AMERICAN UNITARIANS,1830-1865:~ ~ A STUDY OF RELIGIOUS OPINION 0N _ WAR; SLAVERY, AND THE UNION Thesis for the Degree of 'Ph‘. 'D; , MICHIGAN STATEUNIVERSITY 1 CHARLES RICHARD DENTON ' 1969, THESIS 0-169 £283.13 1‘ Y Miclliga 1‘ 5‘.“ 30 University This is to certify that the thesis entitled American Unitarians, 1830-1865: A Study of Religious Opinion on War, Slavery, and the Union presented by Charles Richard Denton has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for Ph.D. degree in History Major professor Date 2 z/ZéjL - 339 - mums. AMERICAN UNITARIANS, 1830—1865: A STUDY OF RELIGIOUS OPINION ON WAR,“SLAVERY, AND THE UNION Thesis for the Degree of Ph.D. MECHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY CHARLES RICHARD DENTON 1969 ABSTRACT AMERICAN UNITARIANS, 1830—1865: A STUDY OF RELIGIOUS OPINION ON WW,SUWEW,AMDNEINHW BY Charles Richard Denton The Unitarian church in the United States has a reputation for producing outstanding individual reformers, especially in the middle of the nineteenth century. Men and women such as William.Ellery Chan— ning, Theodore Parker, George Ripley, Lydia Maria Child, Eliza Follen, James Freeman Clarke, Dorothea Dix, Samuel J. May, Samuel Gridley Howe, and Maria W; Chapman were noted Unitarians and reformers, particularly for the abolition of slavery. And yet few studies, even denominational histories, treat the position of the majority of the faith on the issues of war, slavery, and the Union from.1830 to 1865. In order to establish the majority View among Unitarians on the matters of war, slavery, and the Union, the following sources were in- dispensable: denominational periodicals, particularly the weekly Christian.Register (Boston) and the weekly Christian Inquirer (New York), the correspondence files of the American Unitarian Association and other manuscript collections, denominational histories, memoirs, biographies, selected secondary and general works, and a number of articles in scholarly journals. It became clear after this study was begun that an important issue for consideration was the social structure of the Unitarians. A number of historians and biographers have concluded that this faith consisted mostly of the upper classes, the wealthy, and the socially prominent. If true, Unitarian ideas on war, slavery, and the Union should have reflected the attitudes of an elite. But the evidence shows that this Charles Richard Denton conception is false. Instead, Unitarian doctrines appealed to and attracted men and women from.all walks of life: the rich, distinguished, and professional classes, along with farmers, artisans, factory workers, blacksmiths, and even the poor. If anything, the majority of Unitarians during the middle of the nineteenth century came from the middle class rather than from.the upper class. Unitarian political and social opinions represented more of a cross section of American society than might have been expected. Most Unitarians during the antebellum.period opposed slavery but feared that immediate abolition would ignite sectional and servile war, shattering the union. The few Southern Unitarians, on the other hand, believed the continuation of slavery was necessary to prevent these calamities. Unitarians expressed different attitudes on the two American wars of this period. Most Unitarians opposed the Mexican war for two prin— cipal reasons: they regarded warfare as immoral, and they believed the conflict had been initiated by a slavocracy seeking to extend the area of human bondage. As for the Civil war, nearly all Northern Unitarians supported it because the defeat of the Confederacy would destroy slavery and preserve the Union. Through the war years Unitarians advocated emancipation followed by the social integration of Negroes into American society, thus changing the nature of the Union they fought to maintain. The issues of war, slavery, and the Union affected the Uhitarians in two important ways. The denomination became deeply involved in social and political issues through its periodicals, pulpits, and assemblies. This commitment, in turn, tended to centralize the faith, weakening traditional congregational polity. Concerted denominational actions, such as petitioning Congress to end the Mexican War, establishing a Charles Richard Denton free soil mission in Kansas, and publishing patriotic literature during the Civil war, meant closer bonds between churches, and a more viable central agency, which emerged after Appomattox with the fbrmation of the National Conference. Denominational political involvement and centralization were accomplished by Unitarians close to the Christian tradition, as well as by those who had moved away from.that tradition. Unitarians who have been styled conservatives on doctrinal matters were as active as the radicals, perhaps more so, in securing sectarian action on social and political issues. Consequently, denominational "social action" and consolidation grew from.a broad theological base. AMERICAN UNITARIANS, 1830-1865: A STUDY OF RELIGIOUS OPINION ON ‘WR,SUWEH,AM)NEINHW By Charles Richard Denton A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of History 1969 Copyright by CHARLES RICHARD BENTON 1969 to Mary Elizabeth Cochran ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My interest in the political and social activities of the Uni— tarian denomination dates from.January 1961. In a seminar on American history conducted by Dr. Mary Elizabeth Cochran at the Kansas State College of Pittsburg, Pittsburg, Kansas, I was directed to write a paper on some phase of the territorial period of Kansas history. At that time I became acquainted with the fact that the Unitarians had established a mission at Lawrence, Kansas, in 1855, for the expressed purpose of stopping the spread of slavery. After completing the Master of Science degree, I pursued the study of Kansas Unitarianism to dis- cover why a supposedly nonrmissionary faith would begin a mission for a political objective. The fruits of that research appeared in The Kansas Historical Quarterly in 196A. A portion of this work also had been submitted to the Unitarian Historical Society as an entry for the essay contest in honor of the late Earl Morse Wilbur. These findings indicated that antebellum.Unitarians had been far more active in politi- cal and social matters than had been believed. A number of individuals have assisted me in completing this study. Dr. Frederick D. Williams and Dr. Robert E. Brown have made invaluable suggestions in writing this paper. Mr. Neil R. Jordahl of the Library at the Meadville Theological School loaned me material without which this study could not have been completed. Martha S. C. Wilson and Rev. Alan Seaburg of the Unitarian Historical Library provided a great deal of necessary infbrmation and advice. With the aid of Dr. Dana M. iii Greeley and the staff of the Unitarian Universalist Headquarters, I was able to examine the files of the American Unitarian Association. Dr. C. Conrad wright of the Harvard Divinity School has given me much encouragement. The staffs of a number of libraries were most helpful: the Kansas State Historical Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the New Hampshire Historical Society, the Detroit Public Library, and the Michi- gan State University Library. Special mention should be made of Miss Anna Louise Borger, the librarian of the El Dorado Public Library, El Dorado, Kansas, who secured several items via interlibrary loan during the period I taught at the Butler County Junior College in that city. To the following people I owe a large debt for "boarding" me while doing research in Boston: Richard E. and Alice Batchelor, Robert'W} and Virginia Hillegass, and Clarence E. and Kathryanhitten. I will always be indebted to my wife for her patience and per— severance . iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER INTRODUCTION .............................................. I THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF THE UNITARIAN DENOMINATION, 1830- 186 5 .................................................... II ‘wAR, COLONIZATION, AND SLAVERY IN THE 1830's .............. III POLITICAL PREACHING, THE MEXICAN WAR, AND BRITISH UNITAR- IANS .................................................... IV THE KANSAS MISSION, JOHN BROWN, AND THE SECESSION CRISIS .. v UNITARIANS AND THE CIVIL WAR: PUBLIC AFFAIRS ............. VI UNITARIANS AND THE CIVIL WAR: DENOMINATIONAL AFFAIRS ..... VII SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ................................... BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY ............................................ APPENDIX A OFFICERS OF THE AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION, 1825-1865 B RECEIPTS AND EXPENDITURES OF THE AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSO— CIATION, 1826-1865 ...................................... C UNITARIAN CHURCHES IN THE UNITED STATES FOR THE YEARS 1830, 18A6, 1860, AND 1865, BY STATES ......................... D EDITORS OF THE CHRISTIAN REGISTER, 1821~1865 .............. E BOSTON UNITARIAN MINISTERS FOR THE YEARS 1830, 18A6, AND 1860, WITH THE OCCUPATION OF THEIR FATHERS .............. F SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS IN THE 1960's G UNITARIAN CHAPLAINS IN THE UNION ARMY ..................... Page 11 1+6 76 109 125 1&9 156 159 176 180 182 183 185 188 191 INTRODUCTION This study will deal primarily with the actions and attitudes of Unitarians in the United States on the issues of war, slavery, and the Union from.l830 to 1865. But before proceeding to those matters, it seems appropriate to provide a brief summary of Unitarian theology, organizational structure, the size of the membership of the faith, and leading denominational periodicals. By 1830 Unitarians stressed certain concepts which set them apart from other Christians. For a number of years many preferred the term "liberal Christian" to Unitarian for fear Of becoming too sectarian. Mest Unitarians held that Jesus was the Son of God. They sought a reasonable interpretation of the Bible, a book they considered the revealed WOrd of God. They scorned as unscriptural and unreasonable the doctrine of the Trinity; they denied the concept of "election," that is, that one is either predestined to salvation or to damnation; and they believed that man is essentially good.1 Unitarians emphasized 1Conrad'W'right examines 18th century developments of the movement in The Beginnings of Unitarianism.in America (Boston: Starr King Press, 1955). Earl Mbrse'Wilbur traces early 19th century activities in,A History of Unitarianism in Transylvania, England, and America (Cam— bridge,'Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952), chapter XXI. A more recent study is the first chapter of“William.R. Hutchison, The Trans— cendentalist Ministers: Church Reform in the New England Renaissance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959). An older but still valuable article is C. H. Faust, "The Background Of the Unitarian Opposition to Transcendentalism," Medern Philology, XXXV (February, 1938), pp. 297-32A. Wilbur wrote a popular account entitled Our Unitarian Heritage, An Intro- duction to the History of the Unitarian Mbvement (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1925). 2 the importance of the freedom.of the individual, especially in the interpretation of the Scriptures. Rev. William Ellery Channing be- lieved that individuals who possessed exemplary character would promote Christianity by their conduct. "Such men," he said in 1837, "are the salt of the earth. The might of individual virtue surpasses all other powers."2 One means of safeguarding individual conscience was the congrega— tional nature of the churches. Many thought that congregationalism.com— plemented individualism" Some Uhitarians favored a limited general organization, fearing that excessive consolidation might paralyze indi— vidual freedom with an imposed creed. Channing declined to serve as president of the American Unitarian Association (AUA) at its formation in 1825, then again in 1836. He believed that a strong ecclesiastical structure would weaken congregationalism.and might become attractive to ambitious men seeking power in the religious community. "Those who gain [power],” he declared in 1836, "will not fail to strengthen and extend it," then he added that "free inquiry will be its prey; and the cardinal virtues of the gospel--humility, meekness, and charity—;will be trodden under its feet." In that same year at the ADA annual meeting, Rev. John Gorham Palfrey referred to fears that the Association might infringe on individual freedom, fears he thought exaggerated. In his opinion the AUA 3 performed missionary services that individuals were incapable of doing. 2William E. Charming, The Works of William E. Charming, D. D.LWith an Introduction (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1875), p. 196. Cited hereafter as Channing, Works. 3WilliamH. Channing, The Life of“William.Ellery Channing, D. D. (The Centenery Memorial edition; Boston: American Unitarian Association, 190A), pp. 223—224. Cited hereafter as W} H. Channing,'W} E. Channing. Eleventh Annual Report, AUA, 1836, pp. 2h—25. 3 Palfrey was far more realistic than Channing about the nature of the American Unitarian Association. Throughout the period under study it barely kept afloat. Nearly every annual report from.1826 laments the lack of funds for missionary activities, the Association's chief function. It financed the publication of religious literature, paid officers' salaries, supported a few missionaries who visited isolated groups of "liberal Christians" scattered throughout the country, and made an occasional grant or loan to support a church. Contributions came from.the sale of tracts, voluntary donations from.ohurches or individuals, and life memberships. Membership in the Association was an individual matter; churches sent no delegations to annual meetings, or "May Meetings," as is now the case. During the May Meetings the Executive Committee would report on the previous year's activities, new officers would be elected, speeches were given urging more support for missions, a collation would be held, followed by adjoUrnment. After 1852 Unitarians west of the Appalachians formed a similar though weaker organization, the western Unitarian Conference (HUG)!+ The AUA and the WUC served few churches in comparison with many other religious faiths in the United States. There were 193 individual societies in 1830, of which 147 had a minister. Sixteen years later AThe founding of the AUA is discussed in George‘WL Cooke, Uni— tarianism.in America: A History of its Origin and Development (Bos— ton: American Unitarian Association, 1902), pp. 126-138. Officers of the AUA from.l825 through 1865 are listed in Appendix A. Receipts and disbursements of the AUA from.l825 through 1865 are shown in Appen— dix.B. Charles H. Lyttle, Freedom.Moves west: A History of the western Unitarian Conference 1852—1952 (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1952), covers the origin of the WUC in chapter 6. Although there were antebellum state and regional organizations only the postwar ones are mentioned in Cooke, Unitarianism.in America, pp. AAA—AA6. A 236 societies existed of which 186 had a minister. By 1860 the num- ber of societies had risen to 258, but only 196 had clergymen. Mass— achusetts was the stronghold of Unitarianism with 1A7 societies in 1830, 158 in 18A6, and 16A in 1860.5 Yet even in this citadel of "liberal Christianity,” Unitarian growth failed to maintain a rate relative to the population increase of the Commonwealth. From 1800 to 1870 the population of Massachusetts rose three and one—half times while the number of Unitarian churches did not quite double. A check of parish records in some rapidly growing cities indicates that this_ relative decline in the number of societies holds true for membership as well.6 One estimate is that Unitarians numbered 31,670 in 1865, having increased from 13,550 in 1855.7 Unitarian growth, or lack of it, has sometimes been linked with theological quarrels. During the "Unitarian Controversy" from about 1805 to 1833, the denomination grew rapidly, gaining members from dissatisfied people in other churches, particularly the Calvinist Congregational Church. Quite often the majority in a number of societies went over to the Unitarians. Another dispute began when Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered his famous Divinity School Address in 1838. From this time until the Civil War Unitarians became embroiled in the "Transcendental" or "Radical Controversy." Rev. Theodore Parker's discourse in 18A1 on the transient and permanent in Christianity 5See Appendix C. 6Richard E. Sykes, "The Effect of Rapid Social and Cultural Change on Unitarianism in Massachusetts, 1800—1870" (unpublished Ph.D. dis- sertation, University of Minnesota, 1966), Chapter III. 7Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform in Mid—Nineteenth- Century America (New York and Nashville: Abington Press, 1957), pp. 20-21. 5 sharpened the conflict. Emerson and Parker exposed to the public what some Unitarians had discussed in private—-that neither the authority of scripture nor the personality of Jesus Christ, nor even the miracles of the Bible were vital to sustain Christianityu Emerson, Parker, and their fbllowers-—the transcendentalists, or "radicals"—-relied on in— tuition and self-evident moral truths rather than on traditional Chris— tianity. On the other hand, the bulk of the denomination and most of its leaders-~occassionally called "conservatives"-—continued to adhere to a reasonable interpretation of the Scriptures, including a belief in the divinity of Jesus, as the basis for Christian ethics. Two denominational historians have presumed that the naturalism of Emerson and Parker was perhaps the major reason why Uhitarians with- held contributions to the AUA. In this way they supposedly retarded denominational growth, fearing that their money would be used to 9 propagate radical heresies. From 1839 to 18A2 this assumption appears 8In addition to the sources cited in footnote 1, see Conrad wright, "Henry W) Bellows and the Organization of the National Conference," The Proceedings of the Unitarian Historical Society, xv (1965). Part II, p. 19. 