holders and all, and grant, as we certainly do, that it was
adopted in all honesty and good faith, we shall surely expect
something from it. We should expect forthwith the organising
of a set of common schools for the slave-children; for an
efficient religious ministration; for an entire discontinuance of
trading in Christian slaves; for laws which make the family
relations sacred. Was any such thing done or attempted?
Alas! Two years after this came the admission of Missouri,
and the increase of demand in the Southern slave-market and
the internal slave-trade. Instead of school-teachers, they had
slave-traders; instead of gathering schools, they gathered slave-
coffles; instead of building school-houses, they built slave-pens
and slave-prisons, jails, barracoons, factories, or whatever the
trade pleases to term them; and so went the plan of gradual
emancipation.
In 1834, sixteen years after, a committee of the Synod of
Kentucky, in which State slavery is generally said to exist in
its mildest form, appointed to make a report on the condition
of the slaves, gave the following picture of their condition.
First, as to their spiritual condition, they say:--
After making all reasonable allowances, our coloured population can be con-
sidered, at the most, but semi-heathen.
Brutal stripes, and all the various kinds of personal indignities, are not the only
species of cruelty which slavery licenses. The law does not recognise the family
relations of the slave, and extends to him no protection in the enjoyment of
domestic endearments. The members of a slave-family may be forcibly separated,
so that they shall never more meet until the final judgment. And cupidity often
induces the masters to practise what the law allows. Brothers and sisters, parents
and children, husbands and wives, are torn asunder, and permitted to see each
other no more. These acts are daily occurring in the midst of us. The shrieks
and the agony often witnessed on such occasions proclaim with a trumpet-tongue
the iniquity and cruelty of our system. The cries of these sufferers go up to the
ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. There is not a neighbourhood where these heart-
rending scenes are not displayed. There is not a village or road that does not
behold the sad procession of manacled outcasts, whose chains and mournful coun-
tenances tell that they are exiled by force from all that their hearts hold dear.
Our church, years ago, raised its voice of solemn warning against this flagrant
violation of every principle of mercy, justice, and humanity. Yet we blush to
announce to you and to the world that this warning has been often disregarded,
even by those who hold to our communion. Cases have occurred, in our own de-
nomination, where professors of the religion of mercy have torn the mother from
her children, and sent her into a merciless and returnless exile. Yet acts of dis-
cipline have rarely followed such conduct.
Hon. James G. Birney, for years a resident of Kentucky,
in his pamphlet, amends the word rarely by substituting never.
What could show more plainly the utter inefficiency of the past
act of the Assembly, and the necessity of adopting some
measures more efficient? In 1835, therefore, the subject was
urged upon the General Assembly, intreating them to carry out
the principles and designs they had avowed in 1818.
Mr. Stuart, of Illinois, in a speech he made upon the subject,
said:--
I hope this assembly are prepared to come out fully and declare their senti-
ments, that slaveholding is a most flagrant and heinous sin. Let us not pass it
by in this indirect way, while so many thousands and tens of thousands of our
fellow-creatures are writhing under the lash, often inflicted, too, by ministers and
elders of the Presbyterian Church.
* * * * * * * * *
In this church a man may take a free-born child, force it away from its parents,
to whom God gave it in charge, saying, “Bring it up for me,” and sell it as a
beast or hold it in perpetual bondage, and not only escape corporeal punishment,
but really be esteemed an excellent Christian. Nay, even ministers of the gospel
and doctors of divinity may engage in this unholy traffic, and yet sustain their
* * * * * * * * *
Elders, ministers, and doctors of divinity, are, with both hands, engaged in the
practice.
One would have thought facts like these, stated in a body
of Christians, were enough to wake the dead; but, alas! we
can become accustomed to very awful things. No action was
taken upon these remonstrances, except to refer them to a
committee, to be reported on at the next session, in 1836.
The moderator of the Assembly in 1836 was a slaveholder,
Dr. T. S. Witherspoon, the same who said to the editor of the
Emancipator, “I draw my warrant from the Scriptures of the
Old and New Testament to hold my slaves in bondage. The
principle of holding the heathen in bondage is recognised by
God. When the tardy process of the law is too long in
redressing our grievances, we at the South have adopted the
summary process of Judge Lynch.”
