Address to Abolitionists

From the Pennsylvania Freeman.

Address to Abolitionists.

At a stated meeting of the Executive Committee of the American Free Produce Association, held First month 29th, 1841, the Committee on “Address to Abolitionists” presented a report, which was read and adopted.

Voted:—That Anti-Slavery papers, and others favorable to the cause of abstinence from slave produce, be respectfully requested to insert the same; and to forward a copy containing it to the Association at No 31 North Fifth st. Philadelphia.

Extracted from the minutes,
BENJ. S. JONES, Sec.

The following resolutions were adopted at the last annual meeting of the “American Free Produce Association.”

Whereas, We believe slavery to be a violatiou of the moral law, and of the rights of humanity, and destructive of the best interest of society; and that all who willingly contribute their support to the system are justly chargeable with the guilt of slaveholding; therefore

Resolved, That the consumers of slave produce, by giving direct encouragement to the slaveholder to continue his system of robbery and oppression are its main supporters and that it is their duty immediately, and forever to abstain from purchasing or using goods, the consumption of which tends to strengthen and sustain slavery.

Resolved, That the abolitionists who uses the products of slavery, to the extent of his convenience, stands upon the same platform with the slaveholder, who uses slavery as far as is convenient for him, and that the same argument justifies alike the conduct of either.

Resolved, That moral principles are uniform in their application. The principle which forbids us to purchase from the robber the spoils of his outrage, applies to any participation in wrong doing, and that it is one of the laws of the moral government under which our Heavenly Father seeks to bring us, that the proclaimer of truth shall succeed in establishing it only as he lives up to the testimony he preaches.

Resolved, That we eminently attribute the want of success in the abolition enterprise, to professed abolitionists witnessing by their lives the truths they proclaim.

The Executive Commitee or would earnestly appeal to their fellow laborers in the cause of freedom, to think of these things.

As the advocates of Emancipation have been faithful to their trust, so has their enterprise gained strength and power. Mighty has been the conflict—glorious the triumphs. Though we have by no means done all that could have been done, yet much has been effected: and is it not swing to individual unfaithfulness that we have not accomplished greater good? We believe that examination will show such to be the case. We have not aimed to reform others too much, but ourselves too little. We have chosen rather to contend with giant strength against a mighty array, than to suffer the petty inconveniences, and triffing vexations of a solitary sentinel on some remote and almost unnoticed post. We have desired more to see great and glorious results, than consistent action. In the camp of the champions of liberty are to be found the wedges of gold, and the silver, and the Babylonish vest; not secreted as they were by Achan, in the day when Isreal went forth to battle, but openly displayed in the sight of the foes of God and truth. Brethren, is it not so? We have refused to dip into the Jordan of consistent action; and the leprosy still clings to us, while from those we attempt to cure comes the just and biting taunt, “Physician heal thyself.”

Discussion has flashed brightness upon much that was before dark. Abolitionists can now see, with comparative clearness, the duties, they owe to themselves, and to the slave. Many refuse longer to hold fellowship with a proslavery church—or submit to the pro-slavery dictation of political partyism. Their duty in these particulars, has been established and built up by argument: be ours the more neglected—though not less important task—of showing to professed abolitionists, the inconsistency of their conduct, and to fasten upon them the guilt of slaveholding, while they continue as they now do, by purchasing the fruits of his robbery, to encourage the oppressor in his iniquity.

It is a maxim in common law, as well as in common justice and common honesty—a maxim sanctioned by common sense—that the receiver of stolen goods, knowing their character, is as guilty as the original depredator. In many cases he is far more guilty; for he is often the motive power which calls into activity the agency of the lesser villain; for by opening a market for stolen goods, he offers a premium for the commission of theft. That slaveholding is sinful—sinful under all circumstances—is a proposition which no abolitionist will deny. This truth is incorporated in the constitutions of our societies—it is written upon every page of our publications, and inscribed upon the heart of every lover of freedom. We have contemplated it in its various phases, and spoken of it until anti-slavery and proslavery arguments have become familiar to us as household words. But while we have seen the injustice of slavery, and the policy and duty of its immediate annihilation, have we sufficiently considered its origin—have we clearly seen all the pillars which support this temple of sin? The lust of gold laid its foundation—cent per cent reared the edifice, and won for it the admiration of a corrupt and avaricious people and the sanction of a time serving priesthood. The approval of Church and State may make its courts a place of popular resort, and confer “respectability and standing” upon those who minister at its altars; but such approbation cannot of itself sustain it. Has the approval of Church and State given strength to the African slave trade? Has not avarice maintained it in defiance of their opposition? Christendom has denounced it, and her cruisers watch the coast. The Church, willing to be equally moral with the State, sides with her; and yet, half a million victims are annually torn from their homes and enchained in foreign lands. And why? Because the lust of gold has blunted the moral sensibilities of the world. Because the nations that denounce it, purchase of the trader; and they who profess to abhor it, share its gains. Surely, the Christian philosopher and the Christian's God, must regard the enlightened purchaser who creates and continues the demand, as more truly guilty than his paid agent, the trader!

