The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation (71 page)

49.
Ibid., 40.
Cornish and Russwurm seemed to have been substantially more optimistic about the exposure of the
Journal
among the black populace, despite the obvious barriers of literacy: “interesting fact that there are FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND free persons of colour, one half of whom might peruse, and the whole be benefited by the publications of the Journal.”
Freedom’s Journal,
March 16, 1827.

50.
The assessment that Cornish was the more dominant voice during the first six months of
Freedom’s Journal
has been affirmed by most close observers of Cornish’s life and
Freedom’s Journal.
See Swift,
Black Prophets of Justice,
30; Christopher Allison, “Floating on the Stream of Prejudice,” 32; Gross, “Freedom’s Journal and the Rights of All,” 247–48. Timothy Patrick McCarthy, “ ‘To Plead Our Own Cause’: Black Print Culture and the Origins of American Abolitionism,” in McCarthy and Stauffer,
Prophets of Protest,
131. Also, in Cornish’s departure note he indicates his dominance as well: “Six months of our Editorial labours having expired; by mutual consent, and good wishes for the prosperity and usefulness of each other, our connection in the ‘JOURNAL,’ is this day dissolved, and the right and prerogatives exclusively vested in the Junior Editor, J.B. RUSSWURM.” “To Our Patrons,”
Freedom’s Journal,
Sept. 14, 1827.

51.
“To Our Patrons,”
Freedom’s Journal,
March 16, 1827.

52.
Allison, “Floating on the Stream of Prejudice,” 2.; “Colonization Society,”
Freedom’s Journal,
June 8, 1827. In this same article he expresses his careful deference, but firm disagreement: “There are many friends of colonization, whom we respect, and for no consideration, would we be guilty of treating their opinions lightly. Their objects are emancipation; the salvation of Africa; and the extermination of the slave trade. Nothing could be more worthy the philanthropist, and the Christian. …In soliciting patronage to our Journal among Colonizationists, we expressed ourselves to many of them, as opposed to colonization in any shape, unless it be merely considered as a missionary establishment; yet, if we were wrong, our minds were open to conviction, and we wished to see the subject discussed; they were generally pleased with the idea. If the Colonization Society possess any merits, it cannot lose by investigation; but if the motives of its founders will not bear investigation, it ought to sink: every good man will say the same.”

53.
Benjamin Quarles,
Black Abolitionists
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 184.

54.
Walker’s
Appeal
reserves his praise for two individuals in
The Appeal,
Cornish and Richard Allen. Theodore Wright: “The press came out against us, and we trembled. Maryland passed laws to force out the colored people. It was deemed proper to make them go, whether they would or not. Then we despaired. Ah, Mr. President, that was a dark and gloomy period. The united views and intentions of the people of color were made known, and the nation awoke as from slumber. The ‘Freedom’s Journal,’ edited by Rev. Sam’l. E. Cornish, announced the facts in the case, our entire
opposition. Sir, it came like a clap of thunder!” ADDRESS. of the Rev. Theodore S. Wright, “B
EFORE THE
C
ONVENTION OF THE
N
EW
Y
ORK
S
TATE
A
NTI
-S
LAVERY
S
OCIETY, ON THE
A
CCEPTANCE OF THE
A
NNUAL
R
EPORT
, H
ELD AT
U
TICA
, S
EPT.
30,”
Colored American,
Oct. 14, 1837.

55.
“Colonization Society,”
Freedom’s Journal,
June 8, 1827.

