Читать книгу Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (Vol.1&2). Letters & Travel Sketches from Europe онлайн

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'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.