland. Dr. B A I L E Y ,6 of the National Era, is in the city, and so also is Rev. J. F R E E M A N C L A R K ,7 formerly of Boston; the latter I have seen. Our friend W M . W E L L S B R O W N is as active as ever. There seems to be no end to his enterprise. He has, beyond a doubt, been a most efficient laborer in this country in the great cause of anti-slavery. Mr. F A R M E R 8 and himself have aided us much in ferreting out notable places and getting a sight of notable people—for which we thank them both. Rev. S. R. WA R D holds a meeting to-night in Freemason’s Chapel—the Earl of Shaftesbury in the chair—to consider measures for aiding the fugitives in Canada. Ward will be successful.9 I rejoice exceedingly that you had so good a meeting in New York.10 It may be that slavery and compromise have not quite eaten out the heart of the nation, and that there is yet hope. What a speech was that of Douglass! A masterly production, and which should gain him immortal honor. Some of the criticisms upon it by the American papers would be villainous, if they were not so ridiculous, and some again are amusing. That was decidedly cool of Thurlow Weed,11 that “if ”—”if Douglass’s great mind were imbued with kindlier sympathies”!! Now, it is all proper enough that all men, in whatever relation of life, should feel kind towards each other; but only think of it—asking, not the man who strikes, but the stricken, to be kinder. Surely, slavery has made bad work with the heart and conscience of the American people. It is the reformer’s duty not to be content with ameliorating, as Weed would have Douglass do, but only in rooting out evil. Radicalism is the only ism that ever blessed the world, or ever will or can. These conservatives are singular folks. They have neither genius nor philosophy. They would have their boy learn to swim by making his motions upon the sand-bank; and neither he that led on the barbaric host against the gates of imperial Rome,12 nor Luther,13 ever would be model-men of theirs. But I must not make you too long a letter. You know all about the Exeter Hall meeting.14 Whatever may be its results, I am satisfied of one thing—it is directly to the point to get up a public sentiment against slavery abroad. Slaveholders must be driven into isolation; and I am very glad to know that they themselves are finding out that the thing is being done. I have but little sympathy for the feeling which apologises for and explains away their sins, on the plea of converting them to the truth. A

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single self-application of the Golden Rule would open the whole subject to them, in its length and breadth, and height and depth. Now is an excellent time to spread anti-slavery truth among the people of this country. I shall do what I can (little though, of course, it will be) to help bring about the time when Worth, not birth, shall rule mankind, And be acknowledged stronger. Our passage from America to England was a pleasant one, barring the melancholy accident—the loss of four sailors at sea—of which you already know; and our stay of two weeks in Liverpool was rendered more than agreeable by the kindness of our mutual friend, W M . P. P OWELL , Esq., formerly of New York. Mr. S TURGE , also, of Birmingham, received us with great kindness and cordiality, and has placed us under many obligations to him for his friendly deportment towards us. We are in good health, and, you may well imagine, we enjoy life. There is but one drawback; the light of British liberty has revealed more clearly than ever the inner chambers of the American prison-house of bondage, and disclosed how more than mangled and bleeding are the victims that lie therein. This makes me sad, but more determined to work on and work ever. Very faithfully yours, WM. G. ALLEN Liberator (Boston, Mass.), 22 July 1853. 1. William G. Allen (1820–?) was born free in Virginia, the son of a free black woman and a Welshman. Both of Allen’s parents died when he was young, and he was adopted by a moderately prosperous, free black family. Allen attended a black elementary school in Norfolk, Virginia, until it was closed in the wake of Nat Turner’s insurrection (1831). He graduated from Beriah Green’s Oneida Institute in 1844, then moved to Troy, New York, to assist Henry Highland Garnet in editing the National Watchman, a short-lived, reformist newspaper. Allen moved in 1847 to Boston, where he read law with Ellis Gray Loring, joined with leading black abolitionists to resist the return of fugitive slaves, served as secretary of the Boston Colored Citizens Association, and supported black efforts in Canada. During his residence in Boston, Allen frequently lectured on the history, literature, and destiny of the African race and compiled a pamphlet entitled Wheatley, Banneker, and Norton as an aid for his audiences. In December 1850, Allen was appointed to the faculty of Central College in McGrawville, New York—a school that was abolitionist-sponsored, integrated, coeducational, and based on manual-labor principles. Allen met and became friends with Mary King, the daughter of Rev. Lyndon King, a former college trustee, and by December 1852, the two had decided to marry. The threat of mob violence caused the couple to separate briefly, to meet and marry in New York City, and to sail for England in the spring of 1853. The Allens spent their first seven years in Great Britain, living in London (1853–56) and Dublin (1856–60),

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and raising the first three of their seven children. During this time Allen earned a modest income lecturing about Africa and antislavery and by working as a tutor. Allen also published two narratives about his life, which focused on northern reaction to his interracial marriage. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, Allen earned a master’s degree and interested himself in educational reform, particularly in the rehabilitation and retraining of juvenile delinquents. At the same time, Allen continued his abolitionist activity and assisted both the London Emancipation Committee and the John Anderson Committee. In the summer of 1863, with the help of British abolitionist Harper Twelvetrees, Allen opened the Caledonia Training School in Islington. The bitterness both Allens felt about American racial prejudice prompted them to remain in England after the Civil War. By 1868 Allen’s school had closed, but his wife had organized a smaller educational facility for girls in Islington. This school also closed after a few years, and by 1878 the Allens had moved to London. William G. Allen, A Short Personal Narrative (Dublin, 1860), 5–34; Allen, American Prejudice against Color, 1–107; William G. Allen to Gerrit Smith, 24 January 1854, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU [8:0001, 0608, 12:0383]; Lib, 2 February 1848, 10 November, 20 December 1850; NSt, 6 July 1846; PtL, 8 August 1853; ASRL, 2 November 1863; John Anderson, The Story of the Life of John Anderson, Fugitive Slave, ed. Harper Twelvetrees (London, 1863), 160; Blackett, “William G. Allen,” 39–52. 2. Christian Charles Josiah Baron Von Bunsen (1791–1860) was the Prussian ambassador to the Court of St. James (1841–54). 3. Eliza Lee Follen and Susan Copley Cabot. 4. John Bishop Estlin. 5. Calvin and Harriet Beecher Stowe made the first of three British visits in the spring of 1853. During 4–22 June, they were hosted in Paris by Maria Weston Chapman, then toured the continent, and returned to England in late August. Although generally well received, the Stowe tour was roundly criticized by British Garrisonians, who believed that it was manipulated by conservative clergymen and aristocratic antislavery figures to the exclusion of Garrisonian organizations. Forrest Wilson, Crusader in Crinoline (Philadelphia, Pa., 1941), 384–93; Rice, Scots Abolitionists, 177–83; Lib, 6, 13 May 1853. 6. Gamaliel Bailey (1807–1859) was born in New Jersey and abandoned a medical career to edit the Methodist Protestant in Baltimore. After settling in Cincinnati in 1831, he was drawn to the antislavery movement by the Lane Seminary debates on slavery, and he became coeditor (with James G. Birney) of the Cincinnati Philanthropist. He remained with the Philanthropist until 1847, when he left to edit the newly established National Era, a Washington, D.C., reform paper. Bailey dominated the Era to such an extent that, soon after his death in 1859, the paper ceased publication. DAB, 1:496–97. 7. James Freeman Clarke (1810–1888) was born in New Hampshire, graduated from Harvard College, and was ordained as a Unitarian minister in 1833. His first pastorate was in Louisville, Kentucky; between 1836 and 1839, he also edited the Western Messenger. Clarke returned to Boston in 1841 and founded the Church of the Disciples. He was a prolific writer, active in Boston civic and cultural affairs, and a supporter of the temperance, women’s suffrage, and anti-slavery causes. DNB, 4:153–54.

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8. William Farmer was an accomplished London reporter and skilled stenographer, who recorded many public meetings. After the early 1840s, he was particularly attentive to British antislavery gatherings. Farmer traveled with abolitionists George Thompson, William Lloyd Garrison, and Frederick Douglass throughout Britain on their 1846 lecture crusade against the Evangelical Alliance. Between 1849 and 1854, he frequently corresponded with Garrison’s Liberator, reporting the British activities of black abolitionists William Wells Brown and William and Ellen Craft and criticizing Garrison’s opponents. A committed Garrisonian, he helped found the Anglo-American Anti-Slavery Association in 1852 to publish the Anti-Slavery Advocate. After 1854, Farmer was less active in antislavery affairs because of his editorship of the Clerkenwell News, a halfpenny local weekly. Reemerging in the movement in the early 1860s, he served on the fund-raising committee for fugitive slave John Anderson. In 1864 he again corresponded with the Liberator, detailing J. Sella Martin’s British activities and penning a series of “Letters from England,” which remains one of the best biographies of British antislavery figure George Thompson. Lib, 26 October 1849, 28 June 1850 [6:0533], 18, 25 July, 12 September 1851, 2, 16 January, 19 October 1852 [6:0194], 14 January 1853, 8 December 1854, 12, 19, 26 February, 4, 11, 18, 25 March, 8 April 1864; Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 298, 387; ASA, October 1852, October 1859; Harold Herd, The March of Journalism: The Story of the British Press from 1622 to the Present Day (London, 1952), 185; Anderson, Life of John Anderson, 86, 123–24, 147, 169–71. 9. Allen refers to a meeting that is treated in the next document in this volume. 10. Allen is referring to the annual anniversary meeting of the American AntiSlavery Society held in New York City at the Chinese Assembly Room, Broadway, 11–12 May 1853. Allen’s succeeding comments indicate he may have confused the two addresses that Frederick Douglass delivered on 11 May 1853. At the American society’s 10:00 A.M. opening session, Douglass made some brief general comments about the antislavery cause. But the most memorable of Douglass’s two presentations (and the one to which Allen is obviously alluding) was given at the annual meeting of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which took place during the evening of 11 May at New York’s Broadway Tabernacle. Lib, 20 May 1853; Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, 2:420–40. 11. Thurlow Weed (1787–1882) was born in New York and began his career as a journalist and editor. Elected to the New York legislature in 1829, Weed became influential in national politics during the 1840s and 1850s. On 14 May 1853, Weed wrote an editorial for the Albany Evening Journal, which criticized Frederick Douglass’s 11 May speech before the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass attacked American proslavery sentiment, censured American political parties for their support of slavery, and condemned the resurgent American Colonization Society; he declared that he would never leave America but advised blacks that chose otherwise to resettle in the Caribbean, where they could remain connected to the antislavery movement. Weed agreed with Douglass’s position on colonization and emigration. But he accused Douglass of overstating his case against political parties, and he implied that, in holding such views, Douglass undermined his ability to lead American blacks. DAB, 19:598– 600; Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, 2:420–40; FDP, 27 May 1853.

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12. Allen probably refers to Attila, the leader of the nomadic Huns, who is remembered for his legendary brutality. 13. Martin Luther (1483–1546) was a German theologian who became a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation. After being excommunicated from the Catholic church in 1520, he helped establish the Lutheran church. 14. Allen refers to the annual meeting of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society held at Exeter Hall on 16 May 1853.

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56. Speech by Samuel Ringgold Ward Delivered at Freemasons’ Hall, London, England 21 June 1853 During the early 1850s, many black lecturers—especially Samuel Ringgold Ward, William Wells Brown, and Josiah Henson—explained to their British audiences why Canada West was a “sanctuary” for fugitives fleeing from slavery. Ward’s presentations were the most authoritative; he was a former slave, had lived in Canada for two years, and was the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada’s agent in Great Britain. Ward was the featured speaker at a public meeting held in Freemasons’ Hall on 21 June to consider the plight of fugitive slaves in Canada. His lecture provoked a wide-ranging discussion of how best to provide for blacks escaping to Canada and led to the formation of a committee of assistance headed by the earl of Shaftesbury (the meeting’s chairman), clergyman Thomas Angell, George Smith, and J. C. Gallaway, and George Alexander and Louis Alexis Chamerovzow of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. PtL, 27 June 1853. The Rev. S. R. W ARD said, he had for nearly two years been employed in Canada by a Society,1 whose general object was very similar to that of every Anti-Slavery Society, but whose operations consisted especially in hiding fugitive slaves when they had escaped from their masters, and arrived in the colony. In 1772 it was, by a decree of the highest court of this realm, declared that the moment a slave touched British soil he became a free man.2 That decision was pronounced by Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, who thus rendered his name immortal. Somehow or other it was soon communicated to the slave population in America, who at the same time got hold of another fact—an astronomical one— that by following the north star they would ultimately arrive at the land of freedom. These were two very important facts in slave education—facts which had been learnt with great facility, and had wonderfully vexed many slave-owners. From 1772 to 1832 the people of this country held slaves themselves in the West Indies;3 and, as a slave belonging to another country the moment he came upon British soil was free, during the whole of that time they presented to the world the anomalous spectacle of doing better by other people’s slaves than by their own. Now for many years past a large number of slaves had annually escaped from the United States to Canada, being repelled by slavery on the one hand, and attracted by freedom on the other; so that at length the entire negro population in Canada was said to amount to from thirty to thirty-five thousand. It was to be observed that during their flight slaves were con-

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stantly exposed to the greatest perils. There were persons ever on the alert to catch them, not merely in the slave, but also in the free States; and he was sorry to be obliged to declare, that many who professed the name of Jesus did not scruple to keep dogs, whom they hounded on in the track of slaves. Having lived in the Northern States, he could say that the work of aiding a negro in escaping from the slave-holding States was an arduous one, which it required a great deal of courage to undertake, and which exposed those who did engage in it to a great many perils. When at last the fugitives arrived in the colony, they were in a state of the most complete destitution; and, the excitement having passed off, they frequently became ill, and remained so for several days. This prostration was quite natural. They could not bring with them an extensive wardrobe; they could not have a large amount of money in their pockets to spend as they went along; for hundreds of miles they were obliged to lie in woods during the day, and to travel at night, because if they were seen even in any part of the free States, especially since the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law, they might be captured, brought before a magistrate, and, after a summary decision, delivered over to their captors, for restoration to their masters. And here we might observe, in passing, that when a fugitive slave had been brought before a court, the Judge received five dollars if he declared him free, and ten if he pronounced him a slave—a direct bribe in favour of slavery. Added to this, there was all through the Northern States a feeling that, should the negro be properly treated, he would be troublesome—that he would propose marriage to the daughters of whites, and much more of the same kind. Thus was the poor fugitive in “perils by the way from his own countrymen.” The Society which he represented did not go across the frontier line to bring fugitives into Canada; it did not trouble the United States; but the moment he had put his foot on British soil, and by that act had become a free man, it took him by the hand, and did what it could for him. Arriving as he did under circumstances of extreme destitution—a destitution greatly increased by his having had to run the gauntlet, as it were, along the whole of his route—they put their hands into their pockets—and many colonial pockets were very poorly furnished—and endeavoured to aid him. He had frequently known men put themselves to the greatest straits in order to afford relief. After three or four days, after a few supplies of necessaries, after recovering from the illness attendant on the circumstances of the escape, the fugitives generally were able to obtain plenty of work and good wages. They had not been put to expense for any one for more than from three to six days; and in some cases it had been his happiness to obtain work for a party within two hours after his arrival. The fact was, it required quite a man to escape from slavery. When it came to skulking along by day, and running along by night, when one had to place oneself in circumstances of the extremest peril, then it was

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necessary that there should be a great deal of the bone and sinew of mankind: without that, no one could expose himself to all the hardships and risks which attended flight. The fugitive knew that if captured he would be subjected to the lash, as an example to others; and, having seen many who had been ill-treated, he must say that without a great deal of ingenuity to devise the plan of escape, and a great deal of strong nerve and determination to put it into execution, no one would ever be able to reach Canada. Hence it was that these fugitives in Canada were about as good subjects as any that Her Majesty had. They were men who had shown that they could appreciate freedom by putting themselves to great cost, and incurring great risk, to obtain it; they were men who satisfactorily solved the problem of their own maintenance when work was placed before them. He had already stated their numbers at thirty to thirty-five thousand. They were chiefly scattered over the far-west counties of Essex and Kent; though there were many in Middlesex, York, at Niagara, and in other districts. The first reason why they were to be found in such numbers in Essex was, that its climate was the warmest and most suitable to those who had come from the south. For that county grew nectarines, peaches, pears, and tobacco, quite as freely as in the adjoining State of Ohio. Moreover, the land not being so much settled as that of the east, its price was not so high, and it was easier to acquire some of it; and it would no doubt gratify the Chairman (the Earl of Shaftesbury) and the Meeting to learn, that many of the fugitives were extremely anxious to become purchasers of the soil. The third reason was, that Essex had for its chief town Windsor, which was opposite Detroit, and adjacent to the Detroit river. The shortest route was the best for the fugitive’s purpose. Turning to another subject, M R . W A R D said if he were asked whether there was not a good deal of prejudice in Canada against the negro settlers, he must confess that there was. There was prejudice there of a very similar nature to that which existed in the United States; it was not so extensive, but it was of the same type and character; and in some of its aspects it was meaner than the prejudice of the States. But, then, if prejudice existed, it was to be remembered that the law did not sanction it. 4 In any case in which negroes were deprived of their rights on account of the prejudice against them, they had only to go before a court to obtain a just and equitable decision: he had never known an instance in which the case was otherwise. Again, there was no religious body in Canada that sanctioned this prejudice.5 He knew no church that had a negro pew, none in which a negro was not treated as well as a white man. All that was wanted at the present time, was that the fugitive slaves should, on arriving in Canada, be taken by the hand; above all, that means should be adopted to enable them to read the great rule of God’s word. What was needed was, that those who had particular trades should be assisted in getting employment in them, and that all should be

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put in the way of earning an honest subsistence. It was important to remember the influence which would be exerted by the colored population upon the United States. Kent and Essex being so near to the States, he was very anxious that the influence should be of the right kind, in order that the opponents of slavery might be able to hold up the colored population before the people of the United States, and say, “These are the people whom you held in slavery—do you see no difference in them? Did they work and act under you as they do now? Did they rear children in virtue, honour, and piety, as they do now?” Thus would Canada, placed side by side with a country that boasted of a freedom which it did not possess, work out most important results. Miss Harriett Martineau said an American captain had told her that the sublimest sight he ever beheld was the leap of a fugitive slave from the boat to the Canadian shore. The fugitive, he said, exhibited the most breathless anxiety while the boat was approaching the shore; every pull of the oar seemed to increase the intensity of his feelings; and when at length the boat got close to the Canadian side, not content with stepping ashore, he went back a few feet in the boat, and taking a run and jump, leaped upon free land. The Niagara Falls, by many esteemed the greatest wonder in the world, were altogether eclipsed by this leap of the slave from the boat to the shore—from chains to freedom. What he wished to see all along the coast was that leap made good by upward tendencies and a general improvement of character. Colonial Church and School Society, Occasional Papers, 1:7–10 (February 1854). 1. The immediatist Anti-Slavery Society of Canada was founded during February 1851 in Toronto, Canada West, in response to passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Initially a local Toronto organization, its principal support came from Protestant clergy, liberal business and professional circles, and blacks opposed to southern slavery. Rev. Michael Willis (president), Thomas Henning (secretary-treasurer), and Toronto Globe editor George Brown guided the society until the Civil War. During 1852–53, it became a more national organization with auxiliary societies in Kingston, Hamilton, Windsor, London, Grey county, and St. Catharines and with fourteen vice-presidents from various Canadian towns, including Montreal. The society sought to aid black fugitives in the western region of Canada West, urged them to become farmers, and endorsed such communities as Dawn and the Refugee Home Society. Between 1851 and 1857, the society’s women’s auxiliary—the Ladies Association in Aid of the Colored Refugees—assisted hundreds of fugitives with clothing, money, and employment. Samuel Ringgold Ward, the society’s itinerant agent, raised £1,200 in Britain between 1853 and 1855 to aid Canadian fugitives. Although considerably less active after 1857, the society revived briefly during the John Anderson extradition case of 1860–61 and the period following the Emancipation Proclamation. It disbanded by 1867. I. C. Pemberton, “The Anti-Slavery Society of Canada” (M.A. thesis, University of

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Toronto, 1967), 17, 20–27, 34–40, 48–55, 69, 77, 80–84, 99, 122, 126, 135; Robin W. Winks, “A Sacred Animosity: Abolitionism in Canada,” in The Anti-slavery Vanguard, ed. Martin Duberman (Princeton, N.J., 1965), 323–29. 2. On 22 June 1772, Lord Mansfield, chief justice of the Court of Kings Bench, freed the slave James Somersett, who had refused to return to America with his master. At the time, and throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, Mansfield’s decision was incorrectly regarded as the definitive judicial statement on the illegality of slavery. But Mansfield did not rule on the legality of English slavery. Instead, Mansfield accepted the defense’s second line of reasoning and ruled that to remove Somersett from England would violate the country’s longstanding laws of villenage, which regulated relations between master and servant. In particular, to return Somersett to America against his will would have violated that law requiring a master to respect his servant’s attachment to place. On that basis, Mansfield freed Somersett. Jerome Nadelhaft, “The Somersett Case and Slavery: Myth, Reality and Repercussions,” JNH 51:193–208 (July 1966); Ruth Ann Fisher, “Granville Sharp and Lord Mansfield,” JNH 28:381–90 (October 1943). 3. Ward refers to slaveholding by British planters in the West Indies prior to the passage of the West Indian Emancipation Act of 1833. 4. The widely held view that Canada was a haven for blacks, free of prejudice and overt discrimination, was largely a myth. Blacks did not find all of the personal freedom they hoped for in Canada, and they often faced open prejudice and hostility. There was no uniform pattern of prejudice, but blacks were considered inferior—not necessarily because they might have been slaves, but simply because they were blacks—and Canadians voiced attitudes and actions that often resembled those of northern whites. Some Canadians opposed the formation of black settlements. The situation worsened in the 1850s with fears that an influx of fugitives would mean more competition for jobs and would make things more difficult for Canadians in their own land. Although blacks were equal under Canadian law, they faced social discrimination in schools, public accommodations, and housing. Winks, Blacks in Canada, 20–21, 142–43, 248–51; Pease and Pease, Black Utopia, 8–12, 101–5. 5. Throughout the period of nineteenth century black immigration to Canada, Canadian churches displayed a mixture of attitudes toward the increasing number of blacks in their midst, and they took varying positions on the problem of slavery. This inconsistency translated into a range of behavior (much of which was discriminatory) toward black men and women. Winks, Blacks in Canada, 219–31.

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57. Speech by William G. Allen Delivered at the Stock Exchange, Leeds, England 29 November 1853 Black abolitionist lecturers spoke authoritatively about the close connection between slavery and northern racial prejudice. Free black William G. Allen was particularly careful to suggest this relationship for British listeners. In November 1852 the newly founded Leeds AntiSlavery Association engaged Allen to offer a series of three lectures on American slavery and racial prejudice at the Stock Exchange in Leeds. The first lecture was presented on 29 November 1853, with Leeds’s mayor John Wilson serving as chairman. Leeds Anti-Slavery Association president Wilson Armistead and vice-president Joseph Lupton appeared on the platform. Prior to Allen’s lecture, the mayor read a handbill that had been displayed in an American post office offering a $100-dollar reward for the recovery of a black slave named Peter, noting the inhumane treatment of slaves that it intimated. Allen then lectured on “American Slavery and the Prejudice against Colour.” LI, 26 November, 3 December 1853; LM, 3 December 1853; ASRL, 1 January 1854. Professor ALLEN (an intelligent gentleman of but slight colour) then came forward, and was received with applause. He said he certainly felt very much obliged by the kind reception; it showed to him their kind feeling, which, however, he must accept more as a tribute to the cause he stood there to advocate. He would (for the sake of this cause) he was an orator; but, unfortunately, he was not a speech maker by profession, having lived in the main the quiet life of a teacher. He had not come there to deal out indiscriminate abuse of America and her institutions, for he could not forget that it was there he first looked up to the blue heavens above, and at the green earth beneath him; that there still reposed the ashes of a beloved mother, of a father, and of sisters.1 No, endeared to his heart were the blue hills and the shores of his fatherland. (Hear, hear, and applause.) But while he should not deal in indiscriminate abuse, neither should he indulge in fulsome flattery. American slavery was one of those great evils which require to be attacked by all the efforts of mind and heart, and the man who threw a lance at it should see that it is charged with fire as well as with truth. He acknowledged the greatness of America in energy, intellect, and activity. Look at her; a nation born in a day! Look at her giving culture and education to her people, and here there was something sublime, something great. But if he acknowledged her to be great, he condemned her the more. (Hear, hear.) He had heard it said that America would abolish slavery if she could.

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Why, if America willed to march her armies into Mexico and annex a part of that country, she did it; and if she willed it, she could abolish slavery. (Hear, hear.) But what was American slavery? He had always said that it was the vilest that ever saw the sun. The slave was one who was in the power of his master; his personality was destroyed, though a human being endowed with faculties and inclinations which bid him look upward, and with a capacity which enabled him to pierce the skies. He was from a slave state; a native of Virginia, and though never a slave, he had looked upon slavery for eighteen years, and knew it to be all that it had ever been pronounced, the abomination of abominations. (Hear, hear.) But the slave was not only subject to the will of his master, but also to the will of every white person in the community; for not only the slave, but the free coloured people, were by express statute prevented from giving any evidence against a white person, so that whatever indignity was ordered them, they had no redress. To show the absurdity of the prejudice against coloured persons, he mentioned a case which occurred in Charleston, South Carolina. Some time ago a beautiful young lady was met by a young gentleman, supposed to be connected with one of the first families; he politely bowed to her; but he had passed her but a few steps, when one of his companions ridiculed him for having saluted in this respectful manner “a nigger,” as the term went. The man was astounded, and would not believe it; but, when convinced of it, he was so angry that he ordered a policeman to take her to the police-office, where she was flogged, not for any act she had done, but because he had been guilty of saluting with respect a coloured lady. (Hear, hear, hear.) But the free coloured people are not only subject to such indignities, but in the matter of education and locomotion they were under the greatest restrictions. Let him give them a little of his own experience. Although born a freeman, in Virginia, it was impossible for him to leave his own state without first obtaining from a magistrate a passport. He obtained one which authorised him to leave Virginia for Baltimore by steam boat. He proceeded to Baltimore, but it was with the greatest difficulty he could leave it, being told by the ticket seller that he must get some white man to testify that he was free before he could have a ticket. He was a stranger there, and at last he succeeded in finding a white man to testify that he was a free man. He then went to the State of New York, and after remaining two years, he thought he would return to Virginia, to look upon the face of his mother and shake his father by the hand. He asked a captain to give him a ticket to Norfolk, in Virginia, and he refused, saying that it was contrary to law to take into Virginia even a free coloured man. So he went some other way to Philadelphia, and at last succeeded in getting from thence to Virginia. On arriving there he was met by those he supposed to be his friends, but who, instead of acting as such, seized him by the collar, and asked why he had ventured into

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Norfolk again. His father and mother were alarmed, and he at last thought it best to exile himself; that was the last time he had seen his native State. In England he had seen nothing of the prejudice against colour; he had traversed their parks, and visited their cities, and had been at their hotels, and he had not yet met with any of that feeling which exists in America. This feeling was generated entirely by American slavery, and did not exist even in Brazil, where some of the most distinguished officers of the Government were of African blood. It was said that this prejudice against colour existed because the coloured man was naturally inferior. But surely it was only necessary to turn over the pages of history to confute this assertion. If it was said that coloured men in America had not established a claim to genius, that difficulty could be got over, for the men of African blood there were called upon to employ their genius in battling with the difficulties with which they had to contend daily. No coloured man in America could afford to write poetry or become an artist, when all the powers of that mighty people were combined together to keep him in the dust. But though the whole energies of church and state had for ages been combined to keep the black man down, he was increasing in energy, in power, and in respect with the entire world. (Applause.) He asked, was this any evidence of inferiority? (Hear, hear.) Having named a galaxy of geniuses who had been of African blood, to prove that where the opportunity was given there was no inferiority exhibited by the men of African descent, he admitted that it was true there were few great negroes in America, comparatively speaking; but it must not be forgotten that it was a most serious penal offence for them to learn to read, and every law was directed to their moral, social, physical, and intellectual degradation. Despite all this, however, the Douglasses2 and other coloured men of the United States were rising up and showing that the alleged inferiority of the descendants of Africa was a false and calumnious slander. Not only non-professors, but men who claimed to be Christians, were guilty of this prejudice. Why, he himself was mobbed out of a place one Sabbath evening by those who professed to be Christians, and for no crime that he had committed, except that having three-fourths of Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins, he had aspired to the hand of a lady who had the remaining fourth. (Hear, hear, and applause.) The whole story about this was written in a book, and he could not tell it to them then.3 The Professor then proceeded to show how this prejudice against coloured persons manifested itself in schools, there being only two schools where coloured people were received on terms of perfect equality;4 in politics, no free coloured man being allowed to vote, except he was possessed of real estate worth 250 dollars;5 in the places of worship, where the negroes are provided with separate pews;6 in the cemeteries, in some of which the ashes of a coloured person are not allowed to be interred. Having referred to the

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recent convention of free coloured men in America,7 and to other matters, he said this prejudice against colour would have its day, and then it would pass away. The coloured people are increasing every year in numbers, strength, power, intelligence, and virtue, and he had hope of them and of the American people yet; and against these things American law and American prejudice could not long stand. This prejudice was also dying out because the American people were feeling the force of a world’s indignation. Why were the coloured people of America admitted to the World’s Fair this year at New York?8 Because the Americans found themselves in the presence of people from all parts of Europe, and they dared not brave the indignation of these foreigners. (Hear, hear.) Then, there was Mrs. Stowe, the renowned authoress of Uncle Tom, she gave it a blow. Oh! what a book was that! Every page was that of genius on fire of truth. (Applause.) She had sprung a mine, out of which would issue prayers and sympathies for the coloured race, and in the language of an eloquent man, he was almost induced to exclaim, “Now has the star of our hope arisen above the horizon.” (Hear, hear, and applause.) In conclusion, he asked the audience to do all they could to break down this iniquitous system of slavery, by protesting against it, and shaming the people of America out of it. (Loud applause.) Leeds Mercury (England), 3 December 1853; Leeds Times (England), 3 December 1853. 1. William Allen was American-born (in or around the city of Norfolk, Virginia). Allen’s father and his mother died when he was young, as apparently did at least two female children. 2. Allen’s specific reference is to Frederick Douglass. 3. Allen refers to The American Prejudice against Color (London, 1853), which he wrote in London during the summer of 1853. It focused primarily on the hostility aroused in the United States by his marriage to Mary King, a white woman he met while teaching at Central College in McGrawville, New York. He later abridged, refined, and republished the autobiographical piece as A Short Personal Narrative (Dublin, 1860). PtL, 8 August 1853 [8:0395]. 4. Allen refers to Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, and to New York Central College in McGrawville, New York. 5. In 1853 free blacks could vote on an equal basis with whites only in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island. Allen refers here to New York State, which, by action of the 1821 state constitutional convention, limited voting by free blacks to possessors of a freehold estate worth $250 or more. Litwack, North of Slavery, 75–91. 6. Allen refers to the Negro pew controversy. 7. The Colored National Convention of 6–8 July 1853 met at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York. Approximately 170 delegates from ten states attended. J. W. C. Pennington served as convention president. The proceedings examined and approved a number of resolutions concerned with the condition of free black life in America. Four aims dominated the convention. The delegates,

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particularly Frederick Douglass, who drafted the meeting’s Declaration of Sentiments, made it clear that most free northern blacks rejected the resurgent efforts of the American Colonization Society and, by implication, the calls of some free blacks for emigration. The delegates stressed the need for northern blacks to understand their own political economy and called for black citizens to erect institutions that addressed their economic and educational needs. They especially supported the founding of a manual labor college to train black students in both scholarly and practical subjects. Convinced that their efforts to develop black-directed institutions must begin with the formation of a National Council of Colored Citizens, the delegates drafted a constitution for such an organization and elected the council’s executive committee. Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 123, 139–40, 150, 253–55; Proceedings of the Colored National Convention Held in Rochester July 6th, 7th, 8th, 1853 (Rochester, N.Y., 1853), 3–51, in Howard Holman Bell, ed., Minutes of the Proceedings of the National Negro Conventions, 1830–1864 (New York, N.Y., 1969); FDP, 15 July 1853. 8. The New York Exhibition of 1–5 September 1853 was a cultural and commercial exhibition that featured four thousand exhibitors and entertained 115,000 visitors. Kenneth W. Luckhurst, The Story of Exhibitions (London, 1951), 83, 117, 119, 220.

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58. Speech by William G. Allen Delivered at the Stock Exchange, Leeds, England 1 December 1853 Allen delivered the second of his Leeds antislavery lectures at the Stock Exchange on the evening of 1 December 1853. The audience included many of the same Leeds notables who had attended his first speech but was larger than the previous crowd. Allen’s lecture was entitled “The Social and Political Condition of the Free Coloured People of the Northern States of America.” He delivered his third and final lecture, “The Probable Destiny of the Coloured Race,” four days later at the Stock Exchange. In time, Allen refined these three major addresses into a single antislavery speech, “History, Literature, and Destiny of the African Race.” Like other black speakers, he repeated his standard presentation to audiences throughout the British Isles. LM, 3 December 1853; ASRL, 1 January 1854; Lib, 5 May 1854; LT, 10 December 1853; ASW, January 1854; ASA, December 1854. Professor A L L E N , who was again received with general applause, said the lecture of that evening was on “The Social and Political Condition of the Free Coloured People of the Northern States of America.” He was glad that the topic for that evening presented a distinct point. On the general subject of American Slavery it was exceedingly difficult to speak or to reason before such an intelligent audience as that, but, as he had said, the subject of that evening presented a distinct point. The subject was an interesting one, he did not know one more so, and for this reason, the free coloured people of the Northern States occupied a position which would enable them to influence the destiny of America, and through America, the destinies of the world. This might seem a startling saying, but it might not be the less true for that, for the destinies of nations rested one upon the other; there could be no change in the governmental policy of America without the change affecting the governmental policy of other nations. Look, for instance, at the protection which England afforded to its own coloured subjects. He did not say that this country had not the will to do it, but some how or other it was quite clear that if a British subject who happened to have a coloured skin visited South Carolina, he could not expect or rely upon the same protection from the British Government which a white man received.1 National laws were but conveniences; the great law of brotherhood existed in spite of these laws, and it was impos-

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sible for one nation to have a wrong within itself without injuring other nations, as it was also impos-373sible for one man in a community to commit a wrong without injuring others as well as himself. (Hear, hear.) What, then, was the social and political condition of the free coloured people in America? It was just what the general government of the country had made it. Soon after the formation of the federal government, the slave holding spirit, with commendable agency, saw that to allow a virtuous and accomplished free coloured people to grow up in their midst, would be to cherish a viper amongst themselves which would sting them to the death. So they proceeded with true Anglo Saxon sagacity, to make laws to keep this people in a state of degradation. The first law made by the general government to oppress and degrade the free coloured people was passed twelve years after the formation of the general government. By this law it was decided that no man but a white man should be admitted to the rights of American citizenship, or rather that no foreigner but a white foreigner should be admitted to these rights.2 (Hear, hear.) The gross ingratitude of this law was shown by the fact that the very first martyr in the war which resulted in the separation of the North American colonies from this country was a man of colour, by name Crispus Attucks,3 and the coloured men fought side by side with the white men in that conflict. When Irishmen, Hungarians, Frenchmen, Germans, or Spaniards went to America, they were welcome; let whoever would go, provided he had a white skin, and he would be welcome; but let a man go to the shore of America, in whose veins flowed one drop of African blood, and he was thrust out, and told he could not be introduced to the rights of American citizenship. (Hear, hear.) If such treatment was republicanism, then give him the British or any other monarchy (hear, hear, and applause); if this was Christian democracy, then give him Russian or any other despotism. He would rather go to Russia or to Francis Joseph4 and appeal to them for justice, than go to his own country; for if he had a skin which had been burnt by the gracious smiles of the sun in America, instead of justice he should get injustice, and instead of getting what was his due, he would have execrations and all manner of outrage heaped upon him. Hundreds and thousands of Irishmen, of Polanders, and of others from the shores of Europe, flocked to America seeking liberty as they said; but they no sooner obtained the liberty that they had come for, than they immediately employed all their powers in oppressing and degrading the coloured man. (Hear, hear.) Did they want a mob in America, they might go to the foreigners; did they want insulting in the streets, they might go to the Irishman who had just landed on their shores, and had hardly got the breath out of him. He disliked to say these things, but it was the fact, and it only showed that human nature was under certain circumstances a great beggar. The Professor then proceeded to refer to other laws of the general government, instancing the militia law, which declares that no

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one but a white man shall be enrolled, whilst the coloured men are called upon to fight in the foreign wars of the country; and the law which prohibits a coloured man from driving the mail. In this country any man, if he had genius, might aspire to the highest offices in the state; but in America a man with a coloured skin could not become even a common constable. In London he had seen a coloured postman delivering letters, but in America a coloured man was liable to a heavy penalty for even driving the mail. The next law of the general government authorised the citizens of Columbia district, which were not responsible to any State Government, but Congress only, to make such laws as they thought proper to control the coloured population. The white people of Columbia availed themselves of the privilege, and enacted one of the most diabolical laws ever recorded in any statute book, namely, that no coloured citizen should be allowed to visit the city of Washington, or any other city of Columbia; and if any coloured man was found there who could not prove his freedom, he should be sold into slavery, and the surplus money arising from such sale, after paying the gaol fees, should go into the pocket of the gaoler, thus offering a direct bribe to the gaoler. Under this law, free coloured men had been seized again and again in Washington, and thrown into gaol; one gaoler, of the name of Ringgold,5 having made a fortune by this traffic. The next law which the general government passed was the Fugitive Slave Law; a law which transcended in wickedness any law of the most barbarous states of antiquity; a law which was written in blood and executed in blood. (Hear, hear, and applause.) This law virtually made a slave of every coloured man, for any coloured man or woman walking the Northern States might be claimed as a slave, and a man or woman so claimed was not permitted to say a word in his or her defence. Then the Judge had a fee of ten dollars if he sent a man into slavery, but only of five dollars if he kicked him out; and such men as Judge [R. C. Grier] thought more of a ten dollar bill than of the feelings of a slave. Such were the laws of the general government. But in addition to this, the American people had set themselves systematically to work to depress and degrade the coloured people. In the sixteen States of the Union there were only five in which coloured men were allowed to vote on terms of equality with the white man, namely, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. In one other State (New York) coloured men were allowed to vote, but only on condition that they possessed 250 dollars’ worth of real estate. In all the other States the free coloured people were political nonentities; and in two of them their liberties are invaded by the laws of these States.6 The bad pre-eminence belongs to the State of Illinois, which had enacted a law that if any negro or mulatto, bond or free, came into and remained ten days in the State, with the intention of settling there, he should be

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deemed guilty of a high misdemeanour, and fined 50 dollars; and if the fine were not paid he should be kept in custody and sold as a slave; the money accruing from such sale to be thrown into the charity fund for the benefit of the poor. (Hear, hear.) That, said the lecturer, caps the climax. (Applause.) Further, the law of this State declared that every one with one-fourth only of African blood should be deemed a mulatto. Now, a mulatto was a person with one-half African blood in his veins, and those with only one-fourth were quadroons, therefore it was not impossible but this declaration would involve the State in difficulties. A convention of free coloured people had lately been called in Illinois to protest against this law,7 and they had done so in such a noble and dignified manner, that the people of the State—even the pro-slavery men—had admitted the men who met in convention were as intelligent looking, as fine and manly in appearance, as those of any convention they had ever seen. The State of Indiana had also passed a law against free coloured people coming to reside in that State. Such was the state of things in this State, that the free coloured population were fast emigrating out of the State, although they were the most wealthy people in it. This seemed to him to be bad political economy. As he understood the matter, the true greatness of a people rested upon the intelligence, the virtue, and the wealth of the community. (Hear, hear, and applause.) The object of the American people was to get rid of the free coloured people at all hazards; but if they did, it would, in his opinion, be at great hazard—for many of them had a large portion of white blood in their veins. And this was an explanation of what was charged against the free coloured people, that they were dwindling away because they are inferior to the whites. But why are they dwindling away? (Hear, hear.) Because they are growing whiter and whiter, and by conforming to the Anglo-Saxon model, they slide into, and are lost amongst the masses. (Hear.) Before they succeed in getting out the coloured people, thousands and thousands will be among them, and they will know it not; indeed it would be impossible to get rid of them, because they were so mixed up together. Notwithstanding all the oppression by which the free coloured people had been kept down, they were increasing in wealth, in intelligence, and in power, and in spite of all the disadvantages under which they laboured, the wealth of the free coloured people of the Northern States was recently ascertained to amount to fifteen millions of dollars, or about £3,000,000. The Professor then proceeded to mention instances where coloured people had by their energy and perseverance raised themselves to positions of opulence and respectability, and showed that whilst the respectability and intelligence of such men as Henry Boyd,8 Robert Purvis,9 Dr. Pennington, and Frederick Douglass, were admitted by all, they were not allowed the social privileges of the most ignorant white man; being debarred from

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riding in the public omnibuses, or dining at the public table. He again alluded to his own case as an illustration, and said though he could not speak upon it in public, he had published the details of his life and experience in a book,10 which any one might obtain and read. Leeds Mercury (England), 3 December 1853. 1. Allen refers to the inability of the British government to protect black British sailors whose ships visited southern ports. In 1822 the South Carolina legislature passed a Negro Seamen’s Act, which stipulated that any free black employed on a vessel entering a South Carolina port had to be imprisoned until the vessel was ready to sail. The ship’s captain was responsible for the detention expenses; should a captain fail to meet that responsibility, the imprisoned free black could be considered an “absolute slave” and sold at auction to pay the expenses. Similar laws were passed in Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. Throughout the 1820s and 1830s, Britain protested the laws to the American government; yet no American official was both willing and able to enforce a Supreme Court decision invalidating the law, and South Carolina invoked it at will. In the mid-1840s, Massachusetts responded to the act by sending lawyers Samuel Hoar to Charleston and Henry Hubbard to New Orleans to institute suits on behalf of free blacks jailed under the law. But threats of violence forced both men to return to Massachusetts. Phillip M. Hamer, “Great Britain, the United States, and the Negro Seamen’s Acts, 1822– 1848,” JSH 1:3–28 (February 1935); Charles S. Sydnor, The Development of Southern Sectionalism, 1819–1848 (Baton Rouge, La., 1948), 152. 2. Federal legislation in the post-Revolutionary decades reflected the popular preference for a white man’s country. In 1790 Congress limited naturalization to white aliens, and by 1820 further congressional legislation excluded blacks from serving in the militia, carrying the U.S. mails, and running for office in the District of Columbia. Congress repeatedly approved the admission of new states whose constitutions severely restricted the civil rights of free blacks. Litwack, North of Slavery, 31. 3. Crispus Attucks (ca. 1723–1770), a mulatto of combined black and Natick Indian ancestry, was born in Framingham, Massachusetts. He apparently was the escaped slave of Deacon William Brown of Framingham. On 5 March 1770, Attucks led a protest against the presence of British soldiers in Boston. When the protesters taunted the British guards stationed at the Custom House, the soldiers fired into the crowd and killed Attucks and four others. Like the other victims of the Boston massacre, Attucks became a revolutionary hero to American colonists. Blacks kept his memory alive well after the war ended. DANB, 18–19. 4. Francis Joseph (1830–1916) was the Hapsburg ruler of the Austrian Empire. He succeeded his uncle, Ferdinand I, who abdicated in 1848. 5. Tench Ringgold. 6. Allen refers to the Illinois and Ohio black laws. 7. The reference is to the First Convention of the Colored Citizens of Illinois, which was held at Warner’s Hall in Chicago on 6–8 October 1853. Philip S. Foner and George E. Walker, eds., Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, 1840–1865, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, Pa., 1979–80), 2:54–66.

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8. Henry Boyd (1802–?) was born a slave in Kentucky. At age eighteen, his master consented to sell him his freedom and allowed him to hire out his labor to raise the purchase price. Armed with a pass from his master, Boyd traveled to the Kanawha salt works in western Virginia, where he chopped wood and tended salt kettles until he earned the necessary sum. After purchasing his freedom, he learned carpentry, then moved to Cincinnati in 1826, where, because of his color, he had initial difficulty establishing himself but eventually gained a reputation for his skill. Boyd accumulated considerable property and wealth, and in 1836 he established a corded-bedstead manufacturing firm, which employed eighteen to fifty men, both white and black. By 1844 the firm produced one thousand to twelve hundred bedsteads annually, which sold well in the South and West because many of Boyd’s customers remained unaware of his color. A series of fires later destroyed his firm, made it uninsurable, and led to financial setbacks and the sale of his business in 1859. He later started several minor businesses and, during the 1870s, worked for the city government of Cincinnati. Martin R. Delany described Boyd as “a man of great energy and character.” Although never formally educated, he was well read in history, geography, and arithmetic and had a thorough knowledge of politics. George W. Williams, History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880, 2 vols. (1883; reprint, New York, N.Y., 1968), 2:138–40; CA, 17 August 1839; Pih, “Negro Self-Improvement Efforts,” 182; Carter G. Woodson, “The Negroes of Cincinnati prior to the Civil War,” JNH 1:21 (January 1916); Delany, Condition of Colored People, 98. 9. Robert Purvis (1810–1898) was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the son of William Purvis, a cotton broker, and Harriet Judah, the mulatto daughter of a German Jewish merchant and his ex-slave wife. In 1819 William Purvis moved his wife and three sons to Philadelphia. When Purvis died in 1826, he left an inheritance that provided for his family, and he left a legacy of strong antislavery convictions, which particularly influenced Robert. Robert Purvis concluded his formal education with a year at Amherst College, then returned to Philadelphia, where he began his abolitionist career by contributing to Garrison’s Liberator and by helping to organize the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. In 1834 Purvis married Harriet Forten, daughter of James Forten, the black abolitionist and wealthy Philadelphia sailmaker. He also traveled to England to blunt colonizationist appeals abroad and to fashion international antislavery cooperation. Throughout the remainder of the 1830s, Purvis focused his attention on the problems of Pennsylvania blacks and on the creation of a Pennsylvania anti-slavery network. He joined the Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society of Philadelphia, led the formation of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in 1837, and, in 1838, chaired the committee of black citizens that drafted the Appeal of Forty Thousand—a protest against the Pennsylvania Reform Convention’s attempt to take away black suffrage. When the antislavery movement factionalized in 1840, Purvis remained with the American society. Although he supported the free produce movement, he vowed to “eschew all means [except] pure morality to end slavery.” Passage of the Fugitive Slave Law and ferment among black abolitionists about their role in the movement redirected Purvis’s antislavery activities after 1850. Purvis had always supported fugitive slave rescue efforts, but in the 1850s, he became more devoted to that work. He built secret hiding places for fugitive

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slaves in his Philadelphia home and at his two Byberry farms, and in 1855 he advocated the impeachment of U.S. District Court Judge John K. Kane for his decisions in fugitive slave cases. By 1859 Purvis claimed to be ready “to kill every oppressor” that stood in his or any fugitive’s way to freedom. The depth of Purvis’s commitment to antislavery activism in the 1850s was reinforced by the racial prejudice to which he and his family were subjected during these years. The Purvis children were excluded from public schools, and Purvis was refused permission to participate in agricultural competitions and was harassed by antiabolitionists. Purvis even admitted that some abolitionists, who were the “only true friends of the colored man, were not consistent in their conduct.” During the Civil War, Purvis enlisted blacks in the Union army. After the war, he served as commissioner of the Freedmen’s Savings Bank, supported passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, and helped found the Pennsylvania Equal Rights Association—an organization dedicated to suffrage for women and blacks. In later life, Purvis continued his work for black equality as well as for municipal reform in Philadelphia. DANB, 508–10; Brown, Rising Son, 468–69; Still, Underground Railroad, 711; Janice Sumler Lewis, “The Fortens of Philadelphia: An Afro-American Family and Nineteenth-Century Reform” (Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 1978), 44–46, 50–52, 65–76, 94–95, 106–8, 184–90, 205– 7, 243; PPr, 3 August 1890, 16 April 1898; PEB, 16 December 1859; NYH, 12 May 1854; PF, 29 March 1838, 20 December 1848; Lib, 17 May, 14 June 1834, 10 August 1836, 10 January 1837, 10 May 1838, 19 August 1842, 1 September 1848, 9 September, 25 November, 6 December 1853, 5 May 1854; NASS, 25 October 1849, 20 May 1852, 12 November, 3 December 1853, 13 May 1854, 13 January, 8 September 1855, 7 February 1858, 6 March 1863, 8 April 1865, 22 December 1866, 14 January 1871. 10. Allen refers to his narrative, The American Prejudice against Color (London, 1853).

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59. William G. Allen to Charles Sumner 24 January 1854 William G. Allen never received the same popular attention in Britain as did many of his black abolitionist contemporaries. In spite of his intelligence, wit, and urbanity, Allen was unable to support himself and his family by antislavery lecturing. Boston abolitionist Eliza Lee Follen, who was visiting Britain in midsummer 1853, realized Allen’s economic circumstances and introduced him to some of her wealthy acquaintances. Early in 1854, Allen was employed by Lady Byron as a lecturer for the penal reform movement. Allen did not plan to abandon antislavery lecturing but felt duty bound “to adopt some reliable vocation,” and he felt that his work for penal reform schools elevated him “into a position at once respectable, and influential.” Allen sought information on American reform schools for his lectures in his 24 January 1854 letter to Charles Sumner. Blackett, “William G. Allen,” 47; William G. Allen to Gerrit Smith, 24 January 1854, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU; William G. Allen to My Dear Sir, 11 July 1854, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh. 14 Union Road Clapham Road London, England Jan[uar]y 24, 1854 My Dear Sir1 Although I have never enjoyed the pleasure of a personal interview with you, yet I venture to address you these lines, well knowing the deep interest you feel in whatever pertains to the Great Cause of Human Progress. Permit me also to say, that altho. in England, I am a native of America; and, at this time, am indeed an American in exile. My esteemed friend Hon. Gerrit Smith will detail to you the circumstances, which occasioned this “exile,” should you feel any interest in knowing them, if, indeed, you have not already learned them from the newspapers in America. For several years I was connected with New York Central College McGrawville Cortland Ct. as professor of the Greek Language and of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. This College is thoroughly reformatory in its character—receiving upon terms of perfect equality both sexes and all colors. When I inform you that I am a colored man, you will be quite inclined to credit me when I assure you that my connexion with this College was to me a source of the highest gratification as it afforded me a most desirable opportunity of aiding with such means as were in my

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power the noble men and women who are engaged in the Great American Struggle. I have however, been compelled to abandon that field, and I am now in England. Desirous still of devoting my energies to the cause of Human Progress, and certainly not regarding the doctrine of Human Rights as bounded by either clime or color, I have embraced for popular Agitation in this Country the subjects of “General Education” and “Penal Reformatory Schools”— subjects which are beginning to excite great interest throughout the entire Kingdom. I am countenanced in the matter and greatly aided by the Honorable Lady Byron2 who, I may here add, together with Mrs. Eliza Lee Follen of Boston Mass, now in England, have suggested the propriety of my addressing you this letter. The practice of incarcerating [in] prisons or otherwise vindictively punishing those children whom poverty, neglect of parents, destitution an[d] other like causes may have driven to the commission of crimes, and some of these crimes of an excee[dingly] petty character, is certainly one [for] which a remedy should be found, especially by a great Christian na[ti]on. The “Preventative” in the first p[la]ce, would, in my opinion be secured at least to a great extent by the establishing of a system of education which would more generally diffuse the advantages (i.e. opportunities) of learning. But should children at all events fall into crime, p[ena]l reformatory schools would certa[inly] be more desirable as institutio[ns] to which to send them than the present jails with all their horrid paraphernalia. I have already said that this subject is now exciting great interest throughout the entire Kingdom. Pe[rmi]t me to add that but two mon[ths] ago a large and enthusias[tic] meeting was held in Birm[ingham] in reference to these topics3—a m[ee]ting in which many of the most pr[om]inent men of the Kingdom took a part, and many of these gentlemen long recognized as among the most active and efficient of philanthropists. What I desire of you, My Dear Sir, is simply this—that you will furnish me with any some informa[tion] if it lies in your power so to do, [in] regard to the working of sim[i]lar schools in America, say that of [W]estboro Mass. &c.4 Or if it be not in [y]ou[r] power so to do that you will furnish me with a line or two expressive of your opinion upon these topics—which line or two I may incorporate in any address or addresses I may feel called upon to deliver in this country. With the reputation which attaches to [your] name in this Country as a Scholar, a philanthropist and Christian, you will readily see that such a communication from your pen must be productive of the happiest results. The blows which Englishmen strike at American Slavery are really best parried by the references, which Americans make to the poverty and uneducated state of what are termed the lower classes of this country. So much, therefore, as the reformer in this country can elevate the condition

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of these “lower classes,” so much the more support will he draw from American Slavery. So true it is that all reforms go together. But I have not made this last allusion for the purpose of entering upon any course of reasoning. Considering whom I am addressing, such an attempt on my part would convict me of great vanity. Making, therefore, no apologies addressing you this note, but resting its reception upon the [Dignity] of my cause I remain, My Dear Sir, Most obediently Yours, William G. Allen P.S. Any line directed “care of Anti Slavery Office No. 27 New Broad Street London, England” will reach me in safety. Obediently Yours, William G. Allen Charles Sumner Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Published by permission of the Houghton Library. 1. Charles Sumner (1811–1874), the son of Charles Pinckney Sumner, an early Massachusetts antislavery advocate, graduated from Harvard Law School in 1833. In 1848 he joined the Free Soil party and in 1851 was elected to the Senate from Massachusetts. His first formal address to the Senate attacked the Fugitive Slave Law and foreshadowed his leadership of the political antislavery effort. Throughout the 1850s, he helped organize the Republican party and fought expansion of slavery into the territories. In the spring of 1856, Sumner became a martyr to the cause of abolition when he was nearly caned to death by Preston Brooks, a representative from South Carolina upset by Sumner’s sharp attack on slaveholders in a Senate speech a few days earlier. During the Civil War, Sumner pressed for emancipation and afterward became a leader of those Republicans known as “radicals” for their efforts to control Reconstruction in the South, to impeach President Johnson, and to insure civil rights for blacks. DAB, 18: 208–14; David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (New York, N.Y., 1960); David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man (New York, N.Y., 1970). 2. Anne Isabella Lady Noel Byron (1792–1860), the daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke of Durham County, England, married British poet Lord Byron (George Gordon) in 1815; they had a daughter (Ada), then separated in 1816. She became active in British reform in the late 1820s. She assisted several black abolitionists, including William G. Allen. Most of her energy was directed toward establishing industrial schools and educating the poor. A disciple of the Swiss educational reformer Emanuel de Fellenberg, she opened an industrial school at Ealing Grove in 1834 and managed it until it closed in 1852. Lady Byron died in London in 1860. Ethel Colburn Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella Lady Noel Byron (New York, N.Y., 1929), 1–2, 155–56, 224, 326–35, 370, 429. 3. The Conference on Juvenile Delinquency convened at the Royal Hotel, Birmingham, on 20 December 1853. More than 170 male British reformers—primarily members of the aristocracy, clergy, and Parliament—and a few officers of penal institutions attended. Several leading English abolitionists were present, including William Scholefield, Joseph Sturge, Francis Bishop, and John Angell James. The morning session was chaired by Sir John Pakington, M.P.; the earl of Shaftesbury (Antony Ashley Cooper) presided at the evening session. The confer-

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ence recommended parliamentary action to reform the penal system and to establish additional Industrial Reformatory Schools. ABG, 26 December 1853; I, 24 December 1853. 4. In 1846 the Massachusetts legislature appropriated funds to erect a reformatory for juvenile offenders in the small town of Westborough, Massachusetts, approximately thirty miles west of Boston. The school was organized on the assumption that the solution to the problem of delinquency in urban centers lay in removing offenders from the city (thus protecting the city’s population) and rehabilitating these youth by exposing them to the morally healthy environment of the countryside. Stanley K. Schultz, The Culture Factory: Boston Public Schools, 1789–1860 (New York, N.Y., 1973), 250.

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60. J. C. A. Smith to Editor, Anti-Slavery Reporter 13 March 1854 British antislavery leaders were eager to assist blacks with a worthy cause but felt obligated to protect the integrity of the antislavery movement and its British supporters from the occasional black imposter who fraudulently raised money. By the mid-1840s, black American speakers were subjected to an informal but rigorous credentials check. The unofficial head of the certification system was Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, secretary of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and editor of the society-sponsored Anti-Slavery Reporter. Chamerovzow used the pages of the Reporter to warn local reform leaders about imposters. His 1 March 1854 article, entitled “Colored Lecturers—Caution,” vaguely warned of “certain coloured men” who were not genuine fugitive slaves but who were “going through the country with and without a [panorama] . . . delivering lectures on American slavery.” Chamerovzow made no specific charges, but black abolitionist J. C. A. Smith, then touring England with a panorama, responded to Chamerovzow’s article on 13 March. Smith’s letter of reprimand appeared in the next issue of the Anti-Slavery Reporter. ASRL, 1 March, 1 April 1854. Ashton under Line Lancashire [England] March 13th, 1854 Dear Sir1 Having seen a letter of yours in the, A. S. Reporter of March 1st 1854. Condeming the conduct of coloured Lectures, with and without Panoramas &c. &c. Cautioning the Public against them, and you withhold the names of the parties alluded. Sir I am a coloured man, and have a Panorama, and some times lecture on the horrors of Slavery, as the enclosed programme will give a few of the particulars. And I feel your letter is calculated to do me much injury, in as much as where ever your letter has been read I shall at once be suspected as one of the culprits alluded to in your able columns. I think it is due to me that you should in your reporter state that I am not one of the suspected persons. I am sure you do not wish to injure those who are honestly trying with yourself to overthrow the cruel system of Slavery and give freedom to the downtrodden millions of our race. I here respectfully solicit a notice in your Reporter for next month. Furthermore, I may state that I am not an escaped Slave. But for the peculiar crime of aiding and assisting Slaves to escape from their terrible bondage I was obliged, subsequently to leave the States. As my trial was

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reported2 in the Richmond Republican,3 and other papers of the same city, and the Baltimore Sun,4 of September 1849. (On going to Boston after my trial in Virginia) I was received by Wm. L. Garrison, (Ed.) of Liberator, Gerrit Smith, of Peterborro, New York, and others. And while at the convention held at Syracuse on 15th of Jany. 1850.5 I was also introduced, to those assembled in convention, (by Revd. Samuel J. May) President of the convention, as one of the conductors of the under ground rail road6—for I was so called by the Slaveholders as had been reported in several of the papers, among them was Saml. R. Ward’s Impartial Citizen. However, I am a stranger to you, and it needs not for me to speak of these things though they were publicly known; I can say that my conduct, since my arrival in England, will bear the strictest investigation, I am Sir yors faithfully, J. D. C. A. Smith (A reader of the Reporter)7 British Empire Manuscripts, Rhodes House Library, Oxford. Published by permission. 1. Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, a novelist and social critic, replaced John Scoble as secretary of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and editor of the AntiSlavery Reporter in 1852. Chamerovzow unsuccessfully attempted to unite BFASS forces with British Garrisonians, and he expertly managed the society throughout the 1850s. He presided over the informal antislavery lecture-certification system, encouraged black abolitionist tour participation, and edited the slave narrative of John Brown, Slave Life in Georgia (1854). Possessed with a skilled (albeit untrained) legal mind, he helped prevent the extradition of Canadian fugitive John Anderson (1861). His public commentary on treaty negotiations between the United States and England led to tighter restrictions on the international slave trade in the Treaty of Washington, 1862. During the 1860s, Chamerovzow helped lead the freedmen’s aid movement and organized the Paris Anti-Slavery Convention (1867). He resigned his position in 1869 and returned to his literary activities. Temperley, British Antislavery, 79, 191, 230–32, 242–44, 256–57, 259, 261; Rice, Scots Abolitionists, 168–73, 179, 187, 190; Fladeland, Men and Brothers, 343, 390, 392, 410. 2. J. C. A. Smith’s arraignment and trial were reported in the Baltimore Sun of 29 September and 17 October 1849, respectively. He was arraigned on 26 September on a charge of being an accomplice with S. A. “Red” Smith in a May 1849 conspiracy to assist the escape of two Richmond, Virginia, slaves. The slaves Alfred and Sawney testified at the hearing that J. C. A. Smith had introduced them to S. A. Smith and had outfitted trunks for use in their escape. John Mattauer, a black carpenter, further testified that he had manufactured a box five feet long and two and a half feet deep for J. C. A. Smith one month prior to the escape attempt. After hearing the evidence, the mayor remanded Smith to trial. Following the trial, Smith was discharged from custody by the magistrates. BS, 29 September, 17 October 1849. 3. The Richmond Republican began publication during July 1846. It changed

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its name to the Morning Mail in March 1853, but ceased publication one year later. Cappon, Virginia Newspapers, 178, 182–83. 4. The Baltimore Sun was established in 1837. Circulation of the penny press daily reached ten thousand within nine months—more than triple the circulation of any other Baltimore paper. Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York, N.Y., 1978), 18, 22, 34. 5. Smith refers to a convention held in Syracuse at Market Hall between 15 and 19 January 1850. The meeting was an attempt to reunify the splintered American antislavery movement and was attended by both political abolitionists and moral suasionists. The reunion sentiment that prompted the meeting was lost when Parker Pillsbury chastised the Liberty party for its failures and described the gulf between the American Anti-Slavery Society and political abolitionists as insurmountable. A number of black abolitionists attended this meeting, including Douglass, Samuel Ringgold Ward, J. C. A. Smith, and Henry “Box” Brown. FDP, 25 January, 1 February 1850; PF, 31 January 1850. 6. The popular term “underground railroad” was used to describe antebellum networks of sympathetic free blacks, Quakers, and other abolitionists that assisted fugitive slaves as they escaped to northern cities and Canada. Abolitionist and southern propaganda frequently mythologized these networks as highly complex secret organizations, but they were often haphazard, localized, and semipublic in nature. Few conductors went south to entice slaves away from their masters, as southerners charged, but rather, most gave assistance (shelter, transportation, and money) to those fugitives who came to them voluntarily. There was little formal organization of the underground railroad in the border states. Cincinnati and Philadelphia were the major northern centers of organized fugitive assistance. Levi Coffin aided escaping fugitives for several decades in Newport, Indiana, and in Cincinnati. The key figures in the Philadelphia area were Thomas Garrett of Wilmington, Delaware, several antislavery Quaker farmers of Chester County, Pennsylvania, and J. Miller McKim and William Still of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee. The free black communities of Cincinnati and Philadelphia played a significant role in the underground effort there. Black abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass of Rochester, New York, Jermain W. Loguen and Samuel Ringgold Ward of Syracuse, and Lewis Hayden of Boston also aided countless fugitives. Following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, fear of slave catchers led to the development of “vigilance committees” to protect and assist escaped slaves in many northern cities. Gara, Liberty Line, 81, 84–85, 90–106, 143–45; Roller and Twyman, Encyclopedia of Southern History, 1259– 60. 7. The Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter was founded in 1825 as the organ of the London Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Dominions. After several name changes, the antislavery paper became the organ of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1840, under the name Anti-Slavery Reporter. An editorial committee was responsible for editing the paper, but it is likely that most of the early work was done by subeditor Rev. J. H. Hinton, an influential Baptist. He was replaced in 1841 by John Scoble, who, in turn, was replaced by Louis Alexis chamerovzow in 1852. The early Reporter published twice monthly, cost threepence a copy, and ran at a loss. In 1841–42 its paid circulation was approximately twelve hundred copies, with an additional seven hundred being distributed free of charge, mainly to members of the British

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and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. After 1845, it appeared monthly in a reduced size and at an increased price. The Reporter was renamed the Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines’ Friend in 1910 and has been published from that date to the present by the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society. BUCP, 1: 174–75; Temperley, British Antislavery, 83–84, 229–30, 242.

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61. Samuel Ringgold Ward to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow 1 April 1854 Ex-slave abolitionists had enormous influence in the British Isles because audiences regarded them as trustworthy sources of information about slavery. When the integrity of one former-slave lecturer in Britain was questioned, it had potentially disastrous implications for all others on the lecture circuit. Samuel Ringgold Ward was about thirty-five miles northeast of London at the time J. C. A. Smith’s 13 March 1854 letter appeared in the 1 April Anti-Slavery Reporter. Ward contacted Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, editor of the Reporter, attesting to Smith’s character (Smith had apparently been the subject of a private discussion between Chamerovzow and Ward eight days earlier). Ward’s status and reputation in the Anglo-American antislavery movement gave special significance to his endorsement of Smith’s credibility. When Ward’s letter was published in the Reporter, it was introduced by an editor’s commentary designed to set Smith’s reputation “right with the public.” ASRL, 1 May 1854. Braintree Essex, [England] April 1, [1854] Mr. Chamerovzow My dear Sir: I see, in the last Reporter, a letter from Mr. Smith, expressing fear that he should be injured by your caution against impostors. I am happy to say that if Mr. Smith is an impostor, he must have become such since he came to England. For the occasion he refers to I well remember, and the facts concerning the Syracuse meeting are just as he states them. At that meeting, I gave him the soubriquet of “Boxer” Smith, because he is the man who nailed the box in which Henry Box Brown escaped from Virginia. I presume this is the same person concerning whom you spoke to me on the 24th ult. I believe him to be a true man. Your obedient servant, S. R . W A R D Anti-Slavery Reporter (London), 1 May 1854.

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62. Samuel Ringgold Ward to Editor, British Banner 12 April 1854 Winning the struggle for British popular opinion on the slavery issue was a critical element of professional black abolitionist missions to Britain. Blacks carefully monitored what the British public read in newspapers about the institution. They were as attentive to mistaken information about slavery as they were to its defense by proslavery apologists. Samuel Ringgold Ward’s 12 April 1854 letter to the editor of the British Banner responded to a report in the 5 April Banner of a parliamentary debate in the House of Commons. During this debate on British naval efforts to limit the trade in African slaves into Spanish Cuba, Richard Cobden, M.P., made several observations about the slave trade in America. Ward sought to correct what he described as Cobden’s “misstatement” on the matter. Ward’s letter was published in the 21 June issue of the Banner. ASRL, 1 August 1854. April 12, 1854 S I R: I clip the above from the British Banner of the 5th inst. I beg to call attention to the unfortunate misstatement of Richard Cobden,1 Esq., M.P. I do so, lest the remarks of Mr. Cobden might mislead some of your readers who may not be acquainted with the facts of the case. It is not at all true that there is “no Slave-trade in the United States.” I know not whether Mr. Cobden referred to foreign or domestic trade in human beings. He may have meant that though the Americans trade in the persons of their own citizens and their own children, they do not buy slaves from abroad. But even this is not true. They trade both in their own children, and their poor relatives, and in the persons of native Africans. Mr. Cobden may have been misled by the fact that the American Government have declared the foreign Slave-trade to be piracy,2 and that a Treaty exists between that Government and ours for the suppression of the Slave-trade.3 But, though that trade be declared piracy, vessels have been fitted out with all the horrible implements for that trade at Boston, New York, and Baltimore for the past forty years. The Treaty sent by our Government to that of the United States contained a provision to the effect that, should the subjects of either Government be found engaged in the Slave-trade, “on the coast of Africa, the West Indies, or America,” such offenders should be punished, &c. The American Senate struck out the words, “or America;” thus exempting their coast from the provisions of the Treaty, and making that coast a

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safe refuge-ground for any slaver—either British or Yankee—when borne down upon by a man-of-war. That Treaty also denounced punishment against parties trading in slaves “under the British or the American flag.” The American Senate destroyed its applicability to slavers sailing under the Stripes and Stars. The Treaty also, as it left Downing street,4 forbade trading in human beings “in vessels owned or chartered by the subjects of either Power.” The Republican Senate struck out the words “or chartered.” You perceive, therefore, that the Treaty, as mutilated by our cousins, whom Mr. Cobden defends, provides three distinct opportunities for a Yankee or any other slaver, to escape its penalties. If pursued by one of our naval steamers, he may run for the American coast, and there be safe! Failing this, he may run up the Yankee flag, and thus bid defiance to his pursuer! Or, if ignorant or unmindful of either of these privileges, he may, when boarded by our tars, just coolly declare or prove, that he has not put himself to the expense of purchasing his ship, he only chartered it for his nefarious purpose, and the Treaty, as “fixed” by the Americans, does not allow him to be touched. Besides, it is susceptible of proof from documentary evidence, that fresh negroes have been imported into different southern ports, either directly or indirectly, from Africa, ever since this Treaty was made. And let it not be forgotten that the chief supply of slaves for the southwestern States is brought from Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky, overland and by vessels sailing from the mouth of the Potomac to the mouth of the Mississippi, constantly.5 You will learn the above facts from Jay’s Views of the Action of the Federal Government in behalf of Slavery.6 How Mr. Cobden, in the face of such facts, could make the remark attributed to him, it is difficult to imagine. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, SAMUEL RINGGOLD WARD British Banner (London), 21 June 1854. 1. Richard Cobden (1804–1865) of Sussex achieved business successes that provided time to read, travel, and participate in public affairs. He helped form the Anti-Corn Law League, and during a lengthy career in Parliament, he witnessed the triumph of his free trade beliefs. During the 1850s, Cobden continued his reform work, dedicating most of his time to the peace movement. When the Civil War broke out, he hesitantly defended the northern cause. DNB, 4:604–10. 2. In 1820 the U.S. Congress attempted to limit the illegal importation of African slaves by redefining the African slave trade as piracy, punishable by death. 3. Ward refers to the Anglo-American Treaty of 1824, which dealt with legal and technical aspects of suppressing the transatlantic slave trade—rights of search and seizure, adjudication, definition of the traffic as piracy, and naval cooperation. Although signed by both parties, the British found later amendments

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by the U.S. Senate unacceptable. British counterproposals and offers to renegotiate during the 1830s were met with increasing recalcitrance by the U.S. government. The two countries finally implemented a comprehensive anti—slave trade agreement in 1862. Mannix and Cowley, Black Cargoes, 207; W. E. B. Du Bois, The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638– 1870 (New York, N.Y., 1896; reprint, Baton Rouge, La., 1966), 257–59. 4. Ward’s reference is to Number 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the British prime minister. He used it to symbolize the authority of the British government in the treaty negotiations. 5. This is a reference to the internal slave trade. 6. Ward refers to William Jay’s View of the Action of the Federal Government, in Behalf of Slavery, which was first published in 1839 by J. S. Taylor of New York. Jay devoted one-third of this volume to a discussion of the domestic and African slave trade in the United States, including the federal government’s alleged duplicity in allowing the illegal continuance of the latter after 1808.

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63. Samuel Ringgold Ward to the Readers of the Provincial Freeman 27 April 1854 Samuel Ringgold Ward’s 27 April 1854 letter to the Provincial Freeman was one of many he wrote about his efforts in England to raise money for the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada; the Freeman, in turn, reported to its readers on Ward’s British activities. Ward’s letter illustrates dimensions of the black abolitionist experience in Britain. Professional black lecturers carefully maintained antislavery contacts at home, often aiding a favored American organization or institution while abroad. Ward particularly sought to support the black antislavery press. He had founded the Freeman before going to Britain and felt an obligation to help its publishing agent Mary Ann Shadd Cary make the paper a success. Ward and Cary also understood the American reform public’s fascination with British society and culture. Ward’s letters fed that fascination. Alexander L. Murray, “The Provincial Freeman: A New Source for the History of the Negro in Canada and the United States,” JNH 44: 124–25 (April 1959). Stowmarket Suffolk, [England] April 27, 1854 KIND READERS: I am pleased and grateful that the Provincial Freeman1 is afloat. I am glad to have this medium through which to speak to you about many matters, which seem to me to be quite important. You will, I hope, not be surprised if your enterprise do not meet with very cordial encouragement from some abolitionists. Abolitionists differ and vary in their knowledge and estimate of the negro. Some think we are not to be encouraged to be anything more than a sort of half way set of equals. Others desire and claim for us a full recognition of our equal and inalienable rights. The former class, like the Yankee Quakers,2 desire that we should be free; but, as to our being regarded and treated as equals, that is another thing. This class are always desirous to keep us with the short frocks of childhood on. They assume the right to dictate to us about all matters; they dislike to see us assume or maintain manly and independent positions; they prefer that we should be a second-rate set of folks, in intellectual matters. A thousand times would they rather see us tied to some newspaper that represents us as being about mid way betwixt slaves and men, than to see us holding up a bold front, with a press worthy of entire freemen. Such will always doubt “whether you are

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on the right track,” or “whether you have just the right man at the helm,” or, “whether a movement of the sort is needed at this particular time,” or “whether it is best to encourage ‘our dear colored brethren’ in going too far,” &c. &c. Some people doubt and deny the abolitionism of this class. I simply call them a good sort of folk, who are not exactly up to the idea of human equality. They have been so long accustomed to inferior and degraded Blacks, that they scarcely know how to regard us in any other light. Unfortunately, too many of these occupy leading positions. Happily, however, such are scarcer in Canada and in England, than in the United States. Let no man be discouraged or disappointed, if too many of this class in Canada, even, give you the cold shoulder, as it is called. Many who are not careful to call themselves abolitionists, will treat your enterprise with much more practical, tangible favor. Again, I beg you not to lose heart, if many of our own people act as nearly as possible like enemies. Some of them always so treat all efforts of such character. Then, be the friends of the paper black or white, professed abolitionists or not, welcome them, and regard and treat every man less according to what he appears and professes to be, than what he is, as declared by his actions. In future letters, I shall take great pleasure in giving you somewhat detailed accounts of my sojourn in England. Of course you will not expect me to write as if I had nothing else to do—were independent and at leisure. I never was busier. My private and professional engagements, were never more numerous; my own personal business never more embarrassed nor perplexing. I never had a less dim and remote prospect of spending my days at home, in the midst of my family, like other men, than I have now. And, may I add, that I never felt more devoted to the welfare of my people, or more hopeful of the ultimate triumph of our cause. I am quite hopeless as to the peaceable parts of State Legislative history. Indeed, the American States grow worse, instead of better, daily, hourly, constantly. Let us, however, do what we can, by the elevation, improvement and evangelization of the native or adopted British Negro; by adding our quota to the swelling tide of universal public sentiment against slavery; by holding up Yankee character in the light of its facts; to hasten the day when, peacefully, if possible, but if not peacefully, by what cause or causes soever, American Slavery shall be overthrown, and then the despotism of no country can long survive. Allow me to ask your attention to some business matters. In the British Empire, we have not to devise means, and adopt measures to be free or to regain lost or withholden rights. What we need now to learn, is how to use our liberty, and to make it serviceable to the crushed millions of

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our native land. My own mind is, that the happiest way in which we can do both of these, is to seize every means and opportunity for our individual advancement in all things. One of these advantages is, the tillage of the soil. I mean profitable, paying tillage. Let every man among us buy land. And let it be bought and tilled, with the distinct understanding, that there is a most abundant two-fold market for everything, almost, that we can raise in Canada. Wheat, flax, pork, &c., will always command a good price in England, and in the British West Indies. Besides, in the latter we can find for what we send, an abundance of tropical productions to exchange. Then, too, by machinery, which I shall hereafter describe, a most profitable business can be done in the refining of sugar, which can be bought in Jamaica, unfit for our market, but capable of being so refined as to pay well for importation and refining. Thus the free in Canada can trade with the free of the West Indies, both being profited, and both contributing to the elevation of our British American colonies,3 into successful competition with the North and South of the United States. Let us, then, as speedily as possible, become producers and traders in wheat, flour, pork, fruit and lumber of Canada, and cotton, sugar, tobacco, coffee, &c., of our British tropical Islands. Thus shall we elevate ourselves, and serve the cause. But more of this hereafter. S. R. W. Provincial Freeman (Toronto, Canada West), 10 June 1854. 1. After printing an earlier sample issue, the Provincial Freeman began regular, weekly publication in March 1854 in Toronto, Canada West. Although devoted to “Anti-Slavery, Temperance, and General Literature,” a wide range of interests and issues found expression in the paper. Samuel Ringgold Ward was nominal editor the first year, but Mary Ann Shadd Cary performed most editorial labors, and readers soon addressed letters to the editor, “Dear Madam.” In March 1855 the paper became the Provincial Freeman and Weekly Advertiser. Three months later, Cary began a lecture tour to raise subscriptions and relinquished the editorship to William P. Newman. The following month, the Freeman permanently moved to Chatham. Newman left the paper in January 1856, and by May, editorial responsibilities were divided between Cary, her brother Isaac Shadd, and H. Ford Douglass. This circle, which also included coproprietor Louis Patterson, determined editorial policy for the next two years. The paper initially opposed emigration and reported, with enthusiasm, the internal conflicts within black Canadian settlements, particularly the one at Dawn and the Refugee Home Society experiment at Windsor. But after the disintegration of the latter in the mid-1850s, the Freeman shifted its position, endorsed the emigration movement, and became the official organ of the 1856 Cleveland Emigration Convention. It also informed readers of Canadian affairs (endorsing first Liberal, then Conservative, candidates) and frequently chastised the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada. The Freeman apparently suspended publication in late 1857 and probably revived publication late the next year. By July 1859, Isaac Shadd published the Provincial Freeman and Semi-Monthly Advertiser in Chatham. Its

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date of demise is uncertain, but it advertised in the Weekly Anglo-African through July 1860. By September 1861, the paper was defunct. Murray, “Provincial Freeman,” 124–27, 130–32, 135n.; PFW, 24 March 1853, 25 March, 9 September 1854, 10 March, 23, 30 June, 22 September 1855, 2, 23 February, 29 March, 10 May, 14 June 1856; Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 157–60, 166; W[illiam] H[oward] Day to Gerrit Smith, 21 June 1858, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU [11:0253–54]; WAA, 30 July 1859, 14 July 1860; PP, 28 September 1861 [13:0774]. 2. Ward refers to northern members of the Society of Friends. 3. Ward’s apparent reference is to the Canadas and the British West Indies. The former included Canada West (now Ontario) and Canada East (now Quebec). The latter included Bermuda, the Bahamas, Jamaica, the Leeward and Windward islands, Barbados, Trinidad, Tobago, British Honduras, and British Guiana.

