CHAPTER. III

Chief-Justice Jay died at Bedford in 1828, and his son William occupied his leisure during the following five years in preparing "The Life and Letters of John Jay." This work was published in two octavo volumes in 1833, and was highly praised for both thoroughness and impartiality.

Meanwhile events were occurring which raised antislavery sentiment from the torpor in which it had fallen after the excitement of the Missouri Compromise, and which brought the whole question before the people as a live issue which compelled attention. Between the years 1829 and 1832 took place a remarkable series of debates in Virginia on the subject of slavery, brought about by dissatisfaction with the State constitution and by the Nat Turner massacre, in which a number of slaves had risen against their masters. In these debates the evils of slavery were exposed as clearly as they were afterwards by the Abolitionists, and with an outspoken freedom which, when indulged in by Northern men, was soon to be denounced as treasonable and incendiary. These Southern speakers were silenced by the Slave Power. But there were men in the North who thought the same and who would not be silenced. Chief among these was William Lloyd Garrison. He had begun his memorable career by circulating petitions in Vermont in 1828 in favor of emancipation in the District of Columbia.

 Having joined Lundy in Baltimore in editing the Genius of Universal Emancipation, he had suffered ignominy in the cause in a Southern jail; drawing from persecution and hardship only new inspiration, he began the publication of the Liberator at Boston in January, 1831. In the following year, under his leadership, was formed the New England Anti-Slavery Society, which placed itself on the new ground that immediate, unconditional emancipation, without expatriation, was the right of every slave and could not be withheld by his master an hour without sin. In March, 1833, the Weekly Emancipator was established in New York, with the assistance of Arthur and Lewis Tappan, and under the editorship of William Goodell. In the same year appeared at Haverhill, Mass., a vigorous pamphlet by John G. Whittier, entitled "Justice and Expediency, or Slavery considered with a View to its Rightful and Effectual Remedy, Abolition." Nearly simultaneously were published Mrs. Lydia Maria Child's "Appeal in Behalf of that Class of Americans called Africans," and a pamphlet by Elizur Wright, Jr., aprofessor in the Western Reserve College, on "The Sin of Slavery and its Remedy."

These publications and the doctrines of the Liberator produced great excitement throughout the country. The South had been able to hear the words "gradual emancipation" with a confident equanimity, and only a few years before had tolerated a convention in Baltimore gathered to forward that object. But the word "immediate" now prefixed to emancipation acted as a firebrand to gunpowder. Southern newspapers and politicians could not find epithets strong enough to denounce the fanatical incendiaries who said that slavery, being wrong in itself, should cease at once. A reward was offered by a Southern Legislature for the person of Garrison, dead or alive. For lending Whittier's pamphlet to a white man Dr. Reuben Crandall was tried for his life at Washington on the charge of "circulating Tappan, Garrison & Co.'s papers encouraging the negroes to insurrection."

The lives of the abolitionists were safer at the North, but their principles were condemned there in terms quite as decided. To say that slavery ought to be immediately abolished was sufficient cause for the clergyman to lose his pulpit and the merchant his credit. The new doctrine was too sound to be ignored, and its agitation was disorganizing, vexatious, injurious to business, destructive of private and political peace. The North agreed with the South that slavery was not a subject to which the right of free speech applied. The abolitionists were accused of injuring the cause of the blacks by their proceedings. And indeed, at the South the treatment of the slave became harsher, and at the North the prejudice against the free negro was intensified. In 1833 Miss Crandall, a Quaker lady, endeavoured to establish a boarding-school for the education of coloured girls in Canterbury, Conn. A committee of the inhabitants waited upon her, who represented "that by putting her design into execution she would bring ruin and disgrace upon them all." Three town meetings were held in one week to discuss ways and means to suppress a scheme which would render "insecure the persons, property, and reputation of our citizens."

The State of Connecticut passed a special law to forbid the establishment of such a school. Under it, Miss Crandall was tried and convicted. The constitutionality of the law was called in question and the case was appealed. But the inhabitants of Canterbury thought the crisis too serious to depend on legal technicalities. Miss Crandall was driven from the town by persecution. The shops would sell her no food; her well was filled with manure, and water from other sources refused; her house was smeared with filth and finally set on fire. The trustees of the Noyes Academy in Plymouth, N. H., having consented to the admission of coloured pupils, the respectable people of the town avoided the contemplated disgrace by moving the school building from its foundations and depositing it in a swamp. In 1835 a wealthy coloured man bought a pew on the floor of Park Street Church in Boston. His neighbours nailed up the door of the pew, and so many "aggrieved brethren" threatened to leave that the trustees were obliged to prevent the threatened contamination of the sanctuary by excluding the coloured pew-holder. A hundred similar cases might be cited to show that before the emancipation of the slaves could gain even a hearing, the North had to be educated to consider the negro race as human beings capable of improvement and deserving of humane encouragement.

