At the time when the new cotton industry was enhancing the value of slave labor, there arose from the ranks of the people those who freely consecrated their all to the freeing of the slave.
Among these, Benjamin Lundy, a New Jersey Quaker, holds a significant place.
Though the Society of Friends fills a large place in the anti-slavery movement, its contribution to the growth of the conception of equality is even more significant.This impetus to the idea arises from a fundamental Quaker doctrine, announced at the middle of the seventeenth century, to the erect that God reveals Himself to mankind, not through any priesthood or specially chosen agents; not through any ordinance, form, or ceremony; not through any church or institution; not through any book or written record of any sort; but directly, through His Spirit, to each person.This direct enlightening agency they deemed coextensive with humanity; no race and no individual is left without the ever-present illuminating Spirit.If men of old spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, what they spoke or wrote can furnish no reliable guidance to the men of a later generation, except as their minds also are enlightened by the same Spirit in the same way."The letter killeth; it is the Spirit that giveth life."This doctrine in its purity and simplicity places all men and all races on an equality; all are alike ignorant and imperfect; all are alike in their need of the more perfect revelation yet to be made.Master and slave are equal before God; there can be no such relation, therefore, except by doing violence to a personality, to a spiritual being.In harmony with this fundamental principle, the Society of Friends early rid itself of all connection with slavery.The Friends' Meeting became a refuge for those who were moved by the Spirit to testify against slavery.
Born in 1789 in a State which was then undergoing the process of emancipating its slaves, Benjamin Lundy moved at the age of nineteen to Wheeling, West Virginia, which had already become the center of an active domestic slave-trade.The pious young Quaker, now apprenticed to a saddler, was brought into personal contact with this traffic in human flesh.He felt keenly the national disgrace of the iniquity.So deep did the iron enter into his soul that never again did he find peace of mind except in efforts to relieve the oppressed.Like hundreds and thousands of others, Lundy was led on to active opposition to the trade by an actual knowledge of the inhumanity of the business as prosecuted before his eyes and by his sympathy for human suffering.
His apprenticeship ended, Lundy was soon established in a prosperous business in an Ohio village not far from Wheeling.
Though he now lived in a free State, the call of the oppressed was ever in his ears and he could not rest.He drew together a few of his neighbors, and together they organized the Union Humane Society, whose object was the relief of those held in bondage.In a few months the society numbered several hundred members, and Lundy issued an address to the philanthropists of the whole country, urging them to unite in like manner with uniform constitutions, and suggesting that societies so formed adopt a policy of correspondence and cooperation.At about the same time, Lundy began to publish anti-slavery articles in the Mount Pleasant Philanthropist and other papers.
In 1819 he went on a business errand to St.Louis, Missouri, where he found himself in the midst of an agitation over the question of the extension of slavery in the States.With great zest he threw himself into the discussion, making use of the newspapers in Missouri and Illinois.Having lost his property, he returned poverty-stricken to Ohio, where he founded in January, 1821, the Genius of Universal Emancipation.A few months later he transferred his paper to the more congenial atmosphere of Jonesborough, Tennessee, but in 1824 he went to Baltimore, Maryland.In the meantime, Lundy had become much occupied in traveling, lecturing, and organizing societies for the promotion of the cause of abolition.He states that during the ten years previous to 1830 he had traveled upwards of twenty-five thousand miles, five thousand of which were on foot.He now became interested in plans for colonizing negroes in other countries as an aid to emancipation, though he himself had no confidence in the colonization society and its scheme of deportation to Africa.
After leading a few negroes to Hayti in 1829, he visited Canada, Texas, and Mexico with a similar plan in view.
During a trip through the Middle States and New England in 1828, Lundy met William Lloyd Garrison, and the following year he walked all the way from Baltimore to Bennington, Vermont, for the express purpose of securing the assistance of the youthful reformer as coeditor of his paper.Garrison had previously favored colonization, but within the few weeks which elapsed before he joined Lundy, he repudiated all forms of colonization and advocated immediate and unconditional emancipation.He at once told Lundy of his change of views."Well," said Lundy, "thee may put thy initials to thy articles, and I will put my witness to mine, and each will bear his own burden." The two editors were, however, in complete accord in their opposition to the slave-trade.Lundy had suffered a dangerous assault at the hands of a Baltimore slave-trader before he was joined by Garrison.
During the year 1830, Garrison was convicted of libel and thrown into prison on account of his scathing denunciation of Francis Todd of Massachusetts, the owner of a vessel engaged in the slave-trade.
