Nathaniel Peabody Rogers: Color-phobia, November 10, 1838

COLOR-PHOBIA.

Our people have got it. They have got it in the blue, collapse stage. Many of them have got it so bad, they can't get well. They will die of it. It will be a mercy, if the nation does not. What a dignified, philosophic malady! Dread of complexion. They don't know they have got it — or think, rather, they took it the natural way. But they were inoculated. It was injected into their veins and incided into their systems, by old Doctor Slavery, the great doctor that the famous Dr. Wayland studied with. There is a kind of varioloid type, called colonization. They generally go together, or all that have one are more apt to catch the other. Inoculate for one, (no matter which,) and they will have both, before they get over it. The remedy and the preventive, if taken early, is a kine-pock sort of matter, by the name of anti-slavery. It is a safe preventive and a certain cure. None that have it, genuine, ever catch slavery or colonization or the color-phobia. You can't inoculate either into them. It somehow changes and redeems the constitution, so that it is unsusceptible of them. An abolitionist can sleep safely all night in a close room, where there has been a colonization meeting the day before. He might sleep with It. R. Gurley and old Dr. Proudfit, three in a bed, and not catch it. The remedy was discovered by Dr. William Lloyd Jenner-Garrison.

This color-phobia is making terrible havoc among our communities. Anti-slavery drives it out, and after a while cures it. But it is a base, low, vulgar ailment. It is meaner, in fact, than the itch. It is worse to get rid of than the “seven years' itch.” It is fouler than Old Testament leprosy. It seems to set the dragon into a man, and make him treat poor, dark-skinned folks like a tiger. It goes hardest with dark-complect white people. They have it longer and harder than light-skinned people. It makes them sing out “Nigger—nigger,” sometimes in their sleep. Sometimes they make a noise like this, “Darkey—darkey— darkey.” Sometimes, “Wully—wully—wully.” They will turn up their noses, when they see colored people, especially if they are of a pretty rank, savory habit of person, themselves. They are generally apt to turn up their noses, as though there was some “bad smell” in the neighborhood, when they have it bad, and are naturally pretty odoriferous. It is a tasty disorder — a beautiful ailment; very genteel, and apt to go in “first families.” We should like to have Hogarth take a sketch of a community that had it — of ours, for instance, when the St. Vitus’ fit was on. We have read somewhere of a painter, who made so droll a picture, that he died a-laughing at the sight of it. Hogarth might not laugh at this picture. It would be a sight to cry at, rather than laugh, especially if he could see the poor objects of our frenzy, when the fit is on — which indeed is all the time, for it is an unintermittent. Our attitude would be most ridiculous and ludicrous, if it were not too mortifying and humiliating and cruel. Our Hogarth would be apt to die of something else than laughter, at sight of his sketch.

The courtly malady is the secret of all our anti-abolition, and all our mobocracy. It shuts up all the consecrated meetinghouses — and all the temples of justice, the court-houses, against the friends of negro liberty. It is all alive with fidgets about desecrating the Sabbath with anti-slavery lectures. It thinks anti-slavery pew-owners can't go into them, or use their pulpit, when it is empty, without leave of the minister whom they employ to preach in it. It will forcibly shut people out of their own houses and off their own land, — not with the respectful violence of enemies and trespassers, but the contemptuous unceremoniousness of the plantation overseer — mingled moreover with the slavish irascibility of the poor negro, when he holds down his fellow-slave for a flogging. It sneers at human rights through the free press. It handed John B. Mahin over to the alligators of Kentucky. It shot Elijah P. Lovejoy at Alton. It dragged away the free school, at Canaan. It set Pennsylvania Hall a-fire.

It broke Miss Crandall's school windows, and threw filth into her well. It stormed the female prayer meeting in Boston, with a “property and standing” forlorn hope. It passed the popish resolution at Littleton, in Grafton county. It shut up the meeting-house at Meredith Bridge, against minister and all, — and the homely court-house there, and howled like bedlam around the little, remote district school-house, and broke the windows at night. It excludes consideration and prayer in regard to the forlorn and christian-made heathenism of the American colored man, from county conferences and clerical associations. It broods over the mousings of the New York Observer, and gives keenness to the edge and point of its New Hampshire name-sake. It votes anti-slavery lectures out of the New Hampshire state house, and gives it public hearing on petitions, in a seven by nine committee room. It answers the most insulting mandate of southern governors, calling for violations of the state constitution and bill of rights, by legislative report and resolves that the paramount rights of slavery are safe enough in New Hampshire, without these violations. It sneers and scowls at woman's speaking in company, unless to simper, when she is flattered by a fool of the masculine or neuter gender. It won't sign an anti-slavery petition, for fear it will put back emancipation half a century. It votes in favor of communing with slaveholders, and throwing the pulpit wide open to men-stealers, to keep peace in the churches, and prevent disunion. It will stifle and strangle sympathy for the slave and " remembrance of those in bonds," to prevent disturbance of religious revivals. It will sell the American slave to buy Bibles, or hire negro-hating and negro-buying missionaries for foreign heathen of all quarters but christian-wasted Africa. It prefers American lecturers on slavery, to having that foreign emissary, George Thompson, come over here, to interfere with American rights and prejudices. It abhors "church action" and "meddling with politics." In short, it abhors slavery in the abstract — wishes it might be done away, but denies the right of any body or any thing to devise its overthrow, but slavery itself and slaveholders. It prays for the poor slave, that he might be elevated, while it stands both feet on his breast to keep him down. It prays God might open a way in his own time for the deliverance of the slave, while it stands, with arms akimbo, right across the way he has already opened. Time would fail us to tell of its extent and depth in this free country, or the deeds it has done. Anti-slavery must cure it, or it must die out like the incurable drunkards.

