September 21, 1849
In an article titled, Ecclesiastical Action Respecting Slavery, signed “C.K.W.”, here is a critical report of actions taken by the ministers at a May annual meeting. The ministers have correctly answered the question about whether the scriptures sanction slavery, with a resounding “no”, and this article reminds them of ” an assertion made long ago by the abolitionists, and more recently by The Rev. Albert Barnes ‘There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it.'” Then there is sarcastic comment on the part of the report to the church in which it speaks of efforts to bring about an end of slavery. This section “probably required more labor in its composition, and more care in its revision, than all the rest of the pamphlet.” The article then quotes the paragraph of the account, which purports to tell the history of anti-slavery in the country, and C.K.W. comments: “Not only is nothing said of the labors of individual and associated abolitionists, and of the opposition, individual and associated, of the clergy, but the statement is so ingeniously framed as to represent the clergy as the earliest and most efficient laborers in the work of emancipation…..”
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