The Indiana Separation of 1842 and the Limits of Quaker Anti-Slavery

The Indiana Separation of 1842 and the Limits of Quaker Anti-Slavery Ryan Jordan* On October 1, 1842, Henry Claymade a campaign appearance at aWhig rallyinRichmond, Indiana, the seatofthe largestorganizationofthe Society ofFriends in antebellum America. At the time ofClay's visit, many Whigs in Indiana, Quaker and non-Quaker alike, understood Henry Clay to be running for President in 1844 and treated Clay as ifhe nearly possessed the office. The local Whig paper in Richmond, the Palladium, wrote that "the bare mention of [Clay's] name to the democratic assemblies recently assembled at the North produced an electric effect," going on to exclaim: "...let France toast herNapoleon, and England her Wellington. Give us the civic-wreathed son ofVirginia—Henry Clay—the candidate ofthe Whig party for the Presidency...."1 Many of the more powerful, or "weighty" local Quakers also held Clay in the highest esteem, albeit without calling him an American Napoleon. Henry Clay's visit to Richmond, Indiana coincided—perhaps on purpose—with the Society of Friends' Indiana Yearly Meeting of 1842, the annual gathering ofFriends from all over the Midwestern United States. Certain Quaker leaders, foremost among them the clerk ofthe Yearly Meeting, Elijah Coffin, invited Clay to attend their Meeting. These Quakers, not unlike other Indianans, wanted publicly to throw their support behind Henry Clay and the Whig Party.2 Other leaders ofthe Indiana Yearly Meeting, however, were not nearly as enthusiastic about their Meeting's public endorsement of Clay. These leaders, life-long opponents of slavery dedicated to spreading the Quaker testimony against human bondage, disliked the fact that Clay was a slaveholder who supported the removal offormer slaves to West Africa. In fact, Clay had been President of the American Colonization Society, founded in 1817 to transport slaves back to their "homeland."3 As for the spread of slavery in the West, Clay was at best evasive since his party counted on support in both theNorth and the South for electoral success.4As a result, both Clay and the Whig Party did not support any plan to limit American slavery. Although many Quakers in Indiana supported these moderate views on the slavery issue, Quaker abolitionists found Clay's views untenable. To them his visit to the Indiana Yearly Meeting represented a time when the Society ofFriends, the largest American church to *Ryan Jordan is a graduate student in American history at Princeton. This article is a revision of his UCLA honors thesis, overseen by Joyce Appleby. He is also indebted to Ruth Bloch, Naomi Lamoreaux, Gary Nash, and Joan Waugh for their valuable criticism. 2 Quaker History disown members for owning slaves, was backsliding from its earlier zeal in opposing both slavery and racial prejudice. Because they were so offended by his lack of moral outrage regarding slavery, the Quaker abolitionists in Indianawantedpublicly to push Clay to support the immediate emancipation ofslaves. The best way to do this, in their eyes, was to ask him to manumit his own slaves. Throughout the late summer and fall of 1 842, the Quaker abolitionists gathered about 2,000 signatures foramanumissionpetition tobepresentedto Claywhenhe spoke in Richmond. On the day ofClay's visit, at the end ofhis remarks, and in frontofperhaps 15,000people, HiramMendenhall, amemberofan oldantislaveryQuakerfamilyfromNorthCarolina , readClay apetitionto "unloose the heavy burdens" ofthe "oppressed under your control" and give "liberty towhomlibertyis due."Thepetitionwentonto saythatClayhad"deprived" his slaves ofthe "sacredboon offreedom" and told him to "set an example" throughmanumission.5Although thepetitionreferredto Clayas a"greatand good" man, it provided a visible demonstration to many other Quaker leaders of the abolitionists' desire to challenge authority on behalf of "oppressed humanity." To the abolitionists, the petition was a living example of how Quakers should encourage the moral reformation of all slaveholders in America, no matter how important they might be.6 Manyofthe 15,000people inthe crowdClayhadjustfinishedaddressing were not at all pleased with the abolitionists' petition. Some even heckled Mendenhall with various epithets when Mendenhall finished speaking. For his part, Clay responded to the petitionby declaring thathis slaves hadto be "prepared for freedom" and that he would have to be compensated 15,000 dollars for the loss of his slaves. Clay went on to tell Mendenhall that "slavery is our misfortune, not our fault...