56.
Allison, “Floating on the Stream of Prejudice,” 33. Cornish writes of his response to
Russwurm’s departure: “… the sudden change of the late Editor of ‘Freedom’s Journal’ in respect to colonization, has excited much astonishment, and led to many inquiries; to me the subject is equally strange as to others, and I can only dispose of it, by classing it with the other novelties of the day.” He encouraged his readers to “dispose” of their feelings over what had transpired and support the new venture. See “T
O
O
UR
P
ATRONS, AND THE
P
UBLICK
G
ENERALLY
”
Rights of All,
May 29, 1829. Others were less civil: “This John B. Russworm is known, I presume, to every one of us; his ingratitude is but too deeply stamped on the minds of many … which neither time nor space will obliterate. After he subverted the pledge he made to his colored brethren, he left, to our satisfaction, his country—suffused with shame—and branded with the stigma of disgrace—to dwell in that land for which the temptor MONEY caused him to avow his preferment.… we will pray God, that his notions of nobleness may never enter our hearts, and that we will not be contented with our condition, but will make it better in this our native home.” “To the Editor of the Liberator”
The Liberator,
April 16, 1831, quoted in
The Mind of the Negro as Reflected in the Letters Written During the Crisis,
ed. Carter G. Woodson (New York: Russell & Russell, 1969), 161.

57.
“Colonization,”
Freedom’s Journal,
March 14, 1829.

58.
“The Old Hobby Colonization,”
Rights of All,
Sept. 18, 1829.

59.
Russwurm’s defection to Liberia haunted
The Rights of All
from the start.
The Rights of All
was initially supposed to be a continuation of
Freedom’s Journal,
with Cornish back at the helm. But Cornish was forced to change the name to distance himself from the scandal and to incur a lot of debt to keep the paper going; he was apologetic to his readers in the inaugural edition of
The Rights of All
over both the slippage in quality of
Freedom’s Journal
and the opinions of its late editor. By October of 1829, recurrent sickness and insurmountable financial obstacles led to the closure of Cornish’s second paper; once again Cornish was finished after only six months. Allison, “Floating on the Stream of Prejudice,” 32–33.

60.
Newman,
Transformation of American Abolitionism,
97.

61.
David Walker,
Walker’s Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America, Written in Boston, State of Massachusetts, September 28
,
1829
, Third and Last Edition with additional notes, corrections, &c. (Boston, Mass.: David Walker, 1830), 76.

62.
Garrison acknowledged
The Rights of All
and called Cornish “a colored gentleman of intelligence and spirit.” See
Genius of Universal Emancipation,
Feb. 5, 1830, vol. 4, issue 22. He reprinted original pieces from
Freedom’s Journal
(a Lundy tribute from the March 21, 1828, issue) in the
Philanthropist,
though it is unknown if he read any of the journal in 1827 when Cornish was senior editor. Henry Mayer,
All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery,
1st ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 54. Garrison called Walker’s
Appeal
one of the most “remarkable productions of the age” with an “impassioned and determined spirit.” He thought Walker’s call for retributive justice was “injudicious” but recognized that his call to resistance was the right of a free people.
“
W
ALKER
’
S
A
PPEAL
N
O.
I,”
The Liberator,
January 8, 1831, 1:2.

63.
David W. Blight, “Garrison’s Legacy for Our Time,” in
William Lloyd Garrison at Two Hundred: History, Legacy, and Memory,
ed. James B. Stewart (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008), 5.

64.
Winch,
A Gentleman of Color,
passim; Newman,
Transformation of American Abolitionism,
112–16.

65.
Newman,
Transformation of American Abolitionism,
112–16; Mayer,
All on Fire,
101, 110, 116, 147, 173. While Mayer gives some recognition to Forten’s aid and names James G. Barbadoes as Garrison’s “chief black ally” in Boston, Winch shows that Forten’s support and influence were considerably stronger than previous historians have recognized. On the essential black support of Garrison and
The Liberator,
see Donald M. Jacobs, “William Lloyd Garrison’s
Liberator
and Boston’s Blacks, 1830–1865,”
The New England Quarterly
44, no. 2 (June 1971): 261.

66.
Elizabeth Heyrick,
Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition
(London, 1824), 36; Davis, “Emergence of Immediatism,” 248–57. In 1829 there were still slaves in Philadelphia, even though Pennsylvania had passed a gradual emancipation act in 1780.

67.
This paragraph is a revised version of the opening paragraph in Davis, “Emergence of Immediatism,” 238–39.

68.
“TO THE PUBLIC,”
The Liberator,
January 1, 1831.