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64. James Watkins to Editor, Aris’s Birmingham Gazette 18 May 1854 James Watkins was one of the many fugitive slaves driven from America by passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Watkins arrived in Britain during 1851 and solicited money to purchase his family by lecturing on the “horrors of Slavery.” During 1854 Watkins’s family joined him in England. His willingness to collect funds according to preferred British practice was an important element of his success. Watkins allowed Joseph Crook, M.P. for Bolton, and Henry Van Wart, an American merchant living at Bath, to act as his sponsors. The two men handled Watkins’s financial arrangements, thereby insuring the integrity of the process and boosting the confidence of potential contributors. Watkins’s 18 May 1854 letter thanked British donors for helping to free his family. J. Rennie to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, 14 July 1854, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; Blassingame, Slave Testimony, xxxv. 90 Bath-row [Birmingham?, England] May 18, 1854 SIR :1 Will you permit me2 to inform my numerous friends of Birmingham and the surrounding district, that through their great kindness for which I sincerely thank them, I have been enabled to purchase the freedom of three of my brothers and sisters, by remittance kindly forwarded through Joseph Crookes,3 Esq. M.P. for Bolton, free of charge besides 538 dollars sent through an American merchant of this town. A further piece of good fortune for which I have to express my thanks is, that they have enabled me to send for my wife and family (two girls and one boy); and though, when she arrived at New York, the packet refused to accommodate her on account of her color, the American merchant just alluded to kindly and nobly interfered on my behalf, and secured her and my children a very comfortable passage by the packet City of Manchester, instead of the unfortunate City of Glasgow, by which they were to have come. I shall ever feel my obligation to him, and to all those christian friends whose generous sympathy has enabled me to receive my dear wife and little ones in this blessed land of freedom, where none can invade our peaceful and happy home. I am sure my friends will be glad to hear that they are now under my protection, and that shortly I intend to commence some little business in this town, by which I hope to secure a honest livelihood for myself and

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family amongst those who have showed themselves friends to the once poor fugitive slave, but now happy free man, husband, and father. I am, Sir, your obedient servant, JAMES WATKINS Aris’s Birmingham Gazette (England), 22 May 1854. 1. John Caldicott printed and published Aris’s Birmingham Gazette in 1854. Established in 1741, the nonpartisan weekly was known for its accurate digest of foreign, domestic, and local news. It was renamed the Birmingham Daily Gazette in 1888. ABG, 22 May 1854; Bourne, English Newspapers, 1:98n., 382, 2:276, 361; BUCP, 1:356. 2. James Watkins (ca. 1820–?), whose slave name was Sam, was born to slave parents (his father was evidently a slave driver) belonging to the Abraham Ensor plantation in eastern Maryland. After Ensor died in the mid-1830s, his son Luke sold Watkins’s siblings, which provoked the slave to seek his freedom. As Ensor’s market slave, he frequently drove plantation produce into Baltimore and was thus provided with an opportunity for escape. Watkins first attempted to escape during June 1841, but he was tracked, caught, and returned to Ensor. As punishment and to prevent further escape, Watkins was fitted for several months with an iron headband with two projecting bells. He successfully reached Philadelphia on a second escape attempt during May 1845. Watkins soon settled in Hartford, Connecticut, where he worked as a farmhand, obtained a rudimentary education, and met and married (1846) a daughter of Hartford black leader Thomas Wells. In 1850 Watkins surreptitiously visited his mother in Maryland and found that she had been freed. Upon returning to Hartford, word of a large reward offered by Ensor for his recapture and the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law persuaded him to flee to Britain. Leaving his wife and children in Hartford, Watkins snuck out of New York harbor aboard the Arctic on 20 January 1851 and arrived in Liverpool three weeks later carrying letters of introduction from many Hartford clergymen. He attended antislavery meetings there and occasionally offered remarks. In June he began lecturing in Manchester on the Fugitive Slave Law, as illustrated by his own case. Based first in Bolton, then after 1852 in Birmingham, he continued to lecture and received further instruction in reading and writing. With the aid of friends in Birmingham, he raised sufficient funds by 1854 to free six slave acquaintances (including two sisters and a brother) and to transport his wife and children to England. Watkins hoped to “commence some little business” in Birmingham but, instead, continued to repeat his “simple tale” before British audiences. Except for a successful Irish tour in early 1857, Watkins lectured in the English North Country, generally speaking in the chapels and schoolrooms of small towns not frequented by other black abolitionists. He often enhanced these lectures by singing slave songs. By his own account, Watkins delivered 526 antislavery lectures and spoke to over two hundred thousand Sunday school scholars in Britain by 1859. He also reached many British readers. Between 1852 and 1860, he published nineteen editions of his Narrative of the Life of James Watkins, which apparently sold well. In 1859 he also produced a volume of poetry, entitled Poems, Original and Selected. James Watkins, Narrative of the Life of

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James Watkins . . . (Manchester, England, 1859); ABG, 22 May 1854 [8:0877]; J. Rennie to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, 14 July 1854, British Empire MSS, UkOxURh; Joan R. Sherman, Invisible Poets: Afro-Americans of the Nineteenth Century (Urbana, Ill., 1974), 244. 3. Joseph Crook (1809–1884), a cotton manufacturer, sat in Parliament for Bolton from 1852 to 1861. He favored “manhood suffrage,” vote by ballot, direct taxation, annual Parliaments, and a more equal distribution of electoral districts. MEB, 1:768; Michael Stenton, ed., Who’s Who of British Members of Parliament, 1:96.

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65. Speech by William Wells Brown Delivered at the Town Hall, Manchester, England 1 August 1854 One month before departing from Britain for the United States, William Wells Brown spoke in Manchester at the “Great Anti-Slavery Conference”—a day-long meeting sponsored by the North of England Anti-Slavery and India Reform League to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of British West Indian emancipation. The evening session filled the Manchester Town Hall; many were left standing. British abolitionists George Thompson and Frederick W. Chesson and blacks Samuel Ringgold Ward, William P. Powell, William North, and Brown’s daughters, Josephine and Clarissa, attended. Elderly local magistrate Absolom Watkin presided and introduced speakers Dr. John R. Beard, a Manchester clergyman, and American abolitionist Parker Pillsbury, who urged British remonstrance against the Fugitive Slave Law. Brown began his speech by questioning a comment made earlier in the day that he had been purchased “by the liberality of the British people.” He indicated that he was uncertain whether or not the purchase had been completed. Brown’s speech, like those of so many of his black professional colleagues who toured Britain, was directed at two audiences—the people in attendance and the people back home. Brown had received considerable criticism from some American Garrisonians for allowing himself to be purchased out of slavery. The critics suggested that such a purchase tacitly endorsed the view of slaves as property. Brown explained the Fugitive Slave Law to his listeners and simultaneously justified his behavior to American detractors, knowing that they would shortly read his words in the American reform press. Lib, 25 August, 1 September 1854; Farrison, William Wells Brown, 241–42. Mr. Chairman, and ladies and gentlemen, I would much have preferred that my friend Mr. Pillsbury1 should have occupied the time that is intended for myself. As has been said, he is not only thoroughly acquainted with the working of slavery in the United States, but he is one of its oldest and best pioneers. He has had the advantage of early education, he has the advantage of me at the present time, and I feel confident could not only claim your attention, but could give you better information in a better manner than I could possibly hope to do. I stand to-night without ever having had a day’s schooling in my life. You have been called together to hear men speak to-night—I am here as a piece of property. I am a slave according to the laws of the United States at the present time. Something has been said this afternoon about my having

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been purchased by the liberality of the English people; I know not that such a purchase has taken place; I know it is the contemplation, and many suppose it may have been accomplished by this time, but I do not know that such is the case.2 I stand here, this evening, therefore, not only a slave, a piece of property according to the laws of the United States, but I am here without education or without having received a day’s schooling in my life, and what education I have has been of my own seeking in my own way; and, therefore, I can hope to say but little that shall go to aid in making up the testimony that is intended by the holding of this conference. (Applause.) No one can read, Mr. Chairman, the declaration of the American independence, and compare that document with the history of the legislation of the federal government of the United States, without being struck with the marked inconsistency of the theory of the people and their acts; the one declaring that all men are created equally, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and the other is the history of the encroachment of slavery upon liberty, or legislation in favour of slavery in that country against the cause of freedom. From the very hour that the convention that was held to form the constitution of the United States down to the present time, the acts of the government have been for the perpetuation and the spread of slavery in that land. As has been said, slavery was introduced into the constitution by allowing the African slave trade to be continued for twenty years, making it lawful and constitutional, which it had never been before; and then the slaveowner was allowed representation for this slave property, and every man that would go to the Coast of Africa, and steal five negroes and bring them to the United States, was allowed by the constitution, then, three votes for the five slaves. And it is carried down to the present time, as the American congress has more than twenty-five representatives based upon this slave representation. And that is one of the reasons why in the national congress the slaveowners have the power of carrying so many of their measures, and the twenty-five, I need not say, who are slaveowners themselves, do not represent, but misrepresent, their “property,” and these slaveowners go for the purpose of spreading the system of slavery over the land. America is called a free and independent country, and yet there is not a single foot of soil over which the stars and the stripes wave upon which I could stand and be protected by law. (Sensation.) There is not a foot of soil in the United States upon which I could stand where the constitution would give me any protection; and let me return to the United States, I am liable to be seized at any moment and conveyed in chains to the southern states, and there handed over to a man who claims me as his property, and to be worked up as he may think fit. Such is true as regards even the early history of slavery. It is true that the congress of the United States, or the constitution, agreed to abolish slav-

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ery in 20 years, but the internal slave trade is carried on, and I aver that it is even worse—setting aside the middle passage—than anything connected with the foreign slave trade. In the old states, slaves are raised for the market; they have their family attachments, and they are probably, to some extent, more enlightened and not so much degraded by heathenism as the negroes upon the coast of Africa, and, as men become more enlightened, the separation of families, and the buying and selling of them to slavery, is so much the worse. They feel it the more, and therefore, I think that when we look and see that 100,000 slaves are annually taken from the slave-raising states, to supply the southern markets—the cotton, sugar, and rice plantations of the far south—we must be satisfied that the internal slave trade that is carried on by the people of the United States is as grievous in its effect as the African slave trade when carried on by the people of that country. I know that some suppose that the evils of slavery are exaggerated; I have been asked again and again if certain portions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin were not exaggeration. Of the working of slavery, in my opinion, I don’t think anything can exaggerate that infamous system. When we look and see that there are at the present time enslaved between three and four millions of God’s children, who are put upon the auction stand and sold to the highest bidder, no language which we can use can exaggerate the workings or the evils of the system of slavery as it is carried on in that country. (Applause.) The fugitive slave law, that by many people here is considered a great evil, is at present the law in America, and it is the most atrocious law ever concocted by the human brain or human legislation—a law that sets every other statute in existence in the shade when we look at the barbarous enactments that it contains. By the fugitive slave law every coloured person in that country is liable to be arrested and carried off to the far south and made a slave of, no matter whether born in New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, or any free state. The gate of separation which has hitherto kept the inhabitants of the northern states from participating in slaveholding, is now thrown down; and every man who wishes to go into the slaveholding business, has now only to find some one who shall participate in the gain, and to swear that the coloured person whom he means to enslave, is the property of that man whom he has brought forward for that purpose, and so the poor coloured man is carried away to the south. In the state of Illinois, during the past few months, a coloured man was arrested under this fugitive slave law,3 who had lived in the same town some fifteen years, and had by his industry accumulated 1,500 or 2,000 dollars worth of property; and the man who came upon this man, and claimed and seized him as a slave, was not only a professing Christian, but was a minister of the gospel, and one who belonged to the same denomination as the man whom he claimed for his property. It was in vain this coloured man asserted that he was a free

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man, and had a right to be free; that no one had any right to take him away, that he was free born, and from the state of Ohio. The only respite he could obtain was, that he was allowed, as a favour, to go to prison, and to stay there for a while, until he could get his property and other affairs in the place disposed of; and in the meantime he was obliged to find security, and to pay an officer three dollars a day to watch him and see that he did not run away. He agreed to this, but after a while he had collected evidence by which he proved himself to be free, and was enabled to demand his release. But a debt had been accumulated during his detention, to the amount of some $3,000, so that, although he had thus escaped being sent into slavery, he was utterly ruined. This is the history of a free coloured man in the state of Illinois. There is a more atrocious case I can tell you. Within the last year, two villains from a southern state arrived in a certain town of Pennsylvania, and attempted to seize a coloured man,4 who was employed there as a waiter, in one of the inns. They approached him in a clandestine manner, and threw their chains upon his limbs; but the man, whom they would have made a slave, escaped from his pursuers; he ran out of the house, he ran to the nearest stream, and plunged into it, and there stood at bay, immersed up to his neck in the running water. The slave-hunters came up, and many people gathered around, sympathising with the hunted fugitive. He exclaimed to his persecutors, “If any of you come near me here, I will drown him in this water that flows about me.” The slave-hunters answered him, “If you don’t come out of the river, and surrender, we will shoot you where you are.” And then, suddenly, to the horror and astonishment of all the bystanders, one of the slave-hunters raised his gun or pistol, aimed it at the fugitive, and fired at him. We are told how the water then ran red with the blood of the slave; and how a crowd of four or five hundred people, who stood by and saw this thing done, did nothing more than cry “Shame” upon those who had done it, because it was the law. Sir, I do feel confident, that if in this country such a law existed, and if any two persons came into a town of England, and dared openly to ill treat a human being in that way, there would not be three or four hundred Englishmen standing by so cold to the feelings of humanity as to let such a thing be done in their presence, and content themselves with crying “Shame!” I feel certain, that, in England, the villains who should do such an outrage would instantly be compelled to fly the spot. (Cheers.) * * * * Well, now, you will recollect that all this was perpetrated in the state of Pennsylvania, in one of those which are called the free states. We hear people speak of free and slave states; but I hold that there is no such distinction; for now there are no free states in the United States of America. There are none of them free, because that cannot be a free state

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which cannot protect the freedom of its inhabitants; and there is no state in the union now which can give liberty, or even secure his liberty, to the coloured man. His rights are nothing if the slaveholder pursues him. The courts of justice in some of those “free states” have been converted into prisons, in which the fugitive slaves of the southerners have been kept for them; and very recently, in Boston, a slave was arrested, and confined for six or seven days in the court house, which was guarded by muskets and cannon to prevent his rescue;5 thence he was put on board a vessel in the harbour and carried away to the far south, to a life of slavery. The boast of the “free states,” that people there enjoy perfect freedom is most untrue; for under the fugitive slave law, the slaveowners of the south are empowered to enter those “free states,” and employ not only the marshals of the union, in arresting any of the coloured people whom they choose to claim, but compel the inhabitants of the place, under severe penalties, to abet the seizure of the slave. I cannot exaggerate, sir, the effect of this fugitive slave law, and indeed, of everything else that is connected with slavery in the United States. If you had been, as I have been, for twenty years of your life in the southern states of America, and had seen there, as I have seen, the workings of slavery, the trading in human beings, the buying and selling of them, the whipping and abusing of them, as I have seen all that carried on there—and if you had seen the dear ones torn from you, and taken to be sold [on the] auction block, and handed over to the highest bidder, [as] [I] have seen my dear ones taken, never to see them again—if you had seen all this, you could not think anything, in the statements made at this conference, or in the publications you may have read, was at all exaggerated. (Cheers.) I know you read, with palpitating hearts, the history of the Bloody Assize in this country; you loathe the name of Judge Jeffreys, when you remember that Reign of Terror in England.6 Now, go to the United States, and you will see, that acts as cruel as ever were done in England, in that age, are done in America now—done every day in the southern states, and done almost every week in the northern states; you will see there judges who sit on the bench, giving their sentence in favour of slavery, and condemning freedom; judges who knew, too, that the persons whom their sentence orders thus to be seized and carried back into the southern states, will be cruelly tortured there. It was asserted not long since in Boston, by Theodore Parker,7 that one of those slaves, who had been seized in the north, and carried back to slavery, had been flogged to death, or nearly to death; and such will be the fate of many of them. Then, ought not facts like those to be known throughout this country? I am glad these meetings are held, and that this association has been formed. I hope it will do something to instruct the people here, and to maintain anti-slavery principles, so that Englishmen, when they visit the United States, may not do henceforth, as many of their countrymen have done, give their influence to the

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side of the oppressor, instead of the oppressed. (Cheers.) That is now most important to the cause; for thousands of persons, emigrants and others, are going to the United States every year, and they ought to understand this matter. If nothing else could be accomplished yet, meetings like these and lecturing would be worthy objects of the efforts of this association.8 It is true, there is already in England an anti-slavery society established.9 But I must say, and with great respect for the excellent persons who belong to it, that society is so inactive it scarcely does anything throughout the year but hold an anniversary meeting; and it is a fact, sir, that speeches like those which were made in the conference today, or to night upon this platform, would not be tolerated on the platform of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in London. (Cheers.) It may be said of us, that we have used very strong language. Why, sir, has not the time come for strong language? Those who want milk and water, let them go to London at anniversary time, and they will get it there, in homeopathic doses. (A laugh.) Probably, the fact of my having once been a slave, and of my feeling upon this subject so intensely, having relations of my own, still dragging out the life of slavery, has made me feel, that something strong should be uttered. (Cheers.) People want something strong—they are willing to hear it; then I say, why not give it them? There is need I think, of an association in this country, which shall expose to the British nation the working of slavery in America and the fact as it is; which shall give a true representation also, and not merely a partial account, of what the abolitionists in America are doing. (Cheers.) I am identified, as you may well believe, with the most ultra of the abolitionists,10 who are, I consider, speaking the truth more effectually than any other party or association in the United States; and I consider also, that the greatest of the champions of human liberty there is the present leader of the anti-slavery movement in the United States, William Lloyd Garrison. (Great cheering.) I know there are some who would be afraid to utter that sentiment, because they would be afraid of losing caste. I, sir, have nothing to lose, but everything to gain. (Cheers.) I have now been five years in this country. I have traveled through Great Britain, and am almost an Englishman. I think I know something of the public sentiment here; and I say, the people want to know the truth, and to know what they can do for us. I tell them, that those ultra abolitionists in America, to whom I have referred, are those who in America are considered to be the greatest foes of the fugitive slave law, and of all the acts of the pro-slavery party;11 those are the persons of whom slaveowners speak with most malignity, and who are more vilified by the American pro-slavery press than all other parties and associations put together. This may be, unless I can comply with an invitation to speak on Thursday (and I am afraid that I cannot do so), my last opportunity of speaking publicly in this country; but I shall return to

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the United States, after being five years in England, conscious that I may safely give to the free coloured people of the north, and to the abolitionists of the United States, the assurance that something is being done here for their cause, and that the English people only want to know what they can do, and they will set about it and do it. (Cheers.) We do not ask you to take up arms; we do not ask you to do any act, or utter any language, unbecoming Christians; but we ask you to learn the facts and the truth of this matter, and honestly and strongly to speak out upon it. Manchester Examiner and Times (England), 5 August 1854. 1. Parker Pillsbury (1809–1898) was born the son of a Hamilton, Massachusetts, blacksmith. Self-educated until age twenty-six, he then attended Gilmarton (New Hampshire) and Andover theological seminaries. He lost his first pulpit as a result of his antislavery convictions. A committed Garrisonian and an advocate of women’s rights, Pillsbury served as a lecture agent for several antislavery societies throughout the 1840s and 1850s and intermittently edited the Herald of Freedom. In 1854 he toured Great Britain. After the Civil War, Pillsbury criticized the leadership of the American Anti-Slavery Society for emphasizing the struggle for black suffrage over suffrage for women and opposed ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment because it did not enfranchise women. In 1868 he became coeditor of the radical feminist newspaper The Revolution. DAB, 14:608–9; James McPherson, “Abolitionists, Women’s Suffrage, and the Negro, 1865–1869,” MA 47:41–47 (January 1965). 2. Although apparently unknown to Brown, the lengthy negotiations for his purchase were completed a few days prior to his speech. In January 1848, soon after publication of Brown’s Narrative, Enoch Price, his former owner, offered to sell Brown. Brown rejected the proposal. But with passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, Brown realized that he must allow the purchase or risk being returned to slavery once back in America. In January 1852, Brown instructed Rev. Edward Hore of Ramsgate, Kent, to open negotiations with Price, but no agreement was reached. During the spring of 1854, Ellen Richardson of Newcastle-upon-Tyne reopened negotiations. Price signed the bill of sale on 24 April and forwarded it to his Boston agent, Joseph Greely, who was to complete the transaction. But for unexplained reasons, the transaction was not completed until 7 July 1854. Farrison, William Wells Brown, 238–42. 3. Brown refers to John Freeman of Indianapolis, Indiana, who was arrested in August 1853 and claimed as a slave by Pleasant Ellington of Missouri. Freeman was imprisoned for sixty-eight days while he sought to prove his free status. Freeman won the case at a cost of more than $1,000 in legal fees. NASS, 27 August, 10 September 1853, 18 February 1854. 4. Brown refers to William Thomas, a black waiter at the Phoenix Hotel in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, who was seized in his home as a fugitive slave by Deputy Marshal G. M. Wynkoop and four other men on 3 September 1853. Thomas broke free of his captors and plunged into a nearby river saying he would rather be “drowned . . . than taken alive.” Thomas’s pursuers followed him to the river and demanded his surrender. When Thomas refused, one of the men fired a shot that struck him in the head. Wynkoop and his men believed Thomas was

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dead and began to leave, but Thomas struggled to the river bank. Wynkoop and his men again tried to capture Thomas, and Thomas again plunged into the river, where he remained for over an hour, bloodied and in view of a number of people who had gathered to watch the episode. Some of the spectators prepared to arrest Wynkoop and his men and thereby forced the deputy to withdraw. Thomas then waded ashore, was eventually carried to safety, and soon left the Wilkes-Barre area. Samuel May, The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims (New York, N.Y., 1861; reprint, Freeport, N.Y., 1970), 29–31. 5. Brown refers to Anthony Burns, an escaped Virginia slave who had settled in Boston and was arrested on 24 May 1854 under provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. During the next week, abolitionist lawyers, supported by the Boston Vigilance Committee (a group formed to prevent the return of fugitive slaves), exhausted legal means to protect Burns, including an abortive effort to purchase him from his owner. When their actions failed and U.S. Commissioner Edward Loring ruled that Burns must be returned, a group of black and white rescuers, gathered by leading black abolitionist Lewis Hayden and led by the activist minister Thomas Wentworth Higginson, stormed the courthouse where Burns was held. Their efforts to free Burns failed, but they caused federal authorities to summon troops, police, and militia from throughout New England to insure that Burns could be placed on a revenue cutter and sent back to Virginia. Samuel Shapiro, “The Rendition of Anthony Burns,” JNH 44:34–51 (January 1959). 6. The Bloody Assize, English treason trials conducted by Chief Justice George Jeffreys in 1685, followed the duke of Monmouth’s unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the reigning English monarch James II. More than three hundred rebels were hanged; seven hundred were scourged, fined, or exiled to Barbados. Goldwin Smith, A History of England, 3d ed. (New York, N.Y., 1966), 364. 7. Theodore Parker (1810–1860) was born in Lexington, Massachusetts, to an old New England family. After attending Harvard Divinity School, he was ordained in 1837. Parker’s ministerial career was marked by his formulation of controversial religious theories, which attracted progressive thinkers, estranged him from traditional Unitarian leaders, and led him to embrace antislavery and other antebellum reform causes. Throughout the 1850s, he was a leader of the Boston Vigilance Committee and worked to prevent proslavery control of Kansas. Near the end of the decade, Parker became a pivotal member of the Secret Committee of Six, the group that subsidized John Brown’s raid. DAB, 14:238–41; Henry Steele Commager, Theodore Parker, Yankee Crusader (Boston, Mass., 1960), 197–276. 8. The association to which Brown refers is the North of England Anti-Slavery and India Reform League. Founded by Frederick W. Chesson and George Thompson in early 1854, it was a rival body to the recently splintered Manchester Anti-Slavery Union. Consisting largely of North and West Country Garrisonians, the organization did little except convene a 1 August 1854 general conference, attended by seventy to eighty pro-Garrisonian delegates. The delegates endorsed the policies of the American Anti-Slavery Society, discussed slavery and the international slave trade, and supported free produce cotton production in British India. The organization was defunct by 1855. Temperley, British Antislavery, 243, 272; ASA, September 1854.

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9. Brown refers to the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. 10. “Ultra-abolitionists” was a nineteenth-century term for Garrisonian abolitionists. 11. Brown refers to the Democratic party. Although not a proslavery organization, party leaders (like Stephen Douglas) often deferred to southern preferences during the 1850s. Democratic support for the Fugitive Slave Law (1850), the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), the proposed admission of Kansas as a slave or free state according to “popular sovereignty,” and the Dred Scott decision (1857) demonstrated the influence of southern Democrats. But this alienated some northern Democrats, encouraged the formation of the Republican party, and split Democrats along sectional lines in 1860.

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66. Henry Highland Garnet to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow 2 October 1854 In late 1852, Henry Highland Garnet went to Jamaica as a missionary for the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland and became pastor of the Stirling congregation at Grange Hill. Garnet’s initial critical impression of Jamaican laborers led him to publish a June 1853 request for seventy American blacks to immigrate to Jamaica, believing their “goahead” industriousness would insure their success. But Garnet tempered his views as he better understood Jamaican culture. His 2 October letter to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, secretary of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, revealed Garnet’s new understanding. Garnet challenged the society’s public position (presented in a pamphlet, in articles in the Anti-Slavery Reporter, and in circulars sent to Parliament) that the decline of West Indian sugar estates resulted from the immorality and indolence of West Indian blacks. Garnet’s letter typifies the frequent efforts black abolitionists made to influence British popular opinion after leaving the country. Schor, Henry Highland Garnet, 125–28; ASRL, 1 July 1854. Stirling, Grange Hill P.O. Jamaica, W[est Indies] Oct[ober] 2, 1854 L. A. Chamerovzow, Esq. My dear Sir, I am in the receipt of your circular dated July 1854, which came to hand some four weeks ago, and I take this occasion to answer the several questions which are contained in it, so far as I am able. 1. The physical condition of the labouring classes in Jamaica is not inferior to that of any other people with whom I have met, moving in the same sphere of life and when their limited amount of education and consequently, their limited ideas of the comforts and wants of life, are taken into account, their condition is much better than one would naturally expect to see. The present rising generation are physically a fine, healthy race of people. 2. They are a temperate people and when it is bourne in mind that Rum-making is one of their most comon employments, I can safely say that their general sobriety is astonishing. They are orderly, and lawabiding, and in the rural districts they require less physical force for their government than is necessary for the same class of people in England, and Ireland. Proof [is the] withdrawal of the troops, and the fewness of the Police. When compared with the same class in Europe,

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and in America, they are not equal to the inhabitants of these countries in industry. But if compared with the people of other tropical regions, they are not behind them in this respect. The duties of religion are sadly neglected by many, and I may say by the great majority, not withstanding, there are many faithful witnesses for the truth among them. I have sometimes thought, that perhaps too much is expected from them in matters of religion. We ought to take the Divine view of their case—where little is given, little is required. The curses of the worst examples, which have been before them, and their ancestors for centuries are still resting upon them. The majority of those who are their superiors as regards their position in society, are not their superiors in morality. To speak plainly, the habits of too many of the whites, are wicked, disgusting, and beastial. Many of them are anxious to educate their children—this desire however is not the same in every district. There are five schools in our district, embracing a circuit of ten or fifteen miles. Three belong to the church1 of which I am the minister, having about 200 pupils, and are under my superintendance. One belongs to the Church of England, and one to the Baptists—all of them are open to the people, without the least denominational distinction. 3. Much of the labour in this district is performed upon the sugar estates by females, quite as many as there are men. The same remark is also true of the mountain districts where nearly all the provisions are raised. In this part of the island there are not many children twelve or fifteen years of age, employed in the fields, excepting crop time. 4. Agricultural work is most generally given out by jobs, otherwise they receive from sixpence, to one shilling, and sixpence per day. Carpenters, and masons receive from two shillings to three shillings, and sixpence. All classes of labourers might earn more if they would but economise their time. Field labourers commence work at 6 or 7 oclock A.M. and when jobs are taken, they frequently cease at 11 oclock. At 4 P.M. all kinds of labourers draw off. 5. They do not consider their wages to be sufficient and just, and this fact furnishes the grand and principal ground upon which the people refuse to do more work. There is no such thing as a change in wages. The planter fixes the amount, and he is the sole judge, and arbiter in the matter—and the almost universal opinion of the planters is, that to give the people more wages, would be tempting them to do less work. The working people in their turn, affirm, that at the present low rate of wages, they can do better to cultivate their provission grounds,2 which with less labour, will yield them a better return. This last popular observation is true, and will remain so, as long as there are a sufficient number of people on the Estates who make cash eneough to purchase these provissions. This unphilasophical mode of proceedure may be satisfactory to both Classes for a season, but a crisis must ultimately arrive which

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will prove disasterous to both. It is an undeniable fact, that those who work five days in the week on the estates receive barely sufficient for market purposes on Saturday, which the small cultivator of provissions, works half that time, and obtains the same with comparative ease. 6. Many of them desire to become freeholders, and a goodly number have become such—but it is very difficult for them to get good land by purchase. Large landed proprietors do not in the least encourage them in this respect, and they scarcely ever sell to them, unless they are compelled to do so by necessity. Even the thrown up estates are usually bought entirely by some capitalist, who is willing to sell only as he purchased—that is entire. To this statement, there are some rare exceptions. Most of the villages, which have sprung up since emancipation, have been purchased by Missionaries and other philanthropists and sold out to the people in lots to suit their convenience. This was the case with the village of Stirling in which I reside—it was bought by one of my predecessors, the Reverend William James [Niven] (Wm. Niven) and sold to an industrious class of people. The planters generally believe that to encourage them to become land owners, would place them in a position of independence, and they are not encouraged in their efforts to become owners of the soil. If they buy land, it is generally that which is the poorest, and which is not valuable to the planter. A few days ago, I was speaking to an educated and highly respectable proprietor of large estates, respecting the cultivation of fibrous plants by the peasantry of the country, and the desirableness of their getting good land for that purpose. He sharply replied “when you speak of their getting good land, you speak of an impossibility.” I asked him “how it could be an impossibility.” “Because” said he “such land is not to be bought by them.” But thanks be to God, He has so bountifully scattered his blessings over the island, that even the poor soil is productive. In the single parish of Manchester, which is a mountainous region, the merchants of Kingston are said to have paid to the inhabitants thereof for their coffee, and pimento, during the last year, the handsome sum of thirty thousand pounds stirling—and the most of these staple productions were raised by small landholders. 7. Many are cultivating canes upon their grounds, and they readilly dispose of their sugars at the markets, for double the price which the same qualities could bring in the English Markets. [Any] inferior sugar here is sold in the market for six pence per pound. But this department of enterprise among the labouring people is also looked upon with jealousy by the planters, and is discouraged. Those who raise their own canes in the vicinity of estates usually grind, and boil their crops, at the estates’ property, which they are freely allowed to do for the sake of the “drippings” which are valuable in Rum-making. A black neighbor of mine has a considerable cane field, and he, and a friend of his were about to put up a small boiling house; and a still. But the proprietor of the estate to

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which the poor man’s lot was contiguously situated, heard of the arrangment and rode into the yard of the enterprising black, and the following conversation, and results took place. “So you are going to turn planter?” “How so master?” “Why I hear that you are going to grind your canes, and boil your sugar.” “Yes master I was intending to do so.” “Well I should like to see you doing anything of the kind. You must remember that you have no title for the land you occupy, and I doubt if you will ever get one if you persist in your undertaking.” I am informed that the poor man has been completely overawed by the threat, and will proceed no further. The only reason that can be assigned for this unjustifiable and tyrannical conduct are that the planter feared he might loose some of his canes, and that the examples might be the means of inducing others to venture the same enterprise. The various sorts of “bread [kind”], and rearing of poutry, and small stock, embraces the employment of the peasantry for generally. 8. They rent their grounds on equitable terms, but at the same time, they stipulate the full value for them. Some people in this vicinity pay 20/ a year for their provission grounds—others pay less, and sometimes they use the lands in retired districts without the knowledge or permission of the owners. It frequently occurs also, that the people on the estates pay but a little, or nothing for their houses, and small lots—the proprietors prefering to do this, in order that they may more easily command their services, and to keep them under obligations. 9. They are quite willing to work for masters, who treat them kindly, and discreetly. In the Parish of Westmoreland, as much labour as is required can be obtained on all the estates but a few exceptions—the exceptions are those on which the masters are rough, overbearing—bad pay masters, and tyrannical. 10. Many of the planters treat them with civility—and many exhibit an opposite feeling towards them. They are not often treated with personal violence for they are quite ready to defend themselves as law, or otherwise. 11. Prejudice against colour is marked, and strong, and exists more or less in the social institutions of the land. But as the laws are just and equal, all men can alike make their way to distiction, and this they are achieving. 12. There is less immorality in country places, than there is in towns. W.I. towns are generally notorious for immoralities, and the reason is they are usually sea ports. 13. The Natives look with suspicion upon immigration as is now carried on in Jamaica.3 There is not the least probability that any permanent good will arise out of it, but on the contrary much evil. The coolies are very low in the scale of being and they return to their eastern homes with all their superstitions, which they practice in Jamaica, and become more,

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and more confirmed in their opinion, that their system of religion is superior to ours. Rarely does it occur, that one of them is converted from heathenism. Moreover, they spend but a little of the money which they earn in this land, but take the greater part with them out of the country. 14. Coloured people are found in every department of civil government. The Police is entirely composed of that class of our citizens. 15. Yes, many of them have increased in prosperity. In conclusion, I would say, that it is becoming more, and more apparent, that the emancipated people, use their liberty with more moderation, and propriety, than their former masters, exercise government over them. It is also a fact which ought by no means to be forgotten, that if the former slaveholders are sinking, the emancipated are rising daily. I am dear Sir, yours truly, Henry Highland Garnet British Empire Manuscripts, Rhodes House, Oxford. Published by permission. 1. On 19 October 1852, Henry Highland Garnet was appointed as the first black missionary to Jamaica by the Committee on Foreign Missions of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland. On 31 March 1853 he became pastor of the Stirling congregation, which was located in the small village of Grange Hill at the center of the Westmoreland sugar district in southwestern Jamaica. By the end of 1853, Garnet had established two day schools (one named the Grange Hill School) in the vicinity of his church and had opened the Female Industrial School, which was partially run by his wife, Julia. Schor, Henry Highland Garnet, 125–27. 2. Jamaican blacks freed by the West Indian Emancipation Act of 1833 continued to find life difficult. Garnet refers to the fact that the combination of low wages, high food costs, and exorbitant rents made it reasonable for many Jamaicans not to work for wages on the old plantations but to cultivate their own small plots of land near their homes. By so doing, they could avoid high food costs and, perhaps, use surplus produce to obtain cash. FDP, 8 August, 2 September 1853. 3. Garnet is undoubtedly referring to the efforts of Jamaican planters to import labor from Africa and China for plantation work on terms that all but reestablished slavery and thereby undercut the free native labor force. He may also refer to the Jamaican immigration of American and Canadian blacks, who were offered reasonable hourly wages and subsidized fares to the island. FDP, 8 August, 2 September 1853.

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67. Samuel Ringgold Ward to Frederick Douglass January 1855 The fresh perspective gained by living in a different culture led many black professionals to reexamine the black American experience. Samuel Ringgold Ward’s reflections resulted in a series of provocative essays, which were published in Frederick Douglass’ Paper during the winter and spring of 1855 under the title “The Modern Negro.” The first of these essays, “No. 1,” appeared on 23 February and was prompted by Ward’s reading of Douglass’s speech, “The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered,” delivered 12 July 1854 before a commencement-week function of the Philozetian Literary Society of Western Reserve College at Hudson, Ohio. PtL, 4 December 1854; Blassingame, Frederick Douglass Papers, 2:497–525. LONDON, [England] Jan[uary], 1855 FREDERICK DOUGLASS, ESQ . MY DEAR SIR: One of your many admirers in this country has recently given me the pleasure of reading your “Ethnological Address” upon the negro race. Allow me to thank you for that able, masterly document. And allow me to avail myself of our ancient and unbroken friendship to thank you, as a mulatto for the honor you do me, as a negro—that you are the former, and I the latter, is certainly a fact for which neither of us is responsible, praiseworthy, or blameworthy. But the variety gives us both abundant and varied and I know, that so far as you and I are personally concerned, united opportunities illustrating and defending the manhood and the equality of our African ancestry and our Africo-American brethren. In this particular connexion, I will add, that Canada and the United States are too closely allied in feeling as well as in geographical position, to make the cause of the black man otherwise than one, on both sides of the line. You, from your stand point, we from ours, are alike enabled to vindicate our race, and to repel the vile, foul slanders by which that race has been—by the baser half of the Anglo Saxon race—aspersed. You, I hope will never be ashamed to point your maligners to the condition and prospects of the entirely free British negro; while we, I hope will always be proud of the advancing [progress of nominally] free in the United States— uniting our testimony practically and undeniably, in behalf of those still remaining in chains. I cannot help thinking that such a theme as that you brought before The Western Reserve College Literary Society, needs, at this time to be

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especially, distinctly, and emphatically pressed upon the public attention, by gentlemen of our own color. I think so: 1st Because no better time than the present was ever given for this purpose. This and cognate subjects are matters of universal enquiry and consideration. Here, and all over Europe, this, in spite of “wars and rumors of wars,” is the question of the day. Men and women everywhere, are having their say, pro and con, on this topic. It is a part of the missionary theme; it enters, as well, into general politics. If you speak of the improvement of our West India colonies, and the “experiment”—as some call it—of freedom in these islands, up comes this question. If the American character is under review, the American idea of the negro, and the consequent treatment of the negro is almost certain to claim attention. At no past time was this so, to the same extent. Now, therefore, is the time to press this matter by taking advantage of this state of enquiry concerning it. 2d It has so intimate a connexion with the great question of negro slavery. The Anglo Saxon, who is mean enough—and unfortunately there are far too many such—to hide and skulk behind any refuge of lies, in defending slavery, generally flies to this. “The negro is inferior to us.” Those who justify slavery from their Bible, on the authority of their God, intend to say that they read a Bible and worship a God of their own views and feelings on the question of negro inferiority. Hence, a Congregational minister [of Connecticut]—a paid agent of the Connecticut Colonization Society1—told the Rev. A. G. Beman2 and myself, that it was his (Rev. Mr. Orcutt’s)3 opinion, that “were [Christ] living in a house capable of holding two families, He would prefer NOT to have a colored family in the opposite end.” Those who say the negro is unfit for freedom and who, like the Rev. Dr. Spring,4 would not on that account, dare to pray a prayer that would be answered by our immediate emancipation, have the same view as do those who praise of the contentment of the Negro with, and in, slavery. Those who regard slavery as at once our blessing and our “manifest destiny,” and who believe we can flourish in no other condition, are, of course, beneath the reach of any argument. They will only be convinced when they wake up as Dives did, where Dives did.5 “All liars.” &c. Now, doubtless, a bold push on this matter will do much to trample in the dust the defences cast up about the Old Bastile.6 3d We must do it, or who will? Where is the history of the negro? Alas! the history of our unhappy people consists of a single term and its cognate—slavery—slave trade—there is negro history, and what is more, some of the darkest and most diabolical papers and chapters of other history as well; and while this has been our lot, and that of our fathers, how were we to raise up historians? That is done by people in far different circumstances. Who was to write about us? Alas! who cared enough about us to write for us or of us? Yet, there are patches and shreds of our

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ancient life—I was delighted to find that the founder of Assyria, whose capitol, Nineveh, has recently been exhumed, and whose relics have immortalized Layard, was a son of Ham.7 And here and there a fact can be gleaned so forcible, that the more intelligent of our disparagers will yield the point, as to the ancient negro, but they put us upon our proof as to the modern negro. Well, there we are sadly at fault. We have nothing but Mott’s Sketches,8 Mr. Armistead’s Tribute,9 Mr. Nell’s Military Heroes,10 and a few anecdotes. Confessing this, I think we need not despair, for we have our glorious fatherland, Africa, with her 150 millions of as ancient11 heathen as the world ever saw—far superior to the progenitors of the proud and abuseful Anglo-Saxons; (which is saying very little;) and they are, as we shall see, quite equal to some of the very tallest of your modern, christian, Anglo-Saxons (which is saying but precious little more). We have 14 millions of our people who have survived the bad oppression, the worse example, and worst of all, the amalgamation of the unspeakably bad Anglo Saxon blood, and are, in all respects, in spite of this treble curse—this fruitful matrix of curses—somebody. If you have patience for it, I will second the noble efforts you are making in a like direction, by following this paper with some crude ideas (you know I never had any other) on this subject. I have the honor to be, dear sir, Your obedient servant, SAMUEL RINGGOLD WARD Frederick Douglass’ Paper (Rochester, N.Y.), 23 February 1855. 1. The Connecticut Colonization Society, an auxiliary of the American Colonization Society, was founded in Hartford by Ralph R. Gurley in 1827. It rapidly attracted many prominent members, including Samuel J. May, poet Lydia H. Sigourney, Yale chemist Benjamin Silliman, and many state and local political figures. The society was particularly active during the 1830s and established a host of local and juvenile auxiliaries; it provided significant support to the ACS until the Civil War. Staudenraus, African Colonization Movement, 126–28. 2. Amos G. Beman (1812–1874) was the son of Jehiel C. Beman. The elder Beman, pastor of an African Methodist Episcopal Zion church in Middletown, Connecticut, was a prominent abolitionist and early supporter of William Lloyd Garrison. Amos Beman was privately tutored before attending several schools, including Oneida Institute (1835–36). He taught in Hartford while a candidate for the ministry. In June 1838, he moved to New Haven, Connecticut, to serve the Temple Street Colored Congregational Church. Throughout his career, Beman focused his attention on temperance, antislavery, and moral reform. He sponsored educational lectures, library clubs, protective associations, and “elevation meetings”; he cofounded the Connecticut State Temperance Society for Colored People (1836), wrote a series of newspaper articles on temperance for the Colored American (1839), and organized the New Haven Literary and Debating Society (1841). Beman was a vigorous abolitionist, who, with his father and J. W. C. Pennington,

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became one of the most important antislavery spokesmen for Connecticut’s black community during the 1840s and 1850s. When the American Anti-Slavery Society factionalized in 1840, Beman helped found the American and Foreign AntiSlavery Society and served on its executive committee. Beman also understood the necessity of a vital black press and edited the short-lived Zion’s Wesleyan in 1842. As president of the 1843 National Convention of Colored Citizens held in Buffalo, New York, his speech helped defeat a resolution by Henry Highland Garnet, which sanctioned slave violence. During the 1840s, Beman devoted increasing amounts of time to abolition and the struggle for black civil rights. He led the black suffrage movement in Connecticut, made his church a station on the underground railroad, and counseled disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. At the Rochester Colored National Convention (1853), Beman was elected to the National Council—an executive committee meant to serve as the convention’s administrative arm—and he was appointed to the Manual Labor School Committee. In 1856 and 1857, Beman faced personal tragedy when his wife and two of his four children died of typhoid fever. He remarried in 1858. That same year he was appointed pastor of the Fourth Colored Congregation of Portland, Maine. Beginning in mid-July 1859, Beman served a year as an agent of the American Missionary Association. He traveled throughout the Northeast, lecturing, raising funds, and assessing the status of the black church. Throughout the 1860s, Beman supported himself and his family by serving a number of short-term ministerial appointments, by working for the freedmen in Tennessee, and by advising the African Civilization Society’s freedmen’s school project in Washington, D.C. Beman’s contributions to black civil rights were honored in 1872 when he was appointed chaplain to the Connecticut legislature. Robert A. Warner, “Amos Gerry Beman—1812–1874: A Memoir on a Forgotten Leader,” JNH 22:200–21 (April 1937); Lib, 7 January, 7 July, 11, 25 August 1832, 11 May, 11 August, 7 September, 2 November 1833, 2 March, 3 December 1836, 8 September 1843, 26 September 1856, 9 September 1864 [1:0092, 0218, 0283, 0341, 0651, 0751, 4:0660, 15:0517]; FDP, 22 July 1853, 8, 29 September, 13, 27 October 1854, 12 January, 4 May, 14 September 1855 [8:0373, 9:0072, 0016, 0133, 0168, 0374, 0578, 0832]; Amos G. Beman to Lewis Tappan, 11 October 1841, 27 September 1843, AMA-ARC [4:0251, 0673]. 3. John Orcutt (1807–1879) was born in Acworth, New Hampshire, and studied and taught in Vermont prior to being licensed as a Congregationalist minister in the early 1830s. He served Congregational churches in Massachusetts for twelve years, generating Garrisonian rebukes for his criticism of abolitionist attacks on churches and the clergy. He settled in Hartford, Connecticut, as state agent for the American Colonization Society in 1850. Active in the society until 1878, Orcutt was ACS secretary after 1856 and a life director after 1858. He moved to New York in 1873. AR, November 1851, December 1859, January, February, November 1873, April 1879; Lib, 3 March 1845. 4. Gardiner Spring (1785–1873), a native of Newburyport, Massachusetts, spent most of his career as pastor of New York City’s prestigious Brick Presbyterian Church, where he became a major figure in American Presbyterianism. He authored many books and pamphlets and actively concerned himself with various public issues. Spring championed preservation of the Union and con-

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demned abolitionists for “flaunting” divinely instituted government in their opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. DAB, 17:479–80. 5. “Dives” is the name usually ascribed to a rich man cited in a New Testament parable. After his death, Dives suffered in hell for the evil things he had done while alive and became convinced of the error of his actions. Luke 16:19–31. 6. The Bastille, a fortified prison in Paris and a symbol of the tyranny of the French monarchy, was besieged during the popular uprising of 14 July 1789. 7. Ward refers to recent archaeological finds that, for Ward, confirmed the Jewish tradition that ancient Assyria was founded by Nimrod, a grandson of Ham (who is credited by the Bible with being the predecessor of the black race). Located in modern Iraq, Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire until the sixth century B.C. The ruins of the city were excavated by expeditions directed by Sir Austen Henry Layard (1817–1894), who superintended British Museum excavations in the Tigris Valley (1849–51). These finds were popularized by Layard’s Nineveh and Its Remains (1849). Layard then launched a lengthy career in British politics. Gen. 10:6–11; William R. Shepherd, Historical Atlas, 9th ed. (New York, N.Y., 1964), 4–5; MEB, 6:20–21. 8. The reference is to Abigail Field Mott’s compilation, Biographical Sketches and Interesting Anecdotes of Persons of Colour (New York, N.Y., 1826). 9. Wilson Armistead (1819–1868) was a Quaker philanthropist and Garrisonian abolitionist who was instrumental in organizing the Leeds Anti-Slavery Association (1853) and the Manchester Anti-Slavery League (1854). Armistead’s antislavery concerns were eclectic, but he particularly sought to bring the abolitionist message to the British working class and became a prolific antislavery propagandist. In 1848 he wrote Tribute to the Negro, which was dedicated to J. W. C. Pennington, Frederick Douglass, and Alexander Crummell and was intended to demonstrate “that the white and dark coloured races are alike the children of one Heavenly Father.” The volume extolled the humanity of blacks, revealed important incidents in black history, and provided biographical sketches of noteworthy black leaders. During the 1860s, Armistead was active in the freedmen’s aid movement. MEB, 1:83; Temperley, British Antislavery, 237, 239, 245–46, 259; Rice, Scots Abolitionists, 167–68; Wilson Armistead, A Tribute to the Negro (Manchester, England, 1848; reprint, Miami, Fla., 1969). 10. Ward refers to William C. Nell’s volume entitled Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812 (Boston, Mass., 1851). 11. “Ancient” is a printer’s error. Ward meant for the text to read “decent.”

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68. Samuel Ringgold Ward to Frederick Douglass March 1855 The second installment of Ward’s “Modern Negro” series appeared in the 13 April issue of Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Ward continued his earlier discussion of the need for black equality, this time focusing on the unequal treatment of blacks in American reform circles. The immediacy of Ward’s remarks stemmed from the actions of Garrisonian abolitionist Parker Pillsbury, who had recently challenged the antislavery commitment of some black abolitionists in Britain. Ward, in turn, questioned the commitment of Pillsbury and other Garrisonians to full racial equality. In a separate column, Douglass praised Ward’s boldness and accuracy, although intimating to readers that black antislavery workers like Ward were needed “at home.” A third installment to the “Modern Negro” series, comparing the black and “Anglo-Saxon” races, appeared the following week. Additional installments were promised but were never published. FDP, 13, 20 April 1855; NASS, 28 October 1854. L ONDON , [England] March, 1855 DEAR SIR : I beg to thank your compositor for the general accuracy with which he transferred my miserable scrawl to type. He mistook me, however, in one trivial matter, to which I ask attention. He puts the world “ancient,” instead of “decent,” in the sentence where I compare the natives of our fatherland, Africa, with other heathen. I meant to say, they are as decent as any heathen—quite as decent as were the heathen progenitors of the haughty, self-complacent Anglo-Saxons. But, it ill becomes me to complain of your compositor, when he makes you say, in your Tremont Temple Speech,1 that Job said, “All that a man hath will be give for his life,” while Holy Writ attributes that sentence to Satan! I hope I may rely upon your usual kindness, in allowing me a somewhat wide range in the discussion of this subject. In addition to what was said in No. I, allow me to add, that, now is the time for the negro to vindicate his manhood and his equality to all others, when we see among anti-slavery men, leaders, some of them some vital defects, as I deem them. I will, for the present, confine my remarks to but two classes of anti-slavery people, as illustrative of my idea. I mean the American Quakers and the Garrison Abolitionists. Other areas are as bad, but I choose to refer just now to these. Of the former, I think it may be said without the fear of contradiction, that the

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idea of the equal manhood of the negro is as foreign to their bosoms as to those of any other sect in America. They have purged their sect of slaveholders, they render their annual testimony against slavery, and they steadfastly refuse either to hold or to buy slaves, when they reside in the South. But they have yet to present the first iota of practical evidence of their regarding the negro as equal to themselves. They are a very upright, genteel, proud sect. They, therefore, never stoop to join in mobs, not even in Philadelphia. Nor do they ever condescend to join in low, vulgar, ribald abuse of the negro. What they do is done genteelly, religiously. But they never do that which anyone can possibly mistake for an absence of fashionable contempt for and disparagement of the negro. They will give us good advice; they will aid in giving us a partial education—but never in a Quaker school, beside their own children. Whatever they do for us savors of pity, and is done at arm’s length, on a sort of noli me tangere principle. They raise a negro boy to a clerkship? or put him in a profession? or fit him for anything more than a drudge? Never! They would sooner put on a narrow brim or an unstraight coat. You and I know, sir, some most glorious exceptions to this rule. The more glorious, because exceptions, but the rule holds good. If nothing more is done for us than what Quakers in America do, God save us! I believe the sect in question are more numerous in Pennsylvania and New York, than in any other two States. I regret to say, that from my own observation and experience in those two States, no sect produces specimens of deeper, more determined, and what is no better, more religious negro-haters than does the sect of Friends called Quakers. Well, now, let us look at some facts touching Garrison Abolitionists. You may be aware that I prolong my stay in Europe for attending to private business, which relieves me, I hope, from the temptation (if I ever was assailed by it) of courting popular favor. And, did I desire to be at midlife, what I never was in past days, a popular man among my own people, I should make it entirely impossible by this article. For some of the black people think the Quakers and Garrisonians worthy of almost as much praise as their Maker. They would “do, be, or suffer,” as the grammar says, anything, at the nod of either of these classes. They scarcely think them capable of doing wrong. Now, at the risk of the censure of this class of our people, I beg to state that the class referred to, do not, except in words—mere words, believe in negro equality, nor is it a natural result of their movements to inspire negroes with any such idea, but rather to repress it. There now! I have said it! Now I must look out for breakers! I am prepared. Hear me. 1. No black man has ever been encouraged either as clerk in an anti-slavery office, or editor, or lecturer to the same extent as have white men of the same calibre. What I published on that subject in 1850, has never been denied, for the best of all reasons—it was, and is, undeniable. What Dr. Smith2 says on that

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subject to the same effect, is gently put into the proslavery columns of the Standard,3 as printers put bad types into an inverted old shoe called h—— , but that is not contradiction much less refutation. Nell, Still, and others were kept subordinates, always.4 No black Garrisonian can get $1200 a year as editor. I am not so well acquainted with lecture salaries; but I know of no black man and his wife, who, through courtship to marriage and then for years after have lived as salaried agents of either of the Garrison societies. Whites have.5 2. What was the animus of Parker Pillsbury’s strictures upon Dr. Pennington, Rev. H. H. Garnet and myself?6 Why, it seemed that we three Maryland lads had been to England, had said that Garrison and coadjutors were infidels, and had actually been well received where he had not!! Now honest anti-abolitionists would have called all this in plain, unmistakable, uncanting language, “negro insolence.” Who does not see that that is just what Mr. Pillsbury meant? Mr. P. goes on to complain that we have collected money for colored Churches and for fugitive slaves, where he cannot collect for the American Anti-Slavery Society and then tells the Glasgow Examiner7 that we ought not to have money for any [such] purposes, but it ought to be given to his Society. “Who is equal to us?” is the English of that. But more, Dr. Pennington belongs to the Presbyterian Church, Mr. Garnet has settled in a parish in Jamaica, and Mr. Pillsbury “is informed” that I am going to settle as a planter in Jamaica. He says that were we abolitionists, we should neither settle over parishes nor upon plantations. Of course, then, we are not abolitionists, i.e., we are not subject to the dictation of Mr. Pillsbury and his coadjutors. I ask, once more, is not this the animus of the overseer? Is it at all akin to the idea that a negro is so equal to an Anglo-Saxon, that he may go where he pleases, move his own field and method of labor, and succeed as well as he can? No! The chief complaint against us is, that we do succeed, and, possibly, may do yet more. What did we run away from Maryland for? To succeed or to fail? You and Dr. P. and Garnet are answering that question daily. By the way, I wrote, in December last, a reply to Mr. Pillsbury’s article in the Glasgow paper, and sent it to a paper edited by a colored lady.8 That is the last I have heard of it. 3. One need only refer to the fact, that young Cassey was refused a place in a rich Garrisonian’s counting-house,9 because of his color! That gentleman being at one time (if not now) President of the Pennsylvania AntiSlavery Society, and belonging to a family whose anti-slavery profession is louder than that of any other family of Hicksite Quakers in Pennsylvania. It seems, too, that young Purvis has been rejected in a like manner.10 4. Now for the influence of all this on the blacks. When Cassey was rejected by Davis, I was in Philadelphia. I denounced it, and it was

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justified by a young colored man of high standing. So was the treatment of Nell and Still in the anti-slavery offices. Again, when you dared to take your present position upon the anti-slavery question, by whom were you denounced more bitterly than by two prominent colored gentlemen of that school?11 Now, just so far as that class of abolitionists have influence at all over our people, they repress rather than inspire the idea of equality. Hence the value of your defense of this great principle. Hence the appropriateness of making that defense, most vigorously, now. Hence, also, allow me to thank you, once more for your Ethnological Lecture. I beg to remain your obedient servant, S. R. W Frederick Douglass’ Paper (Rochester, N.Y.), 13 April 1855. 1. Douglass delivered a speech in Tremont Temple, Boston, on 8 February 1855, as one of a formal series of antislavery lectures held there that year. Douglass’s lecture (later published in the 23 February 1855 issue of Frederick Douglass’ Paper) was a philosophical discussion of slavery. FDP, 9, 23 February 1855. 2. James McCune Smith. 3. National Anti-Slavery Standard. 4. Ward refers to the relationship of William C. Nell and William Still to white antislavery organizations. Nell (1816–1874), a Boston antislavery activist, historian, and advocate of integrated public education, administered the Liberator’s short-lived Negro Employment Office in the early 1840s. From then until the Liberator ceased publication in December 1865, Nell contributed articles on antislavery topics and Boston’s black community. Still (1821–1901), of Philadelphia, was hired by the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in 1847 to do clerical and janitorial work. After 1852 he coordinated the fugitive slave efforts of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee, an organization that he chaired. He recorded the personal history of each fugitive he assisted and later used his information to write The Underground Railroad (1872). Still left his position at the PASS office in 1861 but served the association as vice-president for eight years and as president from 1896 until his death. DANB, 472–73, 573–74; Robert P. Smith, “William Cooper Nell: Crusading Abolitionist,” JNH 55:184 (July 1970); Larry Gara, “William Still and the Underground Railroad,” PH 28:33–43 (January 1961). 5. This remark was aimed at white abolitionists David and Lydia Maria Child. David Child was unable to support himself and his wife by his several agricultural experiments and was considered impractical by his contemporaries. The Childs existed with funds received from their work as lecturing agents for the American Anti-Slavery Society, from Lydia Maria Child’s editing of the National Anti-Slavery Standard (1842–43), from writing abolitionist tracts, and from a West Newton, Massachusetts, farm purchased for them in 1850 by antislavery lawyer Ellis Gray Loring. NAW, 1:330–33. 6. Garrisonian abolitionist Parker Pillsbury spent 1854 in Britain lecturing and working to insure the Garrisonian loyalty of local North and West Country anti-

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slavery groups. This activity made him unwelcome in most British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society circles, and that, in turn, made Pillsbury’s trip unsuccessful and unpleasant. Pillsbury responded by attacking black abolitionists who had been successful there, particularly those who did not share a severe Garrisonian view. Pillsbury wrote several letters to newspapers (the Glasgow Sentinel, the Glasgow Examiner, the Christian News, and the Liberator), criticizing black abolitionist lecturers in Britain who sought money for causes such as vigilance committees and Canadian fugitive relief. According to Pillsbury, J. W. C. Pennington had described some white American abolitionists as infidels while he, Pennington, masqueraded as an abolitionist and belonged to a proslavery church. Pillsbury also attacked unnamed black abolitionists for abandoning the movement and accepting land or positions in Jamaica. Those attacks were regarded as transparent criticisms of Ward and Garnet. Rice, Scots Abolitionists, 169–72; NASS, 28 October 1854; CN, 30 September 1854; Lib, 29 September 1854. 7. The Glasgow Examiner, a Liberal weekly, was founded in 1844 and circulated among the upper and middle classes in the west of Scotland. Newspaper Press Directory, 1847 (London, 1847), 297; Newspaper Press Directory, 1857 (London, 1857), 129. 8. There is no record of Ward’s response to Parker Pillsbury in the Provincial Freeman, a paper published by black editor Mary Ann Shadd Cary. The paper received word from Ward by 17 February 1855, however, and such a response may have appeared in the 3 or 31 March 1855 Freeman, but neither issue is extant. PFW, 17 February 1855. 9. This refers to Joseph C. Cassey, an accountant who was the son of black Philadelphia businessman and abolitionist Joseph Cassey and a member of a prominent black Philadelphia family. The younger Cassey was apparently rejected (ca. 1850) for a position with the counting house of Edward M. Davis of Philadelphia. Davis (1811–1887), a Philadelphia Quaker, was married to Maria Mott, daughter of reformers James and Lucretia Mott. A Garrisonian abolitionist, he was a leading figure in the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. Cassey became principal bookkeeper for several years with Smith and Whipper, black lumber merchants of Columbia, Pennsylvania. By 1852 he was co-owner with William Platt of a thriving lumber business in Penn Yan, New York, which served the western region of the state. Delany, Condition of Colored People, 94–95, 107–8; FDP, 16 February 1855; Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 2:334; PF, 9, 16 October 1851, 4 November 1853. 10. Robert Purvis, Jr. (1834–1862), the oldest of eight children born to Philadelphia black abolitionists Robert and Harriet Forten Purvis, participated in Pennsylvania antislavery activities during the 1850s. There is no record of the incident to which Ward refers. WAA, 29 March 1862; DANB, 507; Lewis, “Fortens of Philadelphia,” 81, 125, 147. 11. Ward refers to charges made against Frederick Douglass by black Garrisonians Robert Purvis and Charles Lenox Remond during the May 1852 annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, held in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, New York. Douglass described the charges as a “furious attack.” The entire affair was one in a series of episodes that erupted between Douglass, Garrison, and Garrison’s supporters in the wake of Douglass’s adoption of an independent antislavery posture. The protesters objected particularly to Douglass’s rejection of

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key elements of Garrisonian doctrine between 1847 and 1853. It exemplified the feuding and “pattern of personal abuse” that continued between Douglass and the Garrisonians for a number of years. William H. Pease and Jane H. Pease, “Boston Garrisonians and the Problem of Frederick Douglass,” CJH 2:29–42 (September 1967); Benjamin Quarles, “The Breech between Douglass and Garrison,” JNH 23:144–54 (April 1938); FDP, 20 May 1852; NASS, 20 May 1852. 423

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69. William G. Allen to Editor, Belfast Newsletter 24 November 1855 Arranging a lecture tour occasionally led to misunderstandings between black abolitionists and their local sponsors. William G. Allen’s encounter with Rev. Robert Templeton, pastor of the Lisburn Street Presbyterian Church in Hillsborough, Ireland, illustrates one of the ways conflicts developed. Near the end of a well-received, six-monthlong tour of Ireland, Allen failed to appear at a scheduled lecture in Hillsborough on 21 November. Templeton accused Allen (in the 23 November Belfast Newsletter) of arranging a lecture and then canceling it on the day it was to be given in favor of an appearance in Downpatrick. Templeton proposed that Allen “thought, perhaps, he would make a few pence more in Downpatrick.” Allen responded with a letter that appeared in the 27 November Belfast Newsletter. This prompted a more detailed accusation by Templeton in the following day’s Newsletter. ASA, May 1855; Blackett, “William G. Allen,” 49–50; Belfast and Ulster Directory (Belfast, 1856), 576; BN, 22, 25 June, 23, 28 November 1855; Mrs. Maxwell to [?], 20 November 1855, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh. Belfast, [Ireland] Nov[ember] 24, 1855 SIR: In the Newsletter1 of Friday last is an article, headed “A Lecturer Breaking Faith with the Public,” written by the Rev. Mr. Templeton, Presbyterian minister of Hillsborough, in which I am charged in the most extraordinary manner with dishonour and perfidy, &c., &c., in reference to a lecture which, it seems, Mr. Templeton expected me to deliver in his church in Hillsborough, on Wednesday evening last. Now, I beg to say, in reply to this singular communication, that the blame of assembling an audience in Hillsborough, on Wednesday evening last, for the purpose of disappointing them of a lecture, rests with Mr. Templeton, and not with myself. The truth of this statement will appear in the facts which I shall presently give. I may, however, add, just here, that let Mr. Templeton’s opinion of my course have been what it may, there was certainly no reason why he should have allowed an audience to assemble on the Wednesday evening in question, since I gave him eleven hours’ notice of my intentions, delivering my note in person at his own door, in Hillsborough, at eight o’clock, on the morning of Wednesday, being then on my way from Dromore to Lisburn, to take the 8:45 train for Belfast.

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Mr. Templeton has done me great injustice, and I am sorry to say, that I think he has done it knowingly, and even willingly. To what other conclusion could I come, looking at the hot haste and evident pleasure with which he seeks to establish cause of condemnation? Mr. Templeton knew my address, he saw my testimonials of character, and would it not, therefore, have been more considerate treatment of a stranger to have written a private note stating grievances and requesting explanations before rushing into print? Christian charity does exist in this world, I know; but Mr. Templeton’s is, emphatically, Christian charity with a vengeance. His kindness to me, about which he talks, was a pretence—his courtesy a sham. Here are the facts. I called upon Mr. Templeton on Saturday afternoon last, and stated the object of my visit, which was, as he rightly describes “to secure his aid and influence in procuring a place to deliver, and an audience to hear, a lecture which I designed to give in Hillsborough.” He dissuaded me, sure enough, and drew such a gloomy picture of the lecture-going tendencies of the inhabitants of Hillsborough as would have discouraged any man not “bent” as Mr. Templeton adds, “on making the experiment.” He especially assured me, that, unless I could secure the use of the Court-house, it would be all up with me; for if the lecture should be held in a place of less general character—say, for instance, the Presbyterian Meeting-house, it would be regarded by the public at large as a sort of exclusive or sectarian affair, and many that might, perchance, be disposed to come would be deterred from so doing. Off, therefore, I started, to secure the Court-house, if possible, but found that Mr. Filgate2 (the local magistrate) had gone out of town, and the Court-house could not be obtained. I returned at once to Mr. Templeton, and told him there was no alternative now but to ask the use of his Meeting-house. He then told me that he had no power himself to grant it—that favour must be obtained of the committee, which committee also could not be met until the following Sabbath. I could not remain in Hillsborough all night, and so, therefore, Mr. Templeton took my address, intending, as I supposed, to write to me with regard to final arrangements. I then wrote out a notice of the lecture to be read by Mr. Templeton, or the gentleman who should supply his pulpit, in case the house should be granted. We parted. I then went to the clergyman of the Established Church,3 but as whether I should or should not lecture in Hillsborough, on Wednesday evening, depended clearly upon a contingency, I did not venture to ask the reading of a notice—did not even refer to the fact that I contemplated a lecture on the evening in question, but merely passed a word or two with regard to lectures in Hillsborough and the chances of success, the clergyman all the while giving me no more encouragement than I received from Mr. Templeton. Well, Monday came and passed, and I received no line from Mr. Tem-

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pleton; but while in Lisburn, on Monday, I wrote out a circular for a Wednesday evening lecture at Hillsborough, and left it with Mrs. Reilly4 (printer), to be struck off when I should order it, telling the printer that I was awaiting a communication from Mr. Templeton. Tuesday came, and no letter yet; and, as on Monday I had received an invitation from a gentleman in Downpatrick to spend Wednesday evening with him—not to lecture, or to “make a few more pence,” as Mr. Templeton erroneously states it—I ventured on Tuesday evening to accept the invitation, and wrote accordingly, and mailed my letter at 10:45 P.M. I was to lecture in Downpatrick on Thursday evening. On Wednesday morning I wrote, as nearly as I can recollect, as follows, to Mr. Templeton: M Y D E A R S I R : It will be quite out of my power to be in Hillsborough to-night, having been written to be in Downpatrick tonight. I suppose, however, that my not coming will make no difference, considering the untoward circumstances which seem to exist with regard to my delivering a lecture in Hillsborough to-night, &c. This note I delivered, as I have already said, not dreaming all the while that any notice whatever had been given of the lecture in Hillsborough; and certainly feeling that, if any notice had been given, it must have been on the most limited scale: not a placard had been posted, not a circular issued, and not a notice read in any place of public worship whatever on the Sabbath, save in the Rev. Mr. Templeton’s, if there; and Mr. Templeton himself also out of town a part of Monday, and nearly, if not quite, the whole of Tuesday, for so he told me he would be; and the people of Hillsborough in general, as represented to me, having no taste or wish for lectures. These, therefore, being the facts, and all the facts in the case, I leave it now to the reader to judge whether or not I committed an unpardonable offence in acting upon the strong presumption that no lecture had been appointed for me in Hillsborough on Wednesday evening last. Let judgment go as it may, every one must certainly own that these facts establish no case over which there ought to have been made so much and so great an ado. The rev. gentleman’s startling adjectives, sweeping assertions, most “crushing” quotations and denunciations, added to his attempt to annihilate me root and branch, are, under the circumstances, simply ridiculous. In conclusion, with regard to the audience assembled on Wednesday evening, I beg to say that words can but ill express the measure of regret I feel that they should have been disappointed; and I sincerely hope that they will see in these statements that which will exonerate me from any intention at least of trifling with them, or of imposing upon their kindness. If I have committed an offence at all, it surely rises no higher than

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the one of a mere misunderstanding. I have been in these kingdoms nearly three years, and have lectured meanwhile extensively in England, Scotland, and, during the present season, nearly throughout the North of Ireland, and the audience is yet to be found that can charge me with having occasioned disappointment. Shall not this be set to my credit? Please pardon this long communication; and I assure you I shall write no more upon the subject. I am, my dear sir, very faithfully yours, W I L L I A M G. A L L E N Belfast Newsletter (Ireland), 27 November 1855. 1. The Belfast Newsletter was established in 1737. The Conservative paper appeared twice weekly. In the nineteenth century, it claimed to be nonpartisan in religion and politics and to support every object that promoted Christian principles. Newspaper Press Directory, 1846 (London, 1846), 264; Newspaper Press Directory, 1857 (London, 1857), 83. 2. F. Filgate of Ballynahinch Street was the justice of the peace for Hillsborough, Ireland. Belfast and Ulster Directory (Belfast, 1856), 576. 3. The Church of England. 4. Allen refers to the wife of Thomas Henry Reilly, a printer, bookbinder, and stationer, whose business was located at 61 High Street in Belfast. Belfast and Ulster Directory (Belfast, 1856), 304, 366.

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70. Speech by John Andrew Jackson Delivered at the Scottish Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures Connected with Architecture, Glasgow, Scotland

2 June 1857 The British antislavery public displayed an increasing appetite for information about plantation life. Audiences flocked to hear both the polished analytical speeches of former slaves-turned-professional and the rough-hewn, anecdotal narratives of fugitives such as Canadian former slave John Andrew Jackson. Jackson traveled to England in the mid-1850s and lived in London until he returned to the United States following the Civil War. He lectured throughout Britain to raise money to purchase his father and his sister’s children, who were slaves in South Carolina. In the spring of 1857, Jackson toured Scotland, giving well-attended lectures at Edinburgh, Stirling, and Glasgow. At eight o’clock on Tuesday evening, 2 June 1857, Jackson spoke before a large and attentive audience in the rooms of the Scottish Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures Connected with Architecture at 93 Bath Street in Glasgow. The meeting chairman introduced Jackson by reading testimonials from Edinburgh clergymen. Jackson then addressed the audience in “the peculiar broken dialect of the negro.” His wife, a former North Carolina slave described as an “interesting-looking creole,” accompanied him on the platform. Blassingame, Slave Testimony, 513; CN, 30 May, 6 June 1857; John Andrew Jackson, The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina (London, 1862), 32. On Tuesday evening last, Mr. J. A. Jackson,1 a fugitive slave, delivered a lecture in the Scottish Exhibition Rooms, Bath Street, illustrative of the evils of slavery, and gave a history of his own bondage and escape from the horrors of the “peculiar institution.” The chairman, having read several testimonials from Edinburgh clergymen, introduced the lecturer. Mr. Jackson is an intelligent-looking black, in the prime of life; and although his command of the English language is far from perfect, yet in the peculiar broken dialect of the negro, he [did] “A round, unvarnished tale deliver” of his captivity and escape, and was easily understood. His object is to raise sufficient money to purchase the freedom of his father, and sister’s children, who are still under the lash in South Carolina, and already 500 dollars have been raised for that purpose. In the course of his lecture he told a thrilling tale of a noble slave named Dred. This negro was remarkably tall and powerful—standing nearly seven feet high, and was driver of a gang of slaves on a southern plantation. Owing to his excellent management, everything went on well. He raised the best

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crops, and had the best slaves, for miles around; but having offended a neighboring planter by his independent bearing, and especially by his having refused or neglected to make an obeisance to him, a plot was formed to bring him down a “notch,” and it began to be hinted to his master that there was a plot hatching under the woolly pate of his slave. His master entered heartily into the scheme, for he too was chafed at the airs of conscious superiority which the slave assumed. Accordingly, the hoe, instead of the whip, was put into his hand; but no word or look betrayed that he felt the change. The master was puzzled. He had expected an outburst of passion at the supposed injustice; but instead of that, Dred worked in the gang with apparent cheerfulness. Attempts were next made to find fault with his work—but in vain; he had more work, and did it better than any slave on the plantation. A double task was assigned him; but his gigantic strength and resolution overcame this also. His master was now more than ever bent on his humiliation; and coming to his hut one evening, told him his work was not well done. Dred, who knew the master had not been in the field that day, asked him how he knew. This was going beyond the prerogative of the slave, and afforded sufficient excuse to flog the “nigger.” Dred said he would take a flogging from no man; and the master, awed by his vast strength and self-possession, called on the overseer and the rest of the slaves to seize him. All their efforts were unavailing; and as Dred was beloved by the slaves, they were not over active in the attempt. The master thus openly braved by his slave, vowed vengeance. Calling several of the neighboring overseers, he made a fresh attempt to capture him. But being armed with a large knife, Dred so frightened them, that the master, as a last resource, loaded his gun, and coolly murdered him—preferring to lose his best hand, rather than to be bearded by a “cuss’d nigger.” This story was told with great effect, as were several others of a similar nature. The black driver on the plantation on which Jackson was a slave, was flogged to death by the overseer. Jackson, himself, after the loss of his sister, having come into possession of a pony, on one occasion went to a camp-meeting with it. Here, to his astonishment, he discovered his mistress and young master, who being completely ignorant of his having a pony, seemed as much astonished as himself. To the very natural inquiries of young master, regarding the pony, Jackson returned rather ambiguous answers; but contrived to retain possession. On reaching home, Jackson was secretly informed by one of the domestic slaves that he was to receive 100 lashes for daring to possess property. Dreading to encounter the lash, he fled, and being pursued, swam a creek of the Black River,2 which was swarming with alligators, and happily he got over safe. His young master, he tells us, was a wild fellow. His father, to get him out of the way, gave him a plantation in Tennessee, where he managed to flog most of his slaves to death. He next turned lawyer, and eventually this promising youth

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turned minister—lecturing slaves on their duty to their masters. Jackson set out for Charleston, and halted at nightfall at a roadside inn, where he was partially known. After dexterously turning some of the landlord’s questions, he started at midnight on his way to Charleston. Here, owing to his colour, and his extreme ignorance, he was in daily terror of being captured. He got a situation at four and a quarter dollars per day, and worked a few days; but becoming alarmed at the cross-questioning of one of the coloured workmen, he sold the pony, and having secured a large cloak and some loaves, he stowed himself on board a vessel bound for Boston. For seven days he remained in his voluntary prison; but his stock of water being expended, he discovered himself to the captain, who literally cut him out of the hold, and rather reluctantly gave him his liberty on arriving at Boston. He wrought as a freeman in a tanyard in Massachussetts, until the passing of the infamous Fugitive Slave Bill, when he went to Canada, and has since been engaged in the laudable effort of trying to purchase the freedom of his relatives. Christian News (Glasgow), 6 June 1857. 1. John Andrew Jackson was born a slave on a plantation in Sumter County, South Carolina. His mother was named Betty, and his father was known as “Dr. Claven” for his practice of folk medicine in the slave community. Jackson, a field hand, was owned by a Quaker family and was harshly treated. When he was separated by sale from his wife and child in 1846, Jackson fled slavery. He worked briefly as a Charleston dockhand and then stowed away on a vessel bound for Boston. Jackson settled in Salem, Massachusetts, and worked as a leather tanner and part-time sawmill operative. When he mailed a letter from Boston to his master seeking to purchase members of his family, a slave agent was sent to search for him, but Jackson avoided capture. Passage of the Fugitive Slave Law rekindled his fear of being returned to slavery, and, assisted by Harriet Beecher Stowe, he left Salem for Canada. Jackson settled in St. Johns, New Brunswick, married a former slave from North Carolina, and worked as a whitewasher. In the spring of 1856, still seeking to purchase family members in slavery and hoping to add to the funds he had already saved for that purpose, Jackson returned to Boston to obtain personal references from Stowe and a number of Boston businessmen. In the spring of 1857, he journeyed to Britain with his wife to solicit contributions. He lectured in Scotland and England with the assistance of several antislavery leaders, including David Guthrie, Rev. Thomas Candlish, and Julia Griffiths, friend and patron of Frederick Douglass. Jackson and his wife established a residence in London and remained abroad until after the Civil War but eventually returned to live in South Carolina. In 1893, describing himself as “old and feeble,” Jackson raised money for an orphan home and school for destitute children in Magnolia, Sumter County, South Carolina. Jackson, Experience of a Slave; Blassingame, Slave Testimony, 511–13; CN, 30 May 1857. 2. This is an apparent reference to Black Creek, a tributary of the Pee Dee River in northeastern South Carolina.

