Radio Script #1158

Little Talks on Common Things
March 26, 1978

From time to time on this program mention has been made of papers, many of them weeklies, published by various religious denominations. Several were published in Maine, such as the Baptist’s Zion’s Advocate and the Universalist’s Gospel Banner. Through the courtesy of Mr. Ole Libby of Clinton, I have examined another of those old papers, the Methodist’s Zion’s Herald. Though published in Boston, it arrived regularly in many Methodist homes in Maine.

The issue that Mr. Libby showed me was published only three months before the attack on Fort Sumter opened the Civil War. The issue is dated January 2, 1861. The paper’s masthead says: “Zion’s Herald is the oldest Methodist paper in the world. It is published by the Boston Wesleyan Association composed by 20 Methodist Episcopal churches and is the recognized organ of the church in New England. It is published weekly at $1.50 a year in advance. All travelling preachers of the Methodist Church are authorized agents. We urge agents to write the names of subscribers in full and the name of the post office to which the paper is to be sent in such manner that there can be no misunderstanding.”

This issue of Zion’s Herald shows that Methodists were much concerned about the great issue that would soon tear the nation in two and make a split in their church. This is what a communication from the South said: “The people of New England seem to have very inadequate and erroneous conceptions of the sentiment and purpose of people of the South. Dissension is inevitable. It is too late to stop secession, for that is now a fact. Action, not argument, is now in vogue in secession land. The South was charged with bullying the North with threats of secession. Now she is doing something besides bullying. A majority of the people in North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky are still opposed to the hasty action of South Carolina in leaving the Union, but our southern ruler of public opinion and their earnest press are preparing the people to go along with South Carolina. How can it be otherwise if the North persists in wrongs and taunts. The abyss of disunion may indeed be dark and terrible, but never so dark and terrible as the abyss of abolition.”

That communication is a surprising statement. It was made by a paper published in Boston, the home of the most famous of abolitionists, William Lloyd Garrison, and the very hot-bed of the abolition movement. It shows that the people and the press of New England, even as late as January 1861, were not united as to the best way to deal with the slavery question. Here is a Methodist paper, only three months before the start of the Civil War, publishing an article blaming the North in large measure for the secession of the southern states.

Yet when war came, New England Methodists rallied valiantly to the Union cause and many died in that terrible war.

Zion’s Herald had some strong words to say about the great dispute in the January issue. Listen to this:

”The Constitution of U. S. declares that no person held in service or labor in one state, escaping into another, should be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom the service or labor is due.

“Every act of the North in conflict with that clause of the Constitution is revolutionary, whether by underground railroad or otherwise. The South feels these violations in every fibre of her being. They regard such aggression as insulting to the South. We should either return the runaways or amend the Constitution. If the North persists in this lawless practice, it is the North, not the South, that is dissolving the Union.”

Zion’s Herald published in the same issue the address of a clergyman, Rev. Gilbert Haven, delivered in Boston’s Tremont Temple on the subject of slavery on December 3, 1860. Here is part of that address:

“How can slavery be abolished? If any, person, however humble, can offer a way for its speedy end, he must, as a loyal citizen offer it. I have long felt that slavery will not die bloodlessly unless the monied power is brought against it. All other forces, address the conscience, the sympathies, the fears, and the abstract political views of the slaveholders. But if we begin to bestow our goods to ransom the poor slave, the results may be different.

“How shall the wealth of the North be brought to bear directly against slavery? Some say it should be done by colonization in Africa or elsewhere. Others call for compensation, paying the slaveholders by national taxation.

“I hold that abolition can be obtained most effectively by organizing a society to seek emancipation laws in every state and offer the slaveholders remuneration for their pecuniary sacrifice. We must say to the slaveholder, if you won’t free your slaves without financial recompense, we will give you that recompense. We do not recognize your title to them as human beings, but as simple charity we will save you from financial loss.

