William Jay and the Constitutional Movement for the Abolition of SlaveryTuckerman, Bayard
History
William Jay and the Constitutional Movement for the Abolition of Slavery
Tuckerman, Bayard
Antislavery movements -- United States; Jay, William, 1789-1858; United States -- Politics and government -- 1815-1861
"Think not that Nebraska is to be the terminus of slaveholding
encroachments. New slave States are from time to time to be carved
out of Mexico. Cuba is to be wrested from Spain and St. Domingo
re-enslaved and annexed. As the field for slave labour widens and
widens, the supply will be found inadequate to the demand. The
discovery will then be made that both religion and policy require
the repeal of the prohibition of the African slave-trade. We shall
be told of the Christian duty of bringing the pagans of Africa to
our own civilized shores and of preparing them for heaven by the
discipline of the whip and the teachings of slave-drivers, while
politicans and political economists will insist on the removal of
the restriction as essential to the development of our national
wealth and enterprise. In vain will Virginia and the other breeding
States strive to retain their present lucrative monopoly of the
human shambles. The cotton and sugar States, together with the newly
acquired slave States, aided by Northern politicians, will establish
free trade in the bodies and souls of men.
"The Southern Church is almost without exception the unblushing
champion of slavery, while the Northern Church, adopting a
time-serving, heartless, and often hypocritical neutrality, and
holding in its fraternal embrace slave-breeders and slave-traders,
has virtually taught that the vilest outrages on both the civil and
religious rights of the black man are perfectly compatible with the
highest sanctity in his white oppressor. Some of our religious
journals are sadly grieved and scandalized by the alleged discovery
that certain opponents of slavery are infidels. For my own part, I
know of no form of infidelity so hideous as that which impiously
claims the authority of Almighty God for abrogating all His laws in
behalf of justice and mercy in reference to our conduct towards
millions of our countrymen not of the same colour as ourselves. This
cutaneous Christianity, so insulting to the Deity, so disastrous to
man, is fast becoming the national religion.
"The present crisis is indeed an awful one. While various causes
have aided in producing it, its immediate origin is to be traced to
the lamentable defection, in 1850, of so many of the rich and
influential from truth and justice, liberty and humanity, under the
fallacious plea of saving the Union. Well may the Free Democracy of
Massachusetts, with their hands and consciences undefiled by
oblations on the altar of the American Moloch, now strive to avert
the calamity impending over the country. May a long-suffering God
bless their efforts and rescue a guilty nation from the punishment
it seems anxious to inflict upon itself."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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