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71. Narrative of Tom Wilson The desire of the British (and European) reform public for firsthand accounts of the peculiar institution was satisfied in several ways, and newspapers did their part by printing fugitive slave narratives. Tom Wilson’s short autobiography was but one of many that first appeared in the British press. Wilson arrived at Liverpool from New Orleans during late January 1858. On 13 February 1858, he was taken to the office of the Liverpool Albion, where he told his life’s story, which was recorded “as the narrative fell from his lips.” He also informed the Albion staff that he was looking for a position as a fireman aboard a coastal steamer. After Albion reporters made inquiries and were convinced that Wilson’s narrative was substantially accurate, it was printed in the 20 February issue and then reprinted in several London newspapers. Blassingame, Slave Testimony, 338–40; I, 28 February 1858; BB, 4 March 1858. My name is Tom Wilson. I arrived here in a ship called the Metropolis, Captain Foster. I am slave-born. I have been under slave bondage ever since I was born. I am now forty-five years old. I belonged to Mr. Henry Fastman, of New York, cotton-presser. I was under him for the space of seven years. Before then I belonged to Colonel Barr, of Woodford, Mississippi. There I had a wife and three children, besides having had another child, which died. I was sold by auction by Major Baird’s auctioneer1 for 2,500 dollars, and was taken down to New Orleans, away from my wife and children, and I haven’t seen them since. Shortly after I got there Mr. Fastman’s overseer, Burks, commenced to ill-use me. I didn’t understand tying the cotton; it was new to me, and I was awkward; so I was flogged. They used to tie me down across a cotton bale and give me 200 or 300 with a leather strap. I am marked with the whip from the ankle bone to the crown of my head. Some years before I was sold from Mississippi, the overseer there, because I resisted punishment once, cut my right arm across the muscle, and then had it stitched up. He did that, as he said, to weaken me, because I was too strong in the arm. About a year and a half after I had been in New Orleans I ran into the woods. I was followed by Burks and a pack of bloodhounds into the Baddenrush swamp.2 The dogs soon caught me; they tore my legs and body with their teeth. Here are the marks yet. (As he spoke he turned up his trousers legging and exposed formidable seams extending up the calf and above the knee joint.) Burks (he continued) rode up to me with his gun and shot me in the hip with 14 buck shot, which can be seen and exam-

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ined at any time. The dogs continued to pin me with their teeth. After that I knew nothing about what they did to me for about a week. When I got a little strong they burned my back with a red hot iron, and my legs with spirits of turpentine, to punish me for escaping. They put an iron collar round my neck, which I wore for eight months, besides two irons, one on each leg. After that I was watched very closely, but one night, about a week after Christmas, I ran away and hid myself under the sawdust in a sawmill pit, below New Orleans. I was followed by Burks, the overseer, and the dogs, but they did not find me. I crept out and ran away, for more safety, to the Great salt-water Lake, behind Orleans,3 secreting myself under the bushes and vines. There are alligators in the lake, and as I waded up to the knees in the water the alligators followed me, grunting and bellowing, and trying to get me. I had several times to climb up trees to escape them; but I felt safer among the alligators than among the white men. In the morning, at 4 o’clock, I went down to the wharf. On the road I came across some of the men who were out watching for me with guns and dogs. It was just getting light. I began to whistle and sing, and walked close by them, and they paid no attention to me. When I got down to the wharf some of the coloured crew of the American cotton ship Metropolis took me on board, and hid me away among the bales. One of the coloured men split on me, and there was a search for me that day; but they did not find me, though they came very near me, and I trembled to think that I should be taken back and tortured. I was frightened, too, for the coloured men who had befriended me. I was kept out of sight of the white men, and Captain Foster did not know anything about it until after the men had been paid off at Liverpool. I remained hid from a week after Christmas until about three weeks ago, when the ship came here. During the time I was secreted I was kept alive by the coloured men who had been so good to me. They brought me something to eat and drink every night. When I first landed here I was frightened at every white man I passed, and I hid myself about where I could, and begged at night for bread. I was afraid I should be taken into slavery again. I did not know I could not be a slave here. Inquirer (London), 28 February 1858 1. Wilson refers to “Major” Joseph A. Beard, the leading New Orleans slave trader during the two decades preceding the Civil War. By 1859 Beard’s operations were managed by his auctioneer and silent partner Gardner Smith, and the following year the firm became Beard, Pitts and Gardner Smith. Bancroft, Slave Trading in Old South, 324–25. 2. Louisiana maps of the period reveal no marshes, swamps, or other water features bearing Baddenrush or a similar name. It is possible that Wilson’s use of Baddenrush is a spelling corruption of Baton Rouge in reference to the Bayou

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Baton Rouge northeast of the Louisiana city of the same name. If this is accurate, he would have been about sixty miles northwest of New Orleans at the time of his recapture.

3. Wilson refers to Lake Pontchartrain, which borders the northern edge of New Orleans.

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72. William P. Powell to Maria Weston Chapman 10 December 1858 William P. Powell was one of the few black antislavery lecturers who failed to observe at least the semblance of ideological neutrality in the debate between Garrisonian and non-Garrisonian groups in Britain. Powell was an invaluable agent in the development of Anglo-American Garrisonianism. He successfully promoted British contributions to the Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar and the National Anti-Slavery Subscription Anniversary, two primary sources of revenue for the American AntiSlavery Society. Powell’s 10 December 1858 note to Maria Weston Chapman, president of the Subscription Anniversary (the international Garrisonian fund-raising mechanism that replaced the bazaar in 1858) discusses some of his activities as a Liverpool agent for the subscription. His letter to Chapman also reveals that eight years of self-imposed exile abroad had left unchallenged the purity of his commitment to Garrisonian antislavery tactics and philosophy. ASA, February, April, July 1858, March 1859; Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 1:591–92n.; Pease and Pease, They Who Would Be Free, 286–87. LIVERPOOL , [England] Dec[ember] 10, 1858 To The President of the National Anti-Slavery Subscription Anniversary Boston, Massachusetts If there is one thing that encourages and strengthens us, in our ceaseless demands for the unconditional emancipation of the slave, more than another, it is the fidelity of the American Anti-Slavery Society and its friends. They have always religiously and faithfully resisted the damnable heresies of the so-called American Christian Church, which teaches that the Bible and its Divine Author sanction negro slavery. Therefore we deny the stereotyped imputation that the Garrisonian Abolitionists are Infidels and Atheists. Who, then, we ask, are the Infidels and Atheists, if not the American Evangelical Church and false prophets who, like Balaam,1 are hired by the American Baals2 to curse, reduce and hold God’s poor in worse than Egyptian bondage? In our humble opinion, after thirty years of anti-slavery experience, we have proved to the world that the cause of vital Christianity and humanity is indebted to that noble band of men and women for their unswerving devotion to the truths contained in that blessed book. Courage, friends! We have driven the enemy from one post of defence

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to another—even their last stronghold, the Bible, from behind which they hurled at us their most foul calumnies, only to recoil upon themselves. “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” The slaveholders’ “Jordan is a hard road to travel.” But they rally once more. “In the imminent deadly breach” they erect another battery, viz., the glorious Union, mounted with thirty-two pounder State Constitutions, and their mammoth peace-maker, the United States Constitution, and, last, not least, the corrupt Church. With these formidable weapons they renew the attack. On the contrary we have God, the slave and his flaming two-edged sword of truth—the Bible— on our side. Our weapons are not carnal, but spiritual and mighty through God; they are invincible—they must and shall prevail; and, by God’s blessing, if you faint not, if we remain true to our convictions of duty, though troubled on every side, perplexed, persecuted, and often cast down, driven out from and disowned by Church and State as outlaws—who in much patience, afflictions, necessities, distresses, stripes and imprisonments, and even death—who by pureness, long suffering, kindness to the slaveholder and love for the slave, by the word of truth, the power of God, by the armor of righteousness, on the right hand and on the left, by evil report and good report, as deceivers and yet true, as unknown and yet well known—if you will only continue to refuse to support the United States Constitution, take no part in the government, nor vote at elections, nor hold office, nor acknowledge the binding force of the bloody slaveholding contract directly nor indirectly—if you refuse to take the oath of allegiance nor obey the law of slavery—if you demand and insist that your next Legislature shall pass a law giving protection to every slave who may come into the State of Massachusetts, in another long campaign the blackened ramparts of American slavery will surely topple to the ground. WILLIAM P. POWELL National Anti-Slavery Standard (New York, N.Y.), 12 February 1859. 1. The biblical character Balaam was a Mesopotamian diviner hired by the king of Moab to put a curse upon the Israelites who were invading Canaan (modern Israel) following their emancipation from Egyptian slavery. When the Israelite deity warned Balaam not to complete the curse, he instead blessed them three times. Num. 22:1–24, 25. 2. Powell refers to a biblical story in which the Israelite prophet Elijah demonstrated that 450 prophets of the Phoenician deity Baal were false prophets. Soon after King Ahab introduced Baal worship into Israel, a lengthy drought and famine began. Elijah then challenged the prophets of Baal to a contest to determine which deity controlled nature. Following hours of unsuccessful animal sacrifice, prayer, sacred dancing, and ritual self-mutilation by the prophets of Baal, Elijah’s prayers to the Hebrew deity were answered with torrential rains. 1 Kings 16: 31– 18:46.

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73. Speech by Sarah P. Remond Delivered at the Music Hall, Warrington, England 24 January 1859 Black lecturers often rekindled local British antislavery efforts. Black abolitionists Sarah P. Remond, William P. Powell, and William G. Allen led an abolitionist upsurge in Warrington, Lancashire, England, which became a center of British Garrisonian antislavery activity in 1859. Remond’s Warrington lectures generated particular excitement. She delivered her first Warrington lecture, “Slave Life in America,” on Monday evening, 24 January 1859, at the Music Hall. The lecture had been arranged and publicized by local abolitionist William Robson and was the beginning of an anticipated British antislavery tour by Remond. The doors opened at 7:30 P.M., the seats were soon filled, standing room was quickly exhausted, and complaints arose as some members of the local elite were unable to obtain seats. Once the din died down, the audience was attentive, although outbreaks of noise continued as late arrivals attempted to push in. Robert Gaskell, secretary of the Warrington Anti-Slavery Society, presided and introduced Remond. After she completed her one-and-a-half-hour lecture, the enthusiastic audience cheered and approved resolutions thanking Remond and denouncing slavery as anti-Christian. Lib, 18 February 1859; WS, 29 January 1859; WT, 29 January 1859; ASA, March 1859. Miss RE M O N D 1 commenced by thanking the audience for their kind manifestations towards her, and said that though she was 3,000 miles from home, and from loved ones, yet she felt that a common sympathy should unite all, for was not God their father, and were they not all brethren? She was there that evening as the representative of a race that was stripped of every right and debarred from every privilege—a race which was deprived of the protection of the law, and the glorious influences of religion, and all the strong ties and influences of social life. She was there as the representation of a race, which, in the estimation of American law, had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and for what? For no other reason than that they were of a different complexion from the majority of American citizens. And this infamous doctrine had the sanction of the established courts of law in that country.2 Nine judges of the supreme court of America had met together and given this decision. Five of them were slave holders,3 and were educated in the belief that black men and women were made for no other purpose than to be slaves. The other four were from Northern States where slavery did not exist; but only two of the four lifted their hands against this

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iniquitous decision. They thus established a law which would disgrace any country in any age—a law which would receive, and deserved to receive, the execration of the civilized world. (Applause.) And yet in that boasted America, only two out of nine of the judges of the country lifted their hand against it! She would remind her audience that in 16 of the 31 States slavery did not exist by law; but in those States there were half a million, perhaps more, honourable men and women—descendants of the African race, varying in complexion from black to white, and yet these men and women in either of the 16 States where slavery was prohibited, were deprived of every privilege as citizens. They were, in one respect, just as much deprived of these rights before this decision was given; but this had given the final blow to any faint hope that existed, and now, throughout the 31 states, the black people found that this law was irrevocable, and must be obeyed—not the slightest chance appeared of alteration. She would tell them in America politics were corrupt. (Hear, hear.) It would be uninteresting to an English audience to state the mass of corruptions that underlaid the whole system of American government; but no one who read the newspapers of America could be ignorant of this fact. Let them look at the filibustering expeditions that were constantly fitted out to ravage other States, and no notice being taken of them by the government. 4 The government did not take any measures to suppress—not even to mitigate the horrors of the slave trade; and numberless other points there were which she could not in the limited time touch on; but they all knew sufficient to be aware that American politics were corrupt. But she would tell them that the American churches were infinitely more corrupt than American politics. (Hear, hear.) The American churches were responsible for many of the worst features that existed in regard to the slavery of the African population. When that infamous decision was given that was before mentioned, the church did not set their face against it, but tamely said with the pro-slavery party at the north, “we must obey the law. It is necessary for the public safety that we should obey the law.” But if there was an attempt made to pass a law in favour of the negro, there was no movement on their parts, or sympathy shown towards it. Thus the laws of America stood condemned—for they were insincere and inconsistent. Miss Remond then alluded to the disabilities of the negro population in various States. There was not an hotel in Boston but one that would receive a coloured man or woman. In Massachusetts there had been an improvement within the last five years. Black men and women were allowed to ride in the omnibuses.5 This had been effected by a few who had determined to stand by the weak; but the majority stood aside. These few individuals had renovated the public sentiment to the extent mentioned. But in New York and Philadelphia, if a coloured individual were ready to sink in the street through exhaustion, not a single omnibus would take him in. When they took into

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consideration that the American people, beyond all others, were making greater professions of liberty than any other nation; and then besides, any 4th of July to hear their Declaration of Independence, and the speeches that were made, when they heard all this, and looked a little farther, they saw in that same America an iron despotism crushing out the intellect, aye, the very souls of men and women, made but little lower than the angels! She should like to tell how 17,000 free northern men, called freesoil men, submitted to the dictum of the 347,000 slaveholders6 who lived south of Mason and Dixon’s line,7 but time would fail her. But these 347,000 usurped the real power and guidance of the state; the executive, legislative, judicial, religious, educational, and social influences of the country were all controlled by the advocates of slavery. She appeared there that evening as she had before said, the representative of a down-trodden and greatly injured race, and when she realized her position, and the inadequacy of her efforts, she felt almost overpowered and overwhelmed, for what tongue could describe the horrors of American slavery? Who could give the faintest idea of what the slave mother suffered? She would not spend a moment of the precious time she had to occupy in endeavouring to prove that slavery was a sin—that would be an insult to their understanding—an insult to their hearts. That God gave the right of liberty, and the right to pursue happiness as they listed, no one before her would question—nor that a right so sacred no one could take from another without infringing the higher law of God; therefore, they believed that every man and woman who dared to take from another a right so sacred, was a usurper of freedom, and should receive the indignation of every honest heart, and that the moral feeling of mankind should be arrayed against the sinner and the sin. Miss Remond then touchingly related the case of Margaret Garner,8 who determined to be free or die in the attempt. She was born a slave, and had suffered in her own person the degradation that a woman could not mention. She got as far as Cincinnati with her children. Cincinnati—the queen of the west—that city excelled by no other except New York. There she stood amidst magnificent temples dedicated to God on either hand, but no sympathy or help was afforded her. The slaveholder found her; as he appeared at the door she snatched up a knife and slew her first-born child, but before the poor frenzied creature could proceed further in her dread object, the hand of the tyrant was on her, when she called to the grandmother of the children to kill the others, as she preferred to return them to the bosom of God rather than they should be taken back to American slavery. Above all sufferers in America, American women who were slaves lived in the most pitiable condition. They could not protect themselves from the licentiousness which met them on every hand—they could not protect their honour from the tyrant. There were slaveholders everywhere in that country. There were no morals

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there; no genuine regard for womanhood or manhood. The slaveholders south of Mason and Dixon’s line were as low in the scale of morals as it was possible to conceive; and Margaret Garner would rather that her children should suffer death than be left in the hands of such beings as she had been describing. The courts decided that Margaret Garner must be returned to slavery under the Fugitive Slave Law—a law which had disgraced America so much, and which could find no parallel in history, ancient or modern. But the counsel of Margaret Garner had told her (the lecturer) that he could have raised 10,000 dollars if he could have rescued her from the hands of the tyrant, but the slaveholder said there was not enough money in Cincinnati to purchase his chattel! She was a thing! (Deep sensation.) Yes, every slave below Mason and Dixon’s line was a thing! “Ah!” continued Miss Remond, in deep and thrilling tones, “what is slavery? who can tell? In the open market place women are exposed for sale—their persons not always covered. Yes, I can tell you English men and women, that women are sold into slavery with cheeks like the lily and the rose, as well as those that might compare with the wing of the raven. They are exposed for sale, and subjected to the most shameful indignities. The more Anglo-Saxon blood that mingles with the blood of the slave, the more gold is poured out when the auctioneer has a woman for sale, because they are sold to be concubines for white Americans. They are not sold for plantation slaves.” Miss Remond then dwelt on the discountenance such a system demanded from Christians, and to which the Christian churches of America were indifferent. She did not say that there were not churches which did not sanction American slavery. It must be understood when she spoke of American churches she included all sections, Episcopalians, Wesleyans, Baptists, &c. She would read to them the law relating to the nominally free coloured population below Mason and Dixon’s line. The statute was then read, which virtually prohibited any discussion on slavery, or it might be construed into an offence, for which the punishment was not less than three years of imprisonment with hard labour, or more than twenty-one years.9 She was there that evening to ask English men and women to send forth their indignant protest against this glaring system. Black men and women were treated worse than criminals for no other reason than because they were black. “Liberty or death” was the motto of the American slave; and there were from 30,000 to 40,000 who had escaped into Canada in spite of the overwhelming obstacles that presented themselves. These men and women had taken their lives in their hand, and by the assistance of the Friend’s underground railroad, they had got safe away. After further allusion to the disgraceful recreancy of the American churches, Miss Remond observed, it was sometimes said, “why don’t the black man take the liberty of which he has been deprived by the cruel despot?” Ah! the spirit of revenge was forming—it was coming upwards in the breast of

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the slave, and she related circumstances which had revealed this to her. There were insurrections taking place constantly on the plantations, and the masters had to go about armed. This spirit of revenge would increase, and unless something occurred to free them from the thraldom, it was impossible to see the end of it. But she believed in the efficacy of preaching. She believed in appealing to that high moral feeling which every man’s heart could appreciate—viz., the idea of love to God and man which was implanted in the heart of every man—for who had not felt these emotions in their breast?—and until that man had got to the utmost depth of moral debasement she believed there was a chance of reaching his conscience. This was the opinion of the American anti-slavery party;10 they had faith in great principles—in the eternal law of right. The Americans believed that if the slaves were educated they would throw off the yoke; therefore slave education was prohibited, and at the north where there were free coloured people they were not allowed to enter on any store or any business beyond the lowest position, and they were excluded from the privilege of learning any mechanical trade. Miss Remond related that lately the Rev. Dr. Taylor had shot one of his wife’s negroes for insubordination,11 and she then recited a piece from Shakespeare, showing the nature of revenge, as displayed by Shylock,12 and asked was it strange that these feelings appeared in the breast of the slave who lived a life without hope; and it had been laid down by all statesmen that such an existence brought despair. There was known no despair like that of the slave. The case of the slave was desperate. Ignorant the oppressor had made him, and had determined to keep him so; therefore if the spirit of revenge did come uppermost she could not censure them for it. If any class of persons in this world had a right to take their freedom by force it was the slaves. Miss Remond further illustrated the debased state of the American Churches by relating how the Rev. Dudley Tyng,13 a man of rare ability and powers, and of pro-slavery views, was dismissed from one of the principal churches of Cincinnati, simply because he opposed the extension of slavery into Kansas, and a minister appointed to succeed him who owned 100 slaves.14 The church lent their names to the disruption of the most sacred ties, and a Baptist Church had lately given out the abominable doctrine that if the master sells the wife of a slave, he would be at liberty to take another wife, and vise versa.15 The noble conduct of England in wiping away slavery from her dominions was then noticed, and Miss Remond warned Englishmen against the insidious attempts made by Americans by sophistry and other means to disarm all opposition from the public opinion of this country. Let them not allow 347,000 despots of America even by the shadow of a shade, to contaminate their minds. Let not English merchants if they sold their goods sell their principles. God forbid that ever an English heart should lend a sincere throb to American despotism in this 19th century!

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(Enthusiastic cheers.) The result of American slavery was this, that the great American republic was destined to be sundered. She thanked God for it. It would be severed, and no power could save it unless a sentiment could be created in the northern mind which would overrule the antagonism of the south. The work would go on. God, love, and truth would prevail. She concluded by saying that in the City of Washington if a slave landed there that night, and could not prove his freedom through a stone wall a number of inches thick, he was cast into prison, and after a certain length of time placed on the auction block and sold to the highest bidder to pay his gaol fees! They were misrepresented by the American press, and that was one reason why they were bound to represent themselves. They shut up every avenue—every means was denied them by which knowledge could be gained—and then they turned round and said “You are an inferior race, and have no rights which a white man is bound to respect.” Admitting they were an inferior race—which she did not—granting all their oppressors said on the matter to be correct—it was still their duty if they laid claims to the name of Christians and the name of humanity to protect them because they were weak. If a mother had a daughter or son who was weaker than his fellows, did she neglect and oppress them on that account, or did she not rather by all the means which God had given her succour and support by increased solicitude and affection such a one? Therefore they were wished that evening to give her race their sympathy, and to express their moral indignation against American despotism. Miss Remond then sat down amidst the most enthusiastic cheering, after speaking an hour and a quarter. Warrington Times (England), 29 January 1859. 1. Sarah Parker Remond (1826–1894) was one of eight children born to Nancy and John Remond of Salem, Massachusetts. Sarah’s father, a native of Curaçao, immigrated to the United States in 1798 and was naturalized in 1811. He became a prosperous hairdresser and merchant-trader. John Remond’s role in Salem’s civic affairs helped win his children the right to be educated in the town’s public schools. Sarah Remond received both public and private instruction, which was enhanced by contact with the New England reformers and antislavery advocates who were entertained in the Remond household. Sarah Remond’s commitment to antislavery reform continued a family tradition. Her father was a lifetime member of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and her older brother was a lecturer for the same organization. Sarah Remond’s commitment to the movement found expression in her active participation in the Salem Anti-Slavery Society, the Essex County Anti-Slavery Society, and the Massachusetts society. Like many black abolitionists, she struggled with northern racial prejudice. She sued the Howard Athenaeum in 1853 when she was forcibly ejected from the theater after being allowed to purchase a ticket. That same year, while accompanying Robert Purvis, Jr., to an exhibition at

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Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, she was asked to leave the hall. In 1856 she was appointed an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society and became one of the first black women to lecture regularly before antislavery audiences. Remond was initially a reluctant speaker, but between 1856 and 1858, she toured throughout New England, New York, and Ohio and emerged as an effective advocate for Garrisonian abolitionist principles. In May 1858, Remond served as a delegate to the National Women’s Rights Convention. Seven months later, she sailed for England, arriving there in January 1859, to begin a proposed yearlong speaking tour of the British Isles. She displayed a “well toned” and “pleasing style,” covered a range of topics, and demonstrated an unerring sensitivity to the political and social concerns of her listeners—particularly women reform activists. While in England, Remond continued her formal education, enrolling in courses at Bedford College for Ladies during 1859 and 1860. She stayed in England throughout the Civil War, spoke out against the Confederacy, and attacked racial prejudice. She was also an active member of the London Emancipation Society (later the London Emancipation Committee) and the Freedmen’s Aid Society. In 1865 Remond published a tract for the London Emancipation Committee entitled The Negroes and Anglo-Africans as Freedmen and Soldiers. She left London in 1866 for Florence, Italy, where she received medical training at Santa Maria Nuova Hospital, became a physician, and married. She died in December 1894 and was buried in Rome. Ruth Bogin, “Sarah Parker Remond: Black Abolitionist from Salem,” EIHC 110:120–50 (April 1971); NAW, 3: 136–37; Dorothy B. Porter, “Sarah Parker Remond, Abolitionist and Physician,” JNH 20:287–93 (July 1935); NASS, 12 November 1853, 21 February 1857 [10:0552]; Lib, 3, 6 June 1853, 19 November 1858, 17 February 1860, 27 December 1861, 12 December 1862, 11 November 1864, 22 December 1865 [11: 0406, 12:0493, 13:1002, 14:0611, 15:0596, 16:0548]; Margaret C. Wright to David Wright, 4 December 1853, Sophia Smith Collection, MNS; DANB, 522–23. 2. Remond refers to the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857). Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, writing for a majority of the justices, held that no black could be a citizen of the United States. He argued that the Constitution presumed that blacks were “so inferior that they had no rights which a white man was bound to respect.” Taney’s decision responded to litigation begun in 1841 by Missouri slave Dred Scott. Scott sued his owner, John F. A. Sanford, for freedom, contending that he was free since a previous master had let him reside in free Illinois and the territory of Minnesota from 1834 to 1838. The Court not only denied Scott’s claim to freedom but rejected Congress’s authority to legislate on the issue of slavery in the territories. Taney declared that slave property was protected by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. This decision overturned both the underlying premise of the Compromise of 1820 and the concept of “popular sovereignty” contained in the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854). Abolitionists and free blacks reacted vigorously against the Dred Scott decision because it limited the authority of a free state to exclude slavery within its borders, it threatened black citizenship in free states, and it allowed for

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the spread of slavery into the territories—thus upsetting the fragile congressional balance between the slave and the free states. Don Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in Law and Politics (New York, N.Y., 1978). 3. Remond refers to the five justices of the Supreme Court who were from the slaveholding states. They were Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Maryland and Justices James M. Wayne of Georgia, John Catron of Tennessee, Peter V. Daniel of Virginia, and John A. Campbell of Alabama. All of these men owned slaves, but two, Taney and Campbell, had manumitted their slaves before serving as members of the Court. These five justices were joined by Justice Samuel Nelson of New York and Justice Robert C. Grier of Pennsylvania to provide the majority opinion in the Dred Scott case. Justice Benjamin R. Curtis of Massachusetts and Justice John McLean of Ohio dissented. Fehrenbacher, Dred Scott Case, 324–27; Lewis Walker, Without Fear or Favor (Boston, Mass., 1965), 44; Henry G. Connor, John Archibald Campbell (Boston, Mass., 1920), 71. 4. Several American filibustering expeditions, generally sponsored by proslavery expansionists, attempted Latin American incursions during the 1850s. In 1849 General Narciso López planned to invade Cuba and arouse a revolution against Spain, but he failed when federal authorities broke up his expedition before it sailed. López’s expeditions reached Cuba in 1850 and 1851 but were easily defeated, and he was executed by Spanish authorities. Mississippi politician John A. Quitman organized a fourth Cuban expedition in 1853, with grandiose plans of forming a southern slave empire in the Caribbean, but abandoned the scheme when President Franklin Pierce withdrew approval. The most successful filibusterer was Tennessee adventurer William Walker, who, after an unsuccessful foray into Lower California, led three expeditions into Central America. He established himself as dictator of Nicaragua from 1855 to 1857 and attempted to form a Central American federation but was executed before a Honduran firing squad in 1860. Eccentric Virginia physician George Bickley organized the paramilitary Knights of the Golden Circle during 1859–60 to annex Mexico to the United States. The Knights disbanded before they reached Mexico. Alexander DeConde, A History of American Foreign Policy, 2d ed. (New York, N.Y., 1971), 210–11, 220–24; Ollinger Crenshaw, “The Knights of the Golden Circle: The Career of George Bickley,” AHR 47:23–50 (October 1941). 5. Prior to the mid-1840s, blacks were regularly discriminated against on common carriers in Massachusetts. They were seated in separate “Jim Crow” cars on railroads and in separate sections on omnibuses. Public stages either refused to admit blacks or forced them to ride outside. A concerted abolitionist campaign integrated Massachusetts railroads by 1843. But omnibuses and public stages changed their policies more gradually. Certainly by the late 1850s, blacks and whites enjoyed “the privilege of being squeezed up” together in Massachusetts omnibuses. Louis Ruchames, “Jim Crow Railroads in Massachusetts,” AQ 8:61–75 (Spring 1956); Horton and Horton, Black Bostonians, 68; Lib, 16 March 1860. 6. Although her figures are incorrect, Remond alludes to the abolitionist charge that southern slaveholders wielded greater influence in Kansas territory than did the antislavery settlers who lived there. Between 1854 and 1858, Kansas territory was in political warfare. By means of electoral fraud, proslavery settlers and Missourians elected a territorial legislature in 1855, which created a government that vigorously supported slavery. In response, free-state settlers created their own ter-

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ritorial government and submitted an antislavery constitution to the voters; it was approved 1,731 to 46. In May 1856, proslavery forces sacked Lawrence, Kansas, and destroyed the free-state government. The following year, the proslavery Lecompton constitution was written and approved in a fraudulent referendum. The voters overwhelmingly rejected it in January 1858, but President James Buchanan submitted it to Congress. The House of Representatives rejected the constitution and called for a third referendum; it was soundly defeated. Kansas was not admitted as a free state until 1861. 7. The Mason and Dixon Line, the symbolic border between the North and South, originated as a line surveyed in 1763 and 1767 by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon to settle boundary differences between Pennsylvania and Maryland. In the antebellum period, it was understood to be the dividing line between Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. CWD, 516. 8. Margaret Garner was a slave who killed her three-year-old daughter to prevent her from being returned to slavery. On 27 January 1856, Margaret, her husband Simon Garner, Jr., Simon’s parents, and the four Garner children fled Kentucky with nine other slaves for Cincinnati. When the Garner family was discovered at the home of a relative, Margaret killed her daughter. A month-long series of complicated judicial proceedings followed. The Garners’ extradition hearing certified their slave status and ordered them sent back to Kentucky. But abolitionists hoped to use the coroner’s ruling that Margaret had killed her child and that other family members were accessories to prevent the Garners’ extradition. Even though Ohio state officials sought to try Garner on the charges, the Cincinnati sheriff refused to release the Garners to state authorities and allowed the slaves to be returned to Kentucky. Julius Yanuck, “The Garner Fugitive Slave Case,” MVHR 40:47–66 (June 1953); Campbell, Slave Catchers, 144–47. 9. Many southern states enacted legislation that prohibited inflammatory antislavery language by both whites and free blacks. Discussion of slavery by southern free blacks, however, was more effectively prohibited by a matrix of other restrictive legislation against their caste. By 1835 most southern states had outlawed the right of assembly and organization by free blacks, prohibited them from holding church services without a white clergyman present, required their adherence to slave curfews, and minimized their contact with slaves. Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, 168; Berlin, Slaves without Masters, 317–18. 10. Remond refers to the American Anti-Slavery Society. 11. The Liberator of 17 September 1858 contains a notice that a Dr. Taylor, a clergyman apparently residing in Ouachita Parish, Louisiana, had attempted to correct an insubordinate slave, and when the bondsman attacked him with a knife, Taylor shot the slave. Lib, 17 September 1858. 12. Shylock is one of the chief characters in William Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice. 13. Dudley Atkins Tyng (1825–1858) was born in Maryland, the son of noted Episcopal clergyman Stephen Higginson Tyng. Educated at the University of Pennsylvania and at Alexandria Seminary, Dudley Tyng was ordained in 1846 and functioned as assistant minister at his father’s church (St. George’s in New York City) for two years before serving parishes in Columbus, Charleston (Virginia), and Cincinnati. In 1854 he became pastor of the Church of the Epiphany in Philadelphia. On 29 June 1856, Tyng preached an antislavery sermon, “Na-

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tional Sins and National Duties,” before his congregation. He was immediately censured by the vestry for his “political” views and resigned. ACAB, 6:203; J. R. Balme, American States, Churches, and Slavery (Edinburgh, 1862; reprint, New York, N.Y., 1969), 398–407. 14. Remond refers to William Otis Prentiss, a slaveholding South Carolina Episcopal clergyman, who replaced Dudley Tyng as rector of the Church of the Epiphany in Philadelphia in 1857. One year later, personal matters drew him back to South Carolina, where he continued to serve congregations for several decades. Kenneth Walter Cameron, ed., American Episcopal Clergy (Hartford, Conn., 1970), 33; S. F. Hotchkin, Early Clergy of Pennsylvania and Delaware (Philadelphia, Pa., 1890), 217– 18. 15. Slave marriages were neither socially nor legally recognized in the South, and southern Baptists generally ignored the problem altogether. The issue troubled only those churches whose slave members wished to remarry after forced separation from their spouses. Lacking guidance from higher church authorities, local congregations made their own rulings when necessary, usually allowing slave members to remarry without the stigma of bigamy or adultery. Albert Raboteau, Slave Religion (New York, N.Y., 1978), 125, 183–86, 228.

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74. Speech by Sarah P. Remond Delivered at the Red Lion Hotel, Warrington, England 2 February 1859 The success of Sarah Remond’s first Warrington lecture occasioned a second on Monday evening, 31 January 1859, at the Music Hall. A small admission charge prevented the overcrowding of the first meeting. Before leaving Warrington, Remond gave a third lecture on 2 February, at a noon meeting of women in the assembly room of the Red Lion Hotel. Robert Gaskell introduced Remond by reading her 31 January lecture and asking those in attendance to sign it. Fatigued and slightly ill, Remond spoke only briefly. She was followed by Emily Gaskell, who encouraged local support for the Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar, gave examples of northern racial prejudice, and solicited contributions for Remond. Remond’s efforts in Warrington encouraged 3,525 local residents to sign an address condemning American slavery and to donate $100 to the American Anti-Slavery Society. WT, 29 January, 5 February 1859; Lib, 11 March 1859; WS, 5 February 1859. MISS REMOND then spoke, and her remarks chiefly bore on the sufferings and indignities which were perpetrated on her sisters in America, and the fearful amount of licentiousness which everywhere pervaded the Southern States. This fact would be best realized when she stated that there were 800,000 mulattoes in the Southern States of America—the fruits of licentiousness—bringing nothing but desolation in the hearts of the mother who bore them, and it ought to have brought shame to the fathers; but there was no respect for morality while the ministers of the gospel and statesmen of the south did not set an example which even their slaves could follow. She preferred, however, giving them unquestionable facts instead of personal statements which she might offer, and to this end read several extracts from books, all proving that the system of slavery and the immorality it engenders is eating out the vitals of the country, and destroying domestic happiness, not only amongst the subject race, but amongst the families of slaveholders. She then read a graphic description of a young and beautiful girl at a slave sale. The auctioneer was offered 1,000 dollars for her at first. He then expatiated on the superior education she possessed, and 600 dollars more were offered, and lastly he commented on the religious and moral principles she held, when she rose to 2,000 dollars, at which she was knocked down. Thus 1,000 dollars were paid for her blood, bone, and sinew, 600 for her improved intellect, and 400 more for the profession of the reli-

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gion of God! Miss Remond further treated her subject, and in concluding said she intended to have said more, but her strength failed her. At the conclusion, Mrs. ASHTON1 advanced towards Miss Remond, and after addressing her in a few most affectionate sentiments, said she felt proud to acknowledge her as a sister, and she, in common with her sex present, entertained the most heartfelt sympathy with her in the object she proposed to herself to endeavour to carry out. As a slight expression of their sympathy and esteem, she begged, on the part of the ladies of Warrington, to present her with a watch, on which was inscribed, “Presented to S. P. Remond by Englishwomen, her sisters, in Warrington. February 2nd, 1850.” MISS REMOND was so taken by surprise at this manifestation of feeling towards her that her utterance was for some moments prevented by her emotions. At length she said, I do not need this testimonial. I have been received here as a sister by white women for the first time in my life. I have been removed from the degradation which overhangs all persons of my complexion; and I have felt most deeply that since I have been in Warrington and in England that I have received a sympathy I never was offered before. I had therefore no need of this testimonial of sympathy, but I receive it as the representative of my race with pleasure. In this spirit I accept it, and I believe I shall be faithful to that race now and for ever. Warrington Times (England), 5 February 1859. 1. Mrs. Walter Ashton of Warrington. WS, 5 February 1859.

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75. Circular by Robert Campbell 13 May 1859 Black abolitionist-emigrationist Robert Campbell arrived in Britain during the spring of 1859 seeking funds to finance an African expedition. Campbell had joined Martin R. Delany, the leading American emigrationist, as a member of the Niger Valley Exploring Party—an agency founded to coordinate the establishment of an “industrial settlement” in Yoruba, West Africa. On 13 May 1859, Campbell issued a circular advertising his desire for support and describing the settlement’s potential as a source of free labor cotton. The proposal appealed to the Manchester cotton merchant Thomas Clegg, who gave Campbell a letter of introduction; Clegg recommended the project as “the most feasible plan of helping on my scheme of superseding Slavery, by letting the African grow in his own country what every one wants him to grow elsewhere.” Campbell eventually raised $500 and, on 24 June, sailed for Africa to meet Delany. Campbell’s successful fundraising foray was the beginning of an effective effort by a handful of black abolitionist-emigrationists to generate British commercial backing for their plans by linking those plans with the African goals of British cotton interests. Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 179–82, 198, 206–7. EXPEDITION TO AFRICA, TO PROMOTE THE CULTIVATION OF COTTON AND OTHER PRODUCTS OF SLAVE-LABOUR , BY EMIGRANTS FROM AMERICA.

A party, consisting of Martin R. Delany, M.D.,1 Robert Campbell,2 J. W. Purnell,3 Robert Douglass,4 and Amos Aray, M.D.5 (the last two subsequently omitted), has been commissioned by a Convention of Coloured Persons,6 held at Chatham, C. W., to proceed to Africa, and select a location for the establishment of an Industrial Colony.7 While such an enterprise is of importance in the Evangelization and Civilization of Africa, and in affording an asylum in which the oppressed descendants of that country may find the means of developing their mental and moral faculties unimpeded by unjust restrictions, it is regarded as of still greater importance in facilitating the production of those staples, particularly Cotton, which now are supplied to the world chiefly by Slave Labour. The effect of this would be to lessen the profits of Slavery, to render in time the slave a burden to his owner, and thus furnish an irresistible motive to Emancipation. Africa possesses resources which, properly developed, must doubtless render her eventually a great, if not the greatest, producer of all the products of Slave Labour.

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And how would all good men rejoice to see the blow which shall effectually prostrate the giant Slavery, struck by the Black Man’s arm! It is necessary, however, that civilized influences be diffused in her midst, or, at least, that facilities for rendering available her products, be supplied equal to the demand for them. It is the purpose of the party to proceed to Lagos, thence through Abeokuta to Rabba, on the Niger, about 350 miles from the coast;8 to study the Agricultural and Commercial facilities of the country, and the disposition of the Natives towards strangers as settlers: also to negotiate for the grant or purchase of land, and to ascertain the conditions on which we might be protected in the usages of civilized life. These objects being accomplished, the party will return and report the result of their labours, when a considerable number of intelligent and enterprising persons from the United States and Canada, many of them intimately acquainted with the production of Cotton, and its preparation for market, will be prepared to emigrate. Towards defraying the expenses of this undertaking, £500 has been subscribed in America. This amount has been expended in providing for the families of two of the party in their absence; in paying the passage of Martin R. Delany and J. W. Purnell to Africa, direct from America, and providing them a few articles of outfit; in defraying the current expenses of the party since the 1st December ult., while engaged in soliciting Subscriptions, and otherwise forwarding the objects of the Expedition; and in providing the Subscriber with the means of coming hither. It is desired to raise in this country, in time to enable the Subscriber to depart for Africa in June by the steamer from Liverpool, an additional sum of £250, with which to provide other articles of outfit, and goods for trading with the natives for the means of subsistence, as well as to provide for other necessary and contingent expenses. The Subscriber will take the liberty of calling upon you personally, at an early day, to solicit your aid in this enterprise. ROBERT CAMPBELL Manchester May 13th, 1859 Martin R. Delany, Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party (Leeds, England, 1861), 14–15. 1. Martin R. Delany (1812–1885) was born free in Charlestown, Virginia, the second son of a free seamstress named Pati and a plantation slave named Samuel. Delany’s mother was caught teaching her five children to read and write and was forced to resettle the family in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. In 1823 she helped purchase her husband’s freedom. At age nineteen, Martin Delany moved to Pittsburgh, enrolled in Lewis Woodson’s African Educational Society School (1832), and, a year later, began a three-year apprenticeship with a local doctor. He estab-

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lished himself as a significant figure within the Pittsburgh black community. He belonged to a number of black self-help organizations, was a member of the Philanthropic Society (a group formed to protect fugitive slaves), and led attempts to recover black suffrage in Pennsylvania. He also worked for the Liberty party. In 1843 Delany founded and edited the Mystery—a respected, weekly abolitionist newspaper that addressed social, economic, and political issues affecting black Americans. Delany discontinued the paper early in 1847 and, in December, joined Frederick Douglass as coeditor of The North Star, a position he held until 1849 when he resigned and returned to his Pittsburgh medical practice. After being rejected by a number of medical schools, Delany was accepted at Harvard in 1850, but student protests brought his dismissal from the program after a single term. Within a year, he had written The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States Politically Considered—a brief for emigration and black nationalism. In August 1854, Delany met with 106 delegates in Cleveland, Ohio, to consider immigration to Central America, South America, or the West Indies. Delany moved to Canada West early in 1856 and planned for a second convention, which met in Cleveland that August and marked a new direction in emigration thinking. From 1856 to 1858, Delany focused on Africa and made plans to launch the Niger Valley Exploring Party, an executive agency for establishing a free labor settlement in Africa. Delany and Philadelphia schoolteacher Robert Campbell sought the necessary funds. The American Colonization Society sponsored Delany’s passage to Liberia in the late spring of 1859. In December 1859, the two men acquired land for a settlement through a treaty with the Alake (king) of Abeokuta. They journeyed in May 1860 to England, where Delany conducted a successful seven-month speaking tour, describing his African plans and experiences. When he returned to the United States, he became increasingly involved in the Union war effort as a recruiting agent for black soldiers and, in 1865, was the first black officer commissioned to serve with a black regiment. Delany remained in the military for three-and-a-half years, working with the Freedmen’s Bureau. In 1870 Delany briefly joined the staff of the New National Era, a Washington, D.C., newspaper, before resettling in Charleston, South Carolina. From 1870 to 1875, Delany was active in Republican party politics, tried to develop a homestead plan for freedmen (1872), and briefly edited the Charleston Independent (1875) before serving a three-year term as a minor court official during the tenure of Democratic Governor Wade Hampton. In 1878–79 Delany supported a short-lived emigration effort known as the Liberian Exodus Joint Stock Steamship Company. Delany wrote the novel Blake; or The Huts of America, which was serialized in the Weekly Anglo-African beginning in 1859. Ullman, Martin R. Delany, 1–507; Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 116–225, 265–67; Frank A. Rollin, Life and Public Services of Martin R. Delany (Boston, Mass., 1868; reprint, New York, N.Y., 1969), 306; Dorothy Sterling, The Making of An Afro-American: Martin Robison Delany, 1812– 1885 (Garden City, N.Y., 1971), 48–55. 2. Robert Campbell (?–1884) was born in Kingston, Jamaica, the son of an African-English mother and Scottish father. As a young man, Campbell was apprenticed to a printer and attended a teacher-training college before becoming a parish schoolmaster in Kingston. Campbell resettled his family in Central Amer-

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ica, but by the early 1850s, he was living in New York City. In 1855 he accepted an appointment as an instructor in chemistry, mathematics, and Latin at the Institute for Colored Youth, a Quaker-sponsored school for black children in Philadelphia. Campbell’s encounters with American racial prejudice and his friendship with leading Philadelphia black abolitionists Sarah M. Douglass and Robert Douglass, Jr., moved him toward antislavery activism. In 1857 he participated in a fugitive slave rescue effort. He also defended political action as a valid antislavery tactic, regarded the U.S. Constitution as an antislavery document, and criticized the leaders of the American Anti-Slavery Society for being “unfaithful to their pledge to labour for the free people of colour.” In 1858 Campbell responded to Martin R. Delany’s call for African immigration by joining Delany’s proposed Niger Valley Exploring Party. Campbell returned to New York City and sought funds to support Delany’s project. He also wrote an article for the Anglo-African Magazine (March 1859), in which he suggested that black political equality and personal distinction could only be achieved in a black republic. Unable to secure financing in New York, Campbell journeyed to England. There he received government and private support (especially from the Manchester Cotton Supply Association, a group interested in fostering the development of alternative, free labor cotton sources) and, in late June, sailed for Africa. Campbell and Delany negotiated a land treaty with the Alake (king) of Abeokuta in late December. Both Delany and Campbell traveled to England in May 1860, hoping to secure funds and recruits for their proposed free labor settlement, an effort that Campbell continued in the United States. During this time, Campbell published two works describing Africa—A Few Facts Relating to Lagos, Abbeokuta and Other Sections of Central Africa and A Pilgrimage to My Motherland and an Account of a Journey among the Egbos and Yorubas of Central Africa. By early 1862, Campbell was settled with his family in Lagos. In early June 1863, he published the first edition of the Lagos Anglo-African, a weekly newspaper that lasted until December 1865. During the remaining years of his life, Campbell undertook a series of commercial ventures, served in a number of minor political posts, and studied the cultural and religious life of the country. Campbell is the only emigration advocate from the late 1850s who is known to have remained in Africa. Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 193, 216, 254–56; Ninth Annual Report of the American Baptist Missionary Convention (Philadelphia, Pa., 1849), 8; Robert Campbell to [Board of] Man[agers] of the Franklin Institute, 12 November 1856, Robert Campbell to Alfred Cope, 17 November 1856, Miscellaneous MSS Collections, PSC [10:0354, 0379]; NASS, 14 February, 26 December 1857; AAM, March 1859 [11:0619]; Circular, 13 May 1859, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; ASRL, 1 June, 1 July 1859, 1 November 1860, 1 January 1862, 1 August 1863 [11:0835]; Martin R. Delany and Robert Campbell, Draft of Geographical Observations on Western Africa, 11 June 1860, UkLRgeo [12:0778]; WAA, 19, 26 January, 2 February 1861 [13:0206, 0226, 0353]; Fred I. A. Omu, “The Anglo-African, 1863–65,” NM 90:206–12 (September 1966); R. J. M. Blackett, “Return to the Motherland: Robert Campbell, a Jamaican in Early Colonial Lagos,” Phy 40:375–86 (December 1979). 3. James Whipper Purnell (1833–1880), a nephew of Pennsylvania black abolitionist and moral reformer William Whipper, was born in Pennsylvania. He later

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moved to Chatham, Canada West, where he worked as a store clerk and participated in the 1858 Chatham Convention—a secret constitutional convention called by John Brown to organize a revolutionary government for the black state he intended to establish in the southern Appalachians. By 1858 Purnell was attracted to black emigrationist activities and was named secretary and commercial reporter for Martin R. Delany’s Niger Valley Exploring Party. In early 1859, he accompanied Delany and Robert Campbell on trips to Boston and Washington to secure financial support for the venture, but for unknown reasons, he failed to accompany Delany to West Africa in May. He remained in Chatham for several years. Purnell returned to Philadelphia by the end of the Civil War. There he became a leader in the black civil rights movement, particularly through the Pennsylvania State Equal Rights League and, later, as one of the black delegates who personally urged President Ulysses S. Grant to support the pending 1872 Supplementary Civil Rights Bill. During the early 1870s, he was a bookkeeper for the Philadelphia branch of the Freedmen’s Savings Bank. He died in Camden, New Jersey, where he had extensive real estate holdings. Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 182, 196– 98; WAA, 12 November 1859; J[acob] C. White, Jr., to Jos[eph] C. Bustill, 19 July 1865, in JNH 11:87 (January 1926); ESF, 16 February 1866; PA, 27 January 1872; Richard P. McCormick, “William Whipper: Moral Reformer,” PH 43:44 (January 1976). 4. Robert Douglass, Jr. 5. Amos Aray (1831–?) was the son of black farmers James and Ann Aray (also spelled Array) of Pittsfield, Michigan. Details of his early life remain sketchy prior to early 1856, when he settled in Chatham, Canada West, and opened a general medical practice. William Wells Brown described Aray as “a reformer in medical practice, being an allopathist, hydropathist, homeopathist, and an eclectic.” Aray, an eloquent speaker, frequently delivered local lectures on various nineteenthcentury medical panaceas and gained prominence in the Chatham black community. An emigrationist, he was selected in 1858 to be the surgeon for Martin R. Delany’s Niger Valley Exploring Party but failed to accompany the 1859 expedition to Yoruba. His interest in immigration to West Africa continued, and in 1861 he planned to settle in Yoruba with a group of Chatham blacks sponsored by the African Aid Society; once again, he remained instead in Chatham. By the early 1870s, Aray resettled in Nashville, Tennessee, where he served as a subscription agent for Frederick Douglass’s New National Era. United States Census, 1850; PFW, 8, 29 March 1856; PP, 28 September 1861; Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 182, 252; NNE, 2 March 1871. 6. The National Emigration Convention met in Chatham, Canada West, during 4–7 August 1858. It appears that the meeting was more sparsely attended than the two previous emigration conventions (held in Cleveland in 1854 and 1856). William H. Day was elected president of the National Board of Commissioners, the convention’s administrative arm. Both Martin R. Delany and James Theod ore Holly hoped to use the board to endorse their respective plans for emigration. Delany, who served as the board’s foreign secretary, sought support for his proposed Niger Valley Exploring Party and its African objectives. Holly, who had previously been appointed the board’s Haitian commissioner, sought aid for a Haitian settlement. But the board followed Day’s lead and backed away from

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black emigration. The board changed its name to the Association for the Promotion of Interest of the Colored People of Canada and the United States (later the General Board of Commissioners). It endorsed only the acquisition of information for individual blacks who wished to relocate, and it supported Day’s contention that the board was “equally bound to unite the coloured people’s interest to that of our British brothers here.” Three weeks after the convention adjourned on 30 August, the board’s executive council appointed Delany as its African commissioner but reiterated previous opposition to general emigration and disavowed any “pecuniary responsibility” for Delany’s Niger Valley Exploring Party. Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 179–81, 183, 232; CWP, 26 August 1858; Ullman, Martin R. Delany, 215–18. 7. Early in 1858, after selecting the Niger Valley region of West Africa as the site for a settlement of North American black emigrants, Martin R. Delany established the Niger Valley Exploring Party. Delany attempted to staff the NVEP with black scientists, doctors, businessmen, and technicians who would conduct the necessary exploration and treaty making. By the fall of 1858, the NVEP was composed of five members: Delany, Philadelphians Robert Campbell and Robert Douglass, Jr., and Chatham, Canada West, residents Amos Aray and James W. Purnell. But a poor financial response to Delany’s emigration ideas all but destroyed the NVEP within six months. Only Delany and Campbell eventually went to Yoruba in late 1859 and negotiated a land treaty with local Egba chiefs. Upon reaching Britain, they issued the Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party (Leeds, England, 1861), which summarized their findings as NVEP representatives. By May 1860, the agency existed in name only. Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 171, 173–83, 195, 218, 225, 252. 8. The route described would have taken Martin R. Delany and Robert Campbell fifty miles inland from the port of Lagos to the Egba capital of Abeokuta, then approximately 225 miles northeast through the tropical rain forest and woodland savannah of Yoruba (modern Nigeria) to Rabba, a city on the Niger River. This was the major trade route of the old Oyo Empire. The actual exploring party only ventured inland as far as Ilorin, stopping nearly seventy-five miles from Rabba. T. A. Osae, S. N. Nwabara, and A. T. O. Odunsi, A Short History of West Africa (New York, N.Y., 1968), 91–101, 255–66; Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 116.

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76. William G. Allen to Gerrit Smith 14 May 1859 A few black abolitionists, most notably William P. Powell, William and Ellen Craft, Sarah P. Remond, and William G. Allen, settled in Britain as expatriates. Powell, Remond, and the Crafts prospered in their new surroundings. Allen did not. After initial success in Ireland, Allen found that lecturing was not a “lucrative profession” there. Unlike the others, Allen never found a primary source of income outside the antislavery circuit; tutoring proved inadequate to meet his growing family’s expenses and his wife’s continuing illness. By 1859 Allen described his financial circumstances as a “desperate struggle with the wolves, who are trying to break in the door.” On 14 May he wrote a letter to Gerrit Smith, which discussed his economic situation and commented on the subtle nature of British racism. Allen wanted funds to purchase a house in Dublin, but apparently nothing ever came of his request. Faced with mounting debts, the Allens soon moved to London, where they remained dependent upon friends. Blackett, “William G. Allen,” 50–52; ASRL, 1 July 1863. Leamington, Eng[land] May 14, [18]59 Hon. Gerrit Smith My Dear Mr. Smith In the midst of a desperate struggle with the wolves, who are trying to break in at the door, I steal a few moments to write you these lines, in acknowledgement of your kind note, received a little more than a year ago. Grateful it is to us to know that our kind friends have not forgotten us, & sincerely do we cherish the hope that ere long we may see them all again. We are also greatly obliged by the “Address” which you so kindly sent us. It is a noble document—full of great truths, & setting forth the subject of religion in the clearest and steadiest light in which we have ever seen it.1 Would that all men would read it, & let its truths sink deep into their hearts, & carry them out in their lives. Then should we have a happier world. There would be no more war nor slavery then—no more caste nor pride. Such a document was well calculated to excite discussion, for men have not been accustomed to look at the subject which most concerns them in such an original and sensible manner. But you know whence is your reward & care for none of these things. We have now three children, the last a sweet little girl, named Harriet Aurilla, for my wife’s deceased mother and sister. Ere long we shall have

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four children.2 Dearly we love them & welcome them all, nevertheless such a rapid multiplication of our family under our present circumstances, naturally occasions us considerable anxiety. We would like it if our future were more satisfactorily defined. However we are in good spirits. Faith, Hope and Energy have wondrous power to bear those who trust in them to a successful and happy issue. Wife and children are in good health, and, at present, are trying what virtue there is in a change of air, in a little country town, a few miles from Dublin. And now, My Dear Mr. Smith, I am about to ask a favor. First of all, let me say that I fully believe in the doctrine that every man should be the architect of his own fortune; & the enclosed little note from Richard D. Webb Esq. shows that, since I have been in this country, I have not only believed in, but practiced the doctrine. But I also believe in another doctrine, & I know that you do the same, for your whole life has been a continued illustration of it, viz. that the strong should help the weak, the mighty the feeble. You are my friend, my best friend, my confidential friend; & I feel that I ought to tell you frankly that we need your helping hand. My income has not kept pace with my expenses though I have labored hard, & we have lived carefully & economically; & I have been, for the past year and a half, making every exertion to place myself in a position to achieve a better success. We need a home,—thus far we have lived in, what in this country are called lodgings, a sort of half and half house keeping; & it is almost entirely owing to this fact that I have not been in a position to command that success in teaching that I otherwise could have done. We need therefore not only a “home,” but a place in which I can conduct my classes &c: more suited to the manner of such things in this country. Our children too are growing, & our responsibilities increasing, & I feel that I must summon all the aid I can to enable me to accomplish my purpose. Assist me, My Dear Friend, & I need not, I am sure tell you how truly your aid will be appreciated by one who already holds in grateful remembrance your former kindness & friendship. It has been with great reluctance that I have brought my mind to write you in this way, not that I doubted your friendship, not that I did not believe that you would [illegible strike out] even be pleased with this confidential manner of coming to you, but because my feelings revolt from placing myself & family in a dependant position even toward my dearest & best of friends. But there is a false pride as well as a just one; [illegible marginal insert] & upon reflection, I come to the conclusion that I should be obeying the dictates of the false pride & not the just one, if I were to withhold writing to you longer. If you reply to this at once direct to Mrs. Mary E. Allen At Mrs. Herons Saul Street

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Downpatrick Ireland In about four weeks time I shall return to Ireland, & then take my family back to Dublin. If you do not reply at once, then you will kindly direct care of Richard D. Webb Esq. 76 Great Brunswick St. Dublin Ireland I have said that ere long we hoped to see all our friends again. So we do. But we feel that it is nevertheless our duty while here to place ourselves on as good a footing as possible. A word or two as to colored men in this country. Believe me, My Dear Mr. Smith, [when] I will tell you there is great need of colored men of the right sort in this country. There is none of the American prejudice against color here, but there is a far lower appreciation of the negro & colored races as such. The people of this country have never been accustomed to contemplate the African race in any other light than that of slavery, & consequently they never associate with the race the ideas of intellectual capacity, education & refinement. There’s no wonder of course in all this, but it is certainly true that the people need to be educated up to a “higher level” with regard to the African race. I have perhaps been in a better position than any other colored man that has ever been in this country to judge rightly of the people; & you may take it as my deliberate conviction that half a dozen colored men of the right stamp [in this] country would be a powerful Anti Slavery instrumentality. It becomes me not to speak of myself, but I certainly do not think that I convict myself of vanity when I say that I feel satisfied that I have been enabled to some good in this country for my race, by reason of the personal character I have been able to bear; & such education as I have received. This is a great consolation to me under the circumstances. But I am pressed for time just now, & am not able to make my letter as interesting as I should wish. But I will write you soon again, for I have a full Diary, & would like the pleasure of letting my friends know how the world moves over this way. I wrote to my wife, informing her that I intended to despatch this letter to you, and she replied, “by all means ‘Do’; for I know Mr. Smith is our true friend & will help us a little on our way. Give to him & Mrs. Smith on my behalf, my warmest regard & love,” in all of which I heartily join. Dublin is still our home. We like it very much. We like the Irish also very, very much, especially those in the South; they are so warm-hearted, so hospitable—so kind. During the three months I was in the City of Cork, I was the guest of the Mayor of the City3 who would hardly permit me to leave. They (his family) became greatly attached to me, & really shed tears on my leaving.

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But I must close to get this in time for the mail. With friendly remembrances to any who may still now and then ask about us, & with renewed assurances of regard & love, I am, my Dear Mr. Smith Ever Faithfully yours, Wm. G. Allen P.S. Since writing this letter, I have heard of the death of our esteemed and beloved friend Joseph Sturge Esq. of Birmingham. I saw him a few days ago; he then seemed in tolerable health. But truly “in the midst of life we are in death.” He was a noble man, unusually loving in disposition, as simple as a child, as gentle as a woman, & yet so firm, strong & undaunted. He arose on Saturday morning last apparently in better health than usual, called his children for a ride, was suddenly seized with a pain in the region of the heart & in twenty minutes was dead. All England mourn[s] his loss. Truly he was a good man. The weak, the afflicted, the outcast, the prisoner, the oppressed, have lost a true friend. When I saw him a few days ago, it was the second time or there abouts I have seen him since I have been in the country. I was never in Birmingham but once before. M.N. He then inquired particularly after you. Gerrit Smith Collection, The George Arents Research Library, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y. Published by permission. 1. Allen probably refers to one of two sermons that Smith delivered and published in late 1858 and early 1859. The first was entitled “Discourse on Creeds” and the second was named “The Religion of Reason.” They, combined with a third sermon, “What Is the True Religion?” (delivered in June 1859), were published as Three Discourses on the Religion of Reason (New York, N.Y., 1859). Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 339–43. 2. The Allens’ first three children were Patrick Loguen (b. 1855), Julia Maria (b. 1857), and Harriet Aurilla (b. 1858). The Allens eventually had seven children, all born prior to 1869. It is probable that another child was born before 1869, but it did not live past infancy. George W. Forbes, “Professor William G. Allen: The Real Julius Melbourne,” Antislavery Collection, MB; William G. Allen to [Algernon Peckover?], 21 April 1869, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; William G. Allen to Gerrit Smith, 23 February 1858, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. 3. John Francis Maguire (1815–1872), a popular Irish historian, novelist, lawyer, and the founder of the Cork Examiner, served as a member of Parliament for Waterford and Cork and lord mayor of Cork during the 1850s and 1860s. An eloquent supporter of Daniel O’Connell and Irish reform, Maguire used his newspaper to promote temperance, national education, women’s rights, and the local shipping industry. D. J. Hickey and J. E. Doherty, A Dictionary of Irish History since 1800 (Totowa, N.J., 1981), 348–49.

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77. Speech by Sarah P. Remond Delivered at the Athenaeum, Manchester, England 14 September 1859 Because they sidestepped partisan disputes, black abolitionists enhanced their access to divergent British antislavery factions. Sarah P. Remond’s 1859 British lecture tour is a case in point. During mid-1859, Remond traveled to London, where she addressed several meetings sponsored by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. By early September, she was in Manchester where with her American friend and colleague Samuel J. May, she participated in a well-attended meeting of local Garrisonians at the Athenaeum on Wednesday evening, 14 September. The meeting was addressed by several reform notables, including Rev. Francis Bishop of Chesterfield, Rev. S. A. Steinthal of Liverpool, and peace advocate Henry Vincent. Ivie Mackie, mayor of Manchester, presided and introduced Remond, who spoke about the link between slavery and northern racial prejudice. At the conclusion of the meeting, a collection was made at the door for the American AntiSlavery Society. ASA, August, October 1859; NASS, 9 July, 24 September 1859; WS, 5 February 1859. Miss REMOND , having stated the subject of her lecture, remarked that she appeared as the agent of no society—speaking simply on her own responsibility, of her own knowledge and experience; but that in feeling and in principle she was identified with the Ultra-abolitionists of America. She continued: Although the anti-slavery enterprise was begun some thirty years ago, the evil is still rampant in the land. As there are some young people present—and I am glad to see them here, for it is important that they should understand this subject—I shall briefly explain that there are thirty-two states, sixteen of which are free and sixteen slave states. The free states are in the north. The political feelings in the north and south are essentially different, so is the social life. In the north, democracy, not what the Americans call democracy, but the true principle of equal rights, prevails—I speak of the white population, mind—wealth is abundant; the country, in every material sense, flourishes. In the south, aristocratic feelings prevail, labour is dishonourable, and five millions of poor whites live in the most degrading ignorance and destitution. I might dwell long on the miserable condition of these poor whites, the indirect victims of slavery; but I must go on to speak of the four millions of slaves. The slaves are essentially things, with no rights, political, social, domestic, or religious: the absolute victims of all but

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irresponsible power. For the slave there is no home, no love, no hope, no help; and what is life without hope? No writer can describe the slave’s life; it cannot be told; the fullest description ever given to the world does but skim over the surface of this subject. You may infer something of the state of society in the southern states, when I tell you there are eight hundred thousand mulattoes, nine-tenths of whom are the children of white fathers, and these are constantly sold by their parents, for the slave follows the condition of the mother. Hence we see every shade of complexion of women and men in whose cheeks the lily and the rose vie for predominance. To describe to you the miserable poor whites of the south, I need only quote the words of Mr. Helper,1 a southerner, in his important work on slavery, and the testimony also of a Virginian gentleman of my acquaintance. The five millions poor whites are most of them in as gross a state of ignorance as Mrs. Stowe’s “Topsey,” in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The free coloured people of the northern states are, for no crime but merely the fact of complexion, deprived of all political and social rights. Whatever wealth or eminence in intellect and refinement they may attain to, they are treated as outcasts; and white men and women who identify themselves with them are sure to be insulted in the grossest manner. I do not ask your political interference in any way. This is a moral question. Even in America the Abolitionists generally disclaim every other ground but the moral and religious one on which this matter is based. You send missionaries to the heathen; I tell you of professing Christians practising what is worse than any heathenism on record. How is it that we have come to this state of things, you ask. I reply, the whole power of the country is in the hands of the slaveholders. For more than thirty years we have had a slaveholding President, and the slave power has been dominant. The consequence has been a series of encroachments, until now at last the slave trade is re-opened and all but legitimised in America. It was a sad backward step when England last year fell into the trap laid by America and surrendered the right of search.2 Now slavers ply on the seas which were previously guarded by your ships. We have, besides, an internal slave trade. We have states where, I am ashamed to say, men and women are reared, like cattle, for the market. When I walk through the streets of Manchester and meet load after load of cotton, I think of those eighty thousand cotton plantations on which was grown the one hundred and twenty-five millions of dollars worth of cotton which supply your market, and I remember that not one cent of the money ever reached the hands of the labourers. Here is an incident of slave life for you—an incident of common occurrence in the south. In March, 1859, a slave auction took place in the city of Savannah. Three hundred and forty-three slaves, the property of Pierce Butler—the husband of your own Fanny Kemble—were sold, regardless of every tie of

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flesh and blood:3 old men and maidens, young men, and babes of fifteen months—there was but one question about them, and that was decided at the auction block. Pierce Butler, the owner, resides in Philadelphia, and is a highly-respected citizen and a member of a church. He was reputed a kind master, who rarely separated the families of his slaves. The financial crisis took place, and I have given you the result to his human property. But Mr. Butler has in no wise lost caste amongst his friends; he still moves in the most respectable society, and his influence in his church is so great that, with other members, he has procured the removal from the pulpit of the Rev. Dudley Tyng, who had uttered a testimony against slavery; and in that pulpit, the man who now preaches, Mr. Prentiss4 by name, is the owner of a hundred slaves. Such is the state of public opinion in America, and you find the poison running through everything. With the exception of the Abolitionists, you will find people of all classes thus contaminated. The whole army and navy of the United States are pledged to pursue and shoot down the poor fugitives, who, panting for liberty, fly to Canada, to seek the security of the British flag. All denominations of professing Christians are guilty of sustaining or defending slavery. Even the Quakers must be included in this rule. Now I ask for your sympathy and your influence, and whoever asked English men and women in vain. Give us the power of your public opinion, it has great weight in America. Words spoken here are read there as no words written in America are read. Lord Brougham’s testimony on the first of August resounded through America;5 your Clarkson and your Wilberforce are names of strength to us.6 I ask you, raise the moral public opinion until its voice reaches the American shores. Aid us thus until the shackles of the American slave melt like dew before the morning sun. I ask for especial help from the women of England. Women are the worst victims of the slave power. I am met on every hand by the cry, “Cotton! Cotton!” I cannot stop to speak of cotton while men and women are being brutalised. But there is an answer for the cotton cry too, and the argument is an unanswerable one. Before concluding, I shall give you a few passages from the laws of the slave states. By some of these laws, free coloured people may be arrested in the discharge of their lawful business; and, if no papers, attesting their freedom be found on them, they are committed to gaol; and, if not claimed within a limited time, they may be sold to pay the gaol fees. By another law, any person who speaks at the bar, bench, on the stage, or in private, to the slaves, so as to excite insurrection, or brings any paper or pamphlet of such nature into the state, shall be imprisoned for not less than three, or more than twentyone years; or shall suffer death as the judge decides. I could read such laws for hours, but I shall only add that in Maryland there is at present a gentleman in prison, condemned for ten years, because a copy

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of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was found in his possession.7 The laws are equally severe against teaching a slave to read—against teaching even the name of the good God. In conclusion, Miss Remond made another powerful appeal for sympathy and help. Manchester Weekly Times (England), 17 September 1859. 1. Hinton Rowan Helper (1829–1909) was born in North Carolina, the son of slaveholding German emigrants. Helper formulated a free labor critique of slavery that was developed in The Impending Crisis (1857), an influential and controversial book that attributed the South’s impoverishment to slavery. After five years as consul to Buenos Aires, Helper returned to the United States in 1866 and published three works with similar themes—all ridiculed Reconstruction, denounced blacks as a menace to the South, and sought “to write the negro out of America . . . and out of existence.” Helper committed suicide in Washington, D.C. DAB, 8:517– 18. 2. In the absence of a formal agreement with the United States, Britain had no “right of search” on American vessels. But, until 1858, the British insisted on a “right of visit” in order to ascertain the true identity and nationality of suspicious ships. When the Royal Navy increased its anti–slave trade patrols in the Caribbean during 1857–58, encounters with American vessels provoked a strong reaction from the United States. The British government, hoping to reach an anti– slave trade agreement with the United States, backed away from its claim to “right of visit” and ordered the navy to “respect the American flag under any circumstances.” William L. Mathieson, Great Britain and the Slave Trade, 1839–1865 (London, 1929; reprint, New York, N.Y., 1967), 155–59; Hugh G. Soulsby, The Right of Search and the Slave Trade in Anglo-American Relations, 1813–1862 (Baltimore, Md., 1933), 163. 3. Remond refers to the auction of Pierce Butler’s slaves by local slave trader Joseph Bryan at the Race Course, Savannah, Georgia, on 2 and 3 March 1859. Butler, of Philadelphia, was the absentee co-owner of Butler’s Island, a rice plantation off the Georgia coast near the mouth of the Altamaha River. He had been married to the well-known English actress Frances “Fanny” Kemble from 1834 to 1849. Unsuccessful financial ventures, compounded by the Panic of 1857, compelled him to dispose of his slaves. The 1859 auction, which was advertised in newspapers from Richmond to New Orleans, yielded $303,850. Of the 460 slaves advertised for sale, 429—ranging in age from infants to aged blacks—were sold. They were purchased by slave traders and new masters from throughout the South. After the war, Butler and several of his former slaves returned to Georgia and operated the plantation. Bancroft, Slave Trading in Old South, 229–32, 235; Ulrich B. Phillips, Life and Labor in the Old South (Boston, Mass., 1929), 259–65. 4. William Otis Prentiss. 5. Lord Brougham spoke at a 1 August 1859 meeting at the Store Street Music Hall, London, commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of West Indian emancipation. He also chaired the gathering, which was attended by members of Parliament, a few colonial administrators, a number of British abolitionists, several Americans, and black abolitionists Sarah P. Remond and Ellen Craft. Al-

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though Francis Hincks, governor of the Windward islands, was the featured speaker, Lord Brougham stirred the audience with an energetic and eloquent address that reviewed the history of the British agitation against slavery and the slave trade and eulogized “the men who stood shoulder to shoulder with him in the conflict.” ASA, September 1859. 6. Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce. 7. In 1857 Samuel Green, a former slave and a Methodist Episcopal preacher, was sentenced to ten years in prison by the Dorchester, Maryland, county court for having a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in his possession. Green was arrested after returning from a trip to visit members of his family in Canada. After suspecting Green of communicating with people in the North, local authorities searched his house and found a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Campaigns to free Green began, but Governor Thomas Hicks of Maryland refused to pardon him and declared that Green would never leave prison as long as he was in office. In 1862, after serving five years, Green was pardoned by Governor Augustus Bradford on the condition that he leave the state. Upon his release, Green and his wife went to Canada. ASA, 2 June, 1 September 1862.

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78. Sarah P. Remond to Maria Weston Chapman 6 October 1859 Financial cooperation between British and American activists was a significant feature of the transatlantic abolitionist movement. From 1840, American abolitionism increasingly depended on Britain’s material contributions to antislavery bazaars and, after 1858, on the money given to the American Anti-Slavery Society-sponsored National Anti-Slavery Subscription Anniversary. Run almost exclusively by women, this fund-raising network’s chief organizer was Boston Garrisonian Maria Weston Chapman. A number of black abolitionists contributed to the network’s success and, in turn, used it to promote their lecture activities. Sarah P. Remond wrote Chapman about difficulties she was having in setting up her British tour. Chapman responded in a 4 September letter, offering introductions to helpful British abolitionists, including “the little band of true Englishwomen.” Remond’s 6 October letter to Chapman acknowledged this advice. Maria Weston Chapman to Sarah P. Remond, 4 September 1859, John B. and Mary A. Estlin Papers, UkLW. Warrington, [England] October 6th, 1859 My dear Mrs. Chapman. It was my intention to send you a long letter by our friend Mr. May,1 who sails for home on the 22d of this month but as usual I can only write a hurried note. On the 12th of this month I go to London, to attend the lectures at the Ladies College.2 I shall on every occasion that I can still continue to lecture and do all I can for our cause. I have lectured very frequently, in fact had more invitations recently tha[n] I could fill. Lectured on three successive evenings last week, which was rather too much for me and I am now with my friends Mr. & Mrs. Robson,3 for a little rest, then go to York, to lecture there. In reference to Mr. Thompson,4 I must say that I made one mistake in the beginning I placed him in a wrong position. I thought he belonged to a class of men like Garrison, Phillips, Jackson,5 the two Mr. May’s,6 Mr. Wallcutt,7 &c. Men of the most reliable stamp. But alas! I am satisfied he is not of them. I have not had time or inclination lately to think much about it but I believe we both understand the most important facts in reference to the matter. I wish Rev S J May, could remain longer in England, and help forward our glorious cause. Very many thanks for your valuable letters. Please remember me most kindly to all my Anti Slavery friends and with warmest regard for yourself, I am most truly yours, Sarah P Remond

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Can you give me Mrs. H B Stow’s address, as I should like to see her when she is in London. Antislavery Collection, Boston Public Library, Boston, Mass. Published by courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library. 1. Remond refers to Samuel J. May, with whom she jointly addressed several British antislavery meetings in 1859. 2. Sarah P. Remond began studies in the liberal arts at London’s Bedford College for Ladies in the fall of 1859. The school was founded in 1849 by Elisabeth Jesser Reed, an abolitionist who eventually sponsored an essay prize on the theme of emancipation. There is some evidence that Remond also studied medicine in London during the 1860s. NAW, 3:136; Margaret Tuke, A History of Bedford College for Women, 1849–1937 (London, 1939), 6, 92; Porter, “Sarah Parker Remond,” 287– 93. 3. William Robson (ca. 1805–ca.1892) was born in Warrington, England, and served as the town’s postmaster in the 1840s and 1850s. Robson was a noted local historian and a member of area temperance and Bible societies. In 1858 Robson visited the United States, met William Lloyd Garrison, and returned home committed to the Garrisonian antislavery movement. In 1859, along with his wife, about whom little is known, and Robert Gaskell of Penketh, as well as the assistance of black abolitionists Sarah P. Remond and William P. Powell, Robson founded the Warrington Anti-Slavery Society. In 1877 Robson hosted a banquet for Garrison at Lymm, England. Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 4:552; ASA, 21 February 1859; MEB, 3:237. 4. Sarah Remond refers to George Thompson, who was the source of her earlier complaint to Maria Weston Chapman about unsatisfactory assistance from British abolitionists. 5. Francis Jackson (1789–1861) was born at Newton, Massachusetts, and became a prominent citizen of Boston. A Unitarian and a lifelong friend and financial supporter of William Lloyd Garrison, Jackson held various offices in the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, the annual New England Anti-Slavery Convention, and the American Anti-Slavery Society. Jackson’s acceptance of basic Garrisonian tenets led him to refuse to take an oath to support the U.S. Constitution and to publicly declare that he would not obey any law or document that sanctioned the return of fugitive slaves. At his death, he bequeathed $10,000 for “Negro freedmen,” $5,000 for the women’s rights movement, and a small amount to Garrison. NCAB, 2:318. 6. The reference is to Samuel Joseph May (1797–1871) and his cousin Samuel May, Jr., (1810–1899). Both Mays were born in Boston, educated at Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School, and served as Unitarian ministers. Both were also friends of William Lloyd Garrison and early members of the American AntiSlavery Society. In the 1850s and 1860s, Samuel J. May served a congregation in Syracuse, New York, and Samuel May, Jr., was general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. 7. Robert F. Walcutt (1797–1884) was born on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard, where he was a member of the famous “abolition class” of 1817. Walcutt briefly served as pastor to a Cape Cod Unitarian con-

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gregation but was dismissed for his antislavery views. A lifelong friend and associate of William Lloyd Garrison, Walcutt joined the New England and American antislavery societies and adopted Garrison’s nonresistance and antisabbatarian views. From 1846 until 1865, Walcutt was the general agent for the Liberator, a position that made him one of antislavery’s most important administrators. Garrison and Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1:213, 2:209, 236–37, 422, 3:221, 353, 481, 4:58, 137, 306; Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 3:342– 43, 516, 531–32, 598, 4:37, 64, 199, 206, 263, 275, 305, 433.