9Cooke, Unitarianism.in America, pp. 158—160; Wilbur, Our Unitaru ian Heritage, pp. AAl—AA2; Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, pp. A62-A6A. Cooke cited receipt figures from 185A to 1863, excluding book sales and interest on invested fUnds; he did not mention the 18A3-18A6 increase. Cooke (p. 153) contradicts himself when he wrote that meetings were held in Boston in 18A1 to raise money for missions in the city. That year $10,000 was pledged fer this work and "this sum.was secured in 18A3 and the next four years, so that larger aid was given to missionary activi— ties and to the building of churches. At the annual meeting of 18h9 special attention was given to the subject of domestic missions, and plans were devised for largely extending all the activities in this direction." One of the ministers supported by this money, Rev. John T. Sargent, exchanged pulpits with Theodore Parker in 18th. Sargent was so upset by the rebuke of his employers, the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches, that he resigned from.the ministry—at—large. If contributions to the AUA declined because donors feared supporting radicals, why did contributions to the EEC continue high when a radical wolf was found within its benevolent fold? 6 to be correct as the Association's receipts declined from.about $6,000 to $A,700. Still, the drop in contributions might be explained in part by the econmmic dislocation that followed the Panic of 1837. Following the period of decline AUA receipts rose from.$7,000 in 1843 to almost $13,000 in 18A6, nearly doubling in three years. Beginning in 18h7, AUA receipts again dropped to $11,000, in 18A8 to $9,500, and in 18A9 to $7,700. Not until 185A did receipts surpass the previous high of 1846.10 If the older interpretation is valid, the decline after 18A6 is a remarkable example of delayed reaction to Emerson's Divinity School Address (1838) and Parker's permanent and transient speech (18A1). If radicals had headed the AUA during its stringent years, the usual explana— _ tion might be reasonable. Instead, the president of the American Uni— tarian Association from.l8h7 to 1850 was Rev; Ezra Stiles Gannett, a foe of Parker. His successor from.l851 to 1858 was another paladin of conservatism, Rev. Samuel Kirkland Lothrop. In 18A8 the Executive Committee of the AUA, which was dominated by conservatives, suggested several reasons for the decline in receipts: specific contributions for church construction fell drastically; "an unusual number" of societies were building new or remodelling old meetinghouses and liquidating debts; a number of "country societies" had purchased Channing's Works (sold by the AUA) and could not support missions; many of the urban societies were supporting ministries-at- large which reduced their contributions; a financial recession deterred many who had given generously; and the new Secretary was inexperienced 10See Appendix B. 7 at raising money. There is no mention of the "Radical Controversy" as a cause for the decline of AUA receipts.ll The Executive Committee went further by appointing a subcommittee to inquire into the matter of reduced contributions for missions. Re— porting in 18A9, the subcommittee advanced the notion that Unitarians did not like missions. It found that "to many ears" the word missionary "sounds as the watchword of religious partisanship, or the sign of in- tellectual poverty and mean dependence." Another cause was Yankee pragmatism: "The question which arises before a Boston man is not ‘What will it cost? but What will it produce?" Mussions were too dis- tant to appraise and their accomplishments were often "intangible." Again, there was not a whisper of radicalism as a cause for declining AUA receipts.12 Historians have often used a document written in 1853 to support the thesis that Parkerism influenced reduced contributions to the AUA. The Executive Committee of the AUA mentioned radicalism as one of five reasons for the need to issue a "Declaration of Opinion" in that year.13 There is some evidence that by 1853 Parker's notions were not as unpopular in Boston as the Executive Committee stated. Rev. Nathaniel L. 11Twenty-Third Annual Report, AUA, 18A8, pp. 17-18. 12Twenty-Fourth Annual Report, AUA, 18119, pp..32—33. S. J. May wrote fourteen years earlier that Unitarianism.grew slowly because of the absence of a "general organization" and "a great dread of sectar— ianism.among us." Christian Register, 5 December 1835. In 18A9 E. S. Gannett cited charges that missionary money had been poorly managed and that missionaries were ill—trained. He did not mention Parker as a rea— son for reduced interest in missions. Christian Register, 16 June 18A9. 13Cooke, Unitarianism.in America, pp. 158-160; Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, pp. A62—A6A; Hutchison, Transcendentalist Ministers, p. 130; Lyttle, Freedom.Moves West, pp. 79—80; TwentyéEighth Annual Report, AUA, 1853, pp. 18-23. 8 Frothingham contacted Rev.Rufus Ellis about candidating for Boston's First Church from.which Frothingham was about to retire. Ellis hesi- tated to leave the freedom of his pulpit at Northampton, Massachusetts. He consulted his brother, Rev. George E. Ellis, who replied that the pulpit at the First Church would be free, a fact stemming in part from Parker's influence in the city. "Mr. Parker's frank publication of opinions which his brethren from the first knew him to hold," George wrote, "but which the public had no real understanding of, has opened the eyes of many to views which they had not realized before. Then I think that the independence of a minister is now respected, and that fair conditions are pretty well established." George Ellis had learned that the pulpit committee of the First Church unanimously approved his brother Rufus, who accepted their offer in March 1853.1h If Parkerism was in fact a cause of reduced AUA funds for missions, it was at best a minor one. The logic of those who believe that Parker~ ism reduced contributions is faulty. ‘Why would conservatives fail to aid a conservatively controlled organization like the AUA? Their best offense against radicalism would have been a strengthened Association which could combat the radicals, not an enfeebled one incapable of promoting their interpretations of liberal Christianity. But a strong central agency ran contrary to usual Unitarian suspicion of an eccles- iastical organization which might become an engine of theological op— pression. To avoid this danger some might have preferred local mis— sionary activity, like the ministries—at-large in Boston and elsewhere. 1["Arthur B. Ellis, ed., Memoir of Rufus Ellis... (Boston: ‘William B. Clarke and Co., 1891), pp. 112—119. See also Arthur S. Bolster, Jr., James Freeman Clarke, Disciple to Advancinngruth (Boston: The Beacon Press, 195A), pp. 208—209. 9 The many reasons offered at the time by the conservatives for reduced AUA receipts which hindered missionary expansion outweigh any monistic explanation. For a religious faith reluctant to engage in extensive missionary campaigns, Unitarians relied heavily on the printed word to propagate their beliefs and to provide links among the converted. Their most important publication was the Christian Register, a weekly, four—page newspaper founded at Boston in 1821 by thirty—one year old David Reed, a licensed minister who never accepted a permanent settlement. Reed published the paper for over forty—five years and usually hired Uni- tarian ministers to edit and write for it. The Christian Examiner, begun in 182A at Boston under the name Christian Disciple, was a bi- monthly of a more scholarly and theological cast, yet it contained much on political and social issues. The voice from New York was the Christian Inquirer, another four-page weekly newspaper, started in 18A6 by the New York Unitarian Association. The AUA began The Quarterly Journal of the American Uhitarian Association in 1853. It became a monthly in 1860 and lasted until 1869. Other magazines and newspapers appeared but were often short—lived.l5 From.their pulpits, by their missionary enterprizes, and through their publications, Unitarians proclaimed a belief in freedom.from 1SHarris Elwood Starr, "David Reed," Dictionary Of American Biog- raphy, XV, pp. AAA-AA5; Frank Luther Mett, "The Christian Disciple and and the Christian.Examiner," The New England Quarterly, I (April, 1928), pp. 197-207; Cooke, Unitarianism.in America, pp. AA7-A52. The Christian Register began with 300 subscribers. By 1835 circulation had risen to 1,900, in 1856 to about 3,000, and in 1863 down to about 2,200. Chris— tian Register, 7 January 1826, 6 June 1835; H. AA Nfiles to H. W} Bellows, 25 August 1856, Bellows Papers, MHS; E. E. Hale to R. P. Stebbins, 13 January 1863, AUA Letters, 1862 [misfiled]. It is currently pub- lished under the name UUA NOW. Editors of the Christian Register from 1821 to 1865 are shown in Appendix D. 10 outmoded forms of worship and expounded Christian truth as they saw it. Since scholars generally agree that during the years 1830-1865 most Unitarians were conservatives, this study will deal primarily with this preponderant element. CHAPTER I THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF THE UNITARIAN DENOMINATION, 1830—1865 Historians often describe antebellum.Unitarians as people who were wealthy merchants, professional men, or those drawn from.aris- tocratic old—time families. If most Unitarians occupied such a high social status, their behavior on social and political issues must be seen as the responses and actions of a privileged and affluent minor- ity. On the other hand, if Unitarian congregations were composed of men and women from all walks of life, Unitarian expression on these issues may be interpreted as fairly representative of the position held by most Americans. Discussion of this matter will begin with the findings of two denominational historians, followed by the judg— ments of other students of American history, and finally by the views of several antebellum Unitarians who commented about the social struc- ture of their church. In his discussion of early nineteenth~century Unitarians, C. Conrad wright declared that when parishes began to split on doc- trinal issues during the "Unitarian Controversy," the Unitarian fac- tion tended to have "more than their share of the old families of wealth and prestige in their congregations." To discover the Uni- tarian class structure in New England he analyzed the membership in "upper-class clubs and societies" and the membership of churches 11 12 in three towns: King's Chapel in Boston, the three societies at Salem, and the Second Parish (Unitarian) in.WOrcester.l 'Wright's evidence will be examined to test his generalization re- garding church membership. For King's Chapel, wright used an extensive two—volume history of the church begun by Rev. Henry Wilder Foote, min- ister there from 1861 until his death in 1889, and finished by Henry H. Edes. 'Wright quoted a statement from volume two that the church con— tained "a large proportion of the men of high standing and commanding influence in Boston," then mentioned several prominent men who had wor— shipped there. A large proportion, however, means little unless there is something with which to compare it. Foote began to provide this in- formation before he died. Edes wrote in the Preface to volume two that Foote had compiled a partial listing of non—pewholding worshippers, but that he, Edes, shrank "from attempting to carry out the original de— sign," an indication that a great number of people who attended King's Chapel did not own pews. Foote, moreover, discovered one thing about the parish's social structure. In the spring of 1827, Rev. F. W. P. Greenwood requested and obtained a special fund from the congregation for charitable uses on which he could draw without soliciting parish- ioners individually. Greenwood reported in 18A0 that about $10,000 had been collected and disbursed through this fund. Some of it had gone to twenty members of the church who were too destitute to attend services regularly. 2 lWright, Beginnings of Unitarianism, pp. 259—261. 2Henry Wilder Foote and Henry H. Edes, Annals of King's Chapel From.the Puritan Age of New England to the Present Day (2 vols.; Bos- ton: Little, Brown and Company, 1882, 1896), II, pp. vii, A68—A69. 13 Turning to Salem,'Wright used another secondary source written by Rev. George Batchelor, Uhitarian minister at Salem in the 1880's, who had examined parish records of the three Unitarian churches there-éEast, North, and First-—and had found that the great majority of the men of influence in these three parishes were foreign merchants and shipamasters; and also that these parishes were almost wholly made up of these men, their families, and those who were naturally associated with them.in trade, either as assistants or dependents. The churches also included professional men who served the merchants and 3 ship masters. Batchelor's statement is ambiguous: all that is known for certain is that men of wealth and men not so wealthy were Unitarians. Men connected with the sea as merchants or ship masters constituted the majority of the influential men in each parish. 'we do not know from Batchelor's remarks if the majority in each parish were merchants and ship masters, or if the majority in each parish were their assistants and dependents. The same is true of Wright's evidence for Worcester. He cited a sermon of‘Rev. Aaron Bancroft, father of George Bancroft, who said that his Second Parish contained "a large proportion of the professional and distinguished men of the town, and a fair proportion of the farmers and A mechanics." ‘Wright named several men who belonged to Bancroft's parish, some of whom lat§§_became famous, but this tells us little of their early position. Another account throws different light on Bancroft's situation. The minister "was talked against, preached against, denounced and shunned" because of his Unitarianism, 'When his society decided to-erect a new meetinghouse in 1789, Bancroft agreed to return one—third of his 3George Batchelor, Social Equilibrium.and Other Problems Ethical and Religious (Boston: Geo. H. Ellis, 1887), p. 177. “Wright, Beginnings of Unitarianism, p. 260. 1h salary to the society as his share of the building fund. "In order to eke out sufficient means of support for his family, [Bancroft] gave in- struction to young men and to the daughters of some of his parishioners, 5 and received boarders into his house." It was a most ungracious way for wealthy and prestigeous men to treat their minister by paying him so little that he had to tutor children and rent his home to boarders, unless the parish was in fact somewhat indigent. These examples show that Unitarianism.appealed to merchants, ship masters, sailors, professionals,farmers,mechanics, the rich and the poor. If congregations early in the nineteenth century follow this pattern to the middle of the century, assessments of the Unitarian social structure must be modified. Another denominational historian, the late Earl Merse Wilbur, perpetuated the notion that Unitarians came from.the upper classes. At the end of the "Unitarian Controversy," by the 1830's, "the outlook for the Unitarians seemed full of promise," he wrote. "Their social position, their leadership in offices of state, their controlling in— fluence in education, their leading part in the world of business and in public affairs in general, were undisputed, and their churches were well attended and well supported."6 ‘Wilbur supported his case with a statement by Harriet Beecher Stowe who asserted that in the 1820's when her father, Rev. Lyman Beecher, battled the Unitarians in Boston, the Unitarians dominated the city's cultural and political life. 'Wilbur 5"Aaron Bancroft," in Samuel A. Eliot, ed., Heralds of a Liberal Faith (A vols.; Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1910, 1952), II, p. 22. Cited hereafter as ELF. Russel B. Nye described Bancroft's congregation as "neither large nor affluent" in George Bancroft, Bragg min.Rebel (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 19AA), pp. 8-9. 6Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, p. A5A. 15 noted that this passage had been frequently quoted and often mistakenly attributed to Lyman Beecher instead of his daughter. Here is the state- ment: When Dr. Beecher came to Boston, Calvinism or orthodoxy was the despised and persecuted form of faith. It was the dethroned royal family wandering like a permitted mendicant in the city where once it had held court, and Unitarianism reigned in its stead. All the literary men of Massachusetts were Unitarian. All the trustees and professors of Harvard College were Uni- tarians. All the elite of wealth and fashion crowded Uni~ tarian churches. The judges on the bench were Unitarian, giving decisions by which the peculiar features of church organization, So carerlly ordained by the Pilgrim fathers, had been nullified. The Church, as consisting, according to their belief, in regenerate people, had been ignored, and all the power had passed into the hands of the congregation. This power had been used by the majorities to settle min- isters of the fashionable and reigning type in many of the towns of Eastern Massachusetts. The dominant majority entered at once into possession of churches and church property, leaving the orthodox minority to go out into schooléhouses or town halls, and build their churches as best they could. Old feundations, established by the Pil- grim fathers for the perpetuation and teaching of their own views in theology, were seized upon and appropriated to the support of opposing views. A fund given for preaching an annual lecture on the Trinity was employed for preaching an annual attack on it, and the Hollis professorship of divinity at Cambridge was employed for the furnishing of a class of ministers whose sole distinctive idea was declared warfare with the ideas and intentions of the donor. SO bitter and so strong had been the reaction of a whole generation against the bands too stringent of their fathers--such the impulse with which they broke from.the cords with which their ancestors sought to bind them.for— ever. But in every such surge of society, however confident and overbearing, there lies the element of a counter re- action, and when Dr. Beecher came to Boston this element had already begun to assert itself.7 7Charles Beecher, ed., Autobiography, Correspondence, etc., of Lyman Beecher, D. D. (2 vols.; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1865), II, pp. 119-120. 