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Title: Life and times of Frederick Douglass : His early life as a slave, his escape from bondage, and his complete history
Author: Douglass, Frederick
Language: English
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[Illustration: Eng^d. by Augustus Robin. N.Y.
_Fred^k. Douglass._]
LIFE AND TIMES
OF
FREDERICK DOUGLASS,
WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.
HIS EARLY LIFE AS A SLAVE, HIS ESCAPE FROM BONDAGE,
AND HIS COMPLETE HISTORY
TO THE
PRESENT TIME
INCLUDING HIS CONNECTION WITH THE ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT; HIS LABORS IN
GREAT BRITAIN AS WELL AS IN HIS OWN COUNTRY; HIS EXPERIENCE IN THE
CONDUCT OF AN INFLUENTIAL NEWSPAPER; HIS CONNECTION WITH THE
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD; HIS RELATIONS WITH JOHN BROWN AND
THE HARPER’S FERRY RAID; HIS RECRUITING THE 54th AND
55th MASS. COLORED REGIMENTS; HIS INTERVIEWS
WITH PRESIDENTS LINCOLN
AND JOHNSON;
HIS APPOINTMENT BY GEN. GRANT TO ACCOMPANY THE SANTO DOMINGO
COMMISSION; ALSO TO A SEAT IN THE COUNCIL OF THE DISTRICT
OF COLUMBIA; HIS APPOINTMENT AS UNITED STATES MARSHAL
BY PRESIDENT R. B. HAYES; ALSO HIS APPOINTMENT BY
PRESIDENT J. A. GARFIELD TO BE RECORDER OF
DEEDS IN WASHINGTON; WITH MANY OTHER
INTERESTING AND IMPORTANT EVENTS
OF HIS MOST EVENTFUL LIFE;
WITH AN INTRODUCTION,
BY MR. GEORGE L. RUFFIN,
OF BOSTON.
HARTFORD, CONN.:
PARK PUBLISHING CO.
GEO. M. REWELL & CO., CLEVELAND, OHIO; J. S. GOODMAN
& CO., CHICAGO, ILL.; SUN PUBLISHING CO.,
ST. LOUIS, MO.; PHILLIPS & HUNT,
SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.
1882
COPYRIGHTED BY
PARK PUBLISHING CO.,
1881.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
AUTHOR’S BIRTH.
Author’s place of birth--Description of country--Its
inhabitants--Genealogical trees--Method of counting time
in slave districts--Date of author’s birth--Names of
grandparents--Their cabin--Home with them--Slave practice of
separating mothers from their children--Author’s recollections
of his mother--Who was his father? 25
CHAPTER II.
REMOVAL FROM GRANDMOTHER’S.
Author’s early home--Its charms--Author’s ignorance of “old
master”--His gradual perception of the truth concerning him--
His relations to Col. Edward Lloyd--Author’s removal to “old
master’s” home--His journey thence--His separation from his
grandmother--His grief 28
CHAPTER III.
TROUBLES OF CHILDHOOD.
Col. Lloyd’s plantation--Aunt Katy--Her cruelty and ill-nature--
Capt. Anthony’s partiality to Aunt Katy--Allowance of food--
Author’s hunger--Unexpected rescue by his mother--The reproof
of Aunt Katy--Sleep--A slave-mother’s love--Author’s
inheritance--His mother’s acquirements--Her death 33
CHAPTER IV.
A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE SLAVE PLANTATION.
Home plantation of Colonel Lloyd--Its isolation--Its industries--
The slave rule--Power of overseers--Author finds some
enjoyment--Natural scenery--Sloop “Sally Lloyd”--Wind
mill--Slave quarter--“Old master’s” house--Stables, store
houses, etc., etc.--The great house--Its surroundings--Lloyd
Burial-place--Superstition of slaves--Colonel Lloyd’s wealth--
Negro politeness--Doctor Copper--Captain Anthony--His family--
Master Daniel Lloyd--His brothers--Social etiquette 39
CHAPTER V.
A SLAVEHOLDER’S CHARACTER.
Increasing acquaintance with old master--Evils of unresisted
passion--Apparent tenderness--A man of trouble--Custom of
muttering to himself--Brutal outrage--A drunken overseer--
Slaveholder’s impatience--Wisdom of appeal--A base and selfish
attempt to break up a courtship 48
CHAPTER VI.
A CHILD’S REASONING.
The author’s early reflections on slavery--Aunt Jennie and Uncle
Noah--Presentment of one day becoming a freeman--Conflict
between an overseer and a slave woman--Advantage of resistance--
Death of an overseer--Col. Lloyd’s plantation home--Monthly
distribution of food--Singing of slaves--An explanation--
The slaves’ food and clothing--Naked children--Life in the
quarter--Sleeping places--not beds--Deprivation of sleep--
Care of nursing babies--Ash cake--Contrast 53
CHAPTER VII.
LUXURIES AT THE GREAT HOUSE.
Contrasts--Great House luxuries--Its hospitality--
Entertainments--Fault-finding--Shameful humiliation of an
old and faithful coachman--William Wilks--Curious incident--
Expressed satisfaction not always genuine--Reasons for
suppressing the truth 61
CHAPTER VIII.
CHARACTERISTICS OF OVERSEERS.
Austin Gore--Sketch of his character--Overseers as a class--
Their peculiar characteristics--The marked individuality
of Austin Gore--His sense of duty--Murder of poor Denby--
Sensation--How Gore made his peace with Col. Lloyd--Other
horrible murders--No laws for the protection of slaves possible
of being enforced 71
CHAPTER IX.
CHANGE OF LOCATION.
Miss Lucretia--Her kindness--How it was manifested--“Ike”--
A battle with him--Miss Lucretia’s balsam--Bread--How it
was obtained--Gleams of sunset amidst the general darkness--
Suffering from cold--How we took our meal mush--Preparations
for going to Baltimore--Delight at the change--Cousin Tom’s
opinion of Baltimore--Arrival there--Kind reception--Mr. and
Mrs. Hugh Auld--Their son Tommy--My relations to them--My
duties--A turning-point in my life 78
CHAPTER X.
LEARNING TO READ.
City annoyances--Plantation regrets--My mistress--Her history--
Her kindness--My master--His sourness--My comforts--Increased
sensitiveness--My occupation--Learning to read--Baneful
effects of slaveholding on my dear, good mistress--Mr. Hugh
forbids Mrs. Sophia to teach me further--Clouds gather on my
bright prospects--Master Auld’s exposition of the Philosophy of
Slavery--City slaves--Country slaves--Contrasts--Exceptions--
Mr. Hamilton’s two slaves--Mrs. Hamilton’s cruel treatment
of them--Piteous aspect presented by them--No power to come
between the slave and slaveholder 85
CHAPTER XI.
GROWING IN KNOWLEDGE.
My mistress--Her slaveholding duties--Their effects on her
originally noble nature--The conflict in her mind--She opposes
my learning to read--Too late--She had given me the “inch,” I
was resolved to take the “ell”--How I pursued my study to read--
My tutors--What progress I made--Slavery--What I heard said
about it--Thirteen years old--Columbian orator--Dialogue--
Speeches--Sheridan--Pitt--Lords Chatham and Fox--Knowledge
increasing--Liberty--Singing--Sadness--Unhappiness of Mrs.
Sophia--My hatred of slavery--One Upas tree overshadows us all 92
CHAPTER XII.
RELIGIOUS NATURE AWAKENED.
Abolitionists spoken of--Eagerness to know the meaning of the
word--Consults the dictionary--Incendiary information--The
enigma solved--“Nat Turner” insurrection--Cholera--Religion--
Methodist Minister--Religious impressions--Father Lawson--His
character and occupation--His influence over me--Our mutual
attachment--New hopes and aspirations--Heavenly light--Two
Irishmen on wharf--Conversation with them--Learning to write--
My aims 100
CHAPTER XIII.
THE VICISSITUDES OF SLAVE LIFE.
Death of old Master’s son Richard, speedily followed by that of old
Master--Valuation and division of all the property, including
the slaves--Sent for to come to Hillsborough to be valued and
divided--Sad prospects and grief--Parting--Slaves have no
voice in deciding their own destinies--General dread of falling
into Master Andrew’s hands--His drunkenness--Good fortune in
falling to Miss Lucretia--She allows my return to Baltimore--
Joy at Master Hugh’s--Death of Miss Lucretia--Master Thomas
Auld’s second marriage--The new wife unlike the old--Again
removed from Master Hugh’s--Reasons for regret--Plan of escape 107
CHAPTER XIV.
EXPERIENCE IN ST. MICHAELS.
St. Michaels and its inhabitants--Capt. Auld--His new wife--
Sufferings from hunger--Forced to steal--Argument in
vindication thereof--Southern camp-meeting--What Capt. Auld
did there--Hopes--Suspicions--The result--Faith and works at
variance--Position in the church--Poor Cousin Henny--Methodist
preachers--Their disregard of the slaves--One exception--
Sabbath-school--How and by whom broken up--Sad change in my
prospects--Covey, the negro-breaker 116
CHAPTER XV.
COVEY, THE NEGRO BREAKER.
Journey to Covey’s--Meditations by the way--Covey’s house--
Family--Awkwardness as a field hand--A cruel beating--Why
given--Description of Covey--First attempt at driving oxen--
Hair-breadth escape--Ox and man alike property--Hard labor more
effective than the whip for breaking down the spirit--Cunning
and trickery of Covey--Family worship--Shocking and indecent
contempt for chastity--Great mental agitation--Anguish beyond
description 129
CHAPTER XVI.
ANOTHER PRESSURE OF THE TYRANT’S VICE.
Experience at Covey’s summed up--First six months severer than
the remaining six--Preliminaries to the change--Reasons for
narrating the circumstances--Scene in the treading-yard--Author
taken ill--Escapes to St. Michaels--The pursuit--Suffering in
the woods--Talk with Master Thomas--His beating--Driven back
to Covey’s--The slaves never sick--Natural to expect them to
feign sickness--Laziness of slaveholders 142
CHAPTER XVII.
THE LAST FLOGGING.
A sleepless night--Return to Covey’s--Punished by him--The
chase defeated--Vengeance postponed--Musings in the woods--
The alternative--Deplorable spectacle--Night in the woods--
Expected attack--Arrested by Sandy--A friend, not a master--
Sandy’s hospitality--The ash-cake supper--Interview with
Sandy--His advice--Sandy a conjuror as well as a Christian--
The magic root--Strange meeting with Covey--His manner--
Covey’s Sunday face--Author’s defensive resolve--The fight--
The victory, and its results 150
CHAPTER XVIII.
NEW RELATIONS AND DUTIES.