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79. Speech by William Craft Delivered at Spafields Chapel, London, England 14 October 1859 Black abolitionists were essential to the success of British Garrisonianism. Black efforts in London helped found, sustain, and encourage Garrisonian societies, particularly the London Emancipation Committee. The committee was formed in 1859 to serve London Garrisonians and to encourage local antislavery activity by bringing together notable American abolitionists and potential British converts. To that end, the committee sponsored a meeting in Spafields Chapel on the evening of 14 October 1859, attended by several prominent black abolitionists and Rev. Samuel J. May of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The meeting was chaired by Rev. T. E. Thoresby and attended by Garrisonians Frederick W. Chesson, George Thompson, and black abolitionist Sarah P. Remond, whose recent exchange over slavery with the actress Lola Montez had received considerable attention. May delivered an address on America’s “crowning sin,” accepted a resolution of thanks from the assemblage, and then introduced black abolitionists Ellen Craft and her firstborn son, Charles Estlin Phillips Craft. In so doing, May noted that “this boy would fetch $200 in the United States.” William Craft later addressed the meeting. Proceedings of an Anti-Slavery Meeting Held at Spafields Chapel, Friday Evening, 14 October 1859 [London, 1859], 1–19; Temperley, British Antislavery, 253–54; Rice, Scots Abolitionists, 162, 167–69. Mr. CRAFT (whose appearance upon the platform was hailed with loud applause) expressed his extreme obligation to the Meeting for the very warm reception they had given his wife, child,1 and himself. The Chairman had expressed a hope that he would give some account of the manner of their escape; but to give anything like an account of the matter would take an hour and a half. He hoped at some future opportunity to be enabled to do so, but at that late hour of the night he would not attempt it. He would simply state that they were both slaves in the State of Georgia for upwards of twenty-one years. It was true that their condition in that capacity was by no means of the worst, but still it was bondage after all; and the thought that they had no legal rights; that they could not call the flesh and blood which God had given them their own; and, above all, the fact that at any time their owner, as he was called, had power to plunder their cradle, tear from it their infant, and sell it in the shambles like a brute; that that child, if not sold, could thereafter be cruelly scourged, and that its parents would not dare to lift a finger to

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save it from its fate; those, and similar reflections, haunted his wife and himself for years, until it roused them to make an effort to escape from such a condition; and in the winter of 1848, by the assistance of God, to whom all the praise and honour were due, they rose, as it were, in their might, cast off the galling chains which they had worn for twenty-one years, and escaped, like Lot from Sodom,2 to a place of refuge in the free States, from whence they were again driven by the operation of the new Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, when they finally left America, and came to this free and glorious country, where no tyrant, let his power be ever so absolute at home, dare lay violent hands upon them, or upon the child then before the audience, or the two other boys3 with which God had blessed himself and wife, and reduce them legally to the level of the beasts that perish. (Loud applause.) “O, Sir,” said Mr. Craft, “may God ever bless and prosper England, for the glorious protection which she gives to down-trodden humanity—to exiles of every colour and of every clime.” It was not his intention, by any means, at that late hour of the evening, to make a speech. He was happy to see amongst them his reverend and esteemed friend, who had so long been the friend of humanity— Mr. May. He (Mr. Craft) was rejoiced at the warm reception which the Meeting had given to that gentleman. (Cheers.) He joined in the wish that he might again cross the Atlantic in safety, and there, in good health, meet his kindhearted and noble friends, the advocates of emancipation. He hoped that God would spare his life to live and labour there until no slave was to be found upon the soil of America, and when every bondman’s chain would be [swept?] from the face of the globe. The question was sometimes asked, What could the English people do to hasten the abolition of Slavery? There was no time to go into that subject in detail then; but he would say, generally, that if every religious denomination in this kingdom would remonstrate with its co-religionists in the United States, great good might be done to the cause of Slavery emancipation. (Hear, hear.) He did not ask the British Ministry to interfere with the American Government in the matter, nor had he any desire that the people of this empire should wage war with those of the United States for the abolition of Slavery: he merely asked the Christian churches here to use their influence with corresponding bodies there. Let them endeavour to impress on the descendants of the Puritan fathers the necessity of their doing their duty as Christians, and freeing their churches from the cankerworm of Slavery, which was destroying them. He also felt that British Christians ought to be more careful in receiving as Christians, Americans of eminence, who might present themselves among them for fellowship, and to ascertain how they stood upon the question of Slavery. He did not mean, of course, to cast any reflections upon Mr. May in that respect. They were all satisfied, from his life of labour, that he was thoroughly sound upon that point; but there were a large number of American

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ministers and gentlemen who came to this country every year, who stood in a very different position to that which was occupied by that reverend gentleman. (Hear, hear.) They came here for the purpose, not of enlightening, but of corrupting English sentiment in regard to Slavery. He hoped that such visitors would not be received implicitly as Christians, either in English drawing-rooms or churches; but that Christians would first inquire into the anti-slavery or pro-slavery characters of these visitors, and whenever they found them either defenders of, or apologists for, the great sin of their country, have nothing to do with them. Such a moral protest against Slavery would do here, as it had done in the United States, a great work. Another point of importance was, that every person who emigrated to America, or travelled there, either for business or pleasure, should go out with right views upon the subject of Slavery, and not only so, but fearlessly maintain them whilst remaining there. It was a lamentable fact, which he did not state from his own experience merely, but from higher authority, that nine-tenths of the persons who went from these shores to the United States took sides with the oppressors of the African race, both slave and free. (Shame.) After they had been there a little while, had visited the slaveholders, and feasted, as it were, upon the price of innocent blood, they would begin to apologize for the system, and say that the slaves were very kindly treated; that they were better off than the poor of this country, and therefore there was no need for people here to disturb themselves about their bondage. He (Mr. Craft) never met with a poor person in Great Britain, be he the most indigent in the land, who did not resent it as an insult to be placed upon a level with the American slave. (Hear, hear.) He knew that there were poor people in that and other parts of the world who were in a miserable condition; but from what he had seen of both classes, he could say that he did not believe there was one so degraded and trampled under foot as was the American slave. In this country, let a man be ever so poor, he was free. His cottage was his castle, and no man in the realm—no, not even the proudest lord within it, dare with impunity—cross the threshold of the tenant of the humblest dwelling, or trample on the sacred honour of its female occupants, as the American slaveholders, to their everlasting disgrace, were constantly in the habit of doing. The apologists of Slavery were also in the habit of asserting that the scenes in Uncle Tom’s Cabin were overdrawn and exaggerated. He had read that book, and others upon the subject of American Slavery, and he solemnly declared that he had never seen a description in print which could, in the remotest degree, approach to the reality of the thing itself. It was said that the slaves were happy and contented, and therefore did not wish to be free. He knew that some of them appeared, or affected to be, satisfied with their state. Many of them did seek to make the best of circumstances. It was a principle with many of them, that as it was impossible to escape from

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their bad condition, it was prudent to make the best of it. But he had never seen a slave, who was worth calling a man, who would be content to remain in Slavery five minutes if there was the slightest chance of his escape. But suppose they were happy, and perfectly willing to remain where they were; that very fact would, in his opinion, furnish the strongest argument against the system. How was it possible to make a human being who was not denuded of his manhood, happy in a state of bondage? In order to ensure happiness within him under such circumstances, he must of necessity be unmanned. (Hear, hear.) His spirit must be broken, and he must be made to feel that he was not a human being, but a mere thing. God forbid that any one should be happy whilst his neck was placed under the galling yoke of oppression. He (Mr. Craft) sincerely hoped that the people of this country would investigate the question of American Slavery, and use their whole moral influence to release their unhappy fellow-creatures from the horrible condition in which the bondmen of the United States were placed. With many thanks for their kind attention he would bid them farewell. (Cheers.) Proceedings of an Anti-Slavery Meeting held at Spafields Chapel, on Friday Evening, 14th October 1859, London Emancipation Committee’s Tracts, no. 2 (London [1859]), 13–15. 1. Craft refers to his eldest son, Charles Estlin Phillips Craft (1852–?), who had been introduced to the audience by Samuel J. May. Charles was born in England and named for the Crafts’ abolitionist friends John Bishop Estlin and Wendell Phillips. He returned to the United States with his parents in 1869 and eventually spent his career with the U.S. Postal Service. ASA, December 1852; Lib, 17 December 1852; NAW, 1:396–98; Dorothy Sterling, Black Foremothers: Three Lives (Old Westbury, N.Y., 1979), 4, 54, 59. 2. Craft refers to the biblical story of Lot, a seminomadic Moabite, who fled the ancient Canaanite city of Sodom just before its destruction by the Hebrew deity because of its extreme wickedness. According to the story, Lot and his wife were commanded to flee to the surrounding hills without looking back. Lot obeyed the command but his wife turned to gaze back at Sodom and was transformed into a pillar of salt. Gen. 19:1–26. 3. Craft refers to his second and third sons, William, Jr. (ca. 1855–?), and Brougham (ca. 1857–?). Born and educated in England, they returned to the United States with their parents in 1869. William soon returned to England and remained a British resident. Brougham spent his career with the U.S. Postal Service. NAW, 1:396–98; Sterling, Black Foremothers, 4, 54, 59.

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80. Sarah P. Remond and the Passport Issue Sarah P. Remond to Editor, Scottish Press 4 December 1859 Sarah P. Remond to George Mifflin Dallas 12 December 1859 Sarah P. Remond to Benjamin Moran 15 December 1859 During the autumn of 1859, two incidents involving Sarah P. Remond and her sister Caroline R. Putnam heightened Remond’s awareness of the extent to which American racism reached beyond American shores. Like other black abolitionists, she publicized these incidents as an antislavery tactic, describing them in three December letters to the editors of the Edinburgh Scottish Press, the London Morning Star, and the London Inquirer. The letters were widely reprinted and commented on in the British press. The first incident involved discrimination against Caroline Putnam and her party on the Cunard liner Europa during their passage to Liverpool. The second incident began when the American legation in London refused to visa Remond’s American passport for a visit to Paris. Although Remond presented Assistant Secretary of the Legation Benjamin Moran with a State Department passport dated 10 September 1858 and signed by Secretary of State Lewis Cass, Moran determined that the passport was fraudulent because the Dred Scott decision (1857) excluded blacks from citizenship. A series of letters between Remond and the legation followed, including a 14 December note that explained to Remond that she did not qualify for an American passport because she lacked the “indispensable qualification”—American citizenship. The note stated further that the American legation in London was simply complying with State Department guidelines dat -ing from July 1856. Remond’s efforts made the incident a cause célèbre in the London press. The London Morning Star printed particularly strong attacks on the American legation’s treatment of Remond and the American policy of excluding blacks from citizenship. The controversy distressed American ambassador George Mifflin Dallas, who threatened to “go home” should the attacks continue. Remond later traveled to France without a visa. TG, 27 December 1859; ASRL, 1 August, 1 October 1860; Seventh Annual Report of the Leeds Anti-Slavery Association (Leeds, England, 1860), 3–4; Sarah Agnes Wallace and Frances Elma Gillespie, eds., The Journal of Benjamin Moran, 1857–1865, 2 vols. (Chicago, Ill., 1948–49), 1:608, 610, 613–14, 627–28, 637; Benjamin

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470Quarles, “Ministers without Portfolio,” JNH 39:36–38 (January 1954); Lib, 17 February 1860; Bogin, “Sarah Parker Remond,” 142. London, [England] December 4, 1859 SIR :1 Every coloured American knows, from bitter experience, the liability to receive insult from the majority of the American people. We do not expect it under English influences. My sister, Mrs. Putnam,2 and her friends had first-class tickets from Boston to Liverpool; after the purchase of the tickets, they were informed that they would not be allowed equal privileges with other first-class passengers. Mrs. Putnam remonstrated with the Boston agent. The health of two of the party was the object of the voyage, more particularly that of one who left our climate by the advice of his physician as a last resource for the restoration of his health. No American vessel will take coloured passengers except with similar restrictions, and if English steamers imitate Americans, the only reason for coloured persons to take the former in preference is that they are sure of kinder treatment on board the English vessels.3 A short time after the Europa left Boston, a waiter informed Mrs. Putnam and her friends that they could not go to the table with the other first-class passengers. They asked to see the captain; the steward then came, and Mrs. Putnam remonstrated with him, but he said, as the waiter had said, that she and her friends could not be allowed to go to the table. The captain did not come. The only point is this—whether men and women, guilty of no crime but having a dark complexion, shall be liable to such injustice on board English steamers? The facts relating to the passport are these: I called at 24 Portland Place—the office of the American Minister, Hon., Mr. Dallas,4 with my passport which I had obtained before leaving the United States. I asked to have it vised for the purpose of going to Paris. The Secretary said I was not a citizen of the United States, and he could not sign it. I informed him that I was a citizen of Salem in Massachusetts, and Massachusetts acknowledged my citizenship—and the fact of my having the passport was a proof of my citizenship.5 The Secretary still refused to sign it and said I ought to be satisfied with his refusal. During the conversation, I turned to my sister and said, “Thank God we are in a country where our rights are respected, and I have no doubt we can obtain passports which will take us to France.” This remark called forth from the gentlemanly Secretary this reply, “If you do not cease this conversation I will have you put out of this house.” Most earnestly would I ask all who read this letter to judge what the spirit of a country is that will allow such treatment to its citizens, the spirit which enslaves four millions of men and women, and insults the free coloured population of the United States? You may

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read the facts, but no words can express the mental suffering we are obliged to bear because we happen to have a dark complexion. No language can give one an idea of the spirit of prejudice which exists in the States. I am most respectfully yours, SARAH P. REMOND Scottish Press (Edinburgh), 20 December 1859. No. 6 GRENVILLE STREET BRUNSWICK SQUARE , W. C. Dec[ember] 12, 1859 The Hon. [George Mifflin] Dallas American Minister No. 24 Portland place Sir: I beg to inform you that, a short time since, I went to the office of the American Embassy, to have my passport vised for France. I should remark, that my passport is an American one, granted to me in the United States, and signed by the Minister in due form. It states—what is the fact—that I am a citizen of the United States. I was born in Massachusetts. Upon my asking to have my passport vised at the American Embassy, the person in the office refused to affix the vise, on the ground that I am a person of color. Being a citizen of the United States, I respectfully demand, as my right, that my passport be vised by the Minister of my country. As I am desirous of starting for the Continent, I must request an answer at your earliest convenience. I remain, sir, your obedient servant, SARAH P. REMOND Inquirer (London), 7 January 1860. [December 15, 1859] SIR :6 I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of yesterday’s date. The purport of your communication is most extraordinary. You now lay down the rule that persons free-born in the United States, and who have been subjected all their lives to the taxation and other burdens imposed upon American citizens, are to be deprived of their rights as such, merely because their complexions happens to be dark, and that they are to be refused the aid of Ministers of their country, whose salaries they contribute to pay. I remain, Sir, your obedient servant, SARAH P. REMOND National Principia (New York, N.Y.), 25 January 1860.

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1. William Bryson published the Edinburgh Scottish Press after 1855. The triweekly Press first appeared in 1847; it promoted the peace movement, Sunday closing laws, and parliamentary reform. Its considerable influence in Edinburgh affairs declined under Bryson’s management, which led to its incorporation into the Weekly Herald and Mercury in 1863. R. M. W. Cowan, The Newspaper in Scotland: A Study of Its First Expansion, 1815–1860 (Glasgow, 1946), 137, 282–83, 321, 364. 2. Caroline Remond Putnam was the daughter of John Remond, a leader of the Salem, Massachusetts, black community. Putnam, like her sister and brother, Sarah Parker Remond and Charles Lenox Remond, was educated in the Salem public schools, tutored by private teachers, and exposed to an array of experiences in the exciting and politically vital Remond household. During the late 1840s, she married Joseph H. Putnam, son of George Putnam, the successful Boston hairdresser and civil rights leader, who was a longtime friend of John Remond. In 1850 Caroline and Joseph Putnam had a son, Edmund Quincy Putnam. Caroline Remond Putnam’s major contribution to the antislavery movement was her fund-raising activity throughout the 1850s. Her energetic efforts earned appointments to the Financial Committee of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (1862) and to the Board of Managers of the National Anti-Slavery Subscription Anniversary. Caroline Putnam also understood the importance of challenging racial prejudice; she joined Sarah Remond and William C. Nell in a successful antidiscrimination suit against the Howard Athenaeum in 1853. And during an 1859–60 visit to her sister in Britain, she made a public incident out of discrimination against her on the voyage to Liverpool. In 1866 Putnam revisited Britain with her son Edmund. She attended the Paris Anti-Slavery Convention of 1867 with her sister and toured throughout Germany and Italy before returning to Salem in late August 1868. Eight months later, she apparently established a permanent residence in Florence with her sister. She remained in Florence well into the 1880s. DANB, 522–23; Lib, 5, 12 November 1831, 14 April 1833, 26 April 1850, 11 June 1853, 18 July 1862, 18 December 1863, 1 January 1864, 13, 20 January, 16 June 1865 [1:0271, 0131]; NASS, 3 February 1855, 10 June 1865, 16 February, 16 November, 14 December 1867, 16 January, 25 July, 17 October 1868, 17 April 1869; ASRL, 1 October 1860; United States Census, 1850. 3. Antebellum blacks, if they obtained passage at all, usually received shabby treatment on transatlantic voyages aboard American and Cunard Line vessels. Black abolitionists often purchased first-class tickets on American ships but typically were placed in steerage or in stewards’ quarters, and others were refused passage on American vessels altogether. Many blacks reported mistreatment on Cunard steamers. But black passengers were generally treated more fairly on other British liners. When Peter Williams was refused passage on an American ship in 1836, an English captain found a cabin for him aboard his own ship. On his 1843 voyage home, J. W. C. Pennington ate and slept with whites despite passenger protests. In 1861 Henry Highland Garnet slept in an “elegant stateroom” and ate at a first-class table. Lib, 1 October 1847; ASRL, 4 October 1843; E, 31 August 1843; WAA, 5 October 1861 [13:0798]. 4. George Mifflin Dallas (1792–1864) served as minister to Britain from 1856 to 1861. A politician, diplomat, and lawyer, Dallas held a variety of public offices,

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including mayor of Philadelphia, state attorney general, U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, and minister to Russia. After several years out of public life, he was elected vice-president on the Democratic ticket with James K. Polk in 1844. DAB, 5:38–39. 5. Before the Dred Scott decision (1857) denied federal citizenship to black Americans, black legal status had not been officially defined. As a result, each governmental department pursued its own course regarding black citizenship. This policy led to erratic and inconclusive practice, particularly in State Department deliberations over whether or not to issue passports to blacks. In 1847 Secretary of State James Buchanan skirted the passport problem by issuing “special certificates” to blacks on a case-by-case basis. Two years later Secretary of State John M. Clayton ruled that neither passports nor special certificates nor governmental protection should be available to blacks unless they were servants of U.S. diplomats. As the number of black abolitionists traveling abroad increased during the 1850s, the State Department was faced with a corresponding rise in passport requests from blacks. A number of blacks received some form of official authorization— either special certificates or passports to travel abroad—but issuance often depended on a black individual’s rights in his or her home state or on the assistance of an influential white person. After the Dred Scott decision, and until 1861, passport applications from blacks were consistently rejected. This federal policy caused some states like Massachusetts to issue their own passports to “denationalized” black citizens. Litwack, North of Slavery, 49–57. 6. Benjamin Moran (1820–1886) was a career American diplomat. The son of middle-class English immigrant parents of Philadelphia, he served the American legation in London, first as clerk (1853–57), then as assistant secretary (1857–64), and finally as secretary of the legation (1864–74). A popular figure in British political circles, he was influential in fashioning Anglo-American relations. In 1874 he was named minister resident to Portugal, where he remained in various diplomatic positions until returning to England in 1882. DAB, 12:150–51.

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81. William P. Powell to Samuel May, Jr. 31 December 1859 During his years as a Liverpool resident, William P. Powell helped to make the transatlantic antislavery network a vital conduit for antislavery materials. He collected goods in Liverpool to forward to the Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar, procured British subscribers for American AntiSlavery Society periodicals (particularly the National Anti-Slavery Standard and Liberator), and assisted British abolitionists in purchasing abolitionist books and pamphlets printed in America. Powell frequently arranged for these antislavery publications to be carried to Britain by black American seamen, whose acquaintance he made while operating a sailors’ home in New York City from 1839 to 1851. ASA, August 1853, April 1858; Foner, “William P. Powell.” No. 1 North John St[reet] Royal Insurance Buildings Liverpool, [England] Dec[ember] 31st, 1859 Dear friend May I am extremely obliged for your prompt attention to my letter of wants kindly—favored by the Rev. S. J. May. First then do please countermand the Standard being sent to Thomas Parry1 143 Chester Road Hulme Manchester, in error as the paper is already sent to Miss Rebecca Walton same address—only one copy being required. Second—The list of Anti Slavery publications which I wrote for are for our mutual friend and co-adjutor Wilson Armistead of Leeds which I hope you will not fail to send. Now whilst I think of it, if you should fail to send by New York ship you can give instructions to Philadelphia Anti Slavery office2 (for they have the same publications) to send the books by Mr. Fisher,3 Steward of the ship Saranak or Mr. Freeman,4 Steward of ship Tonawanda, both Philadelphia packets running to L’pool, either gentleman will be glad to serve me. In the mean time, please send me in same package Three Copies of the best got up book of the Martyr Jho. Brown,5 and a dozen of his portraits; and, please have the Standard and Liberator sent to the Revd. P. Hains6 Incumbent of St. Mathias Church Great Howard St. Liverpool. Really the more I write, the more my wants increase. I wish I had the means to scatter Anti Slavery information broadcast over Liverpool and adjoining towns, the difficulty is that the people want information. We want in this Great Commercial town a full supply of Antislavery publications, a good Library, and a few extra copies of the Liberator and Standard. I firmly believe, if I had at my

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command such force as I have above described, a good work could be done in getting up an active Anti Slavery influence which would eventually pay. I am but a unit in Liverpool in consequence of the Cotton power. Still for all that if I were properly backed up with working materials I am quite sure of a good harvest. The Rev. S. A. Steinthal7 is the only Clergyman in Liverpool, who gives to our old organisation the full weight of his influence; he is an instant in Season, and always ready to aid and assist to help the cause along. The Revd. Mr. Hains is a new man, but a good man; not too Orthodox to work with Unitarians and Nothingarians8 for the slaves redemption. As a true diciple of Jesus he fully comprehends our platform, and will work. In a conversation I had with him last time week, he is anxious to form an Antislavery Society, we have agreed to go to work after the holiday’s. Then again, there is a good work going on at Warrington Junction. Professor Allen, Miss Remond and my humble self, have severally lectured in that town; and made many friends to our Cause.9 I have had very poor health for the last twelve months, but hope to be able to take a more active part in the Antislavery cause the coming year. The Jho. Brown affair has created no little excitement in Liverpool, the local papers as well as the people all approve of his bold attempt to free the slave, and regret the failure of the brave old man. “One shall chase a thousand, and two shall put ten thousand to flight.” Don’t forget to send me an Invoice for the Books. Do please give my love to Mrs. Chapman, and tell her that I received and forwarded the Barrel of Apples to Miss Martineau according to her request. Don’t fail to answer. Hastily & truly Yours Faithfully, Wm. P. Powell Antislavery Collection, Boston Public Library, Boston, Mass. Published by courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library. 1. Thomas Parry was a boot and shoe manufacturer at 143 Chester Road, Hulme, near Manchester. Kelly’s Directory of Manchester, 1858 (1858), 1571. 2. In 1859 the Philadelphia antislavery office, an American Anti-Slavery Society affiliate, was located at No. 107 North Fifth Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. NASS, 25 June 1859. 3. This may be a reference to Charles Fisher (1833–?), a mulatto ship steward, who enlisted in the U.S. Navy in January 1862. He served on the Kearsage in its engagement with the Confederate raider Alabama on 19 June 1864. Born in Pennsylvania, he had originally worked as a laborer in Philadelphia. Abajian, Blacks in Selected Newspapers, 1:681; Dennis Denmark Nelson, The Integration of the Negro into the United States Navy, 1776–1947 (n.p., 1948), 19. 4. This probably refers to William Freeman (1815–?), a Philadelphia seaman, who may have made Powell’s acquaintance while the latter operated a sailors’ home for black “cooks, stewards, and seamen” in New York City from 1839 to

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1851 under the auspices of the American Seamen’s Friend Society. According to the 1850 Philadelphia census, Freeman had been born in Pennsylvania and owned real property valued at $2,000. Abajian, Blacks in Selected Newspapers, 1:736; George W. Forbes, Biographical Sketch of William P. Powell, Antislavery Collection, MB. 5. There were no books on John Brown in late 1859. Powell’s experience and keen insights as an antislavery propagandist anticipated both the value of books on Brown and their ensuing publication in 1860. John Brown (1800–1859) was a failed businessman and religious zealot who earned an antislavery reputation during the free state–proslavery struggle in the Kansas territory and, by 1859, considered himself God’s providential instrument to end slavery. On 16 October 1859, Brown led a twenty-one-man cadre in an attack on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, hoping to incite a slave insurrection. The effort failed after two days, and Brown was caught, tried, and hanged in Charleston, Virginia, on 2 December 1859. Before Brown went to the gallows, he delivered a stirring antislavery speech, which insured his martyrdom and pushed the North and South toward violent confrontation over slavery. Stephen B. Oates, To Purge This Land in Blood: A Biography of John Brown (New York, N.Y., 1970), 278–306; Benjamin Quarles, Allies for Freedom: Blacks and John Brown (New York, N.Y., 1974). 6. Rev. P. F. J. B. Hains was the curate of St. Matthias Church, Liverpool, England, where he had served since 1858. The Clergy List, 1859 (London, 1859), 131. 7. Rev. Samuel Alfred Steinthal (1826–1910), the son of a German immigrant, became a prominent Unitarian and a missionary to the poor in Bridgewater, Liverpool, and Manchester. Steinthal was a major figure in various temperance organizations and was a frequent correspondent to the Inquirer. An ardent antislavery advocate, he also lent his house to the original committee of the Manchester Female Suffrage Society for its meetings. He was a close friend of William Lloyd Garrison and, by William P. Powell’s measure, the only thoroughgoing Garrisonian in Liverpool. Temperley, British Antislavery, 237; Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 408–9; DBTB, 117. 8. Powell uses this term to suggest those without a particular religious belief or affiliation. 9. Powell refers to the town of Warrington in Lancashire, which became a center of British Garrisonian antislavery activity during 1859 under the auspices of the Warrington Anti-Slavery Society. Early in the year, William Robson, with the assistance of William P. Powell, prevailed upon Sarah P. Remond to begin her British tour in Warrington. When her Warrington lectures generated great excitement, Robson, his wife, and Robert Gaskell funneled that enthusiasm into stimulating the Warrington society, which they had organized on Garrisonian principles. Their efforts were further aided by the lecture visits of Powell and William G. Allen later that year. Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 4:352; ASA, 21 February, 18 March 1859; WT, 29 January 1859; Minutes of the Glasgow Emancipation Society, 10 August 1859, UkGM; Sarah P. Remond to Maria Weston Chapman, 6 October 1859, Antislavery Collection, MB [12:0104].

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82. Martin R. Delany to Norton Shaw 13 June 1860 By late December 1859, Robert Campbell and Martin R. Delany had negotiated a treaty with West African Egba chiefs, who ceded them land for a Yoruban colony. Delany and Campbell returned to England in mid-May 1860. They lectured in and around London about their African experiences and, at an 11 June meeting, became the first American blacks honored by the Royal Geographical Society. Delany delivered a paper, “Geographical Observations on Western Africa,” which was a detailed description of the terrain, plants, animals, and diseases of the Niger Valley. Delany’s 13 June note to Dr. Norton Shaw, the secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, concerned publication of this paper and demonstrated his sensitivity to African culture. The paper was later edited, abridged, and published in the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of London 4:218–22 (1859–60). Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 208–16, 221–23; Ullman, Martin R. Delany, 237; Martin R. Delany and Robert Campbell, Draft of “Geographical Observations on Western Africa,” 11 June 1860, UkLRgeo [12:0778–81]. 50 Baker St[reet] Patria Sq[ua]r[e] London, [England] June 13, [18]60 N[orton] Shaw, M.D.1 My Dear Sir: I learned last evening, that the Papers read before the Royal Geographical Society2 are to be published. As in all African names, we give the orthography according to the idiom of those languages; you will please change “jallap” to jalap—dropping the l—and “Morish” to Moorish, inserting another o. All other African names which may occur in the Paper, please leave unchanged; and thus oblige. Very Respectfully, Sir, Your most obt. Servt., M. R. Delany Royal Geographical Society Archives, London. Published by permission. 1. Henry Norton Shaw (?–1868) served as secretary of the Royal Geographical Society from 1849 to 1863. In 1866 he was appointed consul to the island of St. Croix in the West Indies. MEB, 3:527. 2. The Royal Geographical Society, located at 1 Savile Row, London, was established in 1830 to improve and diffuse geographical knowledge. The society encouraged exploration of previously uncharted areas of the world, particularly Africa. Papers were read at society meetings held every other week from November to July. Wheatley, London Past and Present, 2:90–91.

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83. William Craft to Samuel May, Jr. 17 July 1860 The tempo of British antislavery activity quickened in the years before the Civil War, particularly among Garrisonians living in the London area. William and Ellen Craft were at the center of this renewal. They entertained visiting American abolitionists at their Hammersmith, west London, home, served on the executive board of the London Emancipation Committee (1859), and published their narrative (1860). In 1861 William Craft became a member of the John Anderson Committee, which supervised the education and lecture tour of the famous Canadian fugitive. On 17 July 1860, William wrote to his Boston antislavery friend Samuel May, Jr., with news of their efforts. Craft also sought a formal arrangement between himself and the American Anti-Slavery Society, realizing, as did many of his astute black colleagues, that, whatever one’s individual reputation, reform efforts in Britain were often well served by an American institutional affiliation. Blackett, “Fugitive Slaves in Britain,” 53. 12 Cambridge Road Hammersmith London, [England] July 17, 1860 My dear Mr. May I was much pleased to receive your kind note this morning. But was very sorry to hear that you were so poorly. I hope this will find you better. I often wonder how you A. S. friends in America can ware so well in the midst of such constant excitement & shameful misrepresentation. You could not live under it were your cause not a just one, & you sustained by a great & good God to do his work. As there are always so many proslavery Americans in this country; & also as there are frequently books & newspaper articles being published here to poison & mislead the public—I feel that labours are very much needed to counteract this evil & wicked influence. I have ever regreted not being able to devote more time to the A. S. cause. But of coures, it was my first duty to provide for my wife & family1 & to try to obtain a little education. This I have done to some extent. And as I can now arrange my affairs so as not to require any of my attention— I should like very much to devote all my time to the Cause. In fact, I feel it to be my duty to do so. And nothing could give me more pleasure than to work in connection with the A. A. S. Society2 provided I can make it to the Societies [word crossed out] interest to employ my services.

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I do not think that a great deal can be done pecuniarily by lecturing in this country. Though I am fully persuaded that much might be accomplished in every way, in private circles. Such as my long residence in this country will enable me to get access to. Should it please the Society to appoint me as an agent I shall be willing to accept the agency for £220 per annum. Out of which I will agree to pay all my expenses, such as traveling, getting up meetings &c. (which as you know are great in England). This money I will agree to raise here, & also to forward the Society as much as possible. I shall not look to the Society for money or to interfear with its income in any way. My proceedings can be made known to you direct or through the London Emancipate Committee3 of which I am a member. I shall be please to act upon any suggestion that the your Committee may be make with regard to my mode of action. I hope your Committee will entertain my proposition, because I see how I can be useful by interesting a large class of persons who have hitherto taken little or no interest in the subject of Slavery. And at the same time render service to the Society by being the means of increasing its income. I have forgotten that I left this note with you. I thank you for tring to collect the money for me. We hope we shall have the pleasure of seeing Miss Mattie Griffith,4 of whom we have read much. There are few more noble hearted or less selfish persons than herself. I am Sorry I made a mistake with regard to Mr. [Dennett’s] name. Which to gether with other faults I hope you will be kind enough to correct. The Newspapers here say that the publication of my little volume5 will do good. At any [rate,] I think it will prepare the way for something better from myself. Hoping that Mr. Garrison, Mr. Phillips, Mr. Jackson6 & in fact, all our old friends are well. P.S. my wife joins in I remain, dear Mr. May, Yours very respectfully, Wm. Craft P.S. My wife joins in kind regards to you [all]. I shall be glad to hear from you at your earliest [convenience.] Antislavery Collection, Boston Public Library, Boston, Mass. Published by courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library. 1. Craft refers to his wife, Ellen, and their first three sons, Charles Estlin Phillips, William, Jr., and Brougham. 2. American Anti-Slavery Society. 3. The London Emancipation Committee was founded in 1859 by Frederick W.

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Chesson. After twice failing to organize a national British Garrisonian antislavery society, Chesson envisioned the London committee as an association of Garrisonians living in London. He sought to expand the organization and to spread antislavery enthusiasm by promoting contact between the British reform public and American antislavery notables—a practice that Garrisonian groups in the North and West Country had used successfully. Chesson enlisted William and Ellen Craft, the nominal leaders of the London Garrisonian antislavery community, as members of the association’s executive committee. After an auspicious beginning, the committee became moribund but was revived three years later when Britishers were spurred to action by the prospect of the Emancipation Proclamation and by the belief that the Union cause needed a British organization. The committee reconstituted itself as the London Emancipation Society in November 1862 and dedicated itself to the needs of the American freedmen for the remainder of the Civil War. Temperley, British Antislavery, 253–57; Rice, Scots Abolitionists, 162, 167–69; Blackett, “Fugitive Slaves in Britain,” 53–57; Lib, 1 July 1859. 4. Martha “Mattie” Griffith (?–1906) was the daughter of Kentucky slaveholders Thomas and Martha Young Griffith. Long an opponent of slavery, she emancipated six family slaves and resettled them in Ohio. Her resulting unpopularity in Kentucky forced her to move in the mid-1850s to Philadelphia, where she wrote antislavery fiction. Her Autobiography of a Female Slave (1856) and “Madge Vertner,” a novel serialized in the National Anti-Slavery Standard during 1859–60, made her a favorite of Garrisonian abolitionists. She became active in female Garrisonian fund-raising activities and made a successful antislavery tour of the British Isles in 1860. Upon her return to the United States, she moved to Boston and supported herself by writing poems and stories for Boston and New York journals. In 1867 she married prominent bureaucrat, journalist, and banker Albert Gallatin Browne; they had no children. Merrill and Ruchames, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, 4:417, 441; ASA, April 1858, 1 September 1859, 1 November 1860, 1 May 1862, 1 January 1863; NASS, 30 July 1859–5 May 1860; Riach, “Ireland and Campaign against Slavery,” 530; NCAB, 19:316. 5. William and Ellen Craft’s narrative, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, was published by William Tweedie in London in 1860 and was priced at a shilling. The volume was evidently written in London during the late 1850s and was intended by the Crafts to be “merely . . . an account of our escape” from slavery, not a full autobiography. Although well received by the antislavery press, which thought it “graphic” and “entertaining,” a second edition was never printed. Craft and Craft, Running a Thousand Miles, iii–iv; ASA, 2 July 1860; I, 21 July 1860. 6. Francis Jackson.

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84. Speech by Theodore Gross Delivered at the Large Room Wesleyan Centenary Hall, London, England 28 September 1860 The concept of a British antislavery lecture tour was well defined by 1860, but successfully setting it in motion frequently required luck, timing, persistence, and proper connections. Former slaves Tabb Gross and Lewis Smith arrived in England during July 1860 to raise funds to purchase Smith’s four oldest children out of slavery in Kentucky. Both men brought excellent references and modest experience on the American antislavery lecture circuit, but their independent status frustrated their early efforts to establish a fruitful fund-raising campaign. They had been in England two months when they participated in a meeting crucial to their success. The gathering was held on the evening of 28 September 1860 at the Large Room, Wesleyan Centenary Hall, Bishopsgate. It was sponsored by Rev. William B. Boyce, who opened the proceedings by singing a popular hymn; Rev. Benjamin Field offered a prayer. After Gross and Smith addressed the assembly, Rev. William Arthur rose and urged those in attendance to solicit contributions for the fugitives. He was followed to the rostrum by Rev. Elijah Hoole, who volunteered to act as treasurer for the fund, publicly certifying the integrity of the fund-raising campaign. Blassingame, Slave Testimony, 346–53; WWA, 3 October 1860. The Rev. Mr. GROSS,1 of the African Episcopalian Church in Cincinnati,2 (who on rising was cordially welcomed by the meeting.) Before proceeding to the case of his Brother Smith,3 he asked permission to make a few remarks personal to himself. There was a considerable difference between his present position—standing upon that platform—and that which he formerly occupied on the plantation of his old master. His feelings, on looking around, almost overpowered him. Though accustomed to preaching, it was to men who had been in his own condition. Born a slave, and not possessing the advantages of early or considerable education, he could scarcely hope to interest an audience like the present, but if they would allow him he would address them in the same plain manner in which he was accustomed to speak at home. The first that he knew of his own history was that he found himself upon a slave island, or plantation, in one of the Eastern states of America. How he came there, or why, he knew not, but he was under the care of his parents, and particularly of his mother. As soon as he became fit for service, he was claimed by his master, and from the first day that he was

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taken from her to work, he found—which he had never known before— what it was to be a slave; and from that day to this he had carried an aching heart. It was true he was now a free man. These hands (which he held forth) were his own; and he had now a general warranty-deed from his earthly master, allowing him (the speaker) the free use of those hands, which were given to him in the first instance by his Master in heaven. His first master (a Mr. Easthope)4 whom he served on the eastern coast of America, lived and died a drunkard; and the speaker was one out of 47 slaves—bodies and souls—that were sold to pay his debts. Four times in his life had he (Mr. Gross) been led upon the block, and sold to the highest bidder—fortunately for himself, on each successive occasion he was sold to a better master—or at least to one less vile than his predecessor. The fourth and last time was to a Minister of the Gospel—under whom, though still a slave, he preached for years. If he had not passed into that man’s hands he might now have been on the cotton or rice plantations of Georgia. He used to work him (Mr. G.) hard, but said he expected to die some day, and if he continued faithful till his death, he would, by his will, set him free. He, however, began to fear that his old master would live longer than himself, and therefore set about seeking the means of purchasing his freedom—which his master consented to grant, if he could pay him the price at which he had been bought. Returning to the period of his youth, the speaker narrated how at the time of the sale of himself and forty-six others he entertained no hope of ever gain-ing his liberty. The first lot sold was his own brother—whose purchaser was immediately warned by the auctioneer that if the slave escaped he, the new master, would lose his money; the slave appealed, however, to his new master against the use of shackles, said he would not run away, and entreated him to buy the next lot—his brother, (the speaker;) the buyer did so; both then promised not to attempt to escape, and entreated him to buy their mother; but he said she was too old, and would not suit him; she was sold to another master. At evening, when they parted, she said to her sons, they would perhaps never see her again on earth, but she entreated them to meet her in heaven. The speaker was then fourteen years of age. These words of his mother’s made such an impression on his mind as he could never forget. Thirty years have since elapsed, but he has never been able to ascertain where she is, or whether dead or alive, but he doubts not she has long since ceased to wear those fetters which were then upon her person, and he trusts, ere long, to meet her where sorrow and sighing are no more. But before his mother was put upon the block, the very next lot to himself was his half-sister—a girl of seventeen, half white, the daughter of his deceased master. Her appearance excited the whole crowd of spectators—before whom she had to stand in full view. When she was put up, her two half-brothers entreated their new master to buy her, but he replied the bidding would, he

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thought, be overdear. He (Mr. Gross) had been born a slave, and had been up to that time a slave, and amongst slaves, and was then fourteen years of age, but never in all his life had he been so disgusted as on that occasion—nor could he now think without utter disgust and indignation, of what he was impelled then to witness. There was his sister exposed to the gaze of those rude men, who came up to her, and demanded answers from herself to such questions as are usually put to persons like herself on the block. She refused to answer, and the speaker saw the big tears running down her cheeks. He (Mr. Gross) heard the most unsuitable questions put to her, with blood-chilling oaths. Then were his eyes opened to what slavery was, and he thought, had he the chance, he would rather have taken a dart, and died, than have lived to witness such atrocity. The buyers, often, have no respect for the feelings of the slaves, nor sense of decency before them. Not to describe their conduct, he would merely state that the slaves, equally nude, are exposed, handled, and examined by these buyers exactly as they or an English horse-dealer would examine a horse that is offered in a fair. His sister was sold for 1,702 dollars. (Sensation.) Let him ask one question, Was that large price paid because she was half white? If she was half white she could do no more work than a person wholly white—nor than if she had been wholly black. Then for what reason was the extra price paid? Simply because, though the blood of the white man flowed in her veins, she was beyond the law that protected the white owners, and they could use her as they pleased. When he (the speaker) thought of those scenes of the slave block, he was led to ask, was there any man or woman under the sun, having human feelings, that would not hate slavery? The speaker entered into some further affecting particulars as to the parting with his mother, the influence of her advice upon himself, the conflicting feelings which he had from time to time experienced, and the strong temptation which he had felt to run away from slavery. He said the misery of slavery did not consist in hunger, or poor diet, or exposure to heat, or lashes—these are evils belonging to slavery, and which a slave soon forgets—but that which preys upon his mind is the thought that his wife and his children and nearest relatives may any day or hour be sold and sent away where he will see them no more. Sometimes immediately after marriage, husband and wife are thus separated. The husband and father selected to be sent away, after enjoying an evening with his children—if that can be called enjoyment—when he thinks that at any moment they may be separated for ever by the will and fiat of another—in the dead of night is aroused, the handcuffs are put on him, and he is ordered to march; if he thinks to resist, to overcome the overseer and escape, the sight of the loaded revolver, and the threat of the instant receipt of its contents, compel him to submit. Could the American people make a law to stop the selling of slaves, it would abolish half the misery of the system. But

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there is no relief from the perpetual dread of separation. Slaves have feelings, just the same as other men. The speaker related how strongly he was tempted to run away from his old master, but the advice of his wife prevailed with him; she said—I know it is hard to be a slave, but it is no harder for you than for me; besides, if you run away to Canada with the hope of getting me there also, before you can effect my removal, the master, expecting it, will have sold me and sent me away—where you will never know. He committed himself to God in prayer; and God had heard his prayer; he prayed for conversion and God had given him that; he prayed for freedom, and God gave him that; he prayed for the freedom of his wife and children, and God had given him that; and he trusted the like would be the case with his brother, Lewis Smith. When both were slaves they each gave their word to the other—he (Mr. Gross) a preacher, on one side of the street, and Lewis Smith, a deacon or leader of the congregation opposite, that if one got liberty first he would help the other. When he (Mr. Gross) had gained his liberty, Mr. Smith reminded him of the promise; he (Mr. Gross) acknowledged its validity, but said there was a still nearer claim upon him, and that was the release of his wife. His own liberty had cost him 1,000 dollars, of which he had saved 700 dollars out of his earnings, and he preached and collected the remaining 300 dollars. His wife and children remained in slavery. Their master said their value was 3,200 dollars, but if he could raise sixteen hundred dollars he would release them. The speaker joined a company of twenty-six men, went to California, worked in the gold diggings, and procured and saved the money for their release. Never was he so proud in all his life as on the day when they received their liberty; he felt as if he had become sixteen feet high. (A laugh.) He was as light as a feather. (The speaker is a tall, broad-shouldered, full-faced negro, with athletic limbs, thick lips, and curly hair.) He felt to-night—though his wife was a little poor-looking creature, and only weighing 115 lb.—he felt that if he had received 200,000,000 dollars, it would not make him so happy. After giving other particulars concerning his own release, Mr. Gross proceeded to state the case of his friend Lewis Smith. Smith was clever at well-sinking, and also at almost all kinds of miscellaneous jobs, and, in the course of eighteen years had saved up 300 dollars, when an opportunity offered of purchasing his freedom if he could pay the price, 1,000 dollars, for which his master had mortgaged him. He (Mr. Gross) then set to work, preached, prayed, and travelled, and collected, and raised the necessary 700 dollars. Smith’s master’s creditor, Mr. Homberg, then offered to release his wife and seven children for 6,000 dollars. Among the children were two lads of fifteen and seventeen years, for which the creditor said he could get 1,500 dollars a piece. Though 6,000 dollars seemed an almost hopeless case, yet he and his friends set to work and collected 1,200 dollars, for which the wife and three children were re-

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leased. 4,800 dollars were still necessary to procure the liberation of the remaining four. The friends of slaves and of abolition in America are liberal, and claims come oft upon them, which they liberally meet: after having done so much, they recommended this appeal to be made in England, to friends of the oppressed slaves, upon whom such claims have not so often been made. Before closing, Mr. Gross related some particulars of his interview with the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher5 (cheers) and the way in which that gentleman first investigated and then took up this case. Having satisfied himself as to the truth of all the facts, and the genuineness of the letters produced from gentlemen whose handwriting he knew, he asked Mr. Gross if he could preach, and, after hearing his modest statement respecting himself, did not urge a request to occupy the pulpit, but, at the close of one of his own discourses, produced some of the letters, related the case to his congregation, told them there were two coloured brethren present, in the congregation (alluding to himself and Mr. Smith, connected with this case) and desired them to plant themselves in the doorways so that the congregation could not leave without an opportunity of offering their contributions. Mr. Beecher himself brought up the first hatful of offerings. It was by such means the money for the release of Mrs. Lewis Smith and three children was obtained; and the speaker and his friends had with them letters and documents in proof of their statements. In conclusion, the speaker called upon Mr. Lewis Smith to produce a photograph of the family group of himself, wife, and children—copies of which were handed round the room. Watchman and Wesleyan Advertiser (London), 3 October 1860. 1. Theodore (Tabb) Gross (1816–?) was born a slave on a Maryland plantation. At age fourteen, he and his brother were sold to help pay their owner’s debts. Gross was sold three more times in the next eleven years—the last time to a minister from Germantown, Kentucky, who struggled with the idea of slavery; he urged Gross to preach and to obtain an education. In 1850 Gross convinced his master to sell him his freedom. Gross was allowed to travel north, where he raised the $1,000 necessary for his purchase by appealing to congregations in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New York. In 1852 he traveled to the California gold fields to raise $1,600 to buy freedom for his wife and four children. Sometime after his return to Kentucky with the funds, Gross honored an arrangement he had made with Lewis Smith, another slave. The two men had become friends in the early 1840s and had agreed that whoever acquired freedom first would assist the other to do the same. In 1856 Gross and Smith began raising funds to buy Smith and his wife and seven children out of slavery. A portion of it was raised during an 1860 British tour undertaken for that purpose. The two men were assisted by many clergymen, particularly Elijah Hoole, D.D., who agreed to act as the fund treasurer and thereby certify their efforts. When Gross and Smith returned to America, Gross resumed his position as minister to an African

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Methodist Episcopal church in Cincinnati. He also began a successful career as a provision merchant, earning enough income to live in a home that was described as a “mansion” and using his funds to support local civic organizations. Blassingame, Slave Testimony, 346–53; BF, 1 February 1861; WWA, 3 October 1860; WAA, 14 October, 23 December 1865. 2. “Elder” Gross, as he was known by his parishioners, was pastor of Allen Chapel, an African Methodist Episcopal congregation in Cincinnati, Ohio. Organized in 1824, the church had been served earlier by a number of black clergymen, including Molliston Madison Clark (1843–44). During Gross’s ministry there, he initiated the building of a new church structure for the congregation. Dabney, Cincinnati’s Colored Citizens, 365–67. 3. Lewis Smith (1825–?) was born a slave on a Mason County, Kentucky, plantation. He was separated from his parents when his master died in 1837. In 1844 Smith married a slave from a nearby plantation and with her had seven children. In 1854 he became the property of his wife’s master, who offered Smith the opportunity to purchase his freedom for $1,000. Smith saved $300 and then approached his friend Theodore (Tabb) Gross, a former slave, for assistance. Smith and Gross had met in the early 1840s and agreed that whoever acquired his freedom first would assist the other. Gross had bought his own freedom in 1852 with funds he solicited from various churches in the Midwest, New York, and Pennsylvania. He and Smith raised sufficient funds at many of the same congregations to buy Smith. A short time later, when Smith’s owner offered to sell Smith his family for $6,000, providing the purchase was completed by May 1861, the two appealed for contributions again. After acquiring $1,200 in America, Smith and Gross traveled to Britain in July 1860, seeking the balance. Their efforts were successful, and Smith’s wife and seven children were freed. When Smith returned to America, he settled in Ripley, Ohio, and purchased a ten-acre farm. In 1868 Smith returned to England on behalf of his Ohio congregation, seeking $1,000 to build their chapel and a schoolhouse, which had been destroyed by a Confederate raiding party during the Civil War. The fund-raising campaign was successful, but Smith’s fifth child, Alfred, who made the trip with his father, died while abroad. Blassingame, Slave Testimony, 346–53; BF, 1 February 1861; WWA, 3 October 1860; Jacob Odgers, The Ransomed Slave: Biographical Sketch of Lewis Smith (Redruth, England, 1868), 9– 32. 4. Tabb Gross’s first master, a Mr. Easthope (?–1830), owned a large slave plantation in eastern Maryland. Although he was in considerable debt at the time of his death, his ownership of forty-seven slaves indicates that he was, at one time, a successful slaveholder. Blassingame, Slave Testimony, 346–47. 5. Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) was apparently instrumental in confirming the worthiness of Gross’s fund-raising efforts in the United States. A leading public figure in mid-nineteenth-century America, Beecher achieved a wide following for his preaching and writings. The Congregationalist Beecher preached at the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn so successfully that the congregation averaged a weekly attendance of twenty-five hundred persons. The Beecher family was known for its outspoken antislavery views: Beecher’s sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was widely known for her antislavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Beecher himself counseled disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Law. He supported

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the women’s suffrage movements and, in his later years, embraced the theory of evolution. For Beecher, the objective of preaching was to effect a moral change, and he fashioned his sermons accordingly. DAB, 2:129–35; Clifford E. Clark, Jr., Henry Ward Beecher, Spokesman for a Middle-Class America (Urbana, Ill., 1978), 84– 98.

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85. Speech by Martin R. Delany Delivered at the City Hall, Glasgow, Scotland 23 October 1860 In August 1860, black emigrationist Martin R. Delany began a lecture tour on “Africa and the African Race.” Delany hoped to convince British commercial cotton interests to finance his African venture and to encourage businessmen to enter into the West African trade. He lectured for two months in England under the sponsorship of the African Aid Society, then concentrated his efforts in Glasgow from early October through 3 December. He lectured to a public meeting convened at the Glasgow City Hall on the evening of 23 October. A “respectable” audience filled the hall to nearly three-quarters’ capacity. Delany and meeting chairman Henry Dunlop shared the platform with Hugh Tennent, black Canadian clergyman Thomas Kinnard, and several other Glasgow abolitionists. Dunlop introduced Delany with brief remarks on the importance of cotton manufacture for the British economy and its dependence on slave-grown American cotton. Delany’s lecture followed. At Tennent’s recommendation, a fund-raising committee was appointed to assist Delany and to finance black traders along the West African coast. Delany’s message reached many other cotton entrepreneurs when it was reprinted in the 2 November issue of the Cotton Supply Reporter, a Manchester trade journal. Richard Blackett, “In Search of International Support for African Colonization: Martin R. Delany’s Visit to England, 1860,” CJH 10:320–22 (December 1975); Ullman, Martin R. Delany, 246; CSR, 2 November 1860. Dr. DELANY commenced by describing the route he had pursued in his travels in Africa.1 Starting from the northern extremity of Liberia, he travelled through its entire extent, a distan[ce] of 700 miles. He continued his course to the interior of Africa. The first city he visited belonging to Central Africa was Lagos, containing a population of 45,000; from thence he proceeded to Abeokuta, containing 110,000 of a population; thence to Ijaye, with a population of 78,000; Oyo, with a population of 75,000; Ogbomosha, with a population of 75,000; Ilorin, with a population of 120,000; Iwo, with a population of 78,000; and Ibadan, containing 250,000 inhabitants. The climate of Africa was very imperfectly known. From observations he (Dr. D.) had made, the average heat during the nine months was only 85 degrees; sea and land breezes blew during the day excepting from ten in the morning till half-past-three, which rendered the climate very mild, especially along the coast. Diseases were very simple, the principal being intermittent and bilious fevers. He then

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alluded to the minerals, vegetables, and animals of the country. The people were also very industrious, sociable and polite. They were also very hospitable and benevolent. Every town was also provided with a market place, and he had seen himself as many as 15,000 people assembled at one of these markets for the purpose of trading. He then referred to the cotton supply of Africa. It was estimated that there were five millions of people in Great Britain depending directly upon the cotton manufacture. If so, then these people were at the mercy and caprice of four millions of American slaves. But further, it was computed that about three-fourths of the population of Great Britain depended upon the manufactures of cotton for a livelihood. Now, in Africa, there was as much land appropriate to the cultivation of cotton, or capable of raising it, as three or five times the extent of the island of Great Britain. In the whole of the country he visited, cotton was manufactured by the natives, but they only used what was required for their own purposes, because they had no sale for it, and the consequences were that what they did not use was allowed to fall upon the ground and rot. No capital was required for the land there, and none was required for the workers, because the men were free, and they were among the most industrious people known. Then the Americans had but one crop of cotton in the year, whereas in Africa they had two, or one continuous crop. While in America they replanted it every year, in Africa they only required to replant it every seven years. This showed conclusively that the whole cotton supply necessary for the British market could be obtained in Africa.2 There was every facility there for producing a sufficient supply of cotton. They could place in Africa five millions of free workers in the cotton fields if necessary. (Applause.) And what an advantage this would be to the British people! It was not the Americans who were producing the cotton; they were depending for this upon the blacks, and though they were regarded as slaves, subject to the will of the Americans, they were not always expected to remain so. Supposing a war was to break out between this country and America, which was not improbable, or supposing a movement like that of John Brown’s3 to be successful, what was to become of three-fourths of the British people depending on cotton manufactures? There was no other people could raise cotton like the black man, for both his nature and country were adapted for raising it. If the African cotton was at present the best brought into the British market, what would it be when civilisation was introduced into Africa? (Applause.) Dr. Delany then described the cotton grown there, some of which was as fine as silk, and was produced in great abundance. Dr. Delany concluded a highly interesting lecture, which was listened to with great attention throughout, amidst great applause. The Cotton Supply Reporter (Manchester, England), 2 November 1860

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1. Martin R. Delany arrived at Cape Palmas, Liberia, on 10 July 1859 and reached Monrovia, three hundred miles to the northwest, two days later. During a threeweek stay in the city, he traveled inland up the St. Paul’s River before returning to Cape Palmas after mid-August. He explored along the Cavalla River into the Liberian interior with Alexander Crummell. In mid-September, Delany sailed for Lagos, where he spent five weeks. Near the end of October, he ventured inland into Yoruba along the Ogun River, as far as the Egba capital of Abeokuta, where he found Niger Valley Exploring Party associate Robert Campbell waiting for him. After successfully negotiating a treaty with the Egba chiefs, Delany and Campbell left to explore further inland on 16 January 1860. Following the trade route of the old Oyo Empire, they proceeded nearly 225 miles inland, reaching northward as far as Ilorin and visiting, in succession, the interior cities of Ijaye, Oyo, and Ogbomosha along the way. Their return was plagued by incidents of Yoruban warfare; Delany was stranded at Oyo, and Campbell was captured and temporarily detained by Ibadan warriors. Eventually visiting Iwo and Ibadan, they returned through Abeokuta to Lagos, from which they sailed on 10 April 1860 for Britain. Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 200–206, 216. 2. In 1860 Britain consumed over a billion pounds of raw cotton, more than 80 percent of it imported from the United States. Despite propagandizing by the Cotton Supply Association (1857–72) about the potential of West Africa as a source of cotton supply, African cotton imports did not increase significantly, even during the American Civil War when the supply of U.S. cotton in Britain was reduced by nearly 50 percent. Farnie, English Cotton Industry, 94–95, 137, 142, 146–51. 3. Delany refers to John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

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86. John S. Jacobs to Isaac Post 5 June 1861 The onset of the Civil War struck black abolitionist expatriates in various ways. William G. Allen and his wife were unwilling to leave Britain, but an excited William P. Powell gathered his family and sailed for New York to support the Union. John S. Jacobs was ambivalent. Jacobs had fled to California after passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, then to England, where he married an Englishwoman. Residing primarily in London, he occasionally attended abolitionist meetings. Jacobs’s 5 June 1861 letter to antislavery friend and correspondent Isaac Post suggests the dilemma that the Civil War created for him. Jacobs returned to the United States during the war. Linda Brent, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, ed. L. Maria Child (Boston, Mass., 1861; reprint, New York, N.Y., 1973), 194; Harriet Brent Jacobs to Amy Post, 1 March, 8, 20 December [n.d.], Post Papers, NRU [16:0692, 0698, 0715]; ASA, September 1861 [13:0722]; WAA, 19 April 1862. London,[England] June 5th, 1861 My Dear Friend:1 I hope you will not judge me by my long silence. Believe me, it does not characterize the language of my heart. I do not like much to deal with words, but with actions. You and your family have shown yourselves friends to me and mine, and not to me only, but to my oppressed brethren, for whose sake I hope our Father and our God will reward you all. You that have believed in the promise, and obeyed His word, are beginning to see the moving of His hand to execute judgment and bestow mercy. Those who have long sown chains and fetters will reap blood and carnage. Their troubles have begun; God only knows where they will end. The excitement in London is daily increasing, but the greater portion of the people seem to be ignorant of the character of the slaveholder and of the cause of the disturbed state of the Union, and still more so with regard to the best means of abolishing slavery. Yesterday I read the views of one man who believed it best to let the old slaves work out the freedom of their children, and when they have died off, then let the children be free, and there would be an end to the evil. This reminded me of the story of the poorhouse, which I will not repeat. Last night I heard our tried and true friend, George Thompson, who tried to convince the people of this country of the great mistake they had made in not encouraging the cultivation of cotton in their colonies,2 and to explain the true cause of the slaveholders seceding from the Union. I am sorry to say, that

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with all the blood and guilt on the slaveholders’ souls, there are Englishmen here that dare express sympathy for them.3 I hope it is their ignorance, and not the want of humanity. I do not think of leaving London at present. I shall wait to see what course the North intends to pursue. If the American flag is to be planted on the altar of freedom, then I am ready to be offered on that altar, if I am wanted; if it must wave over the slave, with his chains and fetters clanking, let me breathe the free air of another land, and die a man and not a chattel. I am yours, truly, JOHN S. JACOBS 4 National Anti-Slavery Standard (New York, N.Y.), 29 June 1861. 1. Isaac Post (1798–1872) was born in Westbury, Long Island, New York. A Quaker by birth and a longtime resident of Rochester, New York, Post was an early abolitionist. He was active in the underground railroad and a close friend of several black abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, William C. Nell, and Jeremiah B. Sanderson. Amy Post, Isaac’s wife, was an associate of Susan B. Anthony. In 1845 the Posts resigned from the Quaker meeting in Rochester, indicating that their membership interfered with their abolition activity. Isaac Post died in Rochester, New York, in 1872; Amy Post died on 20 January 1889. DAB, 8(1):117. 2. The 4 June meeting to which Jacobs refers apparently went unrecorded. But at the time Thompson was making an English lecture tour, during which he expressed his hope that the effect of the Civil War on the cotton supply would prompt Britain to lessen its dependence on slave-grown southern cotton. ASA, July 1861; Lib, 28 June 1861. 3. The Confederacy found support among British Radicals and Liberals, as well as within the Conservative party, whose leading figures tended to be particularly prosouthern. By 1862 the lack of cotton, created by the Union blockade of Confederate ports, encouraged pro-Confederate feeling among the working class as unemployment increased in the textile industry. Some dominant political figures and many members of the London aristocracy were secretly sympathetic to the Confederate cause. The Confederacy also generated support in British newspapers. British popular support for the Confederacy developed for a variety of reasons, including economic ties, disgust for American tariff policies, a belief in the inherent right of self-determination, and a suspicion that the North might invade Canada once the South was defeated. Despite the efforts of Confederate diplomats, propaganda agents, and sympathizers, the British government maintained a policy of neutrality. Mary Ellison, Support for Secession: Lancashire and the American Civil War (Chicago, Ill., 1972), 5–14, 24–25, 162; Brian Jenkins, Britain and the War for the Union, 2 vols. (Montreal, 1974), 2:41–43, 317–19, 343; Wilbur D. Jones, “The British Conservatives and the American Civil War,” AHR 58:528, 540 (April 1953); Joseph N. Hernon, Jr., “British Sympathies in the American Civil War: A Reconsideration,” JSH 33:359, 362 (August 1967); Kevin J. Logan, “The Bee-Hive Newspaper and British Working-Class Attitudes toward the American Civil War,” CWH 22:337–48 (December 1976). 4. John S. Jacobs (1820–?), born to mulatto slave parents in Edenton, North Carolina, was the brother of Harriet A. Jacobs (Linda Brent), the author of the

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slave narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). Jacobs was owned by four different slaveholders during his eighteen years in slavery. By the late 1830s, he was in Washington, D.C., the slave of a Whig congressman from North Carolina, from whom he escaped. Jacobs settled in New Bedford, and for three and a half years he worked aboard the whaler Frances Henrietta. After his sister’s escape from slavery in the mid-1840s, they lived for several years in Boston. In November 1847, he and the celebrated Florida abolitionist Jonathan Walker began an antislavery lecture tour that took them into Massachusetts and New York State, where they sold antislavery publications (including Walker’s narrative) and subscriptions to the Liberator and National Anti-Slavery Standard. Their tour was plagued by small audiences, frequent hecklers, clerical criticism (for speaking on Sunday), and a “shower of musket shot” aimed at Walker. Despite this, Jacobs was described by the National Anti-Slavery Standard as a speaker “scarcely excelled by any of his predecessors,” including Frederick Douglass. By 1849 Jacobs was settled in Rochester, New York, was acquainted with Douglass, and was a traveling lecture agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society, particularly throughout western New York State. He also found time to open several businesses in Rochester, including an antislavery reading room and “oyster saloon.” By late 1850 Jacobs accepted disunion as a sure and bloodless means of emancipation. He urged blacks to unite in radical opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law and advised fugitives to arm themselves and to allow slave catchers to return only their “dead bodies” back into slavery. His need to elude slave catchers and the failure of his Rochester business ventures soon led him to migrate to California. By 1858 Jacobs was living in England and had married an Englishwoman. He occasionally attended London antislavery meetings and, in February 1861, published “A True Tale of Slavery,” his serialized slave autobiography, in the Leisure Hour. Jacobs returned to New York City by April 1862. Brent, Slave Girl, ix, 3, 5, 7, 13, 62, 135– 36, 138–39, 163, 175, 178, 194; LH, 7, 14, 21, 28 February 1861; Lib, 3 December 1847, 11 February, 31 March, 12, 26 May 1848 [5: 0606]; NSt, 7 April 1848, 26 January, 9 March, 20 April, 4 May, 10 August, 2 November 1849 [5:1064, 1067, 1084]; NASS, 6 January 1848, 17 May, 7 June 1849, 10 October 1850; Harriet Brent Jacobs to Amy Post, 1 March, 8, 20 December [n.d.], Post Papers, NRU [16:0692, 0698, 0715]; ASA, September 1861 [13:0722]; WAA, 19 April 1862.

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87. Speech by John Anderson Delivered at Exeter Hall, London, England 2 July 1861 No one filled British antislavery lecture halls like a well-known fugitive slave. Escaped slave John Anderson became a celebrity in British and American antislavery circles during his extradition hearing in Canada West, which resulted from American charges that he killed a white man during his flight to freedom. A meeting welcoming Anderson to Britain was described as the largest and most enthusiastic antislavery audience ever gathered in London—probably more than six thousand persons attended. It was held on the evening of 2 July 1861 in Exeter Hall. Anderson shared the platform with Canadian fugitive Thomas M. Kinnard, black abolitionist William Craft, meeting chairman Harper Twelvetrees, and members of the London Emancipation Committee and the John Anderson Committee. A welcome resolution was adopted, and after preliminary speeches, Twelvetrees presented Anderson with a small bottle of English soil on which was inscribed “John Anderson’s Certificate of Freedom.” When Twelvetrees introduced the fugitive slave as “Citizen Anderson,” the audience burst into several minutes of cheering. Anderson began his speech by referring to the enthusiasm generated by Twelvetrees’s remarks. When he finished speaking, he sat down amid “deafening applause,” and a collection was made on his behalf. Kinnard and Craft spoke later in the meeting. Anderson, Life of John Anderson, 24–123. All honour to England. All honour to Her Majesty the Queen,1 for my freedom. I2 feel very backward, the disturbance has quite upset me, and I do not know that I can make my speech out. (“Go on”—Cheers and laughter.) My worthy friend has upset me so, that I don’t know if I can get through. I feel very thankful for my escape, for I have been chased for a very long time, and have only got free about three weeks ago. I want to describe my narrow escape, but I don’t know that I shall get through with it. I feel so disturbed by a great audience like this. I thank God I have at last broken the yoke. (Hear, hear.) I thought I had seven years ago, but I never did till now, and I have to thank God and Great Britain for it. So I give all credit to Great Britain, and if I get no further in my speech, you must not blame me, for it is very hard for me to get on at all, I can tell you. (Cheers and laughter.) I will describe my escape. I remember my master, a man named Burton,3 selling me to a man named McDonald, with whom I stayed about a month and a half, and then asked if I could go and see my family. He said, “No.” I left him then and went to

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the Missouri River, but they would not let me cross unless I had a pass. I said my master had gone out, so I could not get one, but they would not let me cross. I went back and laid about till night, and then they chased me away, and I crossed the river, and got to the house of my father-in-law. I told him I was going to Canada. He said, “I have got a pistol—will you take it with you?” I said, “No.” Then I went on to my wife’s house, but a slave-catcher named Brown chased me away from there. I then ran towards Canada, and on the third day came across a man named Diggs.4 He said, “Where are you going?” I said I was making my way to some farmer’s house. He said, “I will go with you, you are a runaway.” I tried to escape, and he chased me for half a day. I begged of him for four hours not to follow me, and told him that if he did I should be obliged to slay him— but nothing would do but he must take me dead or alive. He came to take me, and I struck him a blow. He came again, and I struck him again on the left side, and he came no more. I thank God that I have had the fear of God in my soul, otherwise I should never have made my escape. I was very sorry to slay the man—I did not believe he was dead till they came to swear against me. A thousand dollars were offered to any one who would take me across the lines, and there are plenty of people in Canada who would do a great deal for that money. I will now state what religion my owners were. Burton was a Methodist, and McDonald was a Baptist—a member of the same church as myself. I know I tried to be a good man— but I doubt them very much indeed. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) Brothers and sisters, for I know I may call you so (loud cheers), I feel very much obliged to you for your attendance tonight, and for your kindness toward me, and I offer you three cheers. (Laughter.) Three cheers, then, for Her Gracious Majesty the Queen. The speaker resumed his seat amid deafening applause. John Anderson, The Story of the Life of John Anderson, Fugitive Slave, ed. Harper Twelvetrees (London, 1863), 114–16. 1. Queen Victoria. 2. John Anderson (ca. 1831–?) was born in Howard County, Missouri, the son of slave parents. His mother was the property of Moses Burton, a tobacco farmer, and his father fled slavery for South America during Anderson’s infancy. Anderson was separated from his mother at age seven when she was sold. In 1850 he married a slave named Maria Tomlin, who lived on an adjoining farm, and within a year, they had a child. In mid-August 1853, Anderson was sold to another farmer, who lived thirty miles away; the separation from his family so infuriated Anderson that he fled slavery. On the third day of his escape, when he was being pursued by Seneca T. P. Diggs, Anderson stabbed and killed Diggs during a struggle. Anderson fled to Chicago but soon moved to Windsor, Canada West, where he gained a rudimentary education during a brief enrollment in Henry Bibb’s school for fugitive slaves. He also took the name John Anderson, having been known as Jack Burton in his slave days. Six months later, Anderson received

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a suspicious letter, which he believed was sent by a slave agent and which claimed his wife wanted to meet him in Detroit. It prompted his flight to Chatham, Canada West. During 1859, while living in Caledonia, Canada West, Anderson was betrayed by a friend, who informed a local justice of the peace about the Diggs killing. The magistrate ordered Anderson arrested and entertained American extradition requests. From the moment of his arrest in mid-April 1860, Anderson became a cause célèbre in British and American antislavery circles. His release that fall was regarded as a triumph for abolitionist forces because it reaffirmed long-standing British policy toward the extradition of fugitive slaves, which provided that no individual could be sent back to the United States for committing an act that was not against Canadian law. Because Canadian law prohibited slavery, his lawyer argued that Anderson had killed Diggs in self-defense. The freed Anderson was feted at abolitionist meetings throughout the Canadas. In mid-spring 1861, Anderson was invited to England by groups active in the English component of his legal defense. He arrived there in June 1861 and found that a John Anderson Committee had been formed to raise funds for him. During the summer of 1861, Anderson attended many antislavery meetings and narrated the events of his life. In December, he enrolled in the British Training Institution near Corby, where he spent the next year. The committee eventually decided that Anderson should move to Liberia, believing his settlement there would “furnish unequalled opportunities for . . . prosperity.” Anderson was given five acres of land and sailed for Liberia on 26 December 1862, accompanied by black abolitionist Alexander Crummell. Anderson’s narrative, The Story of the Life of John Anderson, Fugitive Slave (London, 1863), was published after he left for Liberia. Anderson, Life of John Anderson; Thomas Henning to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, 20 December 1860, Thomas Henning to Joseph A. Horner, 5 July 18[61], Joseph A. Horner to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, 17, 20 July 1861, Minutes of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 4, 14 January, 8 February, 5 July, 6 December 1861, 1 May 1863, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; ASRL, 1 February, 1 May, 1 June 1861; R. C. Reinders, “Anglo-Canadian Abolitionism: The John Anderson Case, 1860–1861,” RMS 19:72–97 (1975); Blassingame, Slave Testimony, 353–58. 3. Moses Burton was a tobacco farmer and carpenter in Fayette, Howard County, Missouri, who held several slaves. Anderson, Life of John Anderson, 8. 4. Seneca T. P. Diggs.

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88. Henry Highland Garnet to Julia Garnet 13 September 1861 On 2 September 1861, Henry Highland Garnet left the United States for a second tour of Britain, this time to promote his African Civilization Society’s plans to resettle American blacks in Yoruba. On this trip, unlike his earlier voyage, Garnet was well treated on the New YorktoLiverpool steamer and, before leaving America, was able to obtain a valid U.S. passport. On 26 August 1861, despite the 1857 Dred Scott pronouncement denying black citizenship, Secretary of State William H. Seward granted Garnet a passport. This made him, in the words of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, the “first black citizen of the disUnited States.” In his 13 September letter to his wife, Julia, Garnet described the voyage. That night, he departed for London to begin his British lecture tour. Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 192, 218–26, 259; Schor, Henry Highland Garnet, 164; NASS, 26 October 1861. 23 ISLINGTON TERRACE Liverpool, Eng[land] September 13, 1861 My Dearest Wife:1 We arrived in Liverpool yesterday evening, at 5 o’clock, after an extremely pleasant passage of twelve days. We had on board four hundred passengers, 340 in the steerage, and 60 in the saloon. Twelve years ago my treatment on board of an English steamer from New York to this place was very different from that which I have just received. Then I was caged up in the steward’s room of one of Cunard’s vessels, and although a first class passenger, I was not allowed to go into the saloon, or to eat at the table with white humanity. How changed now. On a steamship belonging to the same nation I took a first class passage, asked the steward to give me my berth, and assign me my seat at the table. My ticket was given me without a remark; an elegant state-room with six berths was placed at my disposal, and my seat at the table was between two young American gentlemen, educated at St. Mary’s College in Maryland, and on their way to Rome to finish their studies for the Roman Priesthood. And I am happy to say that I did not receive a look, or hear a word during the whole voyage, that grated upon my very sensitive feelings. As usual, I was sea-sick all the voyage, more or less. When I went on board I resolved not to be sick; but as soon as we cleared Sandy Hook old Neptune called for me, and lead me to the side of the ship, and told me to throw my resolutions overboard, which I did in double-quick time, and for a while I felt as if I did not care if he threw me over after them.

