George Bourne
George Bourne was an English-born American 19th-century abolitionist Presbyterian minister, journalist, and editor, credited as the first public proclaimer of "immediate emancipation without compensation" of American slaves. He is considered one of the pioneers of the anti-slavery movement in the United States.
In 1816, he wrote and printed at home The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable by a citizen of Virginia. In his journalistic career, he wrote over twenty-two books including biographies of Rev John Wesley and Napoleon Bonaparte. His book on Thomas Jefferson and his presidency has been lost. He was one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society and worked fervently at developing an American Protestant alliance of churches. His Picture of Slavery in the United States of America was published in 1834 and included illustrations of whippings and an auction. He also was the editor of various publications dealing with anti-slavery and poperism, most notably the Christian Intelligencer at the time of his death in New York City on November 20, 1845. Several of his sons were also prominent abolitionists in the United States.
Ancestry
George Bourne descended from an ancestral line embracing some of the names illustrious as martyrs and confessors in the first annals of the Reformation and the era succeeding, and to be early placed under decided religious influences, and among favorable religious associations. His father, Samuel Bourne, was for thirty years a deacon of the Congregational Church at Westbury. His mother was Mary Rogers, a lineal descendant of John Rogers, the Proto-martyr in the reign of persecuting Queen Mary, and who was the gifted translator and editor of the Bible which he published under the nom de plume of "Thomas Matthews", supplementing and completing the work of Tyndale and Coverdale.His maternal grandmother was Mary Cotton, daughter of Rowland Cotton, physical doctor of Warminster and preacher at Horningsham, son of Seaborn Cotton and Prudence Wade, who was son of Rev John Cotton, the first Puritan minister of Boston. On his father's side, he reckoned the martyr James Johnston, who suffered death at the Cross of Glasgow, in 1684, in defense of "Covenant and work of Reformation", at the time of the bloody Anglican persecution against the Presbyterians of Scotland.
Early life
Born June 13, 1780, in Westbury, Wiltshire, England, he migrated to New York in 1804 and became the editor and co-owner of the Baltimore Daily Gazette in 1806. In 1810 he moved to Virginia and became a Presbyterian minister.He studied at the seminary at Homerton, London. Being a staunch nonconformist, and inclined in favor of a republican form of government, he wrote articles which attracted attention, even of the cabinet ministry of that day. He took part in the growing discussions regarding slavery and slave-trade, along with the Wilberforces, Clarksons, Buxtons, and their compeers.
Marriage
In 1802 he paid a visit to the United States to assess the propriety of making it his home for ministerial labors. He wrote "Cursory Remarks of the United States of America" which is in the Library of Congress. He determined to return and settle, believing that greater freedom of conscience and liberty could be enjoyed in the United States than in England. At that time Dissenters were still compelled to use the clergy of the Church of England for certain services.After his return to England, he married Mary Oland Stibbs of Bath, Somerset. She to belong to the congregation of the Rev William Jay. They were married in St James' Church, Bristol, September 6, 1804, and shortly after sailed for New York. In 1805 he met the notorious scoffer Thomas Paine at the house of a bookseller in Maiden Lane. Paine confessed his motives for his infamous attacks on Christianity, recently republished in the Christian Advocate. Bourne's first settlement was at Baltimore, where also for some years he edited the Baltimore Daily Gazette.
A citizen of Virginia, the beginnings of ministry
About the year 1809, he removed to New Glasgow, Virginia, and thence to Port Republic, Virginia, where the first Presbyterian church built in that town was erected. He afterward removed to Harrisonburg in Rockingham County, Virginia, where he originated and became Secretary of the Religious Tract Society, and witnessed the system of American slavery. Believing himself ordained to preach the truth, he denounced the evils of the system publicly and privately. His steadfast opposition to the system of slavery was a constant offense to the slave-owners, who determined to get him away from Virginia. He was the object of persistent persecution.Censorship by the Presbyterian Church
In 1815, he presented an overture to the General Assembly raising the question of whether Presbyterians who owned slaves could be Christians. The Assembly refused to act. Upon his return home to Harrisonburg, his presbytery voted his deposition from the ministry, i.e., de-frocking: removal from the ministry, sometimes known as "the right boot of fellowship."In 1816, he published The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable, the most critical American anti-slavery book of its day. The theological importance of the book was that Bourne identified slaveholding as a sin. In his protest in 1815, he cited I Timothy 1:10, which links whoremongers and man-stealers. The Westminster Larger Catechism cites this verse in listing crimes against the Ten Commandments. This document has been one of the three official standards of American Presbyterianism from its formation in 1720.