Change of masters--Benefits derived by change--Fame of the fight
with Covey--Reckless unconcern--Author’s abhorence of slavery--
Ability to read a cause of prejudice--The holidays--How
spent--Sharp hit at slavery--Effects of holidays--Difference
between Covey and Freeland--An irreligious master preferred to
a religious one--Hard life at Covey’s useful to the author--
Improved condition does not bring contentment--Congenial society
at Freeland’s--Author’s Sabbath-school--Secresy necessary--
Affectionate relations of tutor and pupils--Confidence and
friendship among slaves--Slavery the inviter of vengeance 164
CHAPTER XIX.
THE RUNAWAY PLOT.
New Year’s thoughts and meditations--Again hired by Freeland--
Kindness no compensation for slavery--Incipient steps toward
escape--Considerations leading thereto--Hostility to slavery--
Solemn vow taken--Plan divulged to slaves--Columbian Orator
again--Scheme gains favor--Danger of discovery--Skill of
slaveholders--Suspicion and coercion--Hymns with double
meaning--Consultation--Password--Hope and fear--Ignorance
of Geography--Imaginary difficulties--Patrick Henry--Sandy a
dreamer--Route to the north mapped out--Objections--Frauds--
Passes--Anxieties--Fear of failure--Strange presentiment--
Coincidence--Betrayal--Arrests--Resistance--Mrs. Freeland--
Prison--Brutal jests--Passes eaten--Denial--Sandy--Dragged
behind horses--Slave traders--Alone in prison--Sent to
Baltimore 174
CHAPTER XX.
APPRENTICESHIP LIFE.
Nothing lost in my attempt to run away--Comrades at home--Reasons
for sending me away--Return to Baltimore--Tommy changed--
Caulking in Gardiner’s ship yard--Desperate fight--Its causes--
Conflict between white and black labor--Outrage--Testimony--
Master Hugh--Slavery in Baltimore--My condition improves--New
associations--Slaveholder’s right to the slave’s wages--How to
make a discontented slave 200
CHAPTER XXI.
ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY.
Closing incidents in my “Life as a Slave”--Discontent--
Suspicions--Master’s generosity--Difficulties in the way of
escape--Plan to obtain money--Allowed to hire my time--A
gleam of hope--Attend camp-meeting--Anger of Master Hugh--The
result--Plans of escape--Day for departure fixed--Harassing
doubts and fears--Painful thoughts of separation from friends 212
SECOND PART.
CHAPTER I.
ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY.
Reasons for not having revealed the manner of escape--Nothing
of romance in the method--Danger--Free Papers--Unjust tax--
Protection papers--“Free trade and sailors’ rights”--American
eagle--Railroad train--Unobserving conductor--Capt. McGowan--
Honest German--Fears--Safe arrival in Philadelphia--Ditto in
New York 220
CHAPTER II.
LIFE AS A FREEMAN.
Loneliness and insecurity--“Allender’s Jake”--Succored by a
sailor--David Ruggles--Marriage--Steamer J. W. Richmond--
Stage to New Bedford--Arrival there--Driver’s detention
of baggage--Nathan Johnson--Change of Name--Why called
“Douglass”--Obtaining Work--The _Liberator_ and its Editor 228
CHAPTER III.
INTRODUCED TO THE ABOLITIONISTS.
Anti-Slavery Convention at Nantucket--First Speech--Much
Sensation--Extraordinary Speech of Mr. Garrison--Anti-Slavery
Agency--Youthful Enthusiasm--Fugitive Slaveship Doubted--
Experience in Slavery Written--Danger of Recapture 244
CHAPTER IV.
RECOLLECTIONS OF OLD FRIENDS.
Work in Rhode Island--Dorr War--Recollections of old friends--
Further labors in Rhode Island and elsewhere in New England 250
CHAPTER V.
ONE HUNDRED CONVENTIONS.
Anti-Slavery Conventions held in parts of New England, and in some
of the Middle and Western States--Mobs--Incidents, etc. 257
CHAPTER VI.
IMPRESSIONS ABROAD.
Danger to be averted--A refuge sought abroad--Voyage on the
steamship Cambria--Refusal of first-class passage--Attractions
of the forecastle-deck--Hutchinson family--Invited to make
a speech--Southerners feel insulted--Captain threatens to
put them in irons--Experiences abroad--Attentions received--
Impressions of different members of Parliament, and of other
public men--Contrast with life in America--Kindness of
friends--Their purchase of my person, and the gift of the same
to myself--My return 266
CHAPTER VII.
TRIUMPHS AND TRIALS.
New Experiences--Painful Disagreement of Opinion with old
Friends--Final Decision to Publish my Paper in Rochester--Its
Fortunes and its Friends--Change in my own Views Regarding the
Constitution of the United States--Fidelity to Conviction--Loss
of Old Friends--Support of New Ones--Loss of House, etc., by
Fire--Triumphs and Trials--Under-ground Railroad--Incidents 294
CHAPTER VIII.
JOHN BROWN AND MRS. STOWE.
My First Meeting with Capt John Brown--The Free Soil Movement--
Colored Convention--Uncle Tom’s Cabin--Industrial School for
Colored People--Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe 309
CHAPTER IX.
INCREASING DEMANDS OF THE SLAVE POWER.
Increased demands of slavery--War in Kansas--John Brown’s raid--
His capture and execution--My escape to England from United
States marshals 329
CHAPTER X.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END.
My connection with John Brown--To and from England--Presidential
contest--Election of Abraham Lincoln 350
CHAPTER XI.
SECESSION AND WAR.
Recruiting of the 54th and 55th Colored Regiments--Visit to
President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton--Promised a Commission
as Adjutant General to General Thomas--Disappointment 373
CHAPTER XII.
HOPE FOR THE NATION.
Proclamation of emancipation--Its reception in Boston--Objections
brought against it--Its effect on the country--Interview with
President Lincoln--New York riots--Re-election of Mr. Lincoln--
His inauguration, and inaugural--Vice-President Johnson--
Presidential reception--The fall of Richmond--Fanueil Hall--
The assassination--Condolence 390
CHAPTER XIII.
VAST CHANGES.
Satisfaction and anxiety, new fields of labor opening--Lyceums and
colleges soliciting addresses--Literary attractions--Pecuniary
gain--Still pleading for human rights--President Andy Johnson--
Colored delegation--Their reply to him--National Loyalist
Convention, 1866, and its procession--Not Wanted--Meeting with
an old friend--Joy and surprise--The old master’s welcome,
and Miss Amanda’s friendship--Enfranchisement debated and
accomplished--The Negro a citizen 414
CHAPTER XIV.
LIVING AND LEARNING.
Inducements to a political career--Objections--A newspaper
enterprise--The New National Era--Its abandonment--The
Freedman’s Saving and Trust Company--Sad experience--
Vindication 442
CHAPTER XV.
WEIGHED IN THE BALANCE.
The Santo Domingo controversy--Decoration day at Arlington,
1871--Speech delivered there--National colored convention at
New Orleans, 1872--Elector at large for the State of New York--
Death of Hon. Henry Wilson 451
CHAPTER XVI.
“TIME MAKES ALL THINGS EVEN.”
Return to the “old master”--A last interview--Capt. Auld’s
admission “had I been in your place, I should have done as you
did”--Speech at Easton--The old jail there--Invited to a sail
on the revenue cutter Guthrie--Hon. John L. Thomas--Visit to
the old plantation--Home of Col. Lloyd--Kind reception and
attentions--Familiar scenes--Old memories--Burial-ground--
Hospitality--Gracious reception from Mrs. Buchanan--A little
girl’s floral gift--A promise of a “good time coming”--Speech
at Harper’s Ferry, Decoration day, 1881--Storer College--Hon.
A. J. Hunter 487
CHAPTER XVII.
INCIDENTS AND EVENTS.
Hon. Gerrit Smith and Mr. E. C. Delevan--Experiences at Hotels and
on Steamboats and other modes of travel--Hon. Edward Marshall--
Grace Greenwood--Hon. Moses Norris--Rob’t J. Ingersoll--
Reflections and conclusions--Compensations 503
CHAPTER XVIII.
“HONOR TO WHOM HONOR.”
Grateful recognition--Friends in need--Lucretia Mott--Lydia
Maria Child--Sarah and Angelina Grimke--Abby Kelly--H. Beecher
Stowe--Other Friends--Woman Suffrage 517
CHAPTER XIX.
RETROSPECTION.
Meeting of colored citizens in Washington to express their sympathy
at the great national bereavement, the death of President
Garfield--Concluding reflections and convictions 527
APPENDIX.
Oration at the unveiling of the Freedmen’s monument, at Lincoln
Park, Washington, D. C., April 14, 1876--Extract from a speech
delivered at Elmira, N. Y., August 1, 1880 533
[Illustration: ILLUSTRATIONS.]
PAGE.
1. PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR ON STEEL, Frontispiece
2. THE LAST TIME HE SAW HIS MOTHER, 36
3. WHIPPING OF OLD BARNEY, 66
4. GORE SHOOTING DENBY, 74
5. MRS. AULD TEACHING HIM TO READ, 89
6. FOUND IN THE WOODS BY SANDY, 153
7. DRIVEN TO JAIL FOR RUNNING AWAY, 191
8. HIS PRESENT HOME IN WASHINGTON, 221
9. AT THE WHARF IN NEWPORT, 233
10. FIGHTING THE MOB IN INDIANA, 263
11. PORTRAIT OF JOHN BROWN, 308
12. PORTRAIT OF WM. LLOYD GARRISON, 369
13. PORTRAIT OF WENDELL PHILLIPS, 422
14. PORTRAIT OF CHARLES SUMNER, 453
15. COMMISSIONERS TO SANTO DOMINGO, 459
16. MARSHAL AT PRESIDENT GARFIELD’S INAUGURATION, 475
17. REVISITS HIS OLD HOME, 497
18. PORTRAIT OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN ON STEEL, 547
INTRODUCTION.
Just what this country has in store to benefit or to startle the world
in the future, no tongue can tell. We know full well the wonderful
things which have occurred or have been accomplished here in the
past, but the still more wonderful things which we may well say will
happen in the centuries of development which lie before us, is vain
conjecture, it lies in the domain of speculation.
America will be the field for the demonstration of truths not now
accepted and the establishment of a new and higher civilization. Horace
Walpole’s prophecy will be verified when there shall be a Xenophon
at New York and a Thucydides at Boston. Up to this time the most
remarkable contribution this country has given to the world is the
Author and subject of this book, now being introduced to the public--
Frederick Douglass. The contribution comes naturally and legitimately
and to some not unexpectedly, nevertheless it is altogether unique and
must be regarded as truly remarkable. Our Pantheon contains many that
are illustrious and worthy, but Douglass is unlike all others, he is
_sui generis_. For every other great character we can bring forward,
Europe can produce another equally as great; when we bring forward
Douglass, he cannot be matched.
