e. Mr.
Henson seeks to lessen the force of this damning fact by referring to
these defenders of slavery as "certain clergymen and other Christians,"
and as "ignorant and unworthy members of the Church." _Certain_
clergymen! Why, the clergy defended slavery almost to a man, and in
the Northern States they were even more bigoted than in the South. Mrs.
Beecher Stowe said that the Church was so familiarly quoted as being on
the side of Slavery, that "Statesmen on both sides of the question have
laid that down as a settled fact." Theodore Parker said that if the
whole American Church had "dropped through the continent and disappeared
altogether, the anti-Slavery cause would have been further on." He
pointed out that no Church ever issued a single tract, among all its
thousands, against property in human flesh and blood; and that 80,000
slaves were owned by Presbyterians, 225,000 by Baptists, and 250,000
by Methodists. Wilberforce himself declared that the American Episcopal
Church "raises no voice against the predominant evil; she palliates
it in theory, and in practice she shares in it. The mildest and most
conscientious of the bishops of the South are slaveholders themselves."
The Harmony Presbytery of South Carolina deliberately resolved that
Slavery was justified by Holy Writ. The Methodist Episcopal Church
decided in 1840 against allowing any "colored persons" to give testimony
against "white persons." The College Church of the Union Theological
Seminary, Prince Edward County, was endowed with slaves, who were hired
out to the highest bidder for the pastor's salary. Lastly, Professor
Moses Stuart, of Andover, who is accounted the greatest American
theologian since Jonathan Edwards, declared that "The precepts of the
New Testament respecting the demeanor of slaves and their masters
beyond all question recognise the existence of Slavery." So much for Mr.
Henson's "certain clergymen."

Mr. Henson also argues that the Northern States were "the most
distinctly Christian," and that they were opposed to Slavery. History
belies this statement Harriet Martineau, when she visited America and
stood on the anti-slavery platform, says she was in danger of her life
in the North while scarcely molested in the South. When William Lloyd
Garrison delivered his first anti-slavery lecture in Boston, the classic
home of American orthodoxy, every Catholic and Protestant church was
closed against him, and he was obliged to accept the use of