SOURCE: Collection from the Miscellaneous Writings of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Second Edition, p. 44-7 which states it was published in the Herald of Freedom of November 10, 1838.

Morbid Sensibilities.

We admit the truth of your first remark, that “the subject involved is delicate, and daily becomes more so from the morbid sensibilities which are excited, pro and con.” By morbid sensibilities, in both the friends and the opposers of slavery, we suppose you mean a diseased state of those qualities which render them quick of perception and sensation; or at least, an unhappy constitutional bias to such irriration and excitement as one in a sane state of mind would not in the same circumstances, either exhibit or feel. The high excitement of this morbid sensitiveness which has within a few years so extensively existed, we, no less than you, sincerely deplore. Nor can we object to the opinion you have expressed, that it has not made better men, citizens, or christians; that it has done no good in any quarter of the country, but much hurt. It has probably in some instances been overruled for good, but its own natural tendency is to discord, confusion, and every evil work. Some of its effects we have seen, and of far more we have heard. It has induced some of our countrymen to load, not only slaveholders, but all who did not come out in organized opposition to them, with harsh and opprobious epithets; to publish inflammatory articles, to the prejudice of others, without any sufficient evidence of their truth, and which in some instances have turned out to be false; to defend themselves by deadly weapons, sometimes at the expense of the assailant’s life; and to resort in various ways to the use of rash and unwise measures for the abolition of slavery; it has moved others to break up seminaries of learning, because young persons of color were allowed to be benefited by them, to disperse, with savage brutality, assemblies of respectable people consisting of ladies as well as gentlemen, who had peaceably assembled to hear the subject of slavery candidly discussed; to mar, pollute, and destroy public edifices, because they had been, or were likely to be, used for this purpose; to ransack violently the mails in quest of anti-slavery publications; to demolish printing presses, and cruelly persecute their conductors; to shoot down, in one instance, an editor of a paper, who went forth from among ourselves; to offer large rewards, and that publicly, for the murder of distinguished abolitionists; and to bring not a few of our leading men in Congress into collision with each other, so violent and reckless, that some of them have not only treated abusively, but have trodden down the constitutional rights of the people, and threatened a dissolution of the Union.

This morbid sensibility is truly a fearful element in any individual or community. It has already caused a vast amount of evil, and threatens destruction to all our most valuable institutions. The unholy and desolating fires which it has so widely enkindled “ought,” as you remark “to have been long since extinguished by the waters of patriotism and christian affection.” But the extinguishing element seems to be scarce, and the engines for throwing it are out of order; and the fire-men few, badly organized, and too jealous of each other to act in concert; and thus the devouring element is left, fearfully sweeping along. All this we deeply deplore.

But from the excitement of sensibilities, not morbid, of enlightened conscience, and generous sympathy, a christian benevolence, leading men to consider the woes and wants of their fellow creatures, of whatever complexion or condition they may be, we have seen no such evils arising. Of this kind of excitement there has been and still is altogether too little; and powerful stimulants are urgently demanded to rouse public feeling, in regard to this subject to any thing like healthy action. The dormant energies of mental soundness, must be called into exercise, or a cure of morbid sensibilities will never be effected.

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Continued from: Reverend Silas McKeen to Thomas C. Stuart, August 20, 1839

SOURCE: Cyrus P. Grosvenor, Slavery vs. The Bible: A Correspondence Between the General Conference of Maine, and the Presbytery of Tombecbee, Mississippi, p. 25-9

Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, September 1, 1838

“Only ye may opine it frets my patience, Mr. Osbaldistone, to be hunted like an otter, or a sealgh, or a salmon upon the shallows, and that by my very friends and neighbors.” — Rob Roy.

