Some Recollections of Our Antislavery ConflictMay, Samuel J. (Samuel Joseph)
History
Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict
May, Samuel J. (Samuel Joseph)
Antislavery movements -- United States
Not many days elapsed before the responses which it awakened began
to be heard; and they were by no means altogether such as he had
expected. Although he disclaimed the Abolitionists; stated that
he had never attended one of our meetings, nor heard one of our
lecturers; although he made several grave objections to our doctrines
and measures, and unwittingly gave his sanction to several of the
most serious misrepresentations of our sentiments, our objects, and
means of prosecuting them; yet he so utterly repudiated the right of
any man to _property_ in the person of any other man, and gave such
a fearful _exposé_ of the sinfulness of holding slaves and the vices
which infested the communities where human beings were held in such an
unnatural condition, that the Southern aristocracy and their Northern
partisans came soon to regard him as a more dangerous man than even Mr.
Garrison. He was denounced as an enemy of his country, as encouraging
the insurrection of the slaves, and as in effect laboring to do as much
harm as the Abolitionists.
In due time an octavo pamphlet of forty-eight pages was published in
Boston, entitled “Remarks on Dr. Channing’s Slavery.” It was evidently
written by a very able hand, and was attributed to one of the most
prominent lawyers in that city. The writer spoke respectfully of
Dr. Channing, but condemned utterly his doctrines on the subject
of slavery, and found in them all the viciousness of the extremest
abolitionism. The author announced and labored to maintain the
following false propositions: “First. Public sentiment in the free
States in relation to slavery is perfectly sound and _ought not_ to be
altered. Second. Public sentiment in the slaveholding States, whether
right or not, _cannot_ be altered. Third. An attempt to produce any
alteration in the public sentiment of the country will cause great
additional evil,--moral, social, and political.”
Such bald scepticism was not to be tolerated. “A Review of the Remarks”
was soon sent forth. This called out a “Reply to the Review,” and thus
the subject of slavery was fully broached among a class of people who
had given no heed to _The Liberator_ and our antislavery tracts.
In future articles I shall have occasion gratefully to acknowledge the
further services rendered by Dr. Channing to the antislavery cause,
and to show how at last he came nearly to accord in sentiment with the
ultra-Abolitionists.
SLAVERY,--BY WILLIAM E. CHANNING.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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