Senator Charles Sumner to John Greenleaf Whittier, October 7, 1851

Will not Higginson see the matter in a practical light? I respect him so much, and honor his principles so supremely, that I am pained to differ from him; but I do feel that we must not neglect the opportunity afforded by alliances—not fusion with the Democrats to prevent the Whigs from establishing themselves in the State. Palfrey is now earnestly of this inclining; so is Hopkins; also Burlingame, and all these stood out before.

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 255

To Charles Sumner: A Poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, 1854

I have seemed more prompt to censure wrong
    Than praise the right, if seldom to thine ear
    My voice hath mingled with the exultant cheer
Borne upon all our Northern winds along,—
If I have failed to join the fickle throng
In wide-eyed wonder that thou standest strong
In victory, surprised in thee to find
Brougham's scathing power with Canning's grace combined;
That he, for whom the ninefold Muses sang,
From their twined arms a giant athlete sprang,
Barbing the arrows of his native tongue
With the spent shafts Latona's archer flung,
To smite the Python of our land and time,
Fell as the monster born of Crissa's slime,
Like the blind bard who in Castalian springs
Tempered the steel that clove the crest of kings,
And on the shrine of England's freedom laid
The gifts of Cumæ and of Delphi's shade,—
Small need hast thou of words of praise from me.
    Thou knowest my heart, dear friend, and well canst guess,
    That, even though silent, I have not the less
Rejoiced to see thy actual life agree
With the large future which I shaped for thee,
When, years ago, beside the summer sea,
White in the moon, we saw the long waves fall
Baffled and broken from the rocky wall,
That to the menace of the brawling flood
Opposed alone its massive quietude,
Calm as a fate, with not a leaf nor vine
Nor birch-spray trembling in the still moonshine,
Crowning it like God's peace. I sometimes think
    That night-scene by the sea prophetical,
(For Nature speaks in symbols and in signs,
And through her pictures human fate divines),
That rock, wherefrom we saw the billows sink
    In murmuring rout, uprising clear and tall
In the white light of heaven, the type of one
Who, momently by Error's host assailed,
Stands strong as Truth, in greaves of granite mailed,
    And, tranquil-fronted, listening over all
The tumult, hears the angels say, Well done!

SOURCES: John Greenleaf Whittier, The Writings of John Greenleaf Whittier in Seven Volumes, Large Paper Edition, Vol. 4, p. 91-2; Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 229

Charles Sumner to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, January 24, 1850

[January 24, 1850.]

DEAR HENRY,

Whittier is here on a short visit. I go to-night with Miss Bremer to hear Wendell Phillips, and to-morrow evening dine out, or I should insist upon taking him [Whittier] to you. He is staying at the Quincy Hotel, in Brattle Street.

I regret the sentiments of John Van Buren about mobs, but rejoice that he is right on slavery. I do not know that I should differ very much from him in saying that we have more to fear from the corruption of wealth than from mobs. Edmund Dwight once gave, within my knowledge, two thousand dollars to influence a single election. Other men whom we know very well are reputed to have given much larger sums. It is in this way, in part, that the natural antislavery sentiment of Massachusetts has been kept down; it is money, money, money, that keeps Palfrey from being elected. Knowing these things, it was natural that John Van Buren should say that we had more to fear from wealth than from mobs. He is a politician,—not a philanthropist or moralist, but a politician, like Clay, Winthrop, Abbott Lawrence; and he has this advantage, that he has dedicated his rare powers to the cause of human freedom. In this I would welcome any person from any quarter.

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 212

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, June 1862

Worcester, June, 1862

Mrs. Howell, of Philadelphia, a most attractive woman whom I met last year, is there [Princeton] already. She wrote Milton's verses on his blindness which were included in a London edition of his works, and there is a mild, chronic, Quakerly flirtation between her and Whittier, who wrote in the April “Atlantic” a charming poem about a ride with her at Princeton last year. She is a fine-looking woman of forty-five, but the hotel scandal of last year was that she wears what are called plumpers in her cheeks to preserve the roundness of early years, and though I hold this a libel, still the overwhelming majority of last year's Princetonians believe it. Miss Betsey Sturgis, that arbiter of fashion, says plumpers are very common in Philadelphia and she doesn't doubt Mrs. H. wears them. Nature has plumped the cheerful B. S., but there is no telling what other beautifying appliances may not be purchased with Mrs. Cushing's bequest.

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 145

Thomas Wentworth Higginson to James T. Fields, January 1862

Dear Friend:

I send the “Letter to a Young Contributor,” which will cover nine or ten pages.

I am sorry to say that this household unites in the opinion that February is a decidedly poor number. Mrs. Howe is tedious. “To-day” grim and disagreeable, though not without power; “Love and Skates” [Theodore Winthrop] trashy and second-rate; and Bayard Taylor below plummet-sounding of decent criticism. His mediocre piece had a certain simplicity and earnestness, but this seems to me only fit for the “Ledger” in its decline. I could only raise one smile over the “Biglow” (“rod, perch, or pole”), but I suppose that will be liked. Whittier's poem is daring, but successful; Agassiz has covered the same ground often. Whipple uses “considerable” atrociously at beginning of last critical notice, and “Snow” has a direful misprint on page 195 (end of, paragraph) — South for Earth. I liked “Ease in Work,” “Fremont and Artists” in Italy.

