Did you know that the American anti-slavery gradualists and colonizationists who fought slavery for decades before the rise of organized abolitionism in the 1830s used to hold a special sunday every year for church goers and pastors to express their disapproval of slavery and raise money for African deportation? The day they selected for this special anti-slavery sunday was always held around the Forth of July and this became a day where well-to-do church going Northerners came together to hear special sermons on the sanctity of human life. I am not making this up. Interestingly, the day was capitalized on by the American Colonizationist Society (the leading anti-slavery gradualist organization of the day) and it was day wherein they insured special collections for their pro-gradual-emmancipation work. Of course, the abolitionists who began rising up in the late 1820s vociferously challenged the mentality associated and engendered by this yearly and eventist type treatment of what they called the National Sin of slavery and the evil of their age. The young abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison was actually asked to give a Sanctity of Life type sermon on July 4th 1829. Most men asked to give such a speech, took it as an opportunity to promote themselves and move up in the ranks of the ACS. But Garrison had no interest in making a name for himself, and when he spoke, he spoke AGAINST the very mentality behind the sanctity of life sermon itself. He spoke plainly and truthfully and did so in promotion of the cause of abolition which he had really only just begun taking up himself (at this time he was not entirely aware of just how bad incrementalism truly was for the American slaves suffering under the temporized evil of the peculiar institution). But in his sermon, Garrison deliberately slighted the anti-slavery movement of his day, dealt plainly with the apathy and indifference of many of his hearers, and denounced the day as the worst and most disastrous day in the whole three hundred and sixty five. For anybody who wants to know the details behind this event in history, see pages 61-68 of Henry Mayers excellent biography of William Lloyd Garrison, All on Fire.
Posted on: Sun, 19 Jan 2014 07:21:02 +0000
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