[From the rapid and impassioned style of Mr. T’s delivery,
it becomes difficult, indeed impossible to give a very close report of all he
said. We attempt only a sketch touching
on the leading points, and giving enough of his language to enable the reader
to form some idea of his very fervid mode of address. He was heard with profound attention by all,
but with very different feelings by different portions of his auditory, as they
abundantly manifested on more occasions than one.]
He commenced his address by declaring that the feelings of
his heart were too deep for utterance. When he thought where he stood, of the
topic on which he was called to speak, upon the mighty interests which were
involved — upon his own responsibility to God-upon the destinies of thousands
which might hinge upon the results of the present meeting — and when he
reflected upon the ignorance, the wickedness, and the mighty prejudices he had
to encounter; on the two and a half million of clients, whose cause was
committed to his feeble advocacy, with all their rights, eternal and
irreversible, he trembled, and felt almost disposed to retire. And when, in
addition to all, he remembered that there were at this moment, in this land, in
perfect health, in full vigor of mind and body, countrymen of his own, once
pledged to the very lips in behalf of this cause, and with an authority which
must command a wide and powerful influence, who had yet left it to the care of
youth and ignorance, he felt scarce able to proceed, and almost willing to
leave another blank in the history of this day's proceedings.
He had said that he had prejudices to overcome; and they met
him with this rebuff — “you are a foreigner.” I am, said Mr. T. I plead guilty
to the charge: where is the sentence? Yet I am not a foreigner. I am no
foreigner to the language of this country. I am not a foreigner to the religion
of this country. I am not a foreigner to the God of this country. Nor to her
interests — nor to her religious and political institutions. Yet I was not born
here. Will those who urge this objection tell me how I could help it? If my
crime is the having been born in another country, have I not made the best
reparation in my power, by removing away from it, and coming as soon as I could
to where 1 should have been born? (Much laughter.) I have come over the waves
of the mighty deep, to look upon your land and to visit you. Has not one God
made us all? Who shall dare to split the human family asunder? who shall
presume to cut the link which binds all its members to mutual amity? I am no
foreigner to your hopes or your fears, and I stand where there is no
discriminating hue but the color of the soul. I am not a foreigner, I am a man:
and nothing which affects human nature is foreign to me, (I speak the language
of a slave.)
“But what have you known about our country? How have you
been prepared to unravel the perplexities of our policy and of our party
interests? How did you get an intimate acquaintance with our customs, our
manners, our habits of thought and of action, and all the peculiarities of our
national condition and character, the moment you set your foot upon our shores?”
And is it necessary I should know all this before I can be able or fit to enunciate
the truths of the Bible! to declare the mind and will of God as he has revealed
it in his word
“But you do not care about us or our welfare.” Then why did
I leave my own country to visit yours? It was not certainly to better my
circumstances: for they have not been bettered. I never did, and I never will,
better them by advocating this cause. I may enlarge my heart by it: I may make
an infinite number of friends among the wretched by it: but I never can or will
fill my purse by it. “But you are a foreigner — and have no right to speak here.”
I dismiss this — I am weary of it. I have an interest in America, and in
all that pertains to her. And let my right hand forget its cunning, and let my
tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I am ever capable of maligning her,
or sowing the seeds of animosity among her inhabitants. He might truly say,
though in the words of another,
I love thee, witness heaven above,
That I this land, — this people love;
Nor love thee less, when I do tell
Of crimes that in thy bosom dwell.
There is oppression in thy hand—
A sin, corrupting all the land; —
There is within thy gates a pest—
Gold—and a Babylonish vest.
Repent thee, then, and swiftly bring
Forth from the camp th’ accursed thing;
Consign it to remorseless fire—
Watch, till the latest spark expire;
Then strew its ashes on the wind,
Nor leave an atom wreck behind!
