Three Prize Essays on American SlaveryThurston, R. B. (Richard Bowers)
Religion
Three Prize Essays on American Slavery
Thurston, R. B. (Richard Bowers)
Slavery -- United States; Slavery and the church -- United States
1. It is not only our right, but duty, temperately and with Christian
courtesy to continue to discuss this great theme, both orally and with
the pen; and especially to endeavor to bring the truth into contact with
the mind and heart of our southern brethren,--if, peradventure, we may
thus persuade them soon to cease their connection with slavery. Freedom
of discussion is one important safeguard of the public weal; and that
must be regarded as a bad, untenable cause which will not bear the test
of a full and free discussion before the world. Free inquiry, too, has
not only preceded all great reformations, but has been an important
instrument in bringing them about. That great moral change known as the
temperance reformation is but one example among many that might be
adduced. If slavery is ever to be numbered in history among the things
that are past, it will be by having Bible light and truth made to
converge upon it, through the lens of free public discussion. Hence,
believing as we do that American slavery is an enormous evil and a
gigantic wrong,--a thing with which the church should cease to have
connection as speedily as may be,--as Christians we may, we must, employ
our tongues and our pens in behalf of the enslaved, till our world
shall cease to contain such a class of men.
2. We ought so to exercise the right of suffrage as to resist the
extension of slavery beyond its present limits. I say nothing here of
the political question of State rights, or of interfering with slavery
in States where it now exists. The question of authorizing by law the
extension of slavery into new States and Territories, or of admitting
new States with pro-slavery constitutions, is another and very different
thing from that of disturbing the compact in relation to slavery entered
into by the founders of this republic. The concessions in relation to
the slave interest which our fathers made by no means oblige us to make
further concessions, by consenting that slavery shall overstep her
present geographical limits. I know not what others may think; but, for
one, I feel constrained, by a sense of duty to God and my country, so to
vote as to have my votes tell against the spread of slavery. I must
carry my Christian principles of love and humanity to the ballot-box, as
well as elsewhere. Though long identified with one of the political
parties, I have of late felt myself bound, as a voter, to ignore the
ancient party lines, and even to ignore all other questions, compared
with the one great and absorbing one, Shall slavery be allowed to have
more territory, in which to breed and expand itself? In my deliberate
judgment, all Christian patriots should, so far as their votes can
speak, say to the system of bondage existing in our midst, "Hitherto
shalt thou come, but no further, and here shall thy proud waves be
stayed." This becomes now a moral and a religious duty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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