Society, whose edition of the powerful and uncompromising
sermon of the younger Edwards on "The Injustice and Impolicy of the
Slave Trade and of the Slavery of the Africans" was published at Boston
for circulation at the South, in hopes of promoting the universal
abolition of slavery. The list might be indefinitely extended to include
the foremost names in the church in that period. There was no adverse
party.

At the West an audacious movement of the slavery extension politicians,
flushed with their success in Missouri, to introduce slavery into
Illinois, Indiana, and even Ohio, was defeated largely by the aid of the
Baptist and Methodist clergy, many of whom had been southern men and had
experienced the evils of the system.[273:2] In Kentucky and Tennessee
the abolition movement was led more distinctively by the Presbyterians
and the Quakers. It was a bold effort to procure the manumission of
slaves and the repeal of the slave code in those States by the agreement
of the citizens. The character of the movement is indicated in the
constitution of the "Moral Religious Manumission Society of West
Tennessee," which declares that slavery "exceeds any other crime in
magnitude" and is "the greatest act of practical infidelity," and that
"the gospel of Christ, if believed, would remove personal slavery at
once by destroying the will in the tyrant to enslave."[274:1] A like
movement in North Carolina and in Maryland, at the same time, attained
to formidable dimensions. The state of sentiment in Virginia may be
judged from the fact that so late as December, 1831, in the memorable
debate in the legislature on a proposal for the abolition of slavery, a
leading speaker, denouncing slavery as "the most pernicious of all the
evils with which the body politic can be afflicted," could say,
undisputed, "_By none is this position denied_, if we except the erratic
John Randolph."[274:2] The conflict in Virginia at that critical time
was between Christian principle and wise statesmanship on the one hand,
and on the other hand selfish interest and ambition, and the prevailing
terror resulting from a recent servile insurrection. Up to this time
there appears no sign of any division in the church on this subject.
Neither was there any sectional division; the opponents of slavery,
whether at the North or at the South, were acting in the interest of the
common country, and particularly in the interest of the States that were
still afflicted w