In May, 1833, Judge Jay contributed to the first number of the Emancipator a letter which sets forth his own views of the problem of American slavery at that time and also some of the difficulties in the path of the emancipationists:

"The duty and policy of immediate emancipation, although clear to us, are not so to multitudes of good people who abhor slavery and sincerely wish its removal. They take it for granted, no matter why or wherefore, that if the slaves were now liberated they would instantly cut the throats and fire the dwellings of their benefactors. Hence these good people look upon the advocates of emancipation as a set of dangerous fanatics, who are jeopardizing the peace of the Southern States and riveting the fetters of the slaves by the very attempt to break them. In their opinion the slaves are not fit for freedom, and therefore it is necessary to wait patiently till they are. Now, unless these patient waiters can be brought over to our side, emancipation is hopeless; for, first, they are an immense majority of all among us who are hostile to slavery; and, secondly, they are as conscientious in their opinions as we are in ours, and unless converted will oppose and defeat all our efforts. But how are they to be converted? Only by the exhibition of Truth. The moral, social, and political evils of slavery are but imperfectly known and considered. These should be portrayed in strong but true colours, and it would not be difficult to prove that, however inconvenient and dangerous emancipation may be, the continuance of slavery must be infinitely more inconvenient and dangerous.

"Constitutional restrictions, independent of other considerations, forbid all other than moral interference with slavery in the Southern States. But we have as good and perfect a right to exhort slaveholders to liberate their slaves as we have to exhort them to practice any virtue or avoid any vice. Nay, we have not only the right, but under certain circumstances it may be our duty to give such advice; and while we confine ourselves within the boundaries of right and duty, we may and ought to disregard the threats and denunciations by which we may be assailed.

"The question of slavery in the District of Columbia is totally distinct, as far as we are concerned, from that of slavery in the Southern States.

"As a member of Congress, I should think myself no more authorized to legislate for the slaves of Virginia than for the serfs of Russia. But Congress has full authority to abolish slavery in the District, and I think it to be its duty to do so. The public need information respecting the abominations committed at Washington with the sanction of their representatives—abominations which will cease whenever those representatives please. If this subject is fully and ably pressed upon the attention of our electors, they may perhaps be induced to require pledges from candidates for Congress for their votes for the removal of this foul stain from our National Government. As to the Colonization Society, it is neither a wicked conspiracy on the one hand nor a panacea for slavery on the other. Many good and wise men belong to it and believe in its efficacy."

In the summer of 1833 the abolitionists of Great Britain succeeded in obtaining the act of emancipation for the 800,000 slaves in the West Indies. In June Arthur Tappan wrote to Judge Jay asking for his "opinion as to the expediency of forming an American Antislavery Society and of doing it now. The impulse given to the cause by the movement in England would, it appears to me, aid us greatly here." Jay replied very cautiously. A New York society, he thought, might be desirable immediately. The constitutions and proceedings of such societies demanded great caution and prudence; they must blend the wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove. The Southern people affected to apprehend an unconstitutional interference with their property, as they called it, by the Northern abolitionists, and no ground for such pretended fear should be given. With this view, he suggested the incorporation into the constitution of antislavery societies a distinct declaration, such as the following: "We concede that Congress, under the present National Compact, has no right to interfere with any of the slave States in relation to this momentous subject. But we maintainthat Congress has a right and is solemnly bound to suppress the domestic slave-trade between the several States and to abolish slavery in those portions of our territory which the Constitution has placed under its exclusive jurisdiction." He further suggested that the two subjects, the Colonization Society and the political condition of the free blacks, should be avoided. "Duty and policy," he said, "in my opinion demand the emancipation of our slaves, but they do not demand that immediately on their emancipation they shall be invested with the right of suffrage."