Yet while he said this, he would also add, if possible, with
still stronger emphasis, Let my right hand forget her cunning, and let my
tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I desert the cause of American
abjects — or cease to plead, so long as the clanking of chains shall be heard
in the very porch of the temple, and beneath the walls of your capitol. If any
shall still say, I have no right to speak, I will agree to quit the assembly,
on condition that that objecter will furnish to me a plea which shall avail in
the day of judgment, when my Maker shall ask me why I did not do, in America,
that which all the feelings of my heart, and all the dictates of my judgment,
and all the principles too, of God's own gospel, so powerfully prompted me to
do? If the great Judge shall say to me “When human misery claimed you, why did
you not plead the cause of suffering humanity?’ will any one give me an excuse
that will avail as a reply to such a question? Is there any such excuse? [Here
he paused.] Shall it be because the misery for which I should have pleaded was
across the water? If this is the principle, then cease your splendid embassies
of mercy to China and Hindoostan: abandon the glorious missionary cause: and
let us read in your papers and periodicals no more of those eloquent and high
toned predictions about the speedy conversion of the world.
“But you are a monarchist, you were born the subject of a
king, and we are republicans.” Yes, and because I loved the latter best, I left
the dominions of a monarch, and came to the shores of a free Republic. I gave
up the tinsel and the trappings of a king, for the plain coat and the simple
manners of your President. But granting me to be a monarchist, will that do as
an excuse before the King of kings, the Lord of lords?
“But, we quarrelled once. You taxed us, and we would not be
taxed: and now we will have nothing more to do with you.” Indeed; and may our
artizans construct your machinery, and our Irishmen feed your furnaces, and dig
your canals; may our advocates come to your bar, and our ministers to your
pulpits, and shall all, all be made welcome but the advocate of the Slave?
Should I be welcome to you all, if I had but renounced the cause of humanity?
“But the newspapers abuse you — they are all against you;
and therefore you had better go back to where you came from.” Yes: if I fear
the newspapers. But supposing I care nothing about the newspapers, and am
heartily willing that every shaft that can fly from all the presses of the land
shall be launched against me, is it a good reason then? Leave me, I pray you,
to take care of the newspapers, and the newspapers to take care of me: I am
entirely easy on that score.
But now as to the question before us. The gentleman from
Kentucky, [Mr. Birney,] has gone very fully into its civil and political
bearings: that aspect of it I shall not touch: I have nothing to do with it. I
shall treat it on religious ground exclusively; on principles which cannot be
impugned, and by arguments which cannot be refuted. I ask the abolition of
slavery from among you, not because it dooms its victims to hard labor, nor
because it compels them to a crouching servility, and deprives them of the
exercise of civil rights: though all these are true. No: I ask for the
illumination of the minds of immortal beings of our species; I seek to deliver
woman from the lash, and from all that pollutes and that degrades her; I plead
for the ordinances of religion; for the diffusion of knowledge; for the
sanctification of marriage; for the participation of the gospel. And If you ask
my authority, I answer there it is (pointing to the Bible) and let him
that refutes me, refute me from that volume.
The resolution I offer has respect to the moral and
spiritual condition of your colored population, and I do say that while one
sixth of your entire population are left to perish without the word of God,
or the ministry of the gospel, that your splendid missionary operations abroad,
justly expose you before the whole world, to the charge of inconsistency. Your
boast is, that your missionaries have gone into all the world; that you are
consulting with the other christian nations for the illumination of the whole
earth; and you have your missionary stations in all climes visited by the sun,
from the frosts of Lapland to the sunny isles of Greece, and the scorching
plains of Hindoostan; amidst the Christless literature of Persia, and the
revolting vices of Constantinople. God grant that they may multiply a thousand
fold — and continue to spread, till not a spot shall be left on the surface of
our ruined world, where the ensign of the cross shall not have been set up. But
will you, at the same time, refuse this gospel to one sixth of your own
home-born population? And will you not hear me, when I ask that that word of
life, which you are sending to the nations of New Holland and all the islands
of the farthest sea, may be given to your slaves? When I plead for two millions
and a half of human beings in the midst of your own land, left nearly, if not wholly,
destitute of the blessings of God's truth? What spiritual wants have the
heathen which the poor slaves have not? And what obligation binds you to the
one, which does not equally bind you to the other? You own your responsibility
to the heathen of other parts of the world, why not the heathen of this
continent? And if to the heathen of one portion of the continent, why not to
the no less heathen in another portion of it?