Whose patience has been fretted, if it had not been fret-proof, like the abolitionists’? Have they not been hunted like an otter, or a salmon among the shallows, or a partridge upon the mountains; or like David among the cliffs of Ziph and the rocks of the wild goats? And every body seems to think it is all as natural as life, and that they should bear it, and be thankful it is no worse. How they have been belied and slandered and insulted, by a stupid pro-slavery community! How church brethren and sisters have scowled upon them, and trifled with their rights and their feelings, as though they had no more of either than a “nigger!” How has the murderous scorn been extended from their poor, down-trodden — mark the phrase — down-trodden — not merely stamped upon, for once, or any given number of times, — but every time — by the common walking footstep of community, —  trodden on as universally as the path of the highway — “down trodden,” indeed! How has the scorn felt for the poor colored man, been extended to the abolitionist, and how he has borne it, with almost the “patient sufferance” of the “free negro,” or the Jew in Venice, — until sufferance is become “the badge of all our tribe.” And what avails it? “The brotherhood” have fallen into the idea, that we also are “an inferior race,” and that we are exceedingly out of our place, when we claim the common rights of humanity. As to the rights of citizenship, they do not dream that any appertain to us. See with what calm, summer-day serenity they look on, while we are mobbed. They think no more of it, than they do when a lane of “free niggers” is “smoked out” by “public sentiment” in New York or Philadelphia. Who cared for the outrages of the great Concord mob, in September, 1835? “Tremendous public excitement!” shouted the N. H. Patriot — as if another revolution had been fought Tremendous public excitement! A grand popular victory. Victory indeed it was — but over what? Over innocency [sic], humanity, the law of the land, the public peace! An odd victory to boast of.—What a “frolic after Thompson,” (or to that effect) exclaimed the merry N. H. Courier. — O, what a joke! How funny and frolicsome the people were after Thompson! How they did frisk and caper, and how masterly funny they did chase him, and surround Neighbor ——‘s dwelling-house! O, what a sportive company of them got together, and how they did surround that house by moonlight, and what a merry time on't they caused in that dwelling!

O “riddle-cum-ritldle-cum-right!

“What a time we had, that Friday night!”

He, he, he — hah, hah, hah!!!

Hung be the heavens in black. Out, moon — and hide, stars, so that ye look not on and blench your light, at sight of such scenes. “Frolic!” Was the Alton night-scene a frolic? Was the hellish-gathering about that ware-house, rendering the dun night hideous, a joke — a fracas — “an abolition frolic?”

The time will come, when these deeds will be appreciated by the people of this country. Ay, it is at hand. We wait patiently, but not silently. "The brotherhood" may fix upon us its evil eye of menace and "frolic." They shall hear of their merry doings. If we cannot speak freely, we desire not to remain on the slavery-cursed soil. We call upon the people of the land, to look to their liberties. We have no freedom of speech, no liberty of the press, no freedom of assembly. The sovereign and tyrant of the country is Slavery. He holds his court in the South, and rules the vassal North by his vicegerent the mob, — or as Hubbard Winslow preaches it, “the brotherhood.” We owe no allegiance to either. We shall pay none.

SOURCE: Collection from the Miscellaneous Writings of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Second Edition, p. 11-3 which states it was published in the Herald of Freedom of September 1, 1838.

