The Christian Observer in 1845

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Editor’s Note: Leonard Bacon was a nineteenth-century minister at the First Church of New Haven (Congregationalist) in New Haven, Connecticut, an editor of the Christian Spectator (New Haven) from 1826 to 1838, and one of the founders in 1843 of the New Englander, an abolitionist publication with the primary purpose of opposing the extension of slavery into new states. From 1866 until his death in 1871, Bacon was a professor and lecturer at Yale University in theology, church polity, and church history subjects.

In 1846, Slavery Discussed In Occasional Essays, From 1833 To 1846 was published, and included a letter to the editor of the Philadelphia Christian Observer, published by Christian Observer founder Amasa Converse who had merged the Southern Religious Telegraph with the Philadelphia Observer in 1839, and in 1840 first called the publication the Christian Observer.

BiographyBase.com describes Bacon’s book as having “exercised considerable influence upon Abraham Lincoln, and in this book appears the sentence, which, as rephrased by Lincoln, was widely quoted: “If that form of government, that system of social order is not wrong—if those laws of the Southern States, by virtue of which slavery exists there, and is what it is, are not wrong—nothing is wrong.””

Slavery Discussed In Occasional Essays, From 1833 To 1846. Leonard Bacon, Pastor Of The First Church In New Haven [Connecticut], New York: Baker And Scribner, 145 Nassau Street and 36 Park Row. 1846.

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http://www.archive.org/details/slaverydiscussed00baco

http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Bacon_Leonard.html

http://christianobserver.org/about/history/

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pp. 122-130

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Letter to the Editor of the [Philadelphia] Christian Observer, 1845.

Mr. Editor:—Some person has been kind enough to send me your paper of the 5th instant, in which a writer, subscribing himself “A Puritan at the South,” animadverts with some freedom upon a speech which he supposes me to have made at the last meeting of the General Association of Connecticut, and of which he has found some representation in the Boston Recorder. I have not seen the Boston Recorder to which he refers, and therefore I cannot say whether the report of my speech there is correct or not. I only know that elsewhere I have seen it decidedly mis-reported.

The passage which your correspondent has quoted from my speech, is not a very unfair representation of something which I said, if the connection in which it was said is fairly given by the reporter—which I am bound to presume is not the case, inasmuch as your correspondent makes no allusion to the course of my argument, on which the meaning- of that passage entirely depends. I said nothing in that speech, I believe, which I have not often said in print, with at least equal strength of language, years ago; and because I have taken just the position which I took in that speech, those who in this part of the country call themselves the only “friends of the slave,” have made me—as your correspondent knows, if he knows anything about me in this relation—a mark of special obloquy.

My positions were, in effect, and “for substance,” briefly these:

1. The relation of master to one whom the laws and the constitution of society have made a slave, is not intrinsically and necessarily a sin on the part of the master; certainly not such a sin as will justify a sentence of excommunication against him, without inquiry as to how he came into that relation, or how he conducts himself in it.

2. The master who buys and sells human beings, like cattle, for gain; who permits male and female servants, placed by law under his protection and control, to live together in brutish concubinage, or in a merely temporary pairing, with no religious sanctity, which is not only unprotected by the law, but which he himself considers liable to be dissolved at the caprice of the parties, or whenever his convenience or gain may require the separation; who refuses to train his servants diligently, from their childhood up, in the knowledge of God and in the way of salvation, and of the book of God, and whose servants, in a word, live and die in heathenish ignorance; or who treats his servants in any manner inconsistent with the fact that they are intelligent and voluntary beings who were created in God’s image, and for whom Christ has died—does not make a creditable profession of Christian piety. Such a master has no more claim to recognition or communion among Christ’s disciples than a Turk might have, who, having renounced Mohammed, might present himself for membership in a Christian church while yet retaining a full “patriarchal” seraglio of wives and concubines.