Douglass was born a slave, he won his liberty; he is of negro
extraction, and consequently was despised and outraged; he has by
his own energy and force of character commanded the respect of the
Nation; he was ignorant, he has, against law and by stealth and
entirely unaided, educated himself; he was poor, he has by honest
toil and industry become rich and independent, so to speak; he, a
chattel slave of a hated and cruelly wronged race, in the teeth of
American prejudice and in face of nearly every kind of hindrance and
draw-back, has come to be one of the foremost orators of the age, with
a reputation established on both sides of the Atlantic; a writer of
power and elegance of expression; a thinker whose views are potent in
controlling and shaping public opinion; a high officer in the National
Government; a cultivated gentleman whose virtues as a husband, father,
and citizen are the highest honor a man can have.
Frederick Douglass stands upon a pedestal; he has reached this lofty
height through years of toil and strife, but it has been the strife of
moral ideas; strife in the battle for human rights. No bitter memories
come from this strife; no feelings of remorse can rise to cast their
gloomy shadows over his soul; Douglass has now reached and passed the
meridian of life, his co-laborers in the strife have now nearly all
passed away. Garrison has gone, Gerritt Smith has gone, Giddings and
Sumner have gone,--nearly all the early abolitionists are gone to
their reward. The culmination of his life work has been reached; the
object dear to his heart--the Emancipation of the slaves--has been
accomplished, through the blessings of God; he stands facing the goal,
already reached by his co-laborers, with a halo of peace about him,
and nothing but serenity and gratitude must fill his breast. To those,
who in the past--in _ante-bellum_ days--in any degree shared with
Douglass his hopes and feelings on the slavery question, this serenity
of mind, this gratitude, can be understood and felt. All Americans,
no matter what may have been their views on slavery, now that freedom
has come and slavery is ended, must have a restful feeling and be glad
that the source of bitterness and trouble is removed. The man who is
sorry because of the abolition of slavery, has outlived his day and
generation; he should have insisted upon being buried with the “lost
cause” at Appomattox.
We rejoice that Douglass has attained unto this exalted position--this
pedestal. It has been honorably reached; it is a just recognition of
talent and effort; it is another proof that success attends high and
noble aim. With this example, the black boy as well as the white boy
can take hope and courage in the race of life.
Douglass’ life has been a romance--and a fragrance--to the age. There
has been just enough mystery about his origin and escape from slavery
to throw a charm about them. The odd proceedings in the purchase of his
freedom after his escape from slavery; his movements in connection with
the John Brown raid at Harper’s Ferry and his subsequent flight across
the ocean are romantic as anything which took place among the crags
and cliffs, the Roderick Dhus and Douglasses of the Lady of the Lake;
while the pure life he has led and his spotless character are sweet by
contrast with the lives of mere politicians and time serving statesmen.
It is well to contemplate one like him, who has had “hair breadth
escapes.” It is inspiring to know that the day of self-sacrifice and
self-development are not passed.
To say that his life has been eventful, is hardly the word. From the
time when he first saw the light on the Tuckahoe plantation up to the
time he was called to fill a high official position, his life has been
crowded with events which in some sense may be called miracles, and now
since his autobiography has come to be written, we must understand the
hour of retrospect has come--for casting up and balancing accounts as
to work done or left undone.
It is more than forty years now that he has been before the world as
a writer and speaker--busy, active, wonderful years to him--and we
are called upon to pass judgment upon his labors. What can we say? Can
he claim the well done good and faithful? The record shows this, and
we must state it, generally speaking, his life has been devoted to his
race and the cause of his race. The freedom and elevation of his people
has been his life work, and it has been done well and faithfully. That
is the record, and that is sufficient. No higher eulogium can be
pronounced than that Longfellow says of the Village Blacksmith:--
“Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night’s repose.”
Douglass found his people enslaved and oppressed. He has given the best
years of his life to the improvement of their condition, and, now that
he looks back upon his labors, may he not say he has “attempted” and
“done” something? and may he not claim the “repose” which ought to come
in the evening of a well spent life?
The first twenty-three years of Douglass’ life were twenty-three years
of slavery, obscurity, and degradation, yet doubtless in time to
come these years will be regarded by the student of history the most
interesting portion of his life; to those who in the future would know
the inside history of American slavery, this part of his life will be
specially instructive. Plantation life at Tuckahoe as related by him
is not fiction, it is fact; it is not the historian’s dissertation on
slavery, it is slavery itself, the slave’s life, acts, and thoughts,
and the life, acts, and thoughts of those around him. It is Macauley (I
think) who says that a copy of a daily newspaper [if there were such]
published at Rome would give more information and be of more value than
any history we have. So, too, this photographic view of slave life as
given to us in the autobiography of an ex-slave will give to the reader
a clearer insight of the system of slavery than can be gained from the
examination of general history.
Col. Lloyd’s plantation, where Douglass belonged, was very much like
other plantations of the south. Here was the great house and the
cabins, the old Aunties and patriarchal Uncles, little picanninies and
picanninies not so little, of every shade of complexion, from ebony
black to whiteness of the master race; mules, overseers, and broken
down fences. Here was the negro Doctor learned in the science of roots
and herbs; also the black conjurer with his divination. Here was
slave-breeding and slave-selling, whipping, torturing, and beating to
death. All this came under the observation of Douglass and is a part of
the education he received while under the yoke of bondage. He was there
in the midst of this confusion, ignorance, and brutality. Little did
the overseer on this plantation think that he had in his gang a man of
superior order and undaunted spirit, whose mind, far above the minds
of the grovelling creatures about him, was at that very time plotting
schemes for his liberty; nor did the thought ever enter the mind of
Col. Lloyd, the rich slaveholder, that he had upon his estate one who
was destined to assail the system of slavery with more power and effect
than any other person.
Douglass’ fame will rest mainly, no doubt, upon his oratory. His powers
in this direction are very great and in some respects unparalleled by
our living speakers. His oratory is his own and apparently formed after
the model of no single person. It is not after the Edmund Burke style,
which has been so closely followed by Everett, Sumner, and others,
and which has resulted in giving us splendid and highly embellished
essays rather than natural and not overwrought speeches. If his oratory
must be classified, it should be placed somewhere between the Fox
and Henry Clay schools. Like Clay, Douglass’ greatest effect is upon
his immediate hearers, those who see him and feel his presence, and
like Clay a good part of his oratorical fame will be tradition. The
most striking feature of Douglass’ oratory is his fire, not the quick
and flashy kind, but the steady and intense kind. Years ago on the
anti-slavery platform, in some sudden and unbidden outburst of passion
and indignation he has been known to awe-inspire his listeners as
though Ætna were there.
If oratory consists of the power to move men by spoken words, Douglass
is a complete orator. He can make men laugh or cry, at his will. He
has power of statement, logic, withering denunciation, pathos, humor,
and inimitable wit. Daniel Webster with his immense intellectuality
had no humor, not a particle. It does not appear that he could even
see the point of a joke. Douglass is brim full of humor at times, of
the dryest kind. It is of a quiet kind. You can see it coming a long
way off in a peculiar twitch of his mouth; it increases and broadens
gradually until it becomes irresistible and all-pervading with his
audience.
Douglass’ rank as a writer is high, and justly so. His writings, if
anything, are more meritorious than his speaking. For many years he
was the editor of newspapers, doing all of the editorial work. He has
contributed largely to magazines. He is a forcible and thoughtful
writer. His style is pure and graceful, and he has great felicity of
expression. His written productions in finish compare favorably with
the written productions of our most cultivated writers. His style
comes partly, no doubt, from his long and constant practice, but
the true source is his clear mind, which is well stored by a close
acquaintance with the best authors. His range of reading has been wide
and extensive. He has been a hard student. In every sense of the word
he is a self-made man. By dint of hard study he has educated himself,
and to-day it may be said he has a well-trained intellect. He has
surmounted the disadvantage of not having an university education,
by application and well-directed effort. He seems to have realized
the fact that to one who is anxious to become educated and is really
in earnest, it is not positively necessary to go to college, and
that information may be had outside of college walks; books may be
obtained and read elsewhere, they are not chained to desks in college
libraries as they were in early times at Oxford; Professors’ lectures
may be bought already printed; learned doctors may be listened to in
the Lyceum; and the printing press has made it easy and cheap to get
information on every subject and topic that is discussed and taught in
the University. Douglass never made the great mistake (a common one) of
considering that his education was finished. He has continued to study,
he studies now, and is a growing man, and at this present moment he is
a stronger man intellectually than ever before.
Soon after Douglass’ escape from Maryland to the Northern States, he
commenced his public career. It was at New Bedford as a local Methodist
preacher and by taking part in small public meetings held by colored
people, wherein anti-slavery and other matters were discussed. There he
laid the foundation of the splendid career which is now about drawing
to a close. In these meetings Douglass gave evidence that he possessed
uncommon powers, and it was plainly to be seen that he needed only a
field and opportunity to display them. That field and opportunity soon
came, as it always does to possessors of genius. He became a member and
agent of the American Anti-Slavery society. Then commenced his great
crusade against slavery in behalf of his oppressed brethren at the
South.
He waged violent and unceasing war against slavery. He went through
every town and hamlet in the Free States, raising his voice against the
iniquitous system.
Just escaped from the prison-house himself, to tear down the walls
of the same and to let the oppressed go free, was the mission which
engaged the powers of his soul and body. North, East, and West, all
through the land went this escaped slave delivering his warning
message against the doomed cities of the South. The ocean did not
stop nor hinder him. Across the Atlantic he went, through England,
Ireland, and Scotland. Wherever people could be found to listen to
his story, he pleaded the cause of his enslaved and down-trodden
brethren with vehemence and great power. From 1840 to 1861, the time
of the commencement of the civil war, which extirpated slavery in this
country, Douglass was continuously speaking on the platform, writing
for his newspaper and for magazines, or working in conventions for the
abolition of slavery.
The life and work of Douglass has been a complete vindication of the
colored people in this respect; it has refuted and overthrown the
position taken by some writers that colored people were deficient in
mental qualifications and were incapable of attaining high intellectual
position. We may reasonably expect to hear no more of this now, the
argument is exploded. Douglass has settled the fact the right way, and
it is something to settle a fact.
That Douglass is a brave man there can be little doubt. He has physical
as well as moral courage. His encounter with the overseer of the
eastern shore plantation attests his pluck. There the odds were against
him, everything was against him--there the unwritten rule of law was,
that the negro who dared to strike a white man, must be killed, but
Douglass fought the overseer and whipped him. His plotting with other
slaves to escape, writing and giving them passes, and the unequal and
desperate fight maintained by him in the Baltimore ship yard, where law
and public sentiment were against him, also show that he has courage.
