Читать книгу Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (Vol.1&2) - Harriet Beecher Stowe - Страница 17

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The Rev. John Angell James said, "I will only for one moment revert to the resolution.⁵ It does equal honor to the head, and the heart, and the pen of the man who drew it. Beautiful in language, Christian in spirit, noble and generous in design, it is just such a resolution as I shall be glad to see emanate from the Congregational body, and find its way across the Atlantic to America. Sir, we speak most powerfully, when, though we speak firmly, we speak in kindness; and there is nothing in that resolution that can, by possibility, offend the most fastidious taste of any individual present, or any individual in the world, who takes the same views of the evil of slavery, in itself, as we do. [Hear, hear!] I shall not trespass long upon the attention of this audience, for we are all impatient to hear Professor Stowe speak in his own name, and in the name of that distinguished lady whom it is his honor and his happiness to call his wife. [Loud cheers.] His station and his acquirements, his usefulness in America, his connection with our body, his representation of the Pilgrim Fathers who bore the light of Christianity to his own country, all make him welcome here. [Cheers.] But he will not be surprised if it is not on his own account merely that we give him welcome, but also on account of that distinguished woman to whom so marked an allusion has already been made. To her, I am sure, we shall tender no praise, except the praise that comes to her from a higher source than ours; from One who has, by the testimony of her own conscience, echoing the voice from above, said to her, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.' Long, sir, may it be before the completion of the sentence; before the welcome shall be given to her, when she shall hear him say, 'Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.' [Loud cheers.] But, though we praise her not, or praise with chastened language, we would say, Madam, we do thank you from the bottom of our hearts, [Hear, hear! and immense cheering,] for rising up to vindicate our outraged humanity; for rising up to expound the principles of our still nobler Christianity. For my own part, it is not merely as an exposition of the evils of slavery that makes me hail that wondrous volume to our country and to the world; but it is the living exposition of the principles of the gospel that it contains, and which will expound those principles to many an individual who would not hear them from our lips, nor read them from our pens. I maintain, that Uncle Tom is one of the most beautiful imbodiments of the Christian religion that was ever presented in this world. [Loud cheers.] And it is that which makes me take such delight in it. I rejoice that she killed him. [Laughter and cheers.] He must die under the slave lash—he must die, the martyr of slavery, and receive the crown of martyrdom from both worlds for his testimony to the truth. [Turning to Mrs. Stowe, Mr. James continued:] May the Lord God reward you for what you have done; we cannot, madam—we cannot do it. [Cheers.] We rejoice in the perfect assurance, in the full confidence, that the arrow which is to pierce the system of slavery to the heart has been shot, and shot by a female hand. Right home to the mark it will go. [Cheers.] It is true, the monster may groan and struggle for a long while yet; but die it will; die it must—under the potency of that book. [Loud cheers.] It never can recover. It will be your satisfaction, perhaps, in this world, madam, to see the reward of your labors. Heaven grant that your life may be prolonged, until such time as you see the reward of your labors in the striking off of the last fetter of the last slave that still pollutes the soil of your beloved country. [Cheers.] For beloved it is; and I should do dishonor to your patriotism if I did not say it—beloved it is; and you are prepared to echo the sentiments, by changing the terms, which we often hear in old England, and say,—

'America! with all thy faults I love thee still!'

But still more intense will be my affection, and pure and devoted the ardor of my patriotism, when this greatest of all thine ills, this darkest of the blots upon thine escutcheon, shall be wiped out forever." [Loud applause.]