Nathaniel Peabody Rogers: The Discussion, July 14, 1838

The discussion goes on. It pervades, it possesses, it “agitates” the land. It must be stopped, or slavery dies, and the colored man has his liberty and his rights, and Colonization is superseded. Can it not be stopped? Cannot the doctors, the editors, the “property and standing,” the legislatures, congress, the mob, Mr. Gurley, somebody or other, some power or other, the governors, his honor the Chief Justice Lynch; cannot any body, or every body united, put down this discussion? Alas for the “peculiar institution!” it cannot be done. The club of Hercules could not strike it down; it is as impalpable to the brute blow as the stately ghost of “buried Denmark” was to the “partisan” of Marcellus. It cannot be stopped or checked. It is unrestrainable as the viewless winds, or the steeds of Apollo. You hear it every where. The atmosphere is rife with it. “Abolition,” “immediate,” “compensation,” “amalgamation,” “inferior,” “equal;” “inalienable,” “rights,” “the Bible,” “of one blood,” “West Indies,” “mobs,” “arson,” “petition,” “gag-law,” “John Quincy Adams,” “Garrison.” These are the words, and as familiar as household phrase. The air resounds to the universal agitation. Truth and conviction every where result, — the Genius of Emancipation moves triumphantly among the half-awakened people. And Slavery, aghast at the general outcry and the fatal discoveries constantly making of its diabolical enormities, gathers up its all for retreat or desperate death, as the case shall demand. The discussion can't be smothered — can't be checked — can't be abated — can't be endured by pro-slavery. The fiat has gone forth. It is registered in heaven. The colored man's humanity is ascertained and proved, and henceforth he is destined to liberty and honor. God is gathering his instrumentalities to purify this Ration. War, Slavery and Drunkenness are to be purged away from it. The drunkard, that wont reform, will be removed from the earth's surface, and his corporeal shame hidden in her friendly recesses, — his spiritual “shame,” alas, to be “everlasting” — with that unutterable “contempt” which must attend final impenitence, as saith God. Those persisting in the brute practice of what is styled military, which is nothing more or less than human tigerism — rational brutality — hatred dressed up in regimentals — malignity cockaded, — and “all uncharitableness” plumed and knapsacked, — homicide under pay, and murder per order, all who persist in this beastly and bloody mania, and refuse to join the standard of universal non-resistance peace-^will perish by the sword, or by some untimely touch of the Almighty, — for Christ hath said, “All they who take the sword shall perish with the sword;” and the period of accomplishment of his work on this little globe is at hand. Let the warrior of the land take warning. “A prudent man foreseeth,” &c. And slaveholders, pilferers of humanity! those light-fingered ones, who “take without liberty” the very glory and essence of a man, — who put out that light which dazzles the eye of the sun, and would burn on, but for this extinction, when the moon hath undergone her final waning, — those traffickers in immortality, who sell a Man “for a pair of shoes;” those hope-extinguishers, heart-crushers, home-quenchers, family-dissolvers, tie-sunderers; — oh, for a vocabulary — new, copious and original, of awful significancy and expression — that should avail us to shadow forth faintly to the apprehensions of mankind, the unutterable character of this new “ill,” that hath befallen inheriting “flesh;” an “ill” that “flesh” by nature was not “heir to;” — oh, those man, woman and child-thieves, — those unnatural, ultra and extra cannibals, who devour their own flesh; whose carniverous monstrosity is not limited to the blood and flesh of the stranger, — whose voracity invades the forbidden degrees, and eats its near relations within the matrimonial prohibitions, — son-eaters and daughter-consumers — who grow children to sell, and put into their coffers, to buy bread withal, the price of their own-begotten offspring; thus eating “themselves a third time,” as Pope says, “in their race” — “the cubless tigress in her jungle raging” is humanity and sympathy, compared to them: she “rages” when the hunter hath borne off her bruised young, and given her savage bosom the pang of maternal bereavement. She would waste her mighty nature to a shadow, and her strong frame to a skeleton, ere she would appease her hunger by profaning the flesh of her own cubs! Slaveholders! American slaveholders, republican slaveholders, liberty slaveholders, Christianity slaveholders, church-member slaveholders, minister slaveholders, doctor of divinity slaveholders, church slaveholders, missionary slaveholders, “Board of Commissioner” slaveholders, monthly concert slaveholders, Bible Society slaveholders, and Bible Withholders! What will the coming millennium say to you, or do with you? What disposition will it make of you and your system, should it burst upon you when it is in the full tide of experiment! the land smoking with it! Will not the glorious morn and opening dawn of Christ's kingdom prove flaming fire to devour you from the face of the earth? The millennial day pouring in its living light upon scenes, whose enormity shrouds the natural sun, what will become of the actors in these scenes? O for the warning voice that once affrighted Nineveh, and clad her nation in sackcloth, from the king on the throne to the beggar on the dunghill; that laid a people in ashes! But it may not be. Another fate, we fear, attends this last of republics. Warning is esteemed as mockery, and admonition as frenzy.

Shall we hold our peace amid scenes like these? Shall we argue and persuade, be courteous, convince, induce, and all that? No — we shall attempt no such thing, for the simple reason that such things are entirely uncalled for, useless, foolish, inadequate.

Argue with slavery, or argue about it; argue about a sinking ship, or a drowning man, or a burning dwelling! Convince a sleeping family, when the staircase and roof are falling in, and the atmosphere is loaded to suffocation with smoke! “Address the understanding,” and “soothe the prejudices,” when you see a man walking down the roof in his sleep, on a three-story house! Bandy compliments and arguments with the somnambulist, on “Table Rock,” when all the waters of lake Superior are thundering in the great Horse Shoe, and deafening the very war of the elements! Would you not shout to him with a clap of thunder through a speaking trumpet — if you could command it — if possible to reach his senses in his appalling extremity? Did Jonah argufy with the city of Nineveh, — “Yet forty days,” cried the vagabond prophet, “and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” That was his salutation. And did the “property and standing” turn up their noses at him, and set the mob on to him? Did the clergy discountenance him, and call him extravagant, misguided, a divider of churches, a disturber of parishes? What would have become of that city, if they had done this? Did they “approve his principles,” but dislike his “measures” and his “spirit?”

Slavery must be cried down, denounced down, ridiculed down, and pro-slavery with it, or rather before it. Slavery will go when pro-slavery starts. The sheep will follow, when the bell-wether leads. Down then with the bloody system! out of the land with it, and out of the world with it — into the Red sea with it! Men shan't be enslaved in this country any longer. Women and children shan't be flogged here any longer. If you undertake to hinder us, the worst is your own. The press is ours. Demolish it, if you please, — muzzle it, you shall never. Shoot down the Lovejoys you can; and if your skirts are not red enough with his blood, dye them deeper with other murders. You can do it with entire impunity. You can get the dead indicted and tried along with you, and the jury will find you all not guilty together; and “public sentiment” will back you up, and say you had ample provocation. To be sure, you will not escape the vengeance of Heaven; but who cares for that, in a free and christian country? You will come to an untimely end; — but that, you know, is nothing to a “judicious,” “well-regulated,” “christian spirit!” But this is all fanaticism. Wait and see.

SOURCE: Collection from the Miscellaneous Writings of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Second Edition, p. 5-9 which states it was published in the Herald of Freedom of July 14, 1838.

