First to Fall by Ken Ellingwood

Author:Ken Ellingwood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2021-05-04T00:00:00+00:00

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LOVEJOY’S REPLY CAME IN the form of two resounding blasts. One arrived on July 20, nine days after the Market House meeting aimed at getting him to desist. Lovejoy wrote and published a long, blistering column that occupied a hefty chunk of page 2, under the headline “What Are the Doctrines of Anti-Slavery Men?” If the editor had once denounced abolitionists as wild-eyed extremists, this piece of writing was unmistakable proof that he was now fully one of them. He fiercely defended the abolitionist position and the people who advocated it, arguing that abolitionists had been unfairly tarred by misrepresentations and untruths, including the shopworn charge that they were champions of amalgamation.

The case for abolition rested first and foremost, Lovejoy argued, on the belief that all men were created free and equal, a condition that was impossible to honor so long as any man was permitted to turn another into merchandise—“a ‘THING,’ a ‘CHATTEL,’ an article of personal ‘PROPERTY.’ ” American slavery was “a legalized system of inconceivable injustice, and a SIN,” Lovejoy wrote. He warned that the “political evil” represented by bondage was not merely a bane to the nation’s slaves. It threatened the wider society as well and would soon bring about “the downfall of our free institutions, both civil and religious.”

Lovejoy also sought to turn the words of Southern politicians like Calhoun against the slavery cause they so ardently defended. Calhoun, in arguing about the former tariff issue years before, had declared that “he who earns the money—who digs it out of the earth with the sweat of his brow, has a just title to it against the Universe,” Lovejoy wrote. It was just such a liberty—the right of a man to keep what he earns—that abolitionists were defending now. And because the Bible offered only one remedy for sin—to repent immediately—the same held true for the sin of slavery. “Abolitionists believe that all who hold slaves, or who approve the practice in others, should immediately cease to do so,” the editor argued. Emancipation might spell economic harm to slave owners, but it would be as worthwhile as to deprive a rum seller of his profits, he said.

In this remarkable column—part self-criticism, part war cry—Lovejoy was openly embracing a fiery approach that he had, not so long before, denounced as dangerous for the country. Gone were the weasel words of gradualism, the paternalistic concern for souls over the lived existences of breathing people. The time for half measures had passed. Lovejoy may not have directly applied the abolitionist label to himself—his detractors had done this for him, after all—but the volcanic July 20 column was the closest he would come to a personal manifesto on the crime of slavery. His conversion to abolitionism was complete.

A second, more pressing matter still remained: the Market House group’s ultimatum. The polite, almost deferential, tone of the committee’s letter aside, there was no avoiding the question: would he stop publishing on slavery? Six days after his stunning “Anti-Slavery Men” column hit the streets, Lovejoy put quill to paper again.

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