The Rev. Professor Stowe rose amid loud, and repeated cheers, and said, "It is extremely painful for me to speak on the subject of American slavery, and especially out of the borders of my own country. [Hear, hear!] I hardly know whether painful or pleasurable emotions predominate, when I look upon the audience to which I speak. I feel a very near affinity to the Congregationalists of England, and especially to the Congregationalists of London. [Cheers.] My ancestors were residents of London; at least, from the time of Edward III.; they lived in Cornhill and Leadenhall Street, and their bones lie buried in the old church of St. Andrew Under-Shaft; and, in the year 1632, on account of their nonconformity, they were obliged to seek refuge in the State of Massachusetts; and I have always felt a love and a veneration for the Congregational churches of England, more than for any other churches in any foreign land. [Cheers.] I can only hope, that my conduct, as a religious man and a minister of Christ, may not bring discredit upon my ancestors, and upon the honorable origin which I claim. [Hear! and cheers.] I wish to say, in the first place, that in the United States the Congregational churches, as a body, are free from slavery. [Cheers.] I do not think that there is a Congregational church in the United States in which a member could openly hold a slave without subjecting himself to discipline.⁶ True, I have met with churches very deficient in their duty on this subject, and I am afraid there are members of Congregational churches who hold slaves secretly as security for debt in the Southern States. At the last great Congregational Convention, held in the city of Albany, the churches took a step on the subject of slavery much in advance of any other great ecclesiastical body in the country. I hope it is but the beginning of a series of measures that will eventuate in the separation of this body from all connection with slavery. [Hear, hear!] I am extensively acquainted with the United States; I have lived in different sections of them; I am familiar with people of all classes, and it is my solemn conviction, that nine tenths of the people feel on the subject of slavery as you do;⁷ [cheers;] perhaps not so intensely, for familiarity with wrong deadens the conscience; but their convictions are altogether as yours are; and in the slaveholding states, and among slaveholders themselves, conscience is against the system. [Cheers.] There is no legislative control of the subject of slavery, except by slaveholding legislators themselves. Congress has no right to do any thing in the premises. They violated the constitution, as I believe, in passing the Fugitive Slave Act. [Cheers.] I do not believe they had any right to pass it. [Hear, hear!] I stand here not as the representative of any body whatever. I only represent myself, and give you my individual convictions, that have been produced by a long and painful connection with the subject. [Hear, hear!] As to the resolution, I approve it entirely. Its sentiment and its spirit are my own. [Cheers.] At the close of the revolutionary war, which separated the colonies from the mother country, every state of the Union was a slaveholding state; every colony was a slaveholding colony; and now we have seventeen free states. [Cheers.] Slavery has been abolished in one half of the original colonies, and it was declared that there should be neither slavery nor the slave trade in any territory north and west of the Ohio River; so that all that part is entirely free from actual active participation in this curse, laying open a free territory that, I think, must be ten times larger in extent than Great Britain. [Loud cheers.] The State of Massachusetts was the first in which slavery ceased. How did it cease? By an enactment of the legislature? Not at all. They did not feel there was any necessity for such an enactment. The Bill of Rights declared, that all men were born free, and that they had an equal right to the pursuit of happiness and the acquisition of property. In contradiction to that, there were slaves in every part of Massachusetts; and some philanthropic individual advised a slave to bring into court an action for wages against his master during all his time of servitude. The action was brought, and the court decided that the negro was entitled to wages during the whole period. [Cheers.] That put an end to slavery in Massachusetts, and that decision ought to have put an end to slavery in all states of the Union, because the law applied to all. They abolished slavery in all the Northern States—in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and Rhode Island; and it was expected that the whole of the states would follow the example. When I was a child, I never heard a lisp in defence of slavery. [Hear, hear, hear!] Every body condemned it; all looked upon it as a great curse, and all regarded it as a temporary evil, which would soon melt away before the advancing light of truth. [Hear, hear!] But still there was great injustice done to those who had been slaves. Every body regarded the colored race as a degraded race; they were looked upon as inferior; they were not upon terms of social equality. The only thing approaching it was, that the colored children attended the schools with the white children, and took their places on the same forms; but in all other respects they were excluded from the common advantages and privileges of society. In the places of worship they were seated by themselves; and that difference always existed till these discussions came up, and they began to feel mortified at their situation; and hence, wherever they could, they had worship by themselves, and began to build places of worship for themselves; and now you will scarcely find a colored person occupying a seat in our places of worship. This stain still remains, and it is but a type of the feeling that has been generated by slavery. This ought to be known and understood, and this is just one of the out-croppings of that inward feeling that still is doing great injustice to the colored race; but there are symptoms of even that giving way.

