Come-outer

Last updated • 4 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Come-outer is a phrase coined in the 1830s which denotes a person who withdraws from an established organization, or one who advocates political reform. [1]

Contents

History

The term was first applied during the Second Great Awakening to a small group of American abolitionists who dissented from religious orthodoxy, who withdrew from a number of established churches because the churches were not progressive enough on the issue of abolition. A come-outer would not join a church which held a neutral position on the issue of slavery, and he would not vote, or run for office, or otherwise take part in a government that let slavery happen. The phrase was derived from the Bible verse, II Corinthians 6:17 which read "Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you." [2]

Garrisonian anti-institutionalism

William Lloyd Garrison was an influential Boston abolitionist who founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society and the American Anti-Slavery Society in the early 1830s. Garrison advocated an immediate end to slavery, rather than a step-by-step process working through the political system. In 1832, he printed an anti-slavery tract called Thoughts on African Colonization which included the "come out from among them" verse from the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, and a quote from a recently deceased Reverend Doctor Thomson of Edinburgh: "To say that we will only come out of the sin by degrees—that we will only forsake it slowly, and step by step... is to trample on the demands of moral obligation..." [3] At the New England Anti-Slavery Convention in 1836, Garrison proposed that only churches willing to help fight slavery should be considered "the true and real church of God." [4] This was viewed by many as too divisive, so other means were tried until the 1837 convention when a resolution was adopted urging abolitionists to leave unresponsive churches, "to come out from among them and be separate." [4] Garrison's radical ideas defined a strong split within the anti-slavery societies, and Garrison was abandoned by all but a dedicated core group of like-minded abolitionists. The Boston-based group of reformers began to be called "come-outers". [5]

Garrison's newspaper, The Liberator , served to spread his view of abolition and anti-institutionalism. From time to time, news items about come-outers would appear, some culled from other journals. In 1851, Garrison quoted an article entitled "Come-outers in jail" which appeared in The Barnstable Patriot : "Several of these poor deluded beings in Barnstable, whose actions we have before noticed, are now on trial in that town for an assault upon a constable when in the discharge of his duty…the poor creatures are insane, and can hardly be held responsible for their acts. ….the most fitting place for these unfortunate beings is in the Insane Hospital." [6] Garrison offered his opinion that the 'poor deluded beings' were quite properly "laboring under religious insanity." [6]

Other regions of the United States that held pockets of "come-outerism" included Cape Cod, New Hampshire and New York. [7]

Abolition and church reform

Come-outers themselves split further into those who, like Garrison, were against any institution at all, and those who believed that political systems and churches could be reformed into anti-slavery organizations. Non-Garrisonian come-outers split from Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian churches to form new church doctrines that were either completely free of slavery or focused on anti-slavery. The American Baptist Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840 brought the issue to the fore, defining a split among Baptists. [8] The American Baptist Free Mission Society formed in 1843 in Boston when 17 Baptists led by William Henry Brisbane left their church to create a non-racist, anti-slavery evangelical group with missions to Haiti, Burma and Africa. [9] James G. Birney and Gerrit Smith were among those who left the Presbyterian church. [8] The integrated American Missionary Association, a non-denominational group, formed in 1846 mostly of Presbyterian and Congregational members who were unable to get their churches to commit to fight slavery. The Wesleyan Methodist Connection was organized in 1843 and grew to some 15,000 members, many of whom were formerly not Methodist. [8] By 1850, membership in come-outer churches, combined with those in religious denominations such as Free Will Baptist who had long been against slavery, reached 241,000 in America. [10]

Tax resistance

Some come-outers engaged in tax resistance because of their unwillingness to fund a government that did not work to end slavery. Henry David Thoreau and Amos Bronson Alcott both used tax resistance in this way. Utopian Brook Farm has been described as "a come-outer enterprise". [11]

People

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Lloyd Garrison</span> American journalist and abolitionist (1805–1879)

William Lloyd Garrison was an American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known for his widely read anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator, which Garrison founded in 1831 and published in Boston until slavery in the United States was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Anti-Slavery Society</span> Abolitionist society in existence from 1833–1870