The thing that troubled me most, though, was the absence of a strong article on the war, especially as January had none. I see men buying the “Continental” for its strong emancipatory pieces, and they are amazed that the “Atlantic” should not have got beyond Lowell's timid “Self-Possession.” For the “Atlantic” to speak only once in three months, and then against an emancipatory policy, is humiliating. Perhaps I ought to have written and offered one, but I could not write when busy about regiments and companies, and after that I supposed you had a press of war matter on hand, as no doubt you did some months ago; but public sentiment is moving fast if events are not, and it is a shame that life should come from the “Knickerbocker” and not from the “Atlantic.” You always get frank criticisms from me, at least, you know.

P.S. I see the papers treat the number well — but so they always do. At the lowest point ever reached by the magazine, just before your return from England, the newspaper praises kept regularly on.

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 112-4

John Greenleaf Whittier to George L. Stearns, September 13, 1861

[September 13, 1861.]

Dr. Friend:

Owing to absence from home, I did not see thy letter until last evening.

It would have given me pleasure to have attended your meeting of the 10th inst.

I presume I should fully agree with you as to the duty and expediency of striking more directly at the real cause of the war. As heretofore I shall use all my endeavors to this end. If the present terrible struggle does not involve emancipation, partial or complete, it is, at once, a most wicked and the most ludicrous war ever waged.

Thanking thee and thy friends for the invitation, I shall be happy to cooperate with you to the extent of my power.

Thou wast deeply interested in John Brown, I think. Let me call thy attention to a poem, “Our First Martyr,” by Miss Phoebe Cary, of New York, in the last Independent.

Very truly thy fd.,

John G. Whittier.

SOURCE: Preston Stearns, The Life and Public Services of George Luther Stearns, p. 256-7

Thomas Wentworth Higginson to Louisa Storrow Higginson, July 10, 1859

July 10, 1859

Dearest Mother:

Emerson says, “To-day is a king in disguise”; and it is sometimes odd to think that these men and women of the "Atlantic Monthly," mere mortals to me, will one day be regarded as demi-gods, perhaps, and that it would seem as strange to another generation for me to have sat at the same table with Longfellow or Emerson, as it now seems that men should have sat at table with Wordsworth or with Milton. So I may as well tell you all about my inducting little Harriet Prescott into that high company.

She met me at twelve in Boston at Ticknor's and we spent a few hours seeing pictures and the aquarial gardens; the most prominent of the pictures being a sort of luncheon before our dinner; viz., Holmes and Longfellow in half length and very admirable, by Buchanan Read (I don't think any previous king in disguise ever had his portrait so well painted as this one, at any rate); also, by the same, a delicious painting of three Longfellow children — girls with their mother's eyes and Mary Greenleaf's coloring, at least three different modifications of it. . . .

In the course of these divertisements we stopped at Phillips's and Sampson's, where we encountered dear, dark, slender, simple, sensitive Whittier, trying to decide whether to "drink delight of battle with his peers" at the dinner-table, or slide shyly back to Amesbury in the next train. To introduce him to Harriet was like bringing a girl and a gazelle acquainted; each visibly wished to run away from the other; to Whittier a woman is a woman, and he was as bashful before the small authoress as if she were the greatest. Cheery John Wyman was persuading him to stay to dinner, and on my introducing him to my companion turned the battery of his good-nature upon her, pronouncing her story the most popular which had appeared in the magazine — “Oh, sir,” she whispered to me afterwards, “he spoke to me about my story — do you suppose anybody else will? I hope not.”

Duly at three we appeared at the Revere House. You are to understand that this was a special festival — prior to Mrs. Stowe's trip to Europe — and the admission of ladies was a new thing. Harriet was whirled away into some unknown dressing-room, and I found in another parlor Holmes, Lowell, Longfellow, Whipple, Edmund Quincy, Professor Stowe, Stillman the artist, Whittier (after all), Woodman, John Wyman, and Underwood. When dinner was confidentially announced, I saw a desire among the founders of the feast to do the thing handsomely toward the fair guests, and found, to my great amusement, that Mrs. Stowe and Harriet Prescott were the only ones! Nothing would have tempted my little damsel into such a position, I knew; but now she was in for it; to be handed in to dinner by the Autocrat himself, while Lowell took Mrs. Stowe I Miss Terry was at Saratoga and Mrs. Julia Howe suddenly detained; so these were alone. But how to get them downstairs — send up a servant or go ourselves? — that is, were they in a bedroom or a parlor; an obsequious attendant suddenly suggested the latter, so Lowell and I went up. In a small but superb room the authoress of “Uncle Tom” stood smoothing her ample plumage, while the junior lady hovered timidly behind. . . . Mrs. Stowe was quietly dressed in a Quakerish silk, but with a peculiar sort of artificial grape-leaf garland round her head which I could not examine more minutely; she looked very well, but I thought Harriet looked better; she had smoothed down her brown .curls, the only pretty thing about her, except a ladylike little figure, robed in the plainest imaginable black silk. . . .

