The Anti-Slavery Movement

The Anti-Slavery Movement

[From the Herald of Freedom of May 2, 1845; Miscellaneous Writings 307-309]

This essay is an key and crystal clear statement of Rogers's late radicalism. He attacks all political action as based on force. He attacks capitalism generally, and condemns wage slavery along with plantation slavery. In fact, he rejects all authoritarian institutions and all authoritarian solutions.

Let its great moral nature not be forgotten, or lost sight of, for a moment, by those engaged in it. Let not Slavery be mistaken for a physical evil, or a vicious institution of law - that can cured by statutes or physical violence. Let us not march the army against it - or rush, with sledge-hammers, to smite asunder the chains of the bondman, as though they were made of iron. The sledge-hammers might break the slave's legs, but never can sunder his manacles. They are not made of materials to be cloven apart by hammers or battle-axes.

Slavery is a moral evil. This cannot be too often inculcated, or too earnestly. On the reception of this truth, and action correspondent to it, depends entirely the success of the of the enterprise for Slavery's overthrow. The chains that bind the Southern slave are the moral sentiment and feeling of the people of the North. Primarily the sentiment and feeling of New England. If New England were anti-slavery in sentiment - thoroughly and energetically so - Slavery could not subsist in Carolina and Georgia. Indeed, it could not subsist there, if New England were not actively pro-slavery. If we were neutral here, Slavery could not live at the South. If we cared as much for the colored man, as we care for the Irishman (which is little enough), the South could not enslave him long. Could they enslave the Irish people of this country, long - provided they had them now in bondage? Would not the news that white Irishman were sold at auction, In New Orleans, set all New England in a blaze? And not the glare of the conflagration strike down on that gloomy man-market, and make the dark waters that surround it as ruddy as with the light of a volcano?

As Slavery is a moral evil, our applications for its cure should be moral. They should not be political, or military direct, political being military indirect. They should be moral. We have got to generate a humanity for this country, that will not allow slavery. Our present humanity is low toned. It cannot deliver the slave. It allows the poor white man to be trodden under foot. The nominal free man. The institutions among us that are unfriendly to the white poor, will sustain the slavery of the colored man. They will enslave him. We ask them to liberate him. They reply by ordering us to hold our peace. We are surprised at this, but ought not to be. The Institutions make Slavery, and therefore cannot overthrow it. And they cannot allow us to overthrow it. The overthrow of Slavery must involve the doing away of the oppressions practiced by these institutions on the white poor. White Labor is all but enslaved among us. It is the slave of Capital. Capital buys it at auction. The capitalist bids off the the bones and sinews of Labor. The laborer thinks he gets the price of it. It does pass through his hands - but Capital tells him how he must spend it, and imposes on him so many burdens to maintain the idle, that it can keep him always subject, and always poor. It is impossible for Labor to get rich or free. I mean Labor generally. The institutions capital up will exhaust Labor's means, and keep it down. The black laborer it enslaves outright in this country. The means of abolishing slavery must be employed in opening tghe eyes of the people to these tyrant Instititutions. Anti-Slavery tells the truth about them. That is the way to get Slavery down.

Some of our anti-slavery people - of the keenest moral vision formerly - are now purblind with the dust of politics. They do not throw political dust - but they help kick it up and love to be in it. It puts their eyes out. They do not hold office, or vote - but they will hover about the polls, to watch the balloting of others, and about the State House, where they can enjoy the turmoil of legislation. It blinds them to moral truth and renders them insesible to its power and beauty. It blunts their moral sense also - makes them conservative, contemptuous and tyrannical. We push the great Temperance Reform. These people cry out we are forgetting the slave. We give out Theodore Parker's great flashes of religious freedom. They say it is extraneous. We go for Free Meeting. They cry "monomania" - and "departure altogether from the anti-slavery platform." They demand of us to be publishing accounts or corporate anti0-slavery meetings - with resolves passed by their majorities - and lists of their officers. This is anti-slavery. This is Platform abolitionism. But when our Flints let off fire on the communion wine, and set its alcohol to burning blue; when "Prospero" touches with master hand the significant events of the times, and points out their bearing on the progress of humanity; - when our "K's" shed the light of their young genius on our movement and draw men's eyes to it by the beauty of its rainbow dyes, and make them philanthropists before they know it - and so, abolitionists; when our Weavers, with a touch delicate and native as the very spider's - "designing" their moral "parallels,"

"Sure as De Moivre, without rule or line,"[i]

and unrolling before the delighted eye of Philanthropy, webs richer than ever were wrought in the looms of Cashmere, - they toss their solemn heads at us and taunt that we are off the platform and dealing "in spiders and things!" They don't understand. Their eyes are full of political saw-dust. Read Thomas Whalley on Authority. Is there no anti-slavery in it? Won't it do as much, to prepare the people to recognize the humanity of the slave and so give him liberty, to print that, as it bwould to print the list of officers in some anti-slavery society, or a resolve against the Annexation of Texas. I think it will, more.

Nathaniel Peabody Rogers