On the 2d of October the New York City Antislavery Society was successfully organized, despite an active and organized effort to prevent it. A call had been issued for a meeting of the friends of immediate emancipation at Clinton Hall. A counter-notice was published, signed "Many Southerners," inviting a meeting at the same time and place. The proprietors of Clinton Hall, alarmed at the situation, refused to let it to the abolitionists, who then applied to the Clinton Hotel, where they were also refused. The Southerners and their Northern sympathizers, finding Clinton Hotel closed, held a meeting at Tammany Hall, with General Bogardus, the United States Marshal, in the chair, with speeches and resolutions against the abolitionists, when a report that the abolitionists were in session at Chatham Street Hall sent them there in haste, only to find the Hall closed and dark. An eye-witnessdescribed the crowd assembled by the Southern call as "a genuine drunken, infuriated mob of blackguards of every species, some with good clothes, and the major part the very sweepings of the city." The public was amused the next morning by a leading editorial in the Courier and Enquirer, congratulating the country on the failure of the "disorganizing fanatics to organize a society fraught with danger to the Union and based upon an open violation of the United States Constitution;" while the advertising column of the same sheet contained the official proceedings of the abolitionists at the Chatham Street Chapel, where with promptness, energy, and order they had received the report of a committee, adopted a constitution, elected officers, adjourned and closed the building before the arrival of the rioters from Tammany. The successful management of the affair was due chiefly to the coolness and skill of Lewis Tappan, to whose devotion and energy the antislavery cause was from this time constantly indebted. The peaceful and lawful aims of the society, its frank acknowledgment of the rights of the Southern States were set forth in its constitution:

"While it admits that each State in which slavery exists has, by the Constitution of the United States, the exclusive right to legislate in regard to its abolition in said State, it shall aim to convince all our fellow-citizens, by arguments addressed to their understandings and consciences, that slaveholding is a heinous crime in the sight of God, and that the duty, safety, and best interest of all concerned require its immediate abandonment, without expatriation. The society will also endeavour in a constitutional way to influence Congress to put an end to the domestic slave-trade and to abolish slavery in all those portions of our common country which come under its control, especially in the District of Columbia, and likewise to prevent the extension of it to any State that may hereafter be admitted to the Union.

"The society shall aim to elevate the character and condition of the people of colour, by encouraging their intellectual, moral, and religious improvement, and by removing public prejudice, that thus they may according to their intellectual and moral worth share an equality with the whites of civil and religious privileges; but this society will never in any way countenance the oppressed in vindicating their rights by resorting to physical force."

Notwithstanding the distinct and moderate language in which the society set forth its lawful objects, pro-slavery prejudice was aroused to violent opposition. A week later a meeting was called to protest against the "reckless agitations of the abolitionists." Theodore Frelinghuysen, United States Senator from New Jersey, declared that "nine tenths of the horrors of slavery were imaginary," that "the crusade of abolition" was "the poetry of philanthropy," that emancipationists were "seeking to dissolve the Union." Chancellor Walworth came down from Albany to say that they were "reckless incendiaries" and their efforts unconstitutional. David B. Ogden declared the doctrine of immediate emancipation to be "a palpable and direct nullification of the Constitution."

On the 29th of October, 1833, a circular invitation was addressed to Judge Jay and others to attend a convention at Philadelphia on the 4th December to form a National Antislavery Society. This step was taken in concurrence with the views of the friends of immediate emancipation in Boston, Providence, New York, and Philadelphia. Among the motives for organizing such a society without delay it was argued that union is strength; that the advocates of the immediate abolition of slavery, though comparatively few and much scattered, were many in the aggregate, and could act, when combined, with irresistible power; that the cause was urgent, public expectation excited, its friends to some extent committed to such a movement during the present year; that they had the example of similar organizations, which, though feeble and condemned by public opinion in the outset, had speedily risen to great influence, and had been the means under God of immense benefit to the human race, especially in the case of the National Antislavery Society of Great Britain, and of the American Temperance Society. The invitation was signed by a committee consisting of Arthur Tappan, Joshua Leavitt, and Elizur Wright, Jr., all officers of the New York Antislavery Society.

At the same time Judge Jay received a letter from Rev. Samuel J. May urging him to be present. "This is a cause," wrote May, "in which our wisest and best and most prudent men ought to engage. There never has been in our country so great a demand for the exertions of true patriots and real Christians.... Let me beg of you to be there, at the convention. I have heard the hope that you will be there expressed most fervently by many."