It is interest, and not principle, which binds together in an almost inpenetrable phalanx, the two hundred and fifty thousand slaveholders of America. Cotton, sugar, rice and tobacco, are the staple productions of our slave-working states; and it is to the demand for those commodities, the South owes her shadow of prosperity. Her non-slaveholdcitizens know and feel this, and fancied interest bids them sustain their existing system of labor. But though the South can raise these productions, her slave-labor cannot drive factories and Old and New England ply the shuttle for her. Northern warehouses groan beneath the weight of her slave-cultured cotton—the shelves of Northern merchants are loaded with her fabrics; and the vessels of New England do the carrying trade for the southern planter. Thus has slavery enlisted in her cause the North and the South—the trader on the sea—the merchant, and the manufacturer. Her gold is poured into our treasury, and her stolen goods find purchasers among those who profess to abhor her name.

Interest is the mighty agent against which we have to contend. The planter before entering upon his labors, first calculates the profits likely to accrue from the enterprise in which he is about to engage. Having satisfied himself of this, he purchases his negroes, and plants his cane or cotton seed. If his land is equally adapted to the cultivation of either, and he finds there is a surplus of cotton in the market, but a scarcity of sugar, and that such will probably be the case the coming year, he chooses the cane—and the higher the price of sugar, the harder are his laborers driven The shoots are set—the plant ripens, and the gathering season comes. The cane is cut and stored, and long after midnight are the wearied slaves compelled to tend the sugarmill, that the products of their toil may early reach the market. Their task is finished; and the planter exults, because of the quantity of sugar he has made. But is that sugar justly his; has the slave no claim upon it for his toil; has the product of his labor, which the strong arm of violence has wrested from him, indeed become another's? Is it not the fruit of oppression—the product of unrequited and coerced toil, won by robbery the most audacious, and theft of the vilest character? We grant the planter has a just claim for a portion of the sugar. The land upon which it was grown is his; and his money purchased the implements employed in its culture. Giving to this consideration its just weight, we see not how any man of common honesty and common intelligence can purchase that sugar, knowing the manner in which it is obtained, and not feel that he is abetting the planter in his iniquitous system, and encouraging its continuance. We are certain that no abolitionist could go upon that plantation, and after looking on the toil-worn form of the slave, buy the sugar of his raising. He would turn with loathing from its sweetness. Any professed friend of the slave, who would purchase such goods under such circumstances, would justly be denounced as false to the cause of freedom. Abolitionists, with all their faults, are not guilty of such glaring inconsistency—such gross violations of elementary morality. The web is more fiuely spun. Though almost impalpable as air. it binds them as with massive chains of iron. The consumer's connection with slavery is not so readily seen, for the sugar is sent to a southern port and from thence transferred to the merchant of the North; and that, which we might not buy of the planter, or the planter's agent in New Orleans, has how assumed an entirely different character: and we as freely partake of it as though we were not encouraging slavery by so doing. We have reached the other end of the rope, and though we twist with a vigorous hand, we try to persuade ourselves that the poor slave in the middle, is hurt only by the twisting of the planter at the far end: forgetting that if we lose our hold, the slaveholder would spare himself the labor of twisting an unfastened cord.

The planter knows he is but the agent of the consumer, supplying him with the kind of goods he requires, and in quantities to suit. The consumer says, “I have sugar and rice enough for next year, I want cotton.” The seed is planted, the pods in due time are filled, the crop gathered, and the order supplied. The following year he asks for rice and sugar; and the obedient planter, ever willing to oblige those he is paid for serving, sets out his shoots, and seads his slaves to scatter the seed-rice in the swamp land. The work required is accomplished, and thus, year after year, is the consumer's agent actively engaged in laboring for him. Little does the slave think, as he toils beside the tall cane plants, or bends to his labor among the snowy whiteness of the cotton crop, that his professed friends at the north will feed upon the sugar and wear the cotton he has grown. Nor will the perishing victim of the riceswamp miasma dream that he is sacrificed because abolitionists choose to gratify their palates at the expense of his life.

