By the Rivers of Water

by Erskine Clarke

  Leighton knew that, in addition to the cruelty and inhumanity of the international slave trade, what made the proposal to reopen it so full of madness and blind hubris was the fear whites had of blacks. White advocates of colonization had been fueled by a belief that there was no place in America for blacks, that there was a great need to whiten not only Maryland but other states as well. Blacks needed to be sent back to Africa, Latrobe and others had argued, not brought from Africa to America! Leighton knew only too well the disdain and disgust many whites felt toward Africans and their descendants. He knew that respectable scientists were questioning the full humanity of Africans, insisting on the dual origin of the races and comparing Africans to the njina, the newly discovered gorilla. In his travels around the South, Leighton had heard over and over again how whites feared the consequences of emancipation, that with emancipation they would find themselves living among a freed but barbarous people. Given the racism of white Americans, what madness suggested the importation of more Africans? Writing from New York, Leighton clearly saw how the Southern radicals were deepening the existing divisions between the North and the South, and he felt the prospects of war growing more ominous.7

  In the midst of this turmoil, Leighton hoped that the more intelligent and conservative people of the nation would prevail, that they would quell the agitations and preserve the Union. He believed and hoped, he wrote his old colleague B. V. R. James, that the majority of the American people would keep to a sound and prudent path. He clearly hoped that extremes could be avoided, that passions could be cooled, and that, in the providence of God, slavery would die a slow and gentle death under the influence of the gospel and the progress of civilization. And in Monrovia, James, seeing the clouds gathering over his old homeland, wrote to a friend: “How true it is, the greater injury done to the injured, the greater the hatred of those that have done the injury! And such is emphatically the feelings and treatment of the American white man towards the black race. They know they have done him the greatest possible injury, therefore they hate him and despise him!”8

  ABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS elected president in November 1860. There had been four major candidates, but Lincoln, the Republican candidate, had won, with a resounding 59 percent of the electoral college vote. The election showed that a united North was able to decide the nation’s future, and the white South responded with rage. “The Northern people,” wrote a New Orleans newspaper editor, “in electing Mr. Lincoln, have perpetuated a deliberate, cold-blooded insult and outrage on the people of the slaveholding states.” In Columbia, the Southern Presbyterian called on the South to defend its rights and to resist Northern aggression. Disunion was better than subjugation and being ruled by the Northern fanatics who had elected Lincoln. Better to live as a free people, eating only cornbread and wearing only homespun, than remain in the Union as a subjugated province governed by a foreign imperial power.9

  A month after Lincoln’s election, South Carolina voted to secede from the Union. Among those who attended the Secession Convention was Leighton’s kinsman the Reverend Thomas Reese English, a son like Leighton of the Mt. Zion Presbyterian Church. He joined in making the vote for secession unanimous, and after the vote he led the convention in prayer.10

  Leighton and Jane were distraught by these developments. They had family in both the North and the South—Eckards, Bayards, Henrys, and Hodges in the North, and Bayards, McIntoshes, Wilsons, and a host of other relatives along the Black River in the South. In New York, they were part of a large circle of friends and colleagues and were greatly loved and admired by many. They attended the Brick Presbyterian Church, whose pastor, Gardiner Spring, was a prominent member of the Presbyterian Foreign Mission Board and a close colleague of Leighton’s. In Charleston, Columbia, and Savannah, they had old friends—Adgers, Smyths, and Clays, to name only a few.