"I suppose you all remember Dr. Pennington—[cheers]—a colored minister of great talent and excellence—[Hear, hear!]—though born a slave, and for many years was a fugitive slave. [Hear, hear.] Dr. Pennington is a member of the presbytery of New York; and within the last six months he has been chosen moderator of that presbytery. [Loud cheers.] He has presided in that capacity at the ordination of a minister to one of the most respectable churches of that city. So far so good—we rejoice in it, and we hope that the same sense of justice which has brought about that change, so that a colored man can be moderator of a Presbytery in the city of New York, will go on, till full justice is done to these people, and until the grievous wrongs to which they have been subjected will be entirely done away. [Cheers.] But still, what is the aspect which the great American nation now presents to the Christian world? Most sorry am I to say it; but it is just this—a Christian republic upholding slavery—the only great nation on earth that does uphold it—a great Christian republic, which, so far as the white people are concerned, is the fairest and most prosperous nation on earth—that great Christian republic using all the power of its government to secure and to shield this horrible institution of negro slavery from aggression; and there is no subject on which the government is so sensitive—there is no institution which it manifests such a determination to uphold. [Hear, hear!] And then the most melancholy fact of all is, that the entire Christian church in that republic, with few exceptions, are silent, or are apologists for this great wrong. [Hear, hear!] It makes my heart bleed to think of it; and there are many praying and weeping in secret places over this curse, whose voices are not heard. There is such a pressure on the subject, it is so mixed up with other things, that many sigh over it who know not what to say or what to do in reference to it. And what kind of slavery is it? Is it like the servitude under the Mosaic law, which is brought forward to defend it? Nothing like it. Let me read you a little extract from a correspondent of a New York paper, writing from Paris. I will read it, because it is so graphic, and because I wish to show from what sources you may best ascertain the real nature of American slavery. The commercial newspapers, published by slaveholders, in slaveholding states, will give you a far more graphic idea of what slavery actually is, than you have from Uncle Tom's Cabin; for there the most horrible features are softened. This writer says, 'And now a word on American representatives abroad. I have already made my complaint of the troubles brought on Americans here by that "incendiary" book of Mrs. Stowe's, especially of the difficulty we have in making the French understand our institutions. But there was one partially satisfactory way of answering their questions, by saying that Uncle Tom's Cabin was a romance. And this would have served the purpose pretty well, and spared our blushes for the model republic, if the slaveholders themselves would only withhold their testimony to the truth of what we were willing to let pass as fiction. But they are worse than Mrs. Stowe herself, and their writings are getting to be quoted here quite extensively. The Moniteur of to-day, and another widely-circulated journal that lies on my table, both contain extracts from those extremely incendiary periodicals, The National Intelligencer, of February 11, and The N.O. Picayune, of February 17. The first gives an auctioneer's advertisement of the sale of "a negro boy of eighteen years, a negro girl aged sixteen, three horses, saddles, bridles, wheelbarrows," &c. Then follows an account of the sale, which reads very much like the description, in the dramatic feuilletons here, of a famous scene in the Case de l'Oncle Tom, as played at the Ambigu Comique. The second extract is the advertisement of "our esteemed fellow-citizen, Mr. M.C.G.," who presents his "respects to the inhabitants of O. and the neighbouring parishes," and "informs them that he keeps a fine pack of dogs trained to catch negroes," &c. It is painful to think that there are men in our country who will write, and that there are others found to publish, such tales as these about our peculiar institution. I put it to Mr. G., if he thinks it is patriotic. As a "fellow-citizen," and in his private relations, G. may be an estimable man, for aught I know, a Christian and a scholar, and an ornament to the social circles of O. and the neighboring parishes. But as an author, G. becomes public property, and a fair theme for criticism; and in that capacity, I say G. is publishing the shame of his country. I call him G., without the prefatory Mister, not from any personal disrespect, much as I am grieved at his course as a writer, but because he is now breveted for immortality, and goes down to posterity, like other immortals, without titular prefix.' [Cheers.] Now, here is where you get the true features of slavery. What is the reason that the churches, as a general thing, are silent—that