69.
Newman,
Transformation of American Abolitionism,
105.

70.
Ibid., 105–6.

71.
For black gratitude towards Garrison in Boston, see James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton,
Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North
(New York: Holmes & Meier, 1979), 84.

72.
Quoted in Jacobs, “William Lloyd Garrison’s
Liberator
and Boston’s Blacks,” 260.

73.
“ADDRESS of the Rev. Theodore S. Wright…,”
Colored American,
Oct. 14, 1837.

74.
Garrison,
Thoughts on African Colonization,
Part 2, 8.

75.
Ibid., Part 1, 104–05; Part 2, 14.

76.
Ibid., Part 1, 155–56.

77.
Blight, “Garrison’s Legacy for Our Time,” 7.

1.
Carter G. Woodson, ed.,
The Mind of the Negro as Reflected in Letters Written During the Crisis, 1800–1860
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1969), 654, 658.

2.
Frederick Douglass, “Temperance and Anti-Slavery: An Address Delivered in Paisley, Scotland, on 30 March 1846,”
The Frederick Douglass Papers,
Series One,
Speeches, Debates, and Interviews,
ed. John W. Blassingame, vol. 1:
1841–46
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979), 206.

3.
For the more positive view, see Benjamin Quarles,
Black Abolitionists
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 40–41.

4.
Carter Godwin Woodson,
Negro Orators and Their Orations
(Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1925), 93.

5.
This paragraph draws on Christopher Mark Brady Allison, “Floating on the Stream of Prejudice: The Making of the Religious Activism of Samuel Cornish” (M.A. thesis, Yale University, May 2010), 24, 29.

6.
“Address by Abraham D. Shadd, William Hamilton, and William Whipper, 13 June 1832,” in
The Black Abolitionist Papers,
vol. 3,
The United States, 1830–1846
, ed. C. Peter Ripley (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 109–15.

7.
Address to the People of Color of the City of New York, by Members of the Executive Committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society
(New York, 1834), 3–7.

8.
Ibid.;
Objects of the
Phoenix Society of New York,
8. Led by prominent black and white figures, the Phoenix Society grew rapidly and founded a high school for colored youth as well as
Ward Societies with lending libraries, reading rooms, and lecture series devoted to history and science as well as “morals, literature, and the mechanic arts.” Much effort was given to the promotion of temperance and wholesome evening activities for black youth. Samuel Cornish, cofounder of the first black newspaper, played a key role in raising funds (often from women) to build up the
Society’s library holdings. Dorothy B. Porter, “The Organized Educational Activities of Negro Literary Societies, 1828–1846,”
The Journal of Negro Education
5, no. 4 (Oct. 1936): 565–67.

9.
While the financial crisis and depression of 1837 lay ahead, there would be continuing efforts to induce urban blacks to find employment in the countryside.

10.
Address to the People of Color,
4.

11.
W. J. Rorabaugh,
The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 237–40. According to Rorabaugh’s charts, per capita consumption of distilled spirits was much higher in Scotland and Sweden than in the United States. In America the consumption of beer rose rapidly after 1881.

12.
Douglass, “Temperance and Anti-Slavery,” 206; Donald Yacovone, “The Transformation of the Black Temperance Movement, 1827–1854: An Interpretation,”
Journal of the Early Republic
8, no. 3 (Fall 1988): 281–97. Douglass also drew on personal experience to argue that slaveholders used alcohol to mollify and subdue their slaves. For reformers, the parallels and metaphors between slavery and intemperance were endless.

13.
Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women,
An Address to Free Colored Americans
(New York, 1837).

14.
Quotation from Ruth Bogin and Jean Fagan Yellin, introduction to
The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America,
ed. Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horne (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994), 12; Dorothy Sterling, ed.,
Turning the World Upside Down: The Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, Held in New York City, May 9–12
,
1837
(includes the Minutes of the Convention) (New York: CUNY Feminist Press, 1987), passim; Carolyn L. Karcher,
The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994), 244–48; Gilbert Hobbs Barnes,
The Antislavery Impulse, 1830–1844
(1933; repr., Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1957), 142–44; Julie Roy Jeffrey,
The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 93–95.