The majority of the committee appointed made a report as
follows:--
Whereas the subject of slavery is inseparably connected with the laws of many
of the States in this Union, with which it is by no means proper for an ecclesiastical
judicature to interfere, and involves many considerations in regard to which great
diversity of opinion and intensity of feeling are known to exist in the churches
represented in this Assembly; and whereas there is great reason to believe that
any action on the part of this Assembly, in reference to this subject, would tend to
distract and divide our churches, and would probably in no wise promote the
benefit of those whose welfare is immediately contemplated in the memorials in
question.
Therefore Resolved,
1. That it is not expedient for the Assembly to take any further order in
relation to this subject.
2. That as the notes which have been expunged from our public formularies,
and which some of the memorials referred to the committee request to have
restored, were introduced irregularly, never had the sanction of the church,
and therefore never possessed any authority, the General Assembly has no power,
nor would they think it expedient, to assign them a place in the authorised
standards of the church.
The minority of the committee, the Rev. Messrs. Dickey and
Beman, reported as follows:--
Resolved,
1. That the buying, selling, or holding a human being as property, is in the
sight of God a heinous sin, and ought to subject the doer of it to the censures of
the church.
2. That it is the duty of every one, and especially of every Christian, who may be
involved in this sin, to free himself from its entanglement without delay.
3. That it is the duty of every one, especially of every Christian, in the meek-
ness and firmness of the Gospel, to plead the cause of the poor and needy, by testi
fy-
ing against the principle and practice of slaveholding, and to use his best endea-
vours to deliver the church of God from the evil, and to bring about the emancipa-
tion of the slaves in these United States, and throughout the world.
The slaveholding delegates, to the number of forty-eight,
met apart, and Resolved--
That if the General Assembly shall undertake to exercise authority on the
subject of slavery, so as to make it an immorality, or shall in any way declare that
Christians are criminal in holding slaves, that a declaration shall be presented by
the Southern delegation declining their jurisdiction in the case, and our determi-
nation not to submit to such decision.
In view of these conflicting reports, the Assembly resolved
as follows:--
Inasmuch as the constitution of the Presbyterian Church, in its preliminary and
fundamental principles, declares that no church judicatories ought to pretend to
make laws to bind the conscience in virtue of their own authority; and as the
urgency of the business of the Assembly, and the shortness of the time during
which they can continue in session, render it impossible to deliberate and decide
judiciously on the subject of slavery in its relation to the church, therefore
Resolved, that this whole subject be indefinitely postponed.
The amount of the slave-trade at the time when the General
Assembly refused to act upon the subject of slavery at all may
be inferred from the following items. The Virginia Times, in
an article published in this very year of 1836, estimated the
number of slaves exported for sale from that State alone,
during the twelve months preceding, at forty thousand. The
Natchez (Miss.) Courier says that in the same year the States
of Alabama, Missouri, and Arkansas imported two hundred
and fifty thousand slaves from the more Northern States. If
we deduct from these all who may be supposed to have
emigrated with their masters, still what an immense trade is
here indicated!
The Rev. James H. Dickey, who moved the resolutions above
presented, had seen some sights which would naturally incline
him to wish the Assembly to take some action on the subject,
as appears from the following account of a slave-coffle, from
his pen.
In the summer of 1822, as I returned with my family from a visit to the Bar-
rens of Kentucky, I witnessed a scene such as I never witnessed before, and such
as I hope never to witness again. Having passed through Paris, in Bourbon
County, Kentucky, the sound of music (beyond a little rising ground) attracted my
attention. I looked forward, and saw the flag of my country waving. Supposing
that I was about to meet a military parade, I drove hastily to the side of the road;
and, having gained the ascent, I discovered (I supposed) about forty black men
all chained together after the following manner: each of them was handcuffed, and
they were arranged in rank and file. A chain, perhaps forty feet long, the size of
a fifth-horse chain, was stretched between the two ranks, to which short chains
were joined, which connected with the handcuffs. Behind them were, I supposed,
about thirty women, in double rank, the couples tied hand to hand. A solemn
sadness sat on every countenance, and the dismal silence of this march of despair
was interrupted only by the sound of two violins; yes, as if to add insult to
injury, the foremost couple were furnished with a violin a-piece; the second
couple were ornamented with cockades, while near the centre waved the republican
flag carried by a hand literally in chains. I could not forbear exclaiming to the
lordly driver who rode at his ease alongside, “Heaven will curse that man who
engages in such traffic, and the government that protects him in it.” I pursued
my journey till evening, and put up for the night, when I mentioned the scene I
had witnessed. “Ah!” cried my landlady, “that is my brother!” From her I
learned that his name is Stone, of Bourbon County, Kentucky, in partnership
with one Kinningham, of Paris; and that a few days before he had purchased a
negro-woman from a man in Nicholas County. She refused to go with him; he
attempted to compel her, but she defended herself. Without further ceremony he
stepped back, and, by a blow on the side of her head, with the butt of his whip,
brought her to the ground; he tied her, and drove her off. I learned, further,
that besides the drove I had seen, there were about thirty shut up in the Paris
prison for safe-keeping, to be added to the company, and that they were designed
for the Orleans market. And to this they are doomed for no other crime than
that of a black skin and curled locks. Shall I not visit for these things? saith the
Lord. Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?