William Cullen Bryant’s Introduction of Congressman Owen Lovejoy at the Cooper Institute, June 16, 1861

It is now just a quarter of a century since a party of men from the State of Missouri crossed the great river of the West to destroy a newspaper press, established at Alton, in Illinois, to discuss the merits of the institution of slavery and prepare the country for its extinction. They were men of the same class with those who recently invaded Kansas, and attempted to force the curse of slavery upon its unwilling colonists. The proprietor of the journal in question, the “Alton Observer,” a bold and resolute man, armed himself and friends in defence of the freedom of speech and the right of property, and for a while held his assailants at bay. He was overpowered; he was slain; Elijah P. Lovejoy fell pierced with three balls, his press was destroyed, the types scattered, and the “Alton Observer” appeared no more. His blood was not shed in vain. The very State into the soil of which it sank, and the air of which resounded with the curses of his assassins, has given to the Union a Republican President — a Chief Magistrate who urges upon the slave States the policy of emancipation. But the class of men upon whom the guilt of that day is chargeable have proceeded to commit the same crimes upon a larger scale. Then they robbed and murdered one individual — they now rob a nation and murder its defenders. Thousands of young men, the flower of our Northern population, arrayed in defence of the Union, have found their graves in the region beyond the Potomac. These, say the rebels, are deaths by the fortune of war; but on the book of God they are registered as murders. My friends, I introduce to you the brother of this proto-martyr in the cause of emancipation. I present to you a man equally fearless and resolute, Owen Lovejoy, now a member of Congress from the great State of Illinois, who has never ceased since that day to protest against an institution upheld by suppressing the liberty of speech and by assassination.

SOURCE: Parke Godwin, A Biography of William Cullen Bryant, Volume 1, p. 160-1

Speech of William Ellery Channing: Faneuil Hall, Boston, Massachusetts December 8, 1837

Mr. Chairman, — My relation to this meeting not only authorizes, but requires, me to offer, at its commencement, some remarks on the purpose for which we are now assembled. It is not, indeed, without reluctance, that I rise to speak in a place, and under circumstances, to me so new and unusual; but I am commanded to make this effort by a voice which I cannot disobey, by a sense of what I owe to myself, to this community, and to the cause of freedom.

I know that there are those who say that this is not my place, — that my voice should be heard only in the holy temples of religion. I ask. Is there nothing holy here? Was there nothing holy in the spirit of our fathers, when within these walls they invoked the blessing of God on their struggles for freedom? Every place may be made holy by holy deeds. Nothing, nothing. Sir, would tempt me to come here to mingle in the conflicts of party. But when a great question of humanity and justice is discussed here, when a number of my fellow-citizens meet here to lift up their voices against violence and murder, and in support of the laws and the press, I feel that my place is here.

I rise simply to state the object of this meeting. It has been misrepresented, — I do not say intentionally. I do not come here to charge any of my fellow-citizens with unworthy motives. But there has been misrepresentation. You have been told that the professed object of the meeting is not its real one; that it was called to serve the purposes of a party; that it is an imposition. I grieve that this language has been used. It shows how little faith man has in man, how slow he is to ascribe good purposes to his brother, how prone to see by-ends and bad ends in honorable undertakings. Sir, there does exist such a thing as purity of purpose. It is possible for a man to desire freedom, not only for himself, but for his whole race. It is possible for a man to desire that the laws may guard, not only his own possessions, but the rights of every human being; and when laws and rights and freedom are trodden under foot, not once, but again and again, and with increasing fury, it is possible for a man sincerely to feel that he ought to meet with those of a like mind, and bear testimony with them against these atrocities. Sir, are not here motives enough and of sufficient force to bring men together, and to crowd this hall,—motives enough, and more than enough, to explain this meeting? And why, then, look beyond these, — why look for others and base ones?

I can say with confidence, Sir, that this meeting had a good origin. Call it unwise, if you will; but its purpose was pure, was generous, and worthy of Christian freemen. I claim to know something of its origin; for I believe no one had more to do with calling it than myself. Soon after the recent tragedy at Alton, I was called upon, and requested to deliver a discourse on that sad event. For various reasons, I declined so to do. I said to the friend who made the request, and I said it from my own mind, and without any hint from another, that I wished that the citizens of Boston would, in some public manner, express their abhorrence of the lawless spirit which had prompted to this and kindred deeds, and which had broken out here as well as at a distance. On the next day a petition was sent me, embodying the suggestion which I had made the evening before. To this petition I affixed my name. In signing it, my great apprehension was, that the absorption of our citizens in their private affairs would make them indifferent to the subject, so that a meeting sufficiently numerous for the desired impression might not be obtained. The idea of opposition to it did not enter my thoughts, and up to this hour I find a difficulty in comprehending, in making real to myself, the opposition it has excited. I signed the petition with the full understanding that the meeting should bear no relation to party, but should comprehend all citizens, of whatever sect or party, whose spirits had been stirred, as mine was, by the fearful progress of lawless force.

