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.
_______________
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