Jay replied to the committee that he could not be present. "It would perhaps be uncandid to conceal from you," he said, "that the expediency of the proposed attempt to form a National Society at the present time seems to me to be at least questionable. May it not increase the irritation and hostility extensively felt towards abolitionists without promoting their objects more effectually than local societies? If, however, a National Society is to be formed, it is to be hoped its proceedings will be marked with great prudence and moderation. The great objection made to antislavery associations is that they aim at an unconstitutional interference with slavery. This objection, false as I am persuaded it is, has nevertheless an extensive and injurious influence, and unless it be removed success will be hopeless. It seems to me, therefore, of the utmost importance that correct constitutional principles on this subject should not only be entertained, but explicitly and unequivocally avowed by every antislavery society. This avowal might be made in the preamble of their constitution in some form like the following:

['The object of this society is to promote the abolition of slavery in the United States. As all legislation relative to slavery in the several States in which it exists can be constitutionally exercised only by their respective Legislatures, this society will endeavour to effect its object, so far as relates to these States, by argument addressed to the understanding and conscience of their citizens. But inasmuch as the Federal Constitution confers on Congress the exclusive right to legislate for the District of Columbia, this society will use all such lawful and constitutional means as may be deemed advisable to induce Congress to abolish slavery in that District without delay.'

"I am very sensible that the friends of emancipation hold these principles, but not having given them sufficient prominence in their writings they have subjected themselves to much injurious suspicion."

Judge Jay's letter was read on the first day of the Antislavery Convention held in Philadelphia in December, 1833; and in the declaration of principles, reported by William Lloyd Garrison, John G. Whittier, and Samuel J. May, and unanimously adopted by the convention, appeared the following clauses, by which the abolitionists were enabled to repel the charge, so persistently made, that they sought to accomplish their ends by unconstitutional means, by asking Congress to exceed its power by meddling with slavery in the States:

"We fully and unanimously recognize the sovereignty of each State to legislate exclusively on the subject of slavery which is tolerated within its limits; we concede that Congress under the present National Compact has no right to interfere with any of the slave States in relation to this momentous subject.

"But we maintain that Congress has a right and is solemnly bound to suppress the domestic slave-trade between the several States, and to abolish slavery in those portions of our territory which the Constitution has placed under its exclusive jurisdiction."

In 1838 an energetic attempt was made by Alvan Stewart, of Utica, to strike out the clause in the constitution of the American Antislavery Society which recognized the rights of the Southern States under the United States Constitution. Jay perceived the injury that such a course would inflict on the position of the abolitionists. It would, indeed, have committed the society to the doctrine that Congress could continue slavery in the States. He opposed the change with vigour during a debate of two days and succeeded in maintaining the all-important clause.

Looked at by the light of subsequent events, the importance of placing the antislavery movement on a strictly constitutional basis cannot be overrated. Upon the principles thus distinctly avowed rested the moral and political strength of the movement during a struggle of nearly thirty years. And these principles became, in 1854, under the guidance of the founders of the Republican party, the chief plank in the platform of that great organization, under whose sturdy lead, aided by citizens of all parties, thesupremacy of the national Constitution was maintained, the integrity of the national territory was preserved, slavery was ended, and the republic saved.

Judge Jay was not yet officially connected with the antislavery societies, but his sympathy was close with them and their officers. At the request of the Executive Committee of the New York society, he drafted a petition for abolition in the District of Columbia for circulation in New York, in which he again distinctly drew the line between the power of Congress over the District and its want of power as regarded the States. This careful discrimination had no weight with the many who were unwilling to admit that anything said or done by the abolitionists was right. But it succeeded with more liberal men, among them the good Chancellor Kent. The Chancellor, whose reputation as a jurist was second to none, signed the petition, which he declared to contain "no unconstitutional doctrine."

The first anniversary of the American Antislavery Society was held at the Chatham Street Chapel in the beginning of May, 1834. Arthur Tappan presided, and addresses were made by Elizur Wright, Jr., Rev. Amos A. Phelps of Boston, James A. Stone of Kentucky, a delegate from the Lane Seminary, Robert Purvis of Philadelphia, Rev. Henry G. Ludlow, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, and Charles Stewart. The meeting met with disorderly interruptions; the newspapers contained abusive attacks upon the abolitionists and appealed against them to the passions of the lowest and most ignorant class in the community. "All this violence and obloquy," remarked Judge Jay, "are not without an object, and that object is intimidation." The truth of this observation was soon disgracefully verified. When the Fourth of July was celebrated at the Chatham Street Chapel by an antislavery oration from David Paul Brown of Philadelphia, the disorderly elements evoked by the press against the blacks and abolitionists responded in large force and with increased lawlessness. On the 9th of July a mob assembled at the Chapel, broke open the doors, passed resolutions in favor of the Colonization Society and by a suggestive vote adjourned until the next meeting of the Antislavery Society. The mob then proceeded to the Bowery Theatre to avenge some expressions attributed to an English actor, and next to the house of Mr. Lewis Tappan, which was attacked with bricks and stones, the furniture broken up and burned in the street. The riots continued for several days with little hindrance from the city authorities.

