 Moses Stuart. Yale University Library Online Exhibitions. |  Ebenezer Porter. Banner of Truth Trust. |
In 1833, the U.K. abolished slavery. That galvanized U.S. abolitionists, including those at A.T.S., where a student Antislavery Society was formed as an auxiliary of the New England Antislavery Society. The group was small, however; only a few seminarians supported it, and faculty discouraged it, with Ebenezer Porter, A.T.S.'s president, going on record as being against slavery as “a very great national evil,” but also dead against "immediate emancipation" as being not merely “inexpedient” but “impossible.” [1]
Porter conceded that some enslaved people, once they had been freed, “might be employed as the laboring peasantry of this country,” but that others, “through indolence and intemperance, would die and putrefy, like the frogs of Egypt,” and that still others “would be hunted, and manacled, and shot, by white men, in self-defense; till the bolder spirits among them, ripe for treason and violence, would organize an army of outlaws.” He believed in short that life in the U.S. was unthinkable without slavery and that "an immediate abolition of it would tear up the foundations of society.” Instead, he was in favor of colonization as “an adequate and immediate remedy.”
On August 7, 1835, the New Bedford Mercury reported on a July 27 lecture delivered in Boston by A.T.S.'s Moses Stuart. His discourse, according to the Mercury reporter, “demolished the Abolition scripture quoters.” Stuart had not changed his mind fifteen years later. In fact, he seemed more than ever convinced of his position. In 1850, he published a pamphlet, Conscience and the Constitution, that once again used scripture to defend his position. He even purported to know what Christ was thinking about the issue: “He [Christ] doubtless felt that slavery might be made a very tolerable condition, nay, even a blessing to such as were shiftless and helpless, in case of kind and gentle mastership.” [3] His conclusion: like Porter, he believed that colonization was the solution to the problem.
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1. Lyman Matthews, Memoir of the Life and Character of Ebenezer Porter, D. D., Late President of the Theological Seminary, Andover (Boston: Perkins & Marvin, 1837).
2. Sherlock Bristol, The Pioneer Preacher: Incidents of Interest, and Experiences in the Author’s Life. With an Introduction and Notes by Dewey D. Wallace, Jr. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989. Originally published in Chicago by F.H. Revell in 1887.
3. http://www.yaleslavery.org/WhoYaleHonors/stuart.html Retrieved August 5, 2022.
Porter conceded that some enslaved people, once they had been freed, “might be employed as the laboring peasantry of this country,” but that others, “through indolence and intemperance, would die and putrefy, like the frogs of Egypt,” and that still others “would be hunted, and manacled, and shot, by white men, in self-defense; till the bolder spirits among them, ripe for treason and violence, would organize an army of outlaws.” He believed in short that life in the U.S. was unthinkable without slavery and that "an immediate abolition of it would tear up the foundations of society.” Instead, he was in favor of colonization as “an adequate and immediate remedy.”
On August 7, 1835, the New Bedford Mercury reported on a July 27 lecture delivered in Boston by A.T.S.'s Moses Stuart. His discourse, according to the Mercury reporter, “demolished the Abolition scripture quoters.” Stuart had not changed his mind fifteen years later. In fact, he seemed more than ever convinced of his position. In 1850, he published a pamphlet, Conscience and the Constitution, that once again used scripture to defend his position. He even purported to know what Christ was thinking about the issue: “He [Christ] doubtless felt that slavery might be made a very tolerable condition, nay, even a blessing to such as were shiftless and helpless, in case of kind and gentle mastership.” [3] His conclusion: like Porter, he believed that colonization was the solution to the problem.
________________________
1. Lyman Matthews, Memoir of the Life and Character of Ebenezer Porter, D. D., Late President of the Theological Seminary, Andover (Boston: Perkins & Marvin, 1837).
2. Sherlock Bristol, The Pioneer Preacher: Incidents of Interest, and Experiences in the Author’s Life. With an Introduction and Notes by Dewey D. Wallace, Jr. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989. Originally published in Chicago by F.H. Revell in 1887.
3. http://www.yaleslavery.org/WhoYaleHonors/stuart.html Retrieved August 5, 2022.
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