Excerpt on Abolitionists from "The Metaphysical Club" by Louis Menand.
I excerpt this passage from pages 12-15 to show the similarities and diffs with many current neo-anabaptist point of views.
Abolitionism arose out of the Second Great Awakening, the evangelical revival that swept through New England and then uptstate New York between 1800 and 1840, and that also spawned temperance, women's rights, and other social reform movements, along with a number of utopian and religious sects, most famously the Mormons. The foundations of the abolitionist movement were therefore spiritual and anti-institutional. Abolitionism was a party for people who did not believe in parties--a paradoxical law of attraction that turned out to be ideally suited to a Unitarian, Transcendentalist, and generally post-Calvinist culture like New England [and Ralph Waldo Emerson], a culture that was increasingly obsessed with the moral authority of the individual conscience. The American Anti-Slavery Society, the movement's organizational arm, had relatively few members, membership in an organization being the sort of thing that tends to compromise the inner vision. But it ahd many fellow travellers.
Holding that any system that countenanced slavery was evil, the most extreme abolitionists refused to help circulate the antislavery petitions that poured into Congress from the North in response to the petition gag rule. Their nominal leader, William Lloyd Garrison, was a pacifist who believed that no abolitionist should hold political office. He printed the motto "The United States Constitution is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell" on the front page of his newspaper, the Liberator, and he made a practice of burning copies of the Constitution at his public appearances. His political text was the Declaration of Independence, since it asserts that people have a natural right to resist the state for reasons of conscience. (The Declaration of Independence was also, of course, on a somewhat different reading, the political text of the Southern secessionists.) And he preached an otherworldly indifference to the consequences of his platform. "If the State cannot survive the anti-slavery agitation then let the State perish," he announced in an address called "No Compromise with Slavery." If the American Union cannot be maintained, except by immolating human freedom on the altar of tyranny then let the American Union be consumed by a living thunderbolt, and no tear be shed over its ashes."
The abolitionists were not interested in reform. They were interested in conversion. Any "political reformation," Garrison wrote in a stern reply to a fellow abolitionist (and former slaveholder) who had ventured to suggest that people hoping to end slavery might have an obligation to vote for antislavery candidates, "is to be effected solely by a change in the moral vision of the people;--not by attempting to prove, that it is the duty of every abolitionist to be a voter, but that it is the duty of every voter to be an abolitionist." "Genuine abolitionism," he said elsewhere,"...is of heaven, not of men. ...[I]t is a life, not an impulse."
The contempt for ordinary politics made the abolitionists the enemies even of their antislavery allies. They had no more patience with the Conscience Whigs and the American Colonization Society, groups that advocated tactical or gradualist approaches to the eradication of slavery, than they had with slaveholders and their apologists--since, said Garrison, as "the experience of two centuries [has] shown, ... gradualism in theory, is perpetuity in practice." Garrison's associate Wendell phillips was disgusted when, in 1852, Conscience Whighs who had opposed Daniel Webster when he was alive showed up for his funeral. No abolitionist would have made such a concession to decorum. "We do not play politics," phillips said.
dlw: It seems their concern with being pure and bringing on the ideal was greater than the effects of their actions/views on the lives of African-Americans or their ability to relate with their opponents. Can a group remain decentralized and dynamic and yet find ways to cooperate enough to set and push for reforms, as a critical but not central part of how they love their neighbors? It seems to me they put a political goal, the abolition of slavery, at the center of their self-understanding. And no matter how terrible slavery was and is, it's just an aspect of what our fallen world groans for redemption from.
Just food for thought.
dlw
Abolitionism arose out of the Second Great Awakening, the evangelical revival that swept through New England and then uptstate New York between 1800 and 1840, and that also spawned temperance, women's rights, and other social reform movements, along with a number of utopian and religious sects, most famously the Mormons. The foundations of the abolitionist movement were therefore spiritual and anti-institutional. Abolitionism was a party for people who did not believe in parties--a paradoxical law of attraction that turned out to be ideally suited to a Unitarian, Transcendentalist, and generally post-Calvinist culture like New England [and Ralph Waldo Emerson], a culture that was increasingly obsessed with the moral authority of the individual conscience. The American Anti-Slavery Society, the movement's organizational arm, had relatively few members, membership in an organization being the sort of thing that tends to compromise the inner vision. But it ahd many fellow travellers.
Holding that any system that countenanced slavery was evil, the most extreme abolitionists refused to help circulate the antislavery petitions that poured into Congress from the North in response to the petition gag rule. Their nominal leader, William Lloyd Garrison, was a pacifist who believed that no abolitionist should hold political office. He printed the motto "The United States Constitution is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell" on the front page of his newspaper, the Liberator, and he made a practice of burning copies of the Constitution at his public appearances. His political text was the Declaration of Independence, since it asserts that people have a natural right to resist the state for reasons of conscience. (The Declaration of Independence was also, of course, on a somewhat different reading, the political text of the Southern secessionists.) And he preached an otherworldly indifference to the consequences of his platform. "If the State cannot survive the anti-slavery agitation then let the State perish," he announced in an address called "No Compromise with Slavery." If the American Union cannot be maintained, except by immolating human freedom on the altar of tyranny then let the American Union be consumed by a living thunderbolt, and no tear be shed over its ashes."
The abolitionists were not interested in reform. They were interested in conversion. Any "political reformation," Garrison wrote in a stern reply to a fellow abolitionist (and former slaveholder) who had ventured to suggest that people hoping to end slavery might have an obligation to vote for antislavery candidates, "is to be effected solely by a change in the moral vision of the people;--not by attempting to prove, that it is the duty of every abolitionist to be a voter, but that it is the duty of every voter to be an abolitionist." "Genuine abolitionism," he said elsewhere,"...is of heaven, not of men. ...[I]t is a life, not an impulse."
The contempt for ordinary politics made the abolitionists the enemies even of their antislavery allies. They had no more patience with the Conscience Whigs and the American Colonization Society, groups that advocated tactical or gradualist approaches to the eradication of slavery, than they had with slaveholders and their apologists--since, said Garrison, as "the experience of two centuries [has] shown, ... gradualism in theory, is perpetuity in practice." Garrison's associate Wendell phillips was disgusted when, in 1852, Conscience Whighs who had opposed Daniel Webster when he was alive showed up for his funeral. No abolitionist would have made such a concession to decorum. "We do not play politics," phillips said.
dlw: It seems their concern with being pure and bringing on the ideal was greater than the effects of their actions/views on the lives of African-Americans or their ability to relate with their opponents. Can a group remain decentralized and dynamic and yet find ways to cooperate enough to set and push for reforms, as a critical but not central part of how they love their neighbors? It seems to me they put a political goal, the abolition of slavery, at the center of their self-understanding. And no matter how terrible slavery was and is, it's just an aspect of what our fallen world groans for redemption from.
Just food for thought.
dlw
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