John Adams - Fifty Notable Years

A leading spirit in this movement in the "Granite State" was Nathaniel P. Rogers, for a few years the editor of the "Herald of Freedom," issued at Concord, N. H. He was a lawyer of Plymouth, Grafton County, and a member of the Orthodox Church in that town, and was a descendant of him who was burned at Smithfield, and had the martyr spirit of his noted ancestor. He was a scholarly, witty, and affable man, and wielded as facile a pen as any editor in New England. In many of his descriptive sketches he gave to the scenery of New Hampshire a fascination equal to that with which Sir Walter Scott invests the lochs and hills of Scotland. His plea with Mr. Webster, the great Senator from Massachusetts, to let "his lion voice in one Numidian roar" be heard from his place in Congress on the abomination of American slavery and the claims of American freedom, once read, could never be forgotten. When his "Herald of Freedom" was first issued, some of the stage-drivers from Concord refused to carry it out to the subscribers; but this hostility, through the personal influence of the editor, soon ceased. Its columns were opened to all sorts of radical sayings against the churches because of their presumed hostility to human freedom; but as the columns of the paper were free, there were sometimes sound and strong answers to them. Mr. Rogers, worn out with mental toiling and anxiety, was called from the earthly life in the midst of his years.

And so this work of the anti-slavery reformers went steadily forward with increasing momentum, till a more general awakening took place all over the land. The churches were becoming more and more alive to it, and the politicians could in no wise evade it. The seed of "Free-Soilism" sown, "Know-nothingism" sprang up, and one of the two leading political parties became the party of Freedom – of "free soil, free speech, free men." The passage and attempted enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, had served to bring about this result. Hence the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency, secession, war, the downfall of slavery. These first agitators lived to see the end they had striven for attained. They had been heard , and a stronger than they had heard, and had answered them, and an imploring and struggling nation, "in the day of his power!" Now could one of the first of our poets sing: —

Of course the Universalist churches could not evade this controversy between freedom and slavery. Their very faith invited and encouraged it. The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man are doctrines which forever stand in opposition to the presumption that man can own property in his fellow man. Of all the Christian sects, Universalists were the last who could countenance in the light of their beneficent faith the abomination of American slavery. If other theologies gave cause for the aspersion that "God was the greatest slaveholder in the universe," because it was his intention to keep in spiritual bondage and sufferings great numbers of his offspring world without end, Universalism affirmed that this whole human creation now groaning and travailing in pain shall be delivered from its bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 29 29 Heb. viii. 21, 22. Could this church, bearing its own significant name, be silent, then, when the test time came? Nay, it was a golden opportunity for her to speak and act. She uttered her voice, firmly, freely, faithfully. True, there were conservatives at first in this church as in others, who dreaded the consequences of the agitation of this subject, who deemed it a political question rather than a religious one, and feared not only discord and division in the churches because of it, but a disruption of the national union. This timidity wore off in due time, and this manifesto went forth from the Universalists of Massachusetts and other States in 1845. It is a "protest against American slavery," and is signed by three hundred and four Universalist clergymen. The reasons stated as the basis of the protest are these: —

"1. Because slavery denies the eternal distinction between a man and property, ranking a human being with a material thing. 2. Because it does not award to the laborer the fruits of his toil in any higher sense than to the cattle. 3. Because it trammels the intellectual powers and prevents their expansion. 4. Because it checks the development of the moral nature of the slave; denies him rights and therefore responsibility. 5. Because it involves a practical denial of the religious nature of the slave. 6. Because it presents an insurmountable barrier to the propagation of the great truth of the Universal Brotherhood and thereby most effectually prevents the progress of true Christianity. 7. Because the essential nature of slavery cannot be altered by any kindness, how great so ever, practised toward the slave. 8. Because the long continuance of a system of wrong cannot palliate it, but on the other hand augments the demand for its abolition. 9. Because we would in all charity remember that peculiarities of situation may affect the judgment and moral sense; still, we must not forget that no peculiarity of situation can excuse a perpetual denial of universal principles and obligations."

"The crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain." – Isaiah, xl. 4.

THE half-century just passed has been notable for the progress of thought in reference to the significant reforms now claiming public attention. Foremost among these is that of

In no other period of the past has its work been so marked and cheering. In Great Britain and America its manifestations were almost simultaneous. Intemperance was seen to be a monstrous national vice, and societies were formed for the suppression of it. Abstinence from distilled liquors was at first the pledge taken; but subsequent discussion of the subject induced the next and safer step forward, of total abstinence from all intoxicants. From 1834 to 1838 nearly the whole of the original societies through England and Scotland extended their principles on the new and broader declaration, and worked with renewed enthusiasm. 30 30 Chambers' Miscellany. The same course was taken in our own country, and similar effects followed. The new pledge was consistent, because it struck at the root of the evil.

The Temperance reform enlisted the sympathies of Universalists in the beginning. It was a vindication of the Gospel of enlightened and pure manhood, maintaining its supremacy over the sinful inclinations and indulgences "that war against the soul." Indeed, one of the first avowed advocates of the practice of total abstinence, as early as 1778, was the well-known and honored Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and a firm believer in Christian Universalism. He not only advocated this practice himself, but was especially interested in commending it to the attention of two religious bodies in Pennsylvania, the Episcopalians and Presbyterians, at their annual meetings. When in later days the attention of the Christian churches was called to the consideration of this reform, no more zealous friends of it were found than those among Universalists. The Universalist ministry was well represented, and its services welcomed by others. An instance is remembered of a deserved tribute, given in his peculiar quaintness of speech, by the elder Dr. (Lyman) Beecher, to Rev. Edwin Thompson, at an annual meeting of the Massachusetts Temperance Society. Mr. Thompson was State agent for the Society, and had been very active in its work during the year; so that a speaker alluded to him as having been in that time "the main spoke in the wheel." "Indeed," said Dr. Beecher, "it seems to me that he has been the hub, and all the spokes, and a considerable part of the rim!"