Down we went: Dr. Holmes met us in the entry; each bowed lower than the other, and we all marched in together. Underwood had wished to place Edmund Quincy by Harriet, at his request, she being on Dr. Holmes's right — the Autocrat's right, think of the ordeal for a humble maiden at her first dinner party! but I told him the only chance for her to breathe was to place me there, which he did. On Dr. Holmes's left was Whittier, next, Professor Stowe, opposite me, while Mrs. S. was on Lowell's right at the other end.

By this lady's special stipulation the dinner was teetotal, which compulsory virtue caused some wry faces among the gentlemen, not used to such abstinence at “Atlantic” dinners; it was amusing to see how they nipped at the water and among the ban mots privately circulated thereupon, the best was Longfellow's proposition that Miss Prescott should send down into her Cellar for some wine, since Mrs. Stowe would not allow any abovestairs! This joke was broached early and carefully prevented from reaching the ears of either of its subjects, but I thought it capital, for you remember her racy description of wine, of which she knows about as much as she does of French novels, which I find most people suppose her to have lived upon — she having once perused “Consuelo”!

Little Dr. Holmes came down upon her instantly with her laurels. “I suppose you meet your story wherever you go,” said he, “like Madam d'Arblay" (and indeed the whole thing reminded me of her first introductions into literary society). . . . I seized the first opportunity to ask whether she and Mrs. Stowe had any conversation upstairs. “Yes,” said she meekly; “Mrs. Stowe asked me what time it was and I told her I didn't know.” There's intellectual intercourse for a young beginner! . . .

When the wife of Andrew Jackson Davis, the seer, was once asked if her husband, who was then staying at Fitzhenry Homer's, was not embarrassed by being in society superior to that in which he was trained, she replied indignantly that her husband, who was constantly in the society of the highest angels, was not likely to be overcome by Mrs. Fitzhenry Homer. And when I reflected on the entertainments which were described in “In a Cellar,” I felt no fear of Harriet's committing any solecism in manners at an “Atlantic” dinner, which she certainly did not, though a little frightened, occasionally, I could see, at the obsequiousness of the waiters and the absurd multiplicity of courses. . . .

I don't care so very much for " Atlantic " dinners — Professor Felton says they are more brilliant than London ones, but I think that Mary and I get up quite as good ones in Worcester — but Dr. Holmes is always effervescent and funny, and John Wyman is the best story-teller the world ever saw, and indeed everybody contributed something. The best thing Holmes said was in discoursing on his favorite theory of races and families. “Some families,” he said, “are constitutionally incapable of doing anything wrong; they try it as boys, but they relapse into virtue; as individuals, they attempt to do wrong, but the race is too strong for them and they end in pulpits. Look at the Wares, for instance; I don't believe that the Wares fell in Adam!”

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 106-10

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, about 1858

Mr. Emerson is bounteous and gracious, but thin, dry, angular, in intercourse as in person. Garrison is the only solid moral reality I have ever seen incarnate, the only man who would do to tie to, as they say out West; and he is fresher and firmer every day, but wanting in intellectual culture and variety. Wendell Phillips is always graceful and gay, but inwardly sad, under that bright surface. Whittier is the simplest and truest of men, beautiful at home, but without fluency of expression, and with rather an excess of restraint. Thoreau is pure and wonderfully learned in nature's things and deeply wise, and yet tedious in his monologues and cross-questionings. Theodore Parker is as wonderfully learned in books, and as much given to monologue, though very agreeable and various it is, still egotistical, dogmatic, bitter often, and showing marked intellectual limitations. Mr. Alcott is an innocent charlatan, full of inspired absurdities and deep strokes, maunders about nature, and when outdoors has neither eyes, ears, nor limbs. Lowell is infinitely entertaining, but childishly egotistical and monopolizing.

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 93-4

Gerrit Smith to Edmund Quincy, November 23, 1846

Peterboro, Nov. 23, 1846,

Edmund Quincy, Esq., of Massachusetts:

Dear Sir, — I have this evening, read your letter to me, in the last Liberator. I am so busy in making preparations to leave home for a month or two, that my reply must be brief. A reply I must make — for you might construe my silence into discourtesy and unfriendliness.

