Remarks to the Opening Session of the
Symposium on the Antebellum Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression;
November 13, 1997;
Chattanooga, Tennessee
And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing.
-John Milton, Areopagitica, 1644
Good evening...
Welcome to Chattanooga...
Welcome to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga...
...and Welcome to Chattanooga's historic Read House.
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We forget sometimes.
As historians, I believe that we have a responsibility to find out the stories of the past -- and then to tell those stories to the people of the present.... to share the lessons of the past...
We have a responsibility to the present and to the future to present the lessons of the past to those who live with us and to those who will follow us...
...and I fear that we are not doing a bang-up job.
Let's go back into the nineteenth century...
We're still in the month of November... but the year is 1837 ...
The night is cold. We're standing on the bank of the Mississippi River at Alton, Illinois. We watch a drunken crowd as the crowd watches flames spread across the roof of a three-story stone warehouse.
A ladder used by the men who set the fire leans against the side of the building. The crowd is shouting, screaming, for the men inside to come out. Several city officials are standing off to one side - observing - doing nothing to intervene.
Inside the warehouse newspaper publisher and editor Elijah Lovejoy is bleeding to death. He's been shot several times. Lovejoy is a big man. His long hair spreads under his head in disarray on the floor. His expression only hours before had been serious, intelligent, determined. Now his waxen complexion promises death within moments.
There are several men inside the warehouse. They had joined Lovejoy earlier in the evening to help him defend the printing press. They are very frightened.
The people outside want the press and they want Lovejoy. They want him silenced. They hate his opinions. They hate him. They hate his press.
A death-rattle escapes from Lovejoy's throat. He quivers and is still. The men inside the warehouse realize Lovejoy is dead. Their will to fight evaporates. One of the press defenders, a fellow named Amos Roff, steps outside to speak to the crowd. More shots... Roff, wounded... staggers back into the building.
One of Roff's companions shouts, "For God's sake let's get out of here... leave the building and let them in or we all will be destroyed!"
The men in the building respond quickly. They abandon Lovejoy's body, and run from the warehouse toward the river. The mob shouts and fires buckshot at the fleeing men.
Someone among the rabble directs his companions toward the warehouse shouting, ". . . finish the work!"
The mob rushes inside, grabs the heavy press, drags it from the building onto the steamboat landing.
Hammers and crowbars appear, and the crowd begins smashing and tossing pieces of the machine into the river. One witness later said of the men: "They seemed to be happy while engaged in breaking it [the press] to pieces."
Elijah Lovejoy has been dead now 160 years. Lovejoy died trying to protect his new press, and his right to use it. Within the two years before his death, mobs had destroyed three other presses, burned stacks of his newspapers, and had forced him out of St. Louis.
The people were angry with the anti-slavery and anti-Catholic articles published in Lovejoy's newspapers, The St. Louis Observer and the Alton Observer; and many business and political leaders had encouraged the crowd's anger to violent action. St. Louis and Alton leaders saw Lovejoy and his opinions as threat to the established order, as a threat to prevailing attitudes, as a threat to common customs. Community leaders used Lovejoy's outspokenness to control to their own advantage widespread prejudice against blacks and growing fears of the just beginning abolitionist movement.
The movement to do away with slavery in the United States, to emancipate the slaves, without a civil war might have been successful had the right of free inquiry not been squelched.
The attitudes the Southern ruling class and the reflection of those attitudes among the lower classes in the South effectively sealed away Southern people from any journal, any newspaper, and any thought that entertained even the slightest question about slavery as God's ordained institution.
Had there been free discussion in the South as there was in the North, had there existed a forum for debate, there may have been a gradual emancipation through a transitional state of peonage or feudalism. Gradual change occurred in the North. In the South the squelching of debate made a fiercely political issue take on a strongly sectional character. Instead of growing together, North and South grew apart.
In defense of the South, uncompromising, strident demands from Northern abolitionists did infinite damage in driving the Southern elite from open discussion. The abolitionists castigated the slaveholding South for committing appalling sin. The abolitionists, like Lovejoy, like William Lloyd Garrison, like Theodore Weld, adopted a sure technique for the eventual winning of Northern support... but, their uncompromising, evangelical screams of righteous outrage generated a bitter, defensive intolerance below Mason and Dixon's line.
