An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism: With reference to the duty of American femalesBeecher, Catharine Esther
Philosophy
An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism: With reference to the duty of American females
Beecher, Catharine Esther
Abolitionists -- United States; Antislavery movements -- United States; Slavery -- United States
Take another case. It was deemed expedient by Abolitionists to establish
an Abolition paper, first in Kentucky, a slave State. It was driven from
that State, either by violence or by threats. It retreated to Ohio, one
of the free States. In selecting a place for its location, it might have
been established in a small place, where the people were of similar
views, or were not exposed to dangerous popular excitements. But
Cincinnati was selected; and when the most intelligent, the most
reasonable, and the most patriotic of the citizens remonstrated,--when
they represented that there were peculiar and unusual liabilities to
popular excitement on this subject,--that the organization and power of
the police made it extremely dangerous to excite a mob, and almost
impossible to control it,--that all the good aimed at could be
accomplished by locating the press in another place, where there were
not such dangerous liabilities,--when they kindly and respectfully urged
these considerations, they were disregarded. I myself was present when a
sincere friend urged upon the one who controlled that paper, the
obligations of good men, not merely to avoid breaking wholesome laws
themselves, but the duty of regarding the liabilities of others to
temptation; and that where Christians could foresee that by placing
certain temptations in the way of their fellow-men, all the
probabilities were, that they would yield, and yet persisted in doing
it, the tempters became partakers in the guilt of those who yielded to
the temptation. But these remonstrances were ineffectual. The paper must
not only be printed and circulated, but it must be stationed where were
the greatest probabilities that measures of illegal violence would
ensue. And when the evil was perpetrated, and a mob destroyed the press,
then those who had urged on these measures of temptation, turned upon
those who had advised and remonstrated, as the guilty authors of the
violence, because, in a season of excitement, the measures adopted to
restrain and control the mob, were not such as were deemed suitable and
right.
Now, in all the above cases, I would by no means justify the wrong or
the injudicious measures that may have been pursued, under this course
of provocation. The greatness of temptation does by no means release men
from obligation; but Christians are bound to remember that it is a
certain consequence of throwing men into strong excitement, that they
will act unwisely and wrong, and that the tempter as well as the tempted
are held responsible, both by God and man. In all these cases, it cannot
but appear that the good aimed at might have been accomplished in a
quiet, peaceable, and christian way, and that this was not the way which
was chosen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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