16 One can find uncritical acceptance of Mrs. Stowe's statement in several books on this period.8 ‘When examined closely, however, it falls short of being sound historical evidence. The statement is a published, undated letter Harriet wrote to her brother Charles, the editor of their father's autobiography. Internal evidence suggests that it was written shortly after Lyman Beecher's death (1863) as she mentioned going through his papers as if he had died. Thus, it might have been written between 1863 and 1865 when the Autobiography appeared. Lyman Beecher preached in Boston from.l826 to 1832 when Harriet grew from.fifteen to twenty-one years of age. If the dating of the letter is correct, Harriet, past fifty, either recollected conditions of forty years before or simply wrote what the family had told her about Boston. It is obvious that she is a highly partisan witness. And, if the dating of this letter is accu- rata.it was written when Unitarianism was experiencing a rapid growth. In the Introduction it was shown that during the decade from 1855 to 1865, Unitarian numbers grew from 13,550 to 31,670, an increase of 138%. If anyone was on the defensive it was Harriet Beecher Stowe. Other American historians have labeled antebellum.Unitarians as upper-class patricians. James Truslow Adams, using Harriet and Lyman Beecher, judged that Unitarianism, "instead of being a form of dissent from an established church, with the social disabilities that such a position usually implied, became the religion of all the higher social circles of Massachusetts, and Calvinism.occupied the lower social position 8Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, pp. A36—A37; Jacob C. Meyer, Church and State in Massachusetts,... (Cleveland: 'Western Reserve Uni— versity Press, 1930), pp. 180—181, James Truslow Adams, New England in the Republic 1776-1850 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1926). pp- 353-35A; Charles Crowe, George Ripley: Transcendentalist and Utopian Socialist (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1967), p. 52. Crowe attributes the statement to Lyman Beecher. 17 of dissent."9 Arthur B. Darling equated Unitarianism.with wealth, con— servatism, aristocracy, fashion, and capitalism.10 Helmut Richard Nie— buhr asserted that Episcopalians and Unitarians in the first part of the nineteenth century were drawn from "the metropolitan aristocracy of wealth 11 and intellect." "No religious body was at this time [1830's and 18AO's] quite so respectable as the New England Unitarians," wrote Theodore May— nard, "or any Unitarians quite so respectable as those of Boston."12 Charles Crowe, a recent biographer of George Ripley, contends that dur— ing the 1830's Unitarianism centered in eastern Massachusetts among the 'enlightened' upper class merchants, ministers, and lawyers whom Ripley had come to admire as a divinity student. Respectful friends of the existing social order, and advocates of gentlemanly scholarship, the early Unitarians followed a 'reasonable" restrained course of action which avoided both the 'dangerous radicalism} of Deistic belief and the 'unseemr ly' public emotionalism.of evangelical religion.13 9Adams, New England in the Republic, pp. 353-356. See also Henry Steele Commager, Theodore Parker, Yankee Crusader (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1960), p. 1§6. 10A. B. Darling, "Jacksonian Democracy in Massachusetts, 182A—18A ," The American Historical Review, XXIX (January, 192A), p. 273; A. B. Dar— ling, Political Changes in Massachusetts, 182Ar18A8, A Study of Liberal MOvements in Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1925), p. 38. An echo of Darling is Kinley J. Brauer, Cotton versus Conscience: Massa~ chusetts Whig Politics and Southwestern Expansion, late-181,8 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1967), pp. 11-12. 11H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (Cleve- land and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1957), p. 153. Orig- inally published in 1929, this book was cited in a denominational study in 1936 as proof that early nineteenth century Unitarians were "identi— fied with the more cultured and privileged classes." Frederick May Eliot, et_al., Unitarians Face a New Age: The Report of the Commission of Appraisal to the American Unitarian Association (Boston: The Come mission of Appraisal of the_American Unitarian Association, 1936), p. 315. 12Theodore Maynard, Orestes Brownson: Yankee, Radical, Catholic (New York: The Macmillan Company, 19A3), p. 61. 13Crowe, George Ripley, p. A8. 18 And a popular book among Unitarian Universalists in the late 1960's re— iterates what the above writers say.1A It should be expected that American history textbooks would read about the same way. One written by two distinguished historians, G. G. van Deusen and Dexter Perkins, concluded that "the appeal of the [Uni- tarian] movement was primarily to the intellectual and well-to-do ele- 15 ments of society, and its strength centered in New England." Likewise, in his chapter of a cooperative textbook, Kenneth M. Stampp wrote that Unitarianism."appealed chiefly to the better-educated and more affluent descendants of the NeW'England Puritans" and that "the church's well—fed members, though more reasonable and tolerant than their Puritan ancestors, became at least as smug...."16 If the preceding conclusions are accepted, one must view Unitarian ideas on social and political issues as those coming from an aristo- cratic denomination. Some of the sources, however, indicate that people from.more humble stations were Unitarians. Even a few of the historians who asserted that Unitarians were mainly upper—class people presented contrary evidence. And if historians credit hostile witnesses like Mrs. Stowe, it seems only fair to allow Unitarians themselves to testify on their own social structure. Data has been gathered from contemporary manuscripts and newspapers, from.published letters and memoirs, from l[J’Josiah and Laile E. Bartlett, Moment of Truth, Our Next Four Hun— dred Years... (Berkeley: Published by the authors, 1968), pp. A—6, 10, 102. The Bartletts cited Niebuhr and the Appraisal of 1936 as evidence of early Unitarian aristocracy. lSDexter Perkins and Glyndon G. Van Deusen, The United States of America: A History (2 vols.; New York: The Macmillan Company, 1962), I. p. A63. 16John M. Blum, Bruce Catton, Edmund S. Mergan, Arthur M; Schles- inger, Jr., Kenneth M. Stampp, and C. Vananoodward, The National Ex- perience (New York and Burlingame: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1963), p. 2A1. l9 AUA reports, and from.sermons having a bearing on the issue. It will be presented on a geographical basis: Boston, Massachusetts, New England parishes, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, the western states, and the southern states. No attempt will be made to analyze the membership of all the Uni- tarian churches in Boston. There were fourteen in 1830 and twenty-four in 1860. There is evidence, as illustrated by King's Chapel, to suggest that other Boston churches attracted men and women from.all walks of life. Rev. Henry Ware, Jr., son of the Reverend Henry Ware whose election as Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard had sparked the "Uhitarian Controversy," noted that members of the Second Church in Boston were not all aristocrats. A month following his ordination in January 1817'Ware commented that "my people are all in the middling class, many families exceedingly pleasant, all united and very cordial towards me." Soon after his marriage that same year, Ware bought a house near his church in a neighborhood some of his friends considered undesirable. But as 'Ware wrote of himself, "his was a NorthéEnd parish, and he must be a NorthéEnd man."l7 'Ware's second wife, Mary Lovell Pickard, also testified to the diversity of social classes in her husband's congregation. After Ware's first wife died in 182A, he married a daughter of Mark Pickard, a Boston merchant, a woman who recalled in later years that most of her youthful companions were "of the wealthy classes." A few weeks after their mar- riage, Mary Ware wrote that many of her husband's parishioners had called on her. "All classes have come to see me," she said, "even the poorest, 17Johnfware, Memoir of the Life of Hengy Ware, Jr.... (2 vols.; Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1868), I, pp. 101—106. This was first published in 18A6. 20 and seem quite disposed to be pleased. I have said distinctly that I wish ours to be entirely a social intercourse, and they take me at my word." A year later Henry's health declined, so he decided to accept an offer to teach divinity at Harvard where the work would be easier. He resigned in 1829, giving as one reason the "destitute condition" of the sOciety, but they refused to let him go. The congregation agreed to hire an associate pastor without reducing Henry Ware's salary in order to lighten the load (the associate was Ralph Waldo Emerson). The wares went to Europe for a vacation in 1830, and on their return the congregation accepted his resignation. Henry Ware began teaching at Harvard where his work appears to have been more than satisfactory since the University awarded him the Doctor of Divinity degree in 183A. One would expect that an aristocratic denomination would pay their min- isters and their teachers of ministers a reasonable salary. But in 18A2, about a year before her husband's death, Mary Ware wrote that she was not unmindful of the difficulties which poverty brings,-—the hindrances to the satisfactory education of children, the loss of intellectual privileges, and the wear and tear to the spirit of the uncertainties of daily supply for even the necessary wants of life. I understand it all....1 Some writers have assumed that the Federal Street Church in Boston, where William.Ellery Channing served from 1803 until his death in 18A2, contained an upper—class congregation. One biographer suggested that Channing's "more affluent listeners" were probably pained at his remarks that the loss of property during the War of 1812 was only a minor evil.19 l82Edward B. Hall, Memoir of‘Mary, . ware, Wife of Henry ware, Jr. (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1869), pp. 197, 309-310, 371. l9Arthur'W’. Brown, Always Young for Liberty, A Biography of William Ellery Channing (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1956), p. 83. 21 Another biographer declared that after Channing's book Slavery appeared in 1835, his parishioners, "respectable, conservative citizens, most of them, were painfully distressed."2O After attending one of Channing's services in 1836, William.Lloyd Garrison remarked that the minister's sermon on aiding the lower classes probably was "too republican a dose for his aristocratical congregation."21 Yet one biographer wrote that occasionally Channing aided "needy parishioners who sought his help and so brought him into contact with some of life's vicissitudes."22 So the Federal Street Church, like King's Chapel, had rich and poor members but we are not sure how many of each. Channing confirmed the point that Boston Unitarian churches drew men from.many social positions. In 1817 he requested his society to provide a vestry building near the meetinghouse for a number of activi- ties: a Sunday School, a singing school, a charity school, religious meetings, and a library. Regarding the library, Channing said: There are some families of our number, in which individuals may be found with a strong taste for reading, but who cannot afford to purchase any but the most necessary books. In the families of the opulent, too, there are often but few books suited to illustrate the Scriptures, and to furnish religious instruction, and these few are often far from.being the best.23 In 1833 Channing denied the accusation that Unitarianism.was an aristo- cratic faith. "It has often been objected to our views of Christianity," he said, "that they are suited to the educated, rich, fashionable, and not to the wants of the great mass of human beings. This charge, could 2OlMadeleine Hooke Rice, Federal Street Pastor: The Life of“William Ellery Channing (New York: Bookman Associates, 1961), pp. 222-223. Rice also uses this assumption on pp. 53, 73, 161-162, 168. 21Ibid., pp. 171-172. 22Ibid., p. 162. 23W. H. Channing,'W. E. Channing, pp. 296-297. 22 it be substantiated, would be a weightier argument against them.than all others. 'We know it to be false; and yet why has it been urged?" He answered that Unitarians often did not exhibit "the manifestation of a brotherly concern for the multitude of men," that they were often cold 2A toward others. And in an ordination sermon in 1839 for Rev. Robert C. 'Waterston, he said, "You are now set apart to be a Minister at Large. This is the distinction of your office. ‘Whilst other ministers gather worshippers into their churches from.all the conditions of life, you expectto labor chiefly among the less prosperous, the destitute."25 Channing's words are supported by an English Unitarian minister, Rev. William.Adam, who visited Boston during May Meetings in 1839. Adam found that the many Unitarian churches of the city were usually crowded on Sunday. In the paraphrased report of his speech he said that "here he Saw Unitarian Christianity supported by numbers, by wealth, by asso- ciated influence, by the press, and by the pulpit."26 Rev. George Ripley, well—known for his leadership at Brook Farm in the 18AO's, settled over a society in Boston that attracted people of various ranks in society. Shortly after Ripley's ordination over the Purchase Street Church in 1826, he told his mother that his parishioners "are chiefly from.the middling classes of society." Not long afterward he again wrote his mother that liberal Christianity "has been reproached as a faith merely for men of intellect and taste. It is so, but it also speaks loudly to the poor and uneducated, as I have had ample proof.n27 2L'Ibid. , pp. A80—A81. 25Channing,‘W'orks, p. 93. 26Fourteenth Annual Report, AUA, 1839, p. 36. 27Octavius Brooks Frothingham, George Ripley (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1883), pp. 36-AO. 23 'When the "Radical Controversy" erupted with Ripley on the side of the radicals, he became dissatisfied with conservative Unitarianism.and de- cided to leave the ministry, using financial difficulties as a reason. The society admitted its fiscal straits and promised him more support. Ripley remained until the middle of 18A1. 'When he left his parishioners expressed their appreciation with a cash gift of $500, a set of garden tools, and other small items. Throughout much of the nineteenth century the South Congregational Church drew few upper-class members. Rev. Mellish Irving Motte served there from 1828 to 18A2. ‘When MOtte died in 1881, Rev. Edward Everett Hale described the society of Motte's day in his eulogy as one where the people "lived together, much as the people live in an intelligent country town to-day, with no great thought of the amusements or the occupations of the some-what distant city." Hale related a tradition that until a railroad network had been formed around the city, MOtte "was widely known among young people in the Norfolk towns as the Boston minister nearest to the country, and the marriage records of the church fully confirm the tradition." After Motte left, Rev. Frederic Dan Huntington served the society to 1855. ‘When Huntington resigned to accept a teaching position at Harvard, E. E. Hale became the pastor. Apparently before Hale's installation, Huntington told Hale that some- where between 250 and 275 families belonged to the society along with "many single persons, as clerks, schoolteachers etc, etc. Nearly all of them are young. I think there are not six grey heads among them. They are of the working genuine vital class, young merchants, mechanics, men of the professions. There are babies in any quantity,—-increasing 28Crowe, George Ripley, pp. 120-121. 2A families." Hale's son wrote that the South Congregational society "was made up to a considerable degree...of young men and women with their for— tunes to make in the world, and its situation was not very distant from some of the poorer localities that were even then beginning to develop in the newer parts of the city"?9 . In addition to churches such as those mentioned, Boston had Uni- tarian churches expressly for the poor whose pastors, "ministers—at- large," were supported by the AUA from 1827 to 183A when the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches, another Unitarian body, assumed the responsi— bility.30 NO pews were sold in these churches, all seats were free. Rev. Alexander Young, aged twenty-four when ordained for the Sixth Congregational Church (New South) in 1825, cited the ministry—at—large in 1830 as evidence of the appeal Unitarianism had for the poor. He also wrote that the faith had been accepted in New England at first "by the intelligent, reflecting, educated part of the people," but he did not say only among the rich or long—established families.31 By 1860 seven Unitarian chapels with ministers-at—large served the poor in Boston. In that year Rev. James Freeman Clarke complained that churches should not be set aside for the poor, but rather the churches should admit rich and poor people. He thought, however, that the ministry—at-large had 29"Mellish Irving Motte," HLF, III, pp. 259—263; Edward E. Hale, Jr., The Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale (2 vols.; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1917), I, pp. 283-28A. 30Wilbur, Historyeof Unitarianism, p. AA2; "Joseph Tuckerman," HLF, II, pp. 103-117. See Cooke's chapter on the ministry—at-large in Unitarianism.in America, pp. 2A7—261. 31Alexander Young, Evangelical Unitarianism Adapted to the Poor and Unlearned (2d ed.; Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1832). 'When first published, the Christian Register thought the tract would "silence this unfounded objection to our principles," 19 June 1830. 25 been successful. Should one examine their records, Clarke believed, one would find that these churches had been beneficial, proof of which would be the satisfaction gained by ministers who had served in them.32 A quarrel in 1836 over the sale of pews produced some statements about the social structure of Boston's churches. In his Discourse on the Wants of the Times in 1836, Rev. Orestes A. Brownson, then in his Unitarian phase, accused the Boston churches of being aristocratic be- cause the sale of pews favored the rich. A correspondent to the Christian Register, signing himself "A Worshipper, Not a PeweHolder," defended the sale of pews and the annual taxes levied on pewholders usually in propor— tion to the pewholders' ability to pay. He said some seats in the churches were reserved for the poor; they were not excluded but were invited to attend services. "Many [of the poor]," he wrote, "do come." Another correspondent to the paper rebuked Brownson and detailed the social structure of Boston's Unitarians: For by whom.are our churches filled? And by whom, for the most part, are they possessed? By the wealthy, or the honor— able alone? MOst surely not. These form but a small portion of any community, whether of a city or a congregation. They cannot fill our churches—awhich age filled by persons in all conditions, by the Rich in his fullness and the Poor in his straits, by the prosperous in their comforts and the sorrowful in their griefs, by the aged in their infirmities and the youthful in their strength; by the laborious mechanic who owns his pew, and fills it with his numerous flock, and the no less laborious merchant, who has risen from.nothing; who came into the city perhaps not many years ago a poor working boy and whose incessant industry alone, with God's blessing, has made him rich. This writer believed that if the dozen wealthiest families left each of "the most fashionable congregations" those remaining would be people "in the middling, and many below the middling walks of life." Mbst of those 32Monthly Journal of the American Unitarian Association, I (January, 1861), pp. 53-5A. Cited hereafter as Monthly Journal. 