But since the day of his slavery, while living here at the North, many
instances have happened which show very plainly that he is a man of
courage and determination; if he had not been, he would have long since
succumbed to the brutality and violence of the low and mean spirited
people found in the Free States.
Up to a very recent date it has been deemed quite safe even here in
the North to insult and impose on inoffensive colored people, to
elbow a colored man from the sidewalk, to jeer at him and apply vile
epithets to him, in some localities this has been the rule and not the
exception, and to put him out of public conveyances and public places
by force, was of common occurrence. It made little difference that the
colored man was decent, civil, and respectably clad, and had paid his
fare, if the proprietor of the place or his patrons took the notion
that the presence of the colored man was an affront to their dignity
or inconsistent with their notions of self-respect, out he must go.
Nor must he stand upon the order of his going, but go at once. It was
against this feeling that Douglass had to contend. He met it often; he
was a prominent colored man traveling from place to place. A good part
of the time he was in strange cities stopping at strange taverns--that
is, when he was allowed to stop. Time and again has he been refused
accommodation in hotels. Time and again has he been in a strange place
with nowhere to lay his head until some kind anti-slavery person would
come forward and give him shelter.
The writer of this remembers well, because he was present and saw the
transaction,--the John Brown meeting in Tremont Temple in 1860, when a
violent mob composed of the rough element from the slums of the city,
led and encouraged by bankers and brokers, came into the hall to break
up the meeting. Douglass was presiding; the mob was armed; the police
were powerless; the mayor could not or would not do anything. On came
the mob surging through the aisles over benches and upon the platform;
the women in the audience became alarmed and fled. The hirelings were
prepared to do anything, they had the power and could with impunity.
Douglass sat upon the platform with a few chosen spirits, cool and
undaunted; the mob had got about and around him; he did not heed their
howling nor was he moved by their threats. It was not until their
leader, a rich banker, with his followers, had mounted the platform and
wrenched the chair from under him that he was dispossessed, by main
force and personal violence (Douglass resisting all the time) they
removed him from the platform.
It affords me great pleasure to introduce to the public this book, “The
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.” I am glad of the opportunity to
present a work which tells the story of the rise and progress of our
most celebrated colored man. To the names of Toussaint L’Overture and
Alexander Dumas is to be added that of Frederick Douglass. We point
with pride to this trio of illustrious names. I bid my fellow country
men take new hope and courage; the near future will bring us other men
of worth and genius, and our list of illustrious names will become
lengthened. Until that time the duty is to work and wait.
Respectfully,
GEORGE L. RUFFIN.
LIFE AS A SLAVE.
CHAPTER I.
AUTHOR’S BIRTH.
Author’s place of birth--Description of country--Its Inhabitants--
Genealogical trees--Method of counting time in slave districts--
Date of author’s birth--Names of grandparents--Their cabin--
Home with them--Slave practice of separating mothers from their
children--Author’s recollections of his mother--Who was his father?
In Talbot County, Eastern Shore, State of Maryland, near Easton, the
county town, there is a small district of country, thinly populated,
and remarkable for nothing that I know of more than for the worn-out,
sandy, desert-like appearance of its soil, the general dilapidation
of its farms and fences, the indigent and spiritless character of its
inhabitants, and the prevalence of ague and fever. It was in this dull,
flat, and unthrifty district or neighborhood, bordered by the Choptank
river, among the laziest and muddiest of streams surrounded by a white
population of the lowest order, indolent and drunken to a proverb, and
among slaves who, in point of ignorance and indolence, were fully in
accord with their surroundings, that I, without any fault of my own,
was born, and spent the first years of my childhood.
The reader must not expect me to say much of my family. Genealogical
trees did not flourish among slaves. A person of some consequence
in civilized society, sometimes designated as father, was literally
unknown to slave law and slave practice. I never met with a slave in
that part of the country who could tell me with any certainty how old
he was. Few at that time knew anything of the months of the year or
of the days of the month. They measured the ages of their children by
spring-time, winter-time, harvest-time, planting-time, and the like.
Masters allowed no questions to be put to them by slaves concerning
their ages. Such questions were regarded by the masters as evidence of
an impudent curiosity. From certain events, however, the dates of which
I have since learned, I suppose myself to have been born in February,
1817.
My first experience of life, as I now remember it, and I remember it
but hazily, began in the family of my grandmother and grandfather,
Betsey and Isaac Bailey. They were considered old settlers in
the neighborhood, and from certain circumstances I infer that my
grandmother, especially, was held in high esteem, far higher than was
the lot of most colored persons in that region. She was a good nurse,
and a capital hand at making nets used for catching shad and herring,
and was, withal, somewhat famous as a fisherwoman. I have known her
to be in the water waist deep, for hours, seine-hauling. She was a
gardener as well as a fisherwoman, and remarkable for her success in
keeping her seedling sweet potatoes through the months of winter, and
easily got the reputation of being born to “good luck.” In planting
time Grandmother Betsey was sent for in all directions, simply to place
the seedling potatoes in the hills or drills; for superstition had it
that her touch was needed to make them grow. This reputation was full
of advantage to her and her grandchildren, for a good crop, after her
planting for the neighbors, brought her a share of the harvest.
Whether because she was too old for field service, or because she had
so faithfully discharged the duties of her station in early life, I
know not, but she enjoyed the high privilege of living in a cabin
separate from the quarters, having only the charge of the young
children and the burden of her own support imposed upon her. She
esteemed it great good fortune to live so, and took much comfort in
having the children. The practice of separating mothers from their
children and hiring them out at distances too great to admit of their
meeting, save at long intervals, was a marked feature of the cruelty
and barbarity of the slave system; but it was in harmony with the grand
aim of that system, which always and everywhere sought to reduce man to
a level with the brute. It had no interest in recognizing or preserving
any of the ties that bind families together or to their homes.
My grandmother’s five daughters were hired out in this way, and my only
recollections of my own mother are of a few hasty visits made in the
night on foot, after the daily tasks were over, and when she was under
the necessity of returning in time to respond to the driver’s call to
the field in the early morning. These little glimpses of my mother,
obtained under such circumstances and against such odds, meager as they
were, are ineffaceably stamped upon my memory. She was tall and finely
proportioned, of dark glossy complexion, with regular features, and
amongst the slaves was remarkably sedate and dignified. There is, in
“Prichard’s Natural History of Man,” the head of a figure, on page 157,
the features of which so resemble my mother that I often recur to it
with something of the feelings which I suppose others experience when
looking upon the likenesses of their own dear departed ones.
Of my father I know nothing. Slavery had no recognition of fathers, as
none of families. That the mother was a slave was enough for its deadly
purpose. By its law the child followed the condition of its mother. The
father might be a freeman and the child a slave. The father might be
a white man, glorying in the purity of his Anglo-Saxon blood, and his
child ranked with the blackest slaves. Father he might be, and not be
husband, and could sell his own child without incurring reproach, if in
its veins coursed one drop of African blood.
CHAPTER II.
REMOVAL FROM GRANDMOTHER’S.
Author’s early home--Its charms--Author’s ignorance of “old master”--
His gradual perception of the truth concerning him--His relations
to Col. Edward Lloyd--Author’s removal to “old master’s” home--His
journey thence--His separation from his grandmother--His grief.
Living thus with my grandmother, whose kindness and love stood in
place of my mother’s, it was some time before I knew myself to be a
slave. I knew many other things before I knew that. Her little cabin
had to me the attractions of a palace. Its fence-railed floor--which
was equally floor and bedstead--up stairs, and its clay floor down
stairs, its dirt and straw chimney, and windowless sides, and that
most curious piece of workmanship, the ladder stairway, and the hole
so strangely dug in front of the fire-place, beneath which grandmamma
placed her sweet potatoes, to keep them from frost in winter, were
full of interest to my childish observation. The squirrels, as they
skipped the fences, climbed the trees, or gathered their nuts, were
an unceasing delight to me. There, too, right at the side of the hut,
stood the old well, with its stately and skyward-pointing beam, so
aptly placed between the limbs of what had once been a tree, and so
nicely balanced, that I could move it up and down with only one hand,
and could get a drink myself without calling for help. Nor were these
all the attractions of the place. At a little distance stood Mr. Lee’s
mill, where the people came in large numbers to get their corn ground.
I can never tell the many things thought and felt, as I sat on the bank
and watched that mill, and the turning of its ponderous wheel. The
mill-pond, too, had its charms; and with my pin-hook and thread line I
could get amusing nibbles if I could catch no fish.
It was not long, however, before I began to learn the sad fact that
this house of my childhood belonged not to my dear old grandmother, but
to some one I had never seen, and who lived a great distance off. I
learned, too, the sadder fact, that not only the home and lot, but that
grandmother herself and all the little children around her belonged
to a mysterious personage, called by grandmother, with every mark of
reverence, “Old Master.” Thus early did clouds and shadows begin to
fall upon my path.
I learned that this old master, whose name seemed ever to be mentioned
with fear and shuddering, only allowed the little children to live
with grandmother for a limited time, and that as soon as they were big
enough they were promptly taken away to live with the said old master.
These were distressing revelations indeed. My grandmother was all the
world to me, and the thought of being separated from her was a most
unwelcome suggestion to my affections and hopes. This mysterious old
master was really a man of some consequence. He owned several farms
in Tuckahoe, was the chief clerk and butler on the home plantation
of Colonel Lloyd, had overseers as well as slaves on his own farms,
and gave directions to the overseers on the farms owned by Colonel
Lloyd. Captain Aaron Anthony, for such is the name and title of my old
master, lived on Colonel Lloyd’s plantation, which was situated on the
Wye river, and which was one of the largest, most fertile, and best
appointed in the State.
About this plantation and this old master I was most eager to know
everything which could be known; and, unhappily for me, all the
information I could get concerning him increased my dread of being
separated from my grandmother and grandfather. I wished it was possible
I could remain small all my life, knowing that the sooner I grew large
the shorter would be my time to remain with them. Everything about
the cabin became doubly dear, and I was sure there could be no other
spot equal to it on earth. But the time came when I must go, and my
grandmother, knowing my fears, in pity for them, kindly kept me
ignorant of the dreaded moment up to the morning (a beautiful summer
morning) when we were to start, and, indeed, during the whole journey,
which, child as I was, I remember as well as if it were yesterday, she
kept the unwelcome truth hidden from me. The distance from Tuckahoe
to Colonel Lloyd’s, where my old master lived, was full twelve miles,
and the walk was quite a severe test of the endurance of my young
legs. The journey would have proved too severe for me, but that my
dear old grandmother (blessings on her memory) afforded occasional
relief by “toteing” me on her shoulder. Advanced in years as she was,
as was evident from the more than one gray hair which peeped from
between the ample and graceful folds of her newly and smoothly ironed
bandana turban, grandmother was yet a woman of power and spirit. She
was remarkably straight in figure, elastic and muscular in movement. I
seemed hardly to be a burden to her. She would have “toted” me farther,
but I felt myself too much of a man to allow it. Yet while I walked
I was not independent of her. She often found me holding her skirts
lest something should come out of the woods and eat me up. Several old
logs and stumps imposed upon me, and got themselves taken for enormous
animals. I could plainly see their legs, eyes, ears, and teeth, till
I got close enough to see that the eyes were knots, washed white with
rain, and the legs were broken limbs, and the ears and teeth only such
because of the point from which they were seen.