some of them are apologists, and that some, in the extreme Southern States, actually defend slavery, and say it is a good institution, and sanctioned by Scripture? It is simply this—the overwhelming power of the slave system; and whence comes that overwhelming power? It comes from its great influence in the commercial world. [Hear!] Until the time that cotton became so extensively an article of export, there was not a word said in defence of slavery, as far as I know, in the United States. In 1818, the Presbyterian General Assembly passed resolutions unanimously on the subject of slavery, to which this resolution is mildness itself; and not a man could be found to say one word against it. But cotton became a most valuable article of export. In one form and another, it became intimately associated with the commercial affairs of the whole country. The northern manufacturers were intimately connected with this cotton trade, and more than two thirds raised in the United States has been sold in Great Britain; and it is this cotton trade that supports the whole system. That you may rely upon. The sugar and rice, so far as the United States are concerned, are but small interests. The system is supported by this cotton trade, and within two days I have seen an article written with vigor in the Charleston Mercury, a southern paper of great influence, saying, that the slaveholders are becoming isolated, by the force of public opinion, from the rest of the world. They are beginning to be regarded as inhuman tyrants, and the slaves the victims of their cruelty; but, says the writer, just so long as you take our cotton, we shall have our slaves. Now, you are as really involved in this matter as we are—[Hear, hear!]—and if you have no other right to speak on the subject, you have a right to speak from being yourselves very active participators in the wrong. You have a great deal of feeling on the subject, honorable and generous feeling, I know—an earnest, philanthropic, Christian feeling; but if you have nothing to do, that feeling will all evaporate, and leave an apathy behind. Now, here is something to be done. It may be a small beginning, but, as you go forward, Providence will develop other plans, and the more you do, the further you will see. I am happy to know that a beginning has been made. There are indications that a way has been so opened in providence that this exigency can be met. Within the last few years, the Chinese have begun to emigrate to the western parts of the United States. They will maintain themselves on small wages; and wherever they come into actual competition with slave labor, it cannot compete with them. Very many of the slaveholders have spoken of this as a very remarkable indication. If slavery had been confined to the original slave states, as it was intended, slavery could not have lived. It was the intention that it should never go beyond those boundaries. Had this been the case, it would increase the number of slaves so much that they would have been valueless as articles of property. I must say this for America, that the slaves increase in the slave states faster than the white people; and it shows that their physical condition is better than was that of the slaves at the West Indies, or in Cuba, where the number actually diminished. We must have more slave territories to make our slaves valuable, and there was the origin of that iniquitous Mexican war, whereby was added the vast territory of Texas; and then it was the intention to make California a slave state; but, I am happy to say, it has been received into the Union as a free state, and God grant it may continue so. [Hear, hear!] What has been the effect of this expansion of slave territory? It has doubled the value of slaves. Since I can remember, a strong slave man would sell for about four hundred or six hundred dollars—that is, about one hundred pounds; but now, during the present season, I have known instances in which a slave man has been sold for two hundred and thirty pounds. There are more slaves raised in Virginia and Maryland than they can use in those states in labor, and, therefore, they sell them at one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred pounds, as the case may be, for cash. All that Mrs. Tyler intimates in that letter about slavery in America, and the impression it is calculated and intended to convey, that they treat their slaves so well, and do not separate their families, and so forth, is all mere humbug. [Laughter and cheers.] It is well known that Virginia has more profit from selling negroes than from any other source. The great sources of profit are tobacco and negroes, and they derive more from the sale of negroes than tobacco. You see the temptation this gives to avarice. Suppose there is a man with no property, except fifteen or twenty negro men, whom he can sell, each one for two hundred pounds, cash; and he has as many negro women, whom he can sell for one hundred and fifty pounds, cash, and the children for one hundred pounds each: here is a temptation to avarice; and it is calculated to silence the voice