26 who were rich, moreover, had been less prosperous a few years ago. Older churches, he said, had a higher number of the poor than newer ones or those in the central part of town. Unitarians had been generous with their support of the ministry—at-large, hardly aristocratic behavior to his way of thinking. To him, one had to be "an absolute stranger" in the city to call Unitarians aristocratic. The tendency, if anything, ran against an aristocracy. Brownson's reply in the Boston Reformer, which he edited, and which was reprinted in the Christian Register, did not rebut these statements. Brownson said those churches preferring the pew system were welcome to it, but his Society for Christian Union and Progress would rely on voluntary contributions.33 The diversity of Boston's Unitarians emerged in 18A8 after a pro- tracted dispute between the Christian Register and several Orthodox publications over allegations that Unitarianism.was dying in the city. Unitarians contended that the Orthodox had suffered declining church attendence as much as they had. A correspondent to the Christian Reg— ieteg argued that Unitarianism.in Boston remained strong. 'Within the past six years, he wrote, five new Unitarian societies had been formed. Three of them were building meetinghouses. People in the new societies came from.Episcopalian, Baptist, and Orthodox backgrounds, "besides numerous others," he added, "who have been gathered in by virtue of the ministry at large, and the influence of the chapels connected with it." While it might be true that the new societies were not large, they 3A accounted for "nearly one thousand families" new to Unitarianism” The next year Rev. Samuel Cruft, a minister-at-large with the Suffolk 33ChristianRegister, 2 July, 9 July, 30 July 1836. 3l”Ibid., 12 February 18A8. 27 Street Chapel, reported a membership of 155 families, A3 more than in 18A8. Cruft said it was difficult in his chapel to distinguish the poor from the well—to—do because the poor either saved enough to buy nice clothes, or wore borrowed or donated clothing. Cruft related that few of the poor attended his services regularly, but also that few of the "better off" attended either. Poor parents, however, sent their children to Sunday School without hesitation.35 Unitarian churches in other Massachusetts communities evince the same general pattern of social diversity as in Boston. Three societies will be treated in some detail to show that Unitarianism gained adherents from the top of the social ladder down to the lower rungs. Rev. Ralph Sanger served the predominantly rural parish at Dover from.l812 until his death in 1860. Sanger himself might have been con— sidered an "aristocrat" considering his apparent prominence in the come munity. He found time to become an officer of the Norfolk Agricultural Society, worked for the creation of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, served five terms in the Massachusetts legislature, and received the D. D. from Harvard in 1857. According to a biographical sketch of Sanger, it was noted that "although his people were poor, they never failed to pay his salary fully and promptly."36 At Northampton, upper-class individuals led in the formation of a Unitarian society stemming from a schism.in the Calvinist church, but the majority of the liberal Christians there were not at all upper—class. Two families, the Joseph Lymans and the Samuel Howes, precipitated the division in 182A by requesting their orthodox pastor to allow liberal 35Ibid., 9 June 18A9. 36"Ralph Sanger," HLF, I, pp. 123—12A. 28 clergymen to occupy the pulpit at least six times a year. On his refusal the Unitarians seceded, held meetings in the town hall, and invited Uni- tarian clergymen to preach for them” About this time Mrs. Howe wrote that such a small number as they had could not then build a meetinghouse nor permanently settle a minister "unless they were very rich, which we are not; or else very willing to beg, which we are not." ‘The society organized with about fifty people, she said, and "of these persons not more than six or seven can be said to be in easy circumstances; the others are persons who supply the wants of every day by the toil of every day. It will be obvious that the principal burden of expense must rest on the six or seven first mentioned, but they are prepared to do the work; and all, even the peorest, have manifested the disposi— tion to do what they can." One person recalled that on Sundays Mrs. Lyman would send a carriage outside the village to "gather up a few liberals who had no means of getting into town."37 Unitarianism.in Waltham.is an excellent example of this faith's attraction to men and women from.various walks of life. Early in the nineteenth century waltham began to change from.a rural to an indus- trial community with the opening of two cotton factories before 1815. The First Congregational Church became Unitarian under Rev. Samuel 37Susan I. Lesley, Recollections of My Mbther, Mrs. Anne Jean Lyman... (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1899), pp. 2-3, 176, 183-18A. This had been printed originally in a limited edition for family and friends in 1876. Joseph Lyman graduated from Yale, became well—known in Massachusetts legal circles, and attended the Hartford Convention in 1815. His wife, the former Anne Jean Rob- bins, and Mrs. Howe were sisters. Their father was Edward Hutchinson Robbins, a shipbuilder, Federalist in politics, a speaker of the Mass— achusetts House of Representatives, a delegate to the Massachusetts constitutional convention in 1780, lieutenant—governor of the Common- wealth for seven years, and a probate judge when he died. Joseph Lyman and Samuel Howe, both lawyers, were cousins. 29 Ripley, an uncle of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who served the First Church from 1809 to 18A6. The Second Church dismissed an orthodox pastor and _ invited Rev. Bernard Whitman to its pulpit in 1826. ‘Whitman is well— known in Unitarian annals as a leading exponent of liberal Christianity during the "Unitarian Controversy." Ripley's society was predominantly rural while Whitman's, according to J. F. Clarke who preached before it in 1833, was composed "chiefly of those who worked in the waltham.fac- tories."38 After the two Waltham.societies merged when.Whitman died, a sociol- gist, Richard E. Sykes, has suggested that an urban—rural conflict de— veloped within the church. Sykes quoted a comment by Samuel Ripley dated January 1839 that he expected problems in the church with the "heterogeneous mass" now that people had come in from.the defunct Sec— ond Church. Two months earlier, however, Ripley had expressed exaspera— tion at the furor created by nephew R. W. Emerson's Divinity School Address. While the older man did not agree completely with Emerson, there was much with which he could. It was not only hostile clerical reaction that disturbed Ripley but also that of people in Waltham, in— cluding "the common people, even women, [who] look solemn and sad, and roll up their eyes at the mention of R. W. E.: 'Oh, he is a dangerous man; the church is in danger; Unitarianism is disgraced; the party is broken up,‘ etc., etc." Ripley's use of the term "heterogeneous mass" might have meant that a variety of theological beliefs existed in his 38"Samuel Ripley," HLF, II, pp. 172- 178; "Bernard'Whitman, " HLF, II, pp. 2A2-2A9, James B. Thayer, Rev. Samuel Ripley of Waltham (Cam- bridge, iMass. Johanilson and Son, 1897), pp. 30-32; Edward Everett Hale, ed., James Freeman Clarke, Autobiography, Diary and Correspon- dence (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1891), p. 51; Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, p. A52. 30 new society which complicated the choice of a pastor. But of particular significance is Ripley's observation that "common people" were Unitarians. Syke's evidence for new members in 1839, after the merger, shows that the new church continued to attract urban and rural individuals: 3 traders, 3 machinists, 2 farmers, 2 manufacturers, 1 hatter, 1 clergyman, 1 black— smith and 5 having unknown occupations.39 Massachusetts churches elsewhere possessed the same social di— versity. The society at Charlemont, described as "neither large nor wealthy," drew "upon their narrow resources" to build a meetinghouse in 1829. According to Henry Steele Commager, Rev. Theodore Parker's West Roxbury parish consisted of "plain people, farmers, milkmen, shop- keepers," people who remained loyal when Parker shocked many other Uni- tarians with his discourse on the permanent and transient in Christianity. Rev. Thomas wentworth Higginson served the First Religious Society at Newburyport from.l8A7 to 18A9, when he resigned because of dissatis- faction aroused by his political preaching. At the time he declared that he could lead a secession movement with half the parish and form another society but decided against it. "Not a dozen are really opposed to me, but they have all the wealth," Higginson wrote. At the start of his New- buryport career Higginson estimated he had about A00 listeners. Higgin- son's wealthy dozen appeared to him.to be a.minority of the congregation. From.Beverly one person wrote the Secretary of the AUA in 18A5 thanking him for sending a missionary there and surrounding towns where farming 39Thayer, Samuel Ripley, pp. AA-A7; Sykes, "The Effect of Rapid Social and Cultural Change on Unitarianism.in Massachusetts," pp. 99« 105. Sykes thought it "doubtful" that the new pastor, Rev. Thomas Hill, would attract many factory workers. On the other hand, it is more likely that he would since as a youth Hill had been apprenticed first to a printer, then to an apothecary. "Thomas Hill," HLF, III, pp- 170~l7h. 31 was the chief occupation. About 1853 Rev. George W. Stacy began preach- ing at Feltonville and adjacent small towns. Stacy called his society there "respectable for numbers and worthy working men and women." ‘When the AUA made an appeal for funds in 1862, the minister at West Came bridge (now Arlington) replied that the society's contributions for other causes limited what they could give the AUA. Among these causes he mentioned $AO had been collected "for the poor of the Parish." In response to the same appeal the recently retired minister at East Marsh- field replied that he had served that church from.1836 to 1861 and had received an average annual salary of only $150. The AUA should not expect much from.East Marshfield since "there are only about AO families in the society, and no wealthy men."l*O New'England churches outside Massachusetts exhibited the same social structure. Rev. Samuel Kirkland Lothrop, who served as pastor of the society at Dover, New Hampshire, from 1829 to 183A, declared that the church contained old-time residents, "substantial farmers," a black- smith, a mill superintendent, his assistant and his clerk, several mill overseers, a number of "factory girls," five lawyers, and three physicians. In 1837 Rev. Henry W) Bellows commented enthusiastically on opportunities for Unitarian expansion in New Hampshire. "Littleton and Lancaster have promising congregations," he wrote, "and as far as I can judge, they are distinguished from.other places only in having accidently heard h0Christian.Register, 30 January 1830; Commager, Theodore Parker, pp. A1—A2; John White Chadwick, Theodore Parker Preacher and Reformer (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1900), pp. 56-58; Mary Thacher Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The Stogygof His Life (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin Company, 191A), pp. 87, 105; C. T. Thayer to C. Briggs, 18 February 18A5 (Beverly), AUA Letters, 18h5s'Stacy to J. F. Clarke (no date), Menthly Journal, II (February, 1861), pp. 90-91; S. A. Smith to an unknown person, 6 January 1862 (W) Cambridge); G. Leonard to C. H. Brigham, 24 January 1862 (E. Marsh- field), AUA Letters, 1862. 32 our views and formed out what their opinions are." ‘When Rev. Samuel J. iMay accepted the call from.the society at Brooklyn, Connecticut, in 1822, he found it had forty families, "all but half a dozen were plain farmers." A layman who visited the Brooklyn society nearly thirty years later said it was entirely free from.debt but that few members were able to support the church. One of the more pungent observations about Unitarians came from.a Hartford, Connecticut, layman in 1830. "we have very few men of any property amongst us," he declared, "and those few will not do anything decided, because their wives and families are much troubled at their attend- ing worship with us." Meet who came to the Hartford society were "nearly all rather in humble circumstances, but I regard it as rather a favorable circumstance that our opinions should spread first amongst industrious mechanics and labourers....The Unitarians here are rather a vulgar sect." A minister traveling through Maine in 183A found many people living in log cabins expressing an interest in Unitarianism, And nearly all stu- dents of William E. Channing know that in 18AO he aided in founding a small society at Portsmouth, Rhode Island, in order to preach to the far— mers in the vicinity.)+1 Unitarianism.in New York City did not at first attract as many of the wealthy and fashionable as it did later. Rev. Henry Ware, Jr., held services in New York in 1819 and drew large audiences. At the same time he believed that the newly formed society would probably be successful thhornton K. Lothrop, ed., Some Reminiscences of the Life of Samuel Kirkland Lothrep (Cambridge: John Wilson and Son, 1888), pp. 166—167; Bellows to E. Peabody, A October 1837 (Littleton, N. H.), Bellows Papers, MHS; G. B. Emerson, Samuel May, Jr., and T. J. Mumford, Memoir of Samuel Joseph May (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1882), pp. 78-79; G. G. Channing to C. Lincoln, 11 November 1851 (Brook— lyn, Conn.), AUA Letters, 1851; J. H. wells to S. Higginson, 2 March 1830 (Hartford, Conn.), AUA Letters, 1830; Christian Register, 18 Octo- ber 183A; Rice, Federal Street Pastor, p. 179. 33 in time although at present "they are unable to build a church, but have the promise of several rich men to join them whenever they shall undertake it." Channing spoke in New York also in 1819 but was discouraged about prospects there. ‘Ware assured Channing that "if they love Christianity as much in an unostentatious building, (by the way, a much better one than the upper room in which Paul preached,) as in a splendid church," then the New York society ought to succeed. Catherine Sedgwick, along with her brother Henry and his wife Jane, soon joined the New York society. One of the parish projects in 1823 was a charity school for poor children of the city. "We mean to teach the children the rudiments of learning, and how to mend their clothes, darn their stockings, etc," Catherine wrote. "Our society is small, and far from rich, but we hope to accomr plish it." The Second Unitarian Church opened in 1835 and drew some mem— bers from the First Church. ‘When Rev. Henry W. Bellows went to the latter in 1836, he feared the society might dissolve; but he was encouraged by the continued attendence of "a number of families admirable for intelli- gence and refinement,-_more particularly the Sedgwick and Schuyler fami— lies." Nine years later in an article in the Christian Register, both New York societies were mentioned as having had lean years before becoming "remarkably prosperous," another indication that the well-to~do were not immediately attracted to Uhitarianism.“2 The development of the Unitarian church at Philadelphia in many ways paralleled that of New York. The first permanent minister was Rev. hUWare, Henry Ware, Jr., I, pp. 130-131; C. M, Sedgwick to Mrs. Eliza Pomeroy, 10 January 1823 (New York), in Mary E. Dewey, ed., Life eeeigetters of Catherine M; Sedgwick (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1871), p. 158; Rice,Federal Street Pastor, pp. 92—93; Bellows to William and Charlotte Silsbee, 18 November 1838 (New York), Bellows Papers, MHS; Christian Register, 8 May 18A7. 3A William Henry Furness, aged twenty—two, when he was settled there in 1825. Furness wrote the year he was installed that Unitarians in Phila— delphia were "about as obscure and despised as any company of Methodists or such like are in Boston." Catherine Sedgwick visited the city in 1830 and discovered that Philadelphia resembled Boston in many ways and in some respects was better. But she observed that "there is much less religious sentiment in the higher classes, more indifference to the sub— ject, as if it were only fit to interest the vulgar and the weaker sex." Furness and Sedgwick give the impression that few of the upper classes would be Unitarians. Elizabeth Geffen's study of Unitarianism in Phila— delphia reveals that members of this denomination were generally from the "upper middle class, usually, though not always, bountifully endowed with the world's goods." Geffen identified the occupation of many mem— bers of Furness's church and found a variety of them: attorney, druggist, engraver, physician, plasterer, blacksmith, banker, broker, and that all— inclusive term, merchant.l+3 The Unitarian church in St. Louis, begun in the early 1830's, could hardly be called an aristocratic society judging from the rem— iniscences of its first minister, Rev. William Greenleaf Eliot. Eliot became pastor of the society in 183A where he remained as minister until 1869. As an indication of his difficulties, Eliot told George Ticknor that during the first three years of his pastorate the society raised only $1,000 for a building fund and paid him $350 for salary and expenses.hh ABElizabeth M. Geffen, Philadelphia Unitarianism 1796—1861 (Phila— delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961), pp. 121, 1A5, 167—169; Mary Dewey, Catherine Sedgflick, p. 203. AAA layman wrote from St. Louis that the society was "not rich enough to carry their design [to build a church] into execution with- out assistance" from the East. Christian Register, 28 February 1835. 