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On the Sabbath, after worship, we were all gratified to see two whales. They were none of your juveniles, or babies like Barnum’s,2 but were respectable “old folks,” and like most other folks of their color, they made considerable stir. A lady exclaimed, as her little under jaw dropped down about an inch, “as nigh as I can guess,” “Oh! why do they make such a noise and commotion? They are the biggest fishes in the sea—and they are black, too.” I said, “Madam, you have accounted for the noise they make.” On the fifth day we passed an iceberg, about the size of the City Hall Park with a crystal palace resembling very much our City Hall.3 This straggling northern loafer had been cruising about in that part of the Atlantic for several weeks, and seemed bent on mischief. These icebergs will in time probably become the source of great annoyance, and dangerous to travelers across the Atlantic. The ice is of course continually increasing in the Arctic seas, and consequently detached portions of those eternal mountains of ice will continually increase in their desertions. On the tenth day a little child two years old died, and for the first time I witnessed the solemn scene of a funeral at sea. The mother of the child was a devoted Christian, and a member of one of the Presbyterian churches of New York, and died a few months ago. The father, with an aching heart, was on his way back to his native England, with his mother-less babes. God took the eldest, and its spirit went up to heaven to meet its mother. One ascended from a sick chamber on the land, the other from an almost pestilential steerage of a ship on the ocean. O how sweet was that heaven to each! Heaven is central to every portion of our sad and sorrowful earth. When the little pilgrim died, many hands were offered to lay it out. The father begged that a coffin might be made for its remains, instead of the poor sailor’s winding sheet. British tars4 at once acceded to his wishes, and a coffin was made and neatly stained. They then put the little baby in, perforated it with several holes, and put in a cannon shot, so it would easily sink. The bell struck three in the afternoon. The captain, officers and men prepared for the services, and the passengers, fore and aft, assembled as near as possible to the gangway. The captain and surgeon performed the solemn burial services of the Church of England, and at the proper place the board was tilted. A little splash was heard, and the last remains of the young voyager disappeared in a moment. Just then the sea sent up one of his awful and terrible wails which no mortal can describe, and the foam of his billows seemed to spread in white pall over the tombless grave. But the sea shall give up its dead, and they that are in their graves shall hear the voice of God, and come forth. On the eleventh day at dawn we saw the green hills of Ireland, and at 8

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we passed and saluted the Great Eastern,5 outward bound. She appeared very much like an island, or a good sized manufacturing village. While we were rolling and pitching, she triumphantly ploughed through the waves without even deigning to bow her proud head. Soon after my arrival in Liverpool I set out to find my old friends Mr. and Mrs. James Johnson,6 formerly of Troy, N.Y., and accomplished my object in twenty minutes. I found them well, and doing very well, and greatly comforted by their lovely, obedient and accomplished daughter. May God bless all “your friends and mine.” I leave to-night at 11 for London. Yours truly, HENRY HIGHLAND GARNET

A.M .,

Weekly Anglo-African (New York, N.Y.), 5 October 1861. 1. Julia Ward Williams Garnet (1811–1870) was born in Charleston, South Carolina but moved to Boston at an early age. She studied at Prudence Crandall’s Canterbury, Connecticut, school and the Noyes Academy in Canaan, New Hampshire, then taught for several years in Boston. Her marriage to Henry Highland Garnet in 1841 produced three children: James (b. 1844), Mary Highland (born ca. 1845), and a second son (b. 1850), but only Mary survived childhood. Julia Garnet organized fund-raising bazaars for Samuel Ringgold Ward’s Impartial Citizen in 1849 and presided over the Free Labor Bazaar, which accompanied the 1851 World Peace Congress in London. When the Garnets moved to Stirling, Jamaica, in 1852, she directed the Female Industrial School there. After their return to New York City in the mid-1850s, she operated a store at 174 West Thirtieth Street. Following emancipation, she worked among the freedmen in Washington, D.C. CR, 22 January 1870; Pasternak, “Rise Now and Fly to Arms,” 54–56, 60, 112–13, 120–21, 244; Henry H[ighland] Garnet to Alexander Crummell, 13 May 1837, NN-Sc [2:0053]; CA, 21 August 1841; IC, 25 July 1846; Schor, Henry Highland Garnet, 124–26; PP, 22 June 1861. 2. Garnet’s reference is to nineteenth-century American showman and circus entrepreneur Phineas T. Barnum (1810–1891). By the early 1860s, Barnum was exhibiting two small whales in a large tank in his American Museum in New York City. Neil Harris, Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum (Chicago, Ill., 1973), 165. 3. Located on Broadway, the ten-acre City Hall Park was a popular gathering place in nineteenth-century New York City. The park was bordered on one side by the New York City Hall—a unique and impressive structure built in light French Renaissance style with a white marble facade. Charles Lockwood, Manhattan Moves Uptown (Boston, Mass., 1976), 1–2, 184. 4. British Tars were sailors who got this name from their wide-brimmed, waterproof storm hats or tarpaulins. 5. The Great Eastern, a ship designed by I. K. Brunel, was completed in 1858 and assigned to the New York–Liverpool route. It was forty years before any vessel exceeded its size, but the Great Eastern never carried enough passengers to be profitable and eventually became a floating exhibition. Franklin Babcock, Spanning the Atlantic (New York, N.Y., 1931), 121–23, 149–50, 166. 6. Garnet refers to free blacks James (1821–?) and Charity Johnson (1826–?) and

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their daughter Charolotte (1841–?). He had evidently made their acquaintance while he was a clergyman in Rensselaer County, New York, during the 1840s. Born in New York, James Johnson had worked as a waiter in Troy before moving with his family to Liverpool, England, sometime during the 1850s or early 1860s. United States Census, 1850.

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89. Henry Highland Garnet to Henry M. Wilson 27 September 1861 After arriving in London, where he hoped to advance plans for a Yoruban settlement, Henry Highland Garnet stayed at the home of Julia Griffiths Crofts, a prominent British abolitionist and close friend of Frederick Douglass. There he began organizing his lecture schedule and advertised his availability in the Anti-Slavery Reporter. Garnet announced that he was “open to engagements in London or the provinces.” On 27 September 1861, he reported on his first two weeks in England to Rev. Henry M. Wilson of New York, who directed the affairs of the African Civilization Society in his absence. Garnet spent nearly three months advocating the Yoruban cause in England, often at African Aid Society meetings. He returned to the United States in late December. Schor, Henry Highland Garnet, 178; ASRL, 1 October 1861; Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 259–60. 50 BAKER STREET PORTMAN SQUARE, London, [England] Sept[ember] 27, 1861 REV. H. M. WILSON :1 I am again in the great English metropolis, among kind and generous friends, who without stint give me evidences of their sympathies for my injured race. At my lodgings I found my worthy friend, Professor Robert Campbell, and his interesting family, and had the happiness to congratulate him upon the birth of a fine daughter, which event gives to Britain another subject.2 The mother and child are doing well. It was also my pleasure to meet at the Anti-Slavery Office3 our eloquent friend, the Rev. J. Sella Martin,4 of Boston, who has been so fortunate as to meet with marked attention from many of the leading men who conduct the reformatory enterprises of the city. Mr. Campbell’s efforts in the great work which engages his attention, have been crowned with complete success, and in a few weeks he will be able to sail for his “mother land.” He has received the countenance and approval of many of the best men in the kingdom, who respect him, and love the cause which he has espoused. Among the philanthropists of England the motto is, “Universal emancipation, negro nationality, the extermination of the slave-trade, and the redemption of Africa.” A glorious career is before Mr. Campbell, and it is my opinion that he will make his mark upon the shores of time if it shall please God to spare his life, which will challenge the admiration of the whole race in ages yet to come. Let the young men of America arise

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from the dust, for the day is breaking, and darkness is taking its flight. The set time has come when the numerous promises of God to Africa is about to be fulfilled. The system of negro slavery is rapidly passing away, and ere long it will thunder to the ground. If “Cotton is King,” it seems to be the opinion of the combined powers of Europe that it has no divine right to reign in America, where we boast of having “a State without a King.” By recent intelligence we learn that the King of Lagos has fully ceded that important sea-port to the Crown of England, and thus that portion of the African coast which is destined to command the trade and commerce of the whole Niger Valley, is henceforth to be under the watchful eye of Great Britain, who will not only encourage the development of the vast resources of Central Africa, but will also introduce Christianity, and drive the accursed slave-traders from those shores. An English Governor is actually appointed at Lagos, and a Consul at Abeokuta.5 It is likewise stated, by those who are in a position to know, that the British Government is now organizing a powerful and a very extensive plan of operations by which the slave-trade in Dahomey will be effectually destroyed. Lieutenant Glover, late of the Niger Expedition, is now exploring the waters in the neighborhood of Porto Novo, with the view of operating against Abomey, the capital of Dahomey, should the King persist in his nefarious trade in human flesh.6 Indeed it seems to be the policy of the British Government to introduce agricultural improvements into Africa, on an extensive scale, especially in the department of cotton, accompanied by the various appliances of Christian civilization. All these grand stupendous measures have been dictated not solely by humane considerations, but likewise to a very great extent by self-interest applied to trade and commerce. Jeff. Davis7 and his rebel gang have done much towards urging the British people to look for new cotton fields. They must have cotton, and the slave States, they clearly see, will not soon be in a condition to give the requisite supply, and therefore they intend to seek it elsewhere. The two hundred millions of dollars which they annually pay to the United States for cotton will pass into other channels, and Africa will get her share; and thus in the providence of God the plant which has been the curse of her exiled children, will by intelligent labor become the blessing of her children at home. The people of England are divided into three classes as to their opinions upon the American war. Number one have no sympathy with it while the Government fail to make the abolition of slavery the plain and acknowledged issue, and if they never do this, this class do not care which conquers. Number two are with the Administration for law and order. Number three go for the South generally, and cotton in particular. In the first are found the vast majority of the English people; in the second are found a few, who are ultra in their conservatism; and the

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third is composed of those whose consciences are locked up with their treasures, and who see everything through cotton. I found on my arrival, not at all to my surprise, but greatly to my disgust, that an agent who was sent out here by the African Civilization Society two years ago, had preceded me with his libelous letters, in which he vainly attempted to depreciate me, and our cause.8 The first act of kindness that I received from my friends in London, especially intended to assure me of their undiminished confidence in me, was the presentation of these infamous letters. One gentleman gave me a wolfish letter of this person, and said he did not want it, and that he despised the spirit in which it was written. I have the production in my possession, and shall put it in my cabinet of curiosities, and shall give it a place next to an extracted fang of a slain viper. Another gentleman to whom he wrote, remarked that “he would lay up his epistle as evidence against him in some future day.” I have learned, too, that his approval and recommendation would have resulted in my certain defeat. He began to write here against me as early as last June, and was aided in his disreputable work by an unfortunate old negro, a Presbyterian minister of New York.9 They are suitable associates for each other, and no one in this country who know them, envies them. I see now why my coming to England was so much dreaded by certain individuals. I am armed with facts and documentary evidence, which some people will find it hard to meet, if I am spared to return. The African Aid Society,10 the Jamaica Cotton Company,11 the African Civilization Society of England,12 the London Emancipation Committee, and that veteran corps of anti-slavery friends, The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, have all received me most cordially. Among those to whom I am particularly indebted, I would mention Gerard Ralston, Esq.,13 Counsel General of Liberia; F. Fitzgerald, Esq.,14 Dr. Hodgkin,15 G. W. Alexander, Esq.,16 L. A. Chamerovzow, Robert Campbell, Esq., Lyons McLoud,17 and General Depuy,18 Minister from Hayti, and Stephen Bourne, Esq.19 The kindness and noble sentiments of the people here are very gratifying. It seems to me that I am in another world, and among another and a better race of beings than those with whom I have fought for these two score years and five. Coming from scenes of continual conflict, I am now enjoying a few moments of peace, only, however, to renew my strength to enter the field again—for I am enlisted for the war. I am, my dear brother, yours truly for God, universal liberty, African civilization, and negro nationality, HENRY HIGHLAND GARNET Weekly Anglo-African (New York, N.Y.), 19 October 1861.

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1. Henry M. Wilson ministered to a succession of small, black, Presbyterian congregations in New York City beginning in the 1840s after he graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary. Wilson’s appointment in May 1850 to the executive committee of the American League of Colored Laborers reflects a dominant theme in his reform career, a commitment to black social and economic self-reliance. The league promoted black unity, advocated educational programs that prepared blacks to operate their own businesses, and encouraged communities to finance local black business ventures. During the early 1850s, Wilson opposed the Fugitive Slave Law, supported the New York State Vigilance Committee, and attended the Rochester National Convention of Colored Citizens (1853). He was elected to New York’s Council of Colored Citizens, which formed at the Rochester meeting. During that same year, he and close associate J. W. C. Pennington led a protest when blacks were excluded from the Metropolitan Hall concert of famed black singer Elizabeth Greenfield. In the mid-1850s, Wilson used his pastorate of the Seventh Avenue Presbyterian Church as a base to organize the black community in New York City and to promote antislavery activity. In 1858 Wilson turned his attention to the cause of emigration; he supported James Theodore Holly’s plan to settle Haiti, and he later served as secretary of Henry Highland Garnet’s African Civilization Society. Wilson’s commitment to black organizations continued through Reconstruction. In 1866 he founded the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn and acted as the institution’s financial agent until 1870. In 1873, when the New York legislature mandated school desegregation, he organized Brooklyn blacks against the closure of four all-black schools. Mabee, Black Education in New York, 199–208; Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 186; Carlton Mabee, “Charity in Travail: Two Orphan Asylums for Blacks,” NYHi 60:55–77 (January 1974); Minutes of the First Convention of Ministers of the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches (New York, N.Y., 1857); Minutes of the Second Convention of the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches (New York, N.Y., 1858) [13:0423]; NASS, 3 January 1850, 7 April, 10 December 1853, 5 September 1863, 9 January 1864 [8:0197, 0512, 14:1029]; FDP, 6 May, 23 December 1853 [8:0264]; ASB, 23 July 1850; WAA, 30 July 1859, 16 November 1861; CR, 7 December 1861, 18 June 1864 [13:0956, 15:0405]. 2. Robert Campbell had a wife and four children. His family accompanied him to Africa when he settled there in 1862. Blackett, “Return to the Motherland,” 375, 377. 3. The offices of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society were located at 27 New Broad Street, London. 4. J. Sella Martin (1832–1876) was the son of a mulatto slave named Winnifred and her mistress’s nephew. In 1838 Martin, his mother, and his sister Caroline were sold to a Georgia slave trader. Between 1836 and 1856, Martin was sold eight times throughout the South to a variety of owners. He learned the alphabet as a house servant and, during his remaining years in slavery, used every opportunity to learn how to read and write—at one time even coaxing a fellow prisoner to tutor him while he was doing a seven-month jail term for being a discontented slave. In 1856, while working as a boatman on the Mississippi, Martin fled slavery and settled in Chicago. Within a year, he had moved to Detroit, where he briefly toured on the antislavery lecture circuit and prepared for a career in the

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ministry. During the next three years, Martin served congregations in Buffalo and Boston and earned a reputation as an excellent antislavery speaker who was willing to explore, if not endorse, various alternatives for ending slavery, including insurrection and emigration. In early 1860, Martin became pastor of the Joy Street Baptist Church, the leading black congregation in Boston, and he used the pastorate as a platform to attack slavery and to promote racial equality. In late 1861, Martin made the first of four trips to Britain. He collected $2,000 to purchase his sister Caroline and her two children out of slavery and spoke in support of the Civil War. Martin returned to America early in 1862 and served as a delegate to the Massachusetts Republican Party Convention. That fall, Martin resigned from his Boston congregation and accepted an appointment as pastor of the Free Christian Church in Bromley-by-Bow (London), which had been formed by British antislavery activist Harper Twelvetrees. Martin assumed his new position in the spring of 1863 and renewed efforts to counter Confederate propaganda by lecturing frequently at public and private meetings. He assisted British philanthropist John Curwen to found the English Freedmen’s Aid Society and to organize its local chapters and thoroughly impressed Charles Francis Adams, the American minister to Britain. Martin returned to the United States in the spring of 1864 because of poor health. He soon resumed his lecturing activity and, early in the fall, was appointed pastor of the Shiloh Presbyterian Church of New York. Within a few weeks, he received permission from church elders to return to Britain as an agent for the American Missionary Association to seek contributions for the relief of American freedmen. Martin came back to the United States late in 1865, but by April 1866, he had resigned his position and sailed to Britain for a fourth time. Martin remained abroad until 1868, when he replaced Henry Highland Garnet as pastor of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. During January 1870, he was appointed coeditor, along with Frederick Douglass, of the New National Era— the official newspaper of the National Colored Labor Bureau. He left the paper later in 1870 for a position as a special agent of the Post Office Department and, in time, seems to have served as both a postmaster and a school district superintendent in New Orleans. Martin died in New Orleans in August 1876. Blassingame, Slave Testimony, 702–35; Brown, Rising Son, 535–36; Annual Report of the Birmingham and Midland Freedman’s Aid Association, 19 May 1865, UkBPl; PFW, 9 February 1856 [10:0052]; DDA, 2 May 1857; BA, 9 June 1860; NYT, 8 December 1860; WTr, 22 November 1862; MS, 14 February, 3 March 1863; LDN, 21 May 1864; F, 1 December 1865; ASA, 1 May, 1 June, 1 October 1863, 1 March, 1 April 1864; Lib, 5, 19 August, 2, 9 December 1859, 16 June 1863, 6 March, 22 July 1864 [15:0362, 0460]; NASS, 18 April 1857, 4 February, 9 June 1860, 7 December 1861, 9 August, 13 September 1862, 10 January, 14 March, 20 June 1863, 28 May, 18 June, 6 August, 15 October 1864, 14, 21 January, 4, 11 February, 11 March 1865, 23 October, 18 December 1869, 8, 15 January, 27 August, 3 September 1870; DM, April 1860, January, March 1861, June 1862; SW, May 1872, September 1876; Minutes of the Congregational Meeting of the Prince St. Presbyterian Church, 11 April 1866, Shiloh Presbyterian Church Session Minutes, PPPrHi; Anderson, Life of John Anderson, 165. 5. Lagos, in the mid-nineteenth century, was the principal port for the slave

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trade and commerce in the Niger Valley. To secure their commercial interests as well as suppress the slave traffic, the British took possession of this strategic port in the Bight of Benin during August 1861. The treaty of cession permitted King Docemo (d. 1865) of Lagos to retain his title and a pension, while the city and surrounding lagoon passed under British colonial administration. William McCoskry, a merchant who had been consul at Lagos, became acting governor and served until Henry Stanhope Freeman arrived to replace him in late January 1862. The British extended their influence further by sending agents fifty miles north to Abeokuta and to other important trading centers in Yoruba to insure favorable conditions for their merchants and missionaries. William N. M. Geary, Nigeria under British Rule (1927; reprint, London, 1965), 35–40; Osae, Nwabara, and Odunsi, Short History of West Africa, 278–80. 6. Dahomey, in the nineteenth century, was a narrow kingdom situated on the Bight of Benin. A large population and a strong centralized government made it one of the most powerful, culturally developed states in West Africa. From the capital, Abomey, seventy miles inland, King Gezo (1818–58) and King Glele (1858– 89) resisted European intrusion. But they were unable to keep Porto Novo, an active slave-trading port sixty miles west of Lagos, from becoming a French protectorate during the 1850s. Slavery persisted in Dahomey until late in the century, and the Dahomeans frequently raided neighboring Yoruban towns for new stock. These “slave-hunts” hampered the British palm oil trade and missionary activity in Yoruba. The Royal Navy attempted, particularly during the mid-1860s, to curtail the Dahomey slave trade. Officials in Lagos favored an aggressive annexationist policy against Dahomey, but the British government balked. Among those calling for the annexation of Dahomean coastal areas was a British naval officer, John Hawley Glover (1829–1885). After participating in William Bailkie’s 1857–61 Niger Expedition, he served as colonial administrator and secretary in Lagos from 1863 to 1874. During the mid-1860s, Glover used British naval and military force to secure trade routes, to interfere in Dahomean affairs, and to block the Dahomean slave trade route to the coast. C. Daryll Forde and P. M. Kaberry, West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1967), 70–91; Osae, Nwabara and Odunsi, Short History of West Africa, 259–61, 280; DNB, 8:4; Boniface I. Obichere, West African States and European Expansion (New Haven, Conn., 1971), 29–30, 47, 53–58. 7. Garnet refers to the policy of the Confederate government, under the leadership of President Jefferson Davis (1808–1889), of starving the English textile industry of southern cotton to pressure Britain to recognize the Confederate States of America. As Garnet suggests, the British found other sources of cotton. Davis, a graduate of the United States Military Academy (1828), was an army officer, a Mississippi planter, and a U.S. congressman before defending southern interests in the Senate and as Franklin Pierce’s secretary of war from 1847 to 1861. Early in 1861, he was elected president of the Confederacy. At the end of the Civil War, Davis was imprisoned for two years in Fortress Monroe, Virginia. He spent his final decades in Mississippi. DAB, 5:123–31. 8. The African Civilization Society agent referred to was Theodore Bourne, a New York, Dutch Reformed minister and the son of George Bourne, an early abolitionist and anticolonizationist. A man of eclectic reform interests, Theodore

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Bourne served as agent of the New York Colonization Society and corresponding secretary of the fledgling AfCS. In the summer of 1859, he went to England as the AfCS’s foreign secretary. There he raised funds and defended the society against those abolitionists who objected to African resettlement in any form. Bourne tried to establish the African Civilization Society as the proper leader of the Yoruban movement. This effort led him into conflict with Martin R. Delany, with whom he struggled to control British support for black immigration to Africa. Bourne’s activities led to the creation of the African Aid Society (an English adjunct of the African Civilization Society) in July 1860, just as he was being rejected by the new organization. His effectiveness in England was diminished by a variety of factors, including these conflicts and the presence of articulate black lecturers who were more attractive representatives of Yoruban plans. Bourne returned to the United States in March 1861. Little is known about the “libelous letters” that Bourne wrote about Garnet, but antagonism developed between the two men after the society terminated Bourne’s agency in England in fall 1860 and after he abandoned immigration to Yoruba in favor of resettlement in Liberia and Jamaica. Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 183–85, 192, 217–22, 225– 26, 243. 9. Garnet refers to J. W. C. Pennington, who visited England in 1861 and was a vigorous opponent of emigrationist organizations, including the African Civilization Society. Pennington was a member of the antiemigrationist “Smith clique” of New York City blacks, which included James McCune Smith and George T. Downing. During January 1861, he wrote several letters opposing resettlement in Haiti to the Weekly Anglo-African under the pseudonym “A Colored Presbyterian Minister.” Pennington apparently penned similar letters against Garnet and the AfCS once in England. David M. Dean, Defender of the Race: James Theodore Holly, Black Nationalist Bishop (Boston, Mass., 1979), 116n.; WAA, 19, 26 January, 2 February, 9 March 1861. 10. The African Aid Society was founded early in July 1860 by Lord Alfred Churchill and Theodore Bourne, who was an agent for the New York-based African Civilization Society. The AAS was initially formed to manage AfCS fundraising efforts in Britain. It eventually published its own journal, the African Times, developed its own program, and enlisted the support of various British groups, whose vision of African development coincided with AfCS goals. The AAS encouraged the African production of silk, sugar, and cotton, assisted the emigration from Canada to Africa of black skilled labor, fostered Christian missionary efforts, and subsidized African exploration. The association continued to function well into the 1860s. Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 225–27, 251–60; AT, 23 January 1864. 11. Garnet was welcomed to London by the Jamaica Cotton Company, a limitedliability stock company founded in London in 1861 by company secretary Stephen Bourne. Set in motion by the cotton shortage brought about in Britain by the Civil War, the company hoped to stimulate free cotton production in Jamaica. To do this, it generated £50,000 and purchased five thousand acres in St. Thomas in the East in 1862. But the expense of purchasing machinery and developing the land for cotton production soon mired the company in considerable debt. Finally, the failure of the British government to lend expected financial support and the

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end of the Civil War brought the company’s demise in 1865. WAA, 31 August, 19 October 1861; Douglas Hall, Free Jamaica, 1838–1865: An Economic History (New Haven, Conn., 1959), 128–29. 12. English advocates of black immigration to Africa established the British African Civilization Society in 1860. It probably consisted of a surviving remnant, including Thomas Hodgkin and others, of the earlier, British-based African Civilization Society founded by Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton in 1839 and largely disbanded in 1843. Evidence suggests that this newer organization was never really operative. Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall, 181. 13. Gerald Ralston was the Liberian consul general in London. He assisted several black abolitionists, including Garnet. He forwarded donations to Liberia, helped both Edward Blyden and Alexander Crummell with introductions, and was partially responsible for fugitive slave John Anderson’s settling in Liberia. ASRL, 1 January 1863; Edith Holden, Blyden of Liberia (New York, N.Y., 1966), 69, 78. 14. F. Fitzgerald was the editor of the African Times and the secretary of both the African Aid Society and the Company of African Merchants. AT, 23 January 1864. 15. Thomas Hodgkin (1798–1866) was a London physician, who published many papers on medical research, including several on what is now named Hodgkin’s disease. Hodgkin emerged as a reformer in the 1830s through antislavery pamphleteering and through membership in the ephemeral British African Colonization Society and the Aborigine’s Protection Society (1838). His lifelong support for the American Colonization Society caused many British abolitionists to view him with suspicion. Hodgkin also labored for the rights of persecuted European Jewry and the English urban poor. DNB, 9:957–58; Temperley, British Antislavery, 267n. 16. George W. Alexander (1802–1890) was a wealthy London Quaker banker, who, with his wife, Sarah, became active in social reform during the 1830s. He helped found the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, served as the organization’s first treasurer, and was one of its chief financial backers from 1839 to 1847. Alexander traveled in Europe and the United States to promote antislavery, investigated West Indian labor practices, and occasionally wrote abolitionist tracts, including Letters on the Slave Trade (1842). In the 1860s, Alexander helped lead freedmen’s aid efforts. MEB, 6:74; Temperley, British Antislavery, 69, 72–73, 82, 186–87, 195, 228. 17. J. Lyons McLeod, a former naval officer acquainted with West Africa, was appointed consul at Lokoja in 1866 but had to leave his post in 1868 because of ill health. Geary, Nigeria under British Rule, 168–69. 18. Garnet refers to General A. Dupuy, a Haitian financier and diplomat. Expelled from Haiti during the regime of Faustin Soulouque, Dupuy settled in California, where he made his fortune in commercial pursuits. He later returned to Haiti, entered government service, and by 1861 was minister resident of Haiti in London. In mid-1862, President Fabre Geffrard named Dupuy to the Haitian cabinet as his secretary of state of finance and commerce. PP, 26 June, 21 August 1862. 19. Stephen Bourne (1792–1868) edited the London World and promoted na-

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tional religious toleration and reform prior to developing an interest in Jamaican cotton production during the Civil War. He founded and served as secretary of the Jamaica Cotton Company and as a stipendiary magistrate in Jamaica. Bourne died in London in 1868. MEB, 1:351.

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90. J. Sella Martin to George L. Ruffin 10 October 1861 The coming of the Civil War altered the relationship between black Americans and the federal government. Many black abolitionists curtailed their antislavery critique and sought emancipation by allying with the Union against the Confederacy. Some, including black Boston minister J. Sella Martin, took this crusade to Britain. Armed with letters of introduction from New England abolitionists and clergymen, Martin made the first of four trips to Britain in August 1861. He hoped to influence British public opinion about the war and to raise funds to purchase his sister Caroline and her children out of slavery in Columbus, Georgia. Although bothered by chronic illness, he succeeded. English abolitionists appointed John Curwen of Plaistow as secretary of the Caroline Martin Fund, which collected £500. Martin’s 10 October letter to black jurist George L. Ruffin, a member of his Boston congregation, was written near the beginning of his English labors; he appeared at several meetings before this date, including a 1 October meeting of the London Emancipation Committee. J. Sella Martin to Gerrit Smith, 2 July 1861, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU [13:0612]; Lib, 24 October 1862; Blassingame, Slave Testimony, 735; Frederick William Chesson Diary, 1 October 1861, UkMJr. 14 Oxford St[reet] London, [England] Oct[ober] 10, 1861 My Dear friend1 I suppose you think that you have been strangly neglected as I promised to write to you but illness must excuse my silence as it has prevented both the disposition and the command of time in the matter of friendly correspondence. I now find myself however a great deal better than I have been for years and I take this opportunity of making it known to one about whose interest and solicitude for me I have no doubt. I am just about to commence my labors in England which from present [appearances promices] to be of great importance to me personally and to the cause generally. Not only for the present do things look favorable but for the future as well so far as respects the influence to be created and left by my canvassing Great Britain which I am about to do. There is the utmost interest possible to be entertained felt in the American war and a man of any [ability] what ever can command both respectful and inthusiastic attention in his speeches. I have been prevented from going to work by two obstacles namely coming here at least two months

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before I should have come—as I came in the time of general [vacation]. And my poor health; both of which I thank God are now fully surmounted. The People have returned to their various pursuits for the winter and the season has fully commenced. I have been introduced to the right class and now the future is quite clear. You must call upon my wife2 and get the Papers as I send them and they will keep you pretty well posted at less expence than paying twenty five cents for a [letter]. I am very much pleased with nearly all I see and [illegible] no end of seeing here but I must wait till we [illegible] of them which will employ perhaps the [illegible]. There is no end to colored people here.3 Some are begging money to build churches buy relations establish Newspapers [and] build schools. Indeed they are as much of a nuciance in this [re]spect here as they are in Boston. And what is painful the [w]hite People are tired of them. Mr. Spurgion4 told me at a [m]eeting that he was glad to see one colored minister from American [w]ho came on the footing of the white clergyman. And I have quite as much reason as he to congratulate myself that I am not disgraced by any begging scheme. Some of these fellows have been over here for three years and they pastors of Churches in Canada and America at that. But there are some here doing a first rate business and they partially neutralise the bad influences of the social leeches. I have attend all the Exhibition5 with complimentary tickets and thus had an opportunity of seeing the aristocracy to advantage, which has very much confirmed my Monarchical principles for they are the real as well as the prescriptive gentlemen of England. The only draw back to an [or]der of aristocrasy is the fact that it makes such incorrigable snobs of the middle classes who get an opportunity to come between the [wind] and their nobility. I have spoken at two meetings where the great Geo. Thompson spoke6 and I occupied the most of the time for which I recieve [compliment in public] and in private that it was a magnificent oration. That speech did the work for me for I am now engaged by the league7 of which he is the public representative to hold meetings with him all over the Kingdom that is in the cities. Thompson is more than the equal of Wendell Phillips in power and quite [h]is equal in beauty. He is a great man and all England knows it and unlike the abolitionists at home he is a christian. He believes in Christ and the Bible and therein lays his [illegible] with the people. He is as active as ever and though nearly [illegible] Lord Broughm he retains all the intellectual vigor of [illegible] greater wisdom in its application now than then. There is an unaccountable degree of ignorance and prejudice existing in the public mind with regard to [American] matters and there is quite as much wickedness existing [in] the purposes of the commercial class. Mr. Thompson and I have great hope in correcting the one and defeating the other and we go about our

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work with this advantage that we have [a] settled li[n]e of defence which even the times seems to be utterly at a loss in finding any clue to the [laberynte]. I hope yourself and family may be found in the enjoyment of good health by this letter. Remember me kindly to your Dear wife8 and tell her that I remember with pleasure the meals that we have taken together and that I hope soon to have another [house] where you and her will feel at home as of yore. [I] hope Hubert and [Bertha] are well. Give my love to your mother also and tell her that I say there is no place like home after all—that while you are the equal of [W]hite people here you feel quite alone in your equality since all are strangers. Give my respect to Miss Hatten9 and your sister. I received the painful intelligence that Mr. Mollineaux was badly used by a mob. I hope [his injuries were not serious]. Should you see him make known my solicitude [about] his suffering. Give James my best regards and tell him that in the streets of London he would find an abundance of subjects for the exercise of his humor. Remember me kindly to the young men of the congregation who may enquire after me. And tell them I do not forget to mention them by name in prayer. I hope I may find some of them converted to God when I return and I need not tell [you] that my anxieties [in] this respects cluster about yourself more than ordinary interest. You are raising [children] of whose education you must give an account [and with] all your former advantages it would be both painf[ul] and culpable in you if you did not raise them not only with a love of the externals of religion with with the internal blessing of practical piety of which you should be their brightest example. And then you have to die sooner or later for which event it is never too early to prepare. You have no right to leave either your convictions or purposes in an unsettled state when you remember that you are hastening to the bar of God where no excuse will be found nor plea admitted if you are found unprepared. You are neither the slave of any tyranising passion nor the victim of any retarding circumstances which are so fatal to the consideration and resolution of some men and therefore your conversion would be comparatively easy. I hope you will give serious attention to this matter and conscience from the reception of this exhortation of one of your truest friends on earth. Settle this great and as compared with all else [illegible] [i]mportant matter about your soul. I regret to learn that the Church does not keep up as when I was at home. It is very painful to me to feel that the people do not love the cause of God for itself alone. Yet I feel that in seeking to turn their minds from my self to the savior I have done the best I could. I hope you will make what sacrifice you can to keep things as they [illegible] [and] thus put me under [s]till other obligations to you for your disinterested friendship towar[d] me and my family.

J. Sella Martin to George L. Ruffin

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I can not say now when I will be home but be assured I shall not prolong my stay further than is absolutely necessary as I am quite as anxious to be [home] and about my work as are my most ardent [friends] and supporters for me to be. God bless you my dear friend, J. Sella Martin Ruffin Family Papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C. Published by permission. 1. George Lewis Ruffin (1834–1886) was born in Richmond, Virginia, to free black parents George W. and Nancy Lewis Ruffin. In 1853 the Ruffins and their eight children moved to Boston, where young George graduated from Chapman Hall School. In 1858 Ruffin married Josephine St. Pierre, and disheartened by the Dred Scott decision, they sailed for Liverpool, England, but returned to Boston immediately after the outbreak of the Civil War. During the war, the Ruffins were active in the Home Guard and the Sanitary Commission. In 1864 George Ruffin was a prominent delegate to the National Negro Convention at Syracuse, which demanded black suffrage and supported Lincoln’s reelection. Harvard Law School’s first black graduate (1869), he was admitted to the Suffolk County bar and joined Arthur Jewell’s law firm. A Republican, Ruffin’s growing reputation among Boston blacks and in legal circles led to his election to several terms in the state legislature and Boston Common Council during the 1870s. At the same time, he developed his own thriving law practice. He also continued his attendance at black conventions, chairing the New Orleans meeting in 1872. In 1883 Ruffin was appointed Judge of the Charlestown, Massachusetts, municipal court and named Boston consul resident for the Dominican Republic. A lifelong northern leader in the struggle for black equality, he died in Boston of Bright’s disease in 1886. DANB, 535; NAW, 3:207. 2. Sarah J. Martin was the mulatto daughter of a northern farmer. She and her husband had one child, a daughter (born ca. 1863). Mrs. Martin was active in raising funds and supplies in Boston for the freedmen’s aid cause and by 1863 was president of one of the local societies established for this purpose. She accompanied her husband on his 1866–68 freedmen’s aid fund-raising tour of Britain, although poor health forced her to restrict her activities and remain in London and on the English coast during 1868. Her continuing health problems led the Martins to settle on the American Gulf Coast in 1870. J. Sella Martin to My Dear Brethren, 3 May 1867, 19 February, 16 April, 10 July 1868, 18 May 1870, AMAARC; ASA, 1 May 1863; Green, Secret City, 101. 3. During Martin’s first trip to Great Britain, from the fall of 1861 until the spring of 1862, he encountered many British blacks and also met some black American abolitionists who had settled there or who, like himself, were on tour. Martin probably also saw a number of the black American freedmen who had fled to Britain during the early months of the Civil War. 4. This is probably a reference to Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–1892), a Baptist preacher whose popularity at the pulpit of New Park Street Church, Southwark, and at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London made him one of the best-known ministers of his day. DNB, 53:433–45; MEB, 3:696–97. 5. It is likely that J. Sella Martin refers to the London Exhibition of 1862. Al-

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though the exhibition was not formally opened to the public until May 1862, a limited number of preview passes were available to inspect the facilities, which were already in place before they were ready for public viewing. TL, 9 March, 12 June, 19 November 1861, 6 February, 18 May 1862. 6. Martin and Thompson both spoke at the 1 October meeting of the London Emancipation Committee; on 10 October 1861, the date on which Martin’s letter was written, Martin and Thompson addressed an evening meeting at the town hall in High Wycombe, England. It is likely that Martin refers to those gatherings. Lib, 29 November 1861; Frederick William Chesson Diary, 1 October 1861, UkMJr. 7. Martin refers to the London Emancipation Committee. 8. Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (1842–1924) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to freeborn parents of mixed black, white, and American Indian ancestry. She married George L. Ruffin in 1858 and together they had five children—Hubert St. Pierre, Florida Yates, Stanley George, Lewis, and Robert who died in infancy. It seems only Hubert and Florida had been born by 1861. Immediately after their marriage, they lived for three years in Liverpool, England, but returned to Boston following the outbreak of the Civil War. During the war, Josephine Ruffin recruited soldiers and aided the Sanitary Commission. Throughout the remainder of her life, she worked tirelessly for civil rights, charitable organizations, and women’s suffrage causes; she organized the Boston Kansas Relief Association in 1879 to provide assistance to the “exodusters” and helped to found the Boston branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Ruffin was especially active in the black women’s-club movement. She started the Woman’s Era Club (1894), edited the Woman’s Era, and organized the Boston conference that created the National Federation of Afro-American Women (1895). NAW, 3:206–8. 9. This may refer to a daughter of Henry Hatton of Suffolk, Massachusetts, who was active in state black organizational efforts, including the 1854 convention of the State Council of Colored People of Massachusetts. FDP, 31 March 1854.

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91. Speech by Henry Highland Garnet Delivered at the Music Hall, Birmingham, England 15 October 1861 During his second trip to Britain, Henry Highland Garnet sought British support for his African Civilization Society. In gathering that support, he was adept at linking black American emigrationist hopes with British commercial cotton interests. On the evening of 15 October 1861, Garnet attended a meeting in Birmingham’s Music Hall, which was sponsored by the British African Aid Society. The convocation was called to consider the effects of a reduced cotton supply on Manchester and Birmingham industry, to examine the best way to avoid the reduction, and to discuss how the American Civil War afforded an opportunity to end the slave trade by establishing a cotton industry in Africa. A series of five resolutions was debated. Garnet offered an impromptu fourth resolution, which stated “that the introduction of Christian coloured families from Canada into Africa is imminently calculated to advance the influence of Christianity and civilization in that country.” His remarks were supported by black abolitionist-emigrationist Robert Campbell, who had stopped in England on his way to settle his family in Lagos. ASRL, 1 November 1861; WAA, 16 November 1861. The Rev. H. H. Garnet, who was received with protracted applause, moved the fourth resolution. He said he was somewhat embarrassed in arising to address this large and intelligent audience; and, in addition, he was more than ordinarily impressed with a sense of the responsibility that was resting upon him; for he had not only to speak his own sentiments, but also those of thousands of his brethren in America, whose representative he was. (Applause.) But there was one consideration which afforded him some relief. He had learned that it was the pleasure of Englishmen of noble birth and distinguished position to bestow great kindness and condescension upon even the humble of other nations, when they appeared before them with a worthy and important object. (Hear, hear.) He hailed this new movement as most hopeful and encouraging for the future of his fatherland. If it had originated in merely selfish considerations (he meant those suggested alone by trade or commerce), he should have reason to doubt the good that would be finally done to Africa. But this was not the case. It was true there was some self-interest in this movement, as there was, more or less, in everything with which man had to do; but he believed that, in this stupendous work, it was modified and controlled by the spirit of Christianity and universal freedom. (Applause.) With such principles and purposes, the most glorious

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results might be looked for. As for himself, he had not the least doubt as to the character of those results; for he was satisfied that God’s set time had come, in which he intended to favor Africa, and when the cheering prophecy was to be fulfilled, “Ethiopia shall quickly stretch forth her hands unto God.” He knew he would be pardoned in saying that England owes a great debt to Africa. (Hear, hear.) He was glad that she had begun to think about paying it, and he was satisfied that if she went about the work as she usually did in such matters, she would very soon pay off the first installment at least. He would remind the audience that every pound of cotton that came from America, was fanned by the sighs, wet with the tears, and stained with the blood of slaves. This race for whom he spoke had enriched the commerce, enlivened the trade, contributed to the comforts, and administered to the luxury of England. Nor was this all. The soil of Africa in times past had been the theatre upon which many of Britain’s sons had enacted the worst of crimes. Surely a great Christian people should hasten to make compensation. (Hear, hear.) In adverting to the plans of the African Aid Society, the reverend gentleman said that the requirements of the age demanded the adoption of some new and improved measures in the work of the civilization of Africa. The society proposed to assist at first a few industrious and Christian families from North America to settle in Abeokuta, Western Africa. It was desired that they should go in the spirit of Christian love, with the Word of God in their hands, and with the plough, and other agricultural implements; with their chests of mechanical tools, and with men that could use them all well. The effect would be amazing and powerful, if the natives could see among them civilized colored men, fully imbued with Christianity, who had come to live and die with them. They would be taught how to till their land, how to plant and crop, how to live and labor, how to worship the true God, how to hope, and how to die. (Loud applause.) He firmly believed that the society, having such objects and purposes, would surely win and conquer. Let the Africans feel that the new comers are friends and brothers, and as such they will be received. The Africans were quick to observe the differences between pure selfishness and common honesty. One had said, that “there were two classes of men that came to Africa; one loved Africa, the other loved the Africans. The first are welcome, but the second they cared not to see.” After dwelling on the kindness of the Africans to strangers, and especially to the civilized of their own race, the reverend gentleman said he regarded the field of operation selected by the society as a wise and judicious selection. The people there were distinguished for their honesty. It was customary for persons who wished to sell chickens to tie them by the highway, and to intimate the price they wished for them in strings of cowries by a corresponding number of

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notches cut on a stick fastened by them; the owner would then go to his work, or on a journey, leaving his property entirely unprotected. A hundred might pass, and the property would not be meddled with, unless the full price was laid in their place. Then another hundred people might pass by the money, and it would not be removed, except by the lawful owner. (Laughter.) Although Birmingham had a great deal of moral light, yet he questioned whether chickens under similar circumstances, would fare any better in that city. (Renewed laughter and applause.) The people of Abeokuta were industrious. He was informed that in almost every house there were heard the hum of the rude spinning wheel, and the clatter of the weaver’s shuttle. For all that Britain, or any other portion of the world might do for Africa, an ample reward was reserved. Give her your civilization and she will give you her commerce and wealth. Give her the religion of Christ, and she will give you her friendship. Scatter with liberal hands, and you shall reap a thousandfold of the increase. If any should say the work was too great and impracticable, he would answer, that Anglo-Saxon energy, and African industry and honesty could accomplish anything within the boundaries of reason. (Hear, hear.) He wished to see the white hand of England and the black hand of Africa struck together as the sign of an unconquerable determination, under God, to develop the vast resources of that injured land, and to give her people the light of the Gospel. He rejoiced in particular at one sentence in the Article of Cession of Lagos to the British Crown. He referred to the article in which it is declared to be the purpose of the Government to “annihilate the slave trade.” (Applause.) After alluding in glowing terms to the interest which was manifested by many distinguished Christian philanthropists in New York, and other parts of the United States, in favor of the development of the various resources of Africa, and the elevation and nationality of the African race throughout the world, the speaker said the negro race were not surpassed by any other in the power of endurance. In fact, the black man was universal, and everywhere he kept his head above water, notwithstanding the waves of hard trials were fearfully raving around him. (Hear, hear.) He flourished in every land— in the sunny south, the cold north of America, in Greenland, and in all the tropics. He was strong and athletic in every temperate climate, and even in England he had won and worn the champion’s belt. (Loud laughter and applause.) Surely for such a people there was in reserve a glorious destiny, and a proud and powerful nationality. His native country, America—which he loved, with all her faults—was involved in a terrible war, which he believed would long continue; but America’s extremity was England’s opportunity to smite King Cotton between the joints of his harness. (Applause.) He would now read the resolution entrusted to

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him: “That the introduction of Christian colored families from Canada into Africa is eminently calculated to advance the influence of Christianity and civilization in that country.” The reverend gentleman resumed his seat amidst loud applause. African Times (London), 23 October 1861.

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92. Remarks by J. Sella Martin Delivered at the Residence of Arthur Kinnaird, M.P. 2 Pall Mall East, London, England 22 November 1861 Black antislavery lecturers cultivated a variety of British audiences. Although generally concerned with the clergymen, skilled professionals, and mercantile middle class that dominated British abolitionism, blacks also tried to interest sympathetic aristocrats. J. Sella Martin spoke to the invited guests of Arthur Kinnaird, M.P., and his wife at their 2 Pall Mall East residence in London on the evening of 22 November 1861. The audience of sixty to seventy included members of the peerage, distinguished clergymen, high-ranking military officers, and their families. Kinnaird introduced Martin by reading a letter of introduction from the Reverend Edward N. Kirk of Boston, then briefly outlined the reasons for the lack of British support for the Union cause in the American Civil War. Martin’s remarks on the same topic engendered a lively discussion. Dr. G. H. Davis, secretary of the Religious Tract Society, John Macgregor, Samuel Morley, R. N. Fowler, and several others participated. The Reverend Henry Allon dismissed the gathering with a prayer. PtL, 21 November 1862; DM, February 1862. The Rev. J. SELLA MARTIN then came forward and delivered a lengthened and able address, touching more or less on each of the above-named topics.1 Having opened with a grateful acknowledgment of English sympathy for the negro race, he expressed his belief that the apparent indifference to the cause of the North in this country, and, on the other hand, the irritability awakened in the North by the harsh criticisms of the English press, were the fruit of mutual misunderstandings. This was especially the case in regard to the opinion entertained in England as to the extent of anti-slavery feeling in the North—a feeling much deeper, and more widely spread than we supposed. He illustrated at some length the proposition, that the origin of the war was the desire of the South to have slavery supreme; pointing out, in much detail how, for years past, the Slave States, notwithstanding their inferiority in population, extent, and wealth, had exercised predominant power in the Legislative, Administrative, and Executive departments of the country. Thus, out of eighteen Presidents, twelve had been from the South, and six only from the North.2 At length the Northern people found that slavery was asking too much. The passing of the Fugitive Slave Law, and the slaveholding assault on the Hon. Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate Chamber, were among the things which roused the North to resistance.3

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Then came the war in Kansas, where, in fact, the first battle between slavery and freedom was fought; the North having, by this time, come to an united sentiment, that slavery should not be established in that territory.4 The growth of anti-slavery feeling in the North was evidenced by the constant rescue of fugitive slaves; the adoption by eleven States, of Personal Liberty Bills, securing these fugitives trial by jury; and the refusal of the use of gaols for their detention. Coming then more immediately to the question of the war, Mr. Martin denied the truth of the representation, that it was a fratricidal war; it was no more a fratricidal war than any other war. But whatever it was, the South began it, and let any horrors attaching to it be added to its guilty head. (Hear, hear.) There was, indeed, war before the actual outbreak; every white man going South was subjected to Lynch Law5 and other atrocities, and slavery was, in fact, a chronic state of war. (Hear, hear.) If one war would put an end to continual war, good service would be done to the cause of humanity. (Hear, hear.) The cause for which the South had gone out of the Union, and for which it was now fighting, was to maintain slavery, and none other. It was in allusion to slavery that the Southern Vice President, Mr. Stephens,6 had profanely used a Scripture simile—”The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner,” (sensation) an application wicked beyond expression. (Hear, hear.) This maintenance of slavery would involve the necessity of re-opening the African slave-trade,7 without which the supply of slaves could not be kept up; for, such was the wear and tear of the sugar, rice, and cotton plantations, that the average life of the slave was not more than nine years. (Hear, hear.) The Southern slaveholding interest aimed at making slavery supreme on the American continent, embracing, not only their own States, but the Brazils, the Spanish possessions, Central America, and Mexico; and in view of this ambitious project, the North resisted for its own existence. (Hear, hear.) It might be asked, why not let them (the Secession States)8 go? For the same reason that England would not let Ireland go9—that London would not let Marylebone go.10 The moment the right of Secession was conceded, all government became impossible. Mr. Martin next argued that the war now waged by the Federal Government was essentially an anti slavery war. (No.) At all events, if they were not fighting avowedly to put down slavery, it was enough for him that they were fighting slaveholders. (Hear.) To show the tendencies of the war, he called attention to the Act of the last Congress, by which every slave, whose master was a rebel, was confiscated by the fact of rebellion.11 He pointed also to the reception and protection of 800 fugitives in Fortress Monroe. The reply of the Washington Government to the inquiry of General Butler, as to what he was to do with the slaves who had escaped from loyal masters, was to the effect that the substantial

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rights of loyal masters would be best protected by receiving such fugitives, as well as fugitives from disloyal masters, into the service of the United States.12 A record was directed to be kept showing the name and description of the fugitives and other necessary facts. Upon the return of peace, Congress “would (it was said) doubtless provide for all the persons thus received into the service of the Union, and for a just compensation to loyal masters,” but nothing was said of returning the fugitives to the condition of slavery. (Hear, hear, and applause.) Wherever, therefore, the Northern army went, it went as an emancipator. (Hear, hear.) He repeated his strong conviction of the anti-slavery feeling of the North, and his earnest hope and anticipation that, not only would the rebellion be put down, but that its cause would be abolished. Whichever of the belligerents “whipped” the other, this would, he believed, be the result. The South could only win by calling in the assistance of the slaves, and this assistance could, he believed, only be obtained by the masters giving them their freedom. If a compromise should take place, slavery would take care of itself. An insurrection among the slaves for their own freedom would only have the effect of turning both North and South down upon them. After bearing warm testimony to the generous reception accorded to himself, as an escaped slave, by the people of Massachusetts, the Rev. Gentleman closed with a fervid peroration. Record (London), 25 November 1861. 1. Martin refers to the following four issues on which he was asked to speak: the present position of the federal government, the objects of the war and its probable issue, the state of public opinion of the press in the North with reference to slavery, and the state of feeling in the South and the probable influence of the war upon slavery. 2. In 1861 there had been only sixteen presidents of the United States; eight each had been elected from North and South, although two northern presidents (William Henry Harrison and Abraham Lincoln) had been born in the South. Martin apparently refers to four-year presidential administrations prior to Lincoln’s election. Of these eighteen terms, twelve had been primarily served by southern presidents and six by northern presidents. 3. Martin refers to the brutal caning of Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner by South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks on the floor of the Senate during May 1856 in response to Sumner’s earlier antislavery speech, which vilified South Carolina senator Andrew Pickens Butler. 4. Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in May 1854 initiated the rapid development of Kansas by proslavery and by free-state settlers. Each group sought to dominate the political process leading to statehood and thereby determine whether Kansas would be admitted to the Union as a slave or a free state. By 1855 the struggle had erupted into civil war. The territory became a symbol of sectional controversy and earned the sobriquet “Bleeding Kansas.” 5. The term “Lynch law” was used by antebellum southerners to refer to extralegal action, usually mob violence, which was perpetrated against an individual

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or individuals suspected of violating accepted community standards. The violence often took the form of whipping, flogging, or tarring and feathering; occasionally it included scourging or burning to death. After 1830, “Lynch law” was a growing response to antislavery agitation. James Elbert Cutler, Lynch Law (New York, N.Y., 1905), 113, 116, 120; Lib, 31 December 1860. 6. Alexander Hamilton Stephens (1812–1883), a Georgia-born lawyer and politician, was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1843 and later served as vicepresident of the Confederacy. At the end of the Civil War, Stephens was arrested and held at Fort Warren in Boston harbor. He was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson and returned to the Congress during the period 1872–82. DAB, 17: 569–75. 7. Between 1853 and 1860, a number of aggressive southern leaders argued that reopening the African slave trade would help maintain slavery by providing a supply of slaves for southern expansion into the western territories, thus increasing the political power of the South and making slavery more profitable. The trade was not reopened. Ronald T. Takaki, A Proslavery Crusade: The Agitation to Reopen the African Slave Trade (New York, N.Y., 1971), 1, 5–14, 24–26, 37, 153, 227–30. 8. This term refers to those southern slave states that repealed their ratification of the U.S. Constitution and withdrew from the Union to form the Confederate States of America shortly after the election of Republican president Abraham Lincoln in 1860. The states that seceded are South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee. 9. The movement in Ireland to amend or abrogate the Act of Union with England dominated Anglo-Irish relations throughout the nineteenth century. During the 1860s, the issue of Irish separatism grew increasingly volatile with the rise of the Fenian Brotherhood, militant republican societies organized by Irish nationalist James Stephens. Southern secession offered a timely analogue to the intensifying debate on the Irish question. Francis S. L. Lyons, Ireland since the Famine (New York, N.Y., 1971), 93–128. 10. Marylebone was a parish in northwestern metropolitan London, which enjoyed a considerable degree of local political autonomy. Beginning in the early eighteenth century, the suburb was an integral socioeconomic section of Greater London; Martin referred to Marylebone in this context. F. H. Sheppard, Local Government in St. Marylebone, 1688–1835 (London, 1958), 3–15; David Owen, ed., The Government of Victorian London, 1855–1889 (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 23–46. 11. Martin refers to the first Congressional Confiscation Act of August 1861. The act provided that owners who allowed their slaves to labor for the Confederate war effort forfeited any claim to the slaves’ labor. The act made no reference to the right to own slave property. It only gave the federal government the right— as a war measure—to confiscate those slaves who labored for the Confederacy. John Hope Franklin, Emancipation Proclamation (Garden City, N.Y., 1965), 15–88. 12. On 23 May 1861, three fugitive slaves who had been working at a nearby Confederate battery sought refuge at Fortress Monroe, a Union position located in southeastern Virginia. They were brought before Brigadier General Benjamin

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F. Butler (1818–1889) of Massachusetts, who commanded the fortress. Butler defined the slaves as “contrabands of war,” because they had contributed to the Confederate war effort, and he refused to return them. Within four days, according to Butler’s estimate, slaves worth $60,000 came to the fortress seeking sanctuary. Congress essentially approved Butler’s policy by passing the first Confiscation Act on 6 August 1861, which provided that owners of slaves engaged in hostile military service forfeited claims to their slaves’ labor. The contraband policy— devised by Butler in the field, then supported by congressional legislation—came to mean that slaves of masters disloyal to the Union were welcomed into Union lines. Butler’s contraband policy was an important early step in changing the federal position of not interfering with slavery. The policy allowed Union politicians and army officers to threaten slave property as a war measure while continuing to assure loyal slave owners that the institution remained inviolate. CWD, 172; Franklin, Emancipation Proclamation, 17.

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93. William Howard Day to Salmon P. Chase 31 March 1862 William Howard Day spent much of the winter of 1861–62 in Birmingham lecturing against “inroads of pro-slavery spirit” in Britain, endorsing the African Aid Society’s program of black emigration and cotton cultivation in Africa, and raising funds for the black Elgin community in Canada West. Like many black leaders, Day was discouraged by American race relations during the 1850s and turned to emigration as a solution. As the Civil War progressed, he became excited by the prospect of emancipation. He wrote a 31 March 1862 letter to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, congratulating the U.S. government for actions pointing in that direction. Day returned to the United States shortly after writing the letter. ASRL, 2 December 1861 [13:0954]; African Aid Society, The American Crisis and the Slave Trade (Birmingham, England, 1861), 6–7 [13:0970, 0971]; William Howard Day to [Hamilton] Hill, 20 May 1862, OO [14:0317]; Trefousse, Lincoln’s Decision for Emancipation, 30–32, 72–73. Russell’s Temperance Hotel Off Clayton Square Liverpool, [England] March 31, 1862 To The Hon. Salmon P. Chase1 Sec[retar]y of the U.S. Treasury Dear Sir: At this distance from home but with no less interest in the Cause of Freedom than when you knew me more intimately, I essay to ask You and The Government with which you stand connected, to accept my best thanks for the movement lately made so decidedly in the direction of The Liberty of the U.S. Bondsmen. I refer, of course, to the Proposition made to accept the Act of State decreeing Emancipation, and the pecuniary sacrifice supposed to be involved in their so decreeing.2 Whilst I hold that Liberty is God-given—is the Birth Right of all—I am not insensible to the fact that Governments must often act in the direction of The Right in view of the highest expediency. And as I regard this as a triumph of our principles—as a consideration of that from which nearly all, [even] a year since, turned away—as a beginning of the end—I would not question the terms, but would rejoice that in it all I see Liberty. Thanks therefore, heartfelt thanks for this grand instalment of Good: and may The God of Liberty ever bless and keep you.

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Will you kindly convey to The Hon. Wm. H. Seward,3 who has several times done me the honor to correspond with me [for] The Cabinet, this expression of thanks from one,/as you have known for many years,/ most intimately allied with the Grand Cause of which [this] Proposition is one of the [grand] results. Very Truly and Respt. And as ever [The] Liberty, Wm. Howard Day4 William Henry Seward Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, The University of Rochester Library, Rochester, N.Y. Published by permission. 1. Salmon P. Chase (1808–1873) was born in Cornish, New Hampshire, and educated at Dartmouth College. As a lawyer in Ohio, his energetic defense of black fugitives earned him the sobriquet “attorney-general for run-away slaves.” Chase entered politics in the 1840s, became a leading figure in the Liberty and Free Soil parties, and served as U.S. senator and governor of Ohio. After failing to secure the Republican presidential nomination in 1860, he was named secretary of the treasury in Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet. Later, as chief justice of the Supreme Court, he arbitrated the critical legal issues of Reconstruction. DAB, 4:27–34. 2. On 6 March 1862, President Lincoln forwarded a message to Congress initiating a process that he hoped would end slavery in the border states with a plan of gradual, compensated emancipation. The immediate reception of the proposal was encouraging, but none of the border states approved the plan. Compensated emancipation ended slavery only in the District of Columbia after Congress approved federal legislation (April 1862) abolishing slavery there and providing compensation of up to $300 per slave. Trefousse, Lincoln’s Decision for Emancipation, 30–32, 72–73. 3. William Henry Seward (1801–1872) was born in Florida, New York. After graduating from Union College, he practiced law in Auburn. He was elected governor of New York in 1838 and went to the U.S. Senate in 1848. He was a leading antislavery spokesman in the Senate. Seward unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential candidacy in 1856 and 1860. As secretary of state in the administrations of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson (1861–69), he coordinated the delicate Civil War diplomacy with European nations and negotiated the 1867 purchase of Alaska from Russia. DAB, 16:615–21. 4. William H. Day (1825–1900) was born free in New York City, the son of Eliza and John Day, who were moderately prosperous and were devoted African Methodist Episcopal Zion church members. Day’s education in the city’s public schools was supplemented by private lessons. He graduated from Rev. Rudolphus Hubbard’s high school in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he also worked as an apprentice printer for the local paper. In 1843 Day entered Oberlin College, the only black in a class of fifty. Already a veteran of local antislavery efforts when he received his degree four years later, Day continued his reform work, particularly in Ohio, at many black citizens’ conventions. Day was a highly regarded speaker, who displayed a rich knowledge of black history. A political abolitionist, he led the struggle to overturn Ohio’s Black Laws, appeared before the state legislature on behalf of black suffrage, and represented blacks at the state’s constitu-

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tional convention. During the early 1850s, he helped set up statewide and local black gatherings and called for national conventions to address black issues. Day was an editor for the Cleveland True Democrat, but in April 1853, founded his own newspaper, the Aliened American, a Cleveland weekly meant to serve the Ohio black community. He had his press credentials withdrawn while covering state legislative sessions at Columbus in the winter of 1854 because he had “only three-quarters Anglo-Saxon blood.” In August 1854, Day split with the mainstream of black politics and with the leaders of the Rochester Colored National Convention (1853) by attending the National Emigration Convention of Colored Freemen, convened in Cleveland by Martin R. Delany. Day was at first hostile to general emigration but decided that he “would not discourage individuals who are disposed to emigrate to Africa or the West Indies.” The demise of the Aliened American and its successor, the People’s Record, the continued assaults of northern racial prejudice, his own poor health, and his newfound enthusiasm for emigration prompted his settlement early in 1856 in Dresden, Canada West, a small town sixty miles north of Detroit. Day farmed for a living, wrote an occasional piece for the Provincial Freeman, and challenged the discriminatory practices experienced by blacks on Great Lakes boats. Day attended the National Emigration Convention of 1856, but two years later, at Chatham, Canada West, while serving as president of the General Board of Commissioners (the convention’s administrative arm), Day retreated from his emigrationist position and led the commissioners to a tepid endorsement of Delany’s Niger Valley Exploring Party. In the summer of 1859, Day accompanied William King, founder of the successful Elgin community, on a fund-raising trip to England. Day returned from England in the spring of 1862 and settled in New York City. In the mid-1860s, he edited the Zion Standard and Weekly Review, served as general secretary to the Freedmen’s American and British Commission (1866), and was superintendent of schools for the Freedmen’s Bureau in Maryland and Delaware (1867, 1868). Day continued his religious and educational activities into the 1880s, serving as general secretary of the AMEZ General Conference (1876–96) and as a district school director in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (1878, 1881, 1886). Day received a doctor of divinity degree in 1887 from Livingston College in North Carolina. Oberlin College Alumni Records Office to [?], n.d., OClWHi; Commemorative Biographical Encyclopedia of Dauphin County (Chambersburg, Pa., 1896); HT, 3 December 1900; HP, 6 December 1900; ASB, 24 July 1846, 26 January 1849, 19 January, 29 June, 17, 24, 31 August, 14, 30 September 1850, 22 February, 3 April, 20 November 1851, 31 January, 25 December 1852, 14, 28 January, 4, 11 February 1854, 13 January, 27 October 1855, 25 October 1856; FDP, 1, 15 October 1852, 28 April, 6, 12, 19, 26 May, 6, 28 July 1854 [7:0756]; DM, February 1861; VF, 7 October 1852 [7:0776]; AA, 9 April 1853 [8:0208]; PF, 5, 19 June 1856 [10:0010, 0027]; NASS, 14 May 1864; WAA, 26 August, 4 November 1865; William H. Day to Gerrit Smith, 27 March 1856, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU [10:0093]; Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 180–225; CP, 26 August 1858 [11:0334]; CTWP, 3 September 1858 [11:0342]; DANB, 163–65.

Alexander Crummell to Editor

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94. Alexander Crummell to Editor, Colonization Herald 16 February 1863 A handful of black abolitionist lecturers in Britain promoted African economic development although they rejected emigrationist principles. They reasoned that free labor cotton produced in Africa could undermine American slavery by capturing British markets. Liberian missionary Alexander Crummell enthusiastically proposed free labor cotton and coffee production in Liberia. With sixteen other prominent Monrovians, he petitioned the Liberian legislature to grant a patent to E. S. Morris of Philadelphia for his coffee-cleaning machine, which hulled up to three thousand pounds of coffee per day. The petitioners believed that this process would allow Liberia to become competitive in coffee production with slaveholding Brazil. Crummell’s 16 February 1863 letter to the editor of the Colonization Herald also demonstrated his efforts to interest American businessmen and reformers in developing urban markets there for free produce Liberian cotton. AR, March, September 1863 [14:1028]; Ejofodomi, “Missionary Career of Alexander Crummell,” 146–48; Alexander Crummell, Edward W. Blyden, J. J. Roberts et al., to the Senate and House of Representatives of the Republic of Liberia, 1863, NN-Sc [14:0629]. Monrovia, Liberia Feb[ruary] 16, 1863 DEAR SIR:1 After a very pleasant and safe passage from England, I arrived home on the 25th of January. Of my visit to England I shall say but little, since it amounted to nothing with respect to the Liberia College,2 although I was enabled to diffuse much information concerning the Republic in very many places.3 I found everywhere the strongest desire to get facts and knowledge concerning us; and my time was so fully occupied in travelling and preaching, that, in the end, I was glad to leave England in order to secure repose and quiet. I am right glad to be at home again; glad to see everywhere the signs of increased thrift and the evidences of progress; glad once more to be settled and at work. I was landed at Cape Palmas, and sailed up thence to Monrovia; and on the passage we stopped at all important places, save Bassa. I have never seen so much coffee prepared for shipping in Liberia as I saw at Sinou.4 On my arrival here, I found equal zeal in this article, in this country; and from every quarter I hear reports of preparation for a more extensive planting of coffee-trees than has ever taken place before in the country. Mr. E. S. Morris’s visit5 has excited a spirit, and given us a tendency, which, I believe, will carry us on to wealth.

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8. Alexander Crummell From W. J. Simmons, Men of Mark (Cleveland, 1887)

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The Liberia College commenced its first term with eight Freshmen on the first Monday in this month; and Mr. Blyden6 and myself have already commenced our lectures. As many more youth would have entered this year but for the fact that we have no means for the support of beneficiaries. There are many favourable circumstances connected with this institution, even now, in its infancy; and I have no doubt, by God’s favour, and with wise human discretion, of great success in our undertaking. I send you a small box of cotton, which I wish to submit to your inspection. Our interior natives are bringing in raw cotton for sale, as yet, in but small quantities. One of my friends is holding out inducements to the natives to bring it to him; and he is now purchasing it at the rate of about forty pounds per week. This cotton is purchased with trade goods, and costs, including goods, transportation to Monrovia, and ginning, the sum of ten cents a pound. (It was bought in seed.) The additional cost of shipping would increase the price to twelve cents per pound. But a small quantity comes in now; but our interior traders tell us, that at the distance of fifty miles from Millsburg, that is, about seventy-five miles from the coast, fields of cotton are grown everywhere by the natives. The most of this cotton is made into cotton cloths; but the natives can easily be induced to purchase English cotton goods, and, instead of manufacturing to bring the raw material to the coast. Under this conviction, my friend is purchasing every particle of cotton brought him from the interior, and sending word to the headmen and kings to bring him all they can procure. But there is a difficulty in his way, which, in some manner, must be overcome, ere he can make his venture a successful one. The quantity that now comes in is but small. If this quantity lies upon his hands the result is so much loss, because, as a poor man, he cannot afford to have dead, unproductive capital in his store. On the other hand, a single hogshead of cotton, or two or three, is not a sufficient quantity to pay for shipment. It has occurred to me, that if two or three gentlemen in America would take up this matter, and give my friend authority to ship the cotton he receives to them, if even in small quantities, and relieve him from the expense of shipping, and, at the same time, assure him of some certain return per pound for his cotton in trade goods, the whole difficulty would be effectually met. I may add here, that the person to whom I refer assures me that he is endeavouring to make this purchasing of cotton a single and exclusive business, and that he had no doubt that, in a short time, he will be able to refuse rice, cotton cloths, palm-oil, &c., and give himself up entirely to the purchase of cotton. Since my conversation with him, I have had an interview with President Benson,7 and he informs me that cotton is

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grown all along our interior borders, near the coast, from this point northward, that is, to Sierra Leone, but more remotely from the coast from hence to Palmas;8 but that he has no doubt whatever, that, under a proper stimulus, trading ports for cotton could be established and sustained at almost every point on the seaboard. For my own part, I am exceedingly anxious that this movement should be encouraged; and knowing your interest in this special topic, I venture to call your attention to it. My own idea is, first, that authority should be given the person here to ship whenever he pleases, with an order on some house in the United States to pay for that shipment. And second, that, after deducting expenses, the merchant in New York or Boston would return goods to the trader here to the amount of the value of the cotton. My friend thinks that in less than two years he would not need the least aid from abroad; and this is my conviction. I am, dear Sir, with very many grateful remembrances, and with great regard, Most truly yours, ALEXANDER CRUMMELL Anti-Slavery Reporter (London), 1 October 1863. 1. The Colonization Herald and General Register, the organ of the Pennsylvania Colonization Society, was published in Philadelphia from 1835 to 1868. Miller, Search for Black Nationality, 279. 2. Liberia College opened its doors in February 1863. Support for the college came primarily from the Boston-based trustees of Donations for Education in Liberia. Joseph J. Roberts, Liberia’s first president, served as the college’s founding president and professor of law. The original faculty also included Alexander Crummell and Edward W. Blyden. Financial problems, personal rivalries, and poor administration forced the school’s closure twice in the late nineteenth century. The college became the University of Liberia in 1951. Nathaniel R. Richardson, Liberia’s Past and Present (London, 1959), 208–11; Cassell, Liberia, 178, 223–31, 288–92, 370–80. 3. Alexander Crummell reached England in September 1862 after spending several months in the United States collecting four thousand volumes for Liberia College and speaking to many gatherings on the benefits awaiting American blacks in Liberia. Crummell continued to lecture and collect books in England, leaving for Liberia with fugitive slave John Anderson on 26 December. They arrived in Liberia one month later. Benjamin Coates to Alexander Crummell, 10 November 1862, NN-Sc; Ejofodomi, “Missionary Career of Alexander Crummell,” 147; AR, July 1861, January 1863, March 1863 [14:1028]; AT, 22 November 1862; ASRL, 1 July 1863. 4. Crummell apparently landed near the Harper settlement at Cape Palmas and sailed northwest along three hundred miles of Liberian coastline to Monrovia, stopping on the way at the town of Greenville on the Sinoe River. With Grand Bassa, which Crummell bypassed, these were the major coastal settlements in midnineteenth-century Liberia. James B. Webster and A. A. Boahen, History of West Africa (New York, N.Y., 1970), 147–64.

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5. E. S. Morris of Philadelphia visited Liberia in late 1862. He anticipated emancipation in the South, but fearing that the freedmen would be victimized by their former masters, Morris believed that they would be better off in Liberia. After studying the local economy, Morris decided that Liberians should be encouraged to produce coffee, and he invented a machine for hulling coffee beans that made coffee production commercially viable. In 1863 he bought eight hundred acres on the St. Paul’s River, near Monrovia, where he cultivated coffee and manufactured palm oil, indigo, lime juice, arrowroot, and palm soap. He also introduced the first steamboat to ply St. Paul’s River. On returning to Philadelphia, he started a monthly journal, the Liberia Advocate, for circulation in Liberia; it lasted five years (1874– 79). Morris’s object was to extend the gospel and commercial prosperity to the interior of Africa. A. S. Dyer, Edward S. Morris and Christian Education for Africa (London, 1879), 4–15. 6. Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832–1912) was born on the Dutch West Indian island of St. Thomas, the third of seven children, whose parents were free, literate, and of modest means—his mother was a schoolteacher and his father a tailor. Blyden was educated at home and in the island’s integrated public schools, where he displayed an aptitude for languages. Blyden went to the United States in 1850 to study for the ministry, was refused admission to Rutgers Theological Seminary, and decided to pursue his education in Liberia. He arrived in Monrovia during January 1851, studied with Princeton graduate, Rev. D. A. Wilson, then served as a lay preacher, a tutor, and editor of the Liberia Herald (1855–56), an appointment he received from Liberia’s president, Joseph J. Roberts. In 1857 Blyden, whose life was most significantly defined by his enduring commitment to African cultural nationalism, published one of his many reflective writings on African life entitled Vindication of a Race. In this work he countered arguments on black inferiority and abandoned the idea that westernized blacks could improve Africa. The same year, Blyden engaged in the first of a series of clashes with Liberia’s mulatto elite, when he unsuccessfully argued for locating Liberia College away from European influences along the coast. After traveling to the United States and to Britain in 1861 and 1862 to seek support for the college and to promote colonization, Blyden returned to Liberia and an appointment to the school’s faculty as a professor of classics. In 1871 he left Liberia for political reasons and settled in Sierra Leone. There he founded and edited the Negro, a newspaper in which he attacked Christian missionary work because it “hampered African progress” and was insensitive to African customs and institutions. Blyden returned to Liberia in 1873 and, a year later, toured the United States, where he earned a doctor of law degree from Lincoln University. From 1876 to 1879 he served as Liberia’s ambassador to Britain and in 1880 was appointed president of Liberia College. Blyden expanded the curriculum by introducing courses in the mechanical and agricultural arts, and he explored ways to attract native African students to the college. He was discharged from his office in 1884 when Liberian trustees accused him of mismanagement. In 1885 Blyden unsuccessfully sought the presidency of Liberia. In his later years, Blyden toured extensively, lectured about his vision of the African personality, and continued to write about African culture and religion, producing over thirty books and pamphlets as well as numerous articles. His most significant work, Christianity, Islam and Race (1887), was a collection of articles that included re-

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flections on his attachment to Islam and its importance to African development. Lynch, Edward Wilmot Blyden, 1–247; DANB, 49. 7. Stephen Allen Benson (1816–1865) was the second president of the Republic of Liberia. He was brought to Liberia at six years of age and received his entire education in Liberian schools. A successful merchant and farmer, he became active in political affairs in the 1840s, serving as associate justice of Liberia, then secretary of the treasury, prior to his 1853 election as vice-president. He received the presidential nomination of the Republican party of Liberia in March 1855 and was elected two months later after a heated electoral contest. Inaugurated in January 1856, he followed most of the policies of his predecessor, Joseph J. Roberts. He left the presidency in 1863 at the completion of his fourth elected term. Cassell, Liberia, 155, 181, 189–91, 205–7, 209–21, 224; Lynch, Edward Wilmot Blyden, 12, 21, 42. 8. The Liberian coast from Cape Palmas to the border with Sierra Leone is approximately three hundred miles long.

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95. J. Sella Martin and the William Mitchell Episode J. Sella Martin to Editor, London Patriot

25 June 1863 Statement by William Mitchell

3 March 1864 A black abolitionist’s reputation for trustworthiness was a valuable and vulnerable asset in the world of middle-class British reformers. The reputation of a black fund-raiser or lecturer could be threatened by rumor or by the unconventional behavior of other black Americans. Black Baptist minister William Mitchell of Toronto visited Britain with William Troy from 1859 to 1861 on a legitimate antislavery mission. When Mitchell returned to Britain in April 1863 without proper references, he embarrassed J. Sella Martin by fraudulently using Martin’s name and alleged friendship to obtain letters of recommendation and funds. Martin reacted with a 25 June 1863 letter to the London Patriot, which informed readers of the falsehood of Mitchell’s claims. Mitchell’s actions exemplify the limitations of the certification process. Dr. Michael Willis of Toronto, who only knew Mitchell by reputation, had written Mitchell a letter of introduction in 1859. Mitchell then used the letter to obtain recommendations from several British clergymen, who knew of Willis. Mitchell reused the references on his 1863–64 trip. By the time Mitchell admitted his errors in a 3 March 1864 statement (which later appeared in an article on “Coloured Imposters” in the AntiSlavery Reporter), the British antislavery public already had good reason to doubt him. He had been arrested in Cardiff, Wales, failed to pay lodging bills in Canterbury, and kept no regular records of British contributions. PtL, 25 June 1863; ASRL, 1 June 1863, 2 May 1864; Michael Willis to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, n.d., British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh. Bromley St. Leonard London, E[ngland] June 25, 1863 SIR: I learn from private letters from Boston, Mass., that some persons have written to the officers of the church of which I was formerly pastor,1 inquiring if I was authorised to collect money for them in England. As I have not solicited money for any purpose since my second arrival in

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England, in January of the present year, I infer that some unprincipled person is assuming my name, and thus imposing on the benevolent. I am in receipt of a communication informing me that a coloured man styling himself the Rev. William Mitchell2 is pretending to be on intimate terms with me, and has used my name to sanction his pretended mission. I therefore take this opportunity of stating that I have never seen the said William Mitchell since I have been in England, and further that from all I hear of him he is not worthy of the confidence and sympathy of the Christian public. It may tend to prevent imposition, if I state that Mitchell has features and hair resembling the Indian more than the negro cast; that he is of spare build and about forty-five years of age. SELLA MARTIN Pastor of the Free Christian Church3 Patriot (London), 25 June 1863.