In the North the abolitionists and their press were looked upon initially as raving fanatics on the fringes of reality. In the South, the screams of the abolitionists were legally suppressed. That suppression marked a dramatic turn from the ideals of Reason and the search for Enlightenment on which the Republic was founded.
Between the death of Thomas Jefferson in 1826, and the outbreak of hostilities between the free and the slave holding states a great philosophical change took place in the South. The liberal ideas of the eighteenth century aristocracy were in large part discarded, as the ruling elite adopted a belief system based on parochial self-interest . The eighteenth-century cosmopolitanism of the Tidewater South gave way to an intensely local point of view--a point of view based on narrow defensiveness--once again, "parochial self-interest."
In place of the 18th century's appeal to reason, to inquiry, to debate, the Southern aristocrats of the 19th century substituted suppression of debate, supression of inquiry, suppression of criticism. The key word here is "suppression."
Jeffersonian era sentiment favorable to emancipation, a sentiment held by the much of the leadership of the 18th century was not felt by the ruling class of the 19th. The intellectual questioning and religious tolerance of the early Republic's Southern aristocracy were erased by waves of evangelism, conservatism, defensiveness, and suppression.
Some historians, for example Clement Eaton, contend that the liberal period of Southern history--the decades of the early Republic to the death of Jefferson--was characterized by the leadership of an enlightened elite, an enlightened ruling class -- a ruling class which the common people followed much as the Athenian democracy accepted the leadership of Pericles.
This enlightened Southern aristocracy was influenced by the optimism of the Enlightenment and by the doctrine of natural law-natural rights. The ruling elite of the early days of the Republic entertained a deep respect for reason and for the dignity of humankind. Reason permitted the discovery of truth from falsity, good from evil.
The ruling elite was the slave-holding aristocracy. It represented less than a third of the white population, and it looked to Jefferson as leader, guide, mentor, philosopher, statesman. Jefferson advocated tolerance toward a variety of opinions--even those opinions with which he differed. Jefferson also believed in freedom from a slavish regard for tradition, authority, and convention.
Expressed in political terms, this liberal 18th century philosophy of the Enlightenment ordained that the government must not interfer with an individual's "natural rights." This Jeffersonian view called for toleration -- religious toleration, political toleration. Jefferson believed in the right of petition, the right to publish, and the right to speak freely.8
Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826.
It was not too long before Jeffersonian idealism began to crumble before the arguments of self-perservation, self-interest, and public safety.
In 1829, the governor of Georgia asked his state legislature to adopt legislation restricting the importation into the state of a specific abolitionist pamphlet.
In 1830 North Carolina Governor Own responding to outcries from citizens in Wilmington, Fayetteville, and Newbern called the North Caroline legislature into secret session to consider ways to suppress an abolitionist publication entitled Walker's Appeal in Fourth Articles Together with a Preamble to the Colored Citizens of the World, But in Particular and Very Expressly to Those of the United States of America.
Censorship of Southern mail began in 1830, when an anti-abolitionist crowd stormed the Charleston post office to confiscate pamphlets with which the crowd did not agree. The crowd took by force and burned copies of Miss Grimké's Appeal to the Christian Women of the South.
Again in 1835, before a large approving crowd of Charleston citizens, postal officials removed from the mail system and burned in the street large quantities of anti-slavery literature. Within a matter of weeks, Southern postmasters, on their own authority, began to examine the mails and destroy any material they deemed abolitionist.
About that time anti-abolitionist forces petitioned United States Postmaster-General Amos Kendall to issue an order authorizing the destruction of abolitionist newspapers and other abolitionist literature. Kendall replied that while he had no legal authority to issue such an order, he believed abolitionist papers should not be delivered. The ideas expressed in such publications were a threat, said Kendall, to public order and safety.
In the wake of the 1831 Nat Turner slave uprising, a stronger wave of legislation swept the Southern states, suppressing and restraining speech and press.
