Beschreibung:

ADAMS, JOHN, President. Autograph letter signed in full as President to "George Churchman of Cecil County, Maryland and Jacob Lindley of Chester County, Pennsylvania," Washington, D.C., 24 January l80l. 2 pages, 4to, integral blank (now detached), with recipients' docket, partial separations along several old folds, affecting one numeral in date and one letter on page 2, professionally tissue-laminated for preservation. PRESIDENT ADAMS' VIEWS ON THE "SLAVERY OF THE BLACKS" AND THE DANGERS OF THE ABOLITION MOVEMENT A remarkable expression of the President's attitude towards slavery and the increasingly vocal abolitionist movement. Churchman, a Quaker, and Lindley (perhaps also a Quaker) had written to Adams (whose term of office was to expire only two months hence) on the subject, sending him a copy of one of the anti-slavery remonstrances of the Quaker, Warner Mifflin (see below). "I have received your Letter...and thank you for communicating the Letter to me, of our friend Warner Mifflin. I have read both with pleasure, because I believe they proceeded from a Sense of Duty and a principle of Benevolence. "Although I have never sought popularity by any animated Speeches or inflammatory publications against the Slavery of the Blacks, my opinion against it has always been known, and my practice has been so conformable to my Sentiments that I have always employed freemen both as Domesticks and Labourers, and never in my Life did I own a Slave. "The Abolition of Slavery must be gradual and accomplished with much caution and Circumspection. Violent means and measures would produce greater violations of Justice and Humanity, than the continuance of the practice. Neither Mr. Mifflin nor yourselves, I presume would be willing to venture on Exertions which would probably excite Insurrections among the Blacks to rise against their Masters and imbue their hands in innocent blood. "There are many other Evils in our Country which are growing, (whereas tÿe practice of Slavery is fast diminishing,) and threaten to bring Punishment on our Land, more immediately than the oppression of the blacks. That Sacred regard to Truth in which you and I were educated, and which is certainly taught and enjoined from on high, seems to be vanishing from among us. A general Dereliction of Education and Government. A general Debauchery as well as dissipation, produced by pestilential philosophical Principles of Epicurus infinitely more than by Shews and theatrical Entertainments. These are in my opinion more serious and threatening Evils, than even the Slavery of the Blacks, hatefull as that is. "I ÿmight even add that I have been informed, that the condition , of the common sort of White People in some of the Southern States particularly Virginia, is more oppressed, degraded and miserable than that of the Negroes. I wish you success in your benevolent Endeavours to relieve the distresses of our fellow Creatures [the blacks], and shall always be ready to co-operate with you, as far as my means and Opportunities can reasonably be expected to extend...." Warner Mifflin (1745-1798) a Quaker reformer, became one of the principle agents of the early abolition movement. "When he was fourteen years old, on his father's plantation in Virginia, one of the younger slaves, talking with him in the fields, had convinced him of the injustice of the slave system. He soon determined never to be a slave owner. Later, however, he came into possession of several slaves....After a period of indecision, in l774-75 he manumitted all his slaves....He even paid then for their services after the age of twenty-one years. Therafter, he traveled much in Quaker communities urging Friends to free their slaves" (-DAB). Mifflin lobbied for legislative acts in Virginia and before Congress, and he published A Serious Expostulation with the Members of the House of Representatives of the United States , (Philadelphia, l793), as well as other anti-slavery pamphlets.