35 From his experiences Eliot observed three types Of western emigrants: those who were not considered respectable at the East, those who had "a roving disposition," and those "enterprising and industrious" people who sought "to better themselves." Eliot's preaching eventually drew large numbers. His leadership in municipal charities and education (he is considered the founder of washington University) made him popular. His daughter and memorialist, Charlotte, wrote that the 1850's were the best years of his ministry when he attracted "large, influential, and thinking" listeners, yet these people were "not particularly wealthy, but [were] conspicuous for liberal giving."1"5 The social status of other western Unitarians paralleled those in the East.“6 Rev. Moses G. Thomas traveled through the west in 1826 where he found a small group of 30 to 60 meeting regularly at Pittsburgh. Local printers refused to sell Unitarian tracts there because of strong anti—Unitarian prejudice, Thomas reported. Benjamin Bakewell, a Pitts- burgh glass manufacturer born in England, however, nearly singlehandedly supported the church. Rev. Henry A. Miles visited Pittsburgh a decade later and found within the Unitarian society "several English mechanics with their families, who [had] left Unitarian societies in England." During his journey Thomas found a Unitarian farmer in Ohio who agreed to distribute religious literature. He also met many Unitarians in Cincinnati among whom were "three of the most influential men in the city," but Revg'William.Henry Channing, who preached at Cincinnati in ASCharlotte C. Eliot, William Greenleaf Eliot: Minister,_Educator, Philanthropist (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 19010) pp° 29) 31+: 62° héLyttle, Freedom Moves West, chapters 1—8, contains a church-by- church chronicle with little analysis of their social structure. 36 1839, observed that the society was neither numerous nor wealthy. Fresh from Divinity School, Rev; Ephraim.Peabody served as tutor in 1830 to the children of Harm.Jan Huidekoper, a wealthy Unitarian in Meadville, Pennsylvania. Peabody preached for the Meadville society without pay, but one of his parishioners, a tailor, made him.a coat and pantaloons in appreciation of his services. Revu‘William.P. Huntington, who preached at Hillsboro, Illinois, and other towns in that state, also received a new black suit and other small gifts from his parishioners who were too poor to pay him much. Rev. W. H. Channing ministered at Meadville for four years after Peabody and discovered that "the Unitarians were few and not rich," according to Channing's biographer, O. B. Frothingham. Rev. Henry W. Bellows declared in 18A3 that the society at Albany, New York, contained people who were poor but who "are willing to do what they can. If the [American Unitarian] Association counts its coppers too carefully the effort there will be [in] vain."A7 In the two decades before the Civil War there is further evidence that Unitarians in the North outside New England came from.many walks of life. The Executive Committee of the NeW'York Unitarian Association, A7Second Annual Report, AUA, 1827, pp. 52, 55, 61; "Benjamin Bake- well," National Cyclopaedia of American Biogrephy, XXII, pp. 217—218; Christian Register, 13 August 1836; Nina Meore and Francis Tiffany, Harm.Jan Huidekeper (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 190A), p. 220; D. B. Jackson to C. Briggs, 27 December 18A3 (Hillsboro, Ill.), AUA Letters, 18A3; 0. B. Frothingham, Memoir of“William.Henry Channing (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1886), pp. 9h, 1&5; H. W} Bel— lows to C. Briggs, 3 January 18A3 (New York), AUA Letters, 18A3. ‘W. P. Huntington described the Hillsboro society in 1839 as one with seven or eight families and a considerable number of bachelors, "but two or three of each class can, however, be reckoned wealthy; nor can it be said that all together have the means of supporting a pastor, who had no other resources than his salary." At Quincy, Illinois, Huntington preached to audiences between 50 and 100. He was told that they were as intelligent and respectable as those of any other local church. "They are mostly new comers," added Huntington, "and as yet unable to appropriate much money to any other object than what more immediately concerns their getting a living." Christiaanegister, 15 June 1839. 37 publishers of the Christian Inquirer, informed editor Henry W. Bellows that the newspaper's narrow theological coverage had provoked complaints from readers. They advised him to devote two of the paper's four pages to advertisements and "the current news of the day. This decision will give more variety of matter and make it of more general interest to coun— try subscribers who we hope to be our most numerous readers, and amongst them.we hope to do the most good." The minister of the society at North- umberland, Pennsylvania, informed Boston in 1853 that only three or four wealthy families had been able to support his church which contained about seventy-five people. At Alton, Illinois, a minister who attempted to revive the society reported in 185A a regular attendance of three to four hundred people at his services. "Our members," he said, "are among the best merchants, mechanics, manufacturers, and professional men of the place." A missionary in the Courtland, New York, area encountered con— siderable opposition to Unitarian preaching from.other denominations except the Universalists in 1860. He had preached in Universalist churches, in schoolrooms, and in town halls to which he had drawn fair audiences from the more intelligent and independent of the "common people." One of my chief encouragements is, that the mass of those who turn out to hear Liberal preach— ing will not suffer, as to character, in comparison with those who go to the established churches; and I always get most of the refbrmers, who are longing for a better state of thingsfi8 ‘ One of the best testimonies that Unitarianism appealed to and attracted the "common.man" came at the May Meetings in 18A5. The wit- ness was Arthur Buckminster Fuller, brother onMargaret Fuller and son of Timothy Fuller, a noted Federalist congressman and Massachusetts ASH. Boynton to Bellows, 9 April 18A9 (New York), Bellows Papers, MHS; Quarterly Journal, I (1 January 185A), p. 110; ibid., I (1 April 185A), pp. 290-291;'Mbnthly Journal, I (October, 18605, p. A66. 38 politician. After graduating from.Harvard in 18A3, Arthur Fuller went to Belvidere, Illinois, as principal of an academy. He preached and lectured on Unitarianism.in several Illinois towns. He held religious services in 10g cabins, school houses, barns, "and in all places," he wrote, "where men possessing immortal souls would assemble to listen to the glad tid- ings of a rational and consistent faith." He returned to Massachusetts in 18A5 in order to study theology at Harvard. That spring he told the AUA of his experiences in Illinois: we are often told, that the Unitarian faith is too cold, too metaphysical to take deep root in the hearts of the common people. Sir, I reject this charge, as libellous upon our system; Unitarianism.is no mere theory, no barren specula— tion, but a living principle, clear and simple as it is noble and elevating. The common people heard our Saviour gladly, and so hear they now the words of those who advocate the truths he revealed, if properly presented.h9 Although Unitarianism made limited inroads in the South, there are some indications that Southern Unitarians were similar in social status to their northern co-religionists. Clarence Gohdes has written an excel— lent chronicle of antebellum.Southern Unitarianism, but he did not discuss the social structure of the societies beyond stating that the faith appealed to intelligent and distinguished individuals.5O Two of the South's Unitarian societies apparently contained a large, if not predominant, number of aristocrats. The society at Charleston, South Carolina, under the pastoral care of Rev. Samuel Gilman, is said to have attracted wealthy, intelligent, and influential men in the com: munity. Unfortunately, during the Civil'War the antebellum parish records A9"Arthur Buckminster Fuller," HLF, III, pp. 128-129; Twentieth Annual.Report, AUA, 18A5, pp. 17, 36. 50Clarence Gohdes, "Some Notes on the Unitarian Church in the Ante- Bellum.South...," in David K. Jackson, ed., American Studies in Honor of William Kenneth Boyd,... (Durham; Duke University Press, 19AO), pp. 327 -366 . 39 were removed to Columbia, where they were destroyed, so we do not know what proportion of Charleston's Unitarians were aristocrats. The Uni— tarian society at Mobile, Alabama, according to the Executive Committee of the AUA, was "composed mostly of persons of the first respectability in the city." One of the wealthiest supporters of the Mobile society was Samuel St. John, Jr., whose wife had been reared a Unitarian in Baltimore. It is interesting to note, however, that when Rev. Henry W. Bellows preached at MObile in 1837 he wrote his sister that "persons who do not scruple to visit every vile hole of dissipation talk of their conscientious unwillingness to enter our little church, and wonder what their friends would say if they heard of their going to hear a Unitarian preach!"51 The social structure of the New Orleans society under Rev. Theodore Clapp is not clear from available evidence. Clapp had been trained as a Congregational minister at the Andover Theological School. He went to the Crescent City as a tutor, began preaching at a Presbyterian church in 1822, and after private study of the Scriptures, adopted Unitarian beliefs. The Presbyterians disowned him in 1833 although a majority of his congregation remained loyal to their pastor. Clapp had a reputation of attracting numerous listeners. One visitor to the city in 18A3 wrote that Clapp had a large congregation and was considered "one of the lions of the city," but that many of the more educated and refined people thought him "wanting in dignity and taste." If the educated and refined 51Arthur A. Brooks, The History of Unitarianlem in the Southern Churches: Charleston, New Orleans, Louisville, Richmond (Boston: American Unitarian Association, n.d.), pp. 6-8; Eieventh Annual Re rt, AUA, 1836, p. 19; Quarterly Journal, III (1 July 18565, pp. 6A9—65A; Bellows to Harriet A. Bellows, 13 February 1837 (Mobile), Bellows Papers, MHS. A0 shunned Clapp who still drew sizable audiences, his hearers may not have been so refined or educated.52 The society in Richmond, Virginia, however, does not appear to have had many aristocrats or wealthy individuals. Rev. Charles A. Farley who preached there in 1835 reported that the society had difficulty paying him. After Farley left a layman told the AUA they desired another min— ister and could pay him $1,000 a year. But any minister sent them will not here find Unitarianism a passport to refined so- ciety, but he will be avoided by many of the fashionable, and be compelled to hear many severe remarks against him, and his cause--and even some who espouse the cause will hardly own him, untill the cause becomes more fashionable. Rev. William.Silsbee, who preached briefly in Richmond after his gradua— tion from.Divinity School in 1836, wrote that the city possessed "'No 53 If erte, no letters, no society' I might almost say with Hobbes." what "society" and "fashion" that did exist avoided the Unitarian church, most Richmond Unitarians may have been "unfashionable." Other evidence indicates that Unitarianism.appealed to all classes in the South. Rev. Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch, son of the architect Charles Bulfinch, preached at Augusta, Georgia, in the 1830's. Initially, he served only twenty to thirty families but he hoped to collect "a 52"Theodore Clapp," HLF, II, pp. 272—273; Theodore Clapp, Autobio- graphical Sketches and Recollections, During a Thiety-five Years' Resi- dence in New Orleans (Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Company, 1857); R. C. Goodhue to Bellows, 27 April 18A3 (New Orleans), Bellows Papers, MHS. 53Ebenezer Robinson and C. A. Farley to C. Briggs, 3 December 1835 (Richmond), AUA Letters, 1835; Isaac Davenport to C. Briggs, 25 January 1836 (Richmond), AUA Letters, 1836; Silsbee to Bellows, 16 October 1836 (Richmond), Bellows Papers, MHS. There is little information on the social structure of the Richmond society in George H. Gibson, "The Unitarian-Universalist Church of Richmond," The Virginia Magazine of Histogy and Biography, LXXIV (July, 1966), pp. 321—335. As with Charles— ton, antebellum.documents of the Richmond society have apparently been lost, Brooks, History of Unitarianism.in the Southern Churches, p. 22. A1 respectable society" before long. By 183A he thought prospects good for the faith in Georgia, even in small towns. But by 1837 Bulfinch had failed to enlarge his congregation. His salary had been raised to $1,500 but he thought even this might prove burdensome fer his parishioners. He resigned that year because the society had been unable to pay him, A lay- man.at Macon, Georgia, asked Boston in 1836 to find a minister for the small society there consisting mostly of young men aged twenty-one to forty, "most of these Northern men in govt business." Rev. Dexter Clapp remarked that his salary at Savannah in 18A3 was only $800 and was all the society could affbrd. At Washington, D. C., the Unitarian society formed in 1820 drew many of America's leading men usually as listeners but seldom as members. The church continually teetered on the brink of dissolution. Ministers' salaries were as small as the membership. But along with its distinguished visitors the church's Sunday School con— tained children of poor people in the city, according to a layman, because parents were "glad to send their children without regarding sec- tarian instruction." Revx'w. H. Channing came to Washington in 1861 and found a dilapidated meetinghouse and a society neither rich nor fashion— able. A recent biographer of J. F. Clarke asserts that the Unitarian society at Louisville, Kentucky, was composed mostly of "'better fami— lies'--lawyers, judges, and merchants" along with some people of "modest means." Yet one layman appealed to the AUA to finance the traveling expenses of any ministerial candidates the Association might send them, 5A hardly an indication of great wealth among Louisville Unitarians. 5L'Most of the material here is from.AUA Letters: Bulfinch to S. Higginson, 22 April 1830 (Augusta); Bulfinch to J. Whitman, 9 June 183A (Savannah); Bulfinch to C. Briggs, 7 February 1837 (Augusta); Bulfinch to S. Barrett, 1A March 1837 (Augusta); E. A.'ware to H. ware, A October 1836 (Macon); D. Clapp to J. Whitman, 11 July 18A3 (Savannah); A. Stearns A2 One of the more interesting documents on the Unitarian social struc- ture is a statement of the Executive Committee of the AUA justifying its Declaration of Opinion in 1853. The Committee believed that five factors had contributed to the faith's slow growth: 1) an image of theological negativism causing many to believe that Unitarians lacked "well—defined objects" and beliefs; 2) "the almost exclusively intellectual character" of the movement which restricted the appeal of Unitarianism; 3) orthodox prejudice against their views based on misinformation; A) "the subtle power of social prestige"; and 5) Theodore Parker's radicalism which had brought 55 Several historians who treat this 56 odium upon the entire denomination. document stress the anti-Parker aspect of it. The fourth point merits some consideration. The Committee stated that except in some parts of New England and in a few other places, the so-called best society, the wealth, fashion, power of the Christian world, move in circles alien from our peculiar views, and regarding them.with undissembled horror. The immense and dishonorable power thus silently but most effectually wielded is beginning to be felt even here, by means of the universal intercommunication of the world. Elsewhere, in scores of places, this influence is known by us to press with most un— fair and disastrous weight against the advance of our cause. The Committee did not say that "the so—called best society, the wealth, to S. Higginson, 22 March 1830 (washington, D. 0.); S. B. Sumner to S. Barrett, 13 March 1832 (Louisville); Frothingham, W. H. Channing, p. 322; Bolster, J. F. Clarke, p. 76. As an illustration of the languid support of one prominent Unitarian for the society at Washington, D. C., Edward Everett rose to preside at a Unitarian meeting in Boston and said, "I am always ready to be of service to Unitarianism," "Except at washington," retorted Rev. Jared Sparks, sitting beside him, Moncure Daniel Conway, Autobiography, Memories and Experiences (2 vols.; Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1901.), I, pp. 285—286. 55Twenty-eigeth Annual Report, AUA, 1853, pp. 18-23; Quarterly Jour— nal. I (October. 1853). pp. 2.1.4.9. 