The Duty of Disobedience to Wicked Laws

Background: Charles Beecher was an abolitionist Presbyterian minister and writer. He was the son of Lyman Beecher and the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe. In the fall of 1850, shortly after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, he gave this sermon before the First Free Presbyterian Church in Newark Jersey. It was subsequently published in 1851 and circulated as a pamphlet.

There is to be a day of judgment—a day when God will reveal his righteous judgment concerning all deeds done in the body. In that review no part of human conduct will be exempt from scrutiny. . . . The acts of nations, governments, and all authorities will be diligently examined; and especially the laws which were by different nations passed, accepted, obeyed. 

If this be true, it is perfectly proper to anticipate the verdict. It is highly expedient to consider every law of every State in the light of a coming judgment, and to ask how it will then appear. My object to-night will be to take such a view of the late Fugitive Slave Law, passed by the Congress of these United States, and approved by the President. I wish to inquire how that law will look when examined before the bar of God. I wish to ask how the men that made it, the men that execute, the citizens that obey, and the nation that tolerates that law, will look when they stand before the judgment seat. . . . 

Is it right, then, for a free State to say that an escaping slave shall be delivered up? This at once raises a question of natural right. Has a man, made in God’s image, a right to himself greater than another man has to him? Has a man in the interior of Africa a right to himself greater than the right of the slave-trader? Has the slave-trader any right to him after he has bought him? Our Government, by making the slave-trade piracy, say No. But if the slave-trader has no right, how can he sell his right? How can he transfer a claim when he has no claim to transfer? But if so, has the Southern purchaser any right to the man? Can any number of fraudulent sales make a good title? And if the man had a right to run away from the slaver, has he not a right to run away from the slaver’s customer? But if the man has this right to himself, and to exercise that right, can a law of Georgia make that right wrong? And still more if he flies to a free State, can a law to deliver him up make it right? Why, then, could not a law make it right to catch him in Africa in the first instance? If it is right by law to recapture him in a free State, and reconsign him to slavery, it would be right by law to capture him in Africa in the first place. 

Therefore this clause of the Constitution is wrong. It legalizes kidnapping. The legislature pronounces lawful here precisely what it condemns as piracy in Africa. . . . 

Let us picture to ourselves for a moment what is really contained in obedience to this law, 

It is a Sabbath evening. It is winter, and the snow is on the ground, and the winds are out, filled with driving snow. . . . When, hark— upon the wild winter blast, a faint low cry meets your ear; a faint footstep approaches your door; a timid hand smites against your lintel. You rise from before your blazing fire, and look out into the night. 

Feeble with hunger, ragged, with naked feet, pressing to her bosom a pining infant, a mother totters before you, just sinking to the earth. “ For the love of Jesus,” she cries, “ grant me a hiding place from my pursuers! Grant me a morsel of food I Save me, save my child, from a fate worse than death!”  . . .

What does this law require of you ? What must you do, to obey this law ? What is obedience to law ? You must shut your door in her face, or you must take her captive, and shut her up until the hounds of officers can come up. 

This is obedience; and if you do not do this you are a law-breaker… You shut your door, and sit down to read your Bible, saying, “Well, I have kept on the safe side; I have obeyed the law of my country.” If it be objected that this is an extreme case, I deny it; the law makes no exceptions. This and nothing short of this, the law requires. … 

“ I know it is wrong, abstractly considered,” you say; “ but the law says so, and I must do it till the law is altered. True, it seems to me wrong, but what right have I to set up my judgment against the law? True, it seems to me that this law conflicts with the golden rule, on which hang all the Law and the prophets, and nullifies all principles of honor and humanity, but what right have I to follow my own private impressions of right against the laws of the land? What right have I to say I will obey the laws of the land just so far as they coincide with my ideas of right, but when they do not, I will break them? If everybody should do so, would it not put an end to all law, and disorganize society? No, no; I must try to get this law repealed, but in the meanwhile I must keep it, even if it command me to violate every principle of the Decalogue.” Here is the stereotyped argument for all such cases made and provided, which has been used by civil and religious despotism in all ages. First pass a law that compels men to violate conscience, and then drive them to keep it by conscience…

A law which does me some injury is one thing. A law which makes me do wrong is another. The first I may submit to while seeking its repeal. To the latter I must not give place by subjection, no, not for an hour. I must resist unto blood, striving against sin, i. e., to the patient shedding of my own blood. Hence, to disobey such a law does not disorganize society. It does not unsettle law. 

The men that refuse obedience to such laws are the sure, the only defenders of law. If they will shed their own blood rather than sin by keeping a wicked law, they will by the same principle shed their blood rather than break a law which is righteous. In short, such men are the only true law-abiding men…

In conclusion, therefore, my application of the subject is— Disobey this law. If you have ever dreamed of obeying it, repent before God, and ask his forgiveness. I counsel no violence. I suggest no warlike measures of resistance. I incite no man to deeds of blood. I speak as the minister of the Prince of Peace. As much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. To the fugitive, touching the question of self-defense, I offer no advice, as none can be necessary. The right of self-defense is unquestionable here, if ever. Of the expediency of its exercise, every man must judge for himself. I leave the question of self-defense undiscussed, to the settlement of every man’s own judgment, according to circumstances. 

Source:

Charles Beecher sermon: The Duty of Disobedience to Wicked Laws (1851),
https://archive.org/details/dutyofdisobedien00beec