Letters on American Slavery, 1836

Rev. John Thomas Rankin (1793-1886), “Manager” of the Underground Railroad

by Rev. John Clifford Rankin (b. 1953)

The Rev. John Thomas Rankin fled his native slave-holding state of Tennessee, and settled in Ripley, Ohio on the banks of the Ohio River. He served as a pastor, taught widely and organized abolitionists across a 44-year span. He and his seven sons personally led some 2,000 American Blacks to freedom. His life was often in danger, and the slave-holders put various prices on his head, and also with his sons. Across the river was Marysville in slave-holding Kentucky. His dramatic life is understatedly and beautifully profiled in Ann Hagedorn’s book, Beyond the River (Simon & Schuster, 2002). John Thomas Rankin wrote a series of letters to one of his brothers back in Tennessee who had bought a slave, they were published in an Abolitionist newspaper in Cincinnati, and were widely distributed as well as widely opposed (including the seizing and burning of copies, and the the burning down of printing presses …). The Boston abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison credited Rankin for being his intellectual mentor in the just cause. Letters on American Slavery is available through the Rankin House in Ripley. I am an ancestral cousin (we trace back to a common forefather who emigrated from Scotland to Ireland in 1689, and to the Colonies in 1721), and I embrace such a lineage with gratefulness. Here is his preface to the book, and its final paragraph equals a plea, indeed a prayer that is ever true today as the hell of chattel slavery’s history still haunts and poisons our national soul.

_____________________

The following Letters were originally designed for the benefit of the Brother to whom they were addressed. For his convenience they were inserted in the Castigator, and by that means were brought to public view.

The solicitations of a few friends, in connection with the desire of aiding and encouraging every effort for the liberation of the enslaved and degraded Africans, were the means of bringing them before the public a second time, and in another form.

They have received several alterations and additions. And some efforts have been made to render the work more complete than it was in original form; but still, it is far from possessing that excellence of composition which the importance of its subject requires. Therefore, it is desired that its imperfections may be attributed to the weakness of its author, and not to that of the cause it is intended to support.

But little can reasonably be hoped in relation to the success of this work, when it is considered that, in addition to the difficulties arising from its own imperfections, it  must bear the charge of fanaticism, and contend with prejudices that have been rapidly increasing for ages. In opposition to it, more than ten thousand envenomed tongues, and pens dipt in the gall of unrelenting avarice, may be expected to plead the cause of injustice.

These difficulties, however, should be considered as so many arguments in favor of this work. If but a little good can be done, it is the more necessary that that little should be done. That involuntary slavery is a very dangerous evil, and that our nation is involved in it, none can, with truth, deny. And that the safety of our government, and the happiness of its subjects, depend upon the extermination of this evil, must be obvious to every enlightened mind. Nor is it less evident, that it is the duty of every citizen, according to his station, talents and opportunity, to the suitable exertions for the abolition of an evil which is pregnant with the growing principles of ruin. Surely, no station should be unimproved, no talent, however small, should be buried; nor should any opportunity of doing good be lost, when the safety of a vast nation, and the happiness of millions of the human family, demand prompt and powerful exertions. Every thing that can be done, either by fair discussion, or by any other lawful means, ought to be done, and done speedily, in order to avert the hastening ruin that must otherwise soon overtake us!

Let all the friends of justice and suffering humanity, do what little they can, in their several circles, and according to their various stations, capacities and opportunities; and all their little streams of exertion will, in process of time, flow together, and constitute a mighty river that shall sweep away the yoke of oppression, and purge our nation from the abomination of slavery.

###