Another and a most auspicious event signalizes in my memory the year 1835. It was the publication of Dr. Channing’s book on Slavery. He had for many years been the most distinguished minister of religion in New England, certainly in the estimation of the Unitarian denomination; and his fame as a Christian moralist, a philosopher, and finished writer had been spread far and wide throughout England, France, and Germany by a large volume of his Discourses, Essays, and Reviews published in 1830.
A few weeks after his graduation from Harvard College in 1798, when about nineteen years of age, determined to be no longer dependent upon his mother and friends for a living, he gladly accepted the situation of a tutor in the family of Mr. Randolph, of Richmond, Virginia. Here he often met many of the most distinguished gentlemen and ladies of the city and the State, and visited them freely at their city homes and on their plantations. He was delighted with their cordial and elegant courtesy. But he saw also their _slaves_ and the sensuality which abounded amongst them. These made an impression upon his heart which was never effaced.
In the fall of 1830 he went to the West Indies for his health, and passed the winter in St. Croix. There he witnessed again the inherent wrongs of slavery and the vices which it engenders. On his return in May, 1831, he spoke freely and with the deepest feeling from his pulpit of the inhuman system, and its debasing effects upon the oppressors as well as the oppressed. At that time the public mind in New England had begun to be agitated upon the subject of slavery, as it never had been before by the scathing denunciations that were every week poured from _The Liberator_ upon slaveholders and their abettors and apologists. Dr. Channing’s sensitive nature shrank from the severity of Mr. Garrison’s blows, and yet he acknowledged that the gigantic system of domestic servitude in our country ought to be exposed, condemned, and subverted. He found his highly esteemed friend, Dr. Follen, with his excellent wife and several others of the best women in Boston, and Ellis Gray Loring and Samuel E. Sewall and others, whom he highly esteemed, giving countenance and aid to the “young fanatic.” This drew his attention still more to the subject of slavery. Soon after his return from the West Indies I visited Dr. Channing, and found his mind very much exercised. He sympathized with the Abolitionists in their abhorrence of the domestic servitude in our Southern States, and their apprehension of its corrupting influence upon the government of our Republic, and the political as well as moral ruin to which it tended. But he distrusted our measures, and was particularly annoyed, as I have already stated, by Mr. Garrison’s “scorching and stinging invectives.” Whenever I was in the city and called upon the Doctor, he would make particular inquiries respecting our doctrines, purposes, measures, and progress. Repeatedly he invited me to his house for the express purpose, as he said, of learning more about our antislavery enterprise. He always spoke as if he were deeply interested in it, but he was afraid of what he supposed to be some of our opinions and measures. I was surprised that he was so slow to accept our vital doctrine, “immediate emancipation.” But owing, I suppose, to his great aversion to excited speeches and exaggerated statements, and his peculiar distrust of associations, he had never attended any of our antislavery meetings, where the doctrine of immediate emancipation was always explained. The Doctor, therefore, as well as the people generally, misunderstood it, and had been misinformed in several other respects as to the purposes, measures, and spirit of the Abolitionists. Still he persisted in abstaining from our meetings until after the alarming course taken by the Governor and Legislature of Massachusetts, in the spring of 1836, of which I shall give an account in the proper place.