56Lyttle, Freedom Moves West, pp. 79—80; Commager, Theodore Parker, p. 156; Wilbur, History of Unitarianism, pp. A62-A63; Hutchison, Trans— cendentalist Ministers, p. 130. A3 fashion, power of the Christian world" had recoiled only from the views of Parker. The best society often had been alienated "from our peculiar views" and had regarded those views "with undissembled horror." Adverse social pressure had begun to influence even the Yankees. Consequently, Unitarianism was not the preserve of the rich and fashionable, and it may have been abandoned by some because it was not fashionable. This chapter has been devoted primarily to the social status of laymen when in fact ministers are apt to articulate the denomination's position on public issues. Their statements were likely interpreted as the voices of the entire faith. This leads to the question of the social status of the ministers. Most Unitarian ministers studied at the Harvard Divinity School. One of the contributors to a cooperative history of the School, Conrad Wright, wrote that few divinity students in the first half of the nine— teenth century came from prominent families. Most of the students ob- tained financial assistance from the School which nearly covered the entire cost of their education.57 To survey all the denomination's ministers in order to discover their pre—Divinity School social status would be a gargantuan enterprize. A sample from the most significant center of the faith, the ministers of Boston for the years 1830, 18A6, and 1860, may suggest the ministers' standing in society. Information has been gathered to show their fathers' occupation as an indication of their social rank before entering the ministry. As was true of the congregations they served, Boston's 57Conrad Wright, "The Early Period," in George Huntston Williams, ed. The Harvard Divinity School Its Plaee in Harvard University and in Ameri— can Culture (Boston: The Beacon Press, 195A), pp. 60—61. For the assis— tance given needy divinity students at Harvard by the people of King's Chapel, see Foote and Edes, Annals of King's Chapel, II, p. A69. ’ Ah ministers came from a variety of social ranks. Among the fathers were seven merchants, five ministers, four farmers, two publishers, two law— yers, one cotton mill overseer, one crockery dealer and tax assessor, one dentist, one machinist, one ship master, one blacksmith, one tavern 58 keeper, one physician, and thirteen unknown. In the light of the Execu— tive Committee's statement in 1853 that social prestige had become some— thing of a barrier to the spread of Unitarianism, it is revealing what Rev. Charles Brooks, a retired pastor, confided to his journal in 18A6 about the changing social status of Unitarian ministers: Once the office of clergyman was the highest in society-— and then a good salary and a permanent situation attached to the office, but, now salaries are cut down to their mini— mum, and the inconstancy of the tenure of office is prover— bial——both wh[ich] causes tend to prevent young men of com— manding talents and high families from entering the ministry. Unless very much higher salaries are given, the downward move— ment must continue and finally few distinguished men will be found in the ranks of the clergy.5 This reinforces David B. Tyack's judgment of the social ranking in Boston during George Ticknor's day: "Until the influx of immigrants most Bostonians could claim equal ancestral distinction. The rapid rise of the patricians—-the Cabots, Eliots, Grays, Perkins, Storys, Appletons, Lawrences, Bowditches, Dexters, Wards, Forbes, and the rest——testified to the possibility of acquiring high social position without a dis— tinguished family tree."60 From 1830 to 1865 Unitarianism drew people more because of its religious tenets than because it was fashionable. Some of the people 58See Appendix E. 59Entry of 17 November 18A6, Journal 18A6—18A9, Charles Brooks MSS, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library. 60David B. Tyack, George Ticknor and the Boston Brahmins (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 178. A5 who adopted those beliefs were wealthy and distinguished, a large number possessed moderate means, and some were poor. The political and social actions and attitudes in this study will reflect the views of religious liberals, not a social elite.61 61See Appendix F for comments on the social structure of Unitarian Universalists of the 1960's. CHAPTER II WAR, COLONIZATION, AND SLAVERY IN THE 1830's James Truslow Adams has written that "a craven fear seized upon the American soul" during the 1830's and 18A0's regarding the question of Negro slavery. "For the most part," he continued, "all the men of wealth, of learning, of leadership in society, business, and the chur— ches entered into a vast unspoken conspiracy, dictated by fear, to force the American people to abstain from mentioning what was, in reality, the most vital question of the day."1 Adams's exaggeration will become apparent in this and in the fol— lowing chapter insofar as American Unitarians are concerned. Members of this faith during the 1830's and 18AO's were vitally concerned with slavery and related problems of African colonization and war. Uni— tarians were interested in these and other public issues, and expressed themselves from their pulpits and through their presses. Another important source for the idea that Unitarians were sloth- ful on slavery and reform in general is Octavius Brooks Frothingham through his Boston Unitarianiep, 1820—1850. Frothingham emphasized the conservatism and undemocratic nature of Boston's Unitarians based on their belief in individual rather than institutional means for reform. This stress, he wrote, lAdams, New Epgland in the Republic, pp. AOl—A02. A6 A7 may help to explain the circumstance that these men, so humane, so compassionate, so kindly, so conscientious, so tenderhearted, so generous, were no more interested in the organizations against slavery, intemperance, the dis— abilities of working men and women, bad legislation, evil customs. A sense of turpitude was entirely consistent with an apparent apathy which was born of a patient wait- ing on Providence and a diligent employment of its pre- scribed remedies. One of the most plain-spoken damnations of the Unitarians on the matter of slavery is that of Rev. Samuel Joseph May in Some Recollec— tions of Our Antislavery Conflict (1869), which had appeared serially in the Christian Register in 1867—1868. May believed that in propor— tion to their numbers, more Unitarians were abolitionists than were the adherents of any other faith. But Unitarians as a denomination, he wrote, dealt with the question of slavery in any but an impar~ tial, courageous, and Christian way. Continually in their public meetings the question was staved off and driven out, because of technical, formal, verbal difficulties which were of no real importance, and ought not to have caused a moment's hesitation.... And considering their position as a body, not entangled with any proslavery alliances, not hampered by an ecclesiastical organiza— tion, it does seem to me that they were pre—eminently guilty in reference to the enslavement of the millions in our land with its attendant wrongs, cruelties, horrors. May was nearly seventy years old when he made this judgment. As a fervant pacifist, May had approved the Civil War with painful reluctance. He believed that the denunciation of slavery in antebellum times "alone could have saved our country from our late awful civil war." Rather than a history of the antislavery movement, May's Recollections should 3 actually be read as a polemic against war. 2Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Boston Unitarianipp,r1820-1&59... (New York & London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1890), p. A9, ff. 3Samuel J. May, Some Recollections of Our Antislavepy Conflict (Bos— ton: Fields, Osgood, & Co., 1869), pp. 335—337. A8 Until the firing on Fort Sumter, May and other abolitionist Uni— tarians appear to have agreed with moderate antislavery Unitarians on a key point: war was a greater evil than slavery. The former were prepared, especially in the 18AO'S, to accept dismemberment of the United States rather than condone self—contamination in a slaveholding country. The latter sought to continue the Union hoping that slavery would peacefully expire. But the thought of the expansion and per— petuation of slavery caused many moderates, some as early as the 1830's, to consider Northern secession. Theological radicals like Theodore Parker and T. W. Higginson possessed no monopoly among Unitarians on prewar disunionism. A number of theological conservatives like Chand— ler Robbins, E. S. Gannett, and G. E. Ellis were prepared to accept a divided nation before 1861. Abolitionist Unitarians advocated dis— unionism to avoid conflict. For a time mild antislavery Unitarians resented abolitionist provocations which they believed would lead to sectional and servile war. Some of the moderates then joined the aboli— tionists on disunionism. But after Fort Sumter nearly all moderates denounced slavery as vehemently as any abolitionist and actively sup— ported military measures to suppress the rebellion and to destroy slavery. During the Civil War abolitionist and moderate antislavery Unitarians sanctioned the use of force to accomplish manumission with all the problems that war and immediate abolition would bring. While it is common in recent times to highlight Northern anti-Negro prejudice in the Civil War era, it should be remembered that fears of sectional and servile war also existed. This apprehension may explain why so many Unitarians shunned abolitionist extremism during the antebellum years. A9 An illustration of the point that war was considered worse than slavery by abolitionist and moderate antislavery Unitarians can be found in the Christian Examiner of 1835. In this volume Rev. S. J. May and Rev. Andrew Preston Peabody commented on the pacifist book, An Inquiry into the Accordancy of War with the Principles of Chris— tianity, by the English Quaker, Jonathan Dymond. May thought Dymond's presentation "the most thorough examination and complete refutation of the arguments, by which ethical and political writers have attempted to justify war." Peabody, whom May did not list as a strong Unitarian abolitionist in his Recollections, was even more emphatic. "We cannot but regard all war as entirely opposed to the precepts and spirit of the Gospel," he declared. As for the argument that great principles might need force for their defense, Peabody replied "unhesitatingly, No. What right have we to take the lives, the souls, of our brethren, and offer them up, even on the alter of happiness and improvement?" The only war which Americans might justify, according to Peabody, was the War of Independence, and even that was questionable since it had brought corruption, atheism (Thomas Paine in particular), and alcoholism. "The practice of war, requiring naval and military estab- lishments in time of peace," he wrote, "perpetuates military tastes and feelings in the community, and keeps open a perennial source of evil influences. Neither the army nor the navy has ever been a school A of morality and piety; our navy and army cannot claim to be so." hMay's remarks are in the Christian Examiner, XVIII (March, 1835), p. 119; Peabody's in ipig., (July, 1835), pp. 368—398. A good analysis of May's pacifism is William H. and Jane H. Pease, "Freedom and Peace: A Nineteenth Century Dilemma," The Midwest Quarterly, A Journal of Con— tempqrgpy Thopght, IX (October, 1967), pp. 23—AO. May pointedly dis— avowed force to eliminate slavery in A Discourpe on Slavery in the United States Delivered in Brookl Connecticut Jul 18 1 (Boston: Gar— rison and Knapp, 1832), pp. 20—21. 50 Four years later, Rev. William Ware in the same periodical contended that war might be unavoidable if it "became necessary to prevent or ter- minate still greater evils." He believed that "there are blessings more valuable than peace itself,——liberty, justice, truth." Ware considered adequate peacetime military preparations to be "among the most effectual means of preserving peace."5 He did not believe, however, that force should be employed to destroy slavery. Later that same year he wrote of slavery as "one in a series of imperfect arrangements, which for a time must be endured, but which enlightened men and Christians ought to be do— ing their best to improve, temperately, gradually, peaceably [italics added], and with good nature; arrangements too, which are yielding, with more or less rapidity, before the influence of science and of the Christian religion."6 Repudiation of coercive means to overthrow slavery appears often in Unitarian writings before the Civil War. Few Unitarians were sympathetic to slavery. When Edward Everett spoke in Congress of the happiness of Southern chattels, the Christian Register rebuked the former Unitarian pastor with the remark that "all the power and splendor of this performance...do nothing to diminish the regret with which we read this passage——contrary, as we conceive, to the spirit of the age, and to the mind of the country." A correspondent to the paper defended Everett, but admitted that many people had been upset by his opinion.7 zflilliam.Ware, "Peace and Peace Societies," Christian Examiner, XXVI (May, 1839), pp. 182—183. éWilliam.Ware, "Slavery," Christian Examiner, XXVI (July, 1839), p. 303. The Christian Register carried portions of this article and commented favorably on it. Christian Register, 6 July 1839. 7Christian Register, 25 March, 1 April 1826. A discussion of this Edward Everett Orator and States— incident is in Paul Revere Frothingham, pep (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 19255, pp. 103—109. 51 Some Unitarians hoped to eliminate slavery by the removal of Negroes from the United States to Liberia through the American Colon— ization Society.8 The Christian Register and the Christian Examiner often publicized the objectives of the ACS. Both periodicals also carried censure of the ACS from readers and contributors, and occa— sionally agreed with them. Whatever the ACS gained from the Unitarian press, it received little money from Unitarians. That anti—Unitarian war horse, Rev. Lyman Beecher, stated that Unitarians "have uniformly proved a dead weight to such enterprizes" as African colonization.9 A major article in the Christian Examiner against colonization was penned by Samuel E. Sewall, later a financial backer of William Lloyd Garrison. Sewall considered African colonization a "noble cause" but immpossible to succeed in the light of annual increases of blacks born in the United States. At the time he wrote the article (1827) he thought immediate emancipation undesirable, and favored education of slave child— ren who would be freed later. Because of the absence of general manu— mission laws in the South, Sewall urged individual masters to prepare their slaves for freeom.lO A prominent spokesman of the ACS, Benjamin B. Thatcher, was given considerable space in the periodical where he stressed the philanthropic character of the organization.11 William 8See P. J. Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement 1816—1865 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961). Unitarians who endorsed colonization at some time included George Bancroft, William Cullen Bryant, A. H. Everett, Edward Everett, Millard Fillmore, Joseph Gales, Sr., E. S. Gannett, Levi Lincoln, John Marshall, Horace Mann, S. J. May, Stephen C. Phillips, W. C. Rives, Jared Sparks, and Daniel Webster. 9 Quoted in Staudenraus, African Colonization, pp. 133—13A. 103. E. Sewall, "On Slavery in the United States," Christian Examiner, IV (May, June, 1827), pp. 201—227. 11B. B. Thatcher, "Annual Reports of the American Society...," Chris- tian Examiner, XIII (September, 1832), pp. 96—110. 52 Joseph Snelling lived up to his reputation for caustic wit and irony by his attack on Thatcher in the next issue. Based on ACS reports and Ihg African Repgsitogy, the ACS organ, Snelling denounced the Society for its impracticality, the strength it gave to American slavery, the encouragement it rendered the domestic slave trade, its draining away of an important labor supply, its fostering of racial prejudice, and the hypocracy of its appeals in the North with antislavery arguments and in the South with proslavery arguments.12 The Christian Register also carried material on colonization, pro and con. The paper editorially considered colonization an insufficient answer to the slavery problem. In 1828 the Unitarian weekly called Liberia an "excellent resort" for freed blacks and a safety valve to pre— vent the build—up of a "disproportionate increase" of the Negro popula- tion. The paper admitted that transportation facilities had proved in— adequate. In any case slavery was a dying institution which would end either gradually or "by a violent and successful struggle for liberty, like that of our American Revolution." The Christian Register considered "visionary" the idea of miscegenation and integration of Negroes into the mainstream of American life. America would have either a segregated society or she would turn to colonization. Later the paper reiterated its belief that the two races could live together peacefully. A program of education must prepare the freedmen to become "as respectable a class of society as possible" since their complete removal was impossible. In 1831 the paper reprinted an assault on the New York Colonization Society drafted by a convention of New York Negroes who contended that colonization lad. J. Snelling, "The American Colonization Society," Christian Ex— aminer, XIII (November, 1832), pp. 200—224. See A. E. Woodall, "William Joseph Snelling," Dictionggy of American Biography, XVII, pp. 381—382. 53 increased racial prejudice and that most Negroes in the United States considered themselves Americans who should not be deported. The Uni— tarian paper disclaimed reprobation of the colonization principle but noted that the blacks deserved a hearing. Their statement exhibited ”spirit and ability" according to the editor.13 The article on the NeW'York resolutions triggered a debate over colonization in the pages of the Christian Register throughout the year of 1831. These letters to the editor reveal some of the attitudes in the Unitarian community on the matter of colonization and slavery. Antagonists of the American Colonization Society charged that the or— ganization promoted racial prejudice and perpetuated slavery in America. One correspondent wrote that the United States "is the country of the blacks as well as of the whites; and the rights of the blacks are as deserving of equal consideration with those of the whites." This per— son derided statements that freedmen became debauched by their freedom and should be deported. If this were true, he reasoned, then many of the Irish who were "ignorant and degraded" should be removed, but no one would think of doing this. The freedmen should be educated, reason and religion should be used to overcome color prejudice, and political dis— abilities directed against Negroes should be removed.lh Protagonists of colonization regretted the presence of racial bigotry and admitted that colonization would have little immediate effect on slavery, but an African colony, according to one writer, would be "a germ, that will gradually be expanded and strengthened" which would aid in reducing 13Christian Register, 20 December 1828, 1 August 1829, 19 February 1831 lL‘Ibid., 26 February, 5 March, 30 April, 15 October, 29 October, 19 November, 3 December, 10 December, 17 December 1831. Opponents of colonization signed themselves "N" and "Justitia." 54 racial prejudice in all countries.15 Although the Christian Register thereafter mentioned colonization, the issue of slavery was paramount. Rev. Ezra Stiles Gannett, one of the more active Unitarians in the Ameri— can Colonization Society, did not really believe that the transportation of Negroes to Africa would have much effect on American slavery.16 John Quincy Adams concluded that manumission was not an objective of the ACS, "though it may be the day—dream of some of its members," he re— corded in his diary.17 During the late 1820's the Christian Register expressed its oppo— sition to slavery by reprinting excerpts from books or articles on the subject, in notices of books and sermons, in announcements of antislavery meetings, and in editorials. A correspondent brought to the paper"s attention the published journal of a young Bostonian traveling in Vir— ginia. The portion of the journal reprinted revealed the Yankee‘s dis— gust at planters and merchants bargaining over Negroes——including separ— ating husband and wife—~as a Vermont farmer would trade livestock.l8 The Christian Register ”cheerfully” recommended that its readers sub— scribe to Benjamin Lundygs newspaper, Genius of Universal Emancipation, 9 whose prospectus it printed.l In 1828 the paper indignantly told of a freedmen in Washington, D. C., who had been resold into slavery without 15Ibid., 19 March, 2 April, 9 April, 15 October, 22 October 1831. Supporters of the ACS signed themselves "G" and "Ashmun." 