The 1816 General Assembly retroactively removed this reference from his protest on procedural grounds. The reason for this was that the revision in the Church's Constitution had added a detailed critique of man-stealing, but this passage had never been affirmed by two-thirds of the presbyteries, as required by church law. This meant that the passage was not legally binding in a Presbyterian court. The General Assembly, whenever it specifically convenes as a court to hear a case, is the church's supreme court.
Part of the passage read: "The word he uses in its original import, comprehends all who are concerned in bringing any of the human race into slavery, or in detaining them in it.... Stealers of men are all those who bring off slaves or freemen, and keep, sell, or buy them. To steal a freeman, says Grotius, is the highest kind of theft." This note was eliminated in editions of the Constitution published after 1816.
This undercut Bourne's protest, for the Bible's man-stealing passage and the 1806 statement had been the central pillars of his formal protest and his book. He appealed again in 1817. The General Assembly delayed making a decision. In 1818, the General Assembly upheld his presbytery's decision to de-frock him. This decision locked the largest Presbyterian denomination into official theological neutrality on the slave issue until 1866.
''The Book and Slavery Irreconcilable''
Its invectives are so keen and so pungent as to have formed the model for that style of denouncing the evils of slavery which became afterward so noted in the armory of Garrison and his friend, Wendell Phillips, and others."Congregational Church and Lower Canada
About the year 1824 he was called from Mount Pleasant or Sing Sing Academy to take charge of the Congregational Church just commenced at Quebec, Canada, of which he was the first pastor.Ministry and Teachings
"Several ably written accounts of the rise, progress and history of antislavery conflict in America have been published, but for lack of data covering the earlier presentations of that form of Antislavery known as "abolition without compensation," or "immediate abolition," they have failed to account for its origin. They have not explained why there was so great a change from the spirit and method of the advocates of emancipation of the era following the Revolution. It is fully time, therefore, that the persistent advocate of the doctrine of "immediate abolition without compensation," the originator of the American Antislavery Society and conflict, should be duly noticed, more especially as it will relieve the Churches from the apprehension that the contest originated with opponents of Christianity."Character and abilities
Bourne was one of the most indefatigable students and workers of his day. He was scarcely ever without pen and paper, or book, in hand, even at his meals. In addition to the constant demand on him for matter for his paper, he was incessantly preparing articles, and preparing books for the press, for the Harpers, the Appletons, and other publishers. Very few men surpassed him in the variety and extent of his literary acquirements. To great mathematical knowledge he added large attainments in philological lore, and as a linguist he ranked high.His proficiency in the Hebrew language was shown in his preparation of the English-Hebrew portion of Roy's Hebrew Lexicon. His memory was exceedingly retentive. It was said of him that he was a living concordance, gazetteer, Bible dictionary, etc. His general style of preaching was extempore and incisive. Multitudes thronged to hear him wherever he was announced to speak upon these topics. Rev Dr W C Brownlee was wont to say, "There are two men to whose preaching he always listened to with delight-Rev Dr Alexander and George Bourne."
Among the books of which he was the author are the following, in addition to those referred to: Picture of Quebec, Old Friends, The Reformers, Lorette, the History of a Canadian Nun; American Textbook of Popery, and Illustrations of Popery. It was the result of forty years of study. It is the concentrated information derived from over seven hundred volumes of writings of the most noted doctors, bishops, deans, cardinals, saints, and popes of the Romish Antichurch, and of the Greek, Oriental, and English Church, and of the "Fathers" and historians of the first four centuries. It contains a chronological table
By his Picture of Slavery, and by his labors among the Methodist Churches, North, he aroused many of the Northern preachers to that enthusiasm for liberty which culminated in the division of the M E Church.
The Southern Churches regarded Bourne as an agitator, a firebrand, a disturber of their peace, and the Northern proslavery ministers and presses opposed and calumniated him with much vigor.
He was for some years acting editor of the Christian Intelligencer, the organ of the Reformed Dutch Church. On the afternoon of November 20, 1845, he died.