NOTE.

SINCE the publication of my speech in The Liberator, delivered at the last Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Mrs. SrowE has, very kindly, addressed me a letter, from which I extract all relating to Dr. BEECHER:

"One part of your speech occasioned me pain. You know what it is, I presume, and you will be glad, I also presume, to find that you have overstated the subject. I will give you the facts of the case, and leave it to your own honorable mind to judge what abatement should be made in the case. My father did not silence the discussion in Lane Seminary. Those resolutions of the Trustees were not passed at his request, either expressed or implied. They were passed while he and my husband were here in New England. They were passed with such determination, and in such a state of feeling, that they had no choice, except to throw up their professorships or submit to them. My father being, as you know, in the advance party of the church in theology, was at that time as much a persecuted man in the Presbyterian church, as Wм. LLOYD GARRISON has been in the world. Such bitter, unscrupulous enmity, such bigotry, such persecution, can only be paralleled in the history of the Abolitionists. To destroy his influence, to detach from him all his friends, to break down the Institution he was trying to build, and to force him away from the Western country, these were the objects in view. THEODORE WELD's enthusiasm, and the whirlwind of excitement which he produced, were equally welcomed by this party as so much capital to be used against him. With all credit to my good brother THEODORE, I must say that prudence is not his forte, and that there was a plentiful lack of that useful article in all those worthy reformers. I sympathise most cordially in that generous contempt for prudence, which seems to be a necessary part of young Luthers; but I cannot help seeing that the want of it was rather unfortunate in that crisis. It seems to me, that it is not necessary always to present a disagreeable subject in the most disagreeable way possible, and needlessly to shock prejudices which we must combat at any rate. That, however, is a matter of opinion: I will not insist upon it. But the simple question before my father was, either to give up the enterprise of Lane Seminary, or to submit temporarily to those regulations. So much for that."

I gladly give Dr. BEECHER the benefit of this statement by his daughter, and well recollect how every free heart sympathised with him in his conflict

with bigoted and unscrupulous foes. But, with all respect for Mrs. STOWE, I cannot see that the facts she states form any excuse for his conduct as President of Lane Seminary. They seem to me to deepen the fault. The students at the Seminary were not school-boys, but of mature age, and some of them graduates of other Colleges, preparing for the ministry. At no time did their Anti-Slavery labors or discussions interfere with their regular studies, lead them to omit a recitation, or to break the established rules of the Institution. Such men the Trustees forbade either to discuss the Slave question in public, or to converse about it in private! They issued this order in deference to a corrupt public opinion, and from fear of a mob. Surely this was to sacrifice the Slave to the welfare of the Seminary.

In these circumstances, Mrs. STOWE says Dr. BEECHER Submitted to these orders, which he had neither requested nor advised, in order to disarm his Presbyterian enemies, and save the Institution. That is, against his own judgment, he sacrificed the Slave to his own standing with his sect, and to the welfare of Lane Seminary. This is just what the clergy of the United States are doing at the present moment. Few hate the Slave for his own sake. They only sacrifice his rights to their own popularity, to their sect or party, — to something they like better, or value more. Those familiar with the history of Lane Seminary will bear me out in the assertion, that whatever was Dr. BEECHER'S conduct or language in private, he pursued such a course of action, that the public inferred, had a right to infer, and could not but infer, that his heart was with the Trustees. When, after leaving the Seminary, the young men began to lecture on Slavery, in that neighborhood, Dr. BEECHER'S name and course were quoted by professing Christians as a reason for refusing to give them a hearing.

We have never asked that any man, or body of men, should devote themselves exclusively to the Anti-Slavery cause. But we have claimed that they should give it a fair share of attention; and, above all, that they should never repudiate or deny it, even for an hour, in order to save or to increase their own popularity, or build up a favorite project. All good causes are a brotherhood. We have no right to repudiate one, or to sacrifice its claims, that we may be more able to serve another. Indeed, this is not possible, as the result at Lane Seminary shows. The Institution began to die from that hour.

