44

196 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

ter of Dr. Cox to go unanswered through the American journals, but
promptly exposed its unfairness. That letter is too long for insertion here. A
part of it was published in the Evangelist, and in many other papers, both in
this country and in England. Our eminent divine made no rejoinder, and his
silence was regarded at the time as an admission of defeat.

Another interesting circumstance connected with my visit to England,
was the position of the Free church of Scotland with the great Doctors
Chalmers, Cunningham, and Candlish at its head. That church had settled for
itself the question which was frequently asked by the opponents of abolition
at home—"What have we to do with slavery?" by accepting contributions
from slaveholders; i.e., receiving the price of blood into its treasury, with
which to build churches and pay ministers for preaching the gospel; and
worse than this, when honest John Murray of Bowlein Bay, with William
Smeal, Andrew Paton, Frederick Card, and other sterling anti-slavery men in
Glasgow, denounced the transaction as disgraceful, and shocking to the reli-
gious sentiment of Scotland, this church, through its leading divines, instead
of repenting and seeking to amend the mistake into which it had fallen,
caused that mistake to become a flagrant sin by undertaking to defend, in the
name of God and the Bible, the principle not only of taking the money of
slave-dealers to build churches and thus extend the gospel, but of holding
fellowship with the traffickers in human flesh. This, the reader will see,
brought up the whole question of slavery, and opened the way to its full
discussion. I have never seen a people more deeply moved than were the
people of Scotland on this very question. Public meeting succeeded public
meeting, speech after speech, pamphlet after pamphlet, editorial after editorial, sermon after sermon, lashed the conscientious Scotch people into a
perfect furore. "SEND BACK THE MONEY!" was indignantly shouted from
Greenock to Edinburgh, and from Edinburgh to Aberdeen. George Thompson
of London, Henry C. Wright, J. N. Buffum and myself from America, were
of course on the anti-slavery side, and Chalmers, Cunningham, and Candlish
on the other. Dr. Cunningham was the most powerful debater on the slavery
side of the question, Mr. Thompson the ablest on the anti-slavery side. A
scene occurred between these two men, a parallel to which I think I have
never witnessed before or since. It was caused by a single exclamation on
the part of Mr. Thompson, and was in this wise:

The general assembly of the Free Church was in progress at Cannon
Mills, Edinburgh. The building would hold twenty-five hundred persons,
and on this occasion was densely packed, notice having been given that
Doctors Cunningham and Candlish would speak that day in defense of the