The Chief Sins of the People (1851)

AUTHOR: Parker, Theodore

Focussed on anti-slavery agitation against the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, this sermon interestingly inverts the image of the slave as equal to an animal by describing those who return enslaved people to slavery as worse than, lower than, animals.

KEYWORDS: slavery, Abolition, nationalism, reform, Temperance

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

The general purpose of the sermon is to “consider the state of the nation, and look at our conduct in reference to the great principles of religion, and see how we stand before God” and, more specifically, to “consider, in the spirit of Christianity, the public sins of the community, to contemplate the value of our institutions, and to ask the blessing of God; on the poor, the afflicted, and the oppressed” (3). This task is even more pressing in the context of the Abolition of slavery, given that “these are times that try men's souls” (4).

Just as the purpose of human life is to form a good character, to achieve “the best development of body and of spirit,” so is the purpose of national life to “bring forth and bring up manly men” (4, 5). Both individuals and nations are driven by their respective chief desires (which may stay the same or vary over time): “As the chief desire of the individual calls out appetites and passions, which are the machinery of that desire, and reconstructs the man in its image; so the desire of a nation, transient or permanent, becoming the master-motive of the people, calls out certain classes of men, who become its exponents, its machinery, and they make the constitution, institutions, and laws to correspond thereto” (7). The condition of America is more complex, simply due to the fact that it is such a young nation. Parker comments: “America is a young nation, composite, not yet unified; and it is, therefore, not quite so easy to say what is the chief desire of the people; but, if I understand American history, this desire is the love of individual liberty. Nothing has been so marked in our history as this” (7-8). And this liberty or freedom is tantamount to “aiming at Democracy,” a democracy that is not only governed by the “Higher Law of God,” but that, notably, includes “the tawny Indian and the sable Negro” (8). New England is the birthplace of this American desire for freedom. The “national literature,” too, “is democratic” (9). This ubiquitous American desire for freedom and democracy “came to consciousness” in the “Revolution” (9).

However, the desire for wealth is “the most obvious and preponderate desire in the consciousness of the people” and particularly “the controlling class” (9). This class is rarely “engaged in any thing except the pursuit of money by trade or by office. This is the chief desire of a majority of the young men of talent, ambition, and education” (10). Money has come to rule all American institutions from education to law to even the church: “Is there a rich pro-slavery man in the parish? the minister does not dare read a petition from an oppressed slave asking God that his 'unalienable rights' be given him. He does not dare ask alms for a fugitive” (10).

Parker then indicts the rich for tax evasion, their immoral investments (in alcohol, prostitution, and the slave trade), fraud, and corruption (11-12). That hotel buildings and shops are now taller than churches is a sign of these money-driven times. In Europe, even in “frivolous” places like Vienna, churches are still the tallest buildings whereas in America, “[t]rade looks down to find the church” (13). Parker professes to be “glad” that this is the case, for thus America's “outward show correspond[s] to the inward fact” (13). In a remarkable passage, Parker emphasizes the rule of money, even over the law:

Let the son of a distinguished man beat a watchman, knowing him to be such, and be brought before a Justice; (it would be “levying war” if a mulatto had done so to the marshal); he is bailed off for two hundred dollars. But let a black man have in his pockets a weapon, which the Constitution and laws of Massachusetts provide that any man may have if he please, he is brought to trial and bound over for – two hundred dollars, think you? No! but for six hundred dollars! three times as much as is required of the son of the Secretary of State! (13-14)

He then poignantly clarifies that the most important struggle in America is between “money” and “Men” or “Capital and Labor,” which, for Parker, also means between the city (capital) and the country (labor) – things are different in Europe, where city money is one of the democratizing forces in its opposition to the old country aristocracy (15). Hence, both the US free-soil and Temperance movements are backed by the country and opposed by the cities. “Rum is to the aristocracy of gold what the Sword once was to the aristocracy of blood: the Castles of the Baron, and the Rum-shops of the Capitalist, are alike fortresses adverse to the welfare of mankind” (15), Parker remarks. Tories and rich men exclusively think of themselves, enjoying and demanding privileges “adverse to the Rights of mankind” (15) – this is why slavery finds more and more adherents in the Northern cities while the countryside remains the stronghold of freedom. Parker accordingly sums up:

In America the controlling class in general are superior to the majority in money, in consequent social standing, in energy, in practical political skill, and in intellectual development; in virtue of these qualities, they are the controlling class. But in general they are inferior to the majority of men in Justice, in General Humanity, and in Religion, — in Piety and Goodness. Respectability is put before Right; law before Justice; money before God. Religion is compliance with a public hearsay and public custom; it is all of religion, but piety and goodness; its chief sacrament is bodily presence in a meeting-house; its only sacrifice, a pew-tax (16).