As the day advanced the heat increased, and it was not until the
afternoon that we reached the much dreaded end of the journey. Here I
found myself in the midst of a group of children of all sizes and of
many colors, black, brown, copper colored, and nearly white. I had not
seen so many children before. As a new comer I was an object of special
interest. After laughing and yelling around me and playing all sorts of
wild tricks they asked me to go out and play with them. This I refused
to do. Grandmamma looked sad, and I could not help feeling that our
being there boded no good to me. She was soon to lose another object
of affection, as she had lost many before. Affectionately patting me
on the head she told me to be a good boy and go out to play with the
children. They are “kin to you,” she said, “go and play with them.”
She pointed out to me my brother Perry, my sisters, Sarah and Eliza. I
had never seen them before, and though I had sometimes heard of them
and felt a curious interest in them, I really did not understand what
they were to me or I to them. Brothers and sisters we were by blood,
but slavery had made us strangers. They were already initiated into
the mysteries of old master’s domicile, and they seemed to look upon
me with a certain degree of compassion. I really wanted to play with
them, but they were strangers to me, and I was full of fear that my
grandmother might leave for home without taking me with her. Entreated
to do so, however, and that, too, by my dear grandmother, I went to
the back part of the house to play with them and the other children.
Play, however, I did not, but stood with my back against the wall
witnessing the playing of the others. At last, while standing there,
one of the children, who had been in the kitchen, ran up to me in a
sort of roguish glee, exclaiming, “Fed, Fed, grandmamma gone!” I could
not believe it. Yet, fearing the worst, I ran into the kitchen to see
for myself, and lo! she was indeed gone, and was now far away and
“clean” out of sight. I need not tell all that happened now. Almost
heart-broken at the discovery, I fell upon the ground and wept a boy’s
bitter tears, refusing to be comforted. My brother gave me peaches and
pears to quiet me, but I promptly threw them on the ground. I had never
been deceived before, and something of resentment at this, mingled with
my grief at parting with my grandmother.
It was now late in the afternoon. The day had been an exciting and
wearisome one, and, I know not where, but I suppose I sobbed myself to
sleep, and its balm was never more welcome to any wounded soul than to
mine. The reader may be surprised that I relate so minutely an incident
apparently so trivial and which must have occurred when I was less
than seven years old, but as I wish to give a faithful history of my
experience in slavery, I cannot withhold a circumstance which at the
time affected me so deeply, and which I still remember so vividly.
Besides, this was my first introduction to the realities of the slave
system.
CHAPTER III.
TROUBLES OF CHILDHOOD.
Col. Lloyd’s plantation--Aunt Katy--Her cruelty and ill-nature--
Capt. Anthony’s partiality to Aunt Katy--Allowance of food--
Author’s hunger--Unexpected rescue by his mother--The reproof of
Aunt Katy--Sleep--A slave-mother’s love--Author’s inheritance--
His mother’s acquirements--Her death.
Once established on the home plantation of Col. Lloyd--I was with
the children there, left to the tender mercies of Aunt Katy, a slave
woman who was to my master what he was to Col. Lloyd. Disposing of
us in classes or sizes, he left to Aunt Katy all the minor details
concerning our management. She was a woman who never allowed herself to
act greatly within the limits of delegated power, no matter how broad
that authority might be. Ambitious of old master’s favor, ill-tempered
and cruel by nature, she found in her present position an ample field
for the exercise of her ill-omened qualities. She had a strong hold
upon old master, for she was a first-rate cook, and very industrious.
She was therefore greatly favored by him--and as one mark of his favor
she was the only mother who was permitted to retain her children around
her, and even to these, her own children, she was often fiendish in her
brutality. Cruel, however, as she sometimes was to her own children,
she was not destitute of maternal feeling, and in her instinct to
satisfy their demands for food, she was often guilty of starving me and
the other children. Want of food was my chief trouble during my first
summer here. Captain Anthony, instead of allowing a given quantity of
food to each slave, committed the allowance for all to Aunt Katy, to
be divided by her, after cooking, amongst us. The allowance consisted
of coarse corn meal, not very abundant, and which by passing through
Aunt Katy’s hands, became more slender still for some of us. I have
often been so pinched with hunger, as to dispute with old “Nep,” the
dog, for the crumbs which fell from the kitchen table. Many times
have I followed with eager step, the waiting-girl when she shook the
table-cloth, to get the crumbs and small bones flung out for the dogs
and cats. It was a great thing to have the privilege of dipping a piece
of bread into the water in which meat had been boiled--and the skin
taken from the rusty bacon was a positive luxury. With this description
of the domestic arrangements of my new home, I may here recount a
circumstance which is deeply impressed on my memory, as affording
a bright gleam of a slave-mother’s love, and the earnestness of a
mother’s care. I had offended Aunt Katy. I do not remember in what way,
for my offences were numerous in that quarter, greatly depending upon
her moods as to their heinousness, and she had adopted her usual mode
of punishing me: namely, making me go all day without food. For the
first hour or two after dinner time, I succeeded pretty well in keeping
up my spirits; but as the day wore away, I found it quite impossible to
do so any longer. Sundown came, but no bread; and in its stead came the
threat from Aunt Katy, with a scowl well suited to its terrible import,
that she would starve the life out of me. Brandishing her knife, she
chopped off the heavy slices of bread for the other children, and put
the loaf away, muttering all the while her savage designs upon myself.
Against this disappointment, for I was expecting that her heart would
relent at last, I made an extra effort to maintain my dignity, but when
I saw the other children around me with satisfied faces, I could stand
it no longer. I went out behind the kitchen wall and cried like a fine
fellow. When wearied with this, I returned to the kitchen, sat by the
fire and brooded over my hard lot. I was too hungry to sleep. While
I sat in the corner, I caught sight of an ear of Indian corn upon an
upper shelf. I watched my chance and got it; and shelling off a few
grains, I put it back again. These grains I quickly put into the hot
ashes to roast. I did this at the risk of getting a brutal thumping,
for Aunt Katy could beat as well as starve me. My corn was not long in
roasting, and I eagerly pulled it from the ashes, and placed it upon
a stool in a clever little pile. I began to help myself, when who but
my own dear mother should come in. The scene which followed is beyond
my power to describe. The friendless and hungry boy, in his extremest
need, found himself in the strong protecting arms of his mother. I
have before spoken of my mother’s dignified and impressive manner. I
shall never forget the indescribable expression of her countenance
when I told her that Aunt Katy had said she would starve the life out
of me. There was deep and tender pity in her glance at me, and a fiery
indignation at Aunt Katy at the same moment, and while she took the
corn from me, and gave in its stead a large ginger cake, she read Aunt
Katy a lecture which was never forgotten. That night I learned as I
had never learned before, that I was not only a child, but somebody’s
child. I was grander upon my mother’s knee than a king upon his throne.
But my triumph was short. I dropped off to sleep, and waked in the
morning to find my mother gone and myself at the mercy again of the
virago in my master’s kitchen, whose fiery wrath was my constant dread.
[Illustration: THE LAST TIME HE SAW HIS MOTHER.]
My mother had walked twelve miles to see me, and had the same distance
to travel over again before the morning sunrise. I do not remember
ever seeing her again. Her death soon ended the little communication
that had existed between us, and with it, I believe, a life full of
weariness and heartfelt sorrow. To me it has ever been a grief that I
knew my mother so little, and have so few of her words treasured in
my remembrance. I have since learned that she was the only one of all
the colored people of Tuckahoe who could read. How she acquired this
knowledge I know not, for Tuckahoe was the last place in the world
where she would have been likely to find facilities for learning. I
can therefore fondly and proudly ascribe to her, an earnest love of
knowledge. That a field-hand should learn to read in any slave State
is remarkable, but the achievements of my mother, considering the
place and circumstances, was very extraordinary. In view of this fact,
I am happy to attribute any love of letters I may have, not to my
presumed Anglo-Saxon paternity, but to the native genius of my sable,
unprotected, and uncultivated mother--a woman who belonged to a race
whose mental endowments are still disparaged and despised.
CHAPTER IV.
A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE SLAVE PLANTATION.
Home Plantation of Colonel Lloyd--Its Isolation--Its Industries--
The Slave Rule--Power of Overseers--Author finds some Enjoyment--
Natural Scenery--Sloop “Sally Lloyd”--Wind Mill--Slave Quarter--
“Old Master’s” House--Stables, Store Houses, etc., etc.--The Great
House--Its Surroundings--Lloyd--Burial-Place--Superstition of
Slaves--Colonel Lloyd’s Wealth--Negro Politeness--Doctor Copper--
Captain Anthony--His Family--Master Daniel Lloyd--His Brothers--
Social Etiquette.
It was generally supposed that slavery in the State of Maryland existed
in its mildest form, and that it was totally divested of those harsh
and terrible peculiarities which characterized the slave system in the
Southern and South Western States of the American Union. The ground of
this opinion was the contiguity of the free States, and the influence
of their moral, religious, and humane sentiments. Public opinion
was, indeed, a measurable restraint upon the cruelty and barbarity
of masters, overseers, and slave-drivers, whenever and wherever it
could reach them; but there were certain secluded and out of the way
places, even in the State of Maryland, fifty years ago, seldom visited
by a single ray of healthy public sentiment, where slavery, wrapt in
its own congenial darkness, could and did develop all its malign and
shocking characteristics, where it could be indecent without shame,
cruel without shuddering, and murderous without apprehension or fear
of exposure, or punishment. Just such a secluded, dark, and out of
the way place, was the home plantation of Colonel Edward Lloyd, in
Talbot county, eastern shore of Maryland. It was far away from all
the great thoroughfares of travel and commerce, and proximate to no
town or village. There was neither school-house nor town-house in
its neighborhood. The school-house was unnecessary, for there were
no children to go to school. The children and grandchildren of Col.
