Unitarians and Abolition

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
June 17, 2018
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
austinuu.org

Unitarians and Abolition. Some were heroes, others not very heroic at all. It seems that we have always been, and still are, a mixture of passion and fear, militant and hesitant, part of the solution and part of the problem.

Call to Worship
from Jody Picoult’s novel “Vanishing Acts”

I suddenly remember being very little and embraced by my father. I’d try to put my arms around my father’s waist and hug him back. I could never reach around the equator of his body; he was that much larger than life. Then, one day I could do it. I held him instead of him holding me and all I wanted at that moment was to have it back the other way.

Reading
from Johnathan Foers novel “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”

Darling,

You asked me to write you a letter. I do not know why I am writing you this letter or what this letter is supposed to be about. But I am writing it none-the-less because I love you very much and trust you have some good purpose for it. I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.

Your Father

Sermon

I came in to Unitarian Universalism as many of us did, from other denominations and I was thrilled with the stands on justice that this denomination was taking. As I got to know us better, I heard the history of the church I served in the south. They’re doing a bit been the big split during the Civil Rights Movement. No one was against working for civil rights, but some people felt it should happen more gradually. Everyone wanted the YMCA in the town to be integrated but some people wanted to work with the politicians and the leadership of the Y to make it happen and others wanted to take a more militant stand, a more disruptive stand. Those who wanted to be disruptive ended up getting frustrated leaving the church. Unitarians have been like this since our beginning. When I say like this I mean carrying espousing a variety of different perspectives different stances on social issues and on how to bring about Justice. No one is against Justice, well maybe John C Calhoun. Did you know he was a Unitarian?

John Caldwell Calhoun (March 18, 1782-March 31,1850) was a United States representative, senator, secretary of war, secretary of state, and vice president. A political sparring partner to John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay, Calhoun is best remembered for the rallying cries of “states’ rights” and “nullification,” both of which he invoked to support his steadfast opposition to tariffs on manufactures and his defense of slavery.

He was a son of South Carolina, educated at Yale, where he was exposed to Unitarian ideas and espoused them. He remained calvinist in his dour personality and in his opposition to Pleasures such as dancing. After graduation he briefly study law in Charleston South Carolina before going back up north to the Litchfield law school, and Connecticut. Litchfield was a hotbed of anti-federalists and secessionist politics. Are you surprised that there was this kind of group in Connecticut? Don’t be. It’s everywhere.

He moved back to South Carolina as a gentleman farmer, which means that enslaved men and women did the farm work and the housework.

John Quincy Adams was his nemesis and his partner in building All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington DC, where they both worshipped. Calhoun remained a staunch defender of the enslavement of men and women from Africa until his death in 1850. His rallying cry was states rights and nullification by which he meant that a stage should have the right not to enforce a federal law if they didn’t agree with it. Many southern states have made attempts to behave as if this is true up until today.

Many of the Southern unitarians were against enslavement, but they did not want the country to break apart, so they were working to vote for compromise. Some of them did not want to compromise. The American Unitarian Association in Boston sent a minister down to the church and Savannah to talk to them about abolition, they did not let him into their pulpit and they told the AUA not to send anybody else like that down there, they were fine thank you very much, and they did not want to sully the purity of religion by engaging in politics from the pulpit.

One of The unitarians who wanted to keep the union together and so compromised more than he should have was Millard Fillmore. President Fillmore succeeded to the presidency after the death of Zachary Taylor. He did not want to identify with either the anti-slavery Whigs or the pro-slavery Southern Democrats, and he vowed that he wanted “to look upon this whole country, from the farthest coast of Maine to the utmost limit of Texas, as but one country”

Fillmore delayed signing the Fugitive Slave Act for three days, until September 18, 1850, while he pondered its implications. He knew it would be greeted with protest by abolitionists and other northerners who resented being made the South’s slave catchers. Further, he expected that the new law would destroy his political career. He had sworn an oath, however, to defend and preserve the Union. Accordingly he signed it. Charles Sumner, who would soon campaign for the repeal of the Act in the Senate, said, “Better for [Fillmore] had he never been born; better for his memory and the good name of his children, had he never been President.” Some in the South were also dissatisfied with the combined effects of the acts. The governor of South Carolina made public threats of secession. Fillmore immediately gave the United States Army orders to reinforce Federal positions in South Carolina and other southern states. This prompt action stopped any talk of secession.

Fillmore never doubted he had taken the right action. His definitive statement on the subject was: “God knows that I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil, for which we are not responsible, and we must endure it, and give it such protection as is guaranteed by the Constitution, till we can get rid of it without destroying the last hope of free government in the world.”

During his presidency and afterwards Fillmore was befriended by Dorothea Dix, the crusader for better treatment of the mentally ill. He promoted her social legislation and she supported him in his presidency, his political career, and in his bereavements.

Fillmore’s association with First Unitarian Church of Buffalo lasted for 35 years. He took John Quincy Adams to church with him there in 1843 and President-elect Abraham Lincoln in 1861. A letter written in 1849, turning down an invitation to speak at a Unitarian meeting in Boston, saying, “I sympathize with those who inhance liberal Christianity. But yet I am not a member of the Unitarian church,” remains puzzling. He had contributed much money to the Unitarian church, including a registered payment in 1848.

Numerous abolitionists in the congregation greatly disagreed with Fillmore’s acts as President. He understood this and did not complain. Although George W. Hosmer, minister of the church, 1836-67, disagreed publicly with Fillmore’s positions, particularly on the Fugitive Slave Law, the two men enjoyed a close relationship. Upon Fillmore’s death, Hosmer said, “He dreaded war; by any and every means he would save his country from such calamity as war would bring. When Congress by a large majority passed the Fugitive Slave Bill, then for the sake of peace he thought it best to sign it.”

Now all can see, and some saw it then, it was only postponing the horror But I know Mr. Fillmore was honest, unspotted by corruption, and never thought of the nation’s capitol as a place to make money or satisfy selfish ambition. No goods of the nation clung to him; his hands were clean. Integrity and economy kept him safe. A letter he wrote to me, when he suddenly found himself at the head of the Government, reveals the strong earnestness with which he took up his great duty. In serious words he said how deep he felt his dependence on God, and with all his heart sought his guidance.

Conrad Wright has suggested that most Unitarians fell into one of three groups: those influenced by the prominent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who acted for the immediate cessation of slavery; those who sought a gradual end to the institution of slavery, so as to minimize disruption of the social, economic, and political order; and those who opposed slavery on moral grounds, but resisted making a political commitment to end it. An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans, written by Unitarian Lydia Maria Child, firmly established the “Garrison” perspective within Unitarianism. Her work also greatly influenced William Ellery Channing.

Some of those who were long-time abolitionists felt that it was going to take more than legislation and debate to end slavery. A group formed called The Secret six. Two of them were wealthy men, and the other four were men of influence. Two of the not wealthy men were Unitarian ministers, Thomas Higginson and Theodore Parker. They met with a fiery abolitionist named John Brown and funded his raid on Harpers Ferry. He wanted to steal weapons in order to arm enslaved men to make a rebellion. John Brown felt that violence was demanded if slavery were to end. He and his men had killed some pro-slavery householders in Kansas, and the secret six felt that perhaps with this desperate, passionate, murderous person could end the horror.

After Brown was caught, one of the men had himself committed to an insane asylum, insisting that he had not helped Brown. three of the men went to Canada, one stayed in the U.S. and plotted to break John Brown out of prison. Theodore Parker was in Italy with Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning trying to recover from his tuberculosis. He stayed there until he died.

Sources: John McCauley Unitarianism in the Antebellum South, Wikipedia

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