Six churches were attacked and a large number of houses occupied by abolitionists or by coloured people. Against the latter the fury of the mob was especially directed. The same scenes of riot and cruelty toward the helpless blacks occurred in Philadelphia, where forty-five houses were destroyed. It was evident that the arguments of the abolitionists could not be met except with violence. The mobs, as usual, were cowardly. In some cases the determined action of the abolitionists afforded them the protection refused by the police. It was announced that among the houses to be attacked was that of Dr. Abraham L. Cox, in Broome Street, a few doors east of Broadway. John Jay, then a student at Columbia College, was living in the house. Some members of the New York Young Men's Antislavery Society, with guns and pistols, were gathered within and notice was given publicly that an attack would be repelled by force. Late that night the mob in its lawless career passed close to Dr. Cox's house, but did not dare to molest it. Similar preparations for defence saved the store of Arthur Tappan.

While the New York mob, as the Commercial Advertiser said, were "now nightly engaged in deeds of violence," the same paper distinctly took the ground that the abolitionists should not enjoy "the protection of the law and the aid of the military," except "on condition that the causers of these mischiefs shall be abated and the outrages upon public feelings from the forum, the pulpit, and the press shall no more be repeated by these reckless incendiaries." The Courier and Inquirer of the same day said: "Now we tell them [the abolitionists] that when they openly and publicly promulgate doctrines which outrage public feelings, they have no right to demand protection of the people they insult," and they must understand "that they prosecute their treasonable and beastly plans at their own peril."Such was the view taken of American freedom of speech by the pro-slavery party. The manly traits of American character seemed to be lost in the prevailing atmosphere of race prejudice, cowardice, and injustice. Politicians of both parties, representatives of the commercial and professional classes of the North, acquiesced in a policy which they thought would advance their views, but which was destructive of the fundamental principles of American liberty. The highest and the lowest had joined hands to assail the coloured people and their friends. Names honoured in the Church and the State, which should have helped to elevate public opinion and to guide it in the path of justice, obeyed the mandates and echoed the denunciations of the Slave Power. For a time was presented an alliance in behalf of slavery of the highest classes with the scum of politicians and criminals. The intrepid William Leggett was one of the few who dared to publish the truth.

"The fury of demons," he wrote in the Evening Post, "seems to have entered into the breasts of our misguided populace. The rights of public and private property, the obligations of law, the authority of its ministers and even the power of the military are all equally spurned by these audacious sons of riot and disorder." Candid and cautious thinkers began to take alarm at the disregard for law which seemed to be spreading through the country. "These mobs," wrote Dr. Channing, "are indeed most dishonourable to us as a people, because they have been too much the expression of public sentiment, ... because there was a willingness that the antislavery movement should be put down by force."

The conduct of the mobs, and the encouragement given to them by the press, aroused the spirit and stimulated the energy of the abolitionists. "These crimes," said Judge Jay, "abundantly prove the extreme cruelty and sinfulness of that prejudice against colour which we are impiously told is an ordination of Providence. Colonizationists, assuming the prejudice to be natural and invincible, propose to remove its victims beyond its influence. Abolitionists, on the contrary, remembering with the Psalmist 'that it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves,' believe that the benevolent Father of us all requires us to treat with justice and kindness every portion of the human family."

Although he had been an earnest emancipationist for ten years, Judge Jay had had doubts of the wisdom of forming antislavery societies at so early a period in the movement. He had feared that unmeasured and unconstitutional doctrines might be adopted which would set the cause in a false light before the country. His advice had been sought and followed, as we have seen, and there was no longer any reason why he should not become an active member. In 1834, immediately after the riots and when the outlook seemed darkest, he took a place on the Executive Committee of the National Society.

"In that season of feverish excitement," wroteHon. Henry Wilson, "Judge William Jay, inheriting not only the honoured name, but the principles and purity of the illustrious Chief-Justice, at first declined an office in the new society, deeming its organization premature," but now "sought to take his share of its labours and responsibilities. His name gave prestige; his talents, learning, and integrity afforded strength, while his cautious and ready pen laid precious gifts upon its altar."