Lloyd were taught in the house by a private tutor (a Mr. Page from
Greenfield, Massachusetts, a tall, gaunt, sapling of a man, remarkably
dignified, thoughtful, and reticent, and who did not speak a dozen
words to a slave in a whole year). The overseer’s children went off
somewhere in the State to school, and therefore could bring no foreign
or dangerous influence from abroad to embarrass the natural operation
of the slave system of the place. Not even the commonest mechanics,
from whom there might have been an occasional outburst of honest and
telling indignation at cruelty and wrong on other plantations, were
white men here. Its whole public was made up of and divided into
three classes, slaveholders, slaves, and overseers. Its blacksmiths,
wheelwrights, shoemakers, weavers, and coopers, were slaves. Not even
commerce, selfish and indifferent to moral considerations as it usually
is, was permitted within its secluded precincts. Whether with a view
of guarding against the escape of its secrets, I know not, but it is
a fact, that every leaf and grain of the products of this plantation
and those of the neighboring farms, belonging to Col. Lloyd, were
transported to Baltimore in his own vessels, every man and boy on board
of which, except the captain, were owned by him as his property. In
return, everything brought to the plantation came through the same
channel. To make this isolation more apparent it may be stated that the
adjoining estates to Col. Lloyd’s were owned and occupied by friends of
his, who were as deeply interested as himself in maintaining the slave
system in all its rigor. These were the Tilgmans, the Goldboroughs,
the Lockermans, the Pacas, the Skinners, Gibsons, and others of lesser
affluence and standing.
The fact is, public opinion in such a quarter, the reader must see, was
not likely to be very efficient in protecting the slave from cruelty.
To be a restraint upon abuses of this nature, opinion must emanate from
humane and virtuous communities, and to no such opinion or influence
was Col. Lloyd’s plantation exposed. It was a little nation by itself,
having its own language, its own rules, regulations, and customs. The
troubles and controversies arising here were not settled by the civil
power of the State. The overseer was the important dignitary. He was
generally accuser, judge, jury, advocate, and executioner. The criminal
was always dumb--and no slave was allowed to testify, other than
against his brother slave.
There were, of course, no conflicting rights of property, for all the
people were the property of one man, and they could themselves own no
property. Religion and politics were largely excluded. One class of the
population was too high to be reached by the common preacher, and the
other class was too low in condition and ignorance to be much cared for
by religious teachers, and yet some religious ideas did enter this dark
corner.
This, however, is not the only view which the place presented. Though
civilization was in many respects shut out, nature could not be. Though
separated from the rest of the world, though public opinion, as I
have said, could seldom penetrate its dark domain, though the whole
place was stamped with its own peculiar iron-like individuality, and
though crimes, high-handed and atrocious, could be committed there
with strange and shocking impunity, it was to outward seeming a most
strikingly interesting place, full of life, activity, and spirit,
and presented a very favorable contrast to the indolent monotony and
languor of Tuckahoe. It resembled in some respects descriptions I
have since read of the old baronial domains of Europe. Keen as was my
regret, and great as was my sorrow, at leaving my old home, I was not
long in adapting myself to this my new one. A man’s troubles are always
half disposed of when he finds endurance the only alternative. I found
myself here; there was no getting away; and naught remained for me but
to make the best of it. Here were plenty of children to play with, and
plenty of pleasant resorts for boys of my age and older. The little
tendrils of affection so rudely broken from the darling objects in and
around my grandmother’s home, gradually began to extend and twine
themselves around the new surroundings. Here for the first time I saw
a large wind-mill, with its wide-sweeping white wings, a commanding
object to a child’s eye. This was situated on what was called Long
Point--a tract of land dividing Miles river from the Wye. I spent many
hours here watching the wings of this wondrous mill. In the river,
or what was called the “Swash,” at a short distance from the shore,
quietly lying at anchor, with her small row boat dancing at her stern,
was a large sloop, the Sally Lloyd, called by that name in honor of
the favorite daughter of the Colonel. These two objects, the sloop and
mill, as I remember, awakened thoughts, ideas, and wondering. Then
here were a great many houses, human habitations full of the mysteries
of life at every stage of it. There was the little red house up the
road, occupied by Mr. Seveir, the overseer; a little nearer to my
old master’s stood a long, low, rough building literally alive with
slaves of all ages, sexes, conditions, sizes, and colors. This was
called the long quarter. Perched upon a hill east of our house, was a
tall dilapidated old brick building, the architectural dimensions of
which proclaimed its creation for a different purpose, now occupied by
slaves, in a similar manner to the long quarters. Besides these, there
were numerous other slave houses and huts, scattered around in the
neighborhood, every nook and corner of which, were completely occupied.
Old master’s house, a long brick building, plain but substantial,
was centrally located, and was an independent establishment. Besides
these houses there were barns, stables, store houses, tobacco-houses,
blacksmith shops, wheelwright shops, cooper shops; but above all there
stood the grandest building my young eyes had ever beheld, called by
everyone on the plantation the _great_ house. This was occupied by
Col. Lloyd and his family. It was surrounded by numerous and variously
shaped out-buildings. There were kitchens, wash-houses, dairies,
summer-houses, green-houses, hen-houses, turkey-houses, pigeon-houses,
and arbors of many sizes and devices, all neatly painted or
whitewashed--interspersed with grand old trees, ornamental and
primitive, which afforded delightful shade in summer and imparted to
the scene a high degree of stately beauty. The _great_ house itself was
a large white wooden building with wings on three sides of it. In front
a broad portico extended the entire length of the building, supported
by a long range of columns, which gave to the Colonel’s home an air of
great dignity and grandeur. It was a treat to my young and gradually
opening mind to behold this elaborate exhibition of wealth, power, and
beauty.
The carriage entrance to the house was by a large gate, more than a
quarter of a mile distant. The intermediate space was a beautiful
lawn, very neatly kept and cared for. It was dotted thickly over with
trees and flowers. The road or lane from the gate to the great house
was richly paved with white pebbles from the beach, and in its course
formed a complete circle around the lawn. Outside this select enclosure
were parks, as about the residences of the English nobility, where
rabbits, deer, and other wild game might be seen peering and playing
about, with “none to molest them or make them afraid.” The tops of
the stately poplars were often covered with red-winged blackbirds,
making all nature vocal with the joyous life and beauty of their wild,
warbling notes. These all belonged to me as well as to Col. Edward
Lloyd, and, whether they did or not, I greatly enjoyed them. Not far
from the great house were the stately mansions of the dead Lloyds--
a place of somber aspect. Vast tombs, embowered beneath the weeping
willow and the fir tree, told of the generations of the family, as well
as their wealth. Superstition was rife among the slaves about this
family burying-ground. Strange sights had been seen there by some of
the older slaves, and I was often compelled to hear stories of shrouded
ghosts, riding on great black horses, and of balls of fire which had
been seen to fly there at midnight, and of startling and dreadful
sounds that had been repeatedly heard. Slaves knew enough of the
Orthodox theology at the time, to consign all bad slaveholders to hell,
and they often fancied such persons wishing themselves back again
to wield the lash. Tales of sights and sounds strange and terrible,
connected with the huge black tombs, were a great security to the
grounds about them, for few of the slaves had the courage to approach
them during the day time. It was a dark, gloomy and forbidding place,
and it was difficult to feel that the spirits of the sleeping dust
there deposited reigned with the blest in the realms of eternal peace.
Here was transacted the business of twenty or thirty different farms,
which, with the slaves upon them, numbering, in all, not less than
a thousand, all belonged to Col. Lloyd. Each farm was under the
management of an overseer, whose word was law.
Mr. Lloyd at this time was very rich. His slaves alone, numbering as
I have said not less than a thousand, were an immense fortune, and
though scarcely a month passed without the sale of one or more lots to
the Georgia traders, there was no apparent diminution in the number
of his human stock. The selling of any to the State of Georgia was a
sore and mournful event to those left behind, as well as to the victims
themselves.
The reader has already been informed of the handicrafts carried on
here by the slaves. “Uncle” Toney was the blacksmith, “Uncle” Harry
the Cartwright, and “Uncle” Abel was the shoemaker, and these had
assistants in their several departments. These mechanics were called
“Uncles” by all the younger slaves, not because they really sustained
that relationship to any, but according to plantation etiquette as a
mark of respect, due from the younger to the older slaves. Strange
and even ridiculous as it may seem, among a people so uncultivated
and with so many stern trials to look in the face, there is not to be
found among any people a more rigid enforcement of the law of respect
to elders than is maintained among them. I set this down as partly
constitutional with the colored race and partly conventional. There
is no better material in the world for making a gentleman than is
furnished in the African.
Among other slave notabilities, I found here one called by everybody,
white and colored, “Uncle” Isaac Copper. It was seldom that a slave,
however venerable, was honored with a surname in Maryland, and so
completely has the south shaped the manners of the north in this
respect that their right to such honor is tardily admitted even now. It
goes sadly against the grain to address and treat a negro as one would
address and treat a white man. But once in a while, even in a slave
state, a negro had a surname fastened to him by common consent. This
was the case with “Uncle” Isaac Copper. When the “Uncle” was dropped,
he was called Doctor Copper. He was both our Doctor of Medicine and our
Doctor of Divinity. Where he took his degree I am unable to say, but he
was too well established in his profession to permit question as to his
native skill, or attainments. One qualification he certainly had. He
was a confirmed cripple, wholly unable to work, and was worth nothing
for sale in the market. Though lame, he was no sluggard. He made his
crutches do him good service, and was always on the alert looking up
the sick, and such as were supposed to need his aid and counsel. His
remedial prescriptions embraced four articles. For diseases of the
body, epsom salts and castor oil; for those of the soul, the “Lord’s
prayer,” and a few stout hickory switches.
I was early sent to Doctor Isaac Copper, with twenty or thirty other
children, to learn the Lord’s prayer. The old man was seated on a huge
three-legged oaken stool, armed with several large hickory switches,
and from the point where he sat, lame as he was, he could reach every
boy in the room. After standing a while to learn what was expected
of us, he commanded us to kneel down. This done, he told us to say
everything he said. “Our Father”--this we repeated after him with
promptness and uniformity--“who art in Heaven,” was less promptly and
uniformly repeated, and the old gentleman paused in the prayer to give
us a short lecture, and to use his switches on our backs.
Everybody in the South seemed to want the privilege of whipping
somebody else. Uncle Isaac, though a good old man, shared the common
passion of his time and country. I cannot say I was much edified by
attendance upon his ministry. There was even at that time something
a little inconsistent and laughable, in my mind, in the blending
of prayer with punishment. I was not long in my new home before I
found that the dread I had conceived of Captain Anthony was in a
measure groundless. Instead of leaping out from some hiding place and
destroying me, he hardly seemed to notice my presence. He probably
thought as little of my arrival there, as of an additional pig to
his stock. He was the chief agent of his employer. The overseers of
all the farms composing the Lloyd estate, were in some sort under
him. The Colonel himself seldom addressed an overseer, or allowed
himself to be addressed by one. To Captain Anthony, therefore, was
committed the headship of all the farms. He carried the keys of all
the storehouses, weighed and measured the allowances of each slave,
at the end of each month; superintended the storing of all goods
brought to the store-house; dealt out the raw material to the different
handicraftsmen, shipped the grain, tobacco, and all other saleable
produce of the numerous farms to Baltimore, and had a general oversight
of all the workshops of the place. In addition to all this he was
frequently called abroad to Easton and elsewhere in the discharge of
his numerous duties as chief agent of the estate.