On me, then, Sir, not a little of the responsibility of this meeting rests. I owe it to truth and honor to avow it, and I am ready to bear this responsibility. I have no misgivings. I have a distinct consciousness, that the part which I act becomes a man, a citizen, and a Christian. I am willing that the report of what I am doing should go through the length and breadth of the land. I am willing it should cross the ocean. I care not how far, how wide, it is known, that, at this moment of increasing peril from lawless force, I labored to bring my fellow-citizens together, in order that, by a solemn public act, they might help to put down civil convulsion and bloodshed, — might assert the insulted supremacy of the laws, and might pledge themselves to sustain the endangered rights of the citizen. Sir, it is not impossible that the report of this meeting may cross the ocean, and may form a part of the enduring records of this city. I trust that it will not detract from the glory of our beloved city. I trust that the gentlemen who are now to address you will feel the dignity, the sacredness, of this occasion. I trust that they will rise above all local, personal, party considerations. I rejoice that the opening of this hall to us by the fathers of our city has put to rest one question which lately excited us, and I trust that no reference to this will disturb our harmony. In a word, I trust that this assembly will speak a language worthy of Boston; and worthy of those illustrious men, who, in times that tried men's souls, made these walls echo with their thrilling voices, and left here a testimony, which will never die, to the principles of freedom.

SOURCE: William Henry Channing, The Life of William Ellery Channing, p. 557-8

Wendell Phillips's Freedom Speech: Faneuil Hall, Boston, Massachusetts December 8, 1837

MR. CHAIRMAN: — We have met for the freest discussion of these resolutions, and the events which gave rise to them. [Cries of “Question,” “Hear him,” “Go on,” “No gagging,” etc.] I hope I shall be permitted to express my surprise at the sentiments of the last speaker, — surprise not only at such sentiments from such a man, but at the applause they have received within these walls. A comparison has been drawn between the events of the Revolution and the tragedy at Alton. We have heard it asserted here, in Faneuil Hall, that Great Britain had a right to tax the Colonies, and we have heard the mob at Alton, the drunken murderers of Lovejoy, compared to those patriot fathers who threw the tea overboard! [Great applause.] Fellow-citizens, is this Faneuil Hall doctrine? [“No, no.”] The mob at Alton were met to wrest from a citizen his just rights, — met to resist the laws. We have been told that our fathers did the same; and the glorious mantle of Revolutionary precedent has been thrown over the mobs of our day. To make out their title to such defence, the gentleman says that the British Parliament had a right to tax these Colonies. It is manifest that, without this, his parallel falls to the ground; for Lovejoy had stationed himself within constitutional bulwarks. He was not only defending the freedom of the press, but he was under his own roof, in arms with the sanction of the civil authority. The men who assailed him went against and over the laws. The mob, as the gentleman terms it, — mob, forsooth! certainly we sons of the tea-spillers are a marvellously patient generation! — the “orderly mob” which assembled in the Old South to destroy the tea were met to resist, not the laws, but illegal exactions. Shame on the American who calls the tea-tax and stamp-act laws! Our fathers resisted, not the King's prerogative, but the King's usurpation. To find any other account, you must read our Revolutionary history upside down. Our State archives are loaded with arguments of John Adams to prove the taxes laid by the British Parliament unconstitutional,—beyond its power. It was not till this was made out that the men of New England rushed to arms. The arguments of the Council Chamber and the House of Representatives preceded and sanctioned the contest. To draw the conduct of our ancestors into a precedent for mobs, for a right to resist laws we ourselves have enacted, is an insult to their memory. The difference between the excitements of those days and our own, which the gentleman in kindness to the latter has overlooked, is simply this: the men of that day went for the right, as secured by the laws. They were the people rising to sustain the laws and constitution of the Province. The rioters of our day go for their own wills, right or wrong. Sir, when I heard the gentleman lay down principles which place the murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips [pointing to the portraits in the Hall] would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American, — the slanderer of the dead. [Great applause and counter applause.] The gentleman said that he should sink into insignificance if he dared to gainsay the principles of these resolutions. Sir, for the sentiments he has uttered, on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the blood of patriots, the earth should have yawned and swallowed him up.

[Applause and hisses, with cries of “Take that back.” The uproar became so great that for a long time no one could be heard. At length G. Bond, Esq., and Hon. W. Sturgis came to Mr. Phillips's side at the front of the platform. They were met with cries of “Phillips or nobody,” “Make him take back ‘recreant,’” “He sha'n't go on till he takes it back.” When it was understood they meant to sustain, not to interrupt, Mr. Phillips, Mr. Sturgis was listened to, and said: “I did not come here to take any part in this discussion, nor do I intend to; but I do entreat you, fellow-citizens, by everything you hold sacred, — I conjure you by every association connected with this Hall, consecrated by our fathers to freedom of discussion, — that you listen to every man who addresses you in a decorous manner.” Mr. Phillips resumed.]

Fellow-citizens, I cannot take back my words. Surely the Attorney-General, so long and well known here, needs not the aid of your hisses against one so young as I am, — my voice never before heard within these walls!

