Selections: Mr. Birney's Letter To Col. Stone

To Col. Stonb:- Sir- A few days since I was told by a friend, that he had read in the New York Spectator of which you are the editor, this assertion: "Mr. Birney is not the only brawlcr who has sold his slavesand turned abolitionist." He had not the paper with him, but he assured me, that I might rely on the substantial accuracy of the words, as above quoted. The accusation it involves ís a senous one to myself individually, and raay, if unanswered, have an injurious infiuence on the cause of human liberty, in which, with many others much moredistinguished than myself, I am employingthe. humble powers with which it has pleased God lo endow me. It is only in the Jatter view - for as to myself, Í beiieve, I could bear patiently the wrong you have incautiously inflicled - that I have thought it proper to transmit to yoü for pnblication the following statement, which I ought not to doubt, from your christian pro fession you will take pleasure in laying befo!r'e the public, ihroughthe medium you used to acquainting them with your accusation. At the linie [1818] I determined to remove from Kentucky to Alabama - I was the holder of a few slaves, principally domestics, or house servants, given to me by my grandfather, my father, and thetatherot Mrs. Ji. Intending to engage in planting, I sold nearly all my property m Kentucky, with the view of investing the proceeds in slaves and land in the South. Including those obtained by purchase, and those already méntioned, I had on my settlement in Alabama, as a planter, as nearly as I can now remember, about thirty. Two or three years afterwards, I received from my falher five more. My habits at this period of my life tended more to the dissipation than to the accu mul at on of wealth. In a few years my circumstances became embarrassed, though not insolvent - and J found it necessary to resume the practice of the lavv - which from the time of my removal to Alabama I had rel inquished. lt became necessary also, in order to meet my responsibility and preserve my credit that I should sell my land and slaves. Beforemaking any contract for the sale of my slaves, I informed them of my situation, and consulted their wishes in the selection of a purchaser. They had }ess aversion to being sold than they would formerly have had - because I had found it necessary to the prosecution of my professional pursuits, to remove from my plantation tc-Huntsville,sixteen miles distant, tluis' leaving them for the last year, entirely in the charge of an overseer. In the sale I made a short time afterwards to a planter whose land adjoined mine, and whose character ns a humane master was well known. to my slaves, I reservëd my domestic servants - five ín number--a man, his wife and three children. This sale was made in 1824, at atime when my opinions on the subject of slaveholding did not materially differ frorri those which prevailèd among the generality of planters. My religlous professions and connexíon with thechurch took place in the spring of 1826. For several years I had no other slaves, th'an the fíve I have mentioned as domestics. In the autu'mn of 1829-30, an elderly man and his wife, held by an inkeeper at wh'ose house I usually boarded whilst attending a neighboring court, became solicitous that I should buy them. - The innkeeper was addicted to fits of intemperance, and while they were on him he would compel ths oíd negro to amuse him by exercising hisskill acqnired in his younger days- in playing vulgar tunes on the fiddle. The oíd man being a member of the Methodist church, and an occasional exhorter, considered his participation in such things as inconsistent with his religions station, and feit the necessity undèr which he was placed as a great grievance. This, in addition to other reasons, induced me to purchase him and his wife, at the pvice set on. them bythe innkeeper. They were not long in my ppssession till the husband found ii Huntsville an old acquaintance, in a gen tleman who was about removing fron Huntsville to the neighborhood of Louis ville in Kentucky. They expressed a desire to remove with him, on accoant as they stated of their being thus brought into the neighborhood of some of theii friends and relations who resided near Louisville. They persuaded the gentleman to offer for them the same price I hadgiven - though it was not all to be paid in cash, as I had paid it. A part of it was to be paid in furniture for which I had no pressing necessity. However, this was made no impediment to thewiiipjiaumtJiu ut meir wisnes - though they would doubtless have brought much more bad tliey been set up for sale tothe higbest bidder. Up to 1831 my professional business had been profitable and my pecuniary means had again began to accumulate; I determined to expend them together with a gift of money I had received about this time, in the establishment of a stock farm, because it could be conducted with comparatively few slaves. To this end I bought partly from an individual and partly from the government, several hundred acres of cbeap land. In November of that year, I bought from a Tennesseean, a negro woman with her child, a little girl about four yenrs oíd. Before I had made any other purchases of slaves, a lady in Huntsville who had secured to her several slaves, proposed to me, through her husband, to pledge to me two of them, for a sumof money of which hestood in need. Thesum ío be advanced was supposed to be their value, taking into the estímate