1845 Scottish Presbyterian Letter Condemning the Free Church’s Acceptance of Money from American Enslavers, Written before Frederick Douglass’s “Send Back the Money” Campaign.
Isle of Mull, Scotland: March 5-31, 1845. Autograph letter signed by a female member of the MacLeod family, with an additional message signed “Mary McLeod,” to the Rev. John Neil MacLeod in New York. 4pp measuring 9 x 7 inches. Addressed to “The Rev’d J. N. Macleod D.D., Presbyterian Minister, New York, United States, North America.” Postmarked at Tobermory, prepaid “1/-,” with London transit markings and intact black wax seal. Folded with very small holes at folds; excellent. Item #BK0036 A Scottish family and ecclesiastical letter containing an early direct condemnation of the Free Church of Scotland’s acceptance of donations from slaveholding Presbyterians in the American South. Written in March 1845, the letter predates Frederick Douglass’s arrival in Scotland and the public campaign urging the Free Church to “Send Back the Money.” It demonstrates that criticism of the church’s American fundraising was already circulating privately within Scottish Presbyterian networks before Douglass helped transform the controversy into a major transatlantic abolitionist cause. Following the Disruption of 1843, the newly established Free Church sent representatives to the United States to raise money. Contributions from southern churches and slaveholding ministers generated growing criticism, particularly because the Free Church presented itself as a purer and more principled form of Presbyterianism. The writer identifies what she regarded as the central contradiction: the church refused communion with ministers who remained in the established Church of Scotland while recognizing slaveholding American ministers as Christian brethren and accepting their money. She writes: “What can you think now of their disclaiming to hold communion with any of their Bretheren in the Establishment, and avowedly & publicly countenancing and holding communion with the Slave holding Ministers in your Southern States. Their coffers have been largely augmented by donations from these States and the leaders of the Free recognize them as Bretheren and write and speak of them with the greatest respect.” Her criticism is directed as much at the church’s financial expediency as at its inconsistency: “This has opened the eyes of some as to what they will resort to get money—this Church that professed to be a pure Church. Oh does it not clearly show the inconsistencies of man, nay even of Christians, what a different view these leaders may take of Slavery from what your respected Father had.” Douglass began his Scottish campaign the following year, when he and other abolitionists repeatedly challenged the Free Church to return the money received from American slaveholders. Writing to William Lloyd Garrison in April 1846, Douglass declared, “Scotland is a blaze of anti-slavery agitation—the Free Church and Slavery are the all-engrossing topics.”[1] The present letter records essentially the same moral argument a year earlier, made from within the church’s own extended religious and family networks: that accepting southern funds compromised the Free Church’s authority and exposed the limits of its professed purity. Addressed to the Rev. John Neil MacLeod in New York, the letter places the dispute within a transatlantic Presbyterian context. The writer invokes the antislavery views of MacLeod’s father and questions whether the recipient understood that a minister whom he had permitted to preach from his pulpit “advocated the course of the Southern Slave State Ministers so much”, remarking “I should think not.” The letter also contains news of a bereavement and other family and church news about Scotland and America. An important private response to the Free Church’s American fundraising campaign, written before the controversy reached its fullest public expression through Frederick Douglass’s “Send Back the Money” campaign. The letter documents the early moral opposition of Scottish Presbyterians who believed that a church claiming spiritual independence and purity had compromised both by accepting the support of American slaveholders.
Price: $1,750.00