Brethren examine this matter. Sorutinize it closely. See if you can discover wherein the planter, who directly robs the slave, is more guilty than the abolitionist, who is the purchaser and consumer of goods thus stolen. We all admit the planter has done a grievous wrong—that the goods cultivated by slave labor do not justly and entirely belong to the slaveholder. Try, then, if you can find at what particular stage of the transfer from the estate of the planter to our tables and persons, the stolen property becomes honestly acquired. We can see no difference in moral guilt between the slaveholder and consumer of slave-grown produce —between the thief and the purchaser who buys of a known thief.

Let us not be misunderstood. We use the term slave produce in its general acceptation. We do not suppose that slave products are, in themselves, worse than free products, or stolen goods more objectionable in themselves than goods honestly obtained. If it can be shown that the use of such goods, in particular cases, does not sustain and encourage theft and slavery, we sin not in using them.

Among the arguments sometimes urged against abstinence, are its expense and attendant difficulties: we are told, too, that it would be a physical means of abolishing slavery, a compulsory measure that would be injurious to our cause. When we consider the present limited demand for free cotton, sugar, rice, and other goods that are generally slave cultured, and the almost prohibitory duties which are laid upon such articles coming from other lands, need we that stolen goods are afforded for a less price than those which have been honestly and paid for. “Free goods,” says the non-abstainer, “cost ten or twenty per cent, more than slave goods: and did I purchase them, I should do less to advance the cause of freedom than by giving the difference in the cost for the purpose of disseminating our principles by means of the press and the living speaker.” Such reasoning might answer, were we discussing a question of mere expediency, but will not apply to a matter of principle. As well might James G. Birnev have thus reasoned, when contemplating the recent emancipation of his entailed slaves. There were men who would probably bring from three to five thousand dollars in the market, awaiting his signature to a deed for their emancipation, to stretch forth their unshackled forms free as God had created them. Did his hand pause in the act?—Did he calculate the vast amount of good he could do the anti-slavery cause with the money they would sell for? No! he refused to do evil that good might come. His act was a glorious gain for principle—a righteous triumph for consistency. Principle required he should not “use his neighbor's service without wages, and give him not for his work;” and principle is equally stern in requiring the same of us.

If we live not up to that which we profess, but suffer interest or expediency to turn us aside, how can we reasonably expect to win others to embrace our principles. That it is difficult for us wholly to abstain, is an established fact. But does it lessen our obligation to be faithful in a righteous cause? We know that slavery is so interwoven with all our institutions—has so extended itself through all the ramifications of society, that it is almost impossible to keep ourselves unspotted from it. But the difficulty of so doing should be no apology for lukewarmness or indifference; it should rather incite us to greater zeal and watchfulness, and strengthen our determination to withdraw our support from it. It is not the magnitude of the difficulty that affrights us, but the constant succession of petty, personal, unnoticed sacrifices we should have to make. Abolitionists are accustomed to encountering and overcoming difficulties;—why, then, should they plead their existence in this particular as a justification for inaction or sinful indulgence.

We are told that abstinence is a physical means, a compulsory measure. If the objector means it is a moral truth enforced by the agency of peaceful physical power—by such agents as is the pen of the writer, and the lips and tongue of the oral teacher, it may not be denied. It is such physical means as is abstinence from strong drink in the temperance cause, as is abstinence from the use of warlike weapons in the peace cause, as is abstinence from all sin in the cause of Christianity. Is it compulsion to refuse to purchase a stolen jewel of a thief, or contraband goods from the smuggler? Is it compulsion to refuse to share in the plunder of a pirate, or to hold fellowship with the oppressor? If these be compulsory measures, then, too, may abstinence be ranked as one.

God has commanded us “not to be partakers in other men's sin;” and surely if He regards as guilty the slave holder, whose education and habits from early childhood have tended to weaken the natural abhorrence of oppression, and make him to regard slavery, if not as a righteous institution, at least a necessary evil—how much more guilty must we be in His sight, who have seen its iniquity and felt for the captive's wrong, who are professedly anxious for its overthrow, and yet join hands with the oppressor upholding him in his sin, and sharing in his plunder?