With regard to Mr. WELD's "prudence,” justice to him requires a word. No reformer has ever been thought prudent by his cotemporaries, not even those who turned the world upside down eighteen hundred years ago. But, during that very visit to New England, to which Mrs. STOWE refers, at the very moment the Trustees were passing their Resolutions, Dr. BEECHER, who had but just left the Seminary, was extolling, in unmeasured terms, the devotedness, fidelity, attention, and general good conduct of these very students. And since Dr. BEECHER was himself opposed to the Resolutions, we have the support of his judgment, on the spot and at the time, that they were not necessary. Whoever wishes to inquire further will find the whole struggle painted in the Defence put forth by the Trustees, and the Statement published by the students.

3

The letter goes on:

"Second. It is not true that 'in ecclesiastical discussions, subsequent to this time, the weight of his heavy hand has always been felt against the Slave.' The Cincinnati Presbytery, of which he, and my husband, and the other professors were leading members, actually have taken higher AntiSlavery ground, and used more vigorous Anti-Slavery action, than any ecclesiastical body in the United States, except the Quakers; and this was done with my father's concurrence and consent. This ground was the deposing of Mr. GRAHAM from the ministry, for defending Slavery from the Bible. This was the almost unanimous vote of the Cincinnati Presbytery, and it was confirmed by the Cincinnati Synod. Mr. GRAHAM appealed to the General Assembly, and the Assembly reversed the action, and recommended to the Presbytery to restore him. Prof. ALLEN, of Lane Seminary, who was on the floor of the Assembly at the time, told the General Assembly they might rely upon it that the Cincinnati Presbytery would never retrace their steps; and so it proved. Mr. GRAHAM was obliged to go to the Old School Church. You will observe, that an important principle was established here, which, had it been observed, would have kept the Church free from complicity with Slaveholders.

66

Your remark with regard to blood is certainly true. If I have had any Anti-Slavery proclivities, I got them very early in life from my father's sermons and prayers, at the time of the discussion of the Missouri question. I shall never forget the deep feeling he showed when he heard of the admission of Missouri. It was as if he had sustained some great personal calamity.

"These facts I lay before you. You can make any use you please of

them."

I joyfully accord to Dr. BEECHER all the merit which concurrence in the movement against Mr. GRAHAM deserves. How low must the general Church have fallen, when we are glad to confess that the stand made by that Presbytery was a noble one, and does them great honor; while it was only to forbid a clergyman to defend Slavery from the Bible! If, however, he is to be praised for "concurring" in the good deed of that Presbytery, of which he was but a simple member, surely, he is still more to be held accountable for the evil decree of the Trustees of Lane Seminary, to which he not only gave, in public, his "concurrence," but, as President of the Faculty, carried it into execution. If my language, as quoted, is too strong, I should willingly qualify it. But Dr. BEECHER has, for twenty-five years, occupied a very prominent position, and exerted a most commanding influence. During that time, there have been, in fact, but two parties on this question. The Pro-Slavery world, Church and State, is one: the AntiSlavery body is the other. I can appeal to every laborer in the Anti-Slavery cause to say, whether, during those years, Dr. BEECHER'S influence has ever been distinctly felt on the Slave's side? Whether it has not always been thrown into the scale of a Church, then and now a Pro-Slavery body? I think I do not misrepresent when I say, that his first public, explicit word in behalf of the Anti-Slavery cause is yet to be uttered.

WENDELL PHILLIPS.

BOSTON, March 4, 1853.

CORRECTIONS.

In enumerating essays on the practical working of the Slave system, I ought to have named a very full and valuable one Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade in the United States," prepared for the WORLD'S CONVENTION, by T. D. WELD and others, and published, at London, in 1841. The Anti-Slavery construction of the Constitution was ably argued in 1836, two years earlier than I have dated it, in the "Anti-Slavery Magazine," by SAMUEL J. MAY; one of the very first to seek the side of Mr. GARRISON, and pledge to the Slave his life and efforts a pledge which more than twenty years of devoted labors have nobly redeemed.

The allusion on page 28, to the Free Soil press of Ohio, should be erased, as it is incorrect. On page 12, Dr. CHANNING should be quoted as pronouncing Mr. WELD'S Essay "one of the ablest pamphlets from the American press." My request to have the words "unworthy trick," struck out from the paragraph relating to Mr. MANN, page 25, reached the printer too late. I intended to say only that the disclaimer was unworthy of Mr. MANN. On page 6, fourteenth line from the top, for dull, read dumb.

W. P.