¹ See Thompson, R. E., A History of the Presbyterian Churches in the United States, chs. X, XI.Google Scholar

² This article draws in considerable part from a chapter of “The Earlier Life of Robert J. Breekinridge, 1800–1845,” the writer's doctoral dissertation in the Department of History, University of Chicago, 1932.

³ Brown, O. to Breckinridge, , 12 24, 1824. Breckinridge MSS., in Library of Congress.Google Scholar

⁴ Breckinridge, John to Breckinridge, Robert J., 03 31, 1829.Google Scholar

⁵ In 1833 ninety-six blacks were sent from Kentucky to Liberia by the Colonization Society; of these, eleven were slaves freed by Breckinridge. Together with this gift Breckinridge furnished “considerable money and supplies for their maintenance after their arrival in Africa.” Martin, Asa E., The Anti-slavery Movement in Kentucky Prior to 1850; Louisville, 1917, 59Google Scholar. Yet it appears that in the next year he owned slaves not provided for in any scheme of future emancipation, and a minister suggested that his words would gain force if he would follow his brother William's example in freeing his slaves. (Steel, to , E. J. B., 12 25, 1834.Google Scholar) Whatever the exact status of all his slaves in 1834, an Emancipation Deed indicates that early in 1835 Breckinridge provided that his mature slaves should all be free within a few years and the younger ones upon attaining the age of twenty-five. (Copy of the Emancipation Deed, dated Jan. 13, 1835.) His motive was stated to be “an earnest desire to obey the gospel of God and add to the happiness of all mankind ….”

⁶ Kentucky Reporter, 05 5, 1830.Google Scholar

⁷ Ibid., May 19, 1830.

⁸ Kentucky Reporter, 05 14, 1830Google Scholar. See Breckinridge, 's Address Before the Colonization Society of Kentucky (01, 1831)Google Scholar for a fuller statement of his colonization ideas.

⁹ Thompson, , op. cit., p. 123.Google Scholar

¹⁰ The Biblical Repertory, 12:301 (04, 1836).Google Scholar

¹¹ Ibid., p. 305.

¹² Thomas, Thomas E., Correspondence of Thomas Ebenezer Thomas, Mainly Relating to the Anti-slavery Conflict in Ohio, Especially in the Presbyterian-Church. Dayton, Ohio, 1909, 115–117.Google Scholar

¹³ Liberator, 08 20, 1834.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Earle, Fox, American Colonization Society, 169Google Scholar; African Repository, 14:137Google Scholar ff. In the weeks following the visit of the Breckinridges to Boston in 1834, Garrison published a series of articles on. the Maryland Colonization Society's plan of “Cruelty and Oppression.” Liberator, 08 9–20, 1834.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Ezra Hall, Gillett, History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, 2:524, n. 2.Google Scholar

¹⁶ The resolution, which carried 154 to 87, declared that “inasmuch as the constitution of the Presbyterian Church … declares that no Church Judieatory ought to pretend to make laws, to bind the conscience, in virtue of their own authority; and as the urgency of the business of the Assembly, and the shortness of time …. render it impossible to deliberate and decide judiciously on the subject of slavery in its relation to the church; therefore resolved, that this whole subject be indefinitely postponed.” Minutes of the General Assembly, 1836, pp. 272, 273Google Scholar; Biblical Repertory, 07 1836, pp. 440, 441Google Scholar. Birney, in The American Churches the Bulwarks of American Slavery, (p. 36) states that during the sessions of the Assembly the southern delegates met apart and resolved not to submit should the Asembly do anything to make slavery “an immorality.” No confirmatory evidence of such a meeting has been found and it is Possible that Birney may have confused this with the Old School Convention of 1837.

¹⁷ Zebulon, Crocker, The Catastrophe of the Presbyterian Church in 1837, p. 65.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Thompson, , op. cit., p. 133.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Crocker, , op. cit., p. 64.Google Scholar

²⁰ In 1836 the membership of the Presbyterian church was 220,557, of which all but 57,309 were in the North, giving the South but 21% of the total. In 1838, as a result of the schism, the South had 53,792 memfcers of a total Old South membership of 377,665. The South had now 30% of the total. These figures have been compiled from reports of the presbyteries to the General Assembly. See Minutes of the General Assembly, 1836, and 1838.Google Scholar

²¹ Western Presbyterian Herald, 06 1, 1837.Google Scholar

²² Ibid., June 1, 1837.

