One of the most important social, economic, and political problems of this early period was the question of slavery. Naturally the Disciples were divided on this matter, according to their location. Since, however, no binding rules could be passed for the whole, no general separation took place. Local divisions, nevertheless, were not unknown. On the whole, most of the leaders of the movement were strongly opposed to slavery. Thomas Campbell had established a school in Burlington, Kentucky. This institution soon became very popular. One Lord's Day, in the summer of 1819, he noticed a large number of negroes amusing themselves in a nearby grove. He immediately asked them to come into the school room to hear the reading of the Bible. They came gladly, and he read and talked to them. The next day one of his friends came to him, and told him that he had violated the state law which forbade any address to negroes except in the presence of one or more white witnesses. The friend informed him that because of his ignorance of the law nothing would be done about the matter, but he advised him not to repeat the offence. Campbell was thunderstruck at this news, and immediately determined to leave Kentucky where such a law was possible. He persisted in this resolution in spite of the remonstrances of his family and the entreaties of his friends, for he feared that his family might form marriage alliances with the slaveholders. Accordingly, he accepted his son's offer to assist him in Buffalo Seminary.

This school was in Virginia, a slave state, but it was in the northern part, bordering upon the free states of Pennsylvania and Ohio, and in a region where slavery had only a nominal existence. The negroes who remained with their masters did so because they wanted to, for escape was easy. The people themselves took little interest in slavery as an institution. Even though willing to uphold the laws on the subject, they tacitly allowed many violations. Thus, no one was molested for teaching slaves to read, and freedom of speech was granted in large degree." Joseph Doddridge, an Episcopal minister in Wellsburg, Brooke County, and a warm personal friend of the Campbells, published in 1824 a book which would have caused him much trouble further south. Among other things, Doddridge wrote:

"It is a curious circumstance that while our missionaries are generously traversing the most inhospitable regions, and endeavoring with incessant toil to give the science of Europe and America, together with the Christian revelation, to the benighted pagans, most of the legislatures of our slave holding States have made it a highly penal offence to teach a slave a single letter. While, at great expense and waste of valuable lives, we are endeavoring to teach the natives of Africa the use of letters, no one durst attempt to do the same thing for the wretched descendants of that ill-fated people, bound in the fetters of slavery in America. Thus our slavery chains the soul as the body. Would a Mussulman hinder his slave from learning to read the Alcoran ? Surely he would not.

48 Richardson, R. Memoirs of Alexander Campbell, I., 494-498.

"We are often told by slave holders that they would willingly give freedom to their slaves if they could do it with safety:-if they could get rid of them when free; but are they more dangerous when free than when in slavery! But admitting the fact that, owing to their ignorance, stupidity, and bad habits, they are unfit for freedom, we ourselves have made them so. We debase them to the condition of brutes, and then use that debasement as an argument for perpetuating their slavery.'' “

In referring to the cruel scourging of negroes, a brutality which he had witnessed while at school in Maryland, the author said:

"The recollections of the tortures which I witnessed so early in life, is still a source of affliction to my mind. Twenty-four hours never pass during which my imagination does not present me with the afflicting view of the slave or servant writhing beneath the lashes of his master, and cringing from the brine with which he salted his stripes."'"

Such views were fearlessly expressed in northern Virginia. Thomas Campbell, nevertheless, was careful to place his family just across the border in the free state of Pennsylvania.

Since Alexander Campbell knew that the relation of master and servant was recognized in the New Testament and the duties of the parties described, he deemed it not inconsistent to assume the legal rights of a master or to sell those rights as he did in one or two cases. Slaves under his care, nevertheless, received religious instruction and en

"Richardson, R. Memoirs of Alexander Oampbell, I., 499, 500. See also I., 531-534.

48 Ibid., I., 500.

joyed the opportunity of learning to read. Moreover, because he realized the danger of abuse, he was always in favor of emancipation, and he set free the two or three slaves under his control as soon as they were able to take care of themselves." On certain occasions, also, he denounced slavery in no uncertain terms. Thus, after the Southampton Slave Insurrection, he wrote:

"Slavery, that largest and blackest blot upon our national escutcheon, that many-headed monster, that Pandora's box, that bitter root, that blighting and blasting curse under which so fair and so large a portion of our beloved country groans that deadly Upas, whose breath pollutes and poisons everything within its influence is now evoking the attention of this ancient and venerable commonwealth in a manner as unexpected as it is irresistible and cheering to every philanthropist to every one who has a heart to feel, a tear to shed over human wretchedness, or a tongue to speak for degraded humanity. We have always thought, and frequently said, since we became acquainted with the general views and character of the people of Virginia, that there was as much republicanism in Virginia, even in the slave holding districts, as could be found among the same number of inhabitants in any State in the Union. And, moreover, we have thought that if the abolition of slavery was legitimately to be laid before the people of this commonwealth, as it now is, there would be found even among slave-holders a majority to concur in a national system of emancipation.'' 50

With regard to the actual project for getting rid of slavery, Campbell proposed that the ten

47 Richardson, R. Memoirs of Alexander Campbell, I., 501, 502. so Ibid., II., 867.

million dollars previously used yearly for the national debt just wiped out, should go to the colonization of the colored race as stated in the following terms:

"Be it enacted, That from and after the first day of January, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-four, the sum of ten millions of dollars shall be annually appropriated to the organization of all people of color, either slaves or free persons, in until the soil of our free and happy country shall not be trod by the foot of a slave, nor enriched by a drop of his sweat or blood; that all the world may not believe that we are a nation of hypocrites, asserting all men to have certain natural and inherent rights, which in our practice we deny; and shedding crocodile tears over the fall of Warsaw, and illuminating for the revolution of the Parisians, while we have millions of miserable human beings at home held in involuntary bondage, in ignorance, degradation and vice by a republican system of free slave holding.'

Campbell visited extensively in the South. After such a trip to South Carolina, he wrote:

“We conclude that slavery has proved no greater blessing to the far South that it has done to Virginia. It has exhausted whatever of natural fertility had been orginally in the soil; and South Carolina seems to have once had a reasonable proportion of fruitful territory. It has superinduced the worst system of agriculture which one could easily imagine; and it has imposed on the whole community views, feelings and habits exceedingly inimical to the resuscitation of the soil and the agricultural improvement and advancement of the State. Tobacco, rice and cotton are profitable crops for slave labor, but exceedingly unprofitable

51 Richardson, R. Memoirs of Alexander Campbell, II., 868.