In February, 1835, was published Jay's "Inquiry into the Character and Tendency of the American Colonization and American Antislavery Societies." The book bore upon its title-page the words of Milton, "Give me liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely, according to my conscience, above all liberties"—a sentiment considered treasonable in America by the Slave Power. This work had a powerful effect upon public opinion, not only on account of the arguments it contained, but largely on account of the character and position of its author. It was the policy of the pro-slavery party to represent the abolitionists as ignorant and reckless agitators, with nothing to lose. But here was a man of family and fortune, a judge on the bench, high in the counsels of the Episcopal Church, who set forth the detested doctrines with judicial moderation and unanswerable logic.

Jay began by an exposure of the Colonization Society. He showed that it was merely a scheme to get rid of the free blacks at the South, where they were regarded as a nuisance; that its officers represented it at the North as a solution of the slavery question to quiet emancipationists and to obtain their subscriptions. He set forth the constitutional and merciful objects of the American Antislavery Society. He showed that abolitionists were neither acting in opposition to law, nor were in any manner exciting the slaves to insurrection; that the opinions they professed were such as had been freely uttered by Jefferson, Franklin, and numerous Southern statesmen within fifty years. He exposed the cruel character of American slavery, the beastly degradation, physical, moral, and mental, to which it condemned the blacks; the horrors of the interstate slave-trade, tearing husband from wife and children from their mothers to be sold into distant places; he pointed out the national disgrace involved in the fact that in the city of Washington, under the stars and stripes, slave-dealers were licensed to ply their trade in human flesh, leading the chained "coffles" of black wretches about the streets. The concluding chapters were devoted to showing that emancipation could be accomplished with safety, and that the real danger to the country lay in the continuation of slavery.

The welcome extended to this book by the avowed abolitionists is illustrated by the following extract from the annual report of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society in 1836: "We know it will not be thought invidious towards others who have greatlycontributed by their excellent writings to help on our glorious enterprise, if we make especial mention of the volume from the pen of the Hon. William Jay of New York. His 'Inquiry' was published in the early part of last year. Coming from him, a man extensively known, and highly respected and beloved by all who know him, it could not fail to command the public attention. The very rapid sale of the first and second editions evinced the eagerness of thousands to know the results of his inquiry into the sentiments and plans of the two societies which had stood from the birth of the latter in the attitude of opposition. It is a book so full of pertinent facts and carefully drawn conclusions that it could not fail to impart the convictions of its author to other minds. No book on the subject has probably been read by more persons, nor has any one been instrumental to the conversion of more."

The importance of the "Inquiry" to the antislavery cause is illustrated by the diverse character of the men whose attention was attracted by it—men whose conservative habits of mind, whose business and professional interests caused them to ignore if not to condemn the abolitionists. "Your book," wrote Rev. Beriah Green, who presided at the organization of the American Antislavery Society in Philadelphia, "will command a large circle of readers who could not be persuaded to examine a paragraph written by any of us who have so long been known and hated and execrated as abolitionists.To many of these, your arguments, so skilfully arranged, so powerfully described, so happily conducted to so triumphant a conclusion, must prove convincing. They must abandon their 'miry clay,' and, aided by your hand, take a position 'on the rock.'" Among leading men influenced by Jay's "Inquiry" may be mentioned Dr. Alonzo Potter, afterwards Bishop of Pennsylvania, and Peter G. Stuyvesant, a representative of the solid Knickerbockers of New York. Edward Delavan, of Albany, wrote: "You have done the cause of humanity an incalculable amount of good by the work." Mrs. Theodore Sedgwick wrote from Stockbridge: "We are reading your book on American slavery with great interest.

 You have rendered an invaluable service to the country and to the cause of humanity." The approbation most welcome to Jay was probably that of the eminent Chancellor Kent. "I have read the volume," he said, "with equal interest and astonishment. You have accumulated a mass of facts of which a great part were to me unknown, and they are of a surprising kind. I do not well see how your argument on any material point can be gainsaid. You have amply vindicated the character and intentions of the American Antislavery Society from all injurious imputations. The details of the slave-trade and its accompanying atrocities, as carried on at Washington, are horrible, and your work must go far towards opening the eyes and disabusing the minds of the public. I have, from the very beginning, haddoubts and misgivings as to the efficacy and results of the American Colonization Society, and for some years past I have become satisfied that the scheme was in reality but an Utopian vision, though I had supposed until now that its fruits were better. Permit me to add that I have been much pleased, not only with the clearness, force, simplicity, and precision of the style, but with your fearless, frank, and manly, but courteous vindication of the cause of Truth and Justice, and with your striking appeals to the conscience and responsibilities of the Christian reader."