themselves of more enduring fibre than their enslavers." 1 These were the leaders, but with them were associated a host of other men who gave their lives to the cause, some of whom made more impression upon contemporaries than upon posterity; Charles C. Burleigh, for example, celebrated for his apt answers to questions and his objections to razor and shears; John G. Palfrey, of Massachusetts, who inherited fifty slaves, worth about nine thousand dollars, brought them to Massachusetts and set them free; Dr. Charles Follen, exiled from Germany for what would now be called a Nihilist conspiracy, and the one professor of Harvard College who unswervingly gave himself up to anti-slavery;' Theodore Parker, the trenchant Boston minister and protector of fugitives. The cause was cheered and strengthened by the adhesion of several members of the old Boston families, especially Edmund Quincy, who, like Phillips, was roused by the attempt to justify the assassination of Lovejoy. Even Charles Francis Adams, son of the ex-president, wrote at the time: "I wish I could be an entire abolitionist, but it is impossible; my mind will not come down to the point." 4 1 Scudder, Lowell, I., 257. 'Ibid., 249-258. 2 May, Recollections, 397. CHAPTER XIII NON-GARRISONIAN ABOLITION (1831-1860) HE forces which brought abolition to the front were older than Garrison, and would have made themselves felt if he had never lived. In New England and outside arose anti-slavery men like Adams, who never acted with him, and plenty of abolitionists who never accepted allegiance to him; while many of his earlier followers cast off his leadership and pursued ends of which he disapproved. Three groups of non-Garrisonian abolitionists may be distinguished—the New England, the middle state, and the western. In New England one of the great moral forces was Dr. William Ellery Channing, Unitarian minister in Boston and Newport. His sympathy was naturally with the movement, but he disliked Garrison's severity of tone and method, and was unmoved by a personal appeal from Garrison in January, 1834.' The great authority of his pen was more successfully sought by others, and in December, 1835, he published a volume setting forth the 1 Garrisons, Garrison, I., 464. terrible evils of slavery, but suggesting other remedies than immediate emancipation. During the remaining four years of his life Channing continued his argument, quite outside the Garrison movement, and his books furnished an arsenal of material against slavery. The middle states group was strong in New York City and among the Quakers of Pennsylvania,' and the aged Gallatin, throughout his life an opponent of slavery, in 1844 squarely placed himself as an anti-slavery man.2 William Jay, son of the chiefjustice, early joined the movement and wrote effective criticisms of slavery, based on historical data. Horace Greeley, editor of the Tribune, contented himself, during the earlier struggle, with anti-slavery ground. Rev. Samuel J. May, of Syracuse, was a sort of New York Garrison, though less caustic and aggressive. In the middle states group were several wealthy and generous friends of the cause. The brothers Arthur and Lewis Tappan, merchants of New York, for years active colonizationists, in 1833 came over to the abolitionist column, and helped to found a New York society. They supported with timely gifts several struggling newspapers, issued tracts, and attempted to form a colored college. Of similar character was Gerrit Smith, of Peterboro, New York, 1 Child, Hopper, passim. Parton, Greeley, 250. 'Adams, Gallatin, 671. 'Bowen, A. and L. Tappan; L. Tappan, Life of A. Tappan. VOL. XVI.-13 the son of a New York slave-holder and the owner of about seven hundred and fifty thousand acres of land. At first a colonizationist, in 1835 he became an abolitionist, and in course of years gave to the national and New York societies at least fifty thousand dollars in cash, besides presenting forty acres of land to each of three thousand colored men. His money gifts were the smaller part of his interest in the cause: his house was a caravansary for abolitionists and a refuge for fugitives; he was one of the earliest political abolitionists in the country, and aided in the formation of the Liberty party in 1839.1 The third group of abolitionists grew up with little care or knowledge of Garrison. Slavery was a familiar issue in the west, while New England was still inactive, but a new public excitement on the subject was aroused by the debate in Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati in 1832. The president, Dr. Lyman Beecher, was an eastern man, whose daughter Harriet made some observations during her residence which were later incorporated into Uncle Tom's Cabin. The students were partly drawn from the northern and partly from the southern states, including the sons of slave-holders. At the suggestion of Arthur Tappan, one of the founders of the seminary, the students took up colonization and abolition, and eighteen consecutive nights were spent in hot discussion. Theodore F. ' May, Recollections, 167-170, 321-329; Goodell, Slavery and Anti-Slavery, 405, 463; Frothingham, Gerrit Smith. Weld, a student from the east, a disciple of Garrison, much affected the minds of his fellows; and a majority of the students became abolitionists and began to practise their principles by setting up Sunday and day schools for colored children. The trustees were aroused, and voted that there must be no further public discussions, in which Dr. Beecher concurred, whereupon four-fifths of the students withdrew (May, 1833), and fifty-four joined in a public statement that they could not give up their right to inquire into slavery. For some months they set up some sort of institution of their own, listening to lectures by Dr. Gamaliel Bailey. Asa Mahan, then a minister in Cincinnati, resigned from the board of trustees, and, with Rev. John Morgan, who had been a professor in the seminary, piloted the students to Oberlin.1 This secession was practically the beginning of organized abolition in Ohio, and it resulted in the creation of an abolition centre in the west. Philo P. Stewart, manufacturer of an excellent cooking-stove in Albany, and the Rev. John J. Shipherd, a minister in Ohio, in 1833 conceived the idea of a Puritan commonwealth on the frontier. Securing a tract of land at some distance from any other village, they named it Oberlin, for a benevolent pastor in the Vosges Mountains, and in December, 1833, opened 1 Lyman Beecher, Autobiography, II., chap. xxxiv.; Stanton, Random Recollections, 43-48; Birney, Birney, 135-137; Statement of Reasons for Withdrawal from Lane Seminary (pamphlet). |