the risk of their lives during the time the money should be retained. I acceded totne proposition, took into my use the two slaves, and kept them on this contract. till within a short time of my removal to Kentucky,in the autumn of 1833. The money was then returned and the slaves redeliveredto the lady. In the beginning of 1833, I hired from an adminisfrator for that year, five slaves, a man, his wife and their three children. They remained on my farm, till I was about leaving Alabama; at the proper time they were delivered up to the gentleman from whom they were hired. These circumsiances, in relation to the pledged and hired slaves are mentioned to correct misrepresentations that have been frequently made in the North, by some of my southern acquaintance, as to the extent of my connexion with slavery, at the time I proposed to remove from Alabama, They have represented me as holding slaves to some considerable extent, and as selling all or nearly all of them in order to avoid loss in any conversión to abolitionism. - These misstatements have doubtless been often made inconsiderately and ignorantly by those vvho wouïd do more to injure the cause of emancipation, than they would to injure me. Yet in a few instances, if my information be correct, they have been made by persons whose knowledge of my circumstances at that time, takes Iaway every excuse which charity can plead for them on the ground of ignorance. At this time, the autumn of 1833, 1 held as slaves, the wornan and child above mentioned and five house servants. I was then and had been more than a year before, the advocate of the American Colonization society. I do not novv remember, that my views as to the right of the slave to his Iiberty, and the duly of the master to emancípate, were much in advance of those usually entertained by colonizationists. Certain it is, I looked forward to no time, I anticipated no circumstatices, which would ever bring me to consider them as I now do. I had then no expectation that I should at period of my lile deserve the name of an abolitionist, or draw on me persecutions ofsurncient rigor to banish me from Kentucky, where 1 was born- persecutions, from which the Constitutional JEgis of the free State of Ohio, has not yetavailed to defend me. 7 B.eforo breaking up my establishment in Alabama, I proposed to the woman to send her and her child to Liberia, after she had by the service site liad already performed, and by her future hire, returned me the price I had paid for her.- She objected utteriy to going to Liberia. I then proposed to bring her with me to Kentucky, where, ■ after being remunerated by her services for the sum I had paid fof her, I would manumit her and her child, without any condition of removal - in the meantime, giving to the child such education as I eould under existing circumstances. To this she, so far as herself was concerned, to my great surprise, objected-urging that'she was an entire stranger in Kentucky, and thát she did not wish to leave the acquaiiuances she had made since her resiüence in Alabama.Believing her conducl to bealtogethe injudicious, I said to her, that whilst Ife no desire to cpmpel her to either of th courses I had proposed, I could not per mit her to make for her child, the elec tion of remaining behind. So far fron being displeased at this, she expressed he full concurrence, saying she knew he child would be well taken care of, and every provisión made for her that wouk be expected. She preferred being solc to being hired - on account of the better treatment she would receive from a mas ter. than a hirer. I permítted her to select her own master - and, in order that she might have no difficultv in inducing such an one as she might select, to purchase her, I put her price at eighty-five dollars less than I had given for her and ter child. The ad vanee on the price of negroes at this time would have enabled meto have sold her alone at public sale br from seventy-five to one hundredars more than the sum I asked. The gentleman whom she selected - and of whose character for humanity to his slaves, i had received, on enquiry, satisfactory assurances - purchased her without hesitation. 1 was not informed of the reasons of her conduct - so singular as it appeared to me - till she had rejected both m.y propositions leading to her ultímate manumission. I was afterwards told by my overseer, who was warmly attached to my interests, and who, I believe, thought that I was already somewhat fanatical in my desire to oblige the woman; who wanted me to sell her, believing that if I took her to Kentucky,.l would finally emancípate her - that her conduct proceeded from an attachment she had formed for a negro man, who, hesu p posea, naa persuaded üer to object to every proposition which contemplated her removal from that part of the country. The Hule girl, her child, I brought with me, together with the domestic servants already mentioned, to Kentucky in 1833. I had already lost much of my first confideuce in the efficacy of coíonization principies for the extermination of slnvery amonio us. I assistetl, in December 1833, in the org3nization, at Lexington, of a gradual emancipntion society, its principies were somewhatstronger than those of colonization, and wo'jld be more effectual. f enïered on this sciieme willi ardor, and became its active advocate. A short trial of it soon convinced me of its inefficacy to move the hearts of men. Dm ing this winter and the ensuing spring, my mind wasdeeply interested in the whole subject of slavery. I read almostevery wotK i couJd lay my hands on; I talke much of it in public and in private. In th month of May, 1834, I became so fully con vinced of the right uf my slaves to their free dom, and of my duly as a cliristian to give i to them, that I prepared, as well asnow remember, on the first duy of June, a deed o emancipa tion fortheHxI had brought wit tne frora Alabama, and had it duly entered on record in the office of the County Cou.