The family of Captain Anthony consisted of two sons--Andrew and
Richard, his daughter Lucretia and her newly married husband, Captain
Thomas Auld. In the kitchen were Aunt Katy, Aunt Esther, and ten or a
dozen children, most of them older than myself. Capt. Anthony was not
considered a rich slaveholder, though he was pretty well off in the
world. He owned about thirty slaves and three farms in the Tuckahoe
district. The more valuable part of his property was in slaves, of whom
he sold one every year, which brought him in seven or eight hundred
dollars, besides his yearly salary and other revenue from his lands.
I have been often asked during the earlier part of my free life at
the north, how I happened to have so little of the slave accent in my
speech. The mystery is in some measure explained by my association
with Daniel Lloyd, the youngest son of Col. Edward Lloyd. The law of
compensation holds here as well as elsewhere. While this lad could
not associate with ignorance without sharing its shade, he could not
give his black playmates his company without giving them his superior
intelligence as well. Without knowing this, or caring about it at the
time, I, for some cause or other, was attracted to him and was much his
companion.
I had little to do with the older brothers of Daniel--Edward and
Murray. They were grown up and were fine looking men. Edward was
especially esteemed by the slave children and by me among the rest,
not that he ever said anything to us or for us which could be called
particularly kind. It was enough for us that he never looked or
acted scornfully toward us. The idea of rank and station was rigidly
maintained on this estate. The family of Captain Anthony never visited
the great house, and the Lloyds never came to our house. Equal
non-intercourse was observed between Captain Anthony’s family and the
family of Mr. Seveir, the overseer.
Such, kind readers, was the community and such the place in which my
earliest and most lasting impressions of the workings of slavery were
received--of which impressions you will learn more in the after coming
chapters of this book.
CHAPTER V.
A SLAVEHOLDER’S CHARACTER.
Increasing acquaintance with old Master--Evils of unresisted passion--
Apparent tenderness--A man of trouble--Custom of muttering to
himself--Brutal outrage--A drunken overseer--Slaveholder’s
impatience--Wisdom of appeal--A base and selfish attempt to break
up a courtship.
Although my old master, Captain Anthony, gave me, at the first of
my coming to him from my grandmother’s, very little attention, and
although that little was of a remarkably mild and gentle description,
a few months only were sufficient to convince me that mildness
and gentleness were not the prevailing or governing traits of his
character. These excellent qualities were displayed only occasionally.
He could, when it suited him, appear to be literally insensible to the
claims of humanity. He could not only be deaf to the appeals of the
helpless against the aggressor, but he could himself commit outrages
deep, dark, and nameless. Yet he was not by nature worse than other
men. Had he been brought up in a free state, surrounded by the full
restraints of civilized society--restraints which are necessary to
the freedom of all its members, alike and equally, Capt. Anthony might
have been as humane a man as are members of such society generally.
A man’s character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form
and color of things about him. The slaveholder, as well as the slave,
was the victim of the slave system. Under the whole heavens there
could be no relation more unfavorable to the development of honorable
character than that sustained by the slaveholder to the slave. Reason
is imprisoned here and passions run wild. Could the reader have seen
Captain Anthony gently leading me by the hand, as he sometimes did,
patting me on the head, speaking to me in soft, caressing tones
and calling me his little Indian boy, he would have deemed him a
kind-hearted old man, and really almost fatherly to the slave boy. But
the pleasant moods of a slaveholder are transient and fitful. They
neither come often nor remain long. The temper of the old man was
subject to special trials, but since these trials were never borne
patiently, they added little to his natural stock of patience. Aside
from his troubles with his slaves and those of Mr. Lloyd’s, he made the
impression upon me of being an unhappy man. Even to my child’s eye he
wore a troubled and at times a haggard aspect. His strange movements
excited my curiosity and awakened my compassion. He seldom walked alone
without muttering to himself, and he occasionally stormed about as if
defying an army of invisible foes. Most of his leisure was spent in
walking around, cursing and gesticulating as if possessed by a demon.
He was evidently a wretched man, at war with his own soul and all the
world around him. To be overheard by the children disturbed him very
little. He made no more of our presence than that of the ducks and
geese he met on the green. But when his gestures were most violent,
ending with a threatening shake of the head and a sharp snap of his
middle finger and thumb, I deemed it wise to keep at a safe distance
from him.
One of the first circumstances that opened my eyes, to the cruelties
and wickedness of slavery and its hardening influences upon my old
master, was his refusal to interpose his authority to protect and
shield a young woman, a cousin of mine, who had been most cruelly
abused and beaten by his overseer in Tuckahoe. This overseer, a Mr.
Plummer, was like most of his class, little less than a human brute;
and in addition to his general profligacy and repulsive coarseness, he
was a miserable drunkard, a man not fit to have the management of a
drove of mules. In one of his moments of drunken madness he committed
the outrage which brought the young woman in question down to my old
master’s for protection. The poor girl, on her arrival at our house,
presented a most pitiable appearance. She had left in haste and without
preparation, and probably without the knowledge of Mr. Plummer. She
had traveled twelve miles, bare-footed, bare-necked, and bare-headed.
Her neck and shoulders were covered with scars newly made, and not
content with marring her neck and shoulders with the cowhide, the
cowardly wretch had dealt her a blow on the head with a hickory club,
which cut a horrible gash and left her face literally covered with
blood. In this condition the poor young woman came down to implore
protection at the hands of my old master. I expected to see him boil
over with rage at the revolting deed, and to hear him fill the air with
curses upon the brutal Plummer; but I was disappointed. He sternly told
her in an angry tone, “She deserved every bit of it, and if she did
not go home instantly he would himself take the remaining skin from
her neck and back.” Thus the poor girl was compelled to return without
redress, and perhaps to receive an additional flogging for daring to
appeal to authority higher than that of the overseer.
I did not at that time understand the philosophy of this treatment of
my cousin. I think I now understand it. This treatment was a part of
the system, rather than a part of the man. To have encouraged appeals
of this kind would have occasioned much loss of time, and leave the
overseer powerless to enforce obedience. Nevertheless, when a slave
had nerve enough to go straight to his master, with a well-founded
complaint against an overseer, though he might be repelled and have
even that of which he complained at the time repeated, and though
he might be beaten by his master as well as by the overseer, for
his temerity, in the end, the policy of complaining was generally
vindicated by the relaxed rigor of the overseer’s treatment. The latter
became more careful and less disposed to use the lash upon such slaves
thereafter.
The overseer very naturally disliked to have the ear of the master
disturbed by complaints, and either for this reason or because of
advice privately given him by his employer, he generally modified the
rigor of his rule after complaints of this kind had been made against
him. For some cause or other the slaves, no matter how often they were
repulsed by their masters, were ever disposed to regard them with less
abhorrence than the overseer. And yet these masters would often go
beyond their overseers in wanton cruelty. They wielded the lash without
any sense of responsibility. They could cripple or kill without fear of
consequences. I have seen my old master in a tempest of wrath, full of
pride, hatred, jealousy, and revenge, where he seemed a very fiend.
The circumstances which I am about to narrate, and which gave rise to
this fearful tempest of passion, were not singular, but very common in
our slaveholding community.
The reader will have noticed that among the names of slaves, Esther
is mentioned. This was a young woman who possessed that which was
ever a curse to the slave girl--namely, personal beauty. She was
tall, light-colored, well formed, and made a fine appearance. Esther
was courted by “Ned Roberts,” the son of a favorite slave of Col.
Lloyd, who was as fine-looking a young man as Esther was a woman. Some
slaveholders would have been glad to have promoted the marriage of
two such persons, but for some reason, Captain Anthony disapproved of
their courtship. He strictly ordered her to quit the company of young
Roberts, telling her that he would punish her severely if he ever
found her again in his company. But it was impossible to keep this
couple apart. Meet they would, and meet they did. Had Mr. Anthony been
himself a man of honor, his motives in this matter might have appeared
more favorably. As it was, they appeared as abhorrent as they were
contemptible. It was one of the damning characteristics of slavery,
that it robbed its victims of every earthly incentive to a holy life.
The fear of God and the hope of heaven were sufficient to sustain many
slave women amidst the snares and dangers of their strange lot; but
they were ever at the mercy of the power, passion, and caprice of their
owners. Slavery provided no means for the honorable perpetuation of the
race. Yet despite of this destitution there were many men and women
among the slaves who were true and faithful to each other through life.
But to the case in hand. Abhorred and circumvented as he was, Captain
Anthony, having the power, was determined on revenge. I happened to
see its shocking execution, and shall never forget the scene. It
was early in the morning, when all was still, and before any of the
family in the house or kitchen had risen. I was, in fact, awakened
by the heartrending shrieks and piteous cries of poor Esther. My
sleeping-place was on the dirt floor of a little rough closet which
opened into the kitchen, and through the cracks in its unplaned boards
I could distinctly see and hear what was going on, without being seen.
Esther’s wrists were firmly tied, and the twisted rope was fastened to
a strong iron staple in a heavy wooden beam above, near the fire-place.
Here she stood on a bench, her arms tightly drawn above her head. Her
back and shoulders were perfectly bare. Behind her stood old master,
with cowhide in hand, pursuing his barbarous work with all manner of
harsh, coarse, and tantalizing epithets. He was cruelly deliberate,
and protracted the torture as one who was delighted with the agony of
his victim. Again and again he drew the hateful scourge through his
hand, adjusting it with a view of dealing the most pain-giving blow
his strength and skill could inflict. Poor Esther had never before
been severely whipped. Her shoulders were plump and tender. Each blow,
vigorously laid on, brought screams from her as well as blood. “Have
mercy! Oh, mercy!” she cried. “I wont do so no more.” But her piercing
cries seemed only to increase his fury. The whole scene, with all its
attendants, was revolting and shocking to the last degree, and when the
motives for the brutal castigation are known, language has no power
to convey a just sense of its dreadful criminality. After laying on I
dare not say how many stripes, old master untied his suffering victim.
When let down she could scarcely stand. From my heart I pitied her,
and child as I was, and new to such scenes, the shock was tremendous.
I was terrified, hushed, stunned, and bewildered. The scene here
described was often repeated, for Edward and Esther continued to meet,
notwithstanding all efforts to prevent their meeting.