of conscience; and it is the expansion of the slave territory, and the immense mercantile value of the cotton, that has brought so powerful an influence to bear on the United States in favor of slavery. [Hear, hear.] Now, as to free labor coming into competition with slave labor: You will see, that when the price of slaves is so enormous, it requires an immense outlay to stock a plantation. A good plantation would take two hundred, or three hundred hands. Now, say for every hand employed on this plantation, the man must pay on an average two hundred pounds, which is not exorbitant at the present time. If he has to pay at this rate, what an immense outlay of capital to begin with, and how great the interest on that sum continually accumulating! And then there is the constant exposure to loss. These plantation negroes are very careless of life, and often cholera gets among them, and sweeps off twenty-five or thirty in a few days; and then there is the underground railroad, and, with all the precautions that can be taken, it continues to work. And now you see what an immense risk, and exposure to loss, and a vast outlay of capital, there is in connection with this system. But, if a man takes a cotton farm, and can employ Chinese laborers, he can get them for one or two shillings a day, and they will do the work as well, if not better than negroes, and there is no outlay or risk. [Hear, hear!]. If good cotton fields can be obtained, as they may in time, here is an opening which will tend to weaken the slave system. If Christians will investigate this subject, and if philanthropists generally will pursue these inquiries in an honest spirit, it is not long before we shall see a movement throughout the civilized world, and the upholders of slavery will feel, where they feel most acutely—in their pockets. Until something of this kind is done, I despair of accomplishing any great amount of good by simple appeals to the conscience and right principle. There are a few who will listen to conscience and a sense of right, but there are unhappily only a few. I suppose, though you have good Christians here, you have many who will put their consciences in their pockets. [Hear, hear!] I have known cases of this kind. There was a young lady in the State of Virginia who was left an orphan, and she had no property except four negro slaves, who were of great commercial value. She felt that slavery was wrong, and she could not hold them. She gave them their freedom—[cheers]—and supported herself by teaching a small school. [Cheers.] Now, notwithstanding all the unfavorable things we see—notwithstanding the dark cloud that hangs over the country, there are hopeful indications that God has not forgotten us, and that he will carry on this work till it is accomplished. [Hear!] But it will be a long while first, I fear; and we must pray, and labor, and persevere; for he that perseveres to the end, and he only, receives the crown. Now, there are very few in the United States who undertake to defend slavery, and say it is right. But the great majority, even of professors of religion, unite to shield it from aggression. 'It is the law of the land,' they say, 'and we must submit to it.' It seems a strange doctrine to come from the lips of the descendants of the Puritans, those who resisted the law of the land because those laws were against their conscience, and finally went over to that new world, in order that they might enjoy the rights of conscience. How would it have been with the primitive church if this doctrine had prevailed? There never would have been any Christian church, for that was against the laws of the land. In regard to the distribution of the Bible, in many states the laws prohibit the teaching of slaves, and the distribution of the Bible is not allowed among them. The American Bible Society does not itself take the responsibility of this. It leaves the whole matter to the local societies in the several states, and it is the local societies that take the responsibility. Well, why should we obey the law of the land in South Carolina on this subject, and disobey the law of the land in Italy? But our missionary societies and Bible societies send Bibles to other parts of the world, and never ask if it is contrary to the law of these lands, and if it is, they push it all the more zealously. They send Bibles to Italy and Spain, and yet the Bible is prohibited by those governments. The American Tract Society and the American Sunday School Union allow none of their issues to utter a syllable against slavery. They expunge even from their European books every passage of this kind, and excuse themselves by the law and the public sentiment. So are the people taught. There has been a great deal said on the subject of influence from abroad; but those who talk in that way interfered with the persecution of the Madiai, and remonstrated with the Tuscan government. We have had large meetings on the subject in New York, and those who refuse the Bible to the slave took part in that meeting, and did not seem to think there was any inconsistency in their conduct.