-t o the county in which I lived. They all reinained with me, receiving such woges wit the exception of the lit'le girl- aa were customary in the country. In the previous month of January or Feb ruary, a young negro man, held by the late Jndge Boyle, of Kentucky, earnestly solicited me to buy him, lest at the sale of the estáte he might be sold to some person of whose chnracter and temper he knew nothing. At first I objecterl, on the ground íhat I mended never ngiim to pnrch ase a slave, to be held in the absolute sense. He left me, but returned again bringing as an oid lo his own importunity the recommendation of thebrother-in-!aw of JudgeB., who held as slaves some other members of the family. He prevailed, an this second applicaiion- and 1 paid the price of him to the Executors. Before I consented to do so, we had this understonding: that sa soon as by the allowance of fair wnges he should return me the money I had ndvanced, be shouid go free: that, in the mean time, I would have him taught to read, and f he provd apt to lonrn, writing nnd the elementan? rules of rithmeiic -that I would ask of him no unreasonable services- but, that if he should fail to perform with fidelify wh.a.t I required of him,. I sbonid return him to the etale of absolute slavery, from which I considered I was taking him It was but a short time before 1 becarne satisfied that his charactcr had been gryssly though I will not suffer rnyself to think intentional.y misrepresenied to me, He prored trilling, lazy, and troiiWeaorne omong ihe rest oftheservnnts. Epecially provoking to me was his reiterated harsh trentment oftlie liitle girl above mentoned, for whom, as she had no relative near lHr, I feit almost a parentnl tenderness.' After bearing whh lwrn for several montbs, and after persuading and admonishing him, I foond it was out of the question tó keep him uboot me any longer. In ihe monlh of July I thitik it was, I gave him a wnting ai.tborizing him to obtai for his muster any one who wonld give me wilhin one himr'rcd doUaraof the price I had paid for him, akhough I think k probable, had I offered for the highest price, withom regard to the character of ihe preba?err I might have reeeived1 for him one hundred dolfars more than I gave. It turned outr that the rentieman had unwarfly recommended him to me, offërpd to become the purchaser; if I would gnurt a longer credH for a part oí thesumthanl had pr-pr se) n my .written. note. To this I assenied, the sameman had, a short time previuus, become ihc nwner, by purchose, of the farm belonging t the estáte of Jndge Boy le; so that the)oung man was returned to the very place from whicb J had taken him. Before the last paymeut fell due, I became Convinced, notwithstanding what I had done was nothing more than a literal execution ofthe arrangement to which he had assented, (f such a thing can be predicated of a slave), that I liad doi.e wroug n selling him. I wrote to the gentleman who had boiight him, that I wished to repurchase the elave, that I might give him his freedom. His repíy inform 5d that he was out of his power, as he had sent him down the Mississippi with a Southern plnnler. This case has given me more uneasinesa of mind thun any of the others, whilst most persons under the sume pressure of influence which was then bearing on me, would probably have actedas I did, yet I do noteeek to jiistity t. The influences which warped and obscured iny moral visión, I ought to have re sisted. The above statement shows my connectiou with slavery for nearly twenty years. There has been no concealment or suppression on my part of any of the acts since I have become an abolitionist. have often re[eated them to friends vho have inquired concerning them. The enemies of abolition have often perverted or misunderstood them, and trumpeted them to the world n a manner not unlike that which it has pleased yon to adopt. I should have published them in he journals of the country, had I not hought it would have been impertinentto consider such small matters at all affecting the magnificent and awful cause which has brought in opposition the friends of liberiy and the upholders of slavery. At present I think differently, an importanoe having been given to my conduct which renders an exposition of itnecessary; wjiilst God hasgranted me asi trust, repentanceforitserrors, hehas not altogether withheld frora me the humility which can bear theír exposure. Had you been as careful as it seems to me you had ought to have been, before venturing so deadly an assult, on the reputation of a Christian brother, you would either previously have asked of me, if the acts on which it was to proceed were rue, or you would have given the authorty on which you have made your injuídus accusation. Hereafter, sir, should yotr deern any art of my private history worthy of ublication, through the Journal under our control, I will, at your request, and on my own consent to its propriety, furnish you with statements which will stand any test your friends or mine may choose ta appïy to them.