  So Leighton and Jane felt divided as the nation’s divisions deepened, but their sympathies were clearly with the South. Leighton believed that the question of liberty was at the heart of the crisis. The election of Lincoln appeared a sure sign that the North was claiming its liberty to impose its will on the South. Like the settlers at Cape Palmas and the French in Gabon, the North, by electing Lincoln, was acting in an arrogant, imperialist manner. If the white South had its radicals, the North had its radicals as well—abolitionists who had been calling year after year for the immediate freeing of the slaves in the South. They were ready, Leighton believed, to ignore the laws of the land in order to assert their liberty to follow their own conscience. Now, with the election of Lincoln, Leighton thought, the abolitionists had the power of the federal government behind them as they claimed the liberty to abolish slavery.11

  But Leighton believed the white South had its inalienable liberty, too—the liberty to decide for itself the fate of Southern slaves. Leighton hoped that the South would take the issue of slavery in hand and work out a way for slaves to be eventually liberated. But the white South, not the abolitionist North, was to do the liberating and to make the decisions about when and how the slaves were to be freed. Leighton had been raised on stories of how his grandfather and great-grandfather had resisted British aggression during the American Revolution. They had ridden with Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, to defend their homeland against foreign imperialism, and they had fought for the liberty of those who had settled along the Black River. Now, once more, it seemed, the liberty of his people was being threatened—this time by the tyranny of a Northern majority.12

  So liberty was the issue for Leighton, but even the meaning of the word was contested. Lincoln saw the contest clearly. “We all declare for liberty,” he said, “but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor.” Here, declared Lincoln, “are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name—liberty.”13

  For Leighton, liberty resided in moderation—it could be found only between the extremes of tyranny, on the one hand, and anarchy, on the other. Many of his friends in the North shared such a view and hoped that moderation would prevail against both tyranny and anarchy and keep war from erupting. But like the word “liberty,” the words “tyranny” and “anarchy” meant different things in the North and in the South. The tyranny that Leighton feared was the tyranny of an aggressive North imposing its will on the South. The anarchy he feared was the anarchy of an imposed liberation of slaves who no longer had their true friends, Southern whites, guiding them. But the tyranny that increasing numbers in the North saw was the tyranny of a slave system—the arbitrary power of a slave master to whip and beat, and to buy and sell, black men, women, and children. And while many in the North feared the anarchy that could result if there were an immediate emancipation of slaves, they feared more directly the anarchy of secession, and of a lawless disregard for the Constitution. So in the midst of rising anger, and in the face of incompatible and competing interpretations of liberty, tyranny, and anarchy, Leighton hoped for moderation. But the moderation he hoped for could not bridge the chasm that separated the South from the North, or halt the formation of a Southern confederacy. Leighton’s colleague, James Henley Thornwell, professor of theology at Columbia Theological Seminary, wrote: “Two Governments upon this continent may work out the problem of human liberty more successfully than one.”14

  Leighton had an opportunity to spell out his understanding of these issues a few days after South Carolina seceded, when he exchanged a series of frank and painful letters with Jane’s cousin Charles Hodge in Princeton. Leighton and Hodge had been correspondents when the Wilsons were at Fair Hope and Baraka, and during the years the Wilsons were in New York, the Princeton professor had become Leighton’s closest friend and confidant. But, in spite of family ties and deep friendship, the national crisis divided them.

  Leighton knew
that Hodge was heart and soul a conservative. The Princeton professor believed in tradition and he believed in order. And although he thought slavery was a great blight on the nation’s life, what troubled him the most was not the slave’s bondage but what he saw as a coming wave of disorder and anarchy and the looming threat of war and its chaos and bloodshed. Hodge had long viewed abolitionists as a radical fringe in the North, and he had condemned their disregard for the orderly processes of law and civil society. But he thought secessionists were not only radical but also criminal, traitors who were threatening to bring down on the nation all of the terrors of a civil war. He longed, like his friend Leighton, for moderation, for conservative people in the North and the South to bridge their differences, to find compromises, and to restore order and peace to the land.15

  Shortly after South Carolina seceded, Hodge wrote an article on “The State of the Country,” and sent a copy to Leighton before he had the article published. Hodge condemned what he regarded as the extremism of the abolitionists and the way they were treading on the South’s liberty; the South, he said, should be able to work out its own answer to slavery. But in even stronger language he condemned the “absurdities, abnormities, and evils which flow from secession,” likening those who would support it to Benedict Arnold.16

