Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- List of Figures and Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Dramatis Personae
- Part I The Voyage
- Part II Dark, Polluted Gold
- Part III Douglass, Scott and Burns
- Part IV Measuring Heads, Reading Faces
- Part V The Voyage Home
- Part VI The Affinity Scot
- Appendix I Speaking Itinerary, 1846
- Appendix II Maps
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - The Free Church Responds
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- List of Figures and Maps
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Dramatis Personae
- Part I The Voyage
- Part II Dark, Polluted Gold
- Part III Douglass, Scott and Burns
- Part IV Measuring Heads, Reading Faces
- Part V The Voyage Home
- Part VI The Affinity Scot
- Appendix I Speaking Itinerary, 1846
- Appendix II Maps
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The distinction Douglass makes in his speech in Dundee between moral principles (‘spreading the Gospel’) and material self-interest (‘making money’) is a common one. But the dispute between the abolitionists and the Free Church was not quite so simple.
For one thing, the Free Church was not unanimous. As we have seen, some of its own members had reservations about the propriety of accepting funds from the Southern Churches, and, perhaps emboldened by the Glasgow Emancipation Society's intervention, they forced the matter to be debated at the General Assembly of the Free Church in May 1844, following the submission of ‘overtures’ from two Synods. They may have expected a sympathetic response from Rev. Robert Candlish. Only a month before, he had spoken at a public meeting at the Edinburgh Music Hall called to protest the death sentence imposed on John L. Brown in South Carolina for assisting a slave to escape. In the course of his speech he expressed his ‘private personal opinion’ that other Churches should withdraw fellowship from the American churches if they continued to admit slaveholders to their communion. But on this occasion, he was diplomatically cautious and insisted that the Assembly should seek clarification of the American Presbyterians’ position. The matter was referred to a committee, which submitted an interim report in September, and a copy was sent to the United States.
The report sets out what seems to be an uncompromising position. ‘In its own nature,’ it states, ‘slavery in all its forms is to be regarded as a system of oppression which cannot be defended.’ Moreover, ‘[t]he committee cannot but consider it the duty of Christian churches, as such, to set themselves against its manifold abuses, and to aim decidedly at its abolition.’ But in practice, how those churches choose to attain those ends is up to them. ‘[I]t is not for this church to decide peremptorily what ought to be regarded as the particular course of duty to be immediately and universally adopted,’ it reassured its American readers, not least because, it argued, it was not sufficiently aware of the circumstances in which the Southern churches operated.
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- Information
- Frederick Douglass and Scotland, 1846Living an Antislavery Life, pp. 65 - 75Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2018