: Right and wrong in Massachusetts by Chapman Maria Weston - Antislavery movements Massachusetts Boston; Massachusetts Anti-slavery Society

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ch an effort as the one made by this Convention, was greater than some who had fancied themselves abolitionists were able to bear. Compelled to choose between their pro-slavery brethren of the church and ministry and their brethren of the abolition cause, they shrunk from the latter. Their efforts to justify themselves in cramping the cause, that they might avoid its reproach, constitute an era in its progress, known as the "Boston Controversy." The plan originated with five clergymen of Boston and vicinity, the Rev. Messrs. Charles Fitch, Joseph H. Towne, Jonas Perkins, David Sandford, and William Cornell. When the ecclesiastical tumult swelled high, their hearts were stirred up with it, as the water of inland wells is said to rise and fall with the ebb and flow of the bitter ocean tide without.

Their appeal commenced with an acknowledgment of the sins of their brethren, in the use of harsh language, and an accusation of the most prominent abolitionists, of an unkind, improper and unchristian course, as such, assuming as one of the principles of action in the cause, that it must not be presented in a "brother's pulpit," when by so doing a brother might be aggrieved. This last assumption was in direct contradiction to the motto of every pulpit, as well as in defiance of the professed principles of every christian minister to "cry aloud and spare not" in the promulgation of truth, and "to show the people their transgressions,"--"whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear."

The accusation of harsh language was robbed of its power by the heavily charged and indiscriminate epithets which some of the appellants themselves were accustomed to use. Having no standard within themselves by which to graduate their language, the quality of their labors was regulated by the market principle of demand and supply. The respective churches in Boston, to which two of them had been called from the country to minister, had more fame on account of abolition, than they deserved. The appellants soon ascertained that the market was fluctuating, and they also fluctuated and fell. Ignorant of the general temperature of the abolition mind without, they fancied it in correspondence with that under their immediate observation, and took the ill-considered step of appealing before the world from the requisitions of their own acknowledged principles of action with regard to the preaching of acknowledged truth.

It must be remembered, in excuse of clergymen who in this stage of the cause put their hands to the plough and turned back, that the laudable desire of the National Society to have the field filled with agents had induced some to enter it whose preparation of heart was altogether unequal to the work. They yielded to circumstances and to entreaties, rather than to convictions of duty and love of the cause. Some too had been prematurely urged into the anti-slavery ranks by the anxiety of the women of their respective congregations to obtain the influence of their names for the cause. This practice of making those life members who are but slightly interested in the cause, however well calculated to swell the funds of popular societies, and secure the efforts of the ministry in their favor, has been productive of nothing but mischief in Anti-Slavery Societies, and it is to be hoped that no persons will hereafter be subjected to the painful alternative of accepting a testimony of regard of which they are unworthy, or of acknowledging enmity to the cause of Freedom. Let no one be constituted a life member, whose own heart has not so wrought upon his life as to make it clear that his membership is something more than a payment of fifteen dollars.

The clerical appeal was, in fact, an invitation to the leaders of the opposing host of clergymen, to come and take the direction of the Anti-Slavery cause. The former character of its signers as abolitionists--their confident tone, and the suddenness of the movement, drew general attention and remark. A lively sensation ensued throughout New England.

It is astonishing that these men should not have been aware that on the abolition platform their own sect stood but on a level with others, and that Sabbatarian or Anti-Sabbatarian, man or woman, clergyman or layman, voter or non-voter, warrior or non-resistant, must be measured by their consistency and energy in applying each his own religious views, to effect the abolition of slavery. But they had yielded to that fear of man that bringeth a snare, and suffered themselves to be overcome by pro-slavery influence, scantily disguised as sectarian zeal.

This pro-slavery influence was wielded by the leaders of the sect to which the appellants belonged, with a skill and industry which the Anti-Slavery party would have done well to imitate. This pretended zeal, stimulated as it was by the hope of securing the approbation of wealthy and influential men of business, who sustained the double character of panders of slavery and pillars of churches, was not without its reward. The leading commercial and religious journals played into each others' hands, and, from the daily and weekly press of that period, it appears that great numbers of clergymen, of known hostility to the cause, had contrived to signify that some movement of this kind would afford them a pretence for joining it, while, at the same time, such a movement would operate as an assurance that the cause should no longer be urged forward with the speed and effect that rouses the spirit of persecution. Men who had dreaded suffering, and felt mortification at the idea of becoming followers of the bold, plain, uncompromising, untitled Garrison, hoped, by means of this stepping-stone, to escape the reproach of their consciences, without sacrificing their parishes or their pride.

As weeks went on, it became evident, through the columns of the paper in which the clerical appeal first appeared, that the cloak of bigotry and intolerance was to be added to the garment of sectarian zeal, which had at first been employed to hide their want of attachment to the cause. There was talk of a "common ground," which yet must not be profaned by the feet of those abolitionists who were not of one particular communion. Great preference of the National Society was expressed, because the members of the Executive Committee chanced to be members also of sects which the appellants considered Orthodox. Much exertion was made in the Theological Seminary, at Andover, to obtain recruits for this new, exclusive "common ground," and thirty-nine young candidates for the ministerial office came up to its defence.

Meanwhile, the claims of this clerical exclusiveness were adjudged by the great body of abolitionists, to be in an attitude of antagonism with the principles of Freedom. How can he free the slave, they argued, who is occupied in imposing fetters upon the free? How can he love liberty, who is acting in defiance of her first principles? Are not things which are equal to the same things equal to one another?

Amasa Walker, a man peculiarly qualified to speak to such a question, being a zealous member of the same sect as the appellants, manifested, upon this occasion, rectitude and steadfastness worthy of a sect so nobly founded, and, until the present day, so nobly sustained. He explained the causes and developed the real character of the appeal, stripping it of its mask of love for the slave, and zeal for the church of God.

A condemnation was, notwithstanding, expressed against the idea that one man's wishes or sense of propriety, are the proper measure of the rights and duties of another.

Being thus hindered in their attempt to change the nature and foundation principles of the Massachusetts Society, the appellants strove to destroy it by forming a new organization on the basis of sectarianism, to be auxiliary to the National Society. Mr. Phelps, though somewhat disappointed at the result of the whole campaign, in the utter discomfiture of clerical abolitionism, and vexed that the Massachusetts abolitionists insisted upon evidence of repentance from the clerical appellants, before again placing confidence in them, was still not quite prepared to relinquish his hold upon the old society.

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