We wonder if this learned divine has ever undertaken to
convince men that their “responsibilities were limited” in regard to the
removal of any other nuisance than slavery. We have not seen any portion of his
"limitations," except that relating to slavery. Whether he has
treated on them as to any other sin, we do not know. But what possessed him to
think men needed reminding of the limitations of their obligations? Are
they prone to works of supererogation? Are they apt to be rampant in the
exercise of that “charity,” which “seeketh not her own,” to transcend the
bounds of their duty? Is it necessary, in order to a proper husbanding of their
sympathies, that they be warned and admonished against their too prodigal
lavishment upon their fellow-men? Is it to be predicated of fallen, depraved
men, that they will be likely to overrun their obligations? Need they be
guarded against an extravagance like this? Need ministers of the gospel tax
their ingenuity in a behalf like this? Generally this class of men have been
engaged, on what they call in court “the other side;” in enforcing human
obligations, and in setting forth and urging on men's consciences their
terrible responsibilities—to remove from their minds and hearts erroneous
notions of their limitation?. and of their own freedom from obligation.
We take it nothing can be clearer and more reasonable than
the universal obligation to do to others as we would that they should do to us —
and to do likewise for others. If we were slaves, does any doctor doubt
we should desire our neighbors, if we had any, to try to rescue us? If our
house was a-fire, should not we want our neighbors to help put the fire out? If
we were in the water, going to the bottom, could we bear it that neighbors
should go indifferently by, and let us sink — that they should merely pity us —
in the abstract? The slavery case is exceedingly plain. Slavery is the creature
of tolerance — of public sufferance. Southern slavery exists in northern
sufferance. The North is the seat of American sufferance. It is the theatre of moral
influence for this nation. There is no such influence in the South — that is, no
reforming influence except by negative operation. What is the moral influence
of New Orleans on the nation? What of Charleston, or Mobile, or St. Louis, or
Richmond, or any of the states or people of which these are the capitals? What
religious or moral enterprise ever originated, or advanced in any of these
places or people? They no more influence the country, than gamblers, drunkards,
thieves, religiously influence the church. The church influences them for good
or for evil, according to her faithfulness or unfaithfulness in her Master's
service. The North influences the South in the matter of slavery. Yea, the
North acts with the South in slaveholding. They directly and professedly uphold
the system wherever they have occasion. They tolerate it in the District of
Columbia. They directly sustain it in the territories. They allow the slave
trade between the states. They conspired with the South in the constitution,
that the foreign trade in slaves should not be interrupted by Congress for
twenty years. They voted that Arkansas should come into the Union, with a
constitution guarding slavery with a two-edged sword, giving the slaveholder a
veto upon an emancipating legislature, and the legislature a check upon the
repentant slaveholder. They have voted to admit a system that forbids and
discourages repentance of the sin of slaveholding, and makes it desperate. All
this has been done solemnly and with deliberation, and in legislative form — and
the whole nation has tacitly allowed those of its people who chose, to hold
slaves. It has never been disreputable, but highly the contrary, to hold slaves
in this country. Is not a nation answerable for the vices and crimes which are
reputable and popular within its borders? If a nation has any moral influence,
any moral standard, is it not responsible for what that standard does not
condemn? Has not this nation cast all its presidential votes for two men,
guilty at the very moment of the election and all their days before and since,
of the crime of slaveholding — Andrew Jackson, a slaveholder and a slave
driver, and voted for twice by a majority of the electoral suffrage of this
nation, north and south — and Henry Clay, a slaveholder and a notorious
compromiser in the service of the infernal system, voted for by the rest of the
nation. Jackson chosen by northern men against Adams a northern man. And then a
northern man abandoned by northern men, one and the same party, in favor of
Clay, a southern slaveholder[.]
We have nothing to do with abolishing slavery, says the
Doctor Wayland, either as citizens of the United States, or as men. Our
responsibilities for its removal are all limited away. On the very face
of our case, it is palpable and grossly evident, we say, that the northern
people have at least as much to do with its abolition as the people of the
south. They have at least as much to do with its continuation. They are as directly
engaged in it. They have the control of it in the national councils wherever it
exists within congressional jurisdiction. It is the North, and not the South,
that prevents a legislative abolition of it in the District of Columbia.
Slavery in the national district is a northern institution, and not a southern.
It is the “peculiar institution” there of the North, and not of the South. Is
it not so? We declare then, that, as citizens and as men, we at the
North have something to do with the abolition of American slavery — ay, that we
have every thing to do with it. We can abolish it, and we alone can. We
ought to abolish it, and we alone ought to do it, as appears at first impartial
glance.