The American Anti-Slavery Society was an abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, had become a prominent abolitionist and was a key leader of this society, who often spoke at its meetings. William Wells Brown, also a freedman, also often spoke at meetings. By 1838, the society had 1,350 local chapters with around 250,000 members.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maria Weston Chapman</span> 19th-century American abolitionist

Maria Weston Chapman was an American abolitionist. She was elected to the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1839 and from 1839 until 1842, she served as editor of the anti-slavery journal The Non-Resistant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizur Wright</span> American abolitionist and actuary (1804–1885)

Elizur Wright III was an American mathematician and abolitionist. He is sometimes described in the United States as "the father of life insurance", or "the father of insurance regulation", as he campaigned that life insurance companies must keep reserves and provide surrender values. Wright served as an insurance commissioner for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christian views on slavery</span>

Christian views on slavery are varied regionally, historically and spiritually. Slavery in various forms has been a part of the social environment for much of Christianity's history, spanning well over eighteen centuries. In the early years of Christianity, slavery was an established feature of the economy and society in the Roman Empire, and this persisted in different forms and with regional differences well into the Middle Ages. Saint Augustine described slavery as being against God's intention and resulting from sin. In the eighteenth century the abolition movement took shape among Christians across the globe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Rankin (abolitionist)</span>

John Rankin was an American Presbyterian minister, educator and abolitionist. Upon moving to Ripley, Ohio, in 1822, he became known as one of Ohio's first and most active "conductors" on the Underground Railroad. Prominent pre-Civil War abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Weld, Henry Ward Beecher, and Harriet Beecher Stowe were influenced by Rankin's writings and work in the anti-slavery movement.

George Bourne (1780–1845) was a 19th-century American abolitionist and editor, credited as the first public proclaimer of "immediate emancipation without compensation" of American slaves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abby Kelley</span> American abolitionist and social reformer (1811–1887)

Abby Kelley Foster was an American abolitionist and radical social reformer active from the 1830s to 1870s. She became a fundraiser, lecturer and committee organizer for the influential American Anti-Slavery Society, where she worked closely with William Lloyd Garrison and other radicals. She married fellow abolitionist and lecturer Stephen Symonds Foster, and they both worked for equal rights for women and for Africans enslaved in the Americas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beriah Green</span> American abolitionist (1795–1874)

Beriah Green Jr. was an American reformer, abolitionist, temperance advocate, college professor, minister, and head of the Oneida Institute. He was "consumed totally by his abolitionist views". Former student Alexander Crummell described him as a "bluff, kind-hearted man," a "master-thinker". Modern scholars have described him as "cantankerous", "caustic, belligerent, [and] suspicious". "He was so firmly convinced of his opinions and so uncompromising that he aroused hostility all about him."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lewis Woodson</span> American academic

Lewis Woodson was an educator, minister, writer, and abolitionist. He was an early leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Woodson started and helped to build other institutions within the free African-American communities in Ohio and western Pennsylvania prior to the American Civil War.

Stephen Symonds Foster was a radical American abolitionist known for his dramatic and aggressive style of public speaking, and for his stance against those in the church who failed to fight slavery. His marriage to Abby Kelley brought his energetic activism to bear on women's rights. He spoke out for temperance, and agitated against any government, including his own, that would condone slavery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oneida Institute</span> School in upstate New York (1827–1843)

The Oneida Institute was a short-lived (1827–1843) but highly influential school that was a national leader in the emerging abolitionist movement. It was the most radical school in the country, the first at which black men were just as welcome as whites. "Oneida was the seed of Lane Seminary, Western Reserve College, Oberlin and Knox colleges."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyrus Pitt Grosvenor</span>

Cyrus Pitt Grosvenor was an American Baptist minister known for his anti-slavery views. He founded the abolitionist American Baptist Free Mission Society, which did not allow slaveowners to be missionaries, and refused their contributions, prefiguring the split in the Baptist Church in America into Southern and Northern associations. He helped found and served as the first president of New York Central College, the first college in the United States to admit both women and Blacks on an equal basis from its first day, and the first college to employ Black professors. He was described as "a reforming steam engine". In his retirement he worked on a famous mathematics problem and took out a patent to prevent lamp explosions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Protestantism in the United States</span>

