A New Look at the Abolitionists; W. Chadwick

II I ertarian and individualist, found myself closely identifying with the Abolitionists. I couldn't help thinking that their fight is our fight today, in different circum stances and with a new set of op pressors. The more I read their 1 The left-wing historian Howard Zinn, for example, has written a book about the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Com mittee called SNCC: The New Abolition ists (Boston: Beacon, 1964). See also Zinn's article, "Abolitionists, Freedom Riders, and the Tactics of Agitation," in Duberman, Martin (ed.), The Antislavery Vanguard (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965), pp. 417-451. Even more objectionable is the title of one collection of Abolitionist writings: Forerunners of Black Power. To compare men like Garrison and Wendell Phillips with the likes of Stokely Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver is a bit ludicrous. Bor mann, Ernest G. (ed.), Forerunners of Black Power (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1971).

167 168 THE FREEMAN March writings and speeches the more I see, in the Abolitionists' rousing call to freedom, ideas that are as relevant in the fight against the tyranny of today's 'all-powerful State as they were in the struggle against yesterday's slaveholder. The Abolitionists saw them selves as the philosophical heirs of J efferson, Franklin, Paine and other intellectual leaders of the War for American Independence. They saw themselves as trying to fulfill the promise of 1776, and the Declaration of Independence's famous defense of the "inalienable rights . . . (of) life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The first major public address of Wil liam Lloyd Garrison, probably the most prominent of the Abolition ists, was given on the Fourth· of July and referred to the discrep ancy between the American creed, as contained in the Declaration, and the American practice of slav ery.2 In the first issue of his fam ous paper, The Libera,tor, Garrison again invoked the Declaration: "I determined at every hazard, to lift up the standard of emancipation ~ Speech reprinted in Frederickson, George M. (ed.), William Lloyd Garrison (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Han, 1968), p. 15, and in Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison (New York: The Century Company, 1889), Vol. I, pp. 127 137.

in the eyes of the nation, within sight of Bunker Hill and the birth place of liberty."3 Angelina Grimke, the leading woman in the movement, likewise advocated the ideals of 1776, stat ing that Americans "must return to the good old doctrine of our forefathers" - the doctrine of every man's right to his own life, liberty and property.4 Similarly, the poet and Abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier spoke of a time when "the practice of our people shall agree with" the ideals of the Declaration of .Independence. 5 In Opposition to Violence It is frequently noted that the Abolitionists, by and large, were religious people, who believed slav ery a sin; but this, while true, gives the impression that the re ligious Abolitionists opposed slav ery as an act of faith rather than on any clear ethical grounds. Ac tually, they called slavery sinful because they realized it was main tained by violence. This religious libertarianism can be seen in the writings of Stephen Symonds ;{ In Frederickson, p. 22.

4 Grimke, Angelina E., "Appeal to the Christian Women of the South" (no pub lisher given, 1837), p. 3. f) In Ruchames, Louis (ed.), The Aboli tionists: A Collection of their Writings (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1963), p.57.

1976 A NEW LOOK AT' THE ABOLITIONISTS 169 Foster (not the composer), who was, according to one historian, "called by some second in effect only to Garrison in the early years of the agitation for the abolition movement. "6 Foster catalogued the sins on which slavery was based: theift a man owns his own industry, and slavery steals that industry and puts it to work for another; adult ery - slave-owners violate the mar riage-contract of the slaves; man stealing - "God has given to every man an inalienable right to him self . . . and he who interferes with the free and unrestricted ex ercise of that right, who, not con tent with the proprietorship of his own body, claims the body of his neighbor, is a man-stealer;" piracy - the slave-trade, piracy legally and morally; and most im portant, murder - because the slave-owner "maintains his ascend ancy over his victims . . . only by the threat of extermination."7 One wishes that some of the religious socialists of today, using Christian principles as a basis for advocat ing the legally-sanctioned violence of statism, could be introduced to the religious libertarianism of Foster and his kind, who knew coercion when they saw it.

() Bormann, p. 105. 7 Foster, Stephen Symonds, "The Brotherhood of Thieves," in Bormann, pp. 110-112. Involved in Socialism John Thomas, in his article, "Antislavery and Utopia," points out that Jefferson Davis saw the abolitionists as socialists who were starting out with an attack on slave holding (which Davis con sidered a form of private prop erty) but would finish by attack ing all forms of private property. Thomas also points out that George Fitzhugh, the leading in tellectual apologist for slavery, said that many Abolitionists, be cause they were socialists, were embracing slavist ideas. 8 Because the ideas of Davis and Fitzhugh contain a germ of truth - quite a few Abolitionists were involved in socialism - modern students of Abolitionism may be led to believe that the standard view has been correct all along, that the Abolitionists and today's Welfare-Statist are both of the Left. But the chief mistake here is Davis' mistake, to believe that just because the Abolitionists re fused to recognize any right of one man to own another as prop erty, they were against all prop erty rights as such. Thus, the Abo litionists become typical liberal humanitarians seeking to put "hu man rights" above "property rights."