We would urge upon you total abstinence, not only as a measure of true expediency, which, if carried out by all the professed friends of freedom, would upheave slavery from its base; but as a vital principle which lies at the very foundation of the anti-slavery enterprise. As well might the temperance advocate drink the burning poison—the non resistant preach peace with the sabre by his side, as the abolitionist denounce slavery while partaking of its gains. The drunkard and the warrior could see the inconsistency of the temperance man and non-resistant, as do the slave- holders that of the abolitionists. To them, such inconsistency betrays a lack of confidence in our principles—a want of faith in the cause we advocate. They hear us preaching against slavery with our lips and tongue, while they see us, with our hands, build anew her altars and quicken her consuming fire. What wonder that our southern brethren should doubt our sincerity? We call upon them to free their slaves, refusing ourselves to make a lesser sacrifice, and part with some of the luxuries or conveniences which we derive from the captive's unpaid toil.

Did we wholly abstain, and “touch not, taste not, and handle not,” that which is the produce of slave labor, the planter, however much he might condemn our principles and measures, would honor us for our consistency. The words of truth would come pure and unsullied from our lips, made more eloquent by the simple beauty of consistent action.

We know how few abstain; but we attribute this, not to the unsoundness of the arguments urged by the advocates of such a course, but rather to an unwillingness on the part of some to make the very many world-unnoticed sacrifices which would be required; and to the impatience of others to see great and immediate results from their actions. Let such remember that the “seed-wheat of humanity” is not planted without toil, nor does it whiten for the harvest in a single day. The laborer in the moral, as in the natural world, must first scatter the seed, and then wait in patience and in faith for the promised harvest.

To such as are not satisfied of the correctness of the principles advocated by the friends of abstinence, a plan may be suggested for consideration that has been elsewhere proposed, and which, to be consistent in consistency, should be adopted. It is a measure far more economical and humane than the plan now pursued in reference to the slaves. Create a fund that shall be applied to the purchase of land and negroes. Subscribe liberally for an immense estate and a large gang will be needed. It has been computed that there are 250,000 professed abolitionists in the United States. Deduct from that number ten thousand as consistent total abstinence abolitionists—total abstinence we mean from all that encourages slavery—there remains 240,000 to be supplied with sugar, cotton, coffee, rice, &c.; these will require at least twelve thousand slaves, or one to each twenty. Let some distinguished friend of the colored race be appointed chief overseer of these 12,000; with power to select from the anti-slavery ranks, pious and benevolent drivers, who will not work them too hard, and will whip them but little. Set them to work; and let the holders of the stock be supplied with goods directly from the plantation. This would save the commissions now paid to northern and southern merchants. Not only would there be the satisfaction of knowing that the slaves were moderately worked, seldom whipped, and well fed; but in addition to the pleasure which this reflection would naturally produce, there would be the advantage of buying stolen goods at a trifling advance on cost. Would not this plan be far better than the one now pursued—purchasing indiscriminately of all who offer for sale; ignorant whether their slaves have been kindly treated as slaves, or whether they have wrought out their lives by the seven-years' plan of the Louisiana sugar districts?

We fear, brethren, that our guilty inconsistency owes its existence more to the heart than to the head—that the feelings more than the intellect have led us astray. Let not our sympathies he chilled by selfish considerations. We have spoken words of consolation and hope to the perishing bondmen—let not our actions belie the doctrines our head approves. When surrounded by home enjoyment, and freely partaking of all that brightens life, let us not forget the toil-wearied slave. And when our thoughts go out to him, and our soul is made willing to share with him in the sufferings he endures—to partake of the mental and physical anguish that becomes his portion; let us ask ourselves in how much we are responsible for his condition? Whether he toils and suffers that our conveniences may be fulfilled—our luxuries be undiminished? And in the answer we give our own hearts, may we feel that we have acted upon the principle of doing unto others as we would be done by; so shall we be justified in the sight of our Heavenly Father; and the acceptable offering of a pure and spotless heart be received by the Great Parent of all.

JAMES MOTT,
Chairman of the Ex. Com. of American Free Produce Association.

BENJ. S. JONES, Secretary
Philadelphia, 1st mo. 1841