The resolution has reference to the diffusion of the Bible:
and here I am invulnerable. You have offered to give, within twenty years, a
copy of the Scriptures to every family of the world; you are now translating
the sacred volume into all the languages of the earth, and scattering its
healing leaves wherever men are found; and may I not say a word for the more
than two millions at your door? Men whom you will not allow so much as to look
into that book? Whom you forbid to be taught to read it, under pain of death?
Why shall not these have the lamp of life? Are these no portion of the families
of the south, whom you are pledged to supply? Is it any wonder there should be
darkness in your land, that there should be spiritual leanness in your
churches, that there should be Popery among you, when you thus debar men of the
Bible? Is it not a fact, that while you have said you will give a Bible to
every family in the world, not one of the families of slaveholders in the
Southern States is to be found included in the benefaction? Of all the four
hundred and sixty thousand families of your slaves, show me one that is
included in your purpose or your plan. There is not one. If it would be wicked
to blot out the sun from the heavens; if it would be wicked to deprive the
earth of its circumambient air, or to dry up its streams of water, is it less
wicked to withhold the word of God from men? to shut them out from the means of
saving knowledge? to annihilate the cross? to take away the corner stone of
human hope? to legislate away from your fellow-beings the will of God as
recorded in his own word.
In view of the retributions of the judgment, I plead for
these men, disinherited of their birthright. And once for all, I say, that
every enterprise to enlighten, convert, and bless the world, must be branded
with the charge of base hypocrisy, while millions at home are formally and by
law deprived of the gospel of life, of the very letter of the Bible. And what
has been the result Christianity has been dethroned; she is gone: there is no
weeping mercy to bless the land of the slave; it is banished forever, as far as
human laws can effect it. Brethren, I know not how you feel, nor can I tell you
how I feel, when I behold you urging, by every powerful argument, the
conversion of the world, while such a state of things is at your door; when I
see you all tenderness for men you never saw; and yet seeming destitute of all
pity for those you see every day.
Suppose, now, that in China the efforts of your missionaries
should make one of the dark heathen a convert to the peaceful doctrine of the
cross. What would be the duty of such a convert? Learning that there was a
country where millions of his fellow sinners were yet destitute of the treasure
that had enriched him for eternity, would he not leave the loved parents of his
childhood, and the place of his father's sepulchres, and tracing his way across
the waters, would he not come to bestow the boon upon men in America? Would he
not come here to enlighten our darkness? And would he not be acting reasonably?
according to the principles and commands of the very Bible you gave him?
And now I ask, what is the christianity of the South ! Is it
not a chain-forging christianity? a whip-platting christianity? a marriage
denouncing, or, at best, a marriage discouraging christianity. Is it not, above
all, a Bible withholding christianity? You know that the evidence is
incontestible. I anticipate the objection. “We cannot do otherwise. It is true,
there are in South Carolina not twelve slaveholders who instruct their slaves;
but we can't help it; there is an impassible wall; we can't throw the Bible
over it; and if we attempt to make our way through, there stands the gibbet on
the other side. It is not to be helped.” Why? “SLAVERY is there.” Then away
with slavery. “Ay, but how ! Do you want the slave to cut his master's throat?”
By no means. God forbid. I would not have him hurt one hair of his head, even
if it would secure him freedom for life. “How then are we to get rid of it? By
carrying them home?” Home? where? Where is their home? Where, but where they
were born? I say, let them live on the soil where they first saw the light and
breathed the air. Here, here, in the midst of you, let justice be done. “What!
release all our slaves? turn them loose? spread a lawless band of paupers,
vagrants, and lawless depredators upon the country?” Not at all. We have no
such thought. All we ask is, that the control of masters over their slaves may
be subjected to supervision, and to legal responsibility. Cannot this be done?
Surely it can. There is even now enough of energy in the land to annihilate the
whole evil; but all we ask is permission to publish truth, and to set forth the
claims of the great and eternal principles of justice and equal rights; and
then let them work out their own results. Let the social principle operate. Leave
man to work upon man, and church upon church, and one body of people upon
another, until the slave States themselves shall voluntarily loose the bonds
and break every yoke. All this is legitimate and fair proceeding. It is common
sense. It is sound philosophy. Against this course slavery cannot stand long.