Another ground has been taken to excuse the mob, and throw doubt and discredit on the conduct of Lovejoy and his associates. Allusion has been made to what lawyers understand very well, — the “conflict of laws.” We are told that nothing but the Mississippi River rolls between St. Louis and Alton; and the conflict of laws somehow or other gives the citizens of the former a right to find fault with the defender of the press for publishing his opinions so near their limits. Will the gentleman venture that argument before lawyers? How the laws of the two States could be said to come into conflict in such circumstances I question whether any lawyer in this audience can explain or understand. No matter whether the line that divides one sovereign State from another be an imaginary one or ocean-wide, the moment you cross it the State you leave is blotted out of existence, so far as you are concerned. The Czar might as well claim to control the deliberations of Faneuil Hall, as the laws of Missouri demand reverence, or the shadow of obedience, from an inhabitant of Illinois.

I must find some fault with the statement which has been made of the events at Alton. It has been asked why Lovejoy and his friends did not appeal to the executive, — trust their defence to the police of the city. It has been hinted that, from hasty and ill-judged excitement, the men within the building provoked a quarrel, and that he fell in the course of it, one mob resisting another. Recollect, Sir, that they did act with the approbation and sanction of the Mayor. In strict truth, there was no executive to appeal to for protection. The Mayor acknowledged that he could not protect them. They asked him if it was lawful for them to defend themselves. He told them it was, and sanctioned their assembling in arms to do so. They were not, then, a mob; they were not merely citizens defending their own property; they were in some sense the posse comitatus, adopted for the occasion into the police of the city, acting under the order of a magistrate. It was civil authority resisting lawless violence. Where, then, was the imprudence? Is the doctrine to be sustained here, that it is imprudent for men to aid magistrates in executing the laws?

Men are continually asking each other, Had Lovejoy a right to resist? Sir, I protest against the question, instead of answering it. Lovejoy did not resist, in the sense they mean. He did not throw himself back on the natural right of self-defence. He did not cry anarchy, and let slip the dogs of civil war, careless of the horrors which would follow.

Sir, as I understand this affair, it was not an individual protecting his property; it was not one body of armed men resisting another, and making the streets of a peaceful city run blood with their contentions. It did not bring back the scenes in some old Italian cities, where family met family, and faction met faction, and mutually trampled the laws under foot. No; the men in that house were regularly enrolled, under the sanction of the Mayor. There being no militia in Alton, about seventy men were enrolled with the approbation of the Mayor. These relieved each other every other night. About thirty men were in arms on the night of the sixth, when the press was landed. The next evening, it was not thought necessary to summon more than half that number; among these was Lovejoy. It was, therefore, you perceive, Sir, the police of the city resisting rioters, — civil government breasting itself to the shock of lawless men.

Here is no question about the right of self-defence. It is in fact simply this: Has the civil magistrate a right to put down a riot?

Some persons seem to imagine that anarchy existed at Alton from the commencement of these disputes. Not at all. “No one of us,” says an eyewitness and a comrade of Lovejoy, “has taken up arms during these disturbances but at the command of the Mayor.” Anarchy did not settle down on that devoted city till Lovejoy breathed his last. Till then the law, represented in his person, sustained itself against its foes. When he fell, civil authority was trampled under foot. He had “planted himself on his constitutional rights,” — appealed to the laws, — claimed the protection of the civil authority, — taken refuge under “the broad shield of the Constitution. When through that he was pierced and fell, he fell but one sufferer in a common catastrophe.” He took refuge under the banner of liberty, — amid its folds; and when he fell, its glorious stars and stripes, the emblem of free institutions, around which cluster so many heart-stirring memories, were blotted out in the martyr's blood.

It has been stated, perhaps inadvertently, that Lovejoy or his comrades fired first. This is denied by those who have the best means of knowing. Guns were first fired by the mob. After being twice fired on, those within the building consulted together and deliberately returned the fire. But suppose they did fire first. They had a right so to do; not only the right which every citizen has to defend himself, but the further right which every civil officer has to resist violence. Even if Lovejoy fired the first gun, it would not lessen his claim to our sympathy, or destroy his title to be considered a martyr in defence of a free press. The question now is, Did he act within the Constitution and the laws? The men who fell in State Street on the 5th of March, 1770, did more than Lovejoy is charged with. They were the first assailants. Upon some slight quarrel they pelted the troops with every missile within reach. Did this bate one jot of the eulogy with which Hancock and Warren hallowed their memory, hailing them as the first martyrs in the cause of American liberty?

If, Sir, I had adopted what are called Peace principles, I might lament the circumstances of this case. But all you who believe, as I do, in the right and duty of magistrates to execute the laws, join with me and brand as base hypocrisy the conduct of those who assemble year after year on the 4th of July, to fight over the battles of the Revolution, and yet “damn with faint praise,” or load with obloquy, the memory of this man, who shed his blood in defence of life, liberty, property, and the freedom of the press!