  Leighton replied in a long letter. Hodge’s article, he wrote, had much that would irritate both the North and the South. Leighton acknowledged that there was wisdom in what Hodge had written, but he strongly disagreed with much that was in the article. Leighton confessed to his old friend the deep grief he felt over their disagreements and his inability to bridge the differences that separated them. This inability did not stop Leighton, however, from making his arguments as he sought to show that the South was the injured party and the North the aggressor. White Southerners felt oppressed, he wrote, because the North was seeking to impose its will on the South and was “planting her heel upon the neck of the South.” Leighton said he prayed most earnestly for the preservation of the whole Union. And, he added, “if the North will concede what is just, and what the South imperatively needs, the Union may be saved. Otherwise, we go to pieces.” What Leighton obviously believed the South needed was to be left alone, free from Northern domination. The South, he thought, was only claiming its inalienable right to work out its own answer to the slave question and its liberty to forge its own destiny.17

  Hodge replied: “My dear, precious friend. Your letter fills me with despair. That a man so wise, so gentle, so good as you are, one whom I unfeignedly regard as one of the best men I ever knew, should evidently approve of what I consider great crimes and disapprove of what I understand the plainest principles of truth and justice, shakes all confidence in human convictions. I never felt so deeply before that opinions are not thoughts, but feelings.” Hodge had come to the conclusion that carefully constructed arguments were not shaping responses to the crisis in either the North or the South. Feelings, rooted in the deepest memories and associations people had, were shaping what they were seeing in the unfolding drama of secession. Hodge and Leighton, who shared so much in outlook and affection, were looking at the same developments in the nation’s life, and yet, Hodge wrote, “we are almost as far apart as though we did not believe in the same God and Saviour or recognize the same moral law.” If we, wrote Hodge, “who love each other and who sincerely desire that truth and justice should prevail, thus differ, what must be the case of those who are not thus united, or who are animated by feelings of mutual enmity!”18

  Leighton wrote back: “My dear friend and brother. If the differences of views between you and myself on the general state of the country is the cause of despondency on the one side, it is of real heartfelt grief on the other.” He reiterated and expanded once again his belief that the South was the aggrieved party, that it had been abandoned by the conservative men in the North who had stood with it against the attacks of the abolitionists, and that, with the election of Lincoln, the North was acting in an imperialistic and aggressive manner toward the South. He concluded: “I do not expect to pursue this correspondence further. I am afraid that the time for argument is gone by, but whatever may happen, I trust I shall always regard yourself as one of the dearest friends I have had. God save us all from terrible times and scenes.”19

  So the correspondence between the old friends came to an end. Each wanted compromises to preserve the Union. But the distance between the North and the South was too great to be bridged by well-meaning moderates seeking understanding. One had to be on one side or the other; one had to mean one thing or the other; one had to make a decision for Union or secession.

  DURING THE COMING months—from January to early April 1861—as many people in both the North and the South struggled to avoid a war, Leighton and Jane stayed in their New York home and agonized about what they were to do. Was it possible for them to stay in their comfortable Manhattan home, and for Leighton to continue his work with the Mission Board? Could they abandon their family members in the South, leaving them to face the horrors of a looming civil war and the wrath of a powerful and aggressive North? What was the path of duty, of Christian love and discipleship? For the moment, an answer did not have to be given. Leighton continued his work at the Mission Board and was busy writing the annual report for the May meeting of the Presbyterian General Assembly to be held in Philadelphia. His hopes rose and fell for the Union as he watched the developments around him. His letters to the missions in Africa told how he looked for every promising sign of compromise, and how he grieved every failed attempt to find some way to avoid bloodshed. At the end of December 1860, he wrote the mission on Corisco saying that with the election of Lincoln, the nation was in the greatest distress. Southerners, he said, regarded Lincoln as an abolitionist. Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Georgia were preparing to follow South Carolina out of the Union unless they received guarantees protecting them from the aggression of the Lincoln administration. On February 1, 1861, he wrote James in Monrovia that he expected that two nations would be formed, but hoped that, after tempers cooled, they might be reunited in a stronger union. By March he was feeling encouraged. When he wrote again to the Corisco mission, he said that the fear of civil war was passing away. A Southern confederacy had been established, and people North and South were waiting to see if it would include all or only a part of the slave states. On April 9, James wrote Leighton: “I greatly rejoice and thank God for the favorable intelligence which our last papers bring and truly hope during the lull of the fearful storm of passions which the inauguration of the new President has produced, the people of all classes will take time to consider and again come to their right senses.” Three days later, on April 12, 1861, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. The Civil War had begun.20

