Letter requesting ministers petition Congress against passing the Kansas-Nebraska Bill
Perception of separation of church and state was different before income tax was established.
TO THE CLERGY OF NEW ENGLAND.
Dear Brethren:
Upon another page you find a Protest which explains itself. It is sent simultaneously to every Clergyman of every name in New England. It is earnestly hoped that every one of you will append your name to it, and thus furnish to this nation and this age the sublime and influential spectacle of the great Christian body of the North united, as one man, in favor of freedom and of solemn plighted faith. It can hardly be doubted, that if this Protest can go immediately to Washington, carrying upon it the names of the entire Clergy of New England, it will exert there a moral influence of incalculable weight—possibly, in connection with other influences—sufficient in the good Providence of God, to avert the impending evil.
Permit us, then, to commend the following suggestions to your notice, and, so far as they agree with your own convictions, to your immediate action.
1. Please tear off, sign, fold, seal and return to us this annexed Protest BY THE NEXT MAIL to this city, directed to “Rev. John Jackson, Boston, Mass.†He will combine all the answers received into one great Protest, which will be immediately forwarded to Congress.
If you have already—either as a private citizen or as a clergyman—signed any other similar document, PLEASE SIGN THIS ALSO; as it is earnestly desired to embrace in this movement (as far as possible,) the unanimous clerical voice of New England.
2. If deemed judicious, please exert your influence to get up and send immediately on to your Representative in the House, a similar protest from your own neighborhood. It is believed that a great number of such protests—even if less than one hundred legal voters should sign each one—will be of great consequence in indicating the general arousal of the slumbering sentiment of the North, on this fearfully important subject.
3. It is respectfully submitted whether the present is not a crisis of sufficient magnitude and imminence of danger to the liberties and integrity of our nation, to warrant and even demand the services of the clergy of all denominations in arousing the masses of the people to its comprehension, through the Press and even the Pulpit.
4. It is affectionately urged that it find frequent remembrance in all Christian supplications to Him who holds the hearts of all rulers in his hand, and, as the rivers of water, can turn them whithersoever He will.
Affectionately yours,
CHARLES LOWELL, COMMITTEE OF
LYMAN BEECHER, CLERGYMEN
BARON STOW, OF
SEBASTIAN STREETER. BOSTON.
Boston, February 22, 1854.
There is some interesting information about the New Englanders who sent men and arms to Kansas when the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed in "Bleeding Kansas." The excerpt I posted with this post picks up at a later date. The New Englanders were fairly radical in that they were practically (gasp) abolitionists.