Slavery and the Democratic Conscience. Padraig Riley

being is entitled to the enjoyment of without molestation. Instead of being a blessing to society, they become the greatest curse, that can be experienced in life; like the Voracious animal, they devour all that falls in their way; while millions are pining & languishing with hunger, their unrelenting hearts riot and grow fat on the labors of the distressed; they are the fomenters of all the Distressing wars which pervade the nations of the Earth; they wish to bring all men to be subservient to their views and obeisant to their Commands; when this is refused, they invidiously destroy the disobedient with unrelenting fury. I hope and trust, that the people of these states, will avoid that rock on which many Nations have foundered; and accept a system of equal justice for the General good of mankind.²⁵

      Varnum articulated two key concepts that shaped northern democratic thought: a belief in human equality (in Varnum’s letter, on the basis of natural rights) and opposition to unjust political authority. Both ideas impelled Jeffersonians to think beyond the bounds of the new American nation and its constituent states and, in theory, both ideas challenged the political authority required to maintain slavery.

      Anti-aristocratic universalism deeply influenced Jeffersonians in New England and throughout the North. In describing his political ambitions to Connecticut Republican Ephraim Kirby, the young printer Samuel Morse emphasized his “wish for the welfare of man, and a universal love for the human race.” At political celebrations, Republican toasts frequently looked beyond national horizons to celebrate a worldwide struggle for liberty. Honoring Jefferson’s inauguration in March 1801, Republicans in Torringford, Connecticut, offered the following tribute: “Democracy: May it bestride the universe and the whole human race become fellow citizens.”²⁶

      Such universalist sentiments at times included open opposition to slavery. In July 1800, Boston’s Independent Chronicle reprinted a poem by the Liverpool writer Edward Rushton in order to commemorate the Fourth of July. The poem closes by exhorting Americans to attack slavery, in honor of the rights of man and their revolution against authority.

      O perceive what your prowess procur’d

      And reflect that your rights are the rights of MANKIND;

      That to ALL they were bounteously given

      And that he who in chains would his FELLOW MAN bind,

      Uplifts his proud arm against HEAVEN.

      How can you, who have felt the oppressor’s hard hand,

      Who for freedom all perils did brave—

      How can you enjoy ease, while one foot of your land

      Is disgrac’d by the toil of a Slave?

      O rouse then, in spite of a merciless few,

      And pronounce this immortal decree—

      That “whate’er be man’s tenets, his fortune, his HUE,

      HE IS MAN—and shall therefore be free!”²⁷

      Rushton took the universalist claims of transatlantic republicanism to their logical conclusion: American slavery was unjust and all men, regardless of color, should be free. The editors of the Chronicle apparently agreed.

      Joseph Bradley Varnum likely would have read Rushton’s lines with approbation. On January 30, 1797, his distaste for oppression led him to speak on behalf of four black petitioners to Congress, men who had been manumitted by their Quaker masters in North Carolina, but whose manumission was retroactively abrogated by the state legislature, along with over a hundred other enslaved people who had likewise been set free. Their petition, brought to the House by a Pennsylvania Republican, described a series of harrowing journeys to temporary freedom in Philadelphia, fleeing from slave catchers first in North Carolina and then in Virginia. All left behind family members, some of whom had also been freed and then coerced back into slavery. The petitioners particularly objected to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which left them and other nominally free African Americans in the North vulnerable to kidnapping.

      Southern slaveholders, Republican and Federalist alike, objected to the petition in varying degrees of outrage. Thomas Blount of North Carolina deemed the petitioners legally slaves, and therefore powerless to address the House; William Loughton Smith thought the petition should be sealed up and sent back, to express the House’s disdain; James Madison politely offered to let the petition lie on the table while just as politely insisting that nothing at all could be done to address the petitioners’ grievances.

      Northerners, Republican and Federalist alike, spoke in favor of the petitioners, and Varnum joined cause with the leading antislavery Federalist in the House, George Thatcher of Massachusetts. Varnum believed the men had a right to petition the government and he believed that the Fugitive Slave Act promoted the rights of slaveholders and allowed for kidnapping. He hoped that Congress would “take all possible care that freemen should not be slaves.” Varnum lost this debate, as the House voted 50-33 to reject the petition, but he demonstrated that New England Republicans were willing to challenge the power of slavery when they believed that it violated fundamental political commitments. As Varnum explained, very much in harmony with John Leland, “to be deprived of liberty was more important than to be deprived of property.”²⁸

      The case of the North Carolina freedmen, petitioning from Philadelphia, demonstrates that northern antislavery sentiment could move from theoretical objection to practical challenge to southern interests. Antislavery sentiment could also challenge northern practices of racial exclusion, since contests over slavery often brought up the problem of racial discrimination before the law. “Color and complexion,” said the black petitioners, should not exclude individuals from “common humanity”; Varnum argued that color should not be automatically identified with slave status, as the fugitive law seemed liable to do. Such antislavery arguments merged with Republican anti-aristocratic and egalitarian thought, as multiple cases from the 1790s demonstrate. But as the partisan conflict of the 1790s intensified during John Adams’s presidency, Republicans in New England and throughout the North began to focus on the oppression—the slavery, many said—that they suffered at the hands of Federalist elites. They looked to the emerging Republican coalition, and often to Thomas Jefferson himself, to free them from Federalist oppression. In doing so, they made apparent the capacity of egalitarian thought not only to deny equal justice on the basis of race, but also to make considerable allowance for the hierarchical and violent authority wielded by slaveholders. The unitary world envisioned by Varnum, in which aristocrats preyed on the weak, fractured in the American context, where slaveholders appealed to republican argument to win national power, and New Englanders appealed to slaveholders to defeat Federalism. Instead of opposing transatlantic republicanism because of its potential threat to slaveholding (as did South Carolina Federalists), the Jeffersonian coalition embraced anti-aristocratic republican thought while tempering its antislavery content. As Varnum and his colleagues clamored for equal justice in alliance with Jefferson and Virginia, southern slaves experienced tightening of the bonds of control.

       Abraham Bishop’s Phi Beta Kappa Address

      Antislavery feeling in New England was widespread and diverse before 1800. But as Republicans like Bishop and Lincoln joined the cause of Jefferson, Federalist “tyranny” in New England became a far more important problem than slavery. Republicans North and South drew closer together as they tried to elect Thomas Jefferson president in 1800 and overturn the administration of John Adams. Northerners were particularly outraged by the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which sought to repress the more outspoken members of the Republican coalition. By 1800, Matthew Lyon had been jailed for sedition, as had Vermont’s Anthony Haswell and Connecticut’s Charles Holt (both Haswell and Holt would later publish works by John Leland). In Connecticut, the Congregational Church remained established, and the congressional delegation was dominated by Federalists. To Republicans inside and outside New England, the state symbolized the extent of Federalist power.

      It was in this context that Abraham Bishop composed his best-known oration and pamphlet, Connecticut Republicanism: An Oration, on the Extent and Power of Political Delusion. Reprinted throughout the nation, the speech became a defining document of New England Republican thought. The occasion of the speech itself