“I think it evident,” says Dr. Wayland, “that as citizens
of the United States, we have no power whatever either to abolish slavery
in the southern states, or to do any thing of which the direct intention is to
abolish it.” We do not perceive the propriety of the Doctor's language when he
talks of a thing having an intention. Slaves have intentions, and
the Doctor and his friends call them things—but how a thing to be
done can have an intention — a “direct intention,” as the Doctcr
says, is beyond our slight learning. Perhaps the Doctor meant tendency by
intention — and meant to say that we could not do any thing the direct tendency
of which is the abolition of southern slavery. That is to say, we, as citizens
of the United States, may not vote in Congress against slaveholding in the
District of Columbia, or in the territories, or against the slave trade between
the states. We may not receive petitions in behalf of those objects — we may
not petition Congress — we may not talk against slaveholding — or write against
it — or pray against it — or sympathize with our fellow-men in slavery; because
each and every one of these acts has a direct tendency to abolish
slavery in the southern states. Slavery in the land is a system, a whole
system, a custom, a crime, and but one crime wherever committed. It is not
warrantable in one place, and not in another. It is not lawful in one state,
and not in another. It is one entire, individual, undivided matter of fact
every where in the land, as much as murder is — and if it is denounced and condemned in the
District of Columbia by Congress, it is as fatal to it, in the whole country,
as if denounced in South Carolina by Congress, or any where else — more fatal
to it. A blow struck against it, as existing in that district, would be a blow
at the head of it, and it would be mortal, — not one having a direct tendency
to kill the system — or a direct intention, as the Doctor hath it, —
but a blow destructive in itself. It would fix the brand of infamy on every
slaveholder's front throughout the nation. It would render him infamous even in
the eyes of Americans. Dr. Wayland could set no limits to his infamy. It
would seal him a criminal with the broad seal of the nation, the E pluribus
unum. Who would vote for him for President then — who would send him
ambassador to London — who put him in Speaker of the House — President of the
Senate — Chief Justice of the United States? Who would shake hands with him at
the capitol? Now he is first in office, first in honor. Slaveholding is
passport to every distinction. We ask Dr. Wayland and his aid-de-camp Major
Mordecai Noachus, if a vote by Congress on our petitions, abolishing
slavery in the district, and making it capital to enslave a man there, as they
would do if they made it penal at all, would not give the system the death blow
in the South, even if abolitionists had done nothing to kill it elsewhere.
Would not that single enactment do it? Self-evidently it would. Have we not a
right, as citizens of the United States, to do this? The Doctor says no.
We say, ay.
But not to follow this self-immolated man any farther now,
we will say that we need not get a vote from Congress against slavery in order
to its abolition there and every where. Congress! what is it? The mere dregs
and precipitations, the settlings and sediments of the
nation. It is as soulless as a corporation. It has no soul, no mind, no
principle, no opinion. It is an echo, and that not always a true one. It is a
mere catastrophe—an upshot. It will only mutter the word abolition, after
it has become an old story through the country. We have struck slavery its
death blow already. We need not contend with the Doctor about the power. “One
thing you have done,” said an eminent judge to us, “you have driven the South
to come out and declare directly in favor of slavery. Heretofore they have
pretended to lament it, as an evil. Now they declare it is a blessing, and a
righteous institution.” Have we not, said we, driven them to join the issue,
before the world, in favor of slaveholding? “You have,” said the judge. Must
they not maintain it before the world, said we, to save the institution from
going down? “They must,” he replied. Can they maintain it? said we. “No,” said
he, — and yet the judge is not an abolitionist.
We need not contend with this Wayland and wayward President
for the power, as citizens or as men, to beat down southern slaveholding. We
have exercised the power already, and the South knows it. We have waked
the nation to discuss the demerits of the system and the question of the negro
man's humanity; and they are discussing it, and amid the flash and fervor of
the agitation the foul system dies. It can no more endure it, than owls can
noon, or bats sunshine, or ghosts day-break. While Wayland is groping about in
his metaphysics to get hold of some puzzle to embarrass us about the power, we
will have exercised it to the full, and cleared the land of slavery. Then where
will the Doctor find a market for his “limitations?” Slavery is a dead man already,
unless Orator Rhett, and Professor Dew, and Colonel McDuffie, and General
Hamilton, and doctor this, that and the other one, can maintain the precious
creature in the argument, and get the verdict of an enlightened and purged
christianity in its favor. To this conclusion it has already come. The question
is stated — the issue joined — the pleadings closed — all demurring and abating
and delaying past by. And now for the trial. Now, Slavery, hold thine own. The
Doctor's question of our having the power comes too late.
SOURCE: Collection from the Miscellaneous Writings
of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Second Edition, p. 39-44 which states it was
published in the Herald of Freedom of October 20, 1838.