Yet, reading the speeches and 8 Thomas, John, "Antislavery and Utopia," in Duberman, pp. 243-244.

170 THE FREEMAN March writings of the Abolitionist main stream, one finds no bias against private property; they simply did not believe a human being can rightfully be another's property. It is today's advocate of the Wel fare State who treats human being~ as property - property of Big Brother, natural resources to be used for whatever purposes the government has in mind, driven by the whip of the government's police power. While it is true, as stated above, that many Abolitionists were so cialists, even the communitarians among them were libertarians, ad vocating socialism only on a vol untaristic basis. The fascist men tality of the modern statist would have been entirely foreign and abhorrent to them. Consider one of the most prominent among them, Stephen Pearl Andrews. An drews, a lawyer, was chased out of Houston, Texas, by a pro-sla v ery mob, and went to England, where he tried - with some sup port from John Quincy Adams to convince Lord Palmerston and Lord Aberdeen to lend money for the purchase (with the intent of emancipation) of the slaves in Texas. 9 9 Martin, James J .,Men Against the State (Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles Publisher, 1970), p.153; and Stern, Made leine B., The Pantarch (Austin: Univer sity of Texas Press, 1970), pp. 10, 12-13.

Andrews was influenced in be coming an anarchist by the ideas of Josiah Warren, the founder of an anarcho-communist settlement in New Harmony, Indiana; War renism was a combination of Robert Owen's Utopian socialism and native American individual ism. to Men like Andrews stead fastly held to the individual's right to freedom from coercion, and their communitarian experiments were strictly voluntaristic. One might refer to a man like Andrews as a left-wing anarchist but would have to call him a right-wing so cialist, using "right-wing" to mean respect for the rights of the individual. Warren had called his philosophy "Individual Sovereign ty," and Andrews made this phrase his motto. In his magnum opus, The Sci ence of Soc'iety - which is, at least in its first section, "The Sov ereignty of the Individual," a classic of libertarian thought Andrews comes out four-square for laissez-faire in economics: "Nothing short of absolute free trade. Democracy says to govern ment, Hands off! Let the Indi vid ual determine for himself when and where, and how he will buy and sell."ll Andrews' hope was that 10 Martin, pp. 26-55, passim.

11 Andrews, Stephen Pearl, The Science of Society (Boston: Sarah E. Holmes, Publisher, 1888), p. 18.

1976 A NEW LOOK AT THE ABOLITIONISTS 171 out of the workings of the free market, the kind of individualist socialism (sounds contradictory, doesn't it?) he wanted would na turally evolve; I do not share in this hope, but I respect Andrews' undil uted Iibertarianism. The Abolitionists, generally speaking the same laissez-faire language as we modern libertar ians, were a far cry from the so called "New Abolitionists" of to day's statist Left. We who recognize that "Massa" has changed his name to "Big Brother" should give them honor. I close with a passage from a letter written to William Lloyd Garrison by Theodore Weld, Gar rison's chief rival for leadership of the antislavery movement. In the letter, Weld states that he is unfamiliar with the exact philos ophy and aims of the New Eng land AntiSlavery Society (Gar rison's organization), but that: How Inflation Enslaves Us its expressive name is dear to my soul. From that I infer that the So ciety is based on that great bottom law of human right, that nothing but crime can forfeit liberty. That no condition of birth, no shade of color, no mere misfortune of circumstances, can annul that birthright charter, which God has bequeathed to every being upon whom he has st~unped his own image, by making him a free moral agent, and that he who robs his fellow man of this tramples upon right, subverts justice, outrages hu manity, unsettles the foundation of human safety, and sacrilegiously as sumes the prerogative of GOd.l~ To these words, we modern "Abolitionists" - the real "New Abolitionists" - can add a resound ing, "Amen!" , 1~ Weld to Garrison, .January 2, 1833, in Barnes, Gilbert H., and Dwight L. Du monds (eds.), Letters of Theodore Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld, and Sarah Gri1nke Weld, 1822-1844 (New York: D. Appleton Century Company, 1934), Vol. I, p. 98.

IDEAS ON LIBERTY WHEN A GREAT BODY of men are preaching the righteousness of the confiscation of property, the stability of the society is threatened, even though the method of confiscation be simply the depreciation of the currency for the benefit of the discontented poor. ANDREW C. MC LAUGHLIN, The Confederation & the Constitution, 1905 What theBible Says About Big Government JAMES C. PATRICK EVIDENCE IS MOUNTING that many government programs fail to ac complish all that their advocates had promised. After dipping for a while crime statistics are climbing again. Confidence in the institution of government has sagged. Some people wonder whether govern ment has bitten off more than it can chew. They suspect that Henry Hazlitt came close to the mark when he wrote, "The more things a government undertakes to do, the fewer things it can do com petently."! Mr. Patrick holds a Master of Divinity degree from Yale and has filled many lay offices as a churchman. Recently retired from chamber of commerce work, he now is an officer in a group of small-town banks in Illinois.