Ramsgate, [England] March 3, 1864 I, William Mitchell, of Toronto, Canada West, do hereby admit to Benjamin Copeland Etheridge,4 Baptist Minister, of Ramsgate, and John Edgar,5 Grocer, of Canterbury, that I have, for some time past, travelled with old credentials such as I obtained on my first visit in the years 1859 and 1860, to this country, that have not been renewed. My professed object has again been to raise money to build schools and chapels for fugitive slaves. I admit having taken apartments at Mr. Collard’s and Mr. Smith’s, Canterbury, and gone away without paying for the same. I admit having told many falsehoods to the parties herein named; and I hereby make this acknowledgment with the intent that the parties herein named may make such use of this document as they may in their discretion deem necessary. I came on this last visit in April 1863, and I think I have collected about 400£., which I have transmitted to Nathaniel Warren,6 of Toronto, less my travelling expenses and salary, through banks at Reading, Plymouth, North America Bank, London, &c. &c. W. Mitchell Anti-Slavery Reporter (London), 2 May 1864. 1. Martin refers to the Joy Street Baptist Church in Boston, where he became pastor in early 1860. During the late fall of 1862, he resigned and accepted an appointment as pastor of the Free Christian Church in Bromley-by-Bow, a London suburb. WAA, 13 April 1861; NASS, 10 January 1863. 2. William N. Mitchell (?–ca. 1879) was born free in Guilford County, North Carolina, to an Indian woman. Mitchell’s parents died when he was young, and

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he was raised in the custody of local authorities, who used him as an indentured apprentice for twelve years. His study of Christianity convinced him to end his association with slavery and to prepare for the ministry. He moved to Ross County, Ohio, with his wife (they had at least one daughter after settling there) and assisted runaway slaves on the underground railroad. In 1855 Mitchell became a missionary for the American Baptist Free Mission Society and moved to Toronto, Canada West, where he ministered to the city’s estimated one thousand fugitive slaves. In the late 1850s, Canadian Governor-General Sir Edmund Head appointed Mitchell to the Association for the Education and Elevation of the Coloured People of Canada. In that capacity, he toured Canada West, accumulated information and statistics about black life in the country (especially about the needs of newly arrived fugitives), and contributed to the Report of the Fugitive Mission, which assessed those needs. In early 1859, Mitchell traveled to Great Britain seeking funds to build a chapel and school for his congregation. He often shared the rostrum with Rev. William Troy of Windsor, Canada West, who was fund raising for a similar purpose in Scotland and England. During his stay, Mitchell published The Under-Ground Railroad (London, 1860), which detailed underground railroad activity in America and addressed what Mitchell believed were misrepresentations being made about the true condition of fugitive slaves in Canada. During a return trip to England in 1863, Mitchell became embroiled in controversy; he was arrested in Wales, censured for using references from his earlier tour, and accused of not maintaining collection accounts. Mitchell admitted he used old endorsements and failed to pay his room rent while staying in Canterbury but claimed that all of the £400 he had collected was sent to Canada, less expenses and salary. Mitchell is listed as a deceased member of the Consolidated American Baptist Missionary Convention in the minutes of the annual meeting for 1879. William N. Mitchell, The Under-Ground Railroad (London, 1860), 1–172; Winks, Blacks in Canada, 227, 238; Gara, Liberty Line, 161–63; Wilbur H. Siebert, The Underground Railroad: From Slavery to Freedom (New York, N.Y., 1898), 2, 3, 45, 46, 183, 184, 222, 233, 239, 462; PtL, 25 June 1863; Michael Willis to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, n.d., British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; ASRL, 2 May 1864; Minutes of the Thirty-Ninth Annual Meeting of the Consolidated American Baptist Missionary Convention (Lexington, Ky., 1881), 32. 3. In January 1863, J. Sella Martin was appointed pastor of the nondenominational Free Christian Church, which was situated in Bromley-by-Bow, a southeastern suburb of London. The church was founded by abolitionist Harper Twelvetrees. It met in a five-hundred-seat lecture hall and library originally built by Twelvetrees to minister to the social and cultural needs of the area’s predominantly working-class residents, many of whom were employed in his nearby chemical factory. Lib, 18 July 1863, 8 April 1864. 4. Benjamin Copeland Etheridge (1819–1910) was born at Cleve, near Cheltenham, and educated for the ministry at a private college at Lady’s Hill, Here-fordshire. He served several Baptist ministries, including Ramsgate, until 1894. Baptist Handbook, 1911 (London, 1911), 483–84. 5. A James Edgar is listed in the Canterbury directory as a grocer and cheesemonger. 6. Nathaniel Warren was a prominent figure in the Toronto black community.

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536In 1854 he was elected vice-president of the Provincial Union Association—a black relief and antislavery organization active throughout Canada West. During the early 1860s, he attempted to mold Canadian blacks into a significant force in provincial elections. Warren and his wife raised funds for the Provincial Freeman and other antislavery causes, including fugitive slave John Anderson. Warren managed the funds forwarded to Canada West by black clergyman William Mitchell during the latter’s 1863–64 British fund-raising tour. PFW, 17 June, 19 August 1854 [9:0017]; TG, 27 June 1861 [13:0603]; WAA, 9 March 1861 [13:0396]; ASRL, 2 May 1864 [15:0334]. 537

Exchange by William Craft and Dr. James Hunt

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96. Exchange by William Craft and Dr. James Hunt at the Annual Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England

27 August 1863 Black abolitionist activities in Britain regularly commanded the attention of the local reform press and public. On several occasions, blacks were involved in an incident or event that received nationwide publicity. William Craft’s participation in the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which convened in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on Wednesday evening, 26 August 1863, was one such event. At the crowded Thursday afternoon session of the Ethnological Section devoted to research on the Negro, Craft criticized papers read by leading British social scientists John Crawfurd and James Hunt. The initial exchange occurred between Hunt and Craft over Hunt’s assertion that scientific evidence demonstrated black inferiority. After Crawfurd delivered two detailed papers on the subject of racial amalgamation, Craft rose a second time and informed the audience that, despite Crawfurd’s intimations, considerable black-white amalgamation had taken place in the United States. Where blacks were provided equal opportunities with whites, he said, they demonstrated “considerable intellectual ability.” He further observed that a wide range of differences existed within each race—a point proven by the fact that “all Englishmen were not Shakespeares.” Craft’s remarks threw the session into an intense discussion that finally forced the chairman to prematurely adjourn the meeting. The debate reverberated throughout British intellectual circles for some time. Blackett, “Fugitive Slaves in Britain,” 58–60; NASS, 26 September 1863 [14:1070]; I, 29 August 1863 [14:1026]; British Association for the Advancement of Science, Proceedings (London, 1863), 386–410. On the Physical and Mental Characteristics of the Negro, by Dr. JAMES HUNT, President of The Anthropological Society of London.1 The author said he had been collecting facts upon the subject for another society; but he was induced to bring it before the Association from the fact that it had never been brought before a scientific audience in England. In discussing the question, he would have nothing to do with anything but the full-blooded, woolly-headed, typical Negro, to the exclusion of the half-breed. The object of the paper was to determine the position which one well-defined race occupies in the genus homo, and the relation or analogy which the Negro race bears to animated nature

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9. William Craft From William Still, Underground Railroad (Philadelphia, 1872)

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generally. He had selected the Negro race, as it seemed to be an intermediate form between the highest and lowest existing races of man. In discussing the question, he had nothing to do with the origin of man, for analogies did not necessarily include relationship. The skin and hair are by no means the only things which distinguish the Negro from the European, even physically; and the difference is greater still mentally and morally. The skeleton of the Negro is generally heavier, and the bones are larger and thicker, in proportion to the muscles, than those of the European. The bones are also whiter, from the abundance of calcareous salts. The thorax is compressed; the leg is longer than in Europeans, but is made to look shorter on account of the ankle being only between 1 1/3 in. to 1 1/ 2 in. above the ground; the heel is both flat and long. Burmeister2 has pointed out the resemblance of the foot and the position of the toes of the Negro to that of the ape; and many observers have noticed that the Negroes have frequently used the great toe as a thumb. After pointing out several minor particulars, in which the Negro differs from the European, and quoting the opinions of several writers on the capacity of the Negro cranium, the paper recommended caution in accepting such capacity of the cranium as any absolute test of the intellectual power of any race. The brain of a Negro has a smokey tint, not found in that of a European. The hair is essentially different; and the voice resembles sometimes the alto of an eunuch—there being a peculiarity about it by which he can always be distinguished. Dr. Louis Buchner,3 after summing up the peculiarities of the Negro, says they exhibit the most decided approach to the ape. Other distinguished anatomists and physiologists had expressed a similar opinion. The assertion that the Negro only requires an opportunity for becoming civilized is disproved by history. The African race have had the benefit of the Egyptian, Carthaginian, and Roman civilization, but nowhere did they become civilized. The many cases of civilized blacks are not pure Negroes; but, in nearly every case where they had become men of mark, they had European blood in their veins. In the West Indian Islands it has frequently been observed that all the Negroes in places of trust which require intelligence have European features. Negro children are precocious; but no advance in education can be made after they arrive at the age of puberty—they still continue mentally children. It has been said that the present slave-holders of America no more think of rebellion amongst their fullblooded slaves than they do of rebellion amongst their cows and horses. That was because the tranquillity of Negroes in their approach to civilization resembled the content of domestic animals. From all the evidence brought forward, the writer of the paper saw no reason to believe that the pure Negro ever advances further in intellect than an intelligent European boy of fourteen years of age. After citing authorities to prove the low psychological character of the Negro, the paper continued: “We now know it to be a patent

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fact that there are races existing which have no history, and that the Negro is one of these races. From the most remote antiquity, the Negro race seem to have been what they now are.” The writer could see no evidence to support the opinion of some writers that the Negro had degenerated from some higher form of civilization. Everywhere we see the European as the conqueror and the dominant race; and no amount of education will ever alter the decrees of Nature’s laws. The general deductions he would make were—First, that there is a good reason for classifying the Negro as a distinct species from the European as there is for making the ass a distinct species from the zebra; second, that the Negro is inferior intellectually to the European; third, that the analogies are far more numerous between the Negro and the ape, than between the European and ape. There was in the Negro that assemblage of evidence which would induce an unbiased observer to make the European and Negro two distinct species. *

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Mr. CRAFT said that though he was not of pure African descent he was black enough to attempt to say a few words in reference to the paper which had just been read. While Dr. Hunt was reading it, a fable occurred to him which he would, with the permission of the audience, repeat. A lion and a man were walking together along the road, and disputing as to which of the two could claim to belong to the superior race. By and bye they came to a public house, the sign of which was a lion violently held down by a man. The man triumphantly pointed to this in confirmation of his superiority; but the lion sagely inquired who painted the picture. With regard to the origin of the negro, he for one believed that white and black men were all descended from a common parent. (Cheers.) Many scientific gentlemen present would probably dispute that; but at any rate, supposing Adam to have been the founder of a race of men, white men had no stronger claim to him as their father than black men, as it was admitted that owing to the climate in which he commenced his existence, he could have been neither black nor white, but copper coloured. As Africans were very dark, and the inhabitants of Northern Europe very fair, and as, moreover, the nations of Southern Europe were much darker than those of Northern Europe, it was perfectly fair to suppose that climate had a tendency to bleach as well as to blacken. The thickness of the skull of the Negro had been wisely arranged by Providence to defend the brain from the tropical climate in which he lived. If God had not given them thick skulls their brains would probably have become very much like those of many scientific gentlemen of the present day. The woolly hair was not considered by Africans as a mark of inferiority, though some of them shaved it off, but it also answered the purpose of defending the head from the sun. With regard to

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his not being a true African—his grandmother and grandfather were both of pure Negro blood. His grandfather was a chief of the West Coast; but, through the treachery of some white men, who doubtless thought themselves greatly his superiors, he was kidnapped and taken to America, where he (Mr. Craft) was born. He had recently been to Africa on a visit to the King of Dahomey. He found there considerable diversities even among the Africans themselves. Those of Sierra Leone4 had prominent, almost Jewish features. Their heels were quite as short, on the whole, as those of any other race, and upon the whole they were well formed. Persons who had any knowledge of Africans knew that, when they enjoyed advantages, they were capable of making good use of them. He might refer to the instance of the little girl brought to this country by Captain Forbes. This child was presented to the Queen, who had her carefully educated. When she grew up, she mingled in good society, and interested every one by her proficiency in music, and recently she had been married to a commercial gentleman of colour at Lagos.5 Another case was mentioned by Mr. Chambers6 in one of his works, and another case was that of Mr. Crowther,7 who was well-known to many gentlemen in this country. One word with reference to the ancient Britons. When Julius Caesar8 came to this country, he said of the natives that they were such stupid people that they were not fit to make slaves of in Rome. It had taken a long time to make Englishmen what they now were, and, therefore, it was not wonderful if the Negroes made slow progress in intellectual development. It was, however, proved that they made very rapid progress when placed in advantageous circumstances. As to the Negro not being erect, the same thing might be said of agricultural labourers in this country. He pointed to Hayti as furnishing an instance of independence of character and intellectual power on the part of the Negro, and contended that in America the degraded position which he was forced to occupy gave him no chance of proving what he really was capable of doing. He was sorry that scientific and learned men should waste their time in discussing a subject that could prove of no benefit to mankind. He spoke with great deference to their opinions, but, for his own part, firmly agreed with Cowper9 that— Fleecy locks and black complexion Cannot alter nature’s claim; Skins may differ, but affection Dwells in white and black the same. *

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Dr. HUNT in reply said he was sorry that some speakers had attempted to draw away the attention of the audience from the great facts under discussion. Scientific physical facts had been met with vague general

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assertions, and no reply had been attempted to be made by any speaker against the facts that had been adduced. He would leave his scientific friends to judge of the value of Mr. Craft’s remarks. He was sorry, however, that the speaker had not confined himself to uttering exploded theories, but had accused scientific men of wasting their time when discussing this subject. He for one thought it was a great pity that scientific men in this country had so long delayed to bring these facts prominently before the public, and thus explode some of the popular delusions on the subject. It was not at all necessary for Mr. Craft to tell anyone at all acquainted with the subject that he was not a pure Negro, although there were many present who were deluded with the idea that he was. As to the statement that Britons did not make good slaves, he was quite ready to admit the fact; and he knew of no European race that would make good slaves. In this respect Negroes were certainly far superior to Europeans. He then briefly replied to other speakers, and in conclusion, said the time was passed when the great fact he had brought forward could be longer ignored, and however reluctant he had been to introduce the topic, he felt that good would arise from the discussion that had taken place. All he asked was that scientific evidence of this character should be met by scientific argument, and not by poetical clap-trap, or by gratuitous and worthless assumptions. British Association for the Advancement of Science, Proceedings ([London], 1863), 386–87, 388–89, 390–91. 1. James Hunt (1833–1869) was born at Swansea, Dorsetshire. A physician interested in ethnology and anthropology, he founded the Anthropological Society (1863), served as its first president, edited the Anthropological Review, and published widely in British ethnological journals. He gained notoriety from his controversial paper delivered at the 1863 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. A believer in black inferiority, Hunt made the Review an advocate of the Confederacy and slavery during the Civil War. DNB, 10:266–67; Lorimer, Colour, Class and Victorians, 137–45, 148–59. 2. Hunt refers to anatomical research conducted on African blacks by German zoologist Hermann Burmeister (1807–1892), a professor of zoology at the university at Halle. Anglo-American proponents of black inferiority found useful “evidence” in Burmeister’s research on blacks, which was published in English as The Black Man: The Comparative Anatomy and Psychology of the African Negro (New York, N.Y., 1853). Nouvelle biographie générale, vol. 7 (Paris, 1855), 854. 3. Ludwig (Louis) Büchner (1824–1899), a controversial German physician and researcher in forensic medicine at the Medical Hospital of Tübingen, published many of his findings in German scientific journals. By the mid-1850s, he returned to Darmstadt and practiced medicine but continued to publish his scientific conclusions, many of which dealt with Darwinian evolutionary theories. Ludwig Büchner, Force and Matter; or Principles of the Natural Order of the Universe, 4th English ed. (London, 1884), v–xviii.

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4. By the mid-nineteenth century, Sierra Leone’s population consisted of a complex mosaic of black peoples from both sides of the Atlantic. Indigenous to the region were the Temne and Mende tribes, refugees from the ancient Sudanese empires of the north. In 1787 four hundred blacks from England settled in Sierra Leone. They were followed by nearly one thousand blacks from Nova Scotia (1792) and a large number of Jamaican maroons (1800). In addition, Yoruban “recaptives”—blacks rescued from slave ships by the British navy—were generally landed at the coastal capital of Freetown. Webster and Boahen, History of West Africa, 131–46. 5. Sarah Bonetta Forbes Davies (ca. 1840–?), a Dahomean slave girl, was presented at about five years of age by a local king to Captain F. Forbes of the Royal Navy while the latter was on a diplomatic mission in West Africa. Forbes brought her to England. Raised by a Chatham clergyman and his wife, she later became a protégé of Queen Victoria, was educated through royal intervention, and occasionally resided at court. In 1862 she married prominent Lagos merchant and former British naval officer James Penson Lablo Davies, a former African slave freed by the British and educated at a Church Missionary Society school in Sierra Leone. In 1863 they had a daughter, Victoria, whom the queen served as godmotherby-proxy. In 1872 James Davies was appointed to the legislative council of the British West African colonies. ASA, February 1858; ASRL, 1 September 1862, 1 November 1864; Ajayi, Christian Missions in Nigeria, 184–85, 257. 6. Craft probably refers to American Slavery and Colour (London, 1857) by Edinburgh publisher, author, and encyclopedist William Chambers. DNB, 4:27– 29. 7. Samuel Crowther (ca. 1806–1891), a Yoruban, was captured and sold into slavery in 1821. Freed by the British navy in 1822, he was taken to Sierra Leone, where he began a lifelong affiliation with the Church Missionary Society and the Anglican church. Crowther was educated in English and Sierre Leonean institutions and was ordained an Anglican priest in 1843. He returned to Sierra Leone, but two years later, he left for Yoruba and helped establish CMS missions at Badagri and Abeokuta; he published grammars and vocabularies for several African languages, and translated parts of the Bible into Yoruban. Crowther took part in the CMS Niger Expedition in 1841, and in 1854 and 1857, he represented the CMS on British government expeditions up the Niger River. In 1864 he was consecrated bishop of British West Africa, a position he retained until shortly before his death. Well known in Britain, Crowther urged British modernization of West Africa. He visited England in 1851, 1864, and 1877. Ajayi, Christian Missions in Nigeria, 20–43, 72–74, 105–6, 127–30, 159, 180–277. 8. Julius Caesar (100–44 B.C.) invaded Britain in 55–54 B.C. He returned to Rome with his army in 50 B.C., overthrew the Roman republic, and appointed himself dictator. He was assassinated in 44 B.C. 9. William Cowper (1731–1800) was an English poet and literary figure, noted for his many hymns and translations of Milton and Homer. DNB, 4:1319–27. 544

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97. J. Sella Martin to Editor, London Morning Star 8 September 1863 During the Civil War, blacks in Britain played a critical role in promoting the Union cause and combating pro-Confederate propaganda. In the summer of 1863, it was rumored that the Confederate army would soon enlist slaves. J. Sella Martin’s 8 September letter to the London Morning Star’s editor Samuel Lucas scoffed at the possibility. Martin’s letter reached not only the Star’s limited, Radical readership of fifteen thousand but a wider audience as well when it was reprinted in other periodicals like the Anti-Slavery Reporter. MS, 9 September 1863; Bourne, English Newspapers, 2:241, 272; ASRL, 1 October 1863. Bromley London, [England] Sept[ember] 8, [1863] SIR:1 I am prepared to believe the report that reaches us by this mail “that President Davis has decided, after consultation with the governors of the Confederate States, to call out 500,000 black troops, who are to receive their freedom and fifty acres of land at the end of the war.”2 Said Owen Glendower in a spirit either of boasting or superstition, “I can call spirits from the vasty deep.” “So can I,” replied Hotspur, “but will they come?”3 Jefferson Davis has called the wandering spirits of the Confederate army from the wilderness of desertion, but they have not responded to his call—he now calls spirits from the vasty deep of his necessities and their sufferings, but will they come? I answer, “No.” They may be driven to the field of battle as for six generations they have been driven to the field of unpaid labour, but a mere call from Jefferson Davis will serve no other purpose than to give another colour to his great crowd of deserters. Some surprise has already been expressed by the friends of the slave that so small a proportion of the slave population has left the plantations of the rebel States to find safety within the Union lines. In answer to such expressions I have had to state that the number which came and thus made an effort to gain their freedom was in almost exact proportion to the self-reliant; and I now add that the proportion is as large as can be found among any degraded people. But if it is true that the South intends to call out the slaves as soldiers the grounds of that surprise will be speedily removed. Those morally renovated slaves who have been afraid of the battle-field, or too indolent to make an effort for their own freedom— waiting heretofore for the Union lines to embrace them as by en-

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chantment—will, now that Mr. Davis threatens to make them fight for him, seek service under what they consider a better master, by coming within the Northern lines. Thus, the first effect of this proclamation will be to drive those slaves from the plantation and the city to the side of the North who were deaf to its invitation. If they must fight there is no doubt in my mind whom they will fight for. And yet I would not be understood as saying that the negro will not fight for the South. I have no doubt that in the first battles between the slaves and the Federal forces, the slaves will show courage, endurance, and valour equal to their brethren at Milliken’s Bend, Port Hudson, and Fort Wagner.4 But these qualities will get their inspiration from behind rather than from within or above. The Confederates will not trust their slaves in their first battles without taking the precaution to sandwich a coloured company between two white companies of soldiers. In some way they will be guarded until confidence is inspired. The slaves are aware that nothing will inspire confidence in themselves like good fighting and an apparent heartiness in espousing their masters’ cause. Should we hear of fierce fighting on the part of these slaves who can get to the Northern lines, let us remember that they are fighting to secure their masters’ confidence, and when they have succeeded in turning from their every movement their masters’ jealous or suspicious eyes, we will next hear of their deserting in whole regiments to the Northern forces. In the first fierce battles with their brethren, they will feel that they are fighting even their brethren for the sake of freedom. Let us then be prepared for any event that may have the appearance of the slaves fighting for their enslavement. For nothing can make the slave expect freedom from the South. On almost every plantation in the South the heroic deeds of the negro soldiers who fought for their masters in the war of 1812–15 are well known. Nor is it less generally known to them, that though those negro soldiers were by proclamation promised their freedom, yet, after the war, the great majority of them were reduced to slavery. In that war they had no confidence in either belligerent, and being in the hands of one of them they fought under compulsion.5 But in this war the case is different. Their friends are on hand and can reach them, and their brethren are among their friends inspiring them with confidence. We see then that Mr. Davis will by his proclamation, call out soldiers for the Union army rather than for his own, and that those who respond to this call under compulsion will do so in the hope of deserting to the Northern side. But in another respect that seems almost vital. Calling out the negroes will be more harmful to the Confederacy than beneficial. When Mr. Davis withdraws his labourers from the fields of agriculture

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to put them in the field of battle, it not only shows us in what a [desperate?] condition he regards himself, but it shows how surely the madness which precedes the destruction of those whom the gods would destroy has begun. Mr. Davis’s constituency find themselves in such straits for animal food as to begrudge the dogs what they eat; but as they have depended upon the slaves for bread, and as his army cannot fight without food, calling the negroes from fields of toil to the field of strife is as though he filled the stomach of his army with powder, and his cannon with bread-stuff. 500,000 would be the full proportion of able bodied men; therefore none would be left on the plantations except the decrepit and women and children. It would be as much as they could do to feed themselves and the white women and children. Who, then, would feed the Southern army? If, for no other reason, the slave is too much opposed to starving to remain with a perishing army; and we may be sure that, but for sheer desperation, or to gratify his inordinate ambition, Mr. Davis would never take to his ranks the people whom he believes it right to enslave. Mr. Davis is not a candidate for martyrdom, for although he believes it to be the decree of God that the negro should be enslaved, and believes too that the slave loves his condition, still he seems to be more anxious to save his Government, and so save his neck, than to obey the decrees of the Almighty, or to consult the welfare of the slave. Those who will fight are to receive their freedom and fifty acres of land. What right has Mr. Davis to give those whom God has put in slavery their freedom? If his faith be the true one, and he a true believer in it, he has no more right to release a slave [to] freedom than he has to pretend to forgive a man’s sins. The interests of a great people, the value of a great Government, the sacredness of an oath, the horrors of war, were all as nothing to him while initiating the rebellion. He broke up a great Government in the interests of slavery, and now he is about to break up slavery in the interests of a small Government in which he hopes to be the chief abolitionist. Then, too, what a light this throws on the contentment of the slaves. They who love their masters so passionately and bear their chains with such contentment ought to have been offered a good master at the end of the war, but Mr. Davis is infidel enough to offer them freedom and land. Would not these things bring upon the poor slaves the most terrible suffering? If not, why did Mr. Davis plunge his country into a war? What need is there of a separate Government if slavery is to be abolished? But perhaps Mr. Davis means to keep the “word of promise to the ear (of the slave) and break it to his hope” by holding in slavery his wife and child after the war is over; or, more likely Mr. Davis intends to follow the

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example of his countrymen and class in the treatment of the slaves after the Battle of New Orleans in 1812–13.6 Either one of these suppositions I think more likely to be a true solution of this strange anomaly of a slaveholder and slave propagandist setting up an abolition Government. But whatever view we take, this is Mr. Jefferson Davis’s last hand in his game for the Presidency. Travelling once upon Lake Ponchartrain, it was my misfortune to stand near a gambling table in one of those palatial lake boats that steam between New Orleans and Mobile. All at once there was great excitement near the table, and I drew near to ascertain its cause. At one end sat a negro-trader who had already lost ten thousand pounds in money within a few hours; at the other sat a Yankee, who was the winner of the greater portion of the negro-trader’s losings. I learned that these two had, what in their parlance is called, a good hand. The negro-trader was betting his slaves amid the fiercest excitement, and one after another was staked until the last of his slaves was named. He made known this fact to the Yankee, who “called,” which compelled both to expose their cards. The Yankee threw his on the table, and the sight was too much for the negro-trader—he fell back in his chair a corpse. His hand was beaten and his negroes were lost. Jeff Davis will not be more lucky in playing his last hand against Yankee Abe.7 SELLA MARTIN Morning Star (London), 9 September 1863. 1. Samuel Lucas (1811–1865) was the first editor of the London Morning Star and its afternoon affiliate, the Evening Star, both of which began publication in 1856. The Radical penny daily emphasized news over editorial commentary and appealed to a limited readership, never exceeding a circulation of fifteen thousand and declining to five thousand by 1869 when absorbed by the London Daily News. Lucas was the brother-in-law of John Bright and an active reformer in his own right; he edited the Morning Star until his death. Bourne, English Newspapers, 2:238–42, 271–72; DNB, 12:241. 2. Although blacks assisted the Confederate army as servants and laborers, they were never employed as combat troops. In 1863 proposals to arm the slaves multiplied. Both Davis and the Confederate Congress resisted, but finally in March 1865, the Confederate Congress authorized the arming of slaves; the Civil War ended before the plan could be implemented. CWD, 585; Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War (Boston, Mass., 1969), 276–81. 3. Martin refers to William Shakespeare’s Henry IV. In act 3, scene 1, Henry Percy—”Hotspur”—and the Welshman Owen Glendower seal their alliance against King Henry. Speaking of his value to the alliance, Glendower boasts of his magical powers and is then admonished by Hotspur. 4. Black bravery at Port Hudson, Milliken’s Bend, and Fort Wagner during mid1863 demonstrated to skeptics, including the Lincoln administration and the Union military command, that blacks could be effective soldiers. A 27 May assault at Port Hudson, Louisiana, was the first real test for black troops in the Civil

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War. They fought courageously, making three difficult charges and bearing a disproportionate number of Union casualties. On 7 June, when Milliken’s Bend, a small Louisiana town twenty miles upstream from Vicksburg, Mississippi, was attacked by four Confederate regiments, the eight hundred black defenders, although armed with faulty weapons and essentially untrained, fought bravely and blunted the attack. Their courage impressed northern military men and the public. On 18 July, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment, a free black unit commanded by Harvard-educated Robert Gould Shaw, led an offensive against Fort Wagner, a key Confederate battery in Charleston harbor. The costly attack left 245 black soldiers dead, wounded, captured, or missing. Dudley Taylor Cornish, The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861–1865 (New York, N.Y., 1966), xiii, 17, 98, 117, 132, 134, 142–45, 148, 151–72, 187, 191, 225, 233, 240, 244, 252, 261; Quarles, Negro in Civil War, 3–7, 12–21, 188, 215, 218–20, 224, 284, 326. 5. Both the American and British promised freedom for slaves who fought in the War of 1812, but both sides betrayed that promise. American policy was neither consistent nor national; state laws governed the recruitment of blacks. A New York law authorized that slaves who enlisted with the permission of their masters would be freed at the end of the war. In Louisiana, where General Andrew Jackson recruited two regiments of free blacks, slaves needed their masters’ permission to become soldiers but were given only an implied promise of freedom. Technically, they remained slaves who fought for their masters. Some blacks seeking freedom went over to the British, and at the end of the war, a number migrated to Canada and the West Indies. Some that went to the islands were sold into slavery. The Treaty of Ghent, which formally terminated hostilities, provided for the mutual restoration of property by combatants, including slaves. The British did pay over $1,000,000 in fugitive slave indemnities. Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, 125– 26; Kenneth G. Goode and Winthrop D. Jordan, From Africa to the United States and Then (Glenview, Ill., 1969), 45–46. 6. American troops under the command of General Andrew Jackson (including two free black divisions) defeated British forces at the Battle of New Orleans on 8 January 1815. 7. Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) was born at Hodgenville, Kentucky, but as a child moved with his family to Springfield, Illinois. Initially a Whig member of the Illinois legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives, Lincoln joined the newly formed Republican party, achieving national prominence during the late 1850s, particularly for his opposition to the extension of slavery. Elected president in 1860, he is remembered for preserving the Union and for issuing the January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. He was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in April 1865. DAB, 6(1): 242–59.

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98. J. Sella Martin to Michael E. Strieby 4 June 1865 After emancipation, some Anglo-American reformers began collecting funds and supplies for recently freed blacks in the American South. By May 1865 the British freedmen’s aid effort had gained considerable momentum with the formation of more than thirty local societies. British enthusiasm attracted American organizations with similar aims. But the behavior of some American freedmen’s aid agents in Britain imperiled their opportunity to work with the fast-developing British campaign. A few British movement leaders were concerned about overt American solicitations and were fearful that money might be misused. These circumstances confronted J. Sella Martin in early May when he arrived in Britain as the freedmen’s aid agent for the American Missionary Association. At the end of May, he wrote AMA headquarters about the situation. Martin complained that collections were hampered by the competition between himself and Dr. Dudley C. Haynes of the AMA, Levi Coffin and Dr. Henry M. Storrs of the Western Freedmen’s Aid Commission, Charles C. Leigh of the National Freedmen’s Relief Association of New York, and Rev. Crammond Kennedy of the American Freedmen’s Union Commission. Dr. Haynes’s fund-raising methods as an AMA representative had created a particularly hostile climate for Martin. Martin’s 4 June 1865 letter to AMA Secretary Michael E. Strieby further described his difficulties. J. Sella Martin to [Secretary, American Missionary Association], 31 May 1865, AMA-ARC; Bolt, AntiSlavery Movement and Reconstruction, 107, 136. [18 Alfred] Place London, W. C. [England] June 4, 1865 My dear Sir1 Yesterday I met Messrs. Storr2 and Leigh3 at the Freedmen’s Aid Rooms;4 and evidently I had been the subject of conversation, for as soon as I entered Dr. Storr, scarcely waiting for an introduction, said he had desired to see me that he might have a little plain talk with me; and he proceeded to say among other things “That the American Missionary Association was not acting fairly.” “We are here” he continued, pointing to Mr. Leigh “under the reproach of our American friends for soliciting funds from England. And you are here doing the same thing without suffering the reproach.” I replied that neither I nor my Society5 held ourselves responsible for the reproach that others might suffer under unless it could be shone that

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we were parties in bringing it upon them. “You are parties to it” he replied with some warmth; “and I shall write to the Papers here and in America to state that we are doing no more than you are in the way of begging for money.” It seems to me I answered that the question is whether I am doing any more than I was sent to do; or any thing less manly and less in keeping with public sentiment at home; not what you are doing. He rejoined “I see it stated in the Independent6 that you were not coming to England to solicit funds” and in an unchristian and insulting way it is there stated “we dont want English money and the inference is left that you come in a more dignified way than the rest of us.” You will excuse me I said but may I ask if in your meetings you beg for money? “No” he replied. Would you beg for it I asked. “No” he answered. Very well then I said it seems that you approve of our policy. He had already heard that Dr. Haynes7 when he spoke, especially on Sunday chose some text that led to the enforcement of the duty of giving. I had heard of it too and had been told of its bad effect. So I asked him if he approved of Dr. Haynes course. He said he did not “but at the same time he added I do not like the American Missionary Society to be pulling on two strings one of which are not sound and each opposed to the other. When I went to Churches in America” he continued “to get money for the Western Freedmen’s Aid Society8 I was refused admission to the Pulpits on the ground that as the American Missionary Association trusted the American churches while other Societies sent abroad and while ours was aggitating the question of sending some one abroad the American Missionary Society should be rewarded for its fidelity to American sentiment and its trust in benevolent action on the part of the Churches; and now here you are its agent while that sentiment commands you as no beggar and you are doing no more or less than we are, but just like us in advocating the claims of your Society.” Then you mean to say I said that I am here under false colors. Oh no he said I hold you irresponsible but not the Society [remarks. In their turn] Dr. Storrs and Leigh [quieted down] but they were not cured of their enmity. The question of consolidation of funds then came up. It was Tomkins9 opinion that I had better do as Messrs. Leigh and Storr had done, put myself under the direction of the London Society;10 and let all the funds flow into the treasury of that and then divide it equally. I told him that my Society had sent me instead of an abler man just because they desired that I should use my old connections here for the benefit of the Freedmen as my Society understood his wants and that I was not at liberty to give up those connections to any other Society. Liegh and Storr seemed greatly chagrined at this decision and said it was no use to talk any more on the subject. Leigh and Storr then left. And Tomkins told me that “although as I well knew the London Society could do me much good or rather that I could do very well without its co-operation, yet still it could do me

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harm; and that it would be in a temper to do me harm at the next meeting. He then informed me that Haynes had been taken up and endorsed by the Society, but that on leaving, which he did yesterday, he refused to submit his account to be audited by the Society. They may, and if you refuse I think they certainly will, take notice of this conduct, and wi publish something on it.” Massey11 he continued has been no friend to your society because he did not get an appointment from it as he expected and he has done much to [ripen] this feeling which you saw in these. You will pardon me when I tell you I got a little “ashy” at this dodge; And I told him that I had the honor of being one of the Executive Committee12—that I had recommended the sending of a delegate to England—that when I was chosen I stipulated that I was merely to lay the facts before the People and give them an opportunity to give without asking a gift; and that all this necessary you admit by acknowledging first that Dr. Haynes did it and secondly that you would not do it. Your fault with the Society I cant see; and as to your writing to the Papers I have no doubt there are as many pens in 61 John Street13 and as able ones as are likely to be opposed to them in this matter. Leigh here put in and said “I understand those People in John Street about as well as any man in the United States.” I replied that I did not profess to be expert in reading men but I could understand a fact and the fact that concerned me at this time was that my Society was doing through its agent just what it professed to do; and if it was not the agent and not the Society was to blame; and that it was very probable the agent would go on doing as he had done. Dr. Tomkins here interposed and said it would be a most unfortunate thing to America, the Freedmen and the agents of all the Societies if there should be any discord among the American delegates. After rather lengthy [three words illegible] and this is not the first. Massey has gone to America it is true but he has left his spirit of vindictiveness behind. Your Society will certainly have friends enough to see that they are not unjustly dealt and you know that no American could have more friends on the Board14 than you have got. Dont let this feeling and the feeling that will be aroused against Haynes injure your noble Society; for I will not tell you that it has more of my sympathy than any Society in America.” In the light of these facts I saw nothing else to do but to put myself under the London Society. With the understanding however that I should have the privilege of stating to my audiences that they could denigrate personal [or private] donations for the American Missionary Association” and that all donations were to be equally divided between the Societies,— not at different times; but when ever donations were made. This change of programme will hamper me some and perhaps delay my work a little but I think after all that in view of the danger of getting

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the Society opposed to my private action, as it would consider in self defense, I have done the best thing to be done under the circumstances. I shall hold my meeting at Mr. Noel’s15 next Wednesday be at Birmingham on the 13th and at Manchester and Glasgow the following weeks and after that [I must] give myself up to the Society. I sincerely trust that we shall get noless money than we would have got under my plan but I must confess that I am deeply chagrined at the necessity for a change of plan. I am thrown off my feet for the present and you will have to wait until I can see my way clear before I write as encouragingly as I had hoped to do in this letter. I send you the Daily News 16 of day before yesterday in which you will see a letter of mine. I shall have one also but a different one in the Star. I am persuaded that we shall touch the Springs of benevolence yet; though this jealousy and [bickering] [one line illegible] but that the claims of our Society should be known for us to get our share of the funds. By the way as the Boys say “that’s what’s the matter.” Storrs and Leigh know the superior claims of our Society and they would have been glad enough if the foolish pride that forbade our laying our claims before the world had been so [impelling] as to have kept me at home. Please say to all in the office that it will be necessary for them to prepare themselves for the exercise of a little patience. Try and keep my Church17 from beginning repairs as long as possible by preaching for them and telling them of the magnitude of the work here. Yours & to all lovingly, J. Sella Martin P.S. I am getting out a circular. I will send you one. American Missionary Association Archives, Amistad Research Center, New Orleans, La. Published by permission. 1. Michael E. Strieby (1815–1899) was born and educated in Ohio. After graduating from Oberlin College in 1842, he pastored Congregational churches at Mount Vernon, Ohio, and Syracuse, New York. Strieby became secretary of the American Missionary Association in 1864 and directed the AMA’s religious and educational efforts in the postbellum South until he retired in 1896. AM, April 1899; McPherson, Abolitionist Legacy, 56, 95, 404. 2. Henry Martyn Storrs (1827–1894) was born in Ravenna, Ohio, and educated at Amherst College and Andover Theological Seminary. During his early career, he served Congregational churches in Lawrence (Massachusetts), Cincinnati, and Brooklyn. After the Civil War, Storrs worked for the Freedmen’s Bureau. He also lectured and collected funds in Britain for Levi Coffin’s Western Freedmen’s Aid Commission (1865–66). In 1872 Storrs became corresponding secretary of the American Home Missionary Society, but he left that post ten years later to fill the pulpit of the First Presbyterian Church in Orange, New

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Jersey. Storrs remained there until his death. NCAB, 19:447; Bolt, Anti-Slavery Movement and Reconstruction, 136. 3. Charles C. Leigh was a Methodist Episcopal clergyman in New York City. In 1863 he successfully urged African Methodist Episcopal Bishop Daniel Payne to send AME itinerant preachers to do missionary work among the southern freedmen. A financial officer of the National Freedmen’s Relief Association of New York, Leigh toured Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, and other parts of Europe as the association’s European delegate during 1865–66 to raise funds for the freedmen’s aid cause. Harry V. Richardson, Dark Salvation: The Story of Methodism as It Developed among Blacks in America (New York, N.Y., 1976), 192; Bolt, AntiSlavery Movement and Reconstruction, 58, 136n. 4. Martin probably refers to rooms at the offices of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society at 27 New Broad Street in London, where the committee of the Freedmen’s Aid Society met weekly during 1865. FML, 1 September 1865. 5. Martin refers to the American Missionary Association, which was founded at Albany, New York, in 1846. Treasurer Lewis Tappan and secretaries Simeon S. Jocelyn and George Whipple initially directed the society’s affairs. Whipple also edited the American Missionary, an AMA organ, until the Civil War. AMA membership was open to all nonslaveholding Christians. The association promoted mission work and Christian education among nonwhite peoples in the Americas and abroad. By 1855 it had missions in Egypt, Siam, Haiti, Jamaica, and West Africa, in addition to the more than one hundred “home” missions in North America. After the Civil War, the AMA became the largest supporter of freedmen’s education in the South, founding and funding more than five hundred black schools and colleges. Today, blacks remain the AMA’s primary focus. Clifton H. Johnson, “The American Missionary Association, 1846–1861” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1958); McPherson, Abolitionist Legacy; Low and Clift, Encyclopedia of Black America, 101–2. 6. Founded as a Congregationalist weekly in 1848, the New York Independent became the leading American religious newspaper. With a circulation of seventy thousand by 1870, it was firmly abolitionist by the outbreak of the Civil War and initially supported radical Republican policies for Reconstruction. Lewis Tappan’s son-in-law Henry C. Bowen owned and published the Independent. Joshua Leavitt, Henry Ward Beecher, and Theodore Tilton served as editors at various times. Louis Filler, “Liberalism, Anti-Slavery, and the Founders of the Independent,” NEQ 27:293–306 (September 1954); McPherson, Abolitionist Legacy, 25, 26. 7. Dudley C. Haynes (1809–1888) was a Baptist clergyman and the author of several volumes on Baptist history and doctrines. In 1864–65 he toured Britain on behalf of the freedmen’s aid cause, raised money for the American Missionary Association in Dublin, and served as a special delegate to Europe for the Londonbased Freedmen’s Aid Society. Bolt, Anti-Slavery Movement and Reconstruction, 107; Wallace and Gillespie, Journal of Benjamin Moran, 2:1407. 8. The Western Freedmen’s Aid Commission was established by Quaker abolitionist Levi Coffin in Cincinnati in January 1863. It represented several religious groups devoted to educational work among freedmen and lobbied for the creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Coffin, the major figure in the WFAC, organized auxiliaries and raised $100,000 during a British tour in 1864. The commission

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was consolidated into the short-lived American Freedmen’s Union Commission in 1866. James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton, N.J., 1964), 171, 188–89; William Preston Vaughn, Schools for All: The Blacks and Public Education in the South, 1865– 1877 (Lexington, Ky., 1974), 4–5; Temperley, British Antislavery, 260. 9. Frederick Tompkins was a London barrister and a Congregationalist. During the Civil War, he assumed a primary role in the British freedmen’s aid movement, serving as secretary and later president of the London-based Freedmen’s Aid Society, as editor of the FAS-sponsored Freed-Man, and as a member of the executive committee of the National Committee of British FreedMen’s Aid Societies from its founding in 1865. Tompkins visited the American south in 1867 and, after observing racial segregation, became a critic of prosegregationist American freedmen’s aid organizations such as the Peabody Fund. Bolt, Anti-Slavery Movement and Reconstruction, 59n., 78, 89n., 130; FML, September 1865, January 1868. 10. Martin refers to the London-based Freedmen’s Aid Society, which was the first freedmen’s aid organization founded in Britain. It was established in April 1863 at the instigation of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton and a group of notable antislavery reformers that included members of Parliament, ministers, and a number of Quaker philanthropists. By August 1865, the organization had raised £40,000 and had begun a monthly magazine (the Freed-Man) to advertise its activities and to discuss the plight of America’s newly emancipated slaves. The society remained separate from the national freedmen’s aid movement and refused to join the national organization. The FAS defined its aims to include support for both the American freedman and for the struggling freedman in the British colonies, particularly in Jamaica. The society probably functioned until 1869; it published the Freed-Man until August 1868. Temperley, British Antislavery, 259; Bolt, Anti-Slavery Movement and Reconstruction, 39, 41, 46, 49, 51, 59, 102, 106, 110, 115, 130; FML, August 1865, May, June 1866, January, March, October 1867, August 1868. 11. James William Massie (1799–1869) was an Irish-born Independent clergyman and missionary, who served in India, Ireland, and Scotland. He settled in London in the late 1840s and became secretary of the Home Missionary Society (1848–59). Massie advocated free trade and antislavery, and, during the Civil War, was a prominent member of the Freedmen’s Aid Society. He visited the United States several times. MEB, 2:787; Bolt, Anti-Slavery Movement and Reconstruction, 89. 12. Martin refers to the executive committee of the American Missionary Association. It was this body that selected him as an AMA delegate to the 1865 May meetings in London. Prior to leaving for Britain, Martin served as a member of the committee. AM, June 1865; Michael E. Strieby to T. Lyman, 18 March 1865, AMAARC.

13. In 1865 the American Missionary Association offices were located at 61 John Street in New York City. AM, February 1865. 14. As of August 1865, the board of the Freedmen’s Aid Society consisted of Thomas Fowell Buxton, Jr., president; Samuel Gurney, treasurer; William Allen,

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subtreasurer; John Curwen, Samuel Garratt, and Frederick W. Chesson, honorary secretaries; and Frederick Tomkins, acting secretary. FML, 1 August 1865. 15. Martin refers to the John Street Chapel, London, the congregation of Baptist W. Noel (1798–1873). Noel was born in Scotland and studied at Trinity College, Cambridge. He left the Anglican orders after more than twenty years at St. John’s Chapel, Bedford Row, London, joined the Baptist faith, and served as pastor of John Street Chapel from 1850 until 1868. A leading figure in the Evangelical Alliance and the Baptist Union, he wrote many religious tracts and actively supported the Union cause during the Civil War. DNB, 14:534–35.

16. Martin’s letter was not found. The London Daily News began publication under editor Charles Dickens in 1846. The Liberal penny daily advocated free trade and parliamentary reform. It was edited during the 1860s by Thomas Walker. Bourne, English Newspapers, 2:140–51, 272. 17. Martin refers to his Shiloh Presbyterian Church in New York City.

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99. J. Sella Martin to Michael E. Strieby 21 June 1865 Despite proper references, previous lecturing experience, and wellplaced contacts, J. Sella Martin’s inability to raise funds and schedule meetings in England during the early summer of 1865 demonstrated the unpredictability of the British lecture circuit. Following his 2 June 1865 exchange with Henry M. Storrs, Charles Leigh, and Frederick Tomkins, Martin agreed to operate under the auspices of the London-based Freedmen’s Aid Society. But this brought only limited success in scheduling meetings until the 13 June annual gathering of the Birmingham and Midland Freedmen’s-Aid Association at Birmingham’s Town Hall. Martin appeared on the platform with Storrs and Leigh “to give color to the American delegation,” was enthusiastically cheered, and collected £250. Even so, the failure of a mid-June Manchester meeting and the postponement of a scheduled Glasgow lecture tempered his optimism and hampered his mission. Martin’s 21 June letter to American Missionary Association Secretary Michael E. Strieby reported the vagaries encountered in organizing a tour. When later inquiries to local societies proved fruitless, Martin also unprofitably contacted Aspinall Hampson, secretary of the National Committee of British Freed-Men’s Aid Societies, for assistance in arranging a series of lectures. Annual Report of the Birmingham and Midland Freedmen’s-Aid Association to May 19, 1865 (Birmingham, England, 1865), 4, 12; J. Sella Martin to [Secretary, American Missionary Association], 4 July 1865, AMA-ARC; Henry J. Wilson to Jo. Stokes, 23 June 1865, Sheffield Ladies Anti-Slavery Society Letters, UkMJr; J. Sella Martin to [Aspinall Hampson], 12 July 1865, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh [15:1021]. 14 Oxford St[reet] London W.C. [England] June 21, 1865 My dear Sir In my letter of 19th inst. I find that I was not as explicit as I intended to be about some matters connected with my mission. And in the first place I find I did not [set in] a sufficiently clear light either the difficulties of an initiatory nature in, in getting the American Missionary Society before either the public or [the] various freedmen’s aid Societies; or the ultimate [ad]vantages to be derived from taking time to make the claims of our Society appreciated and to [get] a response for them. Confident that neither Levi Coffin1 or Dr. Haynes2 had reached the religious element, I felt certain that it could be reached and would yield

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good results; and my expectation was to see those results almost immediately. But the friends here began to see the same thing about the same time, and I find that both Leigh and Storrs were invited to come here with the view of reaching the Christians. It came out in Committee3 last week that Dr. [Tomkins] had not only verbally but by letter invited Mr. Leigh to come over to England and that Mr. Albright4 at the suggestion of Levi Coffin had invited Dr. Storrs to do the same. It was expected that Leigh would reach the Methodists and that Leigh Storrs would reach the Congregationalists or [Independents]. You percieved from Dr. Storr’s circular that he was here in time to be presented at the May meetings5 and that Dr. Tomkins worked his reception [through?]; and I may add that many engagements were made for him to speak at important Churches with Ministers who were present at his reception; for Storr always and every where makes a fine impression. I think I mentioned in one of my letters that there had been a Soire given to [Leigh?] at the Centenary Hall (Methodist) as a sort of endorsement of him by that body.6 He is now in the Provinces among the Methodist Churches. The initiatory difficulties of your delegate may be thus summed up. First my former English connections we are somewhat interfered with by the necessity there was imposed on me of putting myself under the London Society which difficulties are [increased] by the two considerations that the London Society has very little life in it and that it is a bad time of the year for meeting and somewhat worse in my case [than?] it would otherwise be, on account of Dr. Storrs having got engagements for the Churches of many of my old friends because of his being here where they [one or two words illegible] in London. And secondly because of the indifferant not to say opposing feeling to the American Missionary Association engendered by same one. The history of the Birmingham Meeting, which I find I have [word illegible] you in full, will show the nature of that feeling and the somewhat unscrupulous method of [illegible]fying it. Added to this is the mortification of [having] to spend so much before I can begin to show you results. And now for the ultimate advantages of [word illegible] to [time?] to get the claims of the American Missionary Society Association fully known and encouraging[ly] acknowledged. First. I have sent circulars and written letters to every Freedman’s Aid Society in the Kingdom, of which there are thirty three [small and great]. I have had the article from the American Missionary in which the statements of the Society [word illegible] and the small receipts from England are [noted].7 I have made a circular of the article from the Evening Post in reference to my apointment [leaving?] out some of the matter about myself.8 Those along with three other circulars I have sent to the Secretaries of the F.M.A.S. 9 accompanied by written letters. I have also written letters to their chairmen, or patron[s]. This was all a work of [time] superintending the

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printing, writing and correcting every thing myself, and the effort to find out who these secretaries and chairmen were all this in consequence of the chaotic state of the Freedmen Societies’ literature is in and the fact of its not existing at all in many case[s]—made the work both slow of progress and expensive. I have this morning received favorable answers from three Secretaries in their private capacity telling me they are glad to know the facts about our Society but frankly acknowledging that they did not know of its existence before, and promising to put our Society on the list of those to which their funds are hereafter to be distributed. I have also spent many days and I may say nights in preparing books bound with red Morocco with my commission from you pasted on the first leaf and the London Society’s endorsement placed on the second, and that circular copied from the Post on the third and fourth; and I have put about a dozen of these in the hands of influencial friends to get subscriptions where they can from intimate friends who have not subscribed to this object. This kind of thing consumes a great deal of time and money to find the people and then to talk the matter [into] them. But I have no doubt of the good results. I must confess frankly that these results are not to be looked for in a day or a week for every thing moves slowly here. But there is this to congratulate the Society upon that where it was not known it is now known and where it was misunderstood or misrepresented there is no longer confusion or the [power?] to [harm]. I have thought wise to contribute to the expense of a great meeting to be got up in Exeter Hall on the 28 inst. or on the 5th prox. with the condition that I am to be one of the speakers. Lord Brougham is to preside if he is well enough and if not to provide a suitable substitute himself. Not only did I think the expense worth incurring because of the character which would be given to your delegate but because of the probable advantage to grow out of getting at least a short report of my speech in the Times the [readers?] of which are the men with the money who may [be] influenced to give, and who do not know that there is such a creature as I am [in?] England or such [a] Society as ours in the world. The meeting is to be on Cuban slavery but I will find a place for the Freedman. You will not be disappointed if I do not [now] furnish you with accounts. I will be happier and so will you if the reciepts become known [word illegible] along with the expenditure. The time will come when all in the office will recognize [the] worth of this mission and when the Freedmen will bless it for the good arising out of it. I told you about the miscarriage of the Manchester Meeting. I have to add that for want of getting the Lord Provost of Scotland to preside the meeting in Glasgow has been deferred. Please let me know of [all] reciepts sent from this side of the water [to you] for my circulars to individuals as well as [to Societies?] may bring some thing—that I may [publish them] in the pa-

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pers here. I will remit you the first £100 I get and publish it—a smaller [sum published?] would do more harm than good. I have [arranged?] a large number of Meetings for Oct. The general [word illegible] cuts off m all meetings of importance now. Love to all Yours truly, Sella Martin P.S. No letter from [illegible] yet. S. M. American Missionary Association Archives, Amistad Research Center, New Orleans, La. Published by permission. 1. Levi Coffin (1789–1877) was born to Quaker abolitionist parents in New Garden, North Carolina. In 1826 he moved to Newport, Indiana, where, for over three decades, he assisted slaves escaping on the underground railroad and aided local black schools. In 1847 he opened a free produce store in Cincinnati. After the outbreak of the Civil War, Coffin organized the Western Freedmen’s Aid Commission, lobbied for creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and toured England and Ireland to raise funds for the freedmen’s aid cause (1864–65). The lifelong abolitionist attended the 1867 International Anti-Slavery Conference in Paris. DAB, 4:268– 69; McPherson, Struggle for Equality, 171, 189; Bolt, Anti-Slavery Movement and Reconstruction, 58, 95, 107, 136. 2. Dudley C. Haynes. 3. Martin refers to the executive committee of the Freedmen’s Aid Society. 4. Arthur Albright (1811–1900) was a prosperous Birmingham Quaker with long service in the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Albright worked tirelessly to organize the fledgling British freedmen’s aid movement by lecturing throughout England, developing subscription lists, recruiting speakers, raising funds, and serving as the influential secretary of both the Birmingham and Midland Freedmen’s-Aid Association and the National Committee of British Freed-Men’s Aid Societies. Taylor, British and American Abolitionists, 183n.; Bolt, Anti-Slavery Movement and Reconstruction, 55, 63–64. 5. British missionary societies held annual conferences in London each May. The British and Foreign Bible Society, the Church Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Missionary Society, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Religious Tract Society, and the London Missionary Society were among those organizations that held such meetings. AM, August 1865. 6. Several welcome meetings for Charles C. Leigh were organized during May 1865, including the apparently unrecorded Methodist soirée at Wesleyan Centenary Hall, London. On 4 May the London-based Freedmen’s Aid Society proposed a welcome meeting for Leigh and Henry M. Storrs. The gathering convened on 13 May in Birmingham, when the two Americans addressed a large and enthusiastic audience at Free Trade Hall. Four days later, Leigh and Storrs were also warmly received by delegates from the various freedmen’s aid societies of the United Kingdom. ASRL, 1 June, 1 July 1865. 7. The June 1865 issue of the American Missionary carried a notice that J. Sella Martin, a member of the executive committee of the American Missionary Association, had been appointed to represent the organization at the May meetings in

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London. First published in 1846, the American Missionary was an AMA organ. Society secretary George Whipple edited the monthly newspaper until the Civil War. Circulation peaked at twenty-three thousand in 1856, which prompted the appearance of the American Missionary Magazine the following year. The content of the two periodicals was identical and included reports of AMA activities, correspondence from missionaries, and antislavery work. The newspaper stopped publication after the Civil War, but the AMA magazine continued to appear under the title American Missionary. In 1909 it became a Congregational missionary magazine, and in 1934 it merged with the Missionary Herald. AM, June 1865; Johnson, “American Missionary Association,” 253–72. 8. Martin refers to an unsigned letter, which appeared on the front page of the 8 May 1865 New York Evening Post under the heading “The London May Meetings.” The letter identified the American Missionary Association, outlined the AMA’s efforts on behalf of the freedman, and credited the success of AMA freedmen schools to the association’s willingness to staff them with black teachers and administrators. After acknowledging the interest of “English Christians” in the association’s work and indicating that, by appointing a delegate to the May meetings, it hoped to provide the British with an opportunity to contribute to the association “without solicitation,” the letter described Martin’s qualifications to serve in the post: Martin had been a pastor in London, had been received with “great favor” by English audiences, was familiar with British collection methods, and most important, was a “witness for his race,” who would be the best judge of “a benevolent movement for its elevation.” He was a “medium . . . who fully understands the condition, the nature and the needs of his own people, and who at the same time knows all the peculiarities of those who would be donors.” EP, 8 May 1865. 9. Frederick Tomkins was secretary of the London-based Freedmen’s Aid Society in 1865. FAS honorary secretaries included Plaistow clergyman John Curwen, Pimlico clergyman Samuel Garratt, and London journalist and prominent Garrisonian abolitionist Frederick W. Chesson. FML, August 1865.

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100. Speech by J. Sella Martin Delivered at the Queen’s Rooms, Glasgow, Scotland

3 October 1865 The British certification system was designed to guarantee the character of a fund raiser, the nature of his request, and the integrity of collection procedures. The individuals or groups providing certification might also provide fund-raising opportunities. But more often, these opportunities depended on a black abolitionist’s own initiative. When J. Sella Martin’s first months in England proved disappointing, he traveled to Scotland, where he believed that, in one year, $100,000 could be raised by the AMA for freedmen’s relief. He was endorsed by the Glasgow Freedmen’s Aid Society and worked tirelessly during August 1865, lecturing in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dundee, writing letters to the Glasgow Herald, and contacting local clergymen to sponsor lectures. Martin simultaneously fended off pressure by his New York Shiloh Presbyterian congregation to return home by mid-October and the threats of an incursion into Scotland by other agents. By late September, he began a new series of meetings, appearing frequently with Henry M. Storrs. On 3 October, both men spoke at a society-sponsored gathering in Glasgow’s Queen’s Rooms. The well-attended session was chaired by James Craig of Middleton. After an opening prayer by Rev. A. G. Forbes, Martin was introduced. J. Sella Martin to [Secretary, American Missionary Association], 28 July, [15], [19] August, 16 September 1865, AMA-ARC; CR, 26 August 1865; Minutes of the Glasgow Freedmen’s Aid Society, 25 July, 29 August, 22 September 1865, UkGM; Lib, 3 November 1865. The Rev. SELLA MARTIN next addressed the meeting. He said that before they had any hope of an early and complete solution of the question of slavery there was scarcely any difference of opinion about the desirableness of an early and complete solution of it. Even those who were in favor of the South, as was a section of the country, were compelled to make this general concession to the strongly anti-slavery people of Great Britain, viz., that they hated slavery as badly as anybody else hated it. (Hear.) Whenever they were going to swallow the great whale of the South, they had to grease him with this kind of thing. (Laughter.) But now that they had got that early and complete solution in the fact of the abolition of slavery, very many people stood off and said, “Well, after all, wasn’t it done too quickly?” (Hear and a laugh.) “Did you do it in the right way, after all?” “Haven’t you involved the negro in more suffering by putting him in the difficulties consequent upon being cast into the

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midst of a harassing transition state than he used to go through in slavery?” Very many were asking these questions now. Well, what would they have? Supposing, even, that the negro suffered a great deal more in his body than when in slavery. What then? Did they mean to say he ought to have staid in slavery and suffered? Did they mean that some other plan might have been taken for his emancipation? Well, that another plan was not taken was not the fault of those who were in favor of abolition, and still less was it the fault of the negro himself. If there were those who were delving in the midst of the slime of past difficulties, and who everlastingly beat their heads against the fossiled remains of things that were gone, all that he could say was that they might be in the occupation of burying the dead. This, however, was a living question with them, and was one that pressed itself with such consistency and force for solution that those whose sympathies were right had not time to remember the faults of the method of reaching the result, but were only anxious to grapple with the difficulties that had arisen with or grown out of that result. (Hear, hear.) Now, they would find much to aid them if they wished to be captious, and to object and find fault. But if they just stopped for a moment, and asked what was the condition out of which these negroes came, and really analysed the evils of that condition, they would not harbor these objections long. Whatever might be the temporary sufferings of the negro in his transition state—whatever unfavorable features he might present for lack of self-reliance, for lack of the resources by which to make for himself a place in the community, and earn for himself and his family a livelihood—whatever suffering he might go through in the achievement of the end which was the earnest wish of all his friends, that he should be in the possession of independence—there could be nothing like a comparison in it with the sufferings born under slavery. The former, at least, had the advantage, that he was bearing a difficulty only that he might go into a free and open arena of comfort and of peace. In slavery he was subjected to equal if not to greater difficulties—hope was everlastingly crushed out of him, and all aspirations made impossible in the direction of manhood. But then they must take things as they found them in the history of the world; and he did not expect that slavery—which struck its roots so deep in the soil—could be plucked up, unless a great hole was left, showing where the accursed thing stood. He did not expect that men who had become licentious and tyrannical would yield up their grasp upon the neck of their victims without a great struggle. He did not expect that the negro, in getting free of the devil, would be left without rending before the devil went out. What had been the case in the past? When God purposed to accomplish emancipation, in the history of the whole Church, one race had to go down that another should come up. The sacrifice of Jewish blood prepared the way for Hebrew freedom, and when the Hebrews

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themselves had become so terribly sinful that they could no longer occupy their place, they themselves had to go down that Gentile liberty and Christianity might prevail; and Jerusalem fell just when the glad tidings were preached to all the Gentiles. He did not expect, therefore, that the negroes in America would achieve their freedom without sacrifice. They had already had a sacrifice of blood on the part of the white men, and the negroes involved in the evil must make their sacrifice in starvation and suffering before they could entirely reach the end; and as a negro, knowing their thoughts and their feelings, he said that they were prepared to brave all this. (Cheers.) Let starvation come, if it must come, while they were on the pathway of freedmen. Let them, too, stand out in the inclemency of the weather, and bear all its rigorous and pelting visitations, if people professing Christianity would, while able to relieve, stand and see this, and see the negro crushed by unfavorable conditions and temporary circumstances; since, in the bearing of all that, they were making a possible liberty and happier future for their own race, and helping to lift them to where they ought to be. (Applause.) They were ready to accept the conditions if the people here, having the power to avert them, said they must come, and that they must be borne. The situation would be still more striking if they could ever come to a realization of each man’s personal history; if they could feel as he himself had often felt, and have to say, “I am a slave. Another man owns me. I am the son of a slave. Another man owns my mother. I am a slave, and a slave forever!” Could they realize that somebody should everlastingly dictate what one should do, and lash him if he did not do it, and under the exercise of an irresponsible power, force one’s wife to dishonor and degradation; or having the children beloved of one’s heart, and as lovely in the eyes of its parents as the children of any in this country, torn away and sold on the auction-block? It was galling that not only should a man himself remain a slave during his life, but that his children and his children’s children should likewise be bound in continual slavery. Though they could not, perhaps, realize the state of the case, he could realize it keenly, and he felt not only a holy indignation but often an inexpressible contempt for people that stood and pondered, and raised trivial objections in such a momentous matter as that before them—when poor men had to be raised from the lowest depths of helplessness, and despair, and suffering. (Hear and applause.) Mr. Martin then proceeded to argue that gradual emancipation would have been incomparably worse than immediate emancipation. In fact, it would have been like gradually amputating a man’s leg, or gradually pulling a tooth. It would just have been prolonging the pain and misery. It would have been taking away from the master all interest in the negro, and putting still under his control that negro in whom he had no interest. If he did wrong—and it was wonderful if he did not do wrong, for his

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564master had been teaching him how to do it all his life—the magistrate whipped him, and the master brought him all the more readily and frequently to be thus flogged, because he did not own him, and because, no matter when he died, he did not lose anything. He then pointed out how the whole negro race had to suffer because part of that race was in bondage. They were everywhere from their color identified with degradation and servitude, and out of this one many more fictitious prejudices had arisen. The speaker here pictured graphically the difficulties they had to contend with in these very prejudices, and often the negro himself was well nigh led to believe that he was naturally inferior, and only fit for bondage. The negroes distrusted their own powers, because they had never been called on to exercise them as independent men. With all these difficulties around them, in addition to those of a natural character growing out of the war and the disorganization of labor, they could all see how necessary it was that something should be done for them at this crisis. It was by taking a practical interest in his condition now, that the people of this country could make the negro believe that all their avowed interest and oft-repeated protests against the evils of slavery, and oppression were earnest and real, and that they were quite willing not only to translate them into the privileges of that freedom they themselves enjoyed but that they would do what in them lay to make him the means of bringing up future generations of his own race, so that they could enjoy aright the pleasures of the glorious right of liberty. He hoped all of them would be willing to recognize that their best interests grew out of this, and some of their highest duties were achieved in the doing of it. (Applause.) Liberator (Boston, Mass.), 3 November 1865.

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101. Speech by J. Sella Martin Delivered at the Athenaeum, Bristol, England 27 October 1865 J. Sella Martin gave his last major public lecture at a meeting sponsored by the Freedmen’s Aid Society at the Athenaeum in Bristol. The poorly planned and modestly attended gathering began at one o’clock on Friday afternoon, 27 October 1865. The audience consisted largely of English and Welsh Congregationalist clergymen and lay delegates simultaneously attending a denominational congress in Bristol. After an opening hymn, Benjamin Scott, presiding FAS vice-president, characterized black emancipation as “one of the most momentous revolutions which the world has witnessed.” The meeting then unanimously approved a resolution thanking God for emancipation. Martin’s speech sounded a theme echoed by other blacks touring Britain after emancipation: American racial prejudice might confine the freedman as effectively as slavery. Rev. J. C. Holbrook, Martin’s recently arrived replacement in Britain, made some concluding comments. The session closed with a hymn and benediction. Joseph Davis to Aspinall Hampson, 30 October 1865, British Empire MSS, UkOxU-Rh; NC, 1 November 1865; FML, 1 December 1865. WHAT THE SLAVES THINK Men enter into conversation with me in railway carriages, and they say, “We are as much opposed to slavery as you are; but then, after all slavery ought to have been gradually abolished, and not immediately.” Well now, suppose it ought, it was not. (Laughter.) It would cost just as much blood and treasure to get the negroes back into slavery as it has cost to get them out, and if these people really meant to criticise where they can remedy, and not to find fault merely in a querulous spirit, they would accept the state of facts as they present themselves and make the best of it. (Hear, hear.) I will tell you what is the fact. The people that find fault with abolition generally do not want it, gradual or immediate. They say that the negroes were very well contented when they were in slavery. “I have seen them,” some will say, “and heard them say they were contented.” They have told me that frequently, and there was never a greater mistake in the world. Here a white man says that the negroes were contented. Well, I am a negro, and I was not contented. (Loud applause.) The white man was not in slavery; I was, and I know where the shoe pinched; and I say I was not contented. But then, Mr. Chairman, suppose it were the fact that the black man was contented in bondage, suppose he was con-

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tented to see his wife sold on the auction-block, or his daughter violated, or his children separated from him, or having his own manhood crushed out of him, I say that is the heaviest condemnation of the institution, that slavery should blot out a man’s manhood so as to make him contented to accept this degradation, and such an institution ought to be swept from the face of the earth. (Loud applause.) While there is an irresponsible power committed to the hands of the slaveholder, and while human nature remains as it is, it is impossible to talk about treating slaves kindly. You cannot do it. I was once on a plantation—I went there accidentally— and I saw a lot of negroes gathered by the side of the water. In the middle of the stream there stood a stalwart negro with an axe on his shoulder. The overseer was trying to urge the negroes on the bank to go in and make him come out, but the boys all knew him, and he said, “Do not approach me, for I will brain the first one that does, and die in this water.” The boys knew that he would do it, and they would not approach him. Finally, the overseer had to send for the young master, who came down and said to the negro, “Jim, you must come out of the water.” Jim said, “I will come out if you promise that I shall not be flogged. I have done nothing to be flogged for. I do my work faithfully. You sold away my wife. I have made up my mind never to be flogged, and I will not come out of the water.” The young master appealed to him by all the feelings connected with their boyhood, all the reminiscences and associations of their early life, but the negro still refused; and at last the young master said to the negro-driver, who was standing by, “You must shoot him down: there is no help for it.” The negro-driver then raised his rifle, and in a moment the sharp crack of the rifle sent the poor corpse floating down the stream, his blood staining all the water. Now, that I saw. It was not because the man who did it was bloodthirsty, or tyrannical, or ferocious, or more cruel than many of us might be here, but if the negro had been successful in resisting his authority that day, another negro would have attempted it the next, and so on until all discipline would have been at an end in the plantation. When I have talked about the inherent cruelty of the institution, men have said, “Why do you talk so? Don’t you know that I would not kill my horse?” Ah, but people do not remember that there is this great difference between a man and a horse: if you beat a horse, the other horses go on; if a horse is punished for rebellion, another horse will eat his oats just as well. But if one negro becomes successful, another negro becomes successful, and if one is shot down, the others are deterred. Therefore I say the institution of slavery is so bitter in itself that it sours everything it comes in contact with. It is no use talking about the majority of slaves having been kindly treated or anything like contented. Not one in ten thousand was contented, and the fact is, that where they were well treated the more discon-

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tented they were. I was a slave until I was twenty-two years of age, and I know I suffered more acute anguish than most of the slaves around me, just because aspirations had been roused in me that were not aroused in them; because I was associated with gentlemen who were so near to liberty and brought me so near to it that I wanted it all the more. Nonconformist (London), 8 November 1865.

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102. Sarah P. Remond to Editor, London Daily News 7 November 1865 Even though they supported the dismantling of American slavery, some in British society retained strong racial preconceptions about black abilities and questioned the former slave’s “fitness” for freedom. Black abolitionists in Britain did not let these new expressions of racism go unchallenged. On 7 November 1865, Sarah P. Remond wrote a letter to the editor of the London Daily News refuting the London Times’s characterization of the month-old black rebellion in Morant Bay, Jamaica. The Times declared that the uprising proved blacks unsuited for freedom and advised American legislators to observe Jamaica when considering the future status of former slaves. The Times joined other London papers such as the Standard, Morning Herald, and Daily Telegraph, which similarly portrayed the Jamaican situation. Remond’s critique appeared in the Daily News because it alone emphasized the legitimacy of Jamaican black grievances. NAW, 3: 137; Lorimer, Colour, Class and Victorians, 179, 182–83. 5 Trafalgar Square Brompton, S.W. [London, England] [November 7, 1865] Sir: Will you allow me to say a word in defence of the most hated race in the world, the negroes and their descendants? Notwithstanding the attempt on the part of our enemies, I think it will be difficult to prove that the negroes are more savage than other races. Unprejudiced observers from time to time have given facts which prove that the negroes, under similar circumstances, are as humane as the dominant races. Now, take for granted, if you please—I do not—that all the cruelties reported during the recent insurrection in Jamaica are true:1 take also for granted that the negroes are entirely the aggressors, and I appeal to every candid mind to answer this question, whether the aggressors would have been dealt with in so summary a manner if they had belonged to the dominant race, and their complexions had been white instead of black? It has been with feelings of intense gratitude that the colored race have turned with confidence to one fact, i.e., that since the decision of Lord Mansfield, in 1772, every human being, without any reference whatever to a difference of complexion, was an equal before the law. If they committed any crime, they expected to be legally tried and punished. But there is a change in the public opinion in Great Britain in reference to the colored race. There

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are many causes for this change, and for which the colored race are in no way to blame. Attacks as ungenerous as they are unjust are made upon the negro race and their descendants. The “West Indian interest” always had this hatred towards a race they had oppressed. This conduct shocked the moral sense of the better portion of the English people, and slavery was forced to yield. Since the civil war in the United States, the Southern Confederates and their natural allies, these former West Indian planters, have united together to endeavor to neutralize the interest felt for the oppressed negroes, and to hold them up to the scorn and contempt of the civilized world. No matter what a colored man may do—whether it is a crime committed, or some slight impropriety, it is exaggerated, and noticed in the most insulting manner. I have read the pro-slavery newspapers in the United States with most careful attention for more than a quarter of a century, but I have never read more insulting attacks upon the negro race than I have read within the last four years in some of the London journals. Within the last month, I have read attacks upon the negro race which would disgrace any Southern Confederate or negrohating Northerner. We are expected to be not only equal to the dominant races, but to excel in all that goes toward forming a noble manhood or womanhood. We are expected to develop in the highest perfection a race which for eight generations in the United States has been laden with the curse of slavery. Even some of our friends seem to expect this, but our enemies demand it. Now, take the four and a half millions of “freedmen” in the States, and consider the present attempts made by our enemies to prove that they are unfitted for freedom. I ask the English public to investigate the facts in reference to negro character, as developed there during the present century, and particularly during the civil war. Compare their character in reference to cruelty with their masters, “the chivalry of the South,” who for eight generations have mutilated their slaves, and not unfrequently during the present generation burnt their victims to death; who, in the words of one of your own countrymen, “notch the ears of men and women, cut pleasant poesies in their shrinking flesh, learn to write with pens of red-hot iron on the human face, rack their poetic fancies for liveries of mutilation which their slaves shall wear for life, and carry with them to the grave.” Our cup of bitterness is more than full. If negroes or colored men commit crime in Jamaica, or anywhere else, exact the full penalty, but do not make it the occasion of the most insulting and unjust attacks upon a whole race, on account of a difference of complexion. I am, &c., SARAH P. REMOND Daily News (London), 22 November 1868.

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1. Political tensions, racial fears, and economic distress combined to precipitate a rebellion at St. Thomas-in-the-East, Morant Bay, Jamaica, in 1865. On 11 October, four hundred black settlers protested a decision of the local magistrates. When the militia intervened, blacks laid siege to the local courthouse, fired on it, and attempted to burn it; fifteen magistrates were killed. Black rioting ensued. Fearing full-scale revolt, Governor Edward John Eyre reacted severely, declaring martial law and initiating thirty days of reprisals: 439 blacks were executed, 600 were flogged, and more than one thousand houses belonging to suspected rebels were burned. George William Gordon, a mulatto landowner, a radical critic of the government, and the chief spokesman for the black peasantry in the House of Assembly, was also executed. Black violence at Morant Bay reinforced British racial stereotypes about blacks. London newspapers, particularly the Times, Standard, Morning Herald, and Daily Telegraph, declared that events in Jamaica proved blacks unsuitable for freedom. Green, British Slave Emancipation, 381–405; Lorimer, Color, Class and Victorians, 178–81.