From your remark, that you have not seen my “recent writings and speeches,” I infer, that you do not deign to cast a look upon the newspapers of the Liberty Party. Your proud and disdainful state of mind toward this party accounts for some of the mistakes in your letter. For instance, were you a reader of its newspapers, you would not charge me with “irreverently” using the term “Bible politics.” You evidently suppose that I identify the federal constitution and the Liberty Party with the politics of the Bible. But, in my discourses on “Bible politics,” which, to no small extent, are made up directly from the pages of the Bible, I seek but to show what are the Heaven-intended uses of civil government, and what are the necessary qualifications of those who administer it. So far are these discourses from commending the constitution, or the Liberty Party, that they do not so much as allude either to the one or to the other. Again, were you a reader of the newspapers of this party, you would know its name. You would in that case know, that “Liberty Party” is the name, which, from the first, it has chosen for itself; and that “Third Party” is only a nickname, which low-minded persons have given to it. You well know, that there are low-minded persons, who, seeing nothing in the good man who is the object of their hatred, for that hatred to seize upon, will try to harm him by nicknaming him. It is such as these, whose malice toward the Liberty Party has, for want of argument against that truth-espousing and self-sacrificing party, vented itself in a nickname. Be assured, my dear sir, that I have no hard feelings toward you for misnaming my party. You are a gentleman; and your error is, therefore, purely unintentional. Upon your innocent ignorance — too easy and credulous in this instance, I admit — the base creatures who coined this nickname, have palmed it as the real name of the Liberty Party. You are a gentleman; and hence, as certainly as your good breeding accords to every party, however little and despised, the privilege of naming itself, so certainly, when you are awake to this deception which has been practiced upon your credulity, you will be deeply indignant at it. I see, from his late speech in Faneuil Hall, that even Mr. Webster has fallen into the mistake of taking “Third Party” to be the name of the Liberty Party. The columns of the Liberator have, most probably, led him into it. Being set right on this point yourself, you will of course, take pleasure in setting him right. He will thank you for doing so; for when he comes to know, that “Third Party” is but a nickname, and the invention of blackguards, he will shrink from the vulgarity and meanness of repeating it. Again, were you a reader of the newspapers of the Liberty Party, you would not feel yourself authorized to take it for granted, that to hold an office under the constitution is to be guilty of swearing to uphold slavery. On the contrary, you would be convinced, that nine-tenths of the abolitionists of the country — nine-tenths, too, of the wisest and worthiest of them — believe, that an oath to abide by the constitution is an oath to labor for the overthrow of slavery. Were you a reader of the newspapers of the Liberty Party, you would know, that this position of these nine-tenths of the abolitionists of the country is fortified by arguments of William Goodell and Lysander Spooner, which there has been no attempt to answer, and that, too, for the most probable reason, that they are unanswerable. I am not sure, that you have ever heard of these gentlemen. Theirs are perhaps, unmentioned names in the line of your reading and associations. Nevertheless I strongly desire that you may read their arguments. Your reading of them will, I hope, moderate the superlatively arrogant and dogmatic style in which you, in common with the abolitionists of your school, talk and write on this subject. If this or aught else, shall have the effect to relax that extreme, turkey-cock tension of pride, with which you and your fellows strut up and down the arena of this controversy, the friends of modesty and good manners will have occasion to rejoice.

I have not taken up my pen to write another argument for the constitution. Two or three years ago, I presumed to write one and the way in which it was treated, is a caution to me not to repeat the presumption. I shall not soon forget the fury with which the Mr. Wendell Phillips, whom you so highly praise in the letter before me, pounced upon it. Nothing short of declaring me to be a thief and a liar could relieve his swollen spirit, or give adequate vent to his foaming wrath. He would, probably, have come to be ashamed of himself, had not his review of me been endorsed by Mr. Garrison, and also by one, who it is said, is even greater than Mr. Garrison — “the power behind the throne.”

I do not doubt, my dear sir, that you and your associates have sincerely adopted your conclusions respecting the constitution. That you should be thoroughly convinced by your own arguments is a natural and almost necessary consequence of the self-complacency, which uniformly characterizes persons who regard themselves as ne plus ultra reformers. I wish you could find it in your hearts to reciprocate our liberality, in acknowledging your sincerity, and to admit, that we, who differ from you, are also sincere. No longer then would you suppose us, as you do in your present letter, to be guilty of “Jesuitical evasions,” or to be capable of being, to use your own capitals “PERJURED LIARS.” No longer then would you and the gentlemen of your school speak of us as a pack of office-seekers, hypocrites, and scoundrels. But you would then treat us  — your equal brethren, as honestly and ardently desirous as yourselves to advance the dear cause to which you are devoted — with decency and kindness, instead of contempt and brutality. I honor you and your associates, as true-hearted friends of the slave; and nor man, nor devil, shall ever extort from my lips or pen a word of injustice against any of you. I honor you also for the sincerity of your beliefs, that they, who dissent from your expositions of the constitution, are in the wrong. But I am deeply grieved at your superciliousness and intolerance toward those, whose desire to know and do their duty is no less strong nor pure than your own. Far am I from intimating that the blame of the internal dissensions of the Abolitionists belongs wholly to yourselves. No very small share of it should be appropriated by such of them as have indulged a bad spirit, in speaking uncandidly and unkindly of yourselves. All classes of Abolitionists have need to humble themselves before God for having retarded the cause of the slave by these guilty dissensions.

I would that I could inspire you with some distrust of your infallibility. I should, thereby, be rendering good service to yourself and to the cause of truth. Will you bear to have me point out some of the blunders in the letter to which I am now replying? And, when you shall have seen them, will you suffer your wonder to abate, that the great body of Abolitionists do not more promptly and implicitly bow to the ipse dixits of yourself and your fellow infallibles? Casting myself on your indulgence, and at the risk of ruffling your self-complacency. I proceed to point out to you some of these blunders.

Blunder No. 1. You charge me with holding, that the clause of the constitution relating to the slave-trade, provides for its abolition. What I do hold to, however, is, that the part of the constitution which entrusts Congress with the power to regulate commerce, provides for the abolition of this trade. That Congress would use the power to abolish this trade, was deemed certain by the whole convention which framed the constitution. Hence a portion of its members would not consent to grant this power, unless modified by the clause concerning the slave-trade, and unless, too, this clause were made irrepealable. When the life-time of this modification had expired, Congress, doing just what the anti-slavery spirit of the constitution and the universal expectation of the nation demanded, prohibited our participation in the African slave-trade. I readily admit, that the clause in question is, considered by itself, pro-slavery. But it is to be viewed as a part of the anti-slavery bargain for suppressing the African slave-trade — and as a part, without which, the anti-slavery bargain could not have been made. Did I not infer from your own words, that you cannot possibly bring yourself to condescend to read the “writings or speeches” of Liberty-party men, I would ask you to read what I wrote to John G. Whittier and Adin Ballou on that part of the constitution now under consideration.