CHAPTER VI.
A CHILD’S REASONING.
The author’s early reflections on Slavery--Aunt Jennie and Uncle
Noah--Presentment of one day becoming a freeman--Conflict between
an overseer and a slave woman--Advantage of resistance--Death of
an overseer--Col. Lloyd’s plantation home--Monthly distribution
of food--Singing of Slaves--An explanation--The slaves’ food and
clothing--Naked children--Life in the quarter--Sleeping places--
not beds--Deprivation of sleep--Care of nursing babies--Ash cake--
Contrast.
The incidents related in the foregoing chapter led me thus early to
inquire into the origin and nature of slavery. Why am I a slave? Why
are some people slaves and others masters? These were perplexing
questions and very troublesome to my childhood. I was told by some one
very early that “_God up in the sky_” had made all things, and had made
black people to be slaves and white people to be masters. I was told
too that God was good and that he knew what was best for everybody.
This was, however, less satisfactory than the first statement. It came
point blank against all my notions of goodness. The case of Aunt Esther
was in my mind. Besides, I could not tell how anybody could know that
God made black people to be slaves. Then I found, too, that there were
puzzling exceptions to this theory of slavery, in the fact that all
black people were not slaves, and all white people were not masters.
An incident occurred about this time that made a deep impression on
my mind. One of the men slaves of Captain Anthony and my Aunt Jennie
ran away. A great noise was made about it. Old master was furious. He
said he would follow them and catch them and bring them back, but he
never did it, and somebody told me that Uncle Noah and Aunt Jennie had
gone to the free states and were free. Besides this occurrence, which
brought much light to my mind on the subject, there were several
slaves on Mr. Lloyd’s place who remembered being brought from Africa.
There were others that told me that their fathers and mothers were
stolen from Africa.
This to me was important knowledge, but not such as to make me feel
very easy in my slave condition. The success of Aunt Jennie and Uncle
Noah in getting away from slavery was, I think, the first fact that
made me seriously think of escape for myself. I could not have been
more than seven or eight years old at the time of this occurrence, but
young as I was I was already a fugitive from slavery in spirit and
purpose.
Up to the time of the brutal treatment of my Aunt Esther, already
narrated, and the shocking plight in which I had seen my cousin from
Tuckahoe, my attention had not been especially directed to the grosser
and more revolting features of slavery. I had, of course, heard of
whippings and savage mutilations of slaves by brutal overseers, but
happily for me I had always been out of the way of such occurrences.
My play time was spent outside of the corn and tobacco fields, where
the overseers and slaves were brought together and in conflict. But
after the case of my Aunt Esther I saw others of the same disgusting
and shocking nature. The one of these which agitated and distressed
me most was the whipping of a woman, not belonging to my old master,
but to Col. Lloyd. The charge against her was very common and very
indefinite, namely, “_impudence_.” This crime could be committed by a
slave in a hundred different ways, and depended much upon the temper
and caprice of the overseer as to whether it was committed at all.
He could create the offense whenever it pleased him. A look, a word,
a gesture, accidental or intentional, never failed to be taken as
impudence when he was in the right mood for such an offense. In this
case there were all the necessary conditions for the commission of
the crime charged. The offender was nearly white, to begin with; she
was the wife of a favorite hand on board of Mr. Lloyd’s sloop and was
besides the mother of five sprightly children. Vigorous and spirited
woman that she was, a wife and a mother, with a predominating share
of the blood of the master running in her veins. Nellie (for that was
her name) had all the qualities essential to impudence to a slave
overseer. My attention was called to the scene of the castigation by
the loud screams and curses that proceeded from the direction of it.
When I came near the parties engaged in the struggle, the overseer
had hold of Nelly, endeavoring with his whole strength to drag her to
a tree against her resistance. Both his and her faces were bleeding,
for the woman was doing her best. Three of her children were present,
and though quite small, (from seven to ten years old I should think,)
they gallantly took the side of their mother against the overseer,
and pelted him well with stones and epithets. Amid the screams of the
children “_Let my mammy go! Let my mammy go!_” the hoarse voice of
the maddened overseer was heard in terrible oaths that he would teach
her how to give a white man “_impudence_.” The blood on his face and
on hers attested her skill in the use of her nails, and his dogged
determination to conquer. His purpose was to tie her up to a tree
and give her, in slaveholding parlance, a “genteel flogging,” and he
evidently had not expected the stern and protracted resistance he was
meeting, or the strength and skill needed to its execution. There
were times when she seemed likely to get the better of the brute, but
he finally overpowered her, and succeeded in getting her arms firmly
tied to the tree towards which he had been dragging her. The victim
was now at the mercy of his merciless lash. What followed I need not
here describe. The cries of the now helpless woman, while undergoing
the terrible infliction, were mingled with the hoarse curses of the
overseer and the wild cries of her distracted children. When the poor
woman was untied, her back was covered with blood. She was whipped,
terribly whipped, but she was not subdued, and continued to denounce
the overseer, and pour upon him every vile epithet she could think of.
Such floggings are seldom repeated by overseers on the same persons.
They prefer to whip those who were the most easily whipped. The
doctrine that submission to violence is the best cure for violence did
not hold good as between slaves and overseers. He was whipped oftener
who was whipped easiest. That slave who had the courage to stand up for
himself against the overseer, although he might have many hard stripes
at first, became while legally a slave virtually a freeman. “You can
shoot me,” said a slave to Rigby Hopkins, “but you can’t whip me,” and
the result was he was neither whipped nor shot. I do not know that Mr.
Sevier ever attempted to whip Nelly again. He probably never did, for
not long after he was taken sick and died. It was commonly said that
his death-bed was a wretched one, and that, the ruling passion being
strong in death, he died flourishing the slave whip and with horrid
oaths upon his lips. This death-bed scene may only be the imagining
of the slaves. One thing is certain, that when he was in health his
profanity was enough to chill the blood of an ordinary man. Nature,
or habit, had given to his face an expression of uncommon savageness.
Tobacco and rage had ground his teeth short, and nearly every sentence
that he uttered was commenced or completed with an oath. Hated for his
cruelty, despised for his cowardice, he went to his grave lamented by
nobody on the place outside of his own house, if, indeed, he was even
lamented there.
In Mr. James Hopkins, the succeeding overseer, we had a different and
a better man, as good perhaps as any man could be in the position of a
slave overseer. Though he sometimes wielded the lash, it was evident
that he took no pleasure in it and did it with much reluctance. He
stayed but a short time here, and his removal from the position was
much regretted by the slaves generally. Of the successor of Mr. Hopkins
I shall have something to say at another time and in another place.
For the present we will attend to a further description of the
business-like aspect of Col. Lloyd’s “_Great House_” farm. There was
always much bustle and noise here on the two days at the end of each
month, for then the slaves belonging to the different branches of
this great estate assembled here by their representatives to obtain
their monthly allowances of corn-meal and pork. These were gala days
for the slaves of the outlying farms, and there was much rivalry among
them as to who should be elected to go up to the Great House farm for
the “_Allowances_” and indeed to attend to any other business at this
great place, to them the capitol of a little nation. Its beauty and
grandeur, its immense wealth, its numerous population, and the fact
that uncles Harry, Peter, and Jake, the sailors on board the sloop,
usually kept on sale trinkets which they bought in Baltimore to sell to
their less fortunate fellow-servants, made a visit to the Great House
farm a high privilege, and eagerly sought. It was valued, too, as a
mark of distinction and confidence; but probably the chief motive among
the competitors for the office was the opportunity it afforded to shake
off the monotony of the field and to get beyond the overseer’s eye and
lash. Once on the road with an ox-team, and seated on the tongue of the
cart, with no overseer to look after him, he felt himself comparatively
free.
Slaves were expected to sing as well as to work. A silent slave was not
liked, either by masters or by overseers. “_Make a noise there! make
a noise there!_” and “bear a hand,” were words usually addressed to
slaves when they were silent. This, and the natural disposition of the
negro to make a noise in the world, may account for the almost constant
singing among them when at their work. There was generally more or less
singing among the teamsters at all times. It was a means of telling the
overseer, in the distance, where they were, and what they were about.
But on the allowance days those commissioned to the Great House farm
were peculiarly vocal. While on the way they would make the grand old
woods for miles around reverberate with their wild and plaintive notes.
They were indeed both merry and sad. Child as I was, these wild songs
greatly depressed my spirits. Nowhere outside of dear old Ireland, in
the days of want and famine, have I heard sounds so mournful.
In all these slave songs there was ever some expression of praise of
the Great House farm--something that would please the pride of the
Lloyds.
I am going away to the Great House farm,
O, yea! O, yea! O, yea!
My old master is a good old master,
O, yea! O, yea! O, yea
These words would be sung over and over again, with others, improvised
as they went along--jargon, perhaps, to the reader, but full of
meaning to the singers. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing
of these songs would have done more to impress the good people of the
north with the soul-crushing character of slavery than whole volumes
exposing the physical cruelties of the slave system; for the heart has
no language like song. Many years ago, when recollecting my experience
in this respect, I wrote of these slave songs in the following strain:
“I did not, when a slave, fully understand the deep meaning of those
rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was, myself, within the circle,
so that I could then neither hear nor see as those without might see
and hear. They breathed the prayer and complaint of souls overflowing
with the bitterest anguish. They depressed my spirits and filled my
heart with ineffable sadness.”
The remark in the olden time was not unfrequently made, that slaves
were the most contented and happy laborers in the world, and their
dancing and singing were referred to in proof of this alleged fact; but
it was a great mistake to suppose them happy because they sometimes
made those joyful noises. The songs of the slaves represented their
sorrows, rather than their joys. Like tears, they were a relief
to aching hearts. It is not inconsistent with the constitution of
the human mind, that avails itself of one and the same method for
expressing opposite emotions. Sorrow and desolation have their songs,
as well as joy and peace.
It was the boast of slaveholders that their slaves enjoyed more of
the physical comforts of life than the peasantry of any country in the
world. My experience contradicts this. The men and the women slaves
on Col. Lloyd’s farm received as their monthly allowance of food,
eight pounds of pickled pork, or its equivalent in fish. The pork was
often tainted, and the fish were of the poorest quality. With their
pork or fish, they had given them one bushel of Indian meal, unbolted,
of which quite fifteen per cent. was more fit for pigs than for men.
With this one pint of salt was given, and this was the entire monthly
allowance of a full-grown slave, working constantly in the open field
from morning till night every day in the month except Sunday. There
is no kind of work which really requires a better supply of food to
prevent physical exhaustion than the field work of a slave. The yearly
allowance of clothing was not more ample than the supply of food. It
consisted of two tow-linen shirts, one pair of trowsers of the same
coarse material, for summer, and a woolen pair of trowsers and a