This is the mindset that leads to such policies as taxing a Southern plantation owner and slave-holder less than a carpenter with a family of ten. It is the controlling class which “keeps up the institution of Slavery” (17). Parker quotes from both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to emphasize how much slavery goes – or should go – against the grain of America's self-conception.

All the above serves as a preamble to a rhetorical attack on the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, “the result of a union of the Slave Power of the South with the Money Power of the North” (18). Parker makes clear: “There is no excuse for the Fugitive Slave Law” (18). He is adamant that the law was passed against the will of the large majority of people, by first circulating “a false idea” to “persuade the people to allow it to be done” and then finding “[b]ase men […] to do it” (20). This, too, is a sign of the times. While religion and law used to go hand in hand, with law originally derived from religion, as of late, religion is increasingly removed from law-making: “Politicians, intoxicated with ambition, giddy with power, and sometimes also drunk with strong drink, make a statute which outrages all the dictates of humanity, and then insist that it is the duty of sober men to renounce religion for the sake of keeping the wicked statute of the politicians” (21). This type of thought is prevalent in the controlling class. Parker draws a strong analogy between the hypocrisy and betrayal of Judas and that of the Fugitive Slave Law: “Till the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, we did not know what a great saint Iscariot was. I think there ought to be a chapel for him, and a day set apart in the calendar” (24). As is, only laws that contribute to “the accumulation of money” are enforced and kept. When they are detrimental to this goal, as with Temperance laws, they are disregarded: “No doubt it would be a great pity to have the City Government careful to keep the laws of the city, – to suppress rum-shops, and save the citizens from the almshouse, the jail, and the gallows. […] What a pity for the magistrates of Boston to heed the laws of the state! No; it is the Fugitive Slave Law that they must keep” (26). This is something that Parker could not have imagined happening in Boston (30). He forcefully voices his indignation:

Let us look at the public conduct of any Commissioner who will send an innocent man from Boston into slavery. I would speak of all men charitably; for I know how easy it is to err, yea, to sin. I can look charitably on thieves, prowling about in darkness; on rum-sellers, whom poverty compels to crime; on harlots, who do the deed of shame that holy woman's soul abhors and revolts at; I can pity the pirate, who scours the seas doing his fiendish crimes – he is tempted, made desperate, by a gradual training in wickedness. The man, born at the South, owning slaves, who goes to Africa and sells adulterated rum in exchange for men to sell at Cuba, – I cannot understand the consciousness of such a man; yet I can admit that by birth and by breeding he has become so imbruted, he knows no better. Nay, even that he may perhaps justify his conduct to himself. I say I think his sin is not so dreadful as that of a Commissioner in Boston who sends a man into slavery. […] To do this, inflamed by no jealousy, goaded by no desire of great gain, – only ten dollars – excited by no fear, stung by no special malice, poisoned by no revenge; – I cannot comprehend that in any man, not even in a hyena; beasts that raven for blood do not kill for killing's sake, but to feed their flesh. Forgive me, O ye wolves and hyenas! that I bring you into such company. I can only understand it in a devil! (30-31).

Parker not only inverts the usual image of the slave as nothing but an animal, he goes even further by classifying adherents and enforcers of the Fugitive Slave Law as inferior to animals – they are not even animals, they are devils. Animals after all kill for a reason.
Calling up the likes of Nero and Torquemada, Parker insists that those in Boston who capture and return a slave back into slavery are much worse than these well-known tyrants and butchers of history (31-34). Accordingly, for Parker, the day that “a man was kidnapped in Boston by the men of Boston” is the saddest day Boston has ever seen (36). He is also prescient when he says that “the time is coming when there will be a terrible contest between liberty and slavery” (39). He ends his sermon with a call “to resist all evil with good, till we break the fetters from every foot, the chains from every hand, and let the oppressed go free” (40).

 

Last updated on March 10th, 2024

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