  LEIGHTON AND JANE knew that the time to act had arrived. They sold their New York home and its furnishings and purchased a house in Savannah from a Georgia family that had moved to New York. The Savannah house was a handsome townhouse located a short distance from the old Bayard home in the heart of the city. But it was bought sight unseen, so anxious were they to transfer the proceeds of the New York house to an investment in the South. After saying their goodbyes to many friends, Leighton and Jane, together with eleven-year-old Cornelia, left the city for the Eckard home in Pennsylvania, where Margaret and James Eckard now lived with their children. There the Wilsons awaited the meeting of the Presbyterian General Assembly, which was to be held in Philadelphia in the middle of May. Leighton hoped that the church, which had not become divided along North-South lines, would somehow stay united, and that it might contribute in some way to the efforts that many were still making to pursue peace and reunion. And he wanted to give his reports on the mission in Africa and among the Native American nations of the Southwest.21

  The waiting was painful and awkward. Not only were Leighton and Jane facing a separation from those they loved, but they also found themselves among family members who were strong supporters
of Lincoln. Most distressing was their relationship with the Bayards in Philadelphia. Jane had long regarded her cousins Theodosia Bayard and Elizabeth Bayard Henry as sisters, and Leighton had a close and affectionate relationship with them and other members of the family. In 1861, however, Elizabeth’s son, Alexander Henry, was serving as mayor of Philadelphia, and he was strongly identified with the Union cause and Lincoln’s commitment to preserve the Union. Jane was particularly distressed by the resulting tensions and felt great reluctance to leave those whom she loved, whatever their political positions. And Margaret was torn as well. Both sisters had deep ties North and South and divided hearts. And both sisters were wives, committed by love and a sense of wifely duty to remain with their husbands. So out of the swirling, turbulent power of conflicting loyalties and emotions, they faced the bitter realities of a divided nation and family.22

  The Presbyterian General Assembly met the third week in May. Leighton attended as a member of the Board of Foreign Missions and not as a voting member of the assembly—his South Carolina presbytery refused to send any commissioners. This meant that, except for his reports on missions, he had no voice or vote. He spent most of his time watching the proceedings.23

  These conservative Old School Presbyterians meeting in Philadelphia had been able to remain together while other denominations—most dramatically, Baptists and Methodists in the 1840s—had split North and South over the question of slavery. The Presbyterians had been able to maintain their unity by clinging to the doctrine of the spirituality of the church. The church, it was said, was to deal with spiritual matters and not political ones. So, for a generation, slavery had been banned from the debates of the church—except when the Presbyterians had been forced to defend themselves from the attacks of Scottish Presbyterians, who were demanding that the American church denounce slavery and slaveholders. But now, the guns around Charleston harbor had fired on Fort Sumter and its Federal troops. In Philadelphia, it seemed all too clear that Southern whites had plunged into anarchy, sedition, and rebellion. As soon as the assembly convened, there were demands that it make a statement supporting the Union. Gardiner Spring, Leighton’s friend and New York pastor, moved that “this General Assembly . . . do hereby acknowledge and declare our obligations to promote and perpetuate, so far as in us lies, the integrity of these United States, and to strengthen, uphold, and encourage, the Federal Government in the exercise of all its functions under our noble Constitution: and to this Constitution in all its provisions, requirements, and principles, we profess our unabated loyalty.” The motion passed by a large majority.24