How was it abolished in England? By the fiat of the legislature, you will say.
True: but was there no preaching of the truth beforehand? Was there no waking
up of the public mind? no appeals no investigations? no rousing of public
feelings, and concentration of the public energy Had there been nothing of
this, the glorious act would never have passed the Parliament; and the British
dependencies would still have mourned under the shade of this moral Bohon Upas.
It was well said by one of the gentlemen who preceded me,
that there is a conscience at the South; and that there is the word of God at
the South; and they have fears and hopes like our own: and in penning the
appeals of reason and religion we cannot be laboring in vain. I will therefore
say, that the hope of this cause is in the churches of God. There are church
members enough of themselves to decide the destinies of slavery, and I charge
upon the 17,000 ministers in this land, that they do keep this evil within our
country; that they do not remember them that are in bonds as bound with them;
that they fatten on the plunder of God's poor, and enrich themselves by the
price of their souls. Were these all to do their duty, this monster, which has
so long been brooding over our land, would soon take his flight to the
nethermost hell, where he was begotten. How can these refuse to hear me? They
are bound to hear; Unitarians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists,
Episcopalians, be their name or their sect's name what it may, are bound to
hear — for a minister is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts: and if they shall
withhold their aid when God calls for it, the Lord will make them contemptible
in the eyes of all the people.
Finally: this Anti-Slavery Society is not opposing one evil
only; it is setting its face against all the vices of the land. What friend of
religion ought to revile it? Surely the minister of Christ least of all; for it
is opening his path before him; and that over a high wall that he dare not
pass. Can the friend of education be against us? A society that seeks to pour
the light of science over minds long benighted: a society that aims to make the
beast a man: and the man an angel? Ought the friend of the Bible to oppose it?
Surely not. , Nor can any of these various interests of benevolence thrive
until slavery is first removed out of the way.
Mr. T. in closing, observed that he had risen to-day under
peculiar feelings. Two of his countrymen had been deputed to visit this
country, one of them a member of the Committee of the British and Foreign
Anti-Slavery Society, who had been appointed with the express object of
extinguishing slavery throughout the world, and belonging to a christian
denomination which had actually memorialized all their sister churches in this
land on the subject. My heart leaped when I learned they were to be here:
especially that one of them whose name stood before the blank which is to be
left in the record of this day's proceedings. Where is he now? He is in this
city: why is he not here? The reason I shall leave for himself to explain. Sir,
said Mr. T., in this very fact I behold a new proof of the power of the
omnipotence of slavery: by its torpedo power a man has been struck dumb, who
was eloquent in England on the side of its open opposers. What! is it come to
this? Shall he or shall I advocate the cause of emancipation, of immediate
emancipation, only because we are Englishmen? Perish the thought ! before I can
entertain such an idea I must be recreant to all the principles of the Bible,
to all the claims of truth, of honor, of humanity. No sir: if man is not the
same in every latitude; if he would advocate a cause with eloquence and ardor
in Exeter Hall, in the midst of admiring thousands, but because he is in
America can close his lips and desert the cause he once espoused, I denounce, I
abjure him. Let him carry his philanthropy home again; there let him display it
in the loftiest or the tenderest strains; but never let him step his foot
abroad, until he is prepared to show to the world that he is the friend of his
kind.
The following resolution was offered by Mr. Thompson, and
adopted by the Society.
Resolved, That the practice of suffering a sixth
portion of the population of this Christian land to perish, destitute of the
volume of Revelation, and the ministry of the Gospel, is inconsistent with the
profession of zeal for the conversion of the world.
SOURCE: Isaac Knapp, Publisher, Letters and
Addresses by G. Thompson [on American Negro Slavery] During His Mission in the
United States, From Oct. 1st, 1834, to Nov. 27, 1835, p. 66-74; The Liberator, Boston Massachusetts,
Saturday, May 23, 1835, p. 2-3
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