Trial and Imprisonment of Jonathan Walker,: at Pensacola, Florida, for Aiding Slaves to Escape from Bondage with an Appendix, Containing a Sketch of His Life

Jonathan Walker

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Trial and Imprisonment of Jonathan Walker, at Pensacola, Florida, for Aiding Slaves to Escape from Bondage, with an Appendix, Containing a Sketch of His Life. Written by Jonathan Walker. Published At The Anti-Slavery Office, Boston, 1846.

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Preface:

...On his return from Florida, after his release, Captain Walker called on me with the manuscript narrative of his trial and imprisonment. In common with very many of the members of the American Anti-Slavery Society, I had long known his character as a man of the strictest veracity and the highest conscientiousness; and his narrative seemed to me to cast so strong a light upon the religious, the moral, and the political condition of the United States, from the practical workings of their great organic law — the constitution — down to the minutest of the territorial usages and enactments which result from that law; and to exhibit in so clear a view the contrast between the principles and ideas which at present govern the public mind, and those which are beginning to struggle for the mastery, that I could not but warmly urge this publication.
...There are those who doubt whether the North is as guilty as the South with respect to slavery; whether the system is degrading to the slave and disgraceful to the master; whether the slave is cruelly treated; whether the system is injurious to the reputation of this country, a reproach to its Christianity, and ruinous to the character of its people.
...There are also those who, while they condemn slavery, at the same time assert that its extinction may be best promoted by studied silence, and by a quiet waiting for the gradual operations of a moral and religious system which declares that it is not in its nature sinful, and justifies it from the Scriptures; and of a political and governmental system which is a solemn guaranty in its favor.
...There are those, too, who believe the abolitionists to be instigated by a bitter, unkind, fanatical and insurrectionary spirit; hostile to law and order, sectional in their views, and possessed by one idea.
...And there are others, who, honoring the holy cause, and respecting the disinterestedness of abolitionists, yet justify themselves in standing aloof from the movement, under the idea of being better able to befriend the cause by refusing to be numbered among its adherents, and suffering themselves to be counted in the ranks of the opponents.
...It was for the sake of all these classes that I most earnestly urged Captain Walker to give to the public, whose great majority they compose, the manuscript which he had prepared for the satisfaction of his friends.
...When they see, in its unstudied pages, the good, forgiving, self-denying spirit of the Christian, the indomitable determination of the Freeman, and the severe devotedness of the Puritan, all uniting in an unconscious exhibition of the uncompromising Abolitionist, I cannot but hope that their hearts will be touched by the excellence of the example.
...This is a painful tale for an American to read, and think, meanwhile, that it is circulating through the civilized world; but, if worthy of the name, he will find comfort in the thought that it is confirming the abolitionist and confuting the slave-holder, showing an example to both of the dutiful obedience to right, which is mighty to save a nation from utter reproach and destruction.