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By a telegraphic despatch from Cincinnati, which we published yesterday, our readers have seen that Wendell Phillips, in attempting to deliver one of his revolutionary lectures in that city, created a riot which resulted in his being pelted with rotten eggs, driven from the hall where he would not be permitted to speak, and finally escaped narrowly from a coat of tar and feathers, if not from loss of life at the hands of the excited audience.

It is worthy of remark that the people in the Eastern and Western States deal with the abolition demagogues in a very different manner. Here where they are best known, they are regarded as no longer dangerous, and are accordingly treated with contempt, and are allowed to lecture to thin houses. This is the case at Washington, Albany and New York. The abolition lectures in this city were not attended by the people. Cheever, Garrison and the rest have been only beating the air. They could make no impression whatever, and were regarded as of little consequence.

In the Western States, which have sent so many men to our war, and whose troops have accomplished such brilliant results on the Cumberland and the Tennessee, the disunion agitators are viewed in a different light, and particularly Phillips, who has been more talked of in the newspapers than the rest, and is the chieftain of the disloyal faction. In the West they are regarded as dangerous lunatics, who ought not to be allowed to be at large.

Here, for the most part, they are regarded as harmless monomaniacs, whose tom-foolery is only laughed at by the bulk of the community. One thing is very clear, and that is that neither in the East nor the West is revolutionary abolitionism regarded with favor; nor can its destructive, bloods purposes ever be carried out while the conservative common sense of the whole country is so decidedly opposed to it.

—New York Herald

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The following item appeared in The Liberator a month after Reverend Hayne’s death in 1833.

This eminent servant of God, died in Granville, N.Y. on the 28th of September, aged 80 years. He was born in Hartford, Conn. and brought up in a pious family in Granville, in this State. He was there converted and when he was about 27 years old, he began the work of the ministry. He preached five years in Granville, Mass.– about three years in Torringford, Conn.– nearly or quite thirty years in Rutland, Vt.– about three years in Manchester, Vt. and eleven years in the place where he died.

We shall never forget the man who is the subject of this notice. We have seen him in the pulpit and at his own house and amidst his family. and we can truly say he seemed ever like a man of God. There was something peculiarly touching in the manner in which he invited sinners to the only refuge. He was original in his ideas– gentle in his reproofs and powerful in his rebukes. His talent at satire was prodigious, and when he found it necessary to employ it, his opponents would shrink away before him and leave him master of the field. His discourse on universal salvation preached immediately after the conclusion of a sermon by Hosea Ballou, in his own pulpit, is a wonderful illustration of this remark.

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This call for stories and experiences by Christian churchgoers appeared in several issues of The Liberator while Isaac Knapp gathered material for his book.

Knapp’s completed book, based on his call for words on the topic, was titled  The ‘Negro Pew’: Being an Inquiry Concerning the Propriety of Distinctions in the House of God, on Account of Color and was published in Boston later in 1837.

The Negro Pew

It is intended, as soon as practicable, to publish a work with the above title, designed to show that the practice of making invidious distinctions in the House of God, is inconsistent with the Nature and Principles of the Gospel of Christ; injurious to the feelings, interests, and Souls of those who are affected by it; a reflection upon the Character of Christianity, and calculated to promote Infidelity: with answers to the common objections against breaking down these distinctions.

The Author, wishing to illustrate the subject with facts, would request his colored brethren to communicate such facts respecting their treatment in this respect, as they may have in their possession.

Address Isaac Knapp, at the Anti-Slavery Office, 46 Washington-street. All communications should be accompanied with responsible names, who can testify to every particular as stated.

Background Notes

The 1740s Great Awakening resulted in a great number of black converts, most of whom were slaves. The informal services of the Baptists and Methodists attracted the most blacks. Many black Christians moved towards Methodism because of its early antislavery position. By 1786, blacks made up about 10 percent of the Methodist church in the United States.

Isaac Knapp's The Negro Pew

Although whites and blacks often worshiped together in the 18th century, blacks church attendees enjoyed no real freedom or equality–in the North or South. Most churches used a segregated seating system with the seating for blacks called the “Negro Pew” or the “African Corner“.

Such discrimination motivated blacks, where possible, to organize their own churches, though white leaders actively opposed that. On the eve of the American Revolution, the first black congregations appeared.