It cannot be possible that these Christian men realised these
things, or, at most, they realised them just as we realise the
most tremendous truths of religion, dimly and feebly.
Two years after, the General Assembly, by a sudden and very
unexpected movement, passed a vote exscinding, without trial,
from the communion of the church, four synods, comprising the
most active and decided anti-slavery portions of the church.
The reasons alleged were, doctrinal differences and ecclesiastical
practices inconsistent with Presbyterianism. By this act about
five hundred ministers and sixty thousand members were cut off
from the Presbyterian Church.
That portion of the Presbyterian Church called New School,
considering this act unjust, refused to assent to it, joined the
exscinded synods, and formed themselves into the New School
General Assembly. In this communion only three slave-holding
presbyteries remained; in the old there were between thirty and
forty.
The course of the Old School Assembly, after the separation,
in relation to the subject of slavery, may be best expressed by
quoting one of their resolutions, passed in 1845. Having
some decided anti-slavery members in its body, and being,
moreover, addressed on the subject of slavery by associated
bodies, they presented, in this year, the following deliberate
statement of their policy. (Minutes for 1845, p. 18.)
Resolved, 1st. That the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the
United States was originally organised, and has since continued the bond of union
in the church, upon the conceded principle that the existence of domestic slavery,
under the circumstances in which it is found in the Southern portion of the
country, is no bar to Christian communion.
2. That the petitions that ask the Assembly to make the holding of slaves in
itself a matter of discipline do virtually require this judicatory to dissolve itself,
and abandon the organisation under which, by the Divine blessing, it has so long
"> prospered. The tendency is evidently to separate the Northern from the Southern
portion of the Church--a result which every good Christian must deplore, as
tending to the dissolution of the Union of our beloved country, and which every
enlightened Christian will oppose, as bringing abo
ut a ruinous and unnecessary
schism between brethren who maintain a common faith.
Yeas, Ministers and Elders, 168
Nays Ministers and Elders, 13
It is scarcely necessary to add a comment to this very explicit
declaration. It is the plainest possible disclaimer of any protest
against slavery; the plainest possible statement that the existence
of the ecclesiastical organisation is of more importance than all
the moral and social considerations which are involved in a full
defence and practice of American slavery.
The next year a large number of petitions and remonstrances
were presented, requesting the Assembly to utter additional testi-
mony against slavery.
In reply to the petitions, the General Assembly re-affirmed all
their former testimonies on the subject of slavery for sixty years
back, and also affirmed that the previous year's declaration must
not be understood as a retraction of that testimony; in other
words, they expressed it as their opinion, in the words of 1818,
that slavery is “wholly opposed to the law of God,” and “totally
irreconcileable with the precepts of the gospel of Christ;” and yet
that they “had formed their Church organisation upon the con-
ceded principle that the existence of it, under the circumstances
in which it is found in the Southern States of the Union, is no
bar to Christian communion.”
Some members protested against this action. (Minutes,
1846. Overture No. 17.)
Great hopes were at first entertained of the New School body.
As a body, it was composed mostly of anti-slavery men. It had
in it those synods whose anti-slavery opinions and actions had
been, to say the least, one very efficient cause for their excision
from the Church. It had only three slaveholding Presbyteries.
The power was all in its own hands. Now, if ever, was their
time to cut this loathsome encumbrance wholly adrift, and stand
up, in this age of concession and conformity to the world, a
purely protesting Church, free from all complicity with this most
dreadful national immorality.
On the first session of the General Assembly this course was