Blunder No. 2. But what pro-slavery act can that part of the constitution which respects the African slave-trade, require at the hands of one who should now swear to support the constitution? None. No more than if the thing, now entirely obsolete, had never been. What a blunder then to speak of this part of the constitution, as an obstacle in the way of swearing to support those parts of it which still remain operative!

Blunder No. 3. In your letter before me, as well as in your approval of an article in the Liberator of 30th last month, you take the position, that the pro-slavery interpretations of the constitution, at the hands of courts and lawmakers, are conclusive that the instrument is pro-slavery. But you will yourself go so far as to admit, that all slavery under the national flag, and in the District of Columbia, and indeed everywhere, save in the old thirteen States, is unconstitutional. Nevertheless all such parts of unconstitutional slavery have repeatedly been approved by courts and law-makers. You say, that the constitution is what its expounders interpret it to be; and that, inasmuch as they interpret it to be pro-slavery, you are bound to reject it. But the dignified and authoritative expounders of the Bible interpret it to be pro-slavery. Why, then, according to your own rules, should you not reject the Bible, also? Talleyrand, you know, thought a blunder worse than a crime. You and I do not agree with him. But we certainly cannot fail to agree with each other, that your blunder No. 3, is a very bad blunder.

Blunder No. 4. You declare, that because the constitution is as you allege, pro-slavery, it is inconsistent and unfair to reject a slaveholder from holding office under it. Extend the application if you will, that you may see its absurdity. The constitution of my State makes a dark skin a disqualification for voting. Hence, in choosing officers under it — even revisers of the constitution itself — I am not at liberty, according to your rule, to exclude a man from the range of my selection, on the ground that he is in favor of such disqualification. Nay, more, I must regard his agreement with the constitution on this point, as an argument in favor of his claim to my vote. Again — to conform to your rule, a wicked community should, because it is wicked, choose a wicked preacher — or because it is ignorant, choose an ignorant schoolmaster. Yours is a rule that refuses to yield to the law of progress, and that shuts the door against all human improvement. You would, for the sake of their consistency, have an individual — have a people — remain as wicked as they are — and vote for drunkards and slaveholders, because they have always done so. The provision of the constitution for its own amendment, is of itself, enough to silence your doctrine, that the agreement of a man's character and views with the constitution, is necessarily an argument for, and can never be an argument against, his holding office under it. This provision opens the door for choosing to office under the constitution, those who disagree with it. This provision implies, that in the progress of things, a man's agreement with the constitution may be a conclusive objection to clothing him with official power under it.

But I will stop my enumeration of your blunders, and put you a few questions.

1. Do you not believe, that it was settled by the decision in the year 1772 of the highest court of England, that there was not any legal slavery in our American Colonies?

2. Do you not believe, that there was no legal slavery in any of the States of this nation, at the time the constitution was adopted?

3. Do you not believe, that the constitution created no slavery; and that it is not to be held as even recognizing slavery, provided there was, at the time of its adoption, no legal slavery in any of the States?

4. Do you not believe, that had the American people adhered to the letter and spirit of the constitution, chattel slavery would ere this, have ceased to exist in the nation?

You will of course, be constrained to answer all these questions in the affirmative. And I wish that, when you shall have answered them, you would also answer one more — and that is the question whether, since you are hotly eager for the overthrow of all civil government (they are not governments whose laws, if laws they may be called, are without the sanctions of force) you ought not to guard yourself most carefully from seeking unjust occasions against them, and from satisfying your hatred of them, at the expense of candor and truth? An atheist at heart is not unfrequently known to publish his grief over what he (afflicted soul!) is pained to be obliged to admit are blemishes upon the Bible. His words are, as if this blessed book were inexpressibly dear to him. Nevertheless, his inward and deep desire is, that with or without the blemishes he imputes to it, the Bible may perish. Our Non-resistants throw themselves into an agony before the public eye, on account of the pro-slavery which they allege taints the constitution. But, aside and in their confidential circles, their language is: “Be the constitution pro-slavery or anti-slavery, let it perish.” Were the constitution unexceptionable to you on the score of slavery, you would, being a Non-resistant, still hate it with unappeasable hatred. Now I put it to you, my dear sir, whether the Non-resistants, when they ask us to listen to their disinterested arguments against the anti-slavery character of the constitution, do not show themselves to be somewhat brazen-faced! I say naught against your Non-resistance. That I am not a Nonresistant myself — that I still linger around the bloody and life-taking doctrines in which I was educated — is perhaps, only because I have less humanity and piety than yourself. Often have I tried to throw off this part of my education; and that the Bible would not let me, was, perhaps, only my foolish and wicked fancy.