Isaac Knapp was an abolitionist publisher. When he was still a young printer he partnered with William Lloyd Garrison to found “The Liberator.”

Knapp became a publisher specializing in works on abolitionism and feminism. He published the Grimke sisters and several slave narratives. He was also one of the founders of the New England Anti-Slavery Society.

Source

Collection: The Liberator
Publication: The Liberator
Date: January 2, 1837
Title: The ‘Negro Pew’
Location: Boston, Massachusetts

The African Meeting House, also known variously as First African Baptist Church, First Independent Baptist Church and the Belknap Street Church, was built in 1806 and is now the oldest black church edifice still standing in the United States. It is located in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, adjacent to the African American Abiel Smith School.

Before 1805, although black Bostonians could attend white churches, they generally faced discrimination. They were assigned seats only in the balconies and were not given voting privileges.

African Meeting House circa 1860

The African Meeting House was constructed almost entirely with black labor. Funds for the project were raised in both the white and black communities. The facade of the African Meeting House is an adaptation of a design for a townhouse published by Boston architect Asher Benjamin. In addition to its religious and educational activities, the meeting house became a place for celebrations and political and anti-slavery meetings.

On January 6, 1832, William Lloyd Garrison founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society here. During the Civil War, Frederick Douglass and others recruited soldiers here for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts regiments.

Lectures and information about meetings in this space can be found in Garrison’s newspaper, The Liberator.  Many of our blog posts about The Liberator can be found here.

Step into the sanctuary of the African Meeting House in Boston, and you will walk on the same ancient floorboards where Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison and other prominent abolitionists railed against slavery in the 19th century, and where free black men gathered to shape the famed 54th Massachusetts Civil War regiment.

After a painstaking, $9 million restoration, the nation’s oldest black church just reopened to the public.

via Anti-slavery hub opens after restoration.

William Roscoe (8 March 1753 – 30 June 1831), was an English historian and miscellaneous writer.

Born in Liverpool, Roscoe left school at the age of twelve, having learned all that his schoolmaster could teach. He assisted his father in the work of the garden, but spent his leisure time on reading and study. “This mode of life,” he says, “gave health and vigour to my body, and amusement and instruction to my mind; and to this day I well remember the delicious sleep which succeeded my labors, from which I was again called at an early hour. If I were now asked whom I consider to be the happiest of the human race, I should answer, those who cultivate the earth by their own hands.”

William Roscoe portrayed by Martin Archer Shee, 1815-1817

At fifteen he began to look for a suitable career. In 1769 he was articled to a solicitor. Although a diligent student of law, he continued to read the classics, and made the acquaintance with the language and literature of Italy which was to dominate his life.

In 1774 he went into business as a lawyer, and in 1781 married Jane, second daughter of William Griffies, a Liverpool tradesman; they had seven sons and three daughters. Roscoe had the courage to denounce the African slave trade in his native town, where much of the wealth came from slavery. Roscoe was a Unitarian and Presbyterian. His outspokenness against the slave trade meant that abolitionism and Presbyterianism were linked together in the public mind.

He wrote a long poem published in two parts called The Wrongs of Africa (1787–1788), and entered into a controversy with an ex-Roman Catholic priest called Fr Raymond Harris, who tried to justify the slave trade through the Bible (and was generously paid for his efforts by Liverpool businessmen involved with the slave trade). Roscoe also wrote a pamphlet in 1788 entitled ‘A General View of the African Slave Trade‘. Roscoe was also a political pamphleteer, and like many other Liberals of the day hailed the promise of liberty in the French Revolution.

DEATH OF WM. ROSCOE, ESQ.

With no ordinary feelings of regret, we have to announce the death of our distinguished and philanthropic townsman, William Roscoe, Esq. on Thursday, at his residence, Long-lane, in the 79th year of his age.

Known at a distance as the elegant and enlightened historian and scholar, it was amongst those only who had the high privilege of being his more immediate friends, that his Christian and truly catholic spirit, his enlarged and comprehensive views, his touching simplicity of mind, his charity for all who differed from him, and his firmness and consistency in supporting his own opinions, could be fully known and appreciated. For more than 50 years he was the dauntless and uncompromising advocate of civil and religious liberty, and of all those liberal measures which have since received the sanction of public or legislative approbation.

Albion

Publication: The Liberator
Date: August 13, 1831
Title: DEATH OF WM . ROSCOE , ESQ