“Let us put this plan into the list of our charities, and it will soon exceed them all. Scores of people in every New England town and city will collect money for the cause. In a few years the slaves will be free.”

While Zion’s Herald distrusted the militant abolitionists and maintained that the South had a case because of Northern violations of the Fugitive Stave Law, it makes perfectly clear that the people were opposed to slavery. In another editorial it said: “God has imposed upon the U. S. a great duty to settle the question whether the people of a large nation can preserve order and enjoy personal liberty. About half of our states have in their midst four million persons (another race of human beings) permanently enslaved.

“lt may well be noted that outside the U.S. compensated manumission has been the only successful method of relieving this evil. Great Britain spent nearly a hundred million dollars to free 800,000 slaves in the West Indies islands twenty-six years ago. Holland has just done the same. Russia is now indemnifying the nobles for freeing their serfs. Alone in the world, the older free states of the Russian Union have freed their slaves without recompense to the owners.

“To be effective, compensated emancipation would have to be national, not provincial. Otherwise it would be no more effective than in the Colonization Society, which has made no real progress. If the South would listen to reason, there would be strong public opinion in the North in favor of compensating them for their slaves.

“We are told that the states are independent and ought not to interfere with each other’s institution. Precisely so. But the territories are not yet states, and the North contends that the cause of slavery should not extend to them. If the South really intends to use secession to set up a slave holding nation, the end will be the horror of Civil War.

“The South resents the fact that churches of the North have declared slaveholding a sin. We do not deny that some Christians hold slaves, just as some excellent Christians gamble or become tipsy with liquor. But we maintain it is the duty of the church to lay down a standard and a righteous rule on the subject of slavery and to seek a national consensus to a Christian standard. We believe that church membership should be denied to any buyer or seller into bondage of another human being.”

Under the heading “News from Washington,” Zion’s Herald gave the following items.

“The Cabinet has ordered Major Anderson back to Fort Monroe. The air is full of rumors of war. One is that South Carolina has already commenced hostile ties. ”

“In Congress most of the time is now being spent in ineffectual efforts to arrange some compromise between North and South.

“South Carolina has finally seceded, as she threatened to do. Her senators and representatives have left Washington. She has seized the U.S. Post Office and Customs House at Charleston and the boats in the harbor, Moultrie and Pickney, over which she now flies the Palmetto state flag. Major Anderson, the U.S. Commissioner of Forts, has abandoned the two Charleston forts and has concentrated his feeble forces on the strongest one, Fort Sumter. The U.S. Army command at Charleston is in the hands of rebels.

“Secessionists have carried Alabama by a large majority, and the state will soon follow South Carolina out of the Union.. Florida and Arkansas are expected soon to go the same way. Even Texas is considering a secessionist convention.

“We note that accounts differ greatly concerning the strength of the secessionist movement. The New York Tribune thinks secessionists now have the upper hand in all southern states except Delaware, Maryland and Missouri, and perhaps they control even Maryland. The Tribune predicts armed resistance to the inauguration of Lincoln in March. Other papers, however, believe the movement will be confined to a few southern states. We must wait and see.”

I have never seen a religious paper of that time that devoted so much attention to the great issue that ended in the Civil War. The paper did have something to say about trouble within the Methodist denominations, but at least two-third’s of the space in that issue of January 3, 1860, had to do with slavery and secession.

To get a glimpse of some other matters of the time we turn to the ads in that paper. Two were for church bells. Bacon and White of New York offered them at 12 cents a pound, and would guarantee proper hanging of them in church belfries. The foundry at West Troy, New York offered to meet all competition as to price and quality.

Grover Barker said that 40,000 of their sewing machines were in use, and one could still be put into any home for $40. H. Hamford Co. of Boston had for sale oil that would not cause smoke in kerosene. lamps. They said, “Our oil is superior to kerosene.”

And the best remedy offered for maladies caused by upsetting news over the national dissension seems to have been Dr. Williams’ Vegetable Bittersat, 50 cents a bottle.

Year: 1978