"The Christian church knows no distinction of nations. In that church there is neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but all are one in Christ; and whatever affects one part of the body affects the other, and the whole Christian church every where is bound to help, and encourage, and rebuke, as the case may require. The Christian church is every where bound to its corresponding branch in every other country; and thus you have, not only a right, but it is your duty, to consider the case of the American slave with just the same interest with which you consider the cause of the native Hindoo, when you send out your missionaries there, or with which you consider Madagascar; and to express yourselves in a Christian spirit, and in a Christian way continually, till you see that your admonitions have had a suitable influence. I do not doubt what you say, that you will receive with great pleasure men who come from the United States to promote the cause of temperance, and you may have the opportunity of showing your sincerity before long; and the manner in which you receive them will have a very important bearing on the subject of slavery. [Cheers.] I have not the least doubt you will hail with joy those who will come across the Atlantic to advance and promote still more earnestly those noble institutions, the ragged schools and the ragged churches. [Cheers.] The men who want to do good at home are the men who do good abroad; and the same spirit of Christian liberality that leads you to feel for the American slave will lead you to care for your own poor, and those in adverse circumstances in your own land, I would ask, Is it possible, then, that admonition and reproof given in a Christian spirit, and by a Christian heart, can fail to produce a right influence on a Christian spirit and a Christian heart? I think the thing is utterly impossible; and that if such admonitions as are contained in the resolution, conceived in such a spirit, and so kindly expressed—if they are not received in a Christian spirit, it is because the Christian spirit has unhappily fled. I can answer for myself, at least, and many of my brethren, that it will be so; and, so far from desiring you to withhold your expressions on account of any bad feeling that they might excite, I wish you to reiterate them, and reiterate them in the same spirit in which they are given in this resolution; for I believe that these expressions of impatience and petulance represent the feelings of very few. Who is it that always speaks first? The angry man, and it comes out at once; but the wise man keeps it in till afterwards; and it will not be long before you will find, that whatever you say in a Christian spirit will be responded to on the other side of the water. Now, I believe our churches have neglected their duty on this subject, and are still neglecting it. Many do not seem to know what their duty is. Yet I believe them to be good, conscientious men, and men who will do their duty when they know what it is. Take, for example, the American Board of Foreign Missions. There are not better men, or more conscientious men, on the face of the earth, or men more sincerely desirous of doing their duty; yet, in some things, I believe they are mistaken. I think it would be better to throw over the very few churches connected with the Board which are slaveholding, than to endeavor to sustain them, and to have all this pressure of responsibility still upon them. But yet they are pursuing the course which they conscientiously think to be right. Christian admonition will not be lost upon them.⁸ I will say the same of the American Home Missionary Society. They have little to do with slavery, as I have already remarked. Many think they ought not to say any thing upon the subject, because they cannot do so without weakening their influence. But then this question comes: If good men do not speak, who will?—[Hear, hear!]—and, as our Savior said in regard to the children that shouted, Hosannah, 'If these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.' It is in consequence of their silence that stones have begun to cry out, and they rebuke the silence and apathy of good men; and this is made an argument against religion, which has had effect with unthinking people; so I think it absolutely necessary that men in the church, on that very ground, should speak out their mind on this great subject at whatever risk—[cheers]—and they must take the consequences. In due time God will prosper the right, and in due time the fetters will fall from every slave, and the black man will have the same privileges as the white. [Applause.]"