Appendix

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Appendix Black Abolitionists in the British Isles, 1830–1865

William G. Allen Francis S. Anderson John Anderson Jeremiah Asher J. R. Bailey J. H. Banks John Bennett Benjamin Benson Edward Blyden Clarissa Brown Henry “Box” Brown John Brown Josephine Brown William Wells Brown Robert Campbell Molliston M. Clark Ellen Craft William Craft Alexander Crummell William H. Day Martin R. Delany William Dorsey Frederick Douglass Robert Douglass, Jr. William Douglass Ambrose Dudley Alexander Duval Francis Fedric Henry Highland Garnet Jesse Ewing Glasgow Stephen Gloucester Moses Grandy Theodore Gross Isaac J. Henson Josiah Henson David Holmes J. Hughes Edward Irving

Reported in Britain 1853–1870s 1851–ca.1855 1861–1862 1849–1850 1846 1861 1859 1851–1858 1861, 1862 1851, 1852–1855 1850–1854 1850–1857 1851, 1852–1855, 1856 1849–1854 1859, 1860, 1861–1862 1846–1847 1850–1869 1850–1862, 1863 1848–1853 1859–1862 1860 1851 1845–1847, 1859–1860 1840–1841 1852 1858 1851–1858 1859–1863 1850–1852, 1861–1862 1859–1863 1847–1848 1842–1843 1860–1861 1851 1849–1850, 1851–1852 1852–1853 1863 ca. 1857–1859

Status freeborn former slave former slave freeborn ? former slave former slave former slave freeborn freeborn former slave former slave freeborn former slave freeborn freeborn former slave former slave freeborn freeborn freeborn former slave former slave freeborn freeborn ? former slave former slave former slave freeborn freeborn former slave former slave former slave former slave former slave ? former slave

572 John Andrew Jackson William Andrew Jackson Harriet Brent Jacobs John S. Jacobs Madison Jefferson Robert M. Johnson William H. Jones John Joseph Josephine Edmund Kelly Thomas M. Kinnard J. Marsden Marshall J. Sella Martin William Mitchell William C. Monroe Jonathan J. Myers William North Nathaniel Paul J. W. C. Pennington Thomas Powell William P. Powell Robert Purvis Caroline Putnam Charles Lenox Remond Sarah P. Remond John S. Rock Moses Roper C. J. Russell Frances Russell J. C. A. Smith James McCune Smith Lewis Smith James Francis Thomas William Troy Samuel Ringgold Ward James Watkins Henry Watson William Watson Frank J. Webb Mary E. Webb

Appendix 1857–1865 1862–1863 ca. 1858 ca. 1858–ca. 1862 1841–1842 1861 1865–1868 1847 1856 1852–1853 1859–1861 1856 1853 1861–1862, 1863–1864, 1865 1859–1861, 1863–1864 1851 1860 1853–1854 1832–1836 1843, 1849–1851, 1853, 1861–1862 1856 1850–1851, 1852–1861 1834 1859–1860 1840–1841 1859–1867 1858 1835–1844, 1846, 1854 1859 1854 1850–1854 1832–1837 1860–1861 1853–1856 1859–1862 1853–1855 1851–1860 ca. 1840 1856 1856–1858 1856–1858

former slave former slave former slave former slave former slave freeborn freeborn former slave former slave former slave former slave ? former slave former slave freeborn freeborn freeborn former slave freeborn former slave freeborn freeborn freeborn freeborn freeborn freeborn freeborn former slave freeborn former slave freeborn freeborn former slave former slave former slave former slave former slave former slave former slave freeborn freeborn

Appendix C. H. Williams John Williams Peter Williams Tom Wilson

573 1851 ca. 1840–ca. 1855 1837 1858

former slave former slave former slave former slave

Index

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Index Page numbers in boldface indicate the main discussion of the subject. Abbey Church (Paisley, Scot.), 67n Abbott, Wilson R., 338n Abeokuta, 448 Aberdeen, Scot., 16 Abolitionists: dissension among, 385n; Dred Scott decision opposed by, 441– 42n; fugitive slaves aided by, 228–30, 236n, 244n, 298n, 347n, 358n, 365n, 377– 78n, 383, 385n; imprisoned, 174n, 228– 30, 298n, 461n; Kansas free-state movement supported by, 298n; prejudice among, 34, 300n, 391–92; women, 101– 2n, 152–53n, 216, 223n, 225–26n, 299n, 339n, 346, 347n, 379–81, 440–41n, 462– 63, 472n, 480n, 513–14. See also Antislavery; Black abolitionists; Britain; Garrisonian abolitionists; Gradual emancipation; Immediate emancipation; Political antislavery Aborigines Protection Society, 76n, 508n Abrahams (clergyman), 46, 48, 51n Act of Union (1800), 50n, 522n Act of 1802, 218n Adams, Charles Francis, 505n Adams, William, 76–77n Adams Express, 174n “Address to the Colored Men of Connecticut” (Nott), 128n “Address to the Slaves of the United States” (Garnet), 154n, 226–27n “Address to White Professing Christians of the United States” (BFASS), 119n Advertiser (Wilmington, N.C.), 325n Africa: blacks in, 340–41; church missions in, 227n; cotton production in, 489; development of, 280–81; E. Jones’s missionary work in, 354n; missions in, 48, 278–80. See also West Africa; Liberia African Aid Society, 243n, 451n, 488, 501, 503, 507n, 508n, 516, 524 African and Sierra Leone Weekly Advertiser (Freetown, Sierra Leone), 354n African Beneficial Hall (Philadelphia, Pa.), destroyed in riot, 124n African Civilization Society (England), 49n, 508n African Civilization Society (New York, N.Y.), 118n, 141n, 227n, 310n, 352n, 415n, 497, 501, 503, 504n, 506n, 507n African Educational Society School (Pittsburgh, Pa.), 448n African Free School (New York, N.Y.), 58n, 78n, 82n, 147n, 226n, 300n, 352n, 353n

African immigration, 5, 41–42n, 151n, 449n, 451–52n, 497, 501–2, 506–8n, 515– 16; AFASS endorses, 90n; blacks oppose, 74, 507n; blacks support, 28, 43n, 77n, 141n, 227n, 352n, 447–48, 450–51n, 504n, 524, 526n. See also West Africa African Institution, 49n African Masonic Lodge, 121n African Methodist Episcopal church, 110, 118n, 122n, 123n, 125–26n; in Canada, 110; founding of, 123n African Methodist Episcopal Church Magazine (New York, N.Y.), 123n African Methodist Episcopal Zion church, 110, 122n, 338n, 414n African Mission School (Hartford, Conn.), 354n African Repository (New York, N.Y.), 41n African School (Philadelphia, Pa.), 83n African slave trade, 49n, 543n; British efforts to curtail, 502, 506n, 517 African Slave Trade and Its Remedy, The (Buxton), 49 African Society for Mutual Relief, 75n African Times (London, Eng.), 507n, 508n Africanus, Selah M., 128n Agency Committee, 50n, 57n Ahab (king), 434n Alabama, slave laws in, 55 Alabama (ship), 475n Alaska, 525n Albany Patriot (N.Y.), 230n Albright, Arthur, 557, 559n Alexander, George W., 276, 362, 503, 508n Alexander, Sarah, 508n Alexander I (czar of Russia), 281n Alexandria Seminary (Alexandria, Va.), 443n Alfred (slave), 319, 384n Aliened American (Cleveland, Ohio), 118n, 526n Allen, Anne, 100, 102n Allen, Harriet Aurilla, 453, 456n Allen, Joseph, 164n Allen, Julia Maria, 456n Allen, Loguen Patrick, 456n Allen, Mary E. King, 16, 346, 347n, 355, 358n, 370n, 454, 491 Allen, Richard (AME bishop), 78n, 110, 119n, 122–23n Allen, Richard (Dublin abolitionist), 85– 86, 87n, 98, 102n

576 Allen, William 164n; correspondence to, 161–64 Allen, William G., 358n; antislavery in Britain described by, 357–58; antislavery tour by, 332, 435, 475, 476n; black laws discussed by, 373–76; black progress discussed by, 369–70; blacks in Britain described by, 33, 355–56, 369, 455; W. W. Brown and, 346, 357; Lady Byron and, 379–80, 381n; Central College discussed by, 379–80; correspondence by, 355–58, 379–81, 423–26, 453–56; F. Douglass speech praised by, 357; as expatriate, 453, 491; family of, 370n, 453–54, 456n; financial difficulties of, 16, 20, 329, 453– 56; E. Follen and, 356, 379–80; lecture tours by, 380, 423–26; J. F. Maguire and, 455; marriage of, 347–48n, 369, 370n; penal reform advocated by, 380; W. P. Powell and, 358; prejudice against free blacks described by, 368–69, 372–76; publications by, 20, 355, 376; slavery described by, 368; G. Smith and, 453–56; speeches by, 367–70, 372–76; Stowes’ British tour discussed by, 356–57; J. Sturge eulogized by, 456; R. Templeton and, 423–26; G. Thompson and, 355 Allen Chapel (Cincinnati, Ohio), 486n Allon, Henry, 335, 519 Alton Observer (Ill.), 230n Amalgamation, 23, 49, 52n, 414, 537 America (ship), 250 American Abolition Society, founding of, 90n American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 8, 16, 82n, 90n, 96n, 150n, 174n, 217n, 300n, 360n, 415n; founding of, 84n, 89n, 126n; meetings of, 360n American Anti-Slavery Society, 11, 34, 74n, 79n, 89n, 128n, 150n, 154n, 230–31n, 251n, 347n, 404n, 405n, 433, 439, 450n, 463n, 464n, 465, 475n, 478; agents for, 35n, 300n, 420n, 493n; black agents for, 7, 441n; executive committee of, 83n, 88n, 237n; founding of, 4, 39n, 62n, 82n, 89, 94, 95–96n, 121n, 126n, 217n, 220n, 300n, 377n; fund raising for, 7–8, 101n, 445, 462, 474; funded by antislavery bazaars, 7, 30–31, 101–2n, 215; Irish support for, 102n; meetings of, 189n, 360n, 421n; opposed in Britain, 86, 91n, 93, 95–96n; promoted in Britain, 7–8, 85– 87, 88n, 91n, 96n, 419; schism in, 16, 84n, 85, 90n, 298n, 385n, 417n American Baptist Free Mission Society, 289n, 535n American Baptist Missionary Convention, 334n

Index American Bible Society, 96n, 146n, 348n American churches: antislavery and, 24, 89n, 139, 140n, 291–92, 312–15, 340, 443n, 466; black criticism of, 24, 27, 111– 12, 138, 139–40, 172–73n, 237–38n, 291– 92, 312–15, 341, 345, 350–51, 417–18, 433, 436–38, 458–59, 466; discrimination in, 350, 369; membership of slaveholders in, 172n; slavery sanctioned by, 433, 459. See also Individual denominations American Colonization Society, 41–42n , 96n, 281n, 326n, 414n, 415n; black education opposed by, 48, 51–52n; blacks oppose, 6–7, 9, 27, 29, 37, 38, 44, 46–49, 80–81, 82n, 85, 92, 120n, 123n, 310n, 360n, 371n; blacks support, 126n, 414n; British abolitionists oppose, 44, 322–23, 337; British support for, 508n; M. R. Delany’s African expedition sponsored by, 449n; Garrison opposes, 39n, 41n, 43n, 44; Liberian settlement sponsored by, 41–42n, 50n; manumission policy of, 47; promoted in Britain, 6, 37, 41n, 47, 80, 81n, 84n. See also Colonization American Education Society, 96n American Equal Rights Association, 79n American Freedmen’s Union Commission, 549, 554n American Home Missionary Society, 552n American League of Colored Laborers, 75n, 504n American Methodist Episcopal Book Concern, 126n American Methodist Episcopal church: in Canada, 338n; M. M. Clark as Evangelical Alliance delegate for, 138–40; ministers in, 485–86n American Methodist Episcopal Zion General Conference, 526n American Missionary (New York, N.Y.), 553, 559–60n American Missionary Association, 74–75n, 141n, 230n, 415n, 543n, 549, 553n, 554n, 556, 557, 560n, 561; executive committee of, 550, 554n; founding of, 84n, 118n, 553n; freedmen’s aid and, 505n; in Jamaica, 189n; J. S. Martin as agent for, 549–51, 559n American Missionary Magazine (New York, N.Y.), 560n American Moral Reform Society, 83n American Museum (New York, N.Y.), 499n American Negro Academy (Washington, D.C.), 148n American Peace Society, 96n, 146n American Prejudice against Color, The (Allen), 355, 370n, 376

Index American Seamen’s Friend Society, 96n, 237n, 476n American Seamen’s Protective Union Association, 238n American Slavery and Colour (Chambers), 543n “American Slavery and the Prejudice against Colour” (Allen), 367 American Statistical Association, 119n American Sunday School Magazine (Philadelphia, Pa.), 315n American Sunday School Union, 312–14, 315n American Tract Society, 96n American Union for the Relief and Improvement of the Colored Race, 108, 121n Amherst College (Mass.), 354n, 377n, 552n Amherstburg Association (Baptist), 338n Amistad (ship), 118n Anderson, Francis S., 255, 256n, 257n, 285, 290; antislavery in Britain discussed by, 269; British abolitionists discussed by, 268–69; correspondence by, 268–69; A. Duval discussed by, 269; W. L. Garrison and, 268–69; marriage of, 23; transatlantic voyage described by, 268 Anderson, John, 23, 360n, 495n, 508n, 530n; antislavery tour by, 478; attempted extradition of, 365n, 384n; blacks support, 536n; British experience of, 494; escape of, 494–95; fugitive slaves discussed by, 494–95; slave narrative by, 19, 21; slavery described by, 495; speeches by, 494–95; H. Twelve-trees and, 21 Andover Theological Seminary (Mass.), 124n, 230n, 346n, 354n, 404n, 552n Andrews, Charles C., 352n Angell, Thomas, 362 Anglo-African (Lagos), 450n Anglo-African Magazine (New York, N.Y.), 59n, 450n Anglo-American Anti-Slavery Association, 330n, 360n Anglo-American Treaty of 1824, 388–89, 389–90n Anthony, Susan B., 492n Anthropological Review (London, Eng.), 542n Antiabolitionists: antislavery meetings disrupted by, 245n; blacks harassed by, 378n; in New York, 189n; violence of, 73, 112, 229–31n, 288, 289n, 376n, 520, 521–22n Anti-Corn Law League, 57n, 102n, 389n Anti-Slavery Advocate (London, Eng.), 17, 87n, 323n, 330, 330–31n, 334n, 360n Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection So-

577 ciety, 76n, 386n Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, 89n Anti-Slavery Reporter (London, Eng.), 11, 13, 19, 21, 75–76n, 331n, 383, 384n, 385– 86n,, 387, 407, 501, 533, 544 Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines’ Friend (London, Eng.), 386n Anti-Slavery Society of Canada, 96n, 338n, 362, 365n, 391, 393n; agents for, 300n; fugitive slaves aided by, 362; fund raising for, 335; S. R. Ward as agent for, 362 Antislavery, 214; American churches and, 24, 27, 111–12, 138, 172–73n, 237–38n, 291–92, 312–15, 315n, 341, 345, 350–51, 433, 481–84; in Boston, 178, 214, 249n, 287, 347n, 359n, 405n; in Britain, 4–6, 10, 16–17, 37–41, 43n, 44, 49–50n, 57n, 62n, 75–76n, 79n, 102n, 119n, 128n, 133n, 134, 138, 149–50, 152–53, 161, 168–72, 176– 77, 232–33, 276–77, 323–24n, 344–46, 366n, 367, 403, 460–61n, 474–75, 514n, 561–62; in Canada, 188n, 221n, 365, 391– 93; in Illinois, 230–31n; in Ireland, 87– 88n, 97–99; in Massachusetts, 164n, 270n, 381n; in Midwest, 124n; in New York, 125n, 146n, 153–54n, 298n; in Pennsylvania, 324n; in Philadelphia, 123n, 126n, 418; in Scotland, 16–17, 65– 66, 68–69, 123–24n, 254n; Society of Friends and, 63n; temperance and, 173– 74; in U.S., 4–6. See also Abolitionists; Black abolitionists; Garrisonian abolitionists; Gradual emancipation; Immediate emancipation; Political antislavery Antislavery bazaars, 101–2n , 226n, 499n Antislavery conventions, 58n, 89n, 104, 119n, 187n, 298n, 384, 385n, 472n. See also Black conventions Antislavery literature, 119n, 220n, 289n, 324n, 389, 390n, 460, 480n; in Britain, 19–21, 339n, 416n, 441, 474, 508n. See also Black literature Antislavery Mass Convention of the Abolitionists of the State of New York (1850), 298n Antislavery press, 4, 81–82n, 89n, 95n, 99n, 126n, 128n, 217n, 230–31n, 233n, 235n, 359n, 404n, 474, 553n, 559–60n; in Britain, 11–13, 140n, 225n, 239, 330, 360n, 385n, 430; in Ireland, 330; in Pennsylvania, 347n. See also Black press Appeal of Forty Thousand, 377 “Appeal to the People of Great Britain and the World” (Committee of Fugitives), 257n, 290

578 Aray, Amos, 447, 451n, 452n Aray, Ann, 451n Aray, James, 451n Arctic (ship), 396n Aris’s Birmingham Gazette (Eng.), 395, 396n Armfield, John, 217n Armistead, Wilson, 331n, 367, 414, 416n, 474 Arthur, William, 481 Asher, Jeremiah, 30 Ashton, Mrs. Walter, 446 Asiento, 132n Association for the Education and Elevation of the Coloured People of Canada, 535n Association for the Promotion of Interest of the Colored People of Canada and the United States, 452n Assyrian Empire, 416n Athenaeum (Manchester, Eng.), 457 Atlantic Monthly (New York, N.Y.), 217n Atlantic slave trade, 40n, 41n, 49n, 196, 282n, 286, 458, 520, 522n; abolished by Congress, 176–77, 180n; Anglo-American treaties on, 384n, 389–90n, 460n; British navy attempts to restrict, 388–89; defined as piracy by Congress, 388, 389n; enforcement of laws against, 27; U.S. Constitution on, 399. See also African slave trade; U.S. slave trade Attila the Hun, 357, 361n Attucks, Crispus, 373, 376n Augustine, 183n Aunt Chloe, 317, 324n Auriol, Edward, 349 Australia, 280 Autobiography of a Female Slave (Griffith), 480n Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro: His Anti-Slavery Labours in the United States, Canada and England (Ward), 78n, 300n Avery, Charles, 227n Avery College (Pittsburgh, Pa.), 227n Avery Institute (Pittsburgh, Pa.), 141n Bacon (abolitionist), 321 Bailey, Gamaliel, 357, 358n Bailey, Harriet, 173n Bailkie, William, 506n Baker, Andrew, 13 Balaam, 433, 434n Ball, Robert, 195 Baltimore, Md.: AME churches in, 110; blacks in, 107–8, 122n; slave trade in, 45, 219n Baltimore Annual Conference (AME), 126n Baltimore Jail, 49n

Index Banana Islands, 354n Bangor Female Anti-Slavery Society, 71 Banks, J. H., 118n Baptist Chapel (Dublin, Ire.), 332 Baptist church, 123n; antislavery and, 63n; in Britain, 535n; in Canada, 337–38n Baptist General Convention, 63n Baptist Magazine (London, Eng.), 63n Baptist Union, 555n Barclay and Perkins Brewery, 254 Barjova, Elizabeth, 237n Barker, Thomas Holliday, 295, 296, 299n Barnum, Phineas T., 498, 499n Barr (slaveholder), 430 Bartlett, Alfred, 322, 326n Bartlett, Samuel, 322, 326n Bartlett, William, 326n Bastille (Paris, Fr.), 413, 416n Bath Committee, 146, 310–11n Beard, John R., 398 Beard, Joseph A., 430, 431n Beard, Pitts, and Gardner Smith, 431n Bedford College for Ladies (London, Eng.), 441n, 462, 463n Beecher, Henry Ward, 485, 486n, 553 Beecher, Lyman, 324n Belfast, Ire., 17, 97 Belfast Newsletter (Ire.), 423 Bell, Philip A., 78n Bell, William, 91n Beman, Amos G., 128n, 413, 414n Beman, Jehiel C., 414n Benson, Benjamin, 285, 290 Benson, Stephen Allen, 529, 532n Bentham, Jeremy, 325n Berkeley, George, 281, 282n Bermuda, missions in, 126n Berry, Philip, 164n, 172n Bethesda Congregational Church (New York, N.Y.), 75n Betty (slave), 429n Bevan, Mrs. H., 216, 223n Beveridge (slaveholder), 61, 63n Bibb, Henry, 221n; Bibles for slaves advocated by, 174n, 495n; escape of, 204; free produce movement and, 149, 226n; school of, 495n; West Indian immigration endorsed by, 189n Bibb, James, 221n Bibb, Mary Frances 221n Bible, slavery justified in, 433 Bible Society, 12, 49n, 269n Bickley, George, 442n Biographical Sketches and Interesting Anecdotes of Persons of Colour (Mott), 414n, 416n Biography of an American Bondsman, by His Daughter (Josephine Brown), 251n

Index Birch, James H., 196, 218n Birchard, Matthew, 112, 125n Birmingham and Midland Freedmen’s-Aid Association, 556, 559n Birmingham Daily Gazette (Eng.), 396n Birmingham Ladies’ Negroes’ Friend Society, 26 Birney, James G., 76n, 359n Birt, John, 111, 123n Bishop, Francis, 257n, 268, 269n, 270n, 284n, 381n, 457 Black abolitionists: as Afro-Americans in Britain, 34–35; American churches criticized by, 24, 27, 111–12, 138, 172– 73n, 237–38n, 312–15n, 341, 345, 350, 433; antislavery groups organized by, 30–31; antislavery tours by, 6–18, 29–31, 38–39, 53, 95n, 97–98, 134–37, 168, 175n, 238n, 242–43n, 246, 256–57n, 271, 276, 293–98, 298–99n, 300n, 332–33, 335, 340, 367, 372, 383, 396n, 423–26, 427–29, 435, 441n, 445–46, 457, 462, 476, 478, 481, 493n, 497, 501–3, 510–13, 535n; certification of, 11–14, 152, 268, 383–84, 533–34, 561; colonization issue and, 37–38, 41n, 43n, 44–49, 59n, 74n, 78n, 80–82n, 89n, 123n, 126n, 237n, 278–79, 322–23n, 360n, 371n; as expatriates, 29–30, 234–35, 252–54, 255– 56, 330, 355–58, 379–81, 453–56, 474, 478, 491, 493n, 537; free produce movement promoted by, 28–29, 76n, 82n, 119n, 123n, 128n, 149–51n, 225– 27n, 232–33, 243n, 447–48, 450n, 488– 89; freedmen’s aid promoted by, 3–4, 32–33, 415–16n, 549–50, 556–59; fugitive slaves as, 14–15, 60, 136–37n, 174–75n, 236n, 239–42, 255–56, 259, 395, 398, 427, 430, 465, 481, 494–95; fund raising by, 3, 8, 29–32, 36, 43n, 53, 100–101n, 105, 142–46, 308–10, 327–28, 332, 335, 349, 362, 429n, 447, 462, 479, 486n, 511, 549–50, 553–54n, 556–59n, 561; goals in Britain of, 25– 33; immigration issue and, 28, 43n, 74n, 77n, 118n, 119n, 129–32n, 141n, 173n, 189n, 221n, 283–84n, 360n, 407, 447–49n, 450–51n, 504n, 506–8n, 524, 526; methods in Britain of, 18–25; as missionaries, 35, 227n, 301n, 329, 354n, 407–11; prejudice in free states described by, 48, 55–56, 68, 73–74n, 77n, 104–6, 117, 162, 176–78, 278, 367– 70, 372–76, 401, 435–36; race relations in Britain described by, 33, 38–39, 61, 74, 145, 234, 265n, 355–56, 412; slave life described by, 21–25,

579 54, 100, 191–216, 259–64, 318–23, 399– 400, 427–29, 430–31, 437–38, 445, 457– 59, 465–68, 481–84, 563, 565–66; Union cause promoted in Britain by, 3–4, 6, 25, 27, 544–47. See also Abolitionists; Antislavery; Garrisonian abolitionists; Individual black abolitionists by name Black churches, 42n, 110–11, 122–26n, 144– 45, 334n, 350, 414n, 534n; in Canada, 337–38n; in Cincinnati, 485–86n; fund raising for, 29–30, 34–35, 149, 308–10, 349, 534, 535n; in Hartford, 118n; in New York, 82–84n, 281–82n, 300n, 308–10, 352–53n, 504n, 505n; in Philadelphia, 123n; in Washington, D.C., 107, 120n, 505n; in West Africa, 543n. See also Individual denominations Black conventions, 51n, 74n, 104–5, 119– 20n, 123n, 126n, 128n, 154n, 238n, 334n, 513n, 514n, 525–26n; in Buffalo (1843), 79n, 83n, 106, 120n, 154n, 226n, 415n; on immigration, 221n, 393n, 447, 449n, 451– 52n, 526n; in New York (1834), 104–6, 117n, 120n; in Philadelphia (1831), 51n; in Rochester (1853), 75n, 370–71n, 504n, 526n; in Troy (1847), 147, 310n. See also Antislavery conventions Black education, 75n, 89n, 118n, 143–44, 147–48n, 185n, 227n, 237n, 243–44n, 278n, 299–300n, 371n; AMA supports, 553n, 560n; W. W. Brown on, 303; discrimination in, 65; freedmen’s aid and, 553–54n; fund raising for, 29–30; in Hartford, 127n; in Jamaica, 189n; in Liberia, 529–30, 531n; in Massachusetts, 251n; in New York, 310n, 352–53n, 504n; in Ohio, 140–41n; opposition to, 48, 51, 52n; in Philadelphia, Pa., 123n; prejudice hinders, 234; Society of Friends support, 63n; state of, 350; at Wilberforce settlement, 54, 56, 57n. See also Slave education Black imposters, 13, 383, 384, 387, 533–34 Black laws, 47, 347n; black sailors restricted by, 376n; in Connecticut, 52n; free blacks enslaved by, 459; in Georgia, 266n; in Illinois, 341, 342n, 374–75; in Indiana, 341, 342n, 375; in Ohio, 55, 57n, 140n, 526n; in slave states, 438, 443n; in Washington, D.C., 171–72, 374 Black literature, 19–20, 140n, 141n, 154n, 251n, 301n, 355, 359n, 370n, 376n, 449n, 450n, 452n, 531n, 535n. See also Black press; Slave narratives

580 Black Man: The Comparative Anatomy and Psychology of the African Negro, The (Burmeister), 542n Black press, 19, 39n, 71n, 121n, 226n, 415n, 505n; black support for, 58–59n, 77n, 118n, 123n, 127n, 147n, 414n, 449n, 450n; British support for, 9, 30–31, 173n; in Canada, 221n, 391, 393–94n; editors of, 49n, 74n, 78n, 82–83n, 173n, 221n, 225n, 226n, 300n, 310n, 358n, 393n, 514n, 526n; in West Africa, 354n, 450n, 531n Black settlements, 29–32, 244n; in Canada, 6, 29, 42–48, 54, 56, 57n, 58n, 188–89n, 265, 284n, 365n, 393n, 524, 526n; Canadian opposition to, 366n; fund raising for, 31–32, 37, 43n, 524, 526n; in Liberia, 506, 530; G. Smith plans, 298n; in West Africa, 28, 447–48, 452n, 516. See also African immigration; Canadian immigration Black soldiers: in American Revolution, 127n; in American wars, 416n; in Civil War, 238n, 475n, 545, 547–48n; in War of 1812, 545, 547, 548n; Union army recruits, 79n, 118n, 157, 173n, 227n, 378n, 449n Black suffrage, 89n, 118n, 298n, 310n, 374, 404n, 513n; in Connecticut, 126n, 128n, 415n; free states deny, 111–12; in New York, 147n, 300n, 352n, 370; in Ohio, 525n; in Pennsylvania, 377n, 448–49n; in Rhode Island, 124n Blacks: racial theories on, 537–42. See also Free blacks; Slaves Blair, William Thomas, 309, 310n Blake; or The Huts of America (Delany), 449n Blanchard, Jonathan, 111, 124n Blomfield, Charles James, 270n Bloody Assize, 402, 405n Blyden, Edward Wilmot, 508n, 529–30, 531n Bolles, Samuel S., 128n Book and Slavery Irreconcilable, The (G. Bourne), 220n Booth, John Wilkes, 548n Borneo Church Mission Society, 288n Boston, Mass., 125n; antislavery in, 39n, 88n, 121n, 178, 236n, 249n, 287, 347n, 359n; blacks in, 42n, 109–10, 121n, 249n, 255, 358n, 385n, 420n, 513–14n Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar, 34, 79n, 88n, 100, 101–2n , 214–16, 445; blacks promote, 7–8, 30–31; British contributions to, 216, 223n, 238n, 433–34, 474; fund raising for, 7–8; Irish support for, 87–88n, 102n Boston Colored Citizens Association, 358n

Index Boston Common Council, 513n Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, 88n, 101n Boston Kansas Relief Association, 514n Boston Massacre, 376n Boston Vigilance Committee, 236n, 246, 249n, 251n, 255, 256n, 405n Bourne, George, 203, 220n, 506n Bourne, Stephen, 503, 507n Bourne, Theodore, 503, 506–7n Bowdoin College (Brunswick, Me.), 164n, 346n, 354n Bowen, Henry C., 553n Boyce, William B., 481 Boyd, Henry, 375, 377n Bradford, Augustus, 461n Brazil, 369, 527 Breckinridge, Robert J., 107, 120n Brent, Linda. See Jacobs, Harriet Brent Brewster, Patrick, 65, 67n Brick Presbyterian Church (New York, N.Y.), 415n Bright, John, 102n, 547n Bristol and Clifton Anti-Slavery Society, 223n Bristol and Clifton Ladies Anti-Slavery Society, 17, 324n, 331n Britain: antislavery in, 5–6, 37–39, 40n, 44, 71–74, 102n, 104, 119n, 152–53n, 168, 173n, 214–16, 239–41, 276–77, 299n, 310n, 366n, 403, 460–61n, 463n, 474–75, 475–76n; antislavery press in, 11–13, 19–21, 87n, 91n, 136–37n, 140n, 252, 330–31n, 360, 385–86n; antislavery societies in, 4, 10–12, 16–17, 50n, 57n, 68–69, 75–76n, 134, 149–50, 223n, 344–46, 367, 416n, 476n, 479, 508n, 554n; black expatriates in, 29–30, 234– 35, 252–54, 255–56, 330, 355–58, 379– 81, 453–56, 474, 478, 491, 493n, 537; black fund raising in, 8, 29–32, 34–35, 36, 43, 53, 85–87, 100–101, 142–46, 147n, 185, 188n, 308–10, 327–28, 332– 33, 334n, 335, 349, 362, 429n, 447, 462, 479, 486n, 511, 549–50, 553–54n, 556– 59, 561; black impressions of, 33, 302– 5, 356; black lecture tours in, 6–18, 29–31, 38–39, 53, 95n, 97–98, 136–37n, 168, 175n, 238n, 242–43n, 246, 256– 57n, 271, 276, 293–97, 298–99n, 300n, 340, 383, 396, 423–26, 427–29, 433, 435, 441n, 445–46, 481, 493n, 497, 501–3, 510–13, 535n; Confederacy supported in, 491–92, 502–3, 519, 542n; free produce movement in, 28– 29, 57n, 149–50, 150–51n, 225–27n, 232–33, 243n, 447–48, 450n, 488–89, 527–30; freedmen’s aid in, 3–4, 32–

Index 33, 384n, 395–96n, 416n, 480n, 505n, 513n, 549–50, 553–55n, 556–59, 559–60n; fugitive slaves in, 5, 32–33, 239–42, 242– 43n, 246, 252, 255–56, 256–57n, 259, 265n, 268–69, 283–84, 285–88, 290–91, 293–97, 298–99n, 332, 395–96, 398, 427, 430, 465, 481, 494–95; Garrisonians in, 11, 16–17, 34, 57n, 67n, 69–70n, 85, 87n, 93–94n, 123–24n, 152–53n, 223n, 299n, 323–24n, 330–31n, 344, 359n, 360n, 384n, 405n, 416n, 420n, 433, 435, 457, 463n, 465, 476n, 479–80n, 560n; pacifism in, 70n, 90–91n, 101; penal reform in, 323n, 381–82n; prejudice in, 33, 61, 265n, 453, 455, 469, 470; proslavery sentiment in, 478; temperance in, 88n, 90–91n, 101, 103n, 128n, 229n, 236n, 299n, 323n, 456n; treatment of blacks in, 38–39, 61, 74, 234, 355–56, 412. See also Ireland; Scotland British African Aid Society, 515n British African Civilization Society, 503, 508n British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 8, 10, 12, 17–18, 21, 63n, 67n, 75–76n , 119n, 136n, 140n, 149, 225n, 265n, 276, 310n, 323n, 381, 384n, 385–86n, 402, 403, 407, 421n, 501, 503, 553n, 559n; black abolitionists certified by, 11–12, 383; executive committee of, 86, 88n, 117, 134; founding of, 4, 50n, 128n, 508n; meetings of, 71, 76n, 96n, 129, 149–50, 288n, 340, 344–46, 361n, 362, 457; M. Roper appeals to, 134–36n; West Indian labor issue and, 132n British and Foreign Bible Society, 559n British and North American Royal Mail Steam Company, 342n British Association for the Advancement of Science, 537n, 542n British Banner (London, Eng.), 12, 182, 183n, 388 British Ensign (London, Eng.), 183n British Friend (Glasgow, Scot.), 70n, 91n British India Society, 67n British Methodist Episcopal church, 338n British Museum (London, Eng.), 77n, 416n British Standard (London, Eng.), 183n, 568, 570n British Training Institution (Corby, Eng.), 496n British West Indian Emancipation Act. See Emancipation Act of 1833 British West Indies, 288n; abolition of slavery in, 37, 41n, 49n, 69n, 76n, 87n, 128n; African laborers imported to,

581 129–30, 132n; black immigration to, 118n, 189n, 283–84; blacks in, 407; slavery in, 40n, 50n, 54, 366n Broad Street Committee (BFASS), 88n Broadway Tabernacle (New York, N.Y.), 189n, 360n Brock, William, 138 Bromley-by-Bow, Eng., 535n Brooks, Edward, 162 Brooks, Preston, 381n, 520–21 Brougham, Lord, 459, 460n, 558 Brown, Albert, 164n Brown, Clarissa, 250, 251n, 285, 342n, 398 Brown, Elizabeth Schooner. See Schooner, Elizabeth Brown, George, 365n Brown, Henry (Box), 174–75n , 298n, 385n, 387; correspondence by, 295; escapes of, 298n; family of, 297n; kidnapping attempt of, 293; marriage of, 301n; narrative by, 19–20; panorama of, 191, 293–97; J. C. A. Smith and, 293– 97 Brown, John (abolitionist), 20, 474, 476n, 489; conspirators with, 298n, 405n; F. Douglass supports, 173n Brown, John (slave), 265n, 271; L. A. Chamerovzow and, 13–14, 21, 266n; free blacks discussed by, 26; fugitive slaves discussed by, 263–67; J. Glasgow discussed by, 261; narrative by, 16, 19–21, 266n; slavery described by, 259–64; speech by, 259–65 Brown, Josephine, 250, 251n, 285, 342n, 398 Brown, William Wells, 153n; W. Allen and, 161–64; American abolitionists discussed by, 345–46, 403; American churches criticized by, 312, 350–51; American Sunday School Union criticized by, 312– 15; Anglo-American Anti-Slavery Association and, 331n; antiabolitionist violence discussed by, 288; antislavery in Britain discussed by, 168–72, 214, 216, 239–42, 287, 399–400, 403; antislavery in Massachusetts discussed by, 164, 178; antislavery plans of, 152; antislavery press discussed by, 239; antislavery tour by, 16–17, 168, 176, 191, 257n, 271, 290, 302, 357; Atlantic slave trade discussed by, 176–77, 196, 197, 286, 300; BFASS and, 344, 402; H. Bibb and, 204; Bibles for slaves discussed by, 170–71; black churches discussed by, 350–51; black education discussed by, 302–3, 304–5, 350; black laws discussed by, 162, 171– 72; Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar supported by, 30, 214–16; in Britain, 152, 153n;

582 Britain and American slavery discussed by, 176; British abolitionist women discussed by, 216; British experience of, 34, 250, 283, 302; H. B. Brown and, 171; A. Burns rescue discussed by, 402; contented slave thesis rejected by, 22; correspondence by, 152, 161–64, 239–42, 250, 283–84, 302–5, 312–15, 344–46; E. and W. Craft and, 239, 243n, 249, 250, 275, 316; Democratic party described by, 403; F. Douglass and, 239–41, 302–5; education of, 168–70; Emancipation Act of 1833 discussed by, 285–86; escapes of, 174n, 208, 210–11; J. Estlin and, 21, 323n; Exeter Hall meeting described by, 344; family of, 250, 251n, 285, 342n, 398; W. Farmer and, 21, 360n; finances antislavery tour, 16; free blacks described by, 195, 197–98; free produce movement supported by, 28; free states and prejudice discussed by, 401–2; free states and slavery discussed by, 287; Fugitive Slave Law discussed by, 163, 239–42, 283, 287, 289n, 399–400; fugitive slaves aided by, 207, 222n; fugitive slaves discussed by, 172, 178, 192, 197, 201–13, 239–42, 283, 362, 401–2; fund raising by, 29–30; W. L. Garrison and, 344–46, 403; E. Jones and, 351; London Morning Advertiser and, 312–15; London Times and, 283–84; narrative by, 19–20; Negro pew controversy discussed by, 350; novel by, 20; Oxford University visited by, 302–5; panorama of, 191–216; Paris Peace Congress attended by, 152, 153n, 155, 161, 164n; passport issue discussed by, 163–64; W. Phillips and, 250; P. Pillsbury and, 398; punishment for aiding fugitive slaves discussed by, 163, 171; selfpurchase of, 30, 398, 404n; slave catchers described by, 192, 201–3, 244n; slave prisons described by, 194–95, 197–98; slave trade in U.S. discussed by, 162–63, 169–70, 171, 177, 192–96, 199, 399–400; slaveholders and international conferences discussed by, 168–69; slave traders discussed by, 195–96, 200, 202–3; slavery and U.S. government discussed by, 162, 171, 177–78, 210, 399; slavery and war equated by, 155, 158; slavery described by, 22, 23, 168–71, 177, 193–98, 200–206, 219n, 220–21n, 285–86, 399–400, 402; slaves and free laborers compared by, 170; speeches by, 155, 168–72, 176–80, 285–88, 398–404; C. E. Stowe criticized by, 345, 346–47n; testimonials of, 152;

Index G. Thompson and, 168, 176, 178–79, 242, 287–88; S. R. Ward speech praised by, 345; West Indian immigration discussed by, 283–84; white slaves discussed by, 198–99, 203 Brown, Mrs. William Wells. See Schooner, Elizabeth Browne (abolitionist), 216 Browne, Albert Gallatin, 480n Brown’s Temperance Hotel (Liverpool, Eng.), 152, 241, 244n Brunel, I. K., 499n Bryan, Joseph, 219n, 460n Bryce, James, 295 Buchanan, James, 166n, 443n, 473n Buchner, Ludwig (Louis), 539, 542n Buffalo, N.Y., blacks in, 211–13, 223n Buffum, Arnold, 108, 121n Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 526n, 552n, 553n, 559n Burks (overseer), 430 Burmeister, Hermann, 539, 542n Burnet, John, 268, 269n Burns, Anthony, 217n, 249n, 402, 405n Burns, Robert, 185, 188n Burr, James, 230n Burrill (slave), 220n Burritt, Elihu, 153n, 164n, 187n Burton, Jack. See Anderson, John Burton, Moses, 494–95, 495–96n Butler, Andrew Pickens, 521n Butler, Benjamin F., 522–23n Butler, Pierce, 458, 460n Butt, Richard, 163, 165n Buxton, Thomas Fowell, 46, 49n, 50n, 508n, 554n Buxton, Thomas Fowell, Jr., 554n Byron, Lady Noel (Anne Isabella Milbanke), 10, 129, 379, 380, 381n Byron, Lord (George Gordon), 381n Cabot, Eliza Lee. See Follen, Eliza Lee Cabot Cabot, Samuel, 347n Cabot, Sarah, 346, 347n Cabot, Susan Copley, 347n, 356 Calaboso, 197, 219n Caldicott, John, 396n Caledonia Training School (Islington, Eng.), 359n Calhoun, John Caldwell, 119n, 185, 188n, 317 California: AME conference in, 126n; annexation of, 165n; blacks in, 42n, 483; statehood for, 236n, 237n, 317, 325n Cambell, John, 195 Camberwell, Eng., 269n Cambridge, Eng., 270n Cambridge University (Eng.), 143, 146n,

Index 147n, 311n Campbell, B. M., 219n Campbell, Jabez Pitts, 125–26n ; correspondence by, 113–15 Campbell, John, 183n Campbell, Robert, 449–50n ; African expedition of, 28, 77n, 447–48, 451n, 452n, 477, 488–90, 501; A. Aray and, 447; black conventions discussed by, 447; circular by, 447–48; M. R. Delany and, 448; family of, 504n, 515; free labor supported by, 28; fund raising by, 447– 48; H. H. Garnet and, 503, 515; J. W. Purnell and, 448 Campbell, Walter L., 200, 219n Canaan, 183n Canada (ship), 152, 172n Canada: AME church in, 110; antislavery in, 365n, 391–93, 536n; black churches in, 337–38n; black lecture tours in, 338n; black press in, 391–93; black settlements in, 57n, 188–89n; blacks in, 42n, 57–62n, 221n, 223n, 257n, 283–84, 300n, 335–37, 366n, 526n, 548n; condition of blacks in, 188n, 392–93, 535n; extradition of fugitive slaves from, 257–58n, 496n; fugitive slaves in, 42n, 178, 185–86, 213, 265, 322, 362–63, 429n, 438; fund raising for fugitive slaves in, 31–32, 37, 43n, 53, 57n; land policies in, 338–39n; missions in, 335; prejudice in, 364; U.S. relations with, 189n, 326n Canada–United States Reciprocity Treaty (1854), 189n Canadian immigration, 37, 39, 42n, 185–86, 284n, 393n; blacks oppose, 74n; blacks promote, 221n; J. Colborne encourages, 57n Canal Street High School (New York, N.Y.), 147n Candlish, Thomas, 429n Canonicus (ship), 68 Cape of Good Hope and the Eastern Province of Algoa Bay, &c. &c.; with Statistics of the Colony, The (Chase), 137n Caribbean, black immigration to, 360n Carlyle, Thomas, 303, 306n Caroline (slave), 504n Caroline Martin Fund, 510 Carove, Friedrich Wilhelm, 182 Carter, D., 163 Cary, Mary Ann Shadd, 391, 393n, 421n Cass, Lewis, 469 Cassey, Joseph, 421n Cassey, Joseph C., 419, 421n Catholic church, 361n Catholic emancipation, 50n, 67n Caulkins, Nehemiah, 202, 220n

583 Central America, 449n Challis, Thomas, 335, 337n Chambers, William, 541, 543n Chamerovzow, Louis Alexis, 12, 17, 75n, 344, 346n, 362, 383, 384n, 385n, 387, 503; J. Brown assisted by, 13–14, 21, 266n; correspondence to, 407–10 Chaplin, William L., 228, 229–30n Chapman, Henry Grafton, 88n Chapman, Maria Weston, 81n, 86, 88n, 100, 285, 359n, 433, 463n, 475 Chapman, Mary Gray, 285 Chapman Hall School (Boston, Mass.), 513n Charles I (king of England), 302, 305n, 337n Charles II (king of England), 337n Charles V (king of Spain), 130, 132n Charter Oak (Hartford, Conn.), 128n Chartism, 67n, 153n, 299n Chase, John Centlivres, 137n Chase, Salmon P., 525n; correspondence to, 524–25 Chatham, C.W., 447, 451n, 526n Chesson, Frederick W., 398, 405n, 465, 479– 80n, 555n, 560n Chester (ship), 174n, 208 Chicago Tribune (Ill.), 235n Child, David Lee, 95n, 420n Child, Lydia Maria, 95n, 420n Chinese Assembly Room (New York, N.Y.), 360n Chinn, Thomas Withers, 172n Christ Church (Oxford, Eng.), 189n, 302, 306n, 310n Christ Church (Philadelphia, Pa.), 122n Christian Era, 124n Christian Investigator (London, Eng.), 270n Christian News (Glasgow, Scot.), 228, 229n, 421n Christian Recorder (Philadelphia, Pa.), 126n, 141n Christianity, Islam and Race (Blyden), 531n Christophers, Joseph S., 137n Church (Kirk) of Scotland, 65, 188n Church Missionary Society, 351, 354n, 543n, 559n Church of England, 183n, 306n, 424 Church of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West (London, Eng.), 349 Church of the Disciples (Boston, Mass.), 359n Church of the Epiphany (Philadelphia, Pa.), 443n, 444n Church of the Messiah (New York, N.Y.), 142, 147n, 282n, 308, 310 Churchill, Alfred, 507n

584 Cincinnati, Ohio: antislavery in, 359n; blacks in, 109, 121–22n, 377n, 485–86n; underground railroad in, 385n Cincinnati Literary Association, 121n Cincinnati Philanthropist (Ohio), 359n Cincinnati Union Society, 109 City of Glasgow (ship), 395 City of Manchester (ship), 395 Civil rights, 148n; blacks denied, 289n, 436, 441n, 458; for fugitive slaves, 125n; in Ohio, 124–25n. See also Discrimination; Prejudice Civil War, 6, 510; black recruiting agents in, 173n; blacks in, 238n, 475n, 545, 547– 48n; blacks in Britain and, 491–92; British cotton supply and, 490n, 492n, 502, 506–7n, 515 Clapp, Henry, 164n Clarion (Troy, N.Y.), 120n, 226n Clark (abolitionist), 216 Clark, Molliston Madison, 140n; abolitionists censure, 138; accused of defending slavery, 140; American churches and slavery discussed by, 139–40; British experience of, 138; correspondence by, 138–40; in Evangelical Alliance, 138; London Patriot and, 138–39; prejudice in U.S. discussed by, 138–39; slavery discussed by, 138 Clarke, James Freeman, 164n, 357, 359n Clarkson, Thomas, 38–39, 40n, 46, 50n, 53, 119n, 459 Clarksonian (Hartford, Conn.), 118n Clay, Henry, 184n, 185, 187n, 235, 237n, 244n, 254n, 323, 326n, 340, 342n Clayton, John M., 163, 166n, 473n Clegg, Thomas, 447 Clemmonts, John, 322 Clergy reserves, 188n, 336, 338n Clerkenwell News (London, Eng.), 360n Clotel, or, The President’s Daughter (W. W. Brown), 20, 154n Cobden, Richard, 102n, 161, 388, 389n Coffin, Levi, 385n, 549, 552n, 553n, 556, 559n Colborne, John, 53, 55–57n, 58n Colchester First Church (Conn.), 128n Collins, John A., 67n, 85–87, 88n, 91n, 93, 95–96n Collins, Mrs. Robert, 249n, 274 Colonial Missionary Society, 335, 338n Colonization, 7, 37–39, 49n, 51, 81, 120n, 414n; abolitionists oppose, 89n; blacks oppose, 9, 41n, 44, 50n, 59n, 74n, 78n, 80, 82–83n, 116– 17, 126, 237n, 278–79, 310n, 322–23; organizations opposed to, 118n; press, 530n; promoted in Britain, 84n, 92; transportation costs of, 342n. See also American

Index Colonization Society; Black abolitionists Colonization Herald and General Register (Philadelphia, Pa.), 527, 530n Colonization Scheme Considered, Its Rejection by the Colored People, The (Cornish and Wright), 82n Colored American (New York, N.Y.), 19, 59n, 71, 74, 78n, 83n, 118n, 121n, 127n, 310n, 414n Colored Citizens of New York, 352n Colored Lancastrian School (Poughkeepsie, N.Y.), 300n Colored National Convention (1853), 75n, 370, 415n, 526n Colored National Convention (1855), 334n Colored Wesleyan Methodist Church (Toronto, C.W.), 338n Columbus (ship), 76n Colver, Nathaniel, 93, 95n, 114 Colver Institute (Richmond, Va.), 95n Commercial Advertiser (New York, N.Y.), 202, 220n Committee for the Suppression of the Slave Trade, 40n Committee of Citizens (New York, N.Y.), 310n Committee of the Liverpool Anti-Slavery Society, 102n Committee of Thirteen, 118n Committee of Twenty-Five, 75n Committee on Foreign Missions, 411n “Communipaw” (James McCune Smith), 59n Company of African Merchants, 508n Compensated emancipation, 185, 187n. See also Gradual emancipation Compromise of 1850, 24, 187–88n, 218n, 233n, 235, 236n, 237n, 244n, 245n, 254n, 325n Concert Rooms (London, Eng.), 176 Concord Baptist Association, 334n Conder, Josiah, 140n Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States Politically Considered, The (Delany), 449n Confederacy, 25, 27, 441n, 522n; British support for, 492n, 502–3, 519, 542n; leaders of, 522n Conference of Church Workers among Colored People, 352n Conference on Juvenile Delinquency (1853), 381n Confessions of Nat Turner (Turner), 222n Congregational church, 123n, 415n; antislavery and, 338n; in Canada, 336 Congregational Union, 12, 269n, 338n Congressional Confiscation Act (1861),

Index 520, 522n, 523n Connecticut: antiabolitionist violence in, 73; antislavery in, 117–18n, 128; black lecture tour in, 275n; blacks in, 51–52n, 117–18n, 414n Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society, 104, 116, 128n Connecticut Black Law, 52n Connecticut Colonization Society, 413, 414n Connecticut State Temperance Society for Colored People, 118n, 126–27n, 414n Consolidated American Baptist Missionary Convention, 535n Constitution (ship), 197, 218–19n Constitutional Act of 1791, 338n Constitutional Convention (1787), 307n Copley, Susan. See Cabot, Susan Copley Coquerel, Athanase Josue, 155 Cordell (slaveholder), 175n Corinthian Hall (Rochester, N.Y.), 370n, 421n Cork, Ire., 17, 269n Cork Examiner (Ire.), 456n Cork Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, 29, 223n Corn Laws, 101, 102n; opposition to, 323n; repeal of, 67n, 70n Cornelia (slave), 175n Cornish, Samuel, 51n, 78n, 80, 82n, 83– 84n, 90n Cotton: African production of, 450n, 489; British dependence on, 488–89, 490n; U.S. production of, 219–20n Cotton Supply Association, 450n, 490n Cotton Supply Reporter (Manchester, Eng.), 488 Cottrell, Samuel, 301n Council of Colored Citizens, 504n County Clare, Ire., 97 Coutts, Burdett, 275n Cowper, William, 541, 543n Cox, David, 321, 326n Cox, Francis A., 60–61, 62n, 63n Craft, Brougham, 466, 468n 468n, 478 Craft, Charles Philip Estlin, 465, 468n, 478 Craft, Ellen, 17, 18, 243n, 250, 288, 323n, 346, 360n, 460n; in Britain, 14–15, 239– 42, 257n, 453, 480n; correspondence by, 330; escape of, 246–49, 273–75, 465–66; escapes to Britain, 236n; family of, 465, 468n, 478; as free woman, 330; as fugitive slave, 257n, 330; Fugitive Slave Law threatens, 235, 244n, 271; London Emancipation Committee and, 480n; W. P. Powell defends, 253; returns to U.S., 35 Craft, William, 17, 243n, 275n, 288, 323n,

585 346, 360n; as AfCS agent in Dahomey, 243n; J. Anderson committee and, 478, 494; American churches critized by, 466; antislavery in Britain discussed by, 466, 479; Atlantic slave trade discussed by, 320; black progress discussed by, 541; in Britain, 14–15, 239–42, 257n, 453, 480n; W. W. Brown and, 239, 250, 257n, 275; colonization discussed by, 322–23; contented slave thesis rejected by, 22, 316, 320–21, 467–68; correspondence by, 316– 23, 478–79; escape by, 246–49, 273–75, 465–66; escapes to Britain, 236n; J. Estlin and, 20; family of, 30, 272–73, 275n, 465– 66, 468n, 477, 478; free produce movement promoted by, 28, 243n; Fugitive Slave Law discussed by, 246, 249, 317, 466; Fugitive Slave Law threatens, 235, 244n; fugitive slaves discussed by, 273–75, 318, 321–22; Garrisonian organizations and, 465, 478; M. Griffith and, 479; J. Hunt and, 537–42; London Emancipation Committee and, 479; S. J. May and, 465, 466, 478; narrative by, 19, 479; proslavery sentiment in U.S. described by, 317; racial theories discussed by, 540–41; returns to U.S., 35; slave catchers pursue, 246, 275; slave women discussed by, 23; slavery and U.S. government discussed by, 271–72; slavery discussed by, 271–75, 316–23; slaves compared with British workers by, 467; speeches by, 246–49, 271–75, 465–68, 537, 540–42; travels to Africa discussed by, 541; Uncle Tom’s Cabin defended by, 316, 467; vigilance committee protects, 246 Craft, William, Jr., 466, 468n, 478 Craig, James, 561 Crandall, Prudence, 48, 52n, 56, 499n Cranmer, Thomas, 302, 306n Crawfurd, John, 537 Creole (ship), 197, 218n Cresson, Elliott, 37, 38, 41n, 43n, 44, 49n, 53, 92 Crittenden, John J., 231n Crofts, Julia Griffiths. See Griffiths, Julia Cromwell, Oliver, 335, 337n Crook, Joseph, 395, 397n Crooks (abolitionist), 321 Cropper, James, 44, 46, 49–50n , 102n Cross, Abraham, 127n Cross, Elizabeth, 127n Cross, Isaac, 115–16, 127n Crown and Anchor Tavern, 90n Crowther, Samuel, 541, 543n Crummell, Alexander, 147n, 226n, 416n; African development discussed by, 281;

586 African missions discussed by, 278–80; J. Anderson accompanied to Liberia by, 496n; antislavery in Britain discussed by, 276–77; Bath committee and, 142, 146, 308, 310–11, 311n; S. A. Benson discussed by, 529; BFASS and, 149, 276; black churches discussed by, 144–45, 308–10; black education described by, 278; black ministers discussed by, 143, 351–52; black suffrage promoted by, 124n; W. T. Blair and, 310n; British philanthropy discussed by, 143–44; Cambridge University and, 142, 143, 304; church missions discussed by, 144; Church of Messiah and, 142, 144, 145– 46, 281–82n, 308–10; colonization discussed by, 278–79; Colored American and, 78n; correspondence by, 142–46, 308–10, 527–30; dedication to U.S. discussed by, 145; M. R. Delany’s African expedition and, 490n; education of, 143–46; family of, 144–45, 146–47n; free blacks described by, 277–78, 349–50; free produce movement promoted by, 28, 149–50, 527; free-state prejudice described by, 278; Fugitive Slave Law discussed by, 276; fund raising by, 29–30, 145–46, 308–10, 349; in Liberia, 35; J. Jay and, 142–46, 308–10; E. Jones discussed by, 351; Liberia College and, 527–30, 530n; Liberian agriculture discussed by, 529; Liberian economy discussed by, 529–30; Liberian visit of, 508n, 527; Paris Peace Congress and, 153n, 155, 161, 164n; H. and A. Richardson and, 146; slavery discussed by, 349; speeches by, 149–50, 276–81, 349–52; W. Tyson and, 308–9; United States and Russia compared by, 276 Crummell, Mrs. Alexander, 143–44, 145, 147n Crummell, Boston, 147n Crummell, Frances, 147n Crummell, Sidney, 147n Crystal Palace (London, Eng.), 270n Cuba: filibustering expeditions against, 317–18, 442n; slave catchers in, 318; slavery in, 318, 388, 558 Cunard, Samuel, 341, 342n Cunard Line, 342–43n, 472n, 497 Curran, John Philpot, 213, 223n Curtis, Benjamin, 442n Curtis, Mathew, 101, 102n Curwen, John, 505n, 510, 555n, 560n Dahomey, 502, 506n Daily News (London, Eng.), 547n, 552,

Index 555n, 568 Daily Picayune (New Orleans, La.), 200, 219n Daily Telegraph (London, Eng.), 568, 570n Dallas, George Mifflin, 469, 470, 471, 472n Daniel Webster (ship), 355 Dartmouth College (Hanover, N.H.), 94n, 164n, 236n, 346n, 525n Daves, Thomas, 13 Davies, James Penson Lablo, 341, 543n Davies, Sarah Bonetta Forbes, 341, 543n Davies, Victoria, 543n Davis (abolitionist), 216 Davis, Edward M., 419, 421n Davis, Elnathan, 164n Davis, G. H., 519 Davis, James, 259, 266n Davis, Jefferson, 502, 506n, 544 Dawn settlement, 265, 284n, 365n, 393n Day, Eliza, 525n Day, John, 525n Day, William Howard, 525n; Aliened American and, 118n; black settlements promoted by, 32; British public opinion influenced by, 26; S. P. Chase and, 524– 25; correspondence by, 524–25; free labor promoted by, 28; fund raising by, 30; gradual emancipation plan discussed by, 524; National Emigration Convention and, 451–52n; returns to U.S., 35; W. H. Seward and, 525; slavery and U.S. government discussed by, 524–25; slavery described by, 23 Declaration of Independence, 47, 51n, 54, 73, 177, 196, 215, 290, 291, 399, 437 de Clare, Walter, 306n DeGrasse, Isaiah G., 281n, 350, 353n DeGrasse, John V., 353n Delane, John Thadeus, 284n Delany, Martin R., 448n; African Aid Society and, 488; African cotton discussed by, 489; African expedition of, 452n, 488–89, 490n; Henry Boyd and, 377n; J. Brown and, 489; correspondence by, 477; M. M. Clark and, 140n; free labor promoted by, 28; Niger Valley Exploring Party and, 77n, 447, 450n, 451n, 488; speeches by, 488–89; Royal Geographical Society and, 477; N. Shaw and, 477; West Africa described by, 488– 89 Democratic party, 26, 403, 406n Democratic Sentinel (Wytheville, Va.), 326n Derry, David, 271 Description of William Wells Brown’s Original Panoramic Views of the Scenes in the Life of an American Slave, from

Index His Birth in Slavery to His Death or His Escape to His First Home of Freedom on British Soil, (A) (W. W. Brown), 191 Destiny of the People of Color, The (J. M. Smith), 59n Devens, Charles, 249n Dickens, Charles, 316, 324n, 555n Dickinson College (Carlisle, Pa.), 347n Diggs, Seneca T. P., 495, 496n Discipline (AME), 110, 122n Discrimination: American churches and, 123n; black protest against, 504n; in Canada, 366n; in churches, 341; in education, 56, 147n, 353n, 531n; in free states, 111–12; in Philadelphia, 378n; on public conveyances, 113–15, 526n; on transatlantic ships, 68, 73, 76–77n, 250, 341, 342–43n, 347n, 469–70, 472n, 497; by U.S. government, 163–64, 166–67n, 373–74, 376n. See also Jim Crow; Prejudice; Segregation Disunion, 82n, 89n, 233n; abolitionists advocate, 251n; blacks support, 235, 493n; slavery issue and, 244n Dives, 413, 416n Dixon, Jeremiah, 443n Docemo (king of Lagos), 502, 506n Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, 148n Dominican Republic, 513n Donations for Education in Liberia, 530n Dorr, Thomas, 124n Doughfaces, 235, 237n Douglas, Stephen A., 237n Douglass, Frederick, 173n, 221n, 245n, 307n, 375, 385n, 416n, 429n, 449n, 451n, 492n, 493n, 501; antislavery tour by, 6, 9, 14, 16, 20, 33, 134, 360n; black Garrisonians criticize, 421–22n; black immigration and, 360n; black suffrage promoted by, 124n; Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar promoted by, 30; Boston Garrisonians and, 18; in Britain, 60, 323n; W. W. Brown and, 154n; M. M. Clark censured by, 138, 140–41n; Colored National Convention and, 371n; correspondence to, 239–42, 302–5, 412–14, 417–20; Cunard line and, 342n; R. Douglass, Jr., and, 77n; Evangelical Al-liance criticized by, 138, 172–73n; Free Church criticized by, 312; free produce movement promoted by, 28; freedom purchased for, 30, 183n, 225n; fund raising by, 29–30; narrative by, 9, 19–21,; newspapers of, 31, 58–59n, 505n; C. L. Remond and, 79n; speeches by, 357, 360n, 417, 420n; S. R. Ward compared to, 12; R. D. Webb and, 21

587 Douglass, Grace Busthill, 77n Douglass, H. Ford, 393n Douglass, Robert, Jr., 74, 77n, 447, 450n, 452n Douglass, Robert, Sr., 77n Douglass, Sarah, 77n, 450n Douglass, William, 29 Douglass’ Monthly (Rochester, N.Y.), 173n Downing, George T., 507n Dr. Claven (slave), 429n Drayton, Daniel, 218n, 228, 230n Dred (slave), 427 Dred (H. B. Stowe), 289, 324n Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), 24, 79n, 406n, 435–36, 441n, 513n; black civil rights denied by, 469, 497; blacks oppose, 173n Dresden, C.W., 526n Dublin, Ire., 17, 97 Dunlop, Henry, 488 Dupuy, A., 503, 508n Durkee, Charles, 164n Duval, Alexander, 256n, 285; American churches criticized by, 291–92; F. Anderson and, 257n; free states and slavery discussed by, 291; Fugitive Slave Law and, 255, 291; slavery and U.S. government discussed by, 291; slavery discussed by, 290–91; speeches by, 290– 91; testimonials for, 268 Duval, Mary Ann, 256n; correspondence to, 255–56 Dyer, Heman, 312, 314, 315n East Anglian Daily Times (Ipswich, Eng.), 90n East India Company, 86, 88n Easthope (slaveholder), 482, 486n Ebenezer Bailey’s Young Ladies High School (Boston, Mass.), 88n Edgar, James, 534, 535n Edinburgh, Scot., 16, 17, 53 Edinburgh College, 306n Edinburgh Emancipation Society, 123n Edinburgh Free Church, 188n Edinburgh Ladies Anti-Slavery Society, 17, 246 Edinburgh Society for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the World, 57n Edinburgh University (Scot.), 63n, 67n, 306n Education, 300n; discrimination in, 369; reform in Britain, 41n, 49–50n, 67n, 94n, 124n, 381n. See also Black education; Slave education Education Society, 121n Edwill Thacker v. John Hawk and Others

588 (1842), 124–25n Election reform, in Britain, 41n Elections of 1850, 236n Elementary Instruction in Europe (C. E. Stowe), 346n Elgin, earl of (James Bruce), 186, 189n Elgin Association, 185, 188n Elgin settlement, 188n, 284n; fund raising for, 524, 526n Elijah, 434n Elizabeth (slave), 153n, 222n Elizabeth I (queen of England), 88n Ellington, Pleasant, 404n Emancipation (by purchase), 118n, 180n, 377n, 429, 482–85, 505n; black fund raising for, 275n, 427; British abolitionists negotiate, 404n; of W. W. Brown, 30, 154n, 398–99; of F. Douglass, 30, 173n, 183n; fund raising for, 8, 327–28, 332–33, 334n, 395, 396n, 427, 481, 485, 486n, 510; of J. W. C. Pennington, 30. See also Compensated emancipation; Gradual emancipation; Immediate emancipation Emancipation Act of 1833, 38, 39–40n , 41n, 50n, 53–54, 57n, 128n, 176, 223n, 285–86, 366n, 411n; annual celebration of, 256n, 285, 288–89n, 398, 460n Emancipation Proclamation, 6, 480n, 548n Emancipator (Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.), 89n, 126n, 146n Emigration. See Immigration Emmanuel Church (New York, N.Y.), 84n Enceladus, 239 Enfield, Mrs. W., 216 English Independent (London, Eng.), 140n Ensor, Abraham, 396n Ensor, Luke, 396n Episcopal church, 122n Episcopal Collegiate School (New York, N.Y.), 353n Episcopal Missionary Society, 353n Eppes, Richard, 222n Eslin, James, 163, 165n Essex County (Mass.) Anti-Slavery Society, 79n, 440n Estlin, John Bishop, 11, 21, 316, 323n, 330n, 356, 468n Estlin, Mary, 11, 323n Etheridge, Benjamin Copeland, 534, 535n Eton School (Windsor, Eng.), 189n Europa (ship), 341, 342n, 469, 470 Evangelical Alliance, 138, 169, 172n, 312, 555n; abolitionists criticize, 138, 172–73n, 312; British clerical opposition to, 269– 70n; M. M. Clark as delegate to, 141n Evangelical Knowledge Society, 315n Evangelist (New York, N.Y.), 126n

Index Evans, James, 163, 165n Evening Journal (Albany, N.Y.), 360n Evening Post (New York, N.Y.), 557, 560n Ewing, Greville, 53 Exeter Hall (London, Eng.), 44, 73, 76n, 86, 90n, 129, 312, 315n, 340, 344, 349, 361n, 494 Eyre, Edward John, 570n Fairbank, Calvin, 229, 231n Family Redeemed From Bondage, A (Kelly), 334n Faneuil, Peter, 245n Faneuil Hall (Boston, Mass.), 101n, 242, 244n, 245n Farmer, William, 21, 331n, 357, 360n Fastman, Henry, 430 Father Dickson, 289n Faustin I (emperor of Haiti). See Soulouque, Faustin Fayetteville Observer (N.C.), 318 Fellenberg, Emanuel de, 381n Female Industrial School (Stirling, Jamaica), 411n, 499n Fenian Brotherhood, 522n Ferdinand I (emperor of Austria), 376n Ferdinand I (king of Spain), 76n Few Facts Relating to Lagos, Abbeokuta and Other Sections of Central Africa, A (Campbell), 450n Field, Benjamin, 481 Field, Eleanor Kingsland, 146, 147n Fife, John, 239 Fifteenth Amendment, 251n, 404n Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church (Washington, D.C.), 120n, 227n, 505n Fifth (Colored) Congregational Church (Hartford, Conn.), 116, 118n. See also Talcott Street Church Fifth Amendment, protects slave property, 441n Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment, 548n Filgate, F., 424, 426n Filibustering expeditions, 317–18, 436, 442n Fillmore, Millard, 230n, 235n, 236n, 237n, 241, 253, 254n Finney, Sterling, 261, 266n First African Baptist Church (Albany, N.Y.), 42n First Annual Convention of the People of Color (1831), 51n First Baptist Church (Columbia, Tenn.), 334n First Colored Presbyterian Church (New York, N.Y.), 82–83n First Free Baptist Church (Boston, Mass.), 95n First of August Celebration. See Emancipa-

Index tion Act of 1883: annual celebration of First Presbyterian Church (Orange, N.J.), 552n Fisher, Charles, 474, 475n Fisher, J. T., 221n Fisher, S., 216 Fitzgerald, F., 503, 508n Fitzhugh, Ann Carol, 299n Flag Lane Chapel (Sunderland, Eng.), 95n Follen, Charles, 347n Follen, Eliza Lee Cabot, 346, 347n, 356, 357, 379, 380 Forbes, A. G., 561 Forbes, F., 543n Fort Wagner (Charleston, S.C.), 545, 547– 48n Forten, Harriet, 377n Forten, James, 41n, 123n, 377n Foster (ship captain), 430 Foster, Henry, 115, 126–27n Fourah Bay Christian Institution (Freetown, Sierra Leone), 354n Fourteenth Amendment, 251n, 378n Fourth Annual Convention of Free Colored People (1834), 105, 117n, 120n Fourth (Colored) Congregational Church (Portland, Me.), 118–19n, 415n Fourth Presbyterian Church (Washington, D.C.), 120n Fowler, R. N., 519 Frances Henrietta (ship), 493n Francis I (emperor of Austria), 281n Francis Joseph (emperor of Austria), 373, 376n Francis (ship), 49n Frankfurt Peace Congress (1850), 14 Franklin, Benjamin, 305, 307n Franklin, Isaac, 217n Franklin (ship), 197, 218n Franklin and Armfield, 193, 195, 197, 217n, 218n Franklin Institute (Philadelphia, Pa.), 441n Frazer, Alexander, 282n Frederick II (king of Prussia), 306n Frederick William III (king of Prussia), 281n Frederick Douglass’ Paper (Rochester, N.Y.), 19, 59n, 173n, 226n, 283, 412, 417, 420n Free African Society, 123n Free blacks: in Brazil, 369; at British colleges, 304–5; British treatment of, 355–56; in Canada, 284n, 300n; in Cincinnati, 121–22n; civil rights denied to, 376, 401–2, 436, 458, 469– 71, 473n; condition of, 104–9, 111–13, 115–16, 119n, 121n, 158–59, 234, 373; Dred Scott decision opposed by, 441– 42n; enslavement of, 195, 197–98,

589 261, 266n, 320, 374, 376n, 404n, 439–40; Fugitive Slave Law threatens, 233n, 400– 401; in Jamaica, 189n; legal protection for, 166n; legal status of, 473n; in New York, N.Y., 300n; passports denied to, 163–64, 166–67n, 473n; self-improvement by, 277–78; in slave states, 138–39, 140n, 219n, 349, 368–69, 438; vigilance committees protect, 125n; violence against, 226n, 238n Free Christian Church (Bromley-by-Bow, Eng.), 534n, 535n Free Church of Scotland, 70n, 312; antislavery and, 185; in Canada, 188n Free Colonization Board, 57n Free Labor Bazaar (1851), 499n Free produce movement, 76n, 82n, 119n, 128n, 150n, 225n, 243n, 340, 405n, 516, 559n; African immigration and, 447–48, 450n; blacks promote, 28, 123n, 149–50, 150–51n, 225–27n, 232–33, 233n, 243n; in Britain, 57n; in Liberia, 529–30; in Philadelphia, 233n; West Africa and, 488–89, 527–30 Free Soil party, 126n, 325n, 381n, 525n Free states, 51n; black migration to, 186; blacks denied civil rights in, 401–2, 436, 458; prejudice in, 48, 55–56, 73–74; support slavery, 287, 291 Free trade, 39n, 90n, 94n, 102n, 323n, 389n Free Trade Hall (Birmingham, Eng.), 559n Free Will Academy (Hollis, N.H.), 42n Free Will Baptist church, 42n Freed-Man (London, Eng.), 554n Freedmen: British support for, 87n; homestead plan for, 449n; Irish support for, 90–91n; slaves compared with, 562–63 Freedmen’s aid, 347n, 352n, 378n, 552n, 553n; AMA involvement in, 560n; blacks promote, 32–33, 415n; in Britain, 243n, 384n, 416n, 480n, 505n, 549–50, 554n, 560n; contributions to, 463n; fund raising for, 513n, 549–50, 553n, 556–59; in Scotland, 561 Freedmen’s Aid Society, 441n, 505n, 549– 50, 553n, 554n, 556, 557–58, 559n, 560n, 565; board members of, 554–55n Freedmen’s American and British Commission, 526n Freedmen’s Bureau. See Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands Freedmen’s Relief Association of New York, 549 Freedmen’s Savings Bank, 378n, 451n Freedom Association (Boston, Mass.), 249n Freedom’s Journal (New York, N.Y.), 82–83n, 123n, 147n

590 Freeman, Henry Stanhope, 506n Freeman, John, 404n Freeman, William, 474, 475n Freemasons’ Hall (London, Eng.), 76n, 90n, 104, 119n, 172n, 276, 362 French Revolution, 306n French West Indies, 155, 160n Friends Association for the Relief of Colored Freedmen, 63n, 89n Friends Boarding School (Nine-Partners, N.Y.), 89n Friends’ Review (Philadelphia, Pa.), 233n Fugitive Blacksmith or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington, The (Pennington), 118n Fugitive Slave Law (1793), 163, 165n Fugitive Slave Law (1850), 233n, 237n, 290, 365n, 377n, 406n; abolitionists urge disobedience to, 95n, 257n, 486n; black civil rights denied by, 287, 289n; black emigration from U.S. prompted by, 5, 42n, 174n, 221n, 236n, 249, 255, 283–84, 317, 332–33, 395– 96n, 429, 466, 491; blacks discuss, 24, 232, 235, 271, 276, 280, 291, 374, 403, 438; blacks oppose, 75n, 238n, 239–42, 242n; blacks urge disobedience to, 173n, 300n, 415n, 493n; descriptions of, 399–400; free-state support for, 347n; fugitive slaves threatened by, 118n, 154n, 404n, 246, 250, 284, 363 Fugitive slaves, 22, 192, 201–3, 253; abolitionists aid, 95n, 166n, 185–86, 228– 30n, 249, 298n, 347n, 357, 358n, 365n, 377–78n, 383, 385n, 420; attempted kidnap-pings of, 401; attempted rescues of, 405n, 450n; in England, 60; in the Civil War, 520–21, 544; indemnified by Treaty of Ghent, 548n; kidnapping of, 211–13; legal defen-se for, 525n; legal rulings on, 166n; in New York, 125n; number of, 321; punish-ment for aiding, 163, 171; rescues of, 211–13, 223n, 298n, 300n, 402, 520; Semi-nole Indians aid, 165n; in Toronto, 535n; vigilance committees protect, 84n, 246, 385n Fulton, Robert, 305, 307n Furber (abolitionist), 216 Gales, Joseph, Jr., 165n Gallaway, J. C., 335, 362 Gallego, Peter, West Indian immigration endorsed by, 189n Gambrell, William, 202, 220n Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 346n Garner, Margaret, 437, 443n Garner, Simon, Jr., 443n Garnet, George, 226n Garnet, Henry Highland, 18, 59n, 147n,

Index 226n, 276, 419; African Aid Society discussed by, 516; African Civilization Society and, 497, 503, 504n, 515; African immigration and, 501–2, 515; African slave trade discussed by, 502, 517; antislavery in Britain discussed by, 232– 33; BFASS discussed by, 501; black abolitionists described by, 503; blacks in Jamaica discussed by, 407–10; J. Bourne and, 503; British abolitionists described by, 503; British in West Africa discussed by, 502, 517; British support for Confederacy discussed by, 502; R. Campbell family and, 501; Civil War discussed by, 502; correspondence by, 225n, 232–33, 407–10, 497–99, 501–3; correspondence to, 327–28; family of, 329n, 499n; finances antislavery tour, 16; free produce movement supported by, 28– 29, 149, 151n, 225–27n, 232–33, 516; Fugitive Slave Law discussed by, 233; J. W. Garnet and, 497–99; Impartial Citizen discussed by, 225; in Jamaica, 35, 329, 407, 411n; J. Johnson family and, 499; J. S. Martin and, 501, 505n; missionary work in Jamaica by, 329; National Watchman and, 358n; passport of, 497; J. W. C. Pennington and, 503; P. Pillsbury criticizes, 420–21n; E. and H. Richardson discussed by, 225, 232; schools established by, 407, 411n; slave violence and, 79n, 83n, 154n, 415n; speeches by, 515–18; transatlantic voyage of, 342n, 472n, 497– 99; U.S. immigration discussed by, 26; S. R. Ward and, 225; Weims family aided by, 327–29; West Africa discussed by, 502; West African settlements discussed by, 516–18; H. M. Wilson and, 501–3 Garnet, James Crummell, 329n, 499n Garnet, Julia Ward Williams, 227n, 411n, 499n; correspondence to, 497–99 Garnet, Mary Highland, 499n Garnett, Jeremiah, 299n Garratt, Samuel, 555n, 560n Garrett, Thomas, 163, 166n, 385n Garrison (slaveholder), 60–61, 62–63n Garrison, Wendell Phillips, 347n Garrison, William Lloyd, 11, 39n, 70n, 86, 97–98, 152, 238n, 245n, 251n, 270n, 293, 296, 298n, 300n, 384, 403, 414n, 421n, 462, 463n, 464n, 476n, 479; AASS orga-nized by, 89n; abolitionist schism provo-ked by, 16, 82n, 85, 89n, 95; ACS opposed by, 6; antiabolitionists attack, 57n; anti-clericism of, 84n; in Britain, 44, 102n, 360n; M. M. Clark censured by, 138, 140–41n; colonization opposed by, 39n, 41n, 43n, 44; cor-

Index respondence to, 80–81, 92–94, 113–15, 268–69, 355–58; Evangelical Alliance criticized by, 138, 172–73n; imprisoned, 45–46, 49n; Liberator and, 4, 19, 81–82n; N. Paul defends, 44–46 Garrisonian abolitionists, 40n, 71, 95n, 99n, 121n, 220n, 237n, 270n, 347, 403, 404n, 406n, 421n, 440–41n, 457, 463–64n; AASS dominated by, 89n, 95n; American churches criticized by, 433; in Britain, 11, 57n, 76n, 85, 87n, 93–94, 152–53n, 233n, 270n, 299n, 323–24n, 330–31n, 344, 360n, 384n, 405n, 416n, 420–21n, 433, 435, 457, 463, 465, 476n, 479–80n, 560n; British abolitionists oppose, 96n; fund raising for, 101–2n; in Ireland, 87n; in Scotland, 67n, 69–70n, 123–24n; Stowes’ British tour criticized by, 359n; S. R. Ward describes, 417–20. See also Immediate emancipation Gaskell, Emily, 216, 223n, 445 Gaskell, Robert, 435, 445, 463n, 476n Gay, Sydney Howard, 77n, 95n, 234, 235n, 252 Geffrard, Fabre, 508n General Baptist Convention, 60 General Board of Commissioners, 452n General Theological Seminary (New York, N.Y.), 147n, 353n Geneva College (N.Y.), 353n Genius of Universal Emancipation (Mt. Pleasant, Ohio; Greenville, Tenn.; Baltimore, Md.), 39n, 49n, 78n George (slave), 62–63n Georgia, black laws in, 266n Gezo (king of Dahomey), 506n Giddings, Joshua Reed, 317, 324n Gilmarton Theological Seminary (N.H.), 404n Glasgow, Elizabeth G., 352n Glasgow, J. Ewing, 20, 65 Glasgow, John, 261, 266n, 267n Glasgow, Scot., 16; antislavery in, 53, 185– 86; colonization promoted in, 84n, 80–81; N. Paul in, 53 Glasgow City Hall (Scot.), 346n, 488 Glasgow Emancipation Society, 11, 17, 28, 58n, 65–67, 67n, 68–69, 70n; Committee of Management, 68, 142 Glasgow Examiner (Scot.), 419, 421n Glasgow Female Association for the Abolition of Slavery, 185 Glasgow Freedmen’s Aid Society, 31, 67n, 301n Glasgow Herald (Scot.), 561 Glasgow New Association for the Abolition of Slavery, 29, 31, 118n, 185 Glasgow Sentinel (Scot.), 421n