3. It is not to be presumed that all masters, professing to be “believing masters,” are, of course, guilty of all or any of the crimes above described. But so far as the ministers, elders, or members of any church commit any of these crimes, and the church to which they are responsible in respect to their Christian character, does not deal with them as offenders, to bring them to repentance, or if they will not repent, to cut them off as reprobate, so far that church is liable to be called to account by every and any church. with which it is in communion. And it is the duty of all churches with which a church so neglecting the discipline of Christ’s house may desire communion, to admonish that church, and labor with it for its reformation, and, in the event of the failure of such efforts, then to withdraw from all communion with it.

4. Those laws of the southern States, by the force of which the crimes above mentioned, and others of the same general description, instead of being forbidden and punished, are permitted and promoted, are a shame to human nature, especially when considered as the laws of a people glorying in their freedom, their honor, and (proh pudor) their magnanimity. The system of slavery in these United States, as it exists in its own theory, apart from any question of fact in respect to the working of the system—the system of slavery, simply as set forth in the laws respecting slavery—is a system which belongs, historically and philosophically, to the lowest stage, save one, of human barbarism. The existence of such a body of laws in the statute-books of free American states, “Anglo Saxon” in lineage, and pretending to be Christian, is enough to make the cheek of an American, anywhere, tingle with shame. It is often said that no people can be, on the whole, better than their laws are. I believe that thousands of the southern people are a great deal better than their laws are. I try all I can to believe that the entire people of the south are better, in fact, than they are, as represented by their laws—though sometimes, I must confess, I have to try very hard, especially when such events happen as that which happened a few days ago at Lexington, and that which happened last winter at Charleston. I do believe that there are thousands of southern men whose moral sense is shocked, as mine is, by the atrocity of those defences of slavery which are put forth now and then by the Hammonds, the McDuffies, and the Dews. But, after all, the fact remains. Those barbarian laws stand in the statute-books; and of the thousands who at heart detest them, who dares to propose a repeal or an amendment? Who dares even to utter a protest against them ? Public opinion at the south—or what passes for public opinion— annihilates, on this subject, the freedom of the press, the freedom of speech, and even the right of private judgment. No people upon earth are more governed by public opinion, or have less idea of the possibility of resisting public opinion, than the people of our southern States, particularly in relation to this subject. Public opinion makes them murder each other—like cowards who dare not refuse to do what they know to be wrong—in duels. Public opinion, speaking in the hoarse clamors of the blood-thirsty mob, and in the terrific sentence of the Lynch court, compels the thousands who detest those laws about slavery to digest their detestation in silence. This very habit of being governed by a local public opinion, and of regarding public opinion as a force that cannot possibly be resisted, makes the southern people, in proportion as their intercourse with other communities increases, and the eyes of the nations are turned with closer attention towards their “peculiar institutions,” more and more sensitive to the public opinion of the world at large. “They that take the sword, shall perish by the sword.” So they who attempt to uphold an atrocious body of laws by the tyranny of public opinion, are already beginning to writhe under the indignant public opinion of the civilized world. I say, then, let the voice of universal human nature utter itself against those laws.

It is not through any want of sensibility to shame, but only through ignorance and thoughtlessness of what the public opinion of the world really is, that citizens of the States in which that atrocious system of laws exists, are able to look citizens of other States, or the subjects of other governments, in the face without blushing. What Virginian or Carolinian would not blush, to be told at a northern watering place, in the presence of enlightened foreigners—Sir, the laws of your State permit a man to sell his own son, as he would a mule; or his own daughter, only a shade yellower than himself, as he would sell a horse. What stuff is that chivalry made of, that would not cower to be told that in the chivalrous land of the sunny south, the chastity of more than a million of women is without a shadow of legal protection—that the father, the brother, or the husband of one of those women, if he should lift his hand against the seducer or the ravisher, might be killed on the spot, as if he were a mad dog? I cannot believe that the people of the south—the more intelligent portion of them particularly—are so insensible to the public opinion of the world as not to care what the world thinks of these laws of theirs, which, instead of requiring the master to render to his servants that which is just and equal, forbid his paying them wages; which, instead of requiring the master to see that his servants receive such an education as an enlightened State ought to furnish for every human being reared under its jurisdiction, make it a crime to teach a slave the alphabet; and which, instead of regarding the slave as a being having personal rights, even against his master, make it impossible for the master to endow him with any rights whatever.