Throughout that terrible night I find nothing to regret but this, that within the limits of our country, civil authority should have been so prostrated as to oblige a citizen to arm in his own defence, and to arm in vain. The gentleman says Lovejoy was presumptuous and imprudent, — he “died as the fool dieth.” And a reverend clergyman of the city* tells us that no citizen has a right to publish opinions disagreeable to the community! If any mob follows such publication, on him rests its guilt! He must wait, forsooth, till the people come up to it and agree with him! This libel on liberty goes on to say that the want of right to speak as we think is an evil inseparable from republican institutions! If this be so, what are they worth? Welcome the despotism of the Sultan, where one knows what he may publish and what he may not, rather than the tyranny of this many-headed monster, the mob, where we know not what we may do or say, till some fellow-citizen has tried it, and paid for the lesson with his life. This clerical absurdity chooses as a check for the abuses of the press, not the law, but the dread of a mob. By so doing, it deprives not only the individual and the minority of their rights, but the majority also, since the expression of their opinion may sometimes provoke disturbance from the minority. A few men may make a mob as well as many. The majority, then, have no right, as Christian men, to utter their sentiments, if by any possibility it may lead to a mob! Shades of Hugh Peters and John Cotton, save us from such pulpits!

Imprudent to defend the liberty of the press! Why? Because the defence was unsuccessful? Does success gild crime into patriotism, and the want of it change heroic self-devotion to imprudence? Was Hampden imprudent when he drew the sword and threw away the scabbard? Yet he, judged by that single hour, was unsuccessful. After a short exile, the race he hated sat again upon the throne.

Imagine yourself present when the first news of Bunker Hill battle reached a New England town. The tale would have run thus: “The patriots are routed, — the redcoats victorious, — Warren lies dead upon the field.” With what scorn would that Tory have been received, who should have charged Warren with imprudence! who should have said that, bred a physician, he was “out of place” in that battle, and “died as the fool dieth”! [Great applause.] How would the intimation have been received, that Warren and his associates should have waited a better time? But if success be indeed the only criterion of prudence, Respice finem, — wait till the end.

Presumptuous to assert the freedom of the press on American ground! Is the assertion of such freedom before the age? So much before the age as to leave one no right to make it because it displeases the community? Who invents this libel on his country? It is this very thing which entitles Lovejoy to greater praise. The disputed right which provoked the Revolution — taxation without representation — is far beneath that for which he died. [Here there was a strong and general expression of disapprobation.] One word, gentlemen. As much as thought is better than money, so much is the cause in which Lovejoy died nobler than a mere question of taxes. James Otis thundered in this Hall when the King did but touch his pocket. Imagine, if you can, his indignant eloquence, had England offered to put a gag upon his lips. [Great applause.]

The question that stirred the Revolution touched our civil interests. This concerns us not only as citizens, but as immortal beings. Wrapped up in its fate, saved or lost with it, are not only the voice of the statesman, but the instructions of the pulpit, and the progress of our faith.

The clergy “marvellously out of place” where free speech is battled for, — liberty of speech on national sins? Does the gentleman remember that freedom to preach was first gained, dragging in its train freedom to print? I thank the clergy here present, as I reverence their predecessors, who did not so far forget their country in their immediate profession as to deem it duty to separate themselves from the struggle of '76, — the Mayhews and Coopers, who remembered they were citizens before they were clergymen.

Mr. Chairman, from the bottom of my heart I thank that brave little band at Alton for resisting. We must remember that Lovejoy had fled from city to city, — suffered the destruction of three presses patiently. At length he took counsel with friends, men of character, of tried integrity, of wide views, of Christian principle. They thought the crisis had come: it was full time to assert the laws. They saw around them, not a community like our own, of fixed habits, of character moulded and settled, but one “in the gristle, not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.” The people there, children of our older States, seem to have forgotten the blood-tried principles of their fathers the moment they lost sight of our New England hills. Something was to be done to show them the priceless value of the freedom of the press, to bring back and set right their wandering and confused ideas. He and his advisers looked out on a community, staggering like a drunken man, indifferent to their rights and confused in their feelings. Deaf to argument, haply they might be stunned into sobriety. They saw that of which we cannot judge, the necessity of resistance. Insulted law called for it. Public opinion, fast hastening on the downward course, must be arrested.

Does not the event show they judged rightly? Absorbed in a thousand trifles, how has the nation all at once come to a stand? Men begin, as in 1776 and 1640, to discuss principles, to weigh characters, to find out where they are. Haply we may awake before we are borne over the precipice.

I am glad, Sir, to see this crowded house. It is good for us to be here. When Liberty is in danger, Faneuil Hall has the right, it is her duty, to strike the key-note for these United States. I am glad, for one reason, that remarks such as those to which I have alluded have been uttered here. The passage of these resolutions, in spite of this opposition, led by the Attorney-General of the Commonwealth, will show more clearly, more decisively, the deep indignation with which Boston regards this outrage.

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* See Rev. Hubbard Winslow's discourse on Liberty! in which he defines “republican liberty” to be “liberty to say and do what the prevailing voice and will of the brotherhood will allow and protect.”

SOURCE: Wendell Phillips, Speeches, Lectures, and Letters, Volume 1, p. 2-10