You ask me to join you in abandoning the constitution. My whole heart — my whole sense of duty to God and man — forbids my doing so. In my own judgment of the case, I could not do so without being guilty of the most cowardly and cruel treachery toward my enslaved countrymen. The constitution has put weapons into the hands of the American people entirely sufficient for slaying the monster within whose bloody and crushing grasp are the three millions of American slaves. I have not failed to calculate the toil and selfdenial and peril of using those weapons manfully and bravely — and yet for one, I have determined, God helping me, thus to use them — and not, self-indulgently and basely, to cast them away. If the people of the north should refuse to avail themselves of their constitutional power to effectuate the overthrow of American slavery, on them must rest the guilty responsibility, and not in that power — for it is ample. To give up the constitution is to give up the slave. His hope of a peaceful deliverance is, under God, in the application of the anti-slavery principles of the constitution.

No — I cannot join you in abandoning the constitution and overthrowing the government. I cannot join you, notwithstanding you tell me that to do so is " the only political action in which a man of honor and self-respect can engage in this country." Your telling me so is but another proof of your intolerance and insolence—but another proof of the unhappy change wrought in your temper and manners by the associations and pursuits of your latter years. Your telling me so carries no conviction to my mind of the truth of what you tell me. It is a mere assertion;—and has surely, none the more likeness to an argument by reason of the exceedingly offensive terms in which it is couched.

Since I began this letter, I have received one from a couple of colored men of the city of Alexandria. Never did I read a more eloquent, or heart-melting letter. You remember that Congress, at its last session, left it to the vote of the whites in that part of the District of Columbia south of the Potomac, whether that part of the District should be set back to Virginia, and colored people be subjected to the murderous and diabolical laws which that State has enacted against colored people, the free as well as the bond. The letter which I have received, describes the feelings of our poor colored brethren, as they saw themselves passing from under the laws of the nation into the bloody grasp of the laws of a slave State. I will give you an extract:

“I know that, could you but see the poor colored people of this city, who are the poorest of God's poor, your benevolent heart would melt at such an exhibition. Fancy, but for a moment, you could have seen them on the day of election, when the act of Congress, retroceding them to Virginia, should be rejected or confirmed. Whilst the citizens of this city and county were voting, God's humble poor were standing in rows, on either side of the Court House, and, as the votes were announced every quarter of an hour, the suppressed wailings and lamentations of the people of color were constantly ascending to God for help and succor, in this the hour of their need. And whilst their cries and lamentations were going up to the Lord of Sabaoth, the curses and shouts of the people, and the sounds of the wide-mouthed artillery, which made both the heavens and the earth shake, admonished us that on the side of the oppressor there was great power. Oh sir, there never was such a time here before! We have been permitted heretofore to meet together in God's sanctuary, which we have erected for the purpose of religious worship, but whether we shall have this privilege when the Virginia laws are extended over us, we know not. We expect that our schools will all be broken up, and our privileges, which we have enjoyed for so many years, will all be taken away. The laws of Virginia can hardly be borne by those colored people that have been brought up in a state of ignorance and the deepest subjection: but oh sir how is it with us, who have enjoyed comparative liberty? We trust that we have the sympathies of the good and the virtuous. We know that we have yours and your associates in benevolence and love. Dear friend, can you and yours extend to our poor a helping hand, in this the time of our need? Remember, as soon as the legislature of Virginia meets, which is in December, they will extend their laws over us: and in the spring forty or fifty colored families would be glad to leave for some free State, where they can educate their children, and worship God without molestation. But, dear sir, whither shall we go? Say, Christian brother, and witness heaven and earth, whither shall we go? Do we hear a voice from you saying: ‘Come here?’ Or, are we mistaken? Say, brother, say, are we not greater objects of pity than our more highly favored and fortunate brethren of the North—(Heaven bless and preserve them!”)

If such, my friend, is the woe, when but a few hundred colored persons (and part of them free) find themselves deserted by the National Power, what will it not be, when, in the bosoms of three millions of slaves, all hope of the interposition of that Power shall die? That Power I would labor to turn into the channel of deliverance to these millions. That Power you would destroy. Alas, were it this day destroyed, what a long, black night would settle down upon those millions! Vengeance might, indeed, succeed to despair; and its superhuman arm deliver the enslaved. But, such a deliverance would be through blood, reaching, in Apocalyptic language, “even to the horses’ bridles:” and to such a deliverance neither you nor I would knowingly contribute.

But I am extending my letter to double the length I intended to give it—and must stop.

With great regard, your friend,

Gerrit Smith.

SOURCES: Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith: A Biography, p. 201-8

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, June 1859

Worcester, June, 1859

I got home from Pennsylvania on Friday morning. Whittier was in the same region a month before me and he said, “God might have made a more beautiful region than Chester County — but he never did.” A beautiful rolling country, luxuriant as Kansas and highly cultivated as Brookline; horses and cattle pasturing in rich clover fields; hedges of hawthorn; groves of oak, walnut, pine, and vast columnar tulip trees towering up to heaven and holding out their innumerable cups of nectar to the gods above the clouds; picturesque great houses of brick and stone, gabled and irregular, overgrown with honeysuckle and wistaria, and such a race of men and women as the “Quaker settlement” in “Uncle Tom” portrays. All farming country; no towns nearer the meeting-house than Westchester, nine miles off, and Wilmington (Delaware) twelve. Only little old taverns here and there, known through all the country as “The Red Lion,” “The Anvil,” and “The Hammer and Trowel.” Only three houses in sight from the meeting-house and twenty-five hundred vehicles collected round it on Sunday, with probably seven thousand people on the ground.