Your correspondent, Mr. Editor, and what is of more consequence, your readers, can see whether my language is, as he affirms, “sufficiently indiscriminate and abusive to gratify the feelings of the most thorough-going political revilers of the day.” In my views, and in my language, I ‘discriminate’ carefully between the relation of a master to one whom society has made a slave, and the conduct of that master in that relation—or in other words, between the power of doing wrong which the law gives to the master as against the slave, and the use which the master makes of that power. I ‘discriminate’ carefully between the churches of the south and the offences of individuals in communion with those churches, and instead of excommunicating all slaveholders simply as such, and all churches which contain slaveholders, I would, in the discharge of a fraternal duty, call upon the southern churches themselves to put in force the discipline of Christ’s house against specific sins, which their own moral sense acknowledges to be incompatible with the credibility of a Christian profession. I also ‘discriminate’ between the laws of the Southern States respecting slavery and the blacks, and the individual citizens of those States; and while I regard those laws with unlimited abhorrence as a disgrace to my country and a disgrace to the human species, I regard the people of those States as better than their laws—thousands of them a great deal better. I am willing to treat individual citizens of slaveholding States with all the courtesy and respect due to gentlemen and to American fellow-citizens, except as I find individuals unworthy of such treatment. But they on the other hand must allow me, here at home, a freeman’s privilege of abhorring slavery and of uttering my abhorrence. So I could treat a gentlemanly Turk or Persian with courtesy and hospitality in my New England home, but he must not require me to give up my Christian and American opinions, out of complaisance to his Islamism and his polygamy.

Your correspondent seems to intimate that I, as living in a free-labor State, am necessarily too ignorant on the subject of slavery to have any opinion worth regarding. As if a man could not tell whether it is wrong to buy and sell human beings at public auction “in lots to suit purchasers,” without living in a slave State. As if the public opinion of a slave State, armed with the furies of Lynch law, and assuming an unlimited arbitrary power over every man’s private judgment (unless it is very private indeed) were a necessary guide for erring human nature to a knowledge of the right and wrong about slavery. As if I, living here, where every man is free to think and free to speak on every side, and where I have had the privilege of receiving through the post-office no fewer than three copies of Gov. Hammond’s defence of slavery, were less competent to form an unbiased opinion, than I should be if I lived where no man is allowed to speak but on one side, and where, if I should be so unfortunate as to form an opinion contrary to public opinion, and should be found out in it, the least that I, as a northern man, could expect, would be to be arrayed in tar and feathers unless I should make my escape as a felon flees from justice.

Your correspondent farther suggests that if I “would reform the institutions of the south,” I ought to ”come and dwell” there, where the work is to be done. Let me say then, that I have not undertaken to reform the institutions of the south. I leave that work in the hands of the people of the south to whom it belongs, and whom God will hold accountable for it. I acknowledge the kindness of your correspondent’s hospitable invitation, but God has given me a better lot. “The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places.” I find myself where all the work that I can do comes daily to my hands; and I do not conceive that, considering all my relations, I could do more for the kingdom of Christ, or the welfare of my country there, than I can here. If God had cast my lot there, I would stay there; for nowhere upon earth can more good be done by a good man who is native on the soil and has the confidence of the people, than there. I would not go on a foreign mission, and leave that field behind me; it were as wise to go from China on a foreign mission to Kamschatka. Least of all would I, like some southern ministers, seek a settlement at the north for the sake of getting away from slavery.

Respectfully yours,

Leonard Bacon.

New-Haven [Connecticut], Sept. 8, 1845.

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