Christianity was introduced with the first European settlers beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries. Colonists from Northern Europe introduced Protestantism in its Anglican and Reformed forms to Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts Bay Colony, New Netherland, Virginia Colony, and Carolina Colony. The first arrivals were adherents to Anglicanism, Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, Methodism, the Baptist Church, Calvinism, Lutheranism, Quakerism, Anabaptism and the Moravian Church from British, German, Dutch, and Nordic stock. America began as a significant Protestant majority nation. Significant minorities of Roman Catholics and Jews did not arise until the period between 1880 and 1910.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Turner Torrey</span> American abolitionist

Charles Turner Torrey was a leading American abolitionist. Although largely lost to historians until recently, Torrey pushed the abolitionist movement to more political and aggressive strategies, including setting up one of the first highly organized lines for the Underground Railroad and personally freeing approximately 400 slaves. Torrey also worked closely with free blacks, thus becoming one of the first to consider them partners. John Brown cited Torrey as one of the three abolitionists he looked to as models for his own efforts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abolitionism in the United States</span> Movement to end slavery in the United States

In the United States, abolitionism, the movement that sought to end slavery in the country, was active from the late colonial era until the American Civil War, the end of which brought about the abolition of American slavery through the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Although many Enlightenment philosophers opposed slavery, it was Christian activists, attracted by strong religious elements, who initiated and organized an abolitionist movement. Throughout Europe and the United States, Christians, usually from "un-institutional" Christian faith movements, not directly connected with traditional state churches, or "non-conformist" believers within established churches, were to be found at the forefront of the abolitionist movements.

James George Barbadoes was an African-American, community leader, and abolitionist in Boston, Massachusetts in the early 19th century. Dedicated to improving the lives of people of color at the local level, as well as the national level.

James Bradley was an African slave in the United States who purchased his freedom and became an anti-slavery activist in Ohio.

References

  1. Merriam-Webster Online. Come-outer Retrieved on April 11, 2009.
  2. Von Frank, Albert J. The trials of Anthony Burns, p. 338. Retrieved on April 6, 2009.
  3. Garrison, William Lloyd, Thoughts on African Colonization: or An Impartial Exhibition of the Doctrines, Principles and Purposes of the American Colonization Society, together with the Resolutions, Addresses and Remonstrances of the Free People of Color. Garrison and Knapf, 1832, pages 24 and 87.
  4. 1 2 Putnam, Mary Burnham. The Baptists and Slavery, 1840–1845. George Wahr, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1913. Retrieved on April 11, 2009.
  5. Encyclopædia Britannica. William Lloyd Garrison. Retrieved on April 11, 2009.
  6. 1 2 The Liberator, January 31, 1851. Come-outers in jail Archived 2016-05-27 at the Wayback Machine . Retrieved on April 12, 2009.
  7. 1 2 Perry, Lewis. Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought "From Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Anti-Slavery Thought". Archived from the original on 2008-08-29. Retrieved 2009-04-12.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link). University of Tennessee Press, 1993, 1973.
  8. 1 2 3 Ferrell, Claudine L. The Abolitionist Movement, Greenwood Press, 2006. pp. 75–77.
  9. Cathcart, William. The Baptist Encyclopaedia, Volume 1 of 3, 1881, p. 451.
  10. Jeffrey, Julie Roy. The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism, University of North Carolina Press, 1998, p. 154.
  11. Abel, Darrel. Democratic Voices and Vistas. Barron's Educational Series, 1963, p. 38.
  12. McKivigan, John R. Abolitionism and American Religion, p. 153. Retrieved on April 6, 2009.
  13. Sterling, Dorothy. Ahead of Her Time. W.W. Norton, 1991, p. 123.
  14. Sterling, 1991, p.187.
  15. Sterling, 1991, p.129.