591 Glasgow University (Scot.), 58n, 68, 153n Glele (king of Dahomey), 341, 506n Glendower, Owen, 544, 547n Globe (New York, N.Y.), 189n Globe (Toronto, C.W.), 365n Gloucester, Stephen H., 29, 78n, 138 Gloucester, William, 29–30 Glover, John Hawley, 502, 506n Goodell, William, 90n Gordon, George William, 301n, 570n Gradual emancipation, 38, 40n, 570n 563, 565; A. Lincoln’s plan for, 524–25; for Missouri slaves, 183–84n. See also Compensated emancipation Grahamite diet, 74n Grandy, Moses: antislavery tour by, 6, 8–9, 60, 104, 134; finances antislavery tour, 16; fund raising by, 8, 23, 30; narrative by, 9, 19; J. Scoble and, 8, 11, 13; slave life discussed by, 8 Grange Hill School (Stirling, Jamaica), 411n Grant, James, 323n Grant, Ulysses S., 451n Gray, Thomas, 222n Great Britain. See Britain Great Eastern (ship), 499 Great Exhibition of 1851 (London, Eng.), 270n, 288n, 297 Greeley, Horace, 252 Greely, Joseph, 404n Green, Beriah, 147n, 226n, 358n Green, Samuel, 461n Greenfield, Elizabeth, 504n Grey, Henry, 185n, 188n Grier, Robert C., 374, 442n Griffith, Martha (Mattie), 479, 480n Griffith, Martha Young, 480n Griffith, Thomas, 480n Griffiths, Julia, 225n, 429n, 501 Gross, Theodore (Tabb), 485n; H. W. Beecher and, 485; black churches discussed by, 481–84; blacks in California discussed by, 483; fund raising by, 23, 30, 481, 486n; purchase of, 482–85; slavery described by, 22–23, 481–84; L. Smith and, 481–85, 486n; speeches by, 481–85; testimonials of, 481 Guadeloupe. See French West Indies Guerrero, Vincente, 174n Gurley, Ralph R., 41n, 80, 81n, 92–93, 414n Gurney, Samuel, 554n Guthrie, David, 429n Hains, P. F. J. B., 474, 476n Haiti, 173n, 306–7n, 508n; missions in, 126n; revolution in, 306n; U.S. recognizes, 323, 326n

592 Haitian immigration, 154n, 451–52n; blacks oppose, 507n; blacks support, 504n. See also West Indian immigration Hale, John Parker, 317, 324n Hale, William B., 322, 326n Halifax (Eng.) Ladies Anti-Slavery Society, 31 Hall, Anne, 259, 266n Hall, James W., 203 Hall of Commerce (London, Eng.), 149, 256n, 285, 290 Ham, 183n, 414 Hambleton, Henry, 163, 166n Hamilton, Thomas, 265n Hamilton Street Baptist Church (Albany, N.Y.), 43n Hammond, James Henry, 185, 188n Hampton, Wade, 449n Harman (abolitionist), 216 Harpers Ferry, Va., 20, 173n, 298n, 476n Harris, George, 317, 324n Harris, Jesse, 195 Harris, Sarah, 52n Harrison, William Henry, 521n Harrow School (Eng.), 310n Hartford, Conn., 115–16, 118n, 126–28n, 396n Harvard College (Cambridge, Mass.), 164n, 235n, 251n, 270n, 299n, 315n, 359n, 463n Harvard Divinity School (Cambridge, Mass.), 270n, 299n, 405n, 463n Harvard Law School (Cambridge, Mass.), 381n, 513n Haskins, Mercy O., 237n Hatton, Henry, 514n Haughton, James, 85, 87, 90–91n , 98 Hawke, Thomas A., 163, 165n Hawley, Francis, 202 Hayden, Lewis, 231n, 243n, 249n, 385n, 405n Hayes, Rutherford B., 249n Haynau, Julius Jacob Freiherr von, 254 Haynes, Dudley C., 549, 550, 553n 553n, 556, 559n Head, Edmund, 535n Helper, Hinton Rowan, 458, 460n Hemmings (abolitionist), 216 Henderson, M. H., 353n Henning, Thomas, 338n, 365n Henry IV (king of England), 547n Henry IV (Shakespeare), 547n Henson, Josiah, 276, 362; fund raising by, 29–30, 32; narrative by, 19–20; slavery described by, 23 Herald (New York, N.Y.), 189n Herald of Freedom (Concord, N.H.), 94–95n, 98, 99n, 404n Heslop, Alexander, 306n Hibernian Anti-Slavery Society, 17, 87n

Index Hicks, Thomas, 461n Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 405n High School for Colored Youth (New York, N.Y.), 226n Hilditch, S., 216, 223n Hill, Charles, 13 Hill, Hamilton, 164n Hincks, Francis, 461n Hinton, J. H., 129, 385n Hints on Colonization and Slavery (Breckinridge), 121n “History, Literature, and Destiny of the African Race” (Allen), 372 Hoar, Samuel, 376n Hoby, James, 60, 63n Hodgkin, Thomas, 503, 508n, Hodgson, Mrs. Adam, 101, 102n Hogarth, George, 123n Holbrook, J. C., 565 Holly, James Theodore, 221n, 451n, 504n Holy Alliance, 281n Home Guard, 513n Home Missionary Society, 554n Homes, Frederick, 318, 325n Hoole, Elijah, 481, 485n Hore, Edward, 404n Hotel des Affairs Étrangères (Paris, Fr.), 161 Household Words (London, Eng.), 316, 324n Howard Athenaeum (Boston, Mass.), 440n, 472n Howard Colored Orphan Asylum (New York, N.Y.), 504n Howat, John, 140n Hubbard, Henry, 376n Hubbard, Rudolphus, 525n Hughes, Willis, 241, 244n, 249n Hugo, Victor, 153n Hunt, Mrs. Harry, 216 Hunt, James, 537, 541, 542n Huntley, Mrs. J., 216 Hurlburt, W., 164n, 172n Hurst, Edward, 163, 166n Illinois: antiabolitionist violence in, 73; antislavery in, 230–31n; black laws in, 341, 342n, 374–75 Immediate emancipation, 4, 6, 37–39, 40n, 63n, 121n, 187n, 220n, 223n, 563; blacks support, 105; by violence, 185; Civil War and, 524; J. S. Martin defends, 561–62, 565; in West Indies, 39–40n Immigration: of African laborers to West Indies, 129–30, 132n; blacks oppose, 59n, 173n; of blacks to the Caribbean, 118n, 126n; of Indian laborers to Mauritius, 129–30, 132n; as response to racial prejudice, 119n; to U.S., 26,

Index 42n, 116. See also Canadian immigration; Haitian immigration; Jamaican immigration Impartial Citizen (Syracuse, N.Y.), 58n, 225n, 226n, 300n, 307n, 384; fund raising for, 499n Impending Crisis, The (Helper), 460n Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Brent), 493n Independent (Charleston, S.C.), 449n Independent (New York, N.Y.), 126n, 217n, 550, 553n Indiana: AME church in, 110; black laws in, 341, 342n, 375; underground railroad in, 385n Industrial Reformatory Schools, 382n Infant School for Colored Children (Boston, Mass.), 102n Inquirer (London, Eng.), 469, 476n Institute for Colored Youth (Philadelphia, Pa.), 77, 450n Internal slave trade. See U.S. slave trade International Anti-Slavery Conference (1867), 559n Ipswich Express (Eng.), 87, 90n Ireland: AMA fund raising in, 553n; antislavery in, 17, 85–87, 87–88n, 90–91n, 93, 99n, 102n; black lecture tours in, 7, 10–11, 332–33, 396n, 423–26; fund raising by blacks in, 332–33, 334n; C. L. Remond in, 97–98; separatist movement in, 90–91n, 522n Irish Anti-Slavery Society, 102n Irish Friend (Belfast, Ire.), 87, 91n Isabella (queen of Spain), 76n Isambert, François, 76n Islam, 531–32n Italy, 35 Jackson, Andrew, 548n Jackson, Francis, 249n, 462, 463n, 479 Jackson, James C., 95n Jackson, John Andrew, 427, 429n; fugitive slaves discussed by, 427–29; fund raising by, 427; purchase of, 427; slavery discussed by, 427–29; speech by, 427–29 Jackson, Mrs. John Andrew, 427 Jackson, Mildred, 221n Jacob, 220n Jacobs, Harriet A., 492n Jacobs, John S., 35, 492n; British experience of, 491; British support for Confederacy discussed by, 491–92; Civil War discussed by, 492; correspondence by, 491–92; I. Post and, 491–92; G. Thompson and, 491 Jamaica, 419, 421n, 507n, 508–9n; black abolitionists in, 35; black revolt in, 568–69, 570n; blacks in, 189n, 407–

593 11, 411n, 543n; British administration of, 189n; cotton production in, 507n; I. G. DeGrasse in, 353n; freedmen in, 554n; H. H. Garnet in, 227n, 407, 411n; laborers imported to, 411n; S. R. Ward in, 301n Jamaica Cotton Company, 503, 507–9n Jamaican immigration, 186, 506n; natives oppose, 410–11. See also West Indian immigration James, John Angell, 335, 337n, 381n James, Jepsey, 264, 267n James, Thomas Smith, 335, 337n James I (king of England), 302, 305n James II (king of England), 405n Jay, Eleanor. See Field, Eleanor Kingsland Jay, John, 142, 146n, 147n, 308 Jay, William, 76n, 146n, 147n, 389, 390n Jeffers, William, 74, 78n Jefferson, Madison, 19 Jefferson College (Pittsburgh, Pa.), 140n Jeffreys, George, 402, 405n Jennings, Isabel, 216, 223n Jennings, Jane, 216, 223n Jennings, Thomas L., 300n Jerome, 183n Jerry Rescue, 298n, 300n Jewell, Arthur, 513n Jim Crow, 73, 106, 442n. See also Discrimination; Prejudice; Segregation Jocelyn, Simeon S., 51n, 553n John Anderson Committee, 359n, 478, 494, 496n John Street Chapel (London, Eng.), 555n Johnson, Andrew, 381n, 522n, 525n Johnson, Bryant, 319, 325n Johnson, Charity, 499 Johnson, Charolotte, 500n Johnson, James, 499 Johnson, Oliver, 81n, 95n Johnson, Robert M., 65 Johnson, William Purnell, 125n Johnston, William, 104, 125n Jones, Abigail, 354n Jones, Absalom, 123n Jones, Edward, 351, 354n Jones, George, 176, 180n Jones, Jehu, 354 Jones, William H., 32–33 Joseph, 220n Joseph W. Neal and Company, 196, 218n Joy Street Baptist Church (Boston, Mass.), 534n Judah, Harriet, 377n Julius Caesar, 541, 543n Jupiter (slave), 318 Jury Trial Law, 112–13, 125n Kane, John K., 378n Kansas: free state movement in, 251n,

594 405n, 437, 442–43n, 476n, 520–21, 521n; statehood for, 406n Kansas-Nebraska Act, 24, 79n, 406n, 441n, 521n Kearsage (ship), 475n Keble, John, 306n Kell, Mrs. E., 216, 223n Kelly, Alfred, 334n Kelly, Dolly Orphelia, 333n Kelly, Edmund, 333–34n; education of, 332; family of, 332; Fugitive Slave Law threatens, 332; fund raising by, 30, 332; self-purchase of, 332; slavery described by, 332–33; speeches by, 332–33 Kelly, Paralee Walker, 333n Kelly, Robert Edmond, 333n Kelly, William Dempsey, 334n Kemble, Frances (Fanny), 458, 460n Kennedy, Crammond, 549 Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The (H. B. Stowe), 324n King, Lyndon, 347n, 358n King, Mary E. See Allen, Mary E. King King, Seymour, 226n King, William, 188–89n, 526n Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 172n Kinnaird, Arthur, 519 Kinnard, Thomas, 30, 488, 494 Kirk, Edward N., 519 Knibb, William, 76n Knight, Anne, 216, 223n Knight, John, 244n, 249n Knights of the Golden Circle, 442n Knox Church (Toronto, C. W.), 188n Knox College (Galesburg, Ill.), 124n La Revue des deux mondes (Paris, Fr.), 316 Labor reform, 251n; in Britain, 310n Ladies Association in Aid of the Colored Refugees, 365n Ladies’ Society to Aid Fugitives from Slavery, 257n, 284n Lagos, 448, 450n, 452n, 488, 490n, 502, 505– 6n, 517 Lane, Ebenezer, 112, 125n Lane Theological Seminary (Cincinnati, Ohio), 124n, 324n, 346n, 359n Latimer, George, 95n, 289n Latimer, Hugh, 302, 306n Lawrence, Abbott, 29 Layard, Austen Henry, 414, 416n League of Freedom, 236n Leander (slave), 206–9, 212 Leavitt, Joshua, 115, 126n, 174n, 221n, 553n Leconte, Casimir, 316 Lecture Hall (Croydon, Eng.), 168 Lecture on the Haytian Revolution, A (J. M. Smith), 59n

Index Lee, Simon, 222n Leeds Anti-Slavery Association, 367, 416n Lees, Frederick Richard, 295, 299n Leigh (abolitionist), 216 Leigh, Charles C., 549, 553n, 556, 557, 559n Leisure Hour (London, Eng.), 493n Letter to M. Jean Baptiste Say, on the Comparative Expense of Free and Slave Labor, A (Hodgson), 102n “Letters from England” (Farmer), 360 Letters on the Slave Trade (Alexander), 508n Lewis, Israel, 57n Liberator (Boston, Mass.), 19, 81–82n , 88n, 93, 181n, 356, 384, 443n, 474; agents for, 126–27n, 464n; blacks involved with, 78n, 377n, 420n, 493n; ceases publication, 39n; founding of, 4, 39n; funding for, 101–2n; letters to, 37, 80–81, 113–15, 125n, 268–69, 360n, 421n Liberia, 46, 50n, 147–48n, 227n, 278; ACS and, 41n; agricultural development of, 531n; black abolitionists in, 35, 496n, 508n, 527, 531n; black settlement in, 506n, 530; blacks oppose settlement in, 322–23; coffee production in, 527, 529; colonization of, 80–81; cotton production in, 529; education in, 529–30; politics in, 531–32n; U.S. recognizes, 323, 326n Liberia Advocate (Philadelphia, Pa.), 531n Liberia College (Monrovia), 148n, 527–30, 530n, 531n; controversy over location of, 531n; opening of, 529 Liberia Herald (Monrovia), 531n Liberian Exodus Joint Stock Steamship Company, 449n Liberty Bell, 88n, 347n, Liberty party, 58n, 126n, 217n, 230n, 385n, 525n; black press supports, 226n; blacks in, 118n, 128n, 221n, 226n, 300n, 449n Liberty Street Presbyterian Church (Troy, N.Y.), 226n Life of James Mars, a Slave (Mars), 127n Limerick, Ire., 17, 97 Lincoln, Abraham, 6, 231n, 521n, 522n, 525n, 547, 548n; blacks criticize, 126n; compensated emancipation supported by, 187n; gradual emancipation plan of, 524, 525n Lisburn Street Presbyterian Church (Hillsborough, Ire.), 423 List, Charles, 249n Litchfield Law School (Conn.), 166n Literary and Religious Magazine (Baltimore, Md.), 107, 120n Liverpool Albion (Eng.), 430 Loguen, Jermain W., 226n, 300n, 385n

Index London Emancipation Society (Committee), 17, 29, 243n, 359n, 441n, 465, 478, 479–80n , 494, 503, 510–11 London Exhibition (1862), 511, 513n London Gazette (Eng.), 296, 299n London Missionary Society, 15, 559n London Peace Congress (1850), 153n, 250, 285, 288 London Peace Society, 153n London Tavern, 289n Longdon, Mrs. R., 216, 223n López, Narciso, 325n, 442n Loring, Edward, 405n Loring, Ellis Gray, 358n, 420 Lot, 466, 468n Louis Philippe (king of France), 217n Louisiana Chronicle (St. Francisville), 202, 220n Louisiana Courier (New Orleans), 320, 325n Louisiana Purchase, 184n Love, William, 13 Lovejoy, Elijah Parish, 229, 230n Lucas, Samuel, 544, 547n Lucy (slave), 266n Lundy, Benjamin, 39n, 49n Lupton, Joseph, 367 Lupton, Mrs. Joseph, 216, 223n Luscombe, Thomas, 259 Lushington, Lord Stephen, 10, 76n Luther, Martin, 357, 361n Lutheran church, 361n Lynch Law, 520, 521n MacDowall, Bailie, 346n Macgregor, John, 519 Mackie, Ivie, 457 Macon Telegraph (Ga.), 318, 325n “Madge Vertner” (Griffith), 480n Madison, James, 235n Madison Journal (Richmond, La.), 203, 220n Maguire, John Francis, 455, 456n Mahan, Asa, 164n Maine: prejudice in, 73; statehood for, 184n Malinda (slave), 221n Manchester Anti-Slavery League, 416n Manchester Anti-Slavery Union, 405n Manchester Female Suffrage Society, 476n Manchester Guardian (Eng.), 296, 299n Manhattan Anti-Slavery Society, 237n Mann, Horace, 299n Mannix, [Mary?], 99n Mansfield, Isaac, 222n Mansfield, Lord, 339n, 362, 366n, 568 Manual labor school, 51–52n, 75n, 415n; plans for, 310n; at Wilberforce, 42–43n Manual Labor School Committee, 415n Manumission, 47; ACS policy on, 41n, 47;

595 laws regarding, 138–39, 140n, 219n Maria (slave), 243n Market Hall (Syracuse, N.Y.), 385n Marlboro Chapel (Boston, Mass.), 95 Mars, James, 115–16, 127n Mars, Jupiter, 127n Martin, Caroline, 510 Martin, J. Sella, 504n; as AMA agent, 549– 52, 556–59, 559n; antislavery in Britain described by, 561; antislavery sentiment in free states discussed by, 519–20; black soldiers discussed by, 545–47; blacks in Britain criticized by, 32; L. Coffin and, 556; Confederacy’s use of slaves discussed by, 544–47; contented slave thesis disputed by, 565–66; correspondence by, 510–13, 533–34, 544, 549–52, 556–59; J. Davis’s war policy ridiculed by, 545–47; family of, 510, 513n; freedmen and slaves compared by, 562; freedmen’s aid in Britain discussed by, 549–50, 556–59; freedmen’s aid promoted by, 31, 32–33, 565; fund raising by, 30, 510, 511, 549–51, 556, 561, 565; H. H. Garnet and, 501; D. Haynes and, 551, 556; immediate emancipation defended by, 561–64, 565– 67; lecture tours of, 15, 510, 513n; H. Leigh and, 549–52; W. Mitchell and, 533– 34; G. Ruffin and, 510–13; slavery described by, 32, 563–64, 565–67; speeches by, 519–20, 561–64, 565–66; H. Storr and, 549–52, 556, 557, 561; M. E. Strieby and, 549–52, 556–59; testimonials of, 14; G. Thompson and, 511; F. Tomkins and, 550– 51; Union cause promoted in Britain by, 510, 519–21, 544 Martin, Sarah J., 511, 513n Martineau, Harriet, 337, 339n, 365, 475 Martinique. See French West Indies “Martyr Age of the United States, The” (Martineau), 339n Mary Tudor (queen of England), 306n Maryland: blacks in, 107, 120n; slave trade in, 54 Marylebone (London, Eng.), 520, 522n Mason, Charles, 443n Mason and Dixon Line, 437, 443n Massachusetts: antislavery in, 164, 270n, 381n; black lecture tour in, 275n, 493n; blacks in, 79n, 237n, 440n, 472n; discrimination in, 237n, 436; laws protect fugitive slaves, 166n; penal reform in, 382n; segregation in, 442n Massachusetts Abolition Society, 127n, 230n Massachusetts Abolitionist (Boston), 230n Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 95n, 101n, 223n, 251n, 275n, 300, 440n,

596 463n; agents for, 154n, 173n, 270n, 463n; financial committee of, 472n Massachusetts Fifty-fifth Regiment, 79n, 173n Massachusetts Fifty-fourth Regiment, 79n, 173n Massie, James William, 551, 554n Master, George, 317, 324n Mathews, Edward, 288, 289n Matilda (slave), 206–9, 212 Matthew, Theobald, 88n, 103n Mauritius, Indian labor imported to, 129– 30, 132n Mawson, Mrs. John, 216 May, Samuel J., 270n, 296, 299–300n , 384, 414n, 457, 462, 463n, 465, 466, 468n, 474 May, Samuel, Jr., 11, 236n, 255, 268, 270n, 323n, 462, 463n; correspondence to, 474– 75, 478–79; Crafts accompanied by, 243n McBride (abolitionist), 322n McCoskry, William, 506n McCullogh, William, 64n McDonald (slaveholder), 494n McDougall, J., 229n McHenry, William (Jerry), 300n McKim, J. Miller, 174n, 346, 347n, 357, 385n McLean, John, 442n McLeod, J. Lyons, 503, 508n McQuiller, Colonel, 61, 64n Medley, Stella, 125n Memorial Discourse (Garnet), 59n Merchant of Venice, The (Shakespeare), 443n Merchants Hall (Glasgow, Scot.), 185 Messinger, G. W., 164n Methodist Protestant (Baltimore, Md.), 359n Metropolis (ship), 430 Metropolitan Tabernacle (London, Eng.), 513n Mexican-American War, 162, 165n Mexico, 317, 442n Milbanke, Anne Isabella. See Byron, Lady Noel Milbanke, Ralph, 381n Miles, Mary, 221n Millbank Penitentiary (London, Eng.), 319, 325n Milledgeville Southern Reporter (Ga.), 318, 325n Miller, Charles D., 299n Milliken’s Bend (La.), 545, 548n Mills, William, 53, 56 “Mirror of Slavery” (H. Brown), 175n Miscegenation, 445 Mission Institute (Quincy, Ill.), 230n

Index Missionary Herald (Boston, Mass.), 560n Missions (church): in Africa, 53–54, 104, 136–37n, 147–48n, 278–80, 531n; African Aid Society promotes, 507n; of AMA, 553n; of AME, 125–26n; British societies involved in, 559n; in Canada, 188–89n, 335–36, 338n; in Caribbean, 126n; to freedmen, 553n; for fugitive slaves in Canada, 32, 535n; home, 74–75n, 144; in Jamaica, 189n, 353n; societies involved in, 96n; in West Africa, 230n, 354n Missouri, statehood for, 183–84n Missouri Compromise (1820), 183n, 187– 88n, 441n Mitchell, William N., 29, 533, 534n Moncrieffe, Peter, 306n Monmouth, duke of, 405n Montez, Lola, 465 Moore, Betty, 266n Moore, Elizabeth, 266n Moore, James, 266n Moore, Mark, 95n Moore, Robert Ross Rowan, 101, 102n Moore, Sarah (Sally), 266n Moore Street Industrial Institute (Richmond, Va.), 231n Moral Reform Society of the Colored Citizens of Ohio, 121n Moran, Benjamin, 469, 473n Morant Bay, Jamaica, 568 Morant Bay Rebellion (Jamaica), 301n Morgan, John, 267n Morgan, Mrs. John, 267n Morgan, T. H., 124n Morgan, Thomas, 124n Morgan, William, 111, 124n Morley, Henry, 316 Morley, Samuel, 519 Morning Advertiser (London, Eng.), 19, 21, 312, 316, 323n Morning Chronicle (London, Eng.), 92, 94n Morning Herald (London, Eng.), 568, 570n Morning Mail (London, Eng.), 385n Morning Star (London, Eng.), 128, 469, 544 Morpeth, Lord (George William Frederick Howard), 129, 133n Morris, E. S., 527, 531n Morris, Robert, 249n Morrison, John, 62n Mott, Abigail Field, 414, 416n Mott, James, 89, 421n Mott, Lucretia, 86, 88–89n , 300n, 421n Mott, Maria, 421n Moulton, H., 202 Mount Vaughan High School (Cape Pal-

Index mas, Liberia), 148n Munroe, William C., 221n Murray, Anna, 173n Murray, John, 17, 67n, 69–70n , 85; correspondence by, 68–69 Music Hall (Birmingham, Eng.), 515 Music Hall (Warrington, Eng.), 445 Mutual aid societies, 78–79n, 121n, 123n My Bondage and My Freedom (Douglass), 59n My Southern Home: Or, the South and Its People (W. W. Brown), 154n Myers, Stephen, 226n Mystery (Pittsburgh, Pa.), 449n Nancy (slave), 301n, 318 Napoleon I (emperor of France), 270n, 306n Napoleon (ship), 62n Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery, A (Roper), 21, 62–64n, 136–37n Narrative of Events of the Life of J. H. Banks, A (Banks), 118n Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave (Bibb), 221n Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Douglass), 9, 173n Narrative of the Life of James Watkins (Watkins), 396n Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave (Brown), 153n, 154n, 180n, 203, 208, 404n Nation (New York, N.Y.), 347n National Anti-Slavery Standard (New York, N.Y.), 17, 30–31, 77n, 88–89n, 93–94, 95n,, 102n, 215, 234, 235n, 252, 254n, 419, 420n, 474, 480n, 493n, 497 National Anti-Slavery Subscription Anniversary, 88n, 224n, 433, 462; Board of Managers of, 472n National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 514n National Colored Labor Bureau, 505n National Colored Labor Convention (1869), 238n National Committee of British Freed-Men’s Aid Societies, 554n, 556, 559n National Convention of Colored Citizens (1843), 79n, 83n, 106, 120n, 154n, 226n, 415n National Convention of Colored Citizens (1853), 504n National Convention of Colored People (1847), 310n National Council of Colored Citizens, 371n National Emigration Convention (1854),

597 393n, 451n, 526n National Emigration Convention (1856), 451n, 526n National Emigration Convention (1858), 447, 451n, 526n National Era (Washington, D.C.), 217n, 324n, 357, 359n National Federation of Afro-American Women, 514n National Freedmen’s Relief Association of New York, 553n National Gallery (London, Eng.), 77n National Intelligencer (Washington, D.C.), 162, 165n, 195 National Labor Convention of Colored People, 75n National Negro Convention (1847), 147n National Negro Convention (1864), 513n National Watchman (Troy, N.Y.), 226n, 358n National Women’s Rights Convention (1858), 441n National Board of Commissioners, 451n Naval Yard (Washington, D.C.), 218n Neal, Joseph W., 218n Negro (Freetown, Sierra Leone), 531n Negro Employment Office, 420n Negro Pew Controversy, 38, 42n,, 73, 341, 350, 369, Negro Seamen’s Act, 376n Negroes and Anglo-Africans as Freedmen and Soldiers, The (S. P. Remond), 20, 441n Nell, William C., 414, 416n, 419, 420n, 472n, 492n Nelson, Samuel, 442n Neptune (ship), 264 Nero (emperor of Rome), 106, 120n New Bedford, Mass., 125n, 255 New England, 298n, 441n New England Anti-Slavery Convention, 463n New England Anti-Slavery Society, 4, 39n, 51n, 79n, 82n, 121n, 128n, 223n, 237n, 463–64n New England Non-Resistance Society, 89– 90n, 95n New Hampshire: fugitive slave extraditions in, 73; political antislavery in, 324–25n New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society, 94– 95n, 99n New Haven Literary and Debating Society, 414n New Mexico, 236n New National Era (Washington, D.C.), 173n, 449n, 451n, 505n New Orleans, La., 197–98, 219n, 431n New Orleans, Battle of, 547, 548n

598 New Orleans City Jail, 219n New Park Street Church (Southwark, Eng.), 513n New York, N.Y.: AME church in, 110; antislavery in, 74–75n, 146n; black churches in, 122n, 126n, 181n, 281–82n, 308–10; blacks in, 58–59n, 74–75n, 78n, 82–84n, 108, 189n, 226n, 237n, 310n, 352–53n; civil rights in, 112–13; discrimination in, 436; racial violence in, 73, 75n New York, antislavery in, 153–54n, 298n; black lecture tours in, 441n, 493n; black suffrage in, 78n; blacks in, 125n, 147n, 300n, 338n, 504n; emancipation law, 42n New York Annual Conference (AME), 125– 26n New York Anti-Slavery Society, 83n, 125n, 126n, 146n, 229n New York Association for the Political Elevation and Improvement of Colored People, 82n New York Central College (McGrawville, N.Y.), 58n, 347n, 358n, 370n, 379 New York City Hall, 498, 499n New York City Missionary Society, 75n New York Civil Rights Committee, 238n New York Colonization Society, 507n New York Committee to Aid Fugitive Slaves, 72, 82n, 84n, 104n, 125n, 189n, 310n, 328 New York Congregational Association, 300n New York Evening Post (N.Y.), 235n New York Exhibition (1853), 370, 371n New York Philomathean Society, 78n New York Political Association, 310n New York Select Academy (N.Y.), 310n New York Society for Promoting the Education of Colored Children, 75n New York State Vigilance Committee, 31, 118n, 185–86, 189n,, 228, 327n, 504n New York Tribune (New York), 235n, 252 New York Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society, 146n New Zealand, 280 Newark College (Del.), 353n Newcastle Ladies’ Free Produce Association, 149 Newman, John Henry, 306n Newman, William P., 189n, 393n Newmania, 306n Newport Young Ladies Juvenile AntiSlavery Society, 71 Nicaragua, 442n Nichol, John Pringle, 153n Nicolson Street Church (Edinburgh, Scot.), 246

Index Niger Expedition (1841), 49n, 354n, 543n Niger Expedition (1854), 543n Niger Expedition (1857), 506n, 543n Niger Valley Exploring Party, 77n, 447, 449–52n, 526n; expedition of, 488–89, 490n; fund raising in Britain for, 447–48, 488–89 Nimrod, 416n Nineveh and Its Remains (Layard), 416n Niven, William, 409 Nixon, Reuben, 13 Noah, 183n Noel, Baptist W., 552, 555n Nonresistance, 89–90n , 95n. See also Pacifism Non-Resistant (Boston, Mass.), 88 Non-Slaveholder (Philadelphia, Pa.), 233n North, William, 398 North African School (Hartford, Conn.), 127n North American League, 221n “North American Slavery” (Morley), 316 North British Daily Mail (Glasgow, Scot.), 327 North Carolina, 54 North of England Anti-Slavery and India Reform League, 398, 405n North Star (Rochester, N.Y.), 9, 19, 58n, 77n, 127n, 173n, 449n North Star Association, 77n Northern Star and Colored Farmer (Albany, N.Y.), 226n Northrup, Solomon, 218n Norton, John T., 128n Nott, Henry, 115, 127–28n Nova Scotia, 42n, 543n Noyes Academy (New Canaan, Conn.), 147n, 226n, 499n Nullification, 188n Oak Street Church (West Philadelphia, Pa.), 334n Oberlin College (Ohio), 140n, 525n, 552n Observer (New York, N.Y.), 348n Ockham School (Surrey, Eng.), 243n O’Connell, Daniel, 44, 46, 50n,, 73, 76n, 86– 87, 456n Odgers, Mrs. Jacob, 216, 223n Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party (Delany and Campbell), 452n Ohio: AME church in, 110; antislavery in, 140–41n; antislavery tours in, 441n; black laws in, 55, 57n; blacks in, 525– 26n; civil rights in, 112 Olive Baptist Church (Lawrence, Mass.), 334n On Protestant Nonconformity (Conder), 140n “On the Influence of Opium on Calamenial

Index Functions” (J. M. Smith), 59n Onderdonk, Benjamin T., 353n Onderdonk, Henry, 147n Oneida Institute (Utica, N.Y.), 147n, 226n, 358n, 414n Orcutt, John, 413, 415n Oriel College (Oxford, Eng.), 306n Orleans Parish Prison (La.), 219n Overseers, 201, 428, 566 Oxford Movement, 306n Oxford University (Eng.), 143, 189n, 284n, 302, 304, 306n Pacifism, 87n, 89n, 128n, 153n, 155, 157–60, 233n, 289n; in Britain, 70n, 101, 225n, 389; in Ireland, 90–91n; in Scotland, 472n. See also Nonresistance Packard, Frederick Adolphus, 314, 315n Pakington, John, 381n Panopticon, or Inspection House, The (Bentham), 325n Panorama, 191, 217n, 299n; of H. Brown, 175n; of H. Brown and J. C. A. Smith, 293–97, 298–99n; of W. W. Brown, 191– 216; of J. C. A. Smith, 383 Paris Anti-Slavery Convention (1867), 384n, 472n Paris Peace Congress (1849), 14, 152, 153n,, 161, 164n, 182, 225n; American delegates at, 164n; black abolitionists at, 155; slaveholders at, 169; southern delegates at, 172n Parker, Theodore, 236n, 243n, 249n, 402, 405n Parliamentary Reform Association, 57n Parry, Thomas, 474, 475n Passports, 163, 166n, 473n, 497 Pati (free black), 448n Paton, Catherine, 216, 223n Patriot (London, Eng.), 138, 140n, 533 Paul, Benjamin, 42n Paul, Nathaniel, 42–43n ; ACS condemned by, 6–7, 27, 29, 37–39, 44–48; antislavery in Britain described by, 37–39, 46; antislavery tour by, 4, 6–7, 9; black immigration discussed by, 54–56; black settlements promoted by, 6, 32; in Britain, 38–39; J. Clarkson and, 38–39; colonization opposed by, 37–38, 41n, 43n, 44; correspondence by, 37–39; free produce movement promoted by, 28; fund raising by, 29–30, 37, 53; W. L. Garrison and, 29, 37–39, 44–46; lecture tour in Britain by, 38, 53; prejudice against blacks discussed by, 46–48, 55–56; in Scotland, 53; slavery described by, 54–56; speeches by, 44–49, 53–57; G. Thompson and, 54; treatment of blacks in Britain discussed by,

599 38–39; W. Wilberforce and, 38–39; as Wilberforce settlement agent, 37, 53, 57n Paul, Thomas, 42n Payne, Daniel A., 141n, 553n Pearl (ship), 197, 218n, 219n, 230n Pease, Elizabeth, 152n,, 216, 223n Pease, Joseph, 153n Peck, Edwin, 205 Peck, Richard, 104 Pegram & Bryan, 200 Pembroke, James, 117n Pembroke, Stephen, 118n Penal reform, 153n, 251n; blacks involved in, 379–80; in Britain, 41n, 49n, 70n, 323n, 325n, 379, 381–82n; in Massachusetts, 382n Pennington, J. W. C., 117–19n , 120n, 128n, 276, 375, 416n; AFASS founded by, 90n; African emigration discussed by, 129–31; R. Allen and, 110; American abolitionists discussed by, 185–86, 228–30; American Union for the Relief and Improvement of the Colored Race discussed by, 108; antiabolitionist violence criticized by, 112–14, 229–31; antislavery tour by, 29– 30; antislavery tour finances of, 16; BFASS and, 129; A. G. Beman and, 414– 15n; H. Bibb and, 221n; Bible and slavery discussed by, 182; black abolitionists discussed by, 115, 117; black churches discussed by, 107–12, 185; as black convention delegate, 120n; black conventions discussed by, 104–8; black economics discussed by, 108; black education discussed by, 108–9, 185; black laws criticized by, 112; black press described by, 107; British antislavery organizations and, 31, 185; British support for West Indian immigration discussed by, 129–32; J. Campbell and, 182–83; J. P. Campbell and, 113–15; H. Clay and slavery discussed by, 185; Colored American and, 78n; Colored National Convention and, 370n; compensated emancipation discussed by, 185; S. Cornish and, 84n; correspondence by, 182–83, 228–29; Elgin Association discussed by, 185–86; Fourth Annual Convention of Free People of Color discussed by, 104–5; free blacks discussed by, 104–17; free produce movement promoted by, 28; fugitive slaves discussed by, 185–86, 228–30; fund raising by, 30; H. H. Garnet and, 503, 507n; GermanAmericans and slavery discussed by, 183; Heidelberg University praised by, 182–83; honorary degree presented to,

600 182; immediate emancipation discussed by, 185; immigration discussed by, 116, 129–30, 186; in Jamaica, 189n; London World’s Anti-Slavery Convention attended by, 104, 115; J. McDougall and, 228–30; Moral Reform Society of the Colored Citizens of Ohio discussed by, 109; narrative by, 16, 19; New York Vigilance Committee discussed by, 186, 228; Paris Peace Congress and, 153n, 155, 157n, 161, 164n, 182; P. Pillsbury criticizes, 419, 421n; C. B. Ray and, 74– 75n; slavery discussed by, 23, 105–6, 155, 185–86; speeches by, 104–17, 129–32, 157–60, 185–87; Thoughts on Colonization (Garrison) discussed by, 116; transatlantic voyage of, 472n; value of slaves discussed by, 185; H. M. Wilson and, 504n Pennsylvania: AME church in, 125n; antislavery in, 324n, 377n; black laws in, 73; blacks in, 421n; underground railroad in, 385n Pennsylvania Abolition Society, 166n Pennsylvania Academy (Philadelphia), 77n Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, 377n, 419, 420n, 421n Pennsylvania Colonization Society, 530n Pennsylvania Equal Rights Association, 378n Pennsylvania Freedmen’s Relief Association, 347n Pennsylvania Freeman (Philadelphia), 217n, 347n Pennsylvania Peace Society, 89n Pennsylvania Reform Convention, 377n Pennsylvania State Equal Rights League, 451n People’s Record (Cleveland, Ohio), 526n Percy, Henry (Hotspur), 544, 547n Personal liberty laws, 165–66n , 520 Peter (slave), 367 Peterson, John, 350, 352–53n Philadelphia, Pa.: AME church in, 110; antislavery in, 89n, 418, 475–76n; blacks in, 77n, 108, 122–26n, 377–78n, 420–21n, 450n; discrimination in, 436; racial violence in, 112, 124 Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society, 77n Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, 89n, 347n Philadelphia Free Produce Association of Friends, 233n Philadelphia Journal of Prison Discipline (Pa.), 315n Philadelphia Vigilance Committee, 174n, 385n, 420n Philanthropic Society, 449n Philleo, Calvin, 52n

Index Phillips, Wendell, 89n, 245n, 250, 251n,, 300n, 462n, 479, 511 Philozetian Literary Society, 412 Phoenix High School for Colored Youth (New York, N.Y.), 82–83n Phoenix Hotel (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.), 404n Phoenix Society of New York, 82–83n Picture of Slavery in the United States (G. Bourne), 203, 220n Pierce, Cyrus, 164n Pierce, Franklin, 442n, 506n Pilgrimage to My Motherland and an Account of a Journey among the Egbos and Yorubas of Central Africa, A (Campbell), 450n Pillsbury, Parker, 99n, 344, 385n, 398, 404n,, 417, 421n; black abolitionists criticized by, 417, 419, 420–21n Pioneer and Herald of Freedom (Lynn, Mass.), 99n Piper, Stephen, 90n Pittsburgh, Pa., 448n Platt, William, 421n Plymouth Church (New York, N.Y.), 486n Political antislavery, 79n, 81–82n, 89n, 90n, 121n, 230n, 385n; blacks oppose, 154n, 237n; blacks support, 58n, 74n, 79n, 84n, 118n, 140n, 173n, 300n, 525n; in Britain, 299n; in New Hampshire, 324–25n Political reform, in Rhode Island, 124n Polk, James K., 165n, 473n Popular sovereignty, 441n Port Hudson (La.), 545, 547–48n Port Royal Relief Committee, 347n Portland Sewing Circle, 71 Post, Amy, 492n Post, Isaac, 491, 492n Powell, Edward, 237n Powell, William, Jr., 238n Powell, William P., 237n;; AASS discussed by, 475; W. G. Allen assisted by, 358; F. Anderson and, 255; antislavery activities by, 29–30, 398, 435, 463n, 474, 476n; antislavery in Britain described by, 474– 75; antislavery literature distributed by, 252, 474; black seamen assisted by, 474; Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar aided by, 30, 433; British abolitionists discussed by, 474; J. Brown (abolitionist) discussed by, 475; Compromise of 1850 discussed by, 235; correspondence by, 234–35, 252–54, 255–56, 433–34, 474–75; E. and W. Craft discussed by, 235, 253; disunion favored by, 235; A. Duval and, 255; M. A. Duval and, 255–56; M. Fillmore criticized by, 235; Fugitive Slave Law discussed by, 234–35; fugitive slaves and, 255–57; fugitive slaves

Index hosted by, 11, 255, 257n; Garrisonianism of, 433–34; S. H. Gay and, 234–35, 252– 54; impressions of Britain by, 33, 234; S. May, Jr. and, 474–75; press criticized by, 252–54; S. P. Remond discussed by, 475; returns to U.S., 491; slavery discussed by, 253; D. Webster criticized by, 235 Prejudice, 42–43n, 44, 49n; among abolitionists, 83n, 417–19; in American churches, 111–12, 369; in American press, 252–54; black literature on, 20; in Britain, 33, 61, 265n, 453, 455, 568–69, 570n; in British press, 569; in Canada, 236n, 364, 366n; in free states, 56, 68, 73– 74, 77n, 104–6, 117, 176, 278, 347n, 440n; against freemen, 565; in Jamaica, 410; in New Hampshire, 147n; slavery and, 9, 24–25, 356, 367, 457, 564; in U.S., 470– 71. See also Discrimination; Segregation Prentiss, William Otis, 444n, 459 Presbyterian church, 123n, 415–16n, 419; in Canada, 185, 188–89n Price, Enoch, 174n, 180n, 208, 220n, 404n Price, Thomas, 21, 136n Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), 166n, 289n Prime, Samuel Irenaeus, 346, 348n Princeton Theological Seminary (N.J.), 82n, 230n, 504n Prison Discipline Society, 96n “Probable Destiny of the Coloured Race, The” (Allen) 372 Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society of London, 477 Protectionist (New Garden, Ind.), 121n Providence, R.I., 125n Provincial Freeman (Windsor, Toronto, Chatham, C.W.), 19, 300n, 391, 393n, 419, 421n, 526n, 536n Provincial Union Association, 536n Pugh, Sarah, 346, 347n,, 357 Purnell, James Whipper, 447–48, 450n, 452n Purvis, Harriet Forten, 421n Purvis, Robert, 37, 58n, 167n, 375, 377n, 420–21n Purvis, Robert, Jr., 419, 421n,, 440n Purvis, William, 377n Pusey, Edward Bouverie, 304, 306n Puseyism, 306n Putnam, Caroline, 342n, 469, 470, 472n Putnam, Edmund Quincy, 472n Putnam, George, 472n Putnam, Joseph H., 472n Quakers. See Society of Friends Quincy, Edmund, 81n

601 Rabba, 448 Radical Political Abolitionists Convention (1855), 58–59n Ralston, Gerald, 503, 508n Randall, James B., 318, 325n Ransom (slave), 318n Rathbone, William, 235, 236n Ray, Charles B., 74–75n , 328; correspondence by, 327–28; correspondence to, 71– 74; H. H. Garnet and, 327 Reconstruction, 381n, 460n, 525n, 553n Recorder (Boston, Mass.), 121n Red Lion Hotel (Warrington, Eng.), 445 Redfern, Samuel, 163, 165n Reed, Elisabeth Jesser, 463n Reese (abolitionist), 268 Reflections on the Gordon Rebellion (Ward), 301n Refugee Home Society, 221n, 257n, 365n, 393n Refutation of Aspersions on Stuart’s “Three Years in North America” (J. Stuart), 58n Register (slaveholder), 63n Reilly, Thomas Henry, 426n Reilly, Mrs. Thomas Henry, 425 Religious Tract Society, 519, 559n Remond, Caroline. See Putnam, Caroline Remond Remond, Charles Lenox, 79n;; AASS and, 7–8, 85; ACS opposed by, 27, 80–81, 85, 92–93; antislavery activities by, 29–30; antislavery in Britain discussed by, 71– 74, 81, 85–86, 97–98, 100–101; antislavery tour by, 6–9, 14–17, 92, 332; BFASS and, 18, 71, 76n; Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar and, 7, 30, 100–101, 223n; Boston Garrisonians and, 18; British tour by, 85– 86, 93, 97–98; W. W. Brown and, 154; M. Chapman and, 100; J. A. Collins and, 85, 92–93, 95n; colonization opposed by, 80– 81; Colored American and, 78n; Columbus affair and, 76–77n; correspondence by, 71–74, 80–81, 85–87, 92–94, 97–98; M. Curtis and, 100–101; F. Douglass and, 420, 421–22n; R. Douglass and, 74; free produce movement promoted by, 28; W. L. Garrison and, 80–81, 92–94; Garrisonians in Britain discussed by, 87, 93–94; R. Gurley criticized by, 80–81, 92–93; Ireland toured by, 7–8, 85–86, 92–93; W. Jeffers and, 74; R. Moore and, 101; J. Murray and, 85; prejudice against blacks discussed by, 73–74; as professional antislavery lecturer, 8–9; C. B. Ray and, 71–74, 78n; W. Richardson and, 30, 93; N. P. Rogers and,

602 92, 97–98; G. Thompson and, 81, 85–86, 100–101; women’s rights and, 71–73; World’s Anti-Slavery Convention attended by, 7 Remond, Elizabeth, 99n Remond, John, 79n, 99n, 440n, 472n Remond, Nancy, 79n, 99n, 440n Remond, Sarah P., 440n; W. G. Allen and, 435; amalgamation described by, 23–24, 438, 445; American churches criticized by, 436–38, 458–59; antislavery in U.S. described by, 457; antislavery tour of, 14, 16, 26, 29, 457, 462, 465, 475, 476n; black laws discussed by, 459; British public opinion influenced by, 24, 26; British women honor, 446; M. Chapman and, 462–63; correspondence by, 462–63, 469– 71, 568–69; G. Dallas and, 470–71; discrimination in free states described by, 435–36, 470; discrimination on transatlantic ships described by, 470; Dred Scott decision discussed by, 435; education of, 462, 463n; as expatriate, 453; family of, 99n, 472n; freedmen’s aid promoted by, 32–33; fund raising by, 16, 445; in Italy, 35; Jamaican revolt defended by, 568–69; Kansas conflict described by, 437–38; S. J. May and, 457, 465; L. Montez and, 465; W. P. Powell and, 435; prejudice in Britain described by, 568–69; publications of, 19–20; C. Putnam and, 470; W. Robson and, 435, 462; slavery described by, 23, 437–40, 445–46, 457–60; speeches by, 435–40, 445, 457–60; G. Thompson described by, 462; U.S. visa denied to, 469–71 Report of the Fugitive Mission, 535n “Report on Social Relations and Polity,” 75n Repository of Religion and Literature and of Science and Art, 141n Republican (Richmond, Va.), 384n Republican (Wytheville, Va.), 322 Republican and Virginia Constitutionalist (Wytheville), 326n Republican party, 146n, 406n, 548n; blacks in, 173n, 449n, 505n; founding of, 381n; in Liberia, 532n Reves, John, 321, 326n Reves, John, Jr., 326n Revolution (New York, N.Y.), 404n Revolutions of 1848, 155, 160, 194, 217n Reynoldson, Emily E., 338n Rhoads, Samuel, 233n Rhode Island: black laws in, 73; black suffrage in, 112; blacks in, 124n Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society, 79n Richard, Henry, 153n

Index Richard III (king of England), 302, 305n Richardson, Anna Atkins, 95n, 149, 225n, 227n, 232 Richardson, Ellen, 404n Richardson, George, 275n Richardson, Henry, 95n, 149, 225n, 227n Richardson, Nathan, 164n Richardson, Pelham, 137n Richardson, William, 93 Ridley, Nicholas, 302, 306n Right and Wrong in Boston, 88n Rights of All (New York, N.Y.), 83n Riley, James, 102n Riley, Margaret Cropper, 101, 102n Ringgold, Tench, 195, 217n, 374 Ritchie, John, 123–24n Roaf, John, 336, 338n Roberts, Benjamin F., 298n Roberts, Joseph J., 530n, 531n, 532n Robinson, C. W., 174n Robinson, Christopher, 99n Robson, William, 29, 435, 462, 463n, 476n Robson, Mrs. William, 462, 463n Rochester, N.Y.: antislavery in, 492n; blacks in, 385n, 493n Rock, John S., 249n Rogers, Nathaniel P., 92, 94–95n , 97–98, 99 Roper, Moses, 61–62n ; antislavery in Britain described by, 134; antislavery tour by, 136, 136–37n; BFASS support solicited by, 134–36; correspondence by, 134–36; education of, 60; family of, 137n; financing of antislavery tour by, 16; lecture tour in Britain by, 134–36; narrative by, 9, 19–21, 134–36, 136–37n; T. Price and, 21; slavery described by, 22, 60–61; speeches by, 60–61 Rowland (abolitionist), 216 Royal Exchange (Glasgow, Scot.), 80–81 Royal Geographical Society, 477 Royal Navy, 460n, 543n Ruffin, Florida Yates, 514n Ruffin, George Lewis, 513n, 514n; correspondence to, 510–13; family of, 514n Ruffin, George W., 513n Ruffin, Hubert, 512 Ruffin, Hubert St. Pierre, 514n Ruffin, Josephine St. Pierre, 512, 513n, 514n Ruffin, Lewis, 514n Ruffin, Nancy Lewis, 513n Ruffin, Robert, 514n Ruffin, Stanley George, 514n Ruggles, David, 84, 300n Running a Thousand Miles to Freedom (Craft), 243n, 275n, 480n

Index Russell, J. L., 181n Russia, 276 Russwurm, John B., 83n, 354n Rutgers Theological Seminary (New Brunswick, N.J.), 531n St. Ann’s, Guadeloupe, 23 St. George’s Church (New York, N.Y.), 443n St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church (Philadelphia, Pa.), 123n St. John’s Chapel (London, Eng.), 555n St. Louis Observer (Mo.), 230n St. Luke’s Church (Washington, D.C.), 148n St. Matthew’s Free Church (New York, N.Y.), 282n, 350, 474 St. Matthias Church (Liverpool, Eng.), 476n St. Peter’s Church (Caldwell, Liberia), 148n St. Phillips Episcopal Church (New York, N.Y.), 58n, 146n, 352n Salem African Society, 79n Salem Anti-Slavery Society, 440n Salle de la Sainte Cecile (Paris, Fr.), 153n, 155 Sam (slave), 205, 396n Samaritan Asylum for Indigent Colored Children (Boston, Mass.), 102n Samuel (slave), 448n Sanderson, Jeremiah B., 492n Sanford, John F. A., 441n Sanitary Commission, 513n, 514n Santa Maria Nuova Hospital (Florence, Italy), 441n Santo Domingo, 126, 307n St. Domingo (W. W. Brown), 154n Sarah (slave), 175n Saranak (ship), 474 Saturday Colored Normal School (New York, N.Y.), 352n Saunders, Prince, 127n Saunders, Thomas, 127n Saunders, William, 115, 127n Sawney (slave), 384n Sayres, Edward, 218n, 230n Scales, William, 147n, 226n Scholefield, William, 381n School Fund Institution, 140n Schooner, Elizabeth, 153n, 251n Scoble, John, 8, 11, 12, 13, 17, 75n, 150n, 384n, 385n Scotland: antislavery in, 17, 65, 68–70, 123– 24n, 254n; black fund raising in, 185; black lecture tours in, 10–11, 427–29; freedmen’s aid in, 561 Scott, Benjamin, 565 Scott, Dred, 441n

603 Scottish Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures Connected with Architecture (Glasgow, Scot.), 427 Scottish Press (Edinburgh, Scot.), 469, 472n Seaton, William Winston, 165n Second Baptist Church (New Bedford, Mass.), 334n Second Colored Episcopal Church (New York, N.Y.), 353n Second Colored Presbyterian Church (Philadelphia, Pa.), destroyed by mob, 124n Second Congregational Church (Leicester, Mass.), 270n Second Episcopal Colored Church (New York, N.Y.), 281n Secret Committee of Six, 405n Segregation, 350, 370; in churches, 38, 42n, 111, 122n, 350; in New York, 118n; in public accommodations, 38–39; on public conveyances, 73, 118n, 442n. See also Discrimination; Jim Crow; Prejudice Seiper, Polly, 195 Seiper, William, 195 Seminole Wars, 162, 165n “Send Back the Money,” 67n, 70n Sermon on Education (DeGrasse), 353n Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812 (Nell), 414, 416n Seventh Avenue Presbyterian Church (New York, N.Y.), 504n Seward, William H., 125n, 497, 525n Shadd, Isaac, 393n Shadd, Mary Ann. See Cary, Mary Ann Shadd Shadrach (slave), 249n Shaftesbury, earl of (Antony Ashley Cooper), 10, 309, 310n, 345, 346n, 357, 362, 364, 381n Shakespeare, William, 439, 443n, 547n Shaw, Henry Norton, 477 Shaw, Robert Gould, 548n Shiloh Presbyterian Church (New York, N.Y.), 82–83n, 118n, 183, 189n, 227n, 505n, 550, 561 Shire, Mary Ann, 125n Short Personal Narrative, A (Allen), 370n Shylock, 439 Sidney, Thomas S., 147n, 226n, 310n Sierra Leone, 354n, 531n, 543n Sierra Leone Weekly Times and West African (Freetown), 354n Sigourney, Lydia H., 414n Silas (slave), 266n Silliman, Benjamin, 414n Simpson, Jennie M., 146n Sims, Thomas, 249n Sixth Presbyterian Church (Cincinnati,

604 Ohio), 124n Slatter, Hope H., 200, 219n Slave, The (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Eng.), 226n Slave catchers, 192, 201–3, 220n, 244n, 246, 275, 362, 401, 404–5n; abolitionists harass, 236n, 244n; H. Brown pursued by, 175n; E. and W. Craft pursued by, 244n; in Cuba, 318; rights of, 192 Slave drivers, 197, 201, 428, 566 Slave education, 168–70, 272, 333; forbidden by law, 349; by religious instruction, 174n. See also Black education Slave family, 22–24, 201, 222n Slave kidnapping, 218n, 223n Slave laws, 47, 138–39, 140n, 170, 222n, 272, 275n, 319; in Alabama, 55; in Georgia, 267n; whites punished for violating, 174n Slave Life in Georgia (J. Brown), 20–21, 266n, 384n Slave marriages, 20–23, 439, 444n Slave narratives, 8–9, 16, 59n, 62–64n, 78n, 118n, 127n, 134–36, 153n, 154n, 173n, 175n, 180n, 203, 208, 217n, 219n, 221n, 266n, 275n, 300n, 334n, 384n, 396n, 404n, 430–31, 478, 479, 492–93n; described, 20–21; published in Britain, 19–20, 136–37n, 243n, 480n, 493n Slave power conspiracy, 5, 21, 244n, 325n Slave prisons, 217n, 219n; in New Orleans, 197–98; in Washington, D.C., 194–95 Slave revolts, 205–6, 221–22n, 439; J. Brown attempts to incite, 476n; punishment for inciting, 459 Slave sales, 55, 195–96, 243n, 261, 272–73, 301n, 327, 333, 458–59, 460n; black families separated by, 193–94, 221, 249n; in New Orleans, 198–200; in Washington, D.C., 177; of women, 23, 438, 445– 46, 482–83. See also Emancipation (by purchase) Slave states, 52n, 192 Slave trade, 42, 119n, 149. See also African slave trade; Atlantic slave trade; U.S. slave trade Slave violence, 415n; and black abolitionists, 79n, 83n, 154n, 226–27n Slaveholders: church membership of, 172n; colonization of free blacks supported by, 323; corrupted by slavery, 445 Slavery: abolished in French West Indies, 155, 160; abolished in Mexico, 174n; abolished in Washington, D.C., 187n, 218n, 525n; American churches sanction, 433; biblical justification of,

Index 182–83; in Brazil, 340; Congress acts against, 522n, 523n; in Cuba, 318, 558; defended, 181n, 188n, 252–54, 413; defined as war, 155, 158; described, 21– 25, 32, 54–56, 100, 105–16, 153n, 155, 158, 168–71, 177, 185–86, 192–216, 219n, 220–21n, 253, 259–64, 271–73, 285–86, 290–91, 316–23, 333, 349, 356, 367, 372, 399–400, 402, 427–29, 430–31, 437–38, 445–56, 457–58, 465–68, 481–84, 563–67; immorality of, 445, 467; origins of, in North America, 21, 180n; prejudice and, 9, 24–25, 74n, 140n, 349, 356, 367, 457, 564; in the U.S., 117, 340; U.S. government supports, 162, 171, 177–78; U.S. limits, 183–84n; in West Africa, 506n; whites sold into, 198, 203, 220–21n Slaves: alleged contentment of, 316, 320– 21, 330, 467–68, 565–66; Bibles for, 171, 174n, 221n; and Confederate war effort, 544, 546, 547n; as contrabands of war, 522–23n; diet of, 319–20; education denied to, 168–70; free laborers compared to, 22, 170, 252–54, 467; funerals of, 202, 220n; illegal importation of, in U.S., 180n, 320; life expectancy of, 192; medical experiments on, 265n; punishment of, 60–61, 62–63n, 171, 175n, 197–98, 200–201, 203, 206, 219n, 263–64, 396n, 402, 428, 430–31, 439, 443n, 566; total value in U.S. of, 185; violence of, 437, 443n, 495; women abused as, 445 Smeal, Robert, 70n Smeal, William, 17, 67n, 70n; correspondence by, 68–70 Smith, Alfred, 486n Smith, Ann, 299n Smith, Elizabeth, 299n Smith, Elizabeth Livingston, 299n Smith, Fitzhugh, 299n Smith, Gardner, 431n Smith, George, 335, 337n, 362 Smith, Gerrit, 11, 82n, 226n, 230n, 293, 298n, 300n, 329n, 379, 384; American Abolition Society founded by, 90n; black settlement planned by, 58n, 75n; family of, 299n; sermons by, 453, 456n Smith, Mrs. Gerrit, 455 Smith, Green, 299n Smith, Henry, 13 Smith, J. C. A., 298n; abolitionists discussed by, 295, 383–84, 385n; black abolitionists discussed by, 383–84; black imposters discussed by, 383–84; British press discussed by, 296; H. Brown and, 174–75n, 293–99; L. A. Chamerovzow

Index and, 383–84; correspondence by, 293–97, 383–84; fugitive slaves discussed by, 383; panorama of, 191, 295, 383; G. Smith and, 293–97; trial of, 383–84, 384n; S. R. Ward attests to character of, 387 Smith, James McCune, 58–59n ; antislavery activities of, 28–29; antislavery in Britain discussed by, 65–67; British abolitionists praise, 68–69; correspondence to, 68–69; emigration opposed by, 507n; Glasgow Emancipation Society and, 69; J. Murray and, 68–69; W. Smeal and, 68–69; speeches by, 65–67; G. Thompson and, 65; S. R. Ward quotes, 418–19 Smith, James P., 249n Smith, John C., 120n Smith, Joshua B., 249n Smith, Lewis, 23, 30, 481–85, 486n; fund raising by, 30 Smith, Mrs. Lewis, 485 Smith, Malvina, 58n Smith, Peter, 299n Smith, Robert, 290, 331n Smith, S. A. (Red), 384n Smith, Samuel A., 174n, 298n Smith, Samuel H., 165n Smith and Whipper, 421n “Social and Political Condition of the Free Coloured People of the Northern States of America, The” (Allen), 372 Society for the Extinction of Slave Trade and the Civilization of Africa. See African Civilization Society Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery throughout the British Dominions, 40–41n, 46, 50n Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 559n Society of Friends, 61, 63n, 438; free produce movement supported by, 150n, 233n; freedmen aided by, 89n; fugitive slaves aided by, 56, 267n, 438; in Ireland, 91n; proslavery sentiment in, 459; S. R. Ward describes prejudice of, 417–18 Somersett, James, 366n Somersett Case (1772), 339n, 362, 366n Soulouque, Faustin, 305, 307n, 508n South Division Anti-Slavery Society of Worcester County, 270n Southern Times (Columbia, S.C.), 188n Spanish Inquisition, 73, 76n Spaulding, Rufus, 108, 121n Spears, Charles, 152, 153n, 250, 251n Spring, Gardiner, 413, 415n Spurgeon, Charles H., 511, 513n Stafford House (London, Eng.), 346n

605 Standard of Freedom (London, Eng.), 161 Stanford (fugitive slave family), 223n State Council of Colored People of Massachusetts, 514n Steinthal, Samuel Alfred, 457, 475, 476n Stephens, Alexander H., 520, 522n Stephens, James, 522n Stevens, Thomas, 261–63, 265–67n Stevens, Mrs. Thomas, 262 Stevens, Thomas J., 262–64, 265–67n Steward, Austin, 29, 57n Still, J. N., 217n Still, William, 174n, 385n, 419, 420 Stock Exchange (Leeds, Eng.), 367, 372 Store Street Music Hall (London, Eng.), 460n Storrs, Henry M., 549, 552n, 559n, 561 Story of the Life of John Anderson, Fugitive Slave, The (Anderson), 496n Stowe, Calvin Ellis, 324n, 340, 346n, 356; British tour of, 346–47n, 359n; W. W. Brown criticizes speech by, 345 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 289n, 324n, 340, 345, 346n, 356, 370, 458, 463, 486n; British tour by, 346–47n, 359n; J. A. Jackson aided by, 429n Strieby, Michael E., 549, 552n, 556 Stuart, Charles, 87, 91n, 93, 95–96n Stuart, James, 55, 58n Sturge, Esther, 216, 223n Sturge, Joseph, 50n, 75–76n, 116, 128n, 277, 278, 297, 346n, 355, 358, 381n 456 Sully, Thomas, 77n Sumner, Charles, 245n, 379, 381n, 520–21 Sumner, Charles Pinckney, 381n Sumter County Whig (Livingston, Ala.), 202, 220n Sun (Baltimore, Md.), 384, 385n Sun (New York, N.Y.), 220n Sunday Dispatch, The (New York, N.Y.), 253, 254n Sunday School Union, 312 Sunday school unions, 96 Sunday Times and Noah’s Weekly Messenger (New York, N.Y.), 252, 254n Supplementary Civil Rights Bill (1872), 451n Sussex, duke of, 76n Sutherland, duchess of (Harriet Elizabeth Georgiana Leveson-Gower), 10, 129, 345, 346n Sutherland, duke of (George LevesonGower), 346n Swift, Hiram, 13 Syracuse, N.Y., 58–59n, 385n Syracuse Vigilance Committee, 300n

606 Talbot (abolitionist), 216n Talbott, William F., 200 Talcott Street Church (Hartford, Conn.), 126–28n. See also Fifth (Colored) Congregational Church Taney, Roger B., 441–42n Tanner, Ann, 175n Tanner, Edwin, 175n Tappan, Arthur, 11, 49n, 51n, 52n, 78n, 83n; Tappan, Lewis, 11, 82–83n, 90n, 553n Tate, Bacon, 223n Tavern in Lincoln’s Inn Fields (London, Eng.), 90n Taylor (clergyman), 439, 443n Taylor, Ira H., 249n, 275n Taylor, J. S., 390n Taylor, John Edward, 299n Taylor, Zachary, 166n, 235n, 237n Teague, Joseph, 259, 265, 267n Temperance, 67n, 70n, 87n, 89n, 230n, 251n, 289n, 334n; abolitionists support, 39n; antislavery and, 173–74n; blacks support, 74n, 82n, 117–18n; in Boston, 359n; in Britain, 128n, 236n, 299n, 323n; in Canada, 188n, 338n; in Cincinnati, 121–22n; in Connecticut, 126–27n, 414n; in Ireland, 88n, 90–91n, 101, 103n, 456n; in Philadelphia, 124n, 126n; in Scotland, 123–24n, 229n; in U.S., 299–300n Temperance Hall (Philadelphia, Pa.), 124n Temple Street Colored Congregational Church (New Haven, Conn.), 414n Templeton, Robert, 423 Tennent, Hugh, 488 Texas, 165n, 236n Textbook of the Origin and History of the Colored People, A (Pennington), 118n Thomas, Mrs. H., 216 Thomas, Mary, 223n Thomas, William, 404n Thompson, George, 11, 44, 57n, 60–61, 65– 66, 67n, 81, 85–86, 100–101, 120n, 168, 176, 178, 230n, 250, 251n, 256–57n, 285, 289n, 290, 331n, 347n, 355, 360n, 398, 405n, 462, 463n, 465, 491, 492n, 511,; ACS opposed by, 6; tours U.S., 54, 57n, 242, 244–45n, 287–88 Thompson, Henry A., 128n Thoresby, T. E., 465 Thoughts on African Colonization (Garrison), 38, 41n, 116 Three Discourses on the Religion of Reason (G. Smith), 456n Three Years in America (J. Stuart), 55, 58n Tilton, Theodore, 553n

Index Times (London, Eng.), 283, 284n, 342n, 558, 568, 570n Tintern Abbey (Monmouthshire, Eng.), 304, 306n Tocqueville, Alexis de, 161 Tocqueville, Madame de, 161 Todd, Francis, 49n Tomkins, Frederick, 550, 554–55n, 556–57, 560n Tomlin, Maria, 495n Tonawanda (ship), 474 Tontine Hotel (Glasgow, Scot.), 68 Topsey, 458 Toronto, C.W., 535–36n Torrey, Charles Turner, 228, 230n Total Abstainance Temperance Society, 122n Total Abstinence Society, 103n Toussaint L’Ouverture, 305, 306n Town Hall (Manchester, Eng.), 398 Townsend (ship), 107 Tract on American Slavery (Clark), 140–41n Tractarianism, 306n Trades’ Hall (Glasgow, Scot.), 53 Treaty of Ghent (1814), 548n Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), 165n, 325n Treaty of Washington (1862), 384n Tredgold, John, 75n Tresidder, Henry James, 331n Tribute to the Negro (Armistead), 414, 416n Trinity Church (Monrovia, Liberia), 148n Trinity College (Cambridge, Eng.), 270n, 555n Trinity College (Dublin, Ire.), 49n, 282n Troy, William, 30, 533, 535n True American (Cortland, N.Y.), 226n, 300n True Democrat (Cleveland, Ohio), 526n “True Tale of Slavery, A” (Jacobs), 493n Turner, Nat, 206, 221–22n Tweedie, William, 331n, 480n Twelvetrees, Harper, 21, 359n, 494, 505n, 535n Tyng, Dudley, 439, 443n, 444n, 459 Tyng, Stephen Higginson, 443n Tyson, William A., 308, 310n Ulverton Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, 26 Uncle Tom, 317, 324n Uncle Tom’s Cabin (H. B. Stowe), 133n, 324n, 344, 346n, 370, 400, 458, 460, 461n, 467, 486n; defended, 316–17; promoted with panorama, 217n Underground railroad, 231n, 265n, 267n, 300n, 384, 385n, 438, 492n, 535n; in

Index Connecticut, 415n; in Ohio, 559n Underground Railroad, The (Mitchell), 535n Underground Railroad, The (Still), 420n Union and Emancipation Society, 299n Union army, blacks recruited for, 378n, 449n Union College (Schenectady, N.Y.), 525n Union Missionary Society, 74–75n, 84n, 118n Union Safety Committee, 254n Union Theological Seminary (New York, N.Y.), 123n United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, 227n, 407, 411n United Secession church, 123n University College (London, Eng.), 62n University College of North Wales (Bangor, Wales), 236n University of Heidelberg (Ger.), 118n, 182– 83, 236n University of Liverpool (Eng.), 236n University of London (Eng.), 306n University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia), 126n, 443n Upper Canadian Conference (AME), 338n U.S. Census (1840), 119n U.S. Constitution: as antislavery document, 300n, 450n; and fugitive slaves, 210; as proslavery document, 24, 180n, 244n, 271, 433, 441n U.S. Military Academy (West Point, N.Y.), 506n U.S. slave trade, 45, 54, 58n, 76n, 169, 177, 192–93, 197, 217–18n, 388–89, 390n, 436, 458, 460n; in Baltimore, 219n; in New Orleans, 219n, 431n; in Savannah, 219n; statistics on, 399–400; in Washington, D.C., 163, 165n, 171n, 193–96, 217–18n, 237n. See also African slave trade; Atlantic slave trade U.S. Supreme Court, 335–36, 442n, 435, 441n Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), 279, 280, 282n Van Wart, Henry, 395 Vegetarianism, 90–91n Venn, Henry, 354n Victoria (queen of England), 213, 223n, 342n, 346n, 494, 541, 543n Victoria, V.I., 42n View of the Action of the Federal Government, in Behalf of Slavery (Jay), 76n, 389, 390n Vigilance committees: in Boston, 249n; fugitive slaves protected by, 385n; fund raising for, 421n; in New York, 189n

607 Vincent, Henry, 457 Vindication of a Race (Blyden), 531n Vinton, Alexander, 147n Virginia, 54, 193, 217n Visit to the United States, A (Sturge), 128n Ward, Samuel Ringgold, 300–301n ; abolitionists discussed by, 391–92, 417–19; W. G. Allen and, 356–57; American churches criticized by, 341, 417–18; Anglo-American slave-trade treaty discussed by, 388–89; Anti-Slavery Society of Canada and, 335, 338, 362; antislavery tour of, 14, 16, 346n, 348; Atlantic slave trade described by, 388–89; black progress described by, 392–93; black settlements promoted by, 32; blacks in Canada described by, 336–37, 364; W. W. Brown and, 307n, 345; M. A. S. Cary and, 391; L. A. Chamerovzow and, 387; Clergy Reserves discussed by, 336; R. Cobden criticized by, 388; correspondence to, 225; discrimination on transatlantic ships described by, 341; F. Douglass and, 412– 14, 417–20; family of, 338; free produce movement promoted by, 28–29; fugitive slaves described by, 362–63; fund raising by, 16, 30, 335; Garrisonians criticized by, 412–14, 417–20; S. Gloucester and, 78n; missions discussed by, 335–36; narrative by, 19; newspaper of, 58n, 225n, 226n, 300n, 307n, 384, 499n; P. Pillsbury and, 419, 421n; prejudice and slavery described by, 24–25, 34; proslavery sentiment in free states described by, 340– 41, 413; Provincial Freeman and, 391; J. Scoble recommends, 12; slave trade in U.S. described by, 388–89; slavery discussed by, 340–41, 363–65, 412–13; J. C. A. Smith and, 296, 387; J. M. Smith and, 58n; speeches by, 335–37, 340–41, 362–65; transatlantic voyage of, 342n Ward, Samuel Ringgold, Jr., 338n Ward, William Reynolds, 338n Waring, Maria, 216, 223n Warmsley, Sarah, 128n Warner’s Hall (Chicago, Ill.), 376n Warren, Nathaniel, 534, 535–36n Warrington, Eng., 29 Warrington Anti-Slavery Society, 29, 435, 463n, 476n Washington, D.C.: black laws in, 162, 171– 72, 374; blacks in, 107, 120n, 148n; Congress abolishes slavery in, 187n, 525n; congressional jurisdiction over, 218n; free blacks threatened with

608 enslavement in, 439–40; slave catchers threaten free blacks in, 73; slave sales in, 177; slave trade in, 163, 165n, 171, 193– 96, 217–18n Waterford, Ire., 97 Waterloo, Battle of, 270n Waterville College (Colby, Me.), 230n Watkin, Absalom, 398 Watkins, James, 30, 396n; correspondence by, 395–96; fund raising by, 30 Wayne, James M., 442n Webb, Hannah, 223n Webb, James H., 98, 99n Webb, Mary E., 342n Webb, Richard D., 11, 17, 21, 85, 87–88n, 97–98, 99n, 330n, 454, 455 Webb, Mrs. Richard D., 216 Webster, Daniel, 180n, 235, 236n, 242, 244– 45n, 254n Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842), 258n, 339n Weed, Thurlow, 357, 360n Weekly Advocate (New York, N.Y.), 78n Weekly Anglo-African (New York, N.Y.), 59n, 394n, 449n, 507n Weekly Herald and Mercury (Edinburgh, Scot.), 472n Weims, John, 327–29 Weims, Mary, 329n Weims, Stella, 327–29, 329n Wellington, duke of (Arthur Wellesley), 268, 270n Wells, Thomas, 396n Wesleyan Academy (Wilburham, Mass.), 74n Wesleyan Centenary Hall (London, Eng.), 481 Wesleyan General Conference (Methodist), 126n Wesleyan Missionary Society, 559n Wesleyan University Theological Seminary (Middletown, Conn.), 74n West Africa, 452n; black settlements in, 28, 506n, 516; British in, 502, 505–6n, 508n, 517, 543n; British trade with, 488–89; cotton production in, 490n; descriptions of, 488–89, 490n; French in, 506n; missions in, 543n West Indian Emancipation Act of 1833. See Emancipation Act of 1833 West Indian immigration, 5, 118n; blacks consider, 283–84, 449n, 526n; blacks support, 526n; See also African immigration; Haitian immigration; Jamaican immigration West Indies. See British West Indies Western Freedmen’s Aid Commission, 549, 552–53n, 559n Western Freedmen’s Aid Society, 550 Western Messenger (Louisville, Ky.), 359n

Index Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, 153–54n Western Reserve College (Hudson, Ohio), 412 Western Reserve College Literary Society, 412 Westminster Review (London, Eng.), 339n Weston, Ann, 88n Weston, Caroline, 285 Weston, Warren, 88n Wexford, Ire., 97 Wheatley, Banneker, and Horton (Allen), 358n Wheaton College (Ill.), 124n Whig party (British), 189n Whig party, 236n, 242n, 245n Whipper, William, 450n Whipple, George, 553n, 560n White, A. C., 164n White, Nancy, 333n White, William, 122n White House, 197 Whittier, John Greenleaf 194, 217n Wigham, Eliza, 15, 17 Wigham, Jane, 17, 216, 223n Wilberforce, Samuel, 304, 306n Wilberforce, William, 38–39, 40–41n , 46, 49n, 50n, 304, 306n, 459 Wilberforce settlement, 54, 56, 57n; Canadian government encourages, 58n, 55–56; N. Paul as agent for, 6, 29, 32, 37, 43n; A. Steward manages, 37, 43n Wilberforce University (Ohio), 126n William IV (king of England), 38 Williams, John, 13 Williams, Peter, 58n, 167n, 353n, 472n Williams, William H., 196, 218n, Willis, Michael, 365n, 533 Wilson, D. A., 531n Wilson, Henry M., 504n; correspondence to, 501–3 Wilson, John, 367 Wilson, Tom: escape to Britain by, 430; fugitive slaves discussed by, 430–31; narrative by, 430–31; slavery discussed by, 430–31 Winnifred (slave), 504n Woman’s Era (Boston, Mass.), 514n Woman’s Era Club, 514n Women’s rights, 81–82n, 89n, 237n, 300n, 347n, 359n, 378n, 404n, 463n, 476n, 487n; abolitionists and, 39n, 166n; antislavery and, 71–73, 79n, 84n, 89n, 95n; blacks support, 514n; in Britain, 153n, 243n; conferences on, 89n; conventions on, 441n; in Ireland, 456n Woodson, Lewis, 448n Work, Alanson, 230n World (London, Eng.), 508n World Peace Congress (1851), 499n

Index World Temperance Convention (1846), 169, 172n, 173–74n World’s Anti-Slavery Convention (1840), 7, 17, 71, 76n, 87n, 124n, 269–70n, 347n; black abolitionists attend, 71, 76n, 79n, 80; women denied delegate status at, 89n World’s Anti-Slavery Convention (1843), 115, 124n, 269–70n; black abolitionists attend, 118n Worthington, Gad, 115, 128n Wright, R. P. G., 82n Wright, Robert, 320, 325n Wright, Spencer P., 318, 325n Wright, Theodore S., 80, 82–83n , 90n, 226n Wynkoop, G. M., 404n

609 Yale College (New Haven, Conn.), 51n, 81n, 118n, 166n, 230n Young, John, 222n Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Association, 58n Young Men’s Anti-Slavery Society, 377n Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), 96n Young Men’s Vigilant Association, 124n Young Men’s Wilberforce Debating Society, 237n Youth’s Society, 121n Zion Church (Toronto, C.W.), 338n Zion Standard and Weekly Review (New York, N.Y.), 526n Zion’s Wesleyan (New Haven, Conn.),