The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1876-09-21
AN OPEN LETTER.
HON. JEREMIAH BLACK TO GEN.
JAMES A. GARFIELD.
Where the General Got His Ideas
Pro-Slavery Doctrines Of the Abo.
litionists Carpet Bag and Credit
Mobilier Thieves-Republican Cor
ruption- Garteld's Unfaithiulness
to the "Goddess Of Liberty"

| IlJllOll NltNl lANAA NAlAlNp3
to the "Goddess Of Liberty"
To Hon, James A, Garfield, Member of Con.
greeS from Ohio:
have read the speech you have sent
me. l am astonished and shocked. As
the leader Of your party to whom the
candidates have specially delegated the
conduct Of the pending campaign, you
should have met your responsibilities in
very different way. do not presume
to lecture so distinguished a man upon
his errors; but if can prevent you, even
to small extent, from abusing The pub.
lie credulity, it is my duty to try. Prem
ising only my great anxiety to preserve
the fraternal relations existing between
us for many years, l follow the Horatian
rule, and come at once to "the middle of
things"
You trace back the origin of present
parties to the earliest immigrations at
Plymouth and Jamestown, and profess
to find in the opposing doctrines then
planted and afterwards constantly cher
ished in Massachusetts, and Virginia, the
germs of those ideas which now make
Democracy and Aboltionism the deadly
foes to each other. The ideas so planted
in Massachusetts were, according to your
account, the freedom and equality of all
races, and the right and duty of every
man to exercise his private judgment in
politics as well as religion. On the other
hand, you set forth as rreconcilably hos
tile the doctrine of Virginia, that Capi
tai should own labor, and that the negro
had no rights of manhood, and that the
white man might buy, own and sell him
and his posterity forever" Following
these assertions with others, and linking
the present with the long past, you em-
ploy the devices of your rhetoric to glo-
rify the modern Aboitionist, and throw
foul scorn, not merely on the Southern
people, but on the whole Democracy of
the country This looks
LEARNED AND PHILOSOPHICAL,
and it gives your speech a dignity SEEM
ingly above the reach of the ordinary
demagogue. Happy is he who knows
the causes Of things; felicitous is the par
tisan member Of Congress whose stump
speech goes up the river of time to the
first fountains ofgood and evil. But your
contrast of historical facts is open to OBJ
lection, which | give you in a form as
simple as possible when l say that it is
wholly destitute of truth. This, of course,
implies no imputation on your good faith
| Your high character in the church, as
well as the State forbids the belief that
you would be guilty of wilful misrepre-
sentati0n.
The men of Massachusetts, so far from
planting the right of private judgment,
extirpated and utterly eatinguished it. by
means so cruel that no man of common
humanity can think of them even now
without disgust and indignation. l am
surprised to find you ignorant of this
Did YOU ever hear of the frightful perse-
cutions they carried on systematically
against Baptists and Quakers and Catho-
lies? how they fined, imprisoned, lashed,
mutilated, enslaved and banished every
body who claimed the right of freedom
of though? How they stripped the most
virtuous and inoffensive women, and
publicly whipped them on their naked
backs, orly for expressing their consCl.
entious convictions? Have you ever, in
all your reading, met with the story of
Roger Williams? For merely suggesting
to the public authorities of the colony
that no person ought to be punished on
account of his honest opinions, he was
driven into the woods and pursued ever
after with ferocity which endangered
his life and that of his friends. In fact,
the cruelty of their laws against the free
dom of conscience, and the unfeeling rig
or with which they were executed, made
Massachusetts odious throughout the
world.
These great crimes of the Pilgrim Fa-
theirs ought not to be cast up to their
children; for some of their descendants
Il hope good majority are high prin-
Cipled and honest men, sincerely attach
ed to the liberal institutions planted in
the more southern latitudes of the conti-
nent. But if you are right in your asser-
tioa that the Abolitionists derive their
principles from the ideas entertained and
planted at Plymouth, that may account
for the coarse and brutal tyranny with
which your party has, in recent times,
trampled upon the rights of free thought
and free speech.
Nor are you more accurate in your dec
laration that the old Yankees planted
THE DOCTRINE OF FREEDOM AND EQUALITY,
or opposed the domination of one race
over another Messrs. Palfrey and Sum-
ner have said something to the effect
that slavery never existed in Massachu-
setts, and you may have been misled by
them. But either they were wholly ig
norant of the subject, or else they spoke
with that lavish and loose unveracity
which is common fault among men of
their political faith. The Plymouth col
ony and the province of Mass chusetts
Bay were pro-slavery to the backbone. |
If YOU doubt this l refer you to Moore's |
History of Slavery in Massachusetts,"
where the evidence consisting chiefly of
records and documents perfectly anthem
ticated), is produced and collated with
fullness and fairness which cannot be
questioned. The Plymouth immigrants
planted precisely the doctrines which
you ascribe to the jamestown colonists;
that is to say, that they held that "the
negro had no rights Of manhood that
the white man might buy, own and sell
him and his offspring forever" Practic-
ally and theoretically they maintained
that human slavery in its most unmiti.
gated form was perfectly just, proper
and desirable institution, entirely consis-
tent with Christianity as they understood
it, and founded on principles of univer-
sal jurisprudence. They insisted upon it
as an established and settled rule of the
law of nations, that when one government
or community or political organization
made war upon its own subjects, or the
subjects ofanother, andvanqushed them,
the people of the beaten party had no
rights to which the right of the conquer