16William C. Gannett, Ezra Stiles Gannett... (Boston: Roberts Bro— thers, 1875), p. lhO. 17Allan Nevins, ed., The Diary of John Quincy Adams, 179A—18h5 (New York, London, Toronto; Longmans, Green and Co., 1928), p. LA2. l8Christian Register, 1 September, 17 November 1827. 191mm, 29 March 1828. 55 a legal determination of his free status. "Nothing can be added to national dishonor and political turpitude greater than this," the editor fumed.2O The paper urged readers to sign and support petitions to Con— gress calling for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.21 The Christian Register's policy of gradual emancipation, which was to begin immediately, survived the Nat Turner insurrection of August 1831. Ironically, two days before Turner began his murderous rampage, the paper feared that pending abolition in the British west Indies might incite servile war in the United States. It advised Southern state governments to begin manumission without delay to prevent slave revolts. When the paper first reported the troubles at Northampton, Virginia, it declared that freedom for the blacks would be "the only measure which can prevent the perpetual recurrence of these outrages." Later, one of the corres— pondents who had defended colonization cited west Indian emancipation and Turner's revolt as evidence that immediate abolition would produce a race war and would encourage idleness and criminal tendencies in Negroes. He admitted that whites and blacks probably possessed equal mental capacities and that slavery caused Negroes to appear inferior, but that Northern incendiarism and immediatism would ignite servile and sectional war. Yet a month after the Turner revolt the Christian Register blamed only slavery as the cause of that bloodletting.22 The Christian Register refrained from immediate abolitionism and ab— stained from abuse of Southern slaveowners. It early reception of William 20mm, 12 April 1828. 21Ibid., 27 December 1828, A December 1830, 7 January 1832. 22Ibid., 20 August, 27 August, 3 September, 2h September, 1 October, 8 October 1831. 56 Lloyd Garrison, however, was cordial. The Unitarian weekly disagreed with Garrison when he called for immediate emancipation in the figgius of Universal Emancipation in 1829. Education for the freedmen, said the paper, should precede emancipation. At the same time the Christian Register advised Southerners of their duty to improve the lot of their Negroes and "to give freedom to their slaves at such times and in such manner, as will be consistent with the safety and welfare of the com— munity." When Garrison appeared in Boston in October 1830 to deliver three lectures on slavery, the Christian Register carried a lengthy abstract of two of them. Garrison argued that immediate abolition was desirable, expedient, and just since only color divided the races. Colonization was impractical, tended to strengthen slavery, and de— prived black Americans of their rights. While Northerners should do nothing directly to interfere with slavery, Garrison urged his audience to boycott slave—produced products, to petition Congress praying for abolition in the District of Columbia and for the end of the interstate slave trade, to distribute antislavery literature, and to work to end racial prejudice. The Christian Register opined that it could not "do justice to [Garrison“s] sound logic, his ardent zeal, and his bold and manly eloquence." The paper believed that "the measures which he pro— poses for putting an end to a great national evil, are direct and power— ful, and as far as regards the Northern States cannot be objected to as unconstitutional or an improper interference with the Southern States." The paper hoped "that Mr. Garrison will be induced to repeat his lec— tures in this place. we feel sure that they will interest those whom 23 they fail to convince." 1 ., eptem er , cto er ' . 23Ib'd 19 S b 1829 23 O b 1830 57 The Christian Register"s initial response to Garrison's Liberator was one of wariness. After the Liberator appeared, the Unitarian weekly noted that it "is managed with considerable ability, and if its abundant zeal is tempered with discretion, we doubt not it will do something towards the accomplishment of its benevolent purpose." The Christian Register reprinted Garrisonis advice to free Negroes to obey the laws and to demand rights of citizenship. Such counsel was "manly, sensible, and temperate," and white people ought to read it in order "to reflect, whether their treatment of those, who are of a different color, is reconcileable [gig] with reason, humanity or religion." While the Christian Register was not sure Garrison was correct in saying that the U. S. Constitution guaranteed these rights, it believed that free blacks would "gain much by claiming their rights as men in a fair and respect— ful manner." The next year the paper carried a generally favorable re— view of Garrison's Thgughts on African Colonization in which he assailed the scheme. The Christian Register could not entirely agree with its reviewer but it felt obligated to print "an article so candidly written." By January 1835 the Unitarian paper had become thoroughly irked with Gar- rison“s vituperation against Southern slaveowners, but it still con- sidered slavery "a stain upon our otherwise free political institutions." It believed Garrison's descriptions of slavery not exaggerated but held that some masters were kind to their chattels. After Garrison had been attacked by a Boston mob in October 1835, the Christian Register upheld "the unshackled freedom of speech and of the press; the right to speak and print everything which is not immoral or seditious." Although it deplored Garrison's imprudent writings that had sparked the riot, no one had the right to take the law into his own hands. The paper de- clared ”there is no social evil so great as that of superseding or 58 prostrating the laws as that of the punishment of persons or destruc— tion of property by violence, while it is the design of the laws and the duty of those who execute them to protect both. we know not of any language of reprobation too strong of those acts which place a single individual beyond the protecting power of law.“2h The Christian Register's editorial policy on slavery from about 1826 to 1835 can be summarized as follows. Slavery was contrary to the Christian religion. It brutalized human beings. Condemned by all in— telligent men North and South, slavery was on the road to extinction. Emancipation, however, required caution, lest servile and civil war engulf the nation. Voluntary colonization of emancipated blacks to . Africa was a noble but unrealistic solution. With proper education, Negroes could become an important part of American life. But looking ahead, the paper saw nothing but a segregated society. The power of manumission, the Christian Register insisted, rests with individual slaveowners acting in accord with state authority and not by the power of the federal government. A number of ministers who preached in the South shared the Christian Register‘s attitudes. Rev. Jared Sparks, for whom Channing delivered the famous ordination sermon at Baltimore in 1819, wrote from Virginia his belief that Negroes should be returned to Africa. I am told [he wrote] they are not unhappy. It may be so, but I am very sure they are wretched. Such miserable hovels the people of New England would not build for their horses. I do not believe they are often abused, but they are poorly fed and poorly clothed. An old blanket and the cold earth often constitute their bed and corn meal their only food. My heart often turned away sick at what I saw. 2I"Ibid., 15 January 1831, 16 June 1832, 10 January, 31 October 1835. 25Herbert B. Adams, The Life and Writings of Jared Sparks (2 vols.; Boston and New York; Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1893), I, p. 165. 59 Rev. Samuel K. Lothrop recalled after the Civil War that he had preached six weeks in Washington, D. C., during 1828 and had received a call from the society to remain, but declined the opportunity because life in a slave region to him "was in the highest degree repulsive." He remem— bered one day there when a white man astride a horse led six Negroes roped together down the road at a brisk pace. "It was to me an awful sight; it made me sick and faint," Lothrop recalled, "and whatever desire I may have entertained of the honor of being settled at the capital [gig] of the nation, that scene destroyed forever." Later in New Hampshire, Lothrop delivered an antislavery speech at a "semi—political" gathering in 1831 on the occasion of Virginia's rejection of gradual manumission. He urged resistance to the expansion of slavery but warned against tam- pering with it where it existed in the hope that Southerners would volun- tarily end it. Lothrop denied a request to have his speech published since that would be contrary to its spirit.26 In 1833 a minister wrote from Louisville that the Unitarian movement, although progressing there, faced "many serious obstacles-—the first and most fatal is the deadly poison of Slavegy, whose mischiefs I had partly dreaded of before coming here. I believe no permanent reform in education, public sentiment or Religion can be effected where it dwells."27 At least one Unitarian minister defended slavery from his pulpit in the South in the 1830's. Boston—born and Harvard—educated (bache- lor's degree in 1827 and divinity studies in 1832), Rev. Charles Andrews Farley did not follow the moderate antislavery pattern of many of his 26Lothrop, Lothrop, pp. 151, 171-172. 27George Chapman to S. Barrett, 19 March 1833 (Louisville), AUA Letters, 1833—h. 60 colleagues. Farley arrived-in Richmond, Virginia, in the summer of 1835 to serve as minister of the Unitarian society. In July he com- plained to the AUA Secretary that abolitionism among Northern Unitar— ians might injure the faith there. He believed that "a proper expres— sion of feeling from our Community in Boston" on the subject of slavery might be helpful.28 That expression may have been Farley‘s discourse, Slavegy, delivered in August 1835 and later published at the request of some of the congregation. An analysis of his sermon shows how one pro- slavery minister, and probably several of the laymen, thought about slavery.29 Abolitionism to Farley exhibited "a mock spirit of reform" in an age when reform filled the air. American slavery, however, had "deep foundations" and had been established "in the providence of God..., which, if ever, cannot suddenly be removed without the most fatal con— sequences——without bringing worse evils than they cure, and which would completely defeat the very object which these men [the abolitionists] profess to have in view." Farley admitted "that slavery in the abstract is a great evil," but it was not "a sin against God" under all circum- stances; in some situations slavery "is even preferable to freedom." The Hebrews, ancient Christians, the North American Indians, and Africans themselves had practiced it. The transportation of slaves to America "was not necessarily a sin“ as the minister could "easily conceive" that white slavetraders "might conscientiously think that it was an act 28Farley to C. Briggs, 2 July 1835 (Richmond); same to same, 25 July 1835 (Richmond), AUA Letters, 1835. 29Charles A. Farley, Slavegyg A Discourse Delivered in the Unitar- ian Church, Richmond, Va. , Sunday, August 30,1835 (Richmond: James C. Walker, 1835). Another proslavery Unitarian sermon is that of Charles M. Taggart , Slave ' Tenn. ., June 22D 1851 Nashville: John T. S. Fall, 1851). 61 of mercy to transfer them to a civilized and Christian community." At the present, however, this traffic violated "every righteous principle," and he might have added was illegal. He considered Northern agitation against slavery a trespass of state rights and the compact among the sovereign states. Because the distribution of abolitionist literature in the South infringed on the compact, antislavery writings could be "burned as they deserve in the streets of southern cities, monuments of the folly and sin of the donors." Farley said it was inconceivable that slavery would ever end at the South. Once a people had forfeited their natural right of freedom, their progeny and the progeny of their masters were committed to the slave- master relation. By natural law masters must treat their bondsmen kindly and provide them with restricted.censored religious instruction. Negroes had the physiology of human beings but the intellect of children. A few might be manumitted but they risked northern racial discrimination more oppressive than slavery.- Slaves in the South, Farley declared, "are quite as happy as the servants of the north, and perhaps more so." Aboli- tionism meant a "wild and disorganizing fanaticism" which had gripped "weak minds....Such gggg men," he believed, "must be treated as di men—- as enemies to the country——as disorganizers."30 Farley's views were not those of the denominational organ. Less than a year before his discourse the Christian Register called the New England Anti—Slavery Society's recent "Address to the People of the United States" a document which "established beyond all controversy" the "utter inconsistency of slavery, with our free institutions of government and 30For a different summary of Farley's sermon, see George H. Gibson, "The Unitarian—Universalist Church of Richmond," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, LXXIV (July, 1966), p. 327. 62 declaration of equality of rights,—-with the principles of Christianity, and with the inborn feeling of personal freedom, thus constituting a crime against human nature itself." In January 1835 the paper reported the formation of the American Union for the Relief and Improvement of the Colored Race which sought not only the abolition of slavery but also means for the religious and secular education of Negroes. In one issue the paper devoted the entire front page to the American Union. Editor Sidney Willard served as an officer in the American Union and this fact may explain this extensive Christian Register coverage.31 Until the autumn of 1835, William Ellery Channing hardly associated with the antislavery movement. He had referred to it in an unpublished sermon in 1826 and had studied slavery in preparation for his book, Slavegy published late in 1835 when he was fifty-five years old. Chan- ning‘s book ranks as one of the most significant statements by a leading American with a wide reputation not only in the United States but in Europe. The publisher, James Munroe and Qompany, had a "best seller" with Slavegy; the first printing of 3,000 copies sold out in three weeks; a third printing appeared in March 1836. Channing's thoughts on slavery merit a close look.32 Channing believed slavery to be immoral and contrary to the "impli— cations" drawn from the New Testament. "To hold and treat [a slave] as property," he wrote, "is to inflict a great wrong, to incur the guilt of oppression." Slavery debases morality among Negroes, destroys their in— tellect, prevents them from having family ties, and turns them into 31Christian Register, L. October 1831., 31 January, 7 February, 28 March, 9 May 1835- 32Rice, Federal Street Pastor, pp. 213—21h; Christian Register, 5 December 1835, 2 January, 12 March 1836. 63 savages. Slavery constrains masters to seek absolute power, encourages miscegenation, and undermines civil and political liberties. Manumission should occur slowly and rationally. Slaveowners have the sole responsi- bility for liberating their bondsmen acting through their state govern— ments; the federal government has no responsibility for it. Channing suggested that masters might begin to pay wages to their slaves, forbid the separation of married slaves and the sale of slave children from their parents, and provide religious instruction. Colonization might help some freedmen begin life anew but it would do nothing to end slavery in the United States. Channing seemed to forsee a segregated society after freedom had been accomplished since he considered miscegenation an "evil." He thought, however, that racial amalgamation would decline, for with freedom, Negro women would gain a new dignity. Force must not be used to accomplish abolition. "To instigate the slave to insurrec— tion," he said, "is a crime for which no rebuke and no punishment can be too severe." In a sectional war over slavery, Channing said the free states "would deserve the abhorrence of the world and the indignation of heaven, were they to resort to insurrection and massacre as a means of victory. Better were it for us to bare our own breasts to the knife of the slave, than to arm him with it against his master." Channing had the peculiar notion that slaveowners who retained their chattels out of fear of the consequences of manumission were somehow less reprehensible than masters who used their slaves for profit. This latter class "ought to tremble before the rebukes of outraged humanity and in- dignant virtue." Although manumission should be accomplished by individ— ual masters, collective means of promoting abolition could be used. To Channing "the age of individual action is gone. Truth can hardly be 6h heard unless shouted by a crowd." Should masters fail to respond to moral suasion and should the American people be denied free and open discussion of slavery, the nation "would be changed from a virtuous bond into a league of crime and shame. Language cannot easily do jus— tice to our attachment to the Union. We will yield every thing to it but truth, honor, and liberty. These we can never yield."33 It is readily apparent that Channing and the Christian Register agreed on many points regarding slavery although some of his biog- raphers paint a different picture. According to one, Channing's Slavegy brought the subject to "a class of people who had paid no heed to Thg Liberator and the numerous antislavery tracts being broadcast at the time."3h Another asserts that "Boston society was scandalized by Chan- ning's endorsement of the antislavery cause. The members of the Federal Street Society, respectable, conservative citizens, most of them, were painfully distressed. Some of them ceased to call at the Channing home; some even cut their pastor in the street." This writer declared that "many" Unitarian clergymen "grew chilly" toward Channing. "In spite of the fact that the publication of portions of Slavegy in the Christian Register gave it a kind of official endorsement, there was censure of its author by laymen as well as clergymen."35 A third biographer used as evidence of hostile reaction an undated sermon by Rev. P. R. Froth— ingham, minister at the Arlington Street Church (successor to Federal Street) from 1900 to 1926, who repeated an anecdote passed down through 33Channing,Works, pp. 688—7A3. In order of their arrangement here, quotations from Slavegy come from pp. 723, 692, 729, 689, 690, 706, 733, 739. 