Evil Necessity by Harold D. Tallant

Author:Harold D. Tallant [Tallant, Harold D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, General, State & Local, World
ISBN: 9780813184456
Google: FEsoEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-10-21T22:13:14+00:00

8

The Relevance and Irrelevance of John G. Fee

Fee’s re-examination of the tactics of reform coincided with a similar re-examination by American abolitionists in general, in response to the rise of popular antislavery in the North and the increased intransigence of slaveholders in the South. These developments affected Fee as well, in some ways even more than it did his northern counterparts, for southern intransigence had a far more direct effect on his life than it did on an abolitionist in Boston or New York. In Fee’s case—and for many northern abolitionists as well—the events of the mid-1850s caused him to abandon much of his hope that abolition would come about through the tactics of moral suasion: the efforts of reformers like himself to convince slaveholders of the error of their ways. By the mid-1850s, Fee stood ready to adopt more coercive tactics in the fight against slavery. If slaveholders refused to free their slaves, they must be forced to do so by the legal and political system; should they respond with violence, then their efforts must be met in kind.

Fee’s embrace of coercive tactics in the mid-1850s was ironic, for much of his career until then had been dedicated to ameliorating coercive human relationships, whether between master and slave, religious denomination and communicant, or government and citizen. Yet like Fee’s earlier concern for protecting individual rights from majoritarian coercion, his growing interest in democratic political power reflected his desire to free people from all restraints that prevented them from following God’s higher law. What if citizens started voting like Christians and electing leaders concerned with implementing higher law? Would not democracy become a forum in which God’s will could be made known through the collective voice of his followers? Could constitutional restraints prevent a righteous host from using the ballot to effect “self-evident truths” in law? If human governments were designed by some higher authority to secure humanity’s “inalienable rights,” could any earthly restraints on this government prevent it from accomplishing its mission?1

At the same time, Fee looked to the North and to the federal government to find his righteous majority. This change of perspective represented a modification of Fee’s early conception of effective methods of reform and of his own role as a reformer. Fee initially assumed that effective political action against slavery would have to occur at the state level, and he directed most of his political activities to state politics. Ultimately, of course, Fee believed that all types of political action, whether by state or national government, offered defective solutions to the problem of slavery as long as prejudice—the real foundation of slavery—remained in people’s hearts. Abolition would be effected only by reformers like Fee who showed the nation its sin and pointed the way to salvation.2

However, in the mid-1850s Fee’s views on the efficacy of a national political solution to slavery began to change. Events at home caused Fee to experience a crisis of faith regarding his own antislavery ministry, as Fee and his co-workers experienced serious incidents of mob violence, which threatened to overwhelm them.

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