The Anti-Slavery Crusade : Abolition of an American Institution
A Brooklyn Abolitionist Pastor’s revolt against the Fugitive Slave Act of the 1850's
Henry Ward Beecher was an Abolitionist Preacher in Brooklyn, NY during the 1860s. He led all the nation’s Abolitionists in his opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law, and he became one of the most prominent of the directors of the Underground Railroad Company. His congregation were nearly all stockholders of the line, and the church (Plymouth Church) has been called its Grand Central Depot. The deviation from the established rules of Gospel preaching, and the opening of the pulpit to political discussions, caused much excited denunciation in orthodox circles. The pluck of the Plymouth pastor in those times of excitement was unquestions. After Daniel Webster had delivered his famous speech in favor of Mason’s Fugitive Slave Bill, and signified his intention to vote for it, Mr. Beecher, and his pulpit in Plymouth Church, declared that the “Law of God was higher than all other laws, Government or State, constitutional or unconstitutional, and must first be obeyed.” He said from his pulpit:
“ The worst spectacle which this country now presents is not, I think, the governmental or political corruptions, though these are enormous; but it is that of a religious body, like the one in New York, utterly refusing to open its mouth against the blackest iniquity of the age.”
“And for what, in the name of Heaven? What reason do they give for this strange silence? Why, because, if it does speak against sin, it will not be allowed to preach of slavery, what would these preachers of the Gospel do? Keep silence in regard to them all, of course; for , according to their views, only the smaller and least powerful sins can be safely hit. That ponderous body can bombard men bravery for using tobacco, but it can’t saw one word against selling men and women to raise it. It can spend itself and exert its tremendous machinery against the awful sin of the dancing of young men and maidens, but can’t utter a word when maidens are sold to prostitution, and young men are driven off, in chain-gangs, to the rice swamps of Georgia.”
“The use I make of such men, is to point the young men to them and say: ‘These are men whom you must shun to resemble.’ The worst stamp of Phariseeism was not in our Savior’s day. It has, after years of monstrous growth, exhibited itself in the nineteenth century.”
“Our citizens have been lynched for the suspicion of holding free sentiments; letters and papers have been refused a channel in the national mail; it has been freely said, and it was no vain threat, that a tree should be the man’s public podium who dared to own abolitionism in Southern territory; free colored citizens have been kidnapped, carried into hopeless slavery from our midst; our ships and boats could not carry colored cooks, stewards, or sailors, without having their service withheld from them; our whole free colored population are denied the right of travel and residence in slave States, which the Constitution guarantees to all citizens; they are arrested if found, and sold, if proved free, to pay jail fees.”
“I will both shelter them, conceal them, or speed their flight; and while under my shelter, or under my convoy, they shall be to me as my own flesh and blood; and whatever defence I would put forth for my own children, that shall these poor, despised, and persecuted creatures have in my house or upon the road. The man who shall betray a fellow-creature to bondage, who shall obey this law to the peril of his soul, and to the loss of his manhood, were his brother, son, or father, shall never pollute my hand with the grasp of hideous friendship; or cast his swarthy shadow across my threshold! For such service to those whose helplessness and poverty make them peculiarly God’s children, I shall cheerfully take the points and penalties of this Fugitive Slave bill. Bonds and fines shall be honors; imprisonment and suffering will be passports to fame not long to linger!”