In 1836 the Virginia legislature passed what is still the most intolerant law that was ever placed on the statute books in Jefferson's home state. The Virginia legislature decreed severe punishment for any member or agent of an abolition society who should come into the state of Virginia and say or publish, and I'm quoting now, "that the owners of slaves have no property in the same, or advocate or advise the abolition of slavery."
The statute was condemned by the editor of the Richmond Whig. The editor wrote that the statute violated great constitutional safeguards of liberty on which was founded the Republic.
Southern efforts to suppress abolitionist opinions were largely successful. In fact, some Southern newspaper editors like Tennessee's William Brownlow recommended to their readers against purchasing any material, even encyclopedias, that might be soft on the slavery issue.
On the other hand, during the 1830s and into the 1840s, debate of the slavery issue continued in the Northern media in spite of the unpopularity of the abolitionists; and as the debate continued, Northern attitudes toward slavery gradually changed, as evidenced by the growing success of Lewis Tappen's abolitionist newspaper, The National Era.
Pushing the Northern debate were journalists like the martyred Elijah Lovejoy, Lovejoy's mentor Benjamin Lundy, Lundy's protégé William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Osborne, Elihu Embree and a number of others.
Each of the abolitionist papers served in some way to foment public discussion and thought on the slavery issue. Each abolitionist editor demanded the right to be heard.
The right to speak, the right to be heard, the right to explore differing opinions, ideas, attitudes, were rights based on Jeffersonian concepts of Reason and Enlightenment. These rights of free expression lived among the aristocratic elites of the South until their special interests, their "peculiar institution" on which a way of life was based, was threatened.
Despite serious challenges, that right of free inquiry prevailed in the North. It was crushed in the South--in spite of Jefferson's legacy... and some cynics say that right is remains moribund.
--
A year or so after the Civil War, Elijah Lovejoy's body was brought from the place where it had been hidden it after that November night 25 years before. A solemn funeral service was held during which Lovejoy's dedication to free expression and to individual rights were proclaimed and extolled. The body was then reinterred under a huge memorial marker.
On May 28, 1879, friends and family buried William Lloyd Garrison in the family plot at Roxbury, Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Governor proclaimed an official day of mourning, and in Negro churches throughout the nation-North and South-black men and women gathered in silent prayer. As one biographer wrote later, "The unquiet spirit of William Lloyd Garrison rested at last in the quiet earth."17
Lovejoy was martyred early in the struggle for freedom. Garrison's life spanned the generation of the abolitionist movement into and beyond emancipation. Garrison saw dramatic changes in Northern attitudes about slavery. He was a working anti-slavery journalist when a Northern pro-slavery mob murdered Elijah Lovejoy, and Garrison lived to see Frederick Douglass, a former slave, become a national and respected spokesman for emancipation and the advancement of Negroes.
The irony of William Lloyd Garrison is that the very Constitution he rejected in his uncompromising dogmatic demands for immediate and unconditional emancipation, made possible the goal to which he devoted his life--the abolition of African slavery.
Attitudes and beliefs changed where free debate existed. Where the politically and economically powerful controlled debate and suppressed "incorrect" ideas, attitudes hardened and vested interests held sway.
In the North where rights of free expression and free discussion were protected, the abolitionist press was effective. Because of the press, public discussion of slavery occurred and attitudes changed. Because of their ability to share ideas, to proclaim opinions, to voice challenges to the the established order, the quest of Lovejoy and his fellow abolitionists was successful.
Elijah Lovejoy died in 1837, a martyr to the cause of freedom and free expression. Garrison benefited from Lovejoy's sacrifice. However, one wonders, had Garrison the power possessed by the Southern elites, the Southern aristocracy, would Garrison have permitted those with whom he disagreed the same freedoms he used so effectively?
Garrison, like the leadership of the South, knew he was right, and he permitted no disagreement, no challenge, no ideas in conflict with his own. Garrison made clear that he was all for suppressing wrong ideas... and he knew what was wrong!
One wonders too about how a modern generation hears and applies the lessons of Lovejoy, the battles of the abolitionists to be heard, the suppression of challenges to the established order by the Southern aristocracy--the efforts by Southern elites to protect their narrow self-interest -- free expression tolerated in the North, suppressed in the South?
