The Rise of Aggressive Abolitionism by Harrold Stanley;

Author:Harrold, Stanley; [Harrold, Stanley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Leaders of the Cazenovia Fugitive Slave Convention, August 22, 1850. This daguerreotype shows former slaves Emily and Mary Edmonson, wearing patterned shawls and standing to the right and left respectively of Gerrit Smith, who is gesturing with his left arm. Directly in front of Smith and seated at the table are Theodosia Gilbert and Frederick Douglass. (From the Collection of the Madison County Historical Society, Oneida, New York.)

The factional mixture at Cazenovia was as significant as the convention’s embrace of African Americans and women. It was a radical political abolitionist meeting, but not exclusively so. Its managers were black and white men who, regardless of their faction, were committed to asserting black manhood and to aggressive, if not necessarily violent, antislavery tactics. Gerrit Smith, who organized the meeting, was the most responsible for this. He was also the most important figure in attendance. Yet the absent Chaplin had nearly as great an influence through the presence of his friends James C. Jackson, who had worked with him on the Albany Patriot, Joseph C. Hathaway, who reported on his condition in jail, Gilbert, who had nursed his wounds, and William H. Smith, who led the effort to raise funds for his bail. Although others—including Free Soilers, Whigs, and supporters of the American Colonization Society—who gathered at Cazenovia were more conservative, in all the Letter to the Slaves emerged from a more radical, as well as more diverse, constituency than had any of the Addresses to the Slaves.

By the time the Cazenovia Convention convened at 10:00 A.M. on August 21, Smith, May, and the other managers had agreed that its goal was to identify the entire antislavery movement—black and white, political, church-oriented, and Garrisonian—with fugitive slaves and those northerners who aided them. Although the major means were to be Smith’s Letter to the Slaves and recognition of Chaplin’s martyrdom, the proceedings themselves symbolized this convergence. White radical political abolitionist Jackson called the meeting to order. White Garrisonian May served as temporary chairman. Black Garrisonian Douglass became permanent chairman. In short order the convention’s morning session created a committee to raise funds for Chaplin’s defense, a committee of women to provide him with an inscribed silver pitcher, and a committee, chaired by Loguen, to report an “address or addresses from the fugitive slaves.”27

At the start of the afternoon session, Loguen reported two documents: the Letter to the Slaves and an address to the Liberty Party. Smith presented both of them, and an extended debate, involving him, Ray, Douglass, Clark, Loguen, and May, began. The debate extended into the convention’s second day and overlapped with an intense discussion of the seventeen resolutions that Smith reported from the business committee. The nature of those resolutions provides additional context for understanding the significance of the Letter. Douglass attempted unsuccessfully to defeat a resolution that appeared to endorse voting and another that praised the free produce movement.28 In the end, those assembled passed all seventeen, by no means unanimously. Several of them called on Congress to act against slavery in the District of Columbia.

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