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Cane Ridge Revival Leader B. W.
Stone
"The
question is no longer now as thirty years ago - Is the slavery of
Africans right or wrong? It is settled in the nation that it is
wrong, both politically and morally. The light of truth and
intelligence has removed our doubts. No man of intelligence now
presumes to justify it, whether he be a politician, moralist, or
Christian. ... What can be done to relieve them? They have proposed
and examined many plans by the principles of policy, philosophy, and
religion. But every plan has been found defective but that which we
now advocate, the plan of settling the free people of color in
Africa. To free them and let them live among us, is impolitic, as
stubborn facts have proved. ... But now every Christian, every man
who is conscientious on the subject, may free himself from this
distress by giving up his slaves to the benevolent Colonization
Society, which will joyfully receive them, and transport them to a
fertile and pleasant land, to the enjoyment of liberty, religiou,
and all the comforts of life." (Stone, 1828 - quoted in The
Biography of Eld. Barton Warren Stone by Elder John Rogers,
1847, p. 288-90)
"It is
well known by the personal and intimate freinds of B. W. Stone, that
to get away from those slaves entailed upon his children, and from
the influence of slavery around him, were the chief causes of his
removal to Illinois. Kentucky was exceedingly dear to his heart, and
on his last visit to Caneridge, the scene of his early labors, in
the gospel, he said, he wished his bones to be laid there. He often
said, before his removal to Illinois, in reference to those blacks
entailed upon his children, that as he could not free them, he would
free himself from them, by leaving the country." (Rogers, p.
293)
"Barton
Stone followed a course in his "Christian Messenger" and
as early as 1827 coupled 'war and slavery' as the 'greatest evils in
the world.' ...
"By the 1840's Barton Stone was a
staunch supporter, if not a member, of temperance socieities. (Quest
for a Christian America, by David Edwin Harrell, Jr., 1966, p.
140, 182)
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