3“Arthur W. Brown, Always Young for Liberty, A Biogrgphy of William Ellegy Channing (Syracuse; Syracuse University Press, 1956), p. 231. 35Rice, Federal Street Pastor, pp. 222—223. 65 36 several generations. When one examines these three studies the evi- dence cited to show Unitarian hostility is all after Channing died, the earliest being a letter of s. J. May in October 18L.3.37 Channing brought nothing new to the Unitarian community on slavery. In some respects, the Christian Register was more aggressive, like its comment about a boycott of slave-produced goods not being unconstitutional. Channing's biographers picture the minister as a loner, fighting the Bos- ton conservatives in single—handed intellectual combat, when in fact he repeated much of what the Christian Register had been saying for a long time. It is not surprising that the newspaper said that Slavegy "ought to go into the hands of every slave-holder. It is impossible that he should repel such a view of the subject; impossible that any bad passions can be excited by it in the breast of any thinking, reasonable man."38 Channing seemed pleased with the reception to his book according to some of his letters in which he made no mention of his congregationfs feel— ings.39 George Ticknor, one of Channing's parishioners and no abolition— ist, expressed warm approval of the book for the beneficial effect it A0 Channing's Federal Street society did not unani— Al wmfldhmminEmom. mously approve his antislavery expressions, but his brand of abolition- ism was not unique in Boston. And how did Channing's fellow ministers 36David P. Edgell, William Ellery Chgpning, An Intellectual Portrait. (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1955], p. A0. 37Rice, Federal Street Pastor, p. 223. 38Christian Register, 5 December 1835. 39See Channing's letters of 16 December 1835, A January and 10 Jan— uary 1836 in W. H. Channing, W. E. Channigg, pp. 538—539. hoTicknor to W. H. Prescott, 8 February 1836 (Dresden), in George S. Hillard, ed., Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor (2 vols.; Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1876), I, pp. A79—A80. thice, Federal Street Pastor, p. 2A6. 66 and the denomination's leading laymen react to his espousal of anti- slavery principles? They penalized him by electing him President of the American Unitarian Association in May 1836, but he declined to serve.h2 Not all Unitarians, North or South, sanctioned and supported anti— slavery at this time. As editor of the Christian Examiner, Rev. F. W. P. Greenwood accepted an antislavery article from S. J. May in 183A only to be overruled by the periodical's owner.’+3 That same year Harvard friends of Rev. Henry Ware, Jr., admonished the minister when he announced an antislavery meeting from Channing's pulpit which he supplied temporarily.hh Before the Christian Register mentioned Channing's Slavegy a Massachusetts clergyman reported dissatisfaction with the news- paper because of its "Abolition doctrines. This is a subject which threatens to make trouble for us before long."[“5 A Richmond, Virginia, layman cancelled his Christian Register subscription because of its A6 A minister in Virginia stated in 1836 that Channing‘s abolitionism. Slavegy had retarded Unitarianism in that state twenty-five years. "Add to this the course of the Register," he continued, "which is openly de— nounced in this state as incendiary and prohibited, and you may form some idea of the light in which I, and others, of the same faith and thleventh Annual Repgrt, AUA, 1836, pp. 53—56, shows 69 ministers and 181 laymen as members of the AUA. Channing's refusal to serve went to C. Briggs, 30 July 1836 (Newport, R. I.), AUA Letters, 1836. ABS. J. May, Some Recollections, pp. 138—1AO. hAflare, Hengy Ware, Jr., II, pp. 1A7—1A8. had. B. O. Peabody to J. Whitman, 6 February 1835 (Springfield, Mass.), AUA Letters, 1835. héIsaac Davenport to C. Briggs, 25 January 1836 (Richmond); same to same, 15 May 1836 (Richmond), AUA Letters, 1836. 67 d."h7 calling, stan A Massachusetts—born and reared minister wrote in 1836 from Savannah that "Dr. Channing and the Christian Register have done much to ruin the cause of liberal Christianity. I mean, Christian- ity in its purity--by leading mgny to believe and the Orthodox to say—— that Unitarianism and Abolitionism are identified. I have a burden on A8 my shoulders that I need many helps to sustain." In 1837 a prominant Savannah layman, Dr. Richard D. Arnold, believed the Christian Register's antislavery policy, if continued, would ruin the faith in the South, and that Channing "is opening a path over which torrents of bloodshed are destined to roll." Arnold thought that continued abolitionist agitation #9 Southern hostility to Channing is all the would produce a civil war. more striking, for in 1830 he was popular there. When it became known that he planned a vacation in the Caribbean many hoped he would preach in their towns. One layman wrote: "wg think, that his presence here for a short time, would be of great service to the cause of truth, and freedom; and at any rate, it will give the highest gratification to his 1.1150 numerous readers and admirers in the City [Charleston, South Carolina! 47A. D. Jones to C. Briggs, 19 January 1836 (Charlottesville, Va.), AUA Letters, 1836. ABE. L. Bascom to C. Briggs, 17 February 1836 (Savannah), AUA Let— ters, 1836; same to same, 5 May 1836 (Savannah), AUA Letters, 1835 [mis- filed]. thrnold to 0. Robbins, 15 August 1837; Arnold to Bascom (c. 1837), in Richard H. Shyrock, ed., Letters of Richard D. Arnold, M. D. 1808— 1876... (Durham: The Seeman Press, 1929), pp. 13—1A, 17—18. As mayor of Savannah in 186A, Arnold surrendered the city to General W. T. Sherman. 50F. J. Gray to J. G. Palfrey, 1A March 1830; G. W. Burnap to E. s. Gannett, 16 May 1830 (Baltimore); 8. G. Bulfinch to E. s. Gannett, 13 September 1830 (Augusta); same to same, 20 September 1830 (Augusta); M. L. Hurlburt to E. S. Gannett, 25 September 1830 (Charleston), AUA Letters, 1830. 68 The antislavery posture of Channing and the Christian Register alone failed to undermine Unitarianism in the South. The Richmond society was too weak to support even a proslavery minister, that in Washington, D. C., continually struggled for existence, and other ef- forts languished from a lack of interest or ineffective preachers.51 For financial reasons Bulfinch left the Augusta society in the spring of 1837. Later that year a layman doubted if the society would be able to pay a minister at that time and thought it wiser to plan for one in the spring of 1838. Any candidate for Augusta, he warned, "must be selected with care in reference to topicks which are now disturbing the Peace of the Union, as well must he also be a strong man. I doubt if we ever [will] get one who will please us as did Mr. Bulfinch."52 The embryonic society at Macon, Georgia, appealed to Boston for a 6.53 minister in October 183 One person at Savannah reported a unanimous feeling "of cordial satisfaction and approbation" with Rev. William 5A Silsbee in 1839. Rev. Theodore Clapp, who had founded an independent congregational church in New Orleans, refused to be called a Unitarian 51J. F. Clarke thought C. A. Farley "rather too unstable" for the church at Mobile, Clarke to C. Briggs, 19 February 1835 (Louisville), AUA Letters, 1835. S. G. Bulfinch informed Boston that Rev. William Farmer at Macon became hysterical in fear of a Negro insurrection. He had been sent to Charleston, became deranged "with a different object of alarm," and sent north, Bulfinch to S. Barrett, 2A March 1837 (Augusta), AUA Letters, 1837. See Bulfinch's optimistic remarks on prospects in the South, Christian Register, 2 June 1837. 52Bulfinch to C. Briggs, 2A March 1837 (Augusta); T. S. Metcalf to C. Briggs, 17 October 1837 (Augusta), AUA Letters, 1837. 53E. A. Ware to H. Ware, A October 1836 (Macon), AUA Letters, 1837 [misfiled]. 514E. L. Bascom to C. Briggs, 12 December 1839 (Savannah), AUA Letters, 1839. 69 in 1835. But when he visited Thomas Carlyle in 18A7 he described him— self as '“a Unitarian, a Yankee, a democrat, and a radical, all the way from the banks of the Mississippi...." Clapp, who defended slavery, promised his assistance in raising funds for another Unitarian church in New Orleans in the late 1830's.55 Thirty—two year old Rev. George Washington Hosmer told Boston in the spring of 1836 that he believed possibilities for Unitarianism in the South were favorable. "I have not seen the insurmountable obstacles and dark signs which Miss [Harriet] Martineau and some others have mentioned." Hosmer had preached at sev- eral places in Kentucky as well as in New Orleans and Mobile.56 An example of Unitarian strength in the South is the society at Mobile, Alabama, formed, significantly, on 10 January 1836. Rev. James Freeman Clarke helped precipitate this decision by his preaching there. He described Mobile as "a very important post, and a very desirable one." Samuel St. John, Jr., a prominent member of the Mobile society, joined the AUA in August 1836 with a $1,000 subscription. Rev. Ephraim Peabody preached there in the spring of 1837 and told Boston that the church had "been what in New England would be called well—filled,—— i. e., scarcely a pew in which there were not more or less hearers and this number made up very much of families. Were it not for the money troubles, the people think all the pews would be rented or sold.” Peabody told Rev. Henry W. Bellows, who had just finished his divinity studies at 55T. Clapp to J. Whitman, 28 February 1835 (New Orleans), AUA Let- ters, 1835; J. F. Clarke to C. Briggs, 21 December 1835 (New Orleans), AUA Letters, 1835; G. W. Hosmer and E. Peabody to C. Briggs, 28 March 1836 (Mobile), AUA Letters, 1836; C. Briggs to S. Barrett, 18 January 1837 (Mobile), AUA Letters, 1837; Theodore Clapp, Autobiographical Sketches and Recollections... (Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Company, 1857), pp° 3A0, 375—379. 56Hosmer and Peabody to C. Briggs, 28 March 1836 (Mobile), AUA Let— ters, 1836. 7O Harvard, of the opportunity to preach at Mobile. Bellows received $50 from the AUA for missionary work at the South. He spoke to several groups on his way to Mobile, including a sermon before the Georgia Senate. He arrived in Mobile early in December 1837, and by January 1838 he had a membership of 150 with about 300 in his meetinghouse on Sundays. "I confess I am a little intoxicated with my unexpected success here," Bellows wrote.57 In spite of his warm reception in the South, Bellows flinched when confronted with slavery. "Every where you see the fruits of Slavery. The more I see of it," he wrote an aunt and uncle in New Hampshire, "the more I deplore it. It seems to me quite as bad for the people as for the Slaves." The institution fomented vice among both blacks and whites. I“Slavery taints the whole Southern character," he con- tinued. I"It blurs their moral perceptions, it effeminates their frames, and hardens their hearts." But the preacher could not talk openly about it: ”I am obliged to hold my peace here on the subject. I should be torn to pieces were I to utter these sentiments publicly...I could never consent to live in a Slave country." A month later he assured his parents they "need not fear that I shall preach about Slavery. My conscience as well as policy would forbid me." He intended to keep his eyes open as well as his own counsel about the institution. He told them they did not know half the perils slavery held for the coun- try. "I see nothing but disunion and civil war before us. But I trust 57.1. F. Clarke to c. Briggs, 19 February 1835 (Louisville), AUA Let- ters, 1835; same to same, A January 1836 (Mobile), same to same, 11 Janu— ary 1836 (Mobile), AUA Letters, 1836; E. Peabody to C. Brooks, 8 May 1837 (Mobile); Bellows to C. Briggs, 6 October 1837 (Littleton, N. H.), same to same, 23 November 1837 (Augusta), same to same, 11 December 1837 (Mo— bile), AUA Letters, 1837; Christian Re ister, 3 September 1836, Bellows to E. Peabody, 11 December 1837 (Mobilei, Bellows to W. Silsbee, 29 Jan— uary 1838 (Mobile), Bellows Papers, MHS; Thirteenth Annual Repprt, AUA, 1838, p. A. 71 that Providence sees differently. I could not live in a slave country." In these and other letters Bellows remarked on southern hostility toward the North. The Mobile society's chairman of the board of trustees, how— ever, invited Bellows to return in 1838 in order to settle permanently.58 Although Unitarian views might be heard in the South regardless of Northern Unitarian antislavery feeling, that feeling continued to worry Southern Unitarians. Samuel St. John, Jr., told Boston in January 1838 that Northern Unitarians exhibited little "sympathy" with their southern co-religionists on slavery. A year later he heatedly complained to Bellows that there is little sympathy for us of the Spppp by the Unitar- ians of the North-—our Southern members all say this—-and what good grounds they have for saying so!! Abolition is so strongly interwoven with the Unitarianism of the North, that that alone I think is destined to prevent that concert which ought to occur. A month later he candidly told the AUA Secretary that he had found "where— ever I move out of my own little Society at Newport [Rhode Island] that abolition or slavery is one of the first topics introduced in conversa— tion among our Unitarian brethren and often[,] very often——too often coupled with remarks that a pure christian [pip] could condemn." St. John said, as in his letter to Bellows, that two brands of Unitarianism had developed with slavery marking the distinction.59 58Bellows to Uncle (Jacob N. Knapp) and Aunt, 22 November 1837 (Augusta); Bellows to his parents, 25 January 1838 (Mobile); C. Dillin- ger to Bellows, 11 May 1838 (Mobile), Bellows Papers, MHS. 59St. John to Bellows, 15 February 1839 (Mobile), Bellows Papers, MHS; St. John to C. Briggs, 10 January 1838 (Mobile), AUA Letters, 1838; same to same, 13 March 1839 (at sea), AUA Letters, 1839. In the last letter St. John said on his return to Mobile from Cuba he would send Briggs $AOO to the AUA, making a total of $500 he had donated to day, and in return he wished 50 volumes of AUA tracts for the Mbbile parish library. 72 St. John‘s complaint of Northern Unitarian antislavery feeling in the late 1830's indicates little change from earlier years. The gppip— tian Register, if anything, became less outspoken. That newspaper under Sidney Willard had suggested inquiring into the propriety of the federal fugitive slave law to see if "such a law is consistent with our insti— 60 tutions," but the matter was not pursued. Channing's antislavery pamphlets continued to receive favorable comments.61 When Rev. Chandler Robbins became editor, he learned of a reader's accusation that "Yppp Editor is Abolitionist to the Core." Robbins could think of only two items which might have inflamed the ire of this southern reader: the paper's report of a Savannah mob assaulting John Hopper, son of aboli— tionist Isaac T. Hopper, or the letter from aged Rev. Noah Worcester. Worcester had written that fiery speeches like those of Governor McDuffie of Virginia did more to foment servile revolts than anything Northern abolitionists said. Robbins declared that anyone who tried to gag Worcester "would be worthy of advocating slavery itself or endur— ing it."62 The balanced moderation of the Christian Register on slavery was becoming obsolete. The possibility of the annexation of Texas as a slave state strained the theory of the inevitable withering away of slavery. Slave expansion may have loosened the tongues of many who had been less outspoken. As a Harvard undergraduate, Edward Everett Hale recorded in his diary in 1838 the lament of Rev. William Swett that among Unitarian clergymen "Judea has given way to Texas, and antislavery 60Christian Register, 10 September 1836. 61Ibid., 7 January 1837, 19 August 1837, 13 April 1839. 62Ibid., 25 March, 8 April, 2 June 1837. 73 and Canada take the place of salvation."63 That same year members of Harvard's Philanthropic Club first attempted, unsuccessfully, to arrange 6A a formal discussion of slavery. Rev. Ezra Stiles Gannett, who dis— approved Christian Register coverage of secular issues, told the Ameri- can Peace Society in July 1838 that while Congress must not tamper with slavery in the Southern states, "it has a right to touch it in [the District of] Columbia. It ought to do it, and the north would be recreant to itself if it suffered itself to be driven from that great position!‘65 jIn July 1839 the transcendentalist Rev. William H. Furness preached his first antislavery sermon in Philadelphia.66 Later that year Rev. Samuel Willard, sixty—three years old, retired from his par— ish at Deerfield, Massachusetts, where he had been a leader in the Uni- tarian movement in 1810, announced through the Christian Register his conversion to immediate emancipation "by moral and constitutional means." Earlier he had opposed abolitionism but he changed his mind. Since his views differed from those on which the Christian Register had "set the seal of its approbation," he wrote the paper asking for publication of his letter with his signature. Willard‘s decision rested on hearing a reading of Theodore Weld's American Slavepy As It Is since he had been blind since 1818.67 63Hale, Life and Letters of E. E. Hale, I, p. 39. 61"Willard L. Sperry, "'A Beautiful Enmity': The Student," in Wil- liams, ed., flgrvard Divinity School, pp. 160—161. 65Christian Re ister, A August 1838; Gannett to C. Briggs, 5 November 1838 (Boston], AUA Letters, 1838. 66 67Christian Register, 7 September 1839. Willard had prepared a ser— ies of articles on slavery for the paper but editor Rufus Johnson refused to publish them for fear of losing subscribers. Mary Willard, ed., Life of Rev. Samuel Willard, D. D.,... (Boston: Geo. H. Ellis, 1892), p. 182. Geffen, Philadelphia Unitarianism, p. 178. 7A When Samuel Willard changed his mind about abolitionism it appears that Channing may have had second thoughts