Humankind, however, is stubborn; and our species continues to fight the same battles over and over.
We don't listen. We forget.
We sometimes find ourselves eating eggs at breakfast... and we eat them again at suppertime... and we sometimes even eat them in the den in front of evening television.
One tends to expect suppression of unpopular ideas among the less educated and within the political and social backwaters of the world.
Surely suppression does not exist among modern educated elites! Surely we've learned lessons from the example of the aristocracy of the antbellum South. Surely we have resurrected here in the last days of the 20th century the 18th century Jeffersonian ideal of toleration -- toleration even of those ideas with which we don't agree. After all, don't we believe with Milton and Jefferson that when Truth and Falsehood grapple in a free and open encounter; who ever knew of Truth being put to the worse? Truth's victory in a free and open field, said Milton, is the best and surest suppression of falsity.
Surely the sacrifices of 19th century men like Lovejoy and his abolitionist cohorts resulted in enlightenment for their 20th century progeny.
Surely!
In November, 1966, pro-affirmative action students stole and destroyed 23,000 copies, the entire press run, of The Daily Californian, the University of California at Berkeley's student newspaper, after the paper ran an editorial supporting a public vote on whether state affirmative action programs should be continued.
Pro-Jewish groups in 1995 threatened the editorial staff of New York's Columbia University's Daily Spectator when the newspaper published an editorial written by the president of the Black Students Organization implying that Jews played a part in the oppression of blacks.
In May, 1997, the president of the University of Great Falls took to task student editors of the school newspaper for publishing birth control information. The president of the university ordered the paper to reject all birth control advertisements because, he said, he had received complaints from some readers.
State officials moved in 1997 to exercise editorial control over Texas student newspapers. One official with the Texas Office of the General Counsel explained that the state needed to establish publication guidelines permitting prior review and censorship.
At Oregon's Linfield College in 1996, students stole hundreds of copies of the student paper, The Linfield Review, on the eve of Parents' Weekend. The stolen issue, according to some campus leaders, contained a crime story that placed the college in a bad light.
Right here at UT Chattanooga about six years ago a journalism student working in student affairs the Saturday morning of high school visit day confiscated all of the student newspapers from the University Center because of a front page story she thought would make a bad impression on prospective students.
A group of disgruntled students at Eastfield College recently destroyed 1,700 copies of their school's student newspaper, Et Cetera, because of an editorial cartoon the angry students claimed was "racist."
Several women students stole and destroyed two-thousand copies of the Northern Essex Community College Observer in the fall of 1996. The women said they wanted the papers destroyed because they did not agree with a story on welfare mothers.
...and just last week we read in The Chronicle of Higher Education, that a group of Cornell University students were so upset with their student newspaper, The Cornell Review, that they confiscated and burned, depending on what source one uses, "hundreds" of copies - or - "fewer than a hundred" copies of the offending publication. The issue contained an editorial cartoon attacking abortion in the black community. University officials said they did not intervene because they saw in the episode no danger to life or property.
We might ask tonight - what about danger to free inquiry? what about danger to free speech? what about danger to free expression?
What about the lessons of the past?
We, as historians, I submit, have a huge responsibility to share with our contemporaries the stories and the lessons from our past.
Lovejoy, Garrison, and their abolitionist press colleagues won their battle.
Their war... however, our war for individual freedom, free expression, and for toleration continues.
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Bibliography
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Blassingame, John W. ed. The Frederick Douglass Papers. Vol. 2. series I, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.
Dillon, Merton L. Elijah P. Lovejoy, Abolitionist Editor. Urbana: University of Illinois, 1961.
Dumond, Dwight Lowell. Antislavery Origins of the Civil War in the United States. 1 ed., Ann Arbor paperbacks, AA28, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1959.
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Eaton, Clement. Freedom of Thought in the Old South, Durham, Duke University, 1940.
Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery: 1830-1860. The New American Nation, ed. Henry S. and Richard B. Morris Commager. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960.
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The Liberator, 7 November 1835
Last updated: November 24, 1997
comments to: commdept@cecasun.utc.edu
