Frederick Douglas
September 14, 1846

“You will observe, that during the speeches of Mr. Garrison and Mr. Thompson, special reference has been made to the church in America. Why, Sir, do we so often allude to this, and make special attacks on the American church and clergy? It is not because we have any war with them as a body of Christians, not because we have any war with the ministers in America, as such,—not at all; but they have thrown themselves across the pathway of emancipation, and made it our duty to make war upon them, or desert the cause of the slave. Why, Sir, the political parties in the United States that uphold the sin of slavery dwindle into insignificance, when compared with the power exercised by the church to uphold and sustain that system.

[…] I have heard sermon after sermon, when a slave, intended to make me satisfied with my condition, telling me that it is the position God intended me to occupy; that if I offend against my master, I offend against God; that my happiness in time and eternity depends on my entire obedience to my master. Those are the doctrines taught among slaves, and the slave-holders themselves have become conscious about holding slaves in bondage, and their consciences have been lulled to sleep by the preaching and teaching of the Southern American pulpits. ‘There is no place,’ said an Abolitionist in the United States, ‘where slavery finds a more secure abode than under the shadow of the sanctuary.’ The simple fact in itself, that three millions of slaves exist in a land where there are more than two millions of Evangelical Christians, ought to be sufficient to show that that Christianity, that Evangelical religion, is not what it ought to be—(cheers).

Only think of a religion under which the handcuffs, the fetters, the whip, the gag, the thumbscrew, blood-hounds, cat-o’-nine-tails, branding-irons, all these implements, can be undisturbed. Only think of a body of men thanking God every Sabbath-day that they live in a country where there is civil and religious freedom, when there are three millions of people herded together in a state of concubinage, denied the right to learn to read the name of the God that made them,—where there are laws that doom the black man to death for offences which, if committed by white men, would pass unpunished. Think of a man standing up among such a people, and never raising a whisper in condemnation of such a state of things, denouncing the slaveholders, or speaking a word of pity or sympathy with the poor slave. This in itself should have been sufficient to have led the Evangelical Alliance to have barred and bolted its gateways, to keep out from them the persons who have been here, such as Dr. Smyth, of Charleston, South Carolina. I happen to know something of him. Sir, that man stands charged, and justly charged, with performing mock marriages, in the city of Charleston, among the slaves, leaving out the most important part of the ceremony, “What God has bound together, let no man put asunder.” When marriages are performed among slaves, this is left out, and for the best of reasons,—when they marry them with the understanding that their masters have the right and power of tearing asunder those they have pretended to join together—(cries of ‘Shame, shame’).

I do believe the Evangelical Alliance was hoodwinked, that they were misled; I do not think they really understood the matter; they were led off by such statements as this,—that the slave-holders were in such a position, that they could not emancipate their slaves if they would; and there is just enough truth in this to save it from being an absolute falsehood; there are laws in America which make emancipation depend upon expatriation; they say that unless a slave be removed from the State, his master shall not emancipate him; or if he does, he shall be reduced to slavery again by the State. Well, the slave-holders who made this law take shelter under it; and Dr. Marsh, in Newcastle, the other day, on being called on to know why, if temperance had removed intemperance from the land, why it had not removed slavery? he declared, that the slave-holders, if they emancipated their slaves, would at once be thrown into prison. Well, it is by such statements as these that the slave-holders led them astray.

I wish to undeceive them as far as I can; the slave-holders are not compelled to retain their slaves. If they will leave it to their slaves for five minutes, they will decide the question. All the slave-holders have to do, is to say to the slave, I have done with you; I cannot, with any conscience, hold you; it is true you cannot be free on this soil, but the British lion rules on three sides of us; Canada is round us; go to Canada, and be free from the talons and beak of the American eagle—(loud cheers). All that the slave-holder has to do, is to say,—Go. But what if the law did make it impossible for a man to emancipate his slaves; there is one outlet yet; the slave-holder himself could leave the state, and say to the state,—If you will have slavery, if you will stain your soil and country with slavery, I for one will not stay among you—(hear, hear). If the slave-holding Christians of the South would only take that course, and say,—Unless you give up slavery, and allow us to emancipate our slaves, we will leave the state,—what a sublime spectacle it would present, to see the Christians of the Southern States marching out two abreast: it would present a far sublimer spectacle than the Evangelical Alliance—(loud cheers).

One word in reference to my friend Garrison’s allusion to the prayers in the Evangelical Alliance: I have all my days been accustomed to prayer, in connection with slavery: my master was a praying man; the man who claims to own these hands, and who has bound himself almost with the solemnity of an oath, that if ever again I set my feet on the American soil I shall be a slave, that man prays, at morning, noon, and nights; and I have seen him tie up by the hands a female cousin of my own, and lash her with a cow-skin, till the warm blood trickled at her feet, and all the while say, ‘the slave that knoweth his master’s will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes’—(shame). I have seen my master’s brother trample my own brother to the ground, and stamp on him with his boot, till the blood gushed from his nose. I have seen these things in the midst of prayer.

When the Presbyterian assembly was called on a few years ago, to say that slavery is a sin against God, it was voted by the Assembly, that it is inexpedient to take action on the subject, and as soon as that was done, Dr. Cox jumped up and clapped his hands, and thanked God that their Vesuvius was capped; and having got rid of slavery, they all engaged in prayer; while the poor heart-broken slave was lifting up his hands to them, and clanking his chains and imploring them in the name of God to aid him; and their reply was, it is inexpedient for us to do so: and Dr. Cox clapped his hands and thanked God that the Vesuvius was capped; that is, that the question of slavery is got rid of. And so it was with Methodists; and so it is with almost all the religious bodies in the United States. It was these reverend doctors who led astray the British ministers in the Evangelical Alliance, on this question of slavery; they dared not go home to America as connected with the Alliance, if anything had been registered against slavery by that Alliance; they knew who were their masters, and that they must be uncompromising—(hear, hear) … .

I know the prayers of slaveholders. I have been the slave of religious and irreligious slaveholders, and I bear my testimony, that next to being a slave at all, I regard the greatest calamity to be that of belonging to a religious slaveholder. (Cries of hear, and cheers.) I have found them the most mean, the most exacting, the most cruel. This is a startling position, but it is true as far as my experience is concerned. I know not how to explain it, but such is the fact. The religious slaveholders are the most tenacious of slavery.”

 

Source(s):

Frederick Douglass, “Slavery in the Pulpit of the Evangelical Alliance: An Address Delivered in London, England, on September 14, 1846,” London Inquirer, September 19, 1846, and London Patriot, September 17, 1846, cited in John Blassingame et al., eds., The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, vol. 1, 1841–1846 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1979), p. 407