Almost all the people in the region were Quakers, and being dissatisfied with the conservative position held by that body on slavery and other matters, they have gradually come out from among them and formed a Yearly Meeting of Progressive Friends which retains little of the externals of Quakerism and all its spirit and life. The young people have abandoned the Quaker dress, as indeed they have done everywhere, but retain all the simplicity, kindness, and uprightness. So noble a people in body and mind, I never saw before. I never was in the presence of so many healthy-looking women, or so many good faces of either sex. Their mode of living is Virginian in its open-house hospitality; they say incidentally, “we happened to have thirty-five people in the house last night.” . . . I stayed at three different houses during my four days’ visit and might have stayed at thirty. I passed from house to house as through a series of triumphal arches and yet not from any merit supposed in myself, but simply because, as Conway wrote to them in a letter, “the earnest man is a king at Longwood; he finds friends and sumptuous entertainment wherever he turns. To say that they make one at home is nothing; one fears forgetfulness of all other homes.”

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Do not imagine that these people are ignorant or recluse; they have much intercourse with people, especially with Philadelphia; the young people are well educated, and all take the “Atlantic.” One feels in cultivated society. Aunt Nancy will like to hear that Bayard Taylor originated there and is now building a house there; I saw his father's house; also that of John Agnew, where his beautiful bride lived and died. I saw John Agnew himself, a noble-looking old man, erect as an arrow. I saw the lovely Mary's daguerreotype, and her grave. They all speak well of B. T. and praise his simplicity, modesty, and love of home; I never had so pleasant an impression of him, and if you will read his spirited poem of the tulip tree you can imagine a Chester County for a background.

The little meeting-house was crowded — seven hundred or so; the rest of the Sunday crowd was collected outside and there was speaking in several places. I spoke on the steps. Other days the church held them all. There were morning and afternoon sessions, and at noon we picnicked under the trees every day. They discussed everything — Superstition, Slavery, Spiritualism, War, Marriage, Prisons, Property, etc. — each in turn, and uniting in little “testimonies” on them all, which will be printed. There were some other speakers from abroad beside myself, but none of much note. No long speeches and great latitude of remark, among the audience, commenting or rebuking in the friendliest way. “Friend, will thee speak a little louder? What thee says may be of no great importance, but we would like to judge for ourselves.” Or sometimes to the audience: “Have patience, friends, this old man (the speaker) is very conscientious.” Sometimes stray people, considerably demented, would stray in and speak; one erect old man, oddly dressed, who began and said, “My mother was a woman”: and then a long pause. It seemed a safe basis for argument. Of course, they all knew each other and called by their first names. One old oddity seemed to devote himself to keeping down the other people's excesses, and after two persons (strangers) had yielded to too much pathos in their own remarks, he mildly suggested that if the friends generally would get a good chest and each speaker henceforth lock up his emotions in it and lose the key, it would be a decided gain! There was one scene, quite pathetic, where one of the leading men announced that after great struggles he had given up tobacco — they rejoiced over him as a brand from the burning; it was most touching, the heartfelt gratitude which his wife expressed.

There was one park not far from the meeting-house which I have never seen equalled; the most English-looking place I ever saw — two avenues of superb pines and larches, leading down to a lake with other colonnades of deciduous trees at right angles. The house to which it belonged was buried in shrubs and bushes and surrounded by quaint outbuildings. At Hannah Cox's house, the most picturesque at which I stayed, there was a large wax plant in a pot, trained over much of the side of the house: this is seven years old and is taken in every fall and trained over the side of the room; and the thick leaves serve as registers of visitors' names, which have been scratched on them with a pin; some were dated 1851; I marked mine on two, lest one should fall. . . . Every time it is changed it takes five persons three hours to train it.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

I took tea one evening at the house of some singular Quaker saints . . . with a capacity for sudden outpourings of the Spirit in public meetings. ... In the old square house General Washington had been quartered and the neat old Quaker mother well remembered when the Hessian prisoners were marched through the city. The two sisters always talked together, as is usual in such cases, and when I walked them to the evening meeting, one on each arm, the eldest was telling a long story of her persecutions among the Orthodox Friends, and whenever the sister interrupted, the eldest would unhook her own arm from mine, for the purpose (as I at last discovered) of poking her sister's elbow and thus admonishing to silence. It was done so promptly and invariably that I was satisfied that it was the established habit of the family.

SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 72-77

John Greenleaf Whittier to Julia Ward Howe, December 29, 1853

Amesbury, 29th, 12 mo. 53.

My Dear Fr'd,—

A thousand thanks for thy volume! I rec'd it some days ago, but was too ill to read it. I glanced at “Rome,” “Newport and Rome,” and they excited me like a war-trumpet. To-day, with the wild storm drifting without, my sister and I have been busy with thy book, and basking in the warm atmosphere of its flowers of passion. It is a great book — it has placed thee at the head of us all. I like its noble aims, its scorn and hate of priestcraft and Slavery. It speaks out bravely, beautifully all I have felt, but could not express, when contemplating the condition of Europe. God bless thee for it!