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ Ibid. How far the Assembly of 1837 -went to placate the South may be seen in portions of its “Circular Letter” and its “Narrative of the State of Religion.” The latter voiced the opinion that slaves are “providentially placed among us; and their circumstances call upon us for that moral and religious instruction which will conduce to their happiness, and prepare them to perform their duties as men and Christians. The prayer of every benevolent heart should ascend to God for their best interests, and especially that all classes of them may be delivered from that worst of bondage the thraldom of sin and Satan.” The dominance of an extreme social conservatism in the Old School organization, for the next generation, is well foreshadowed in the following extract from the “Circular Letter”:

One of the most formidable evils of tie present crisis is the wide spread and ever restless spirit of radicalism, manifest both in the church and in the state. Its leading principle everywhere seems to be to level all order to the dust. Mighty only in power to destroy, it has driven its deep agitations through the bosom of our beloved church. Amidst the multiplied and revolting forms in which it has appeared, it is always animated by one principle. It is ever the same levelling revolutionary spirit, and tends to the same ruinous results. It has, in succession, driven to extreme fanaticism the great cause of revivals of religion, of temperance, and of the rights of man.

Minutes of the General Assembly, 3837, pp. 507, 509–510Google Scholar. There is an indication of how faithful the Presbyterian Church (Old School) remained to this social philosophy in a tribute by the great South Carolinian, Thornwell, a decade later. Thornwell characterized the stand of the Old School as “wise, moderate, and scriptural …. based upon …. the only ground upon which the religious denominations of the country, if not the country itself, can be saved from division and disunion.” Southern Presbyterian Review, 12 1848, pp. 311, 328.Google Scholar

²⁶ Gillett, , op. cit., 2:522–527.Google Scholar

²⁷ There is no space here to discuss the many and persistent charges which New School Presbyterians heaped upon Breekinridge for his part in the schism. His position had been a most difficult one, and the complete reconciliation of his problem impossible. “The Southern members, want us to say things in favour of slavery, which are both false and impossible; and seem resolved to press it,” he wrote his wife from the Old School Convention (May 13, 1837). As he looked back over his course in 1837, despite the many charges by New School Presbyterians that he had sacrificed zeal for emancipation to “orthodoxy,” Breckinridge seemed fairly well satisfied with his stand. He wrote that “in 1837, my whole object …. was to prevent the orthodox from introducing the question of slavery at all into the Convention or Assembly of that year. That subject was excluded—the church was saved ….” Baltimore Literary and Religious Magazine, 5:131 (03, 1839)Google Scholar. Though it must be insisted that Breckinridge did not surrender his conviction that slavery should be put on the course of extinction yet it is true that the coincidence of a degree of radicalism with “heresy,” in the case of the northern New School Presbyterians, left its imprint upon him. “What erroneous sectaries ever did anything to advance any great interest of man?” he asked. “…. what evangelical denomination ever did real injury to any? Not one ….” ibid., 3:307 (July, 1837). This suggests, correctly, that Breckinridge might be counted upon to extend to the limit his patience with his orthodox, but pro-slavery, brethren of the South. Denounced as a pro-slavery zealot by abolitionists, he was branded an abolitionist by extreme southerners. To one of these latter charges he returned this revealing answer: “…. As to the matter of Slavery, to be honest with you, my dear brother, my only fear is that I have not said enough about it; that out of love to our church, & to very dear brethren in the South …. I have kept too near the outer edge of that question. I am no ‘abolitionist’ in the technical sense; far from it. But I love liberty …. & pray for Slavery to be brought to an end.” Breckinridge to Coit, Jan. 10, 1843.

²⁸ The stormy career of the “frontier controversialist,” Joshua L. Wilson, furnishes a good example of the problem which confronted those orthodox leaders who were also opposed to slavery. “Wilson was so completely absorbed in the problem of extirpating ‘error’ …. that in the convention of 1837 he decided to ‘let the Southern brethren manage their own concerns in their own way.’” Hightower, Eaymond L., Joshua L. Wilson, Frontier ControversialistGoogle Scholar, University of Chicago typed Ph. D. thesis, and in Church History, 1933, p. 211.Google Scholar