I owe an apology to Dr. Howe, if not to thyself, for putting into verse¹ an incident of his early life which a friend related to me. When I saw his name connected with it, in some of the papers that copied it, I felt fearful that I had wounded, perhaps, the feelings of one I love and honor beyond almost any other man, by the liberty I have taken. I can only say I could not well help it — a sort of necessity was before me, to say what I did.

I wish I could tell thee how glad thy volume has made me. I have marked it all over with notes of admiration. I dare say it has faults enough, but thee need not fear on that account. It has beauty enough to save thy “slender neck” from the axe of the critical headsman. The veriest “de’il”— as Burns says — “wad look into thy face and swear he could na wrang thee.”

With love to the Doctor and thy lovely little folk,

I am

Very sincerely thy friend,

John G. Whittier.

_______________

¹ “The Hero.” See Whittier’s Poems.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards & Maud Howe Elliott, Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, Large-Paper Edition, Volume 1, p. 138-9

Salmon P. Chase* to John Greenleaf Whittier, November 23, 1860

Columbus, Nov. 23, 1860.

My Dear Friend:

I missed no gloves, but presume those left at friend Sparhawk's were mine. I am gratified that you made them useful to the cause and to yourself.

We have indeed great reason to rejoice; for the power of the Slave Interest is certainly broken. What use will be made of the victory, does not so clearly appear. Some indications lead me to apprehend that the wisest and best use will not be made. Great efforts will doubtless be put forth to degrade Republicanism to the Compromise level of 1850.

There are also some serious dangers on the disunion side. I have always regarded the Slavery question as the crucial test of our institutions; and it has been my hope and prayer that a peaceful settlement of this question on the basis, first, of denationalization, and then final enfranchisement through voluntary State action, would establish beyond all dispute the superiority of free institutions, and the capacity of a free Christian people to deal with every evil and peril lying in the path of its progress.

To this end, all needless irritation should be carefully avoided, and much forbearance exercised. The citizens of the Free States have now to suffer injuries, when travelling or temporarily sojourning in Slave States, which, under ordinary circumstances and upon common principles, would, as between independent sovereignties, justify extreme measures. If extreme measures are not resorted to, it is because the people of the Free States love the Union and prefer to forbear. And this is right.

On the other hand, however, the Slave States have, regarding matters from their standpoint, some just causes of complaint. The slaveholders undoubtedly think that they have a right to take their slaves, as property, into the territories and be protected in holding them by Federal power, and nearly all jurists and statesmen, North and South, are agreed that the Fugitive Servant Clause of the Constitution entitles them to have their fugitive slaves delivered up on claim. The Republicans insist, however, that the first demand is not well founded in the Constitution, while some propose what they call a reasonable Fugitive Act in satisfaction of the second, and others, still, refuse to have anything to do with the returning of fugitives, Constitution or no Constitution.

Now two facts seem clear to me; first, that the Constitution was intended to create, and fairly construed, does create an obligation, so far as human compacts can, to surrender fugitives from service; and secondly, that in the progress of civilization and Christian humanity it has become impossible that this obligation shall be fulfilled. With my sentiments and convictions, I could no more participate in the seizure and surrender to slavery of a human being, than I could in cannibalism. Still there stands the compact: and there in the Slave States are fellow citizens, who verily believe otherwise than I do, and who insist on its fulfilment and complain of bad faith in its nonfulfilment: and in a matter of compact I am not at liberty to substitute my convictions for theirs.

What then to do? Just here it seems to me that the principle of compensation may be admitted. We may say, true there is the compact — true, we of the Free States cannot execute it — but we will prove to you that we will act in good faith by redeeming ourselves through compensation from an obligation which our consciences do not permit us to fulfil. Mr. Rhett of S. C. once very manfully denounced the Fugitive Act as unconstitutional, but still insisted on the Constitutional obligation which he summed up in these words "Surrender or Pay." Now, if we say we cannot surrender, but we will pay, shall we not command the highest respect for our principles, and do a great deal towards securing the final peaceful and glorious result which we all so much desire?

There would be some difficulties of detail, if the principle were adopted; but none insuperable.

There is still another plan of adjustment which might be adopted, though I fear that, in the Slave States, and perhaps in the Free States, it would meet with greater objection. It would consist in amendments of the Constitution by which the Slave States would give up the Fugitive Slave Clause altogether, and the Free States would agree to a representation in Congress of the whole population, abrogating the three fifths rule. One advantage of this would be that the Constitution would be freed from all discriminations between persons, and would contain nothing which could, by any implication, be tortured into a recognition of Slavery. Will you think over these matters carefully and give me your ideas upon them?

I have written in much haste, but I think you will understand me. What I have written is too crudely expressed for any but friendly eyes; and I hope that you will let nobody see this letter, except if you think fit, our friend Sparhawk and your sister.

Affectionately and faithfully yours,

S. P. Chase.

John G. Whittibr

_______________

* Of Chase Whittier wrote in 1873 (Prose Works, ii, 278): "The grave has just closed over all that was mortal of Salmon P. Chase, the kingliest of men, a statesman second to no other in our history, too great and pure for the Presidency, yet leaving behind him a record which any incumbent of that station might envy."

The letter is marked “Private and Confidential,” but the occasion for such ceased long ago. It illustrates the difficult situation that had to be faced after the election of Lincoln.

SOURCE: John Albree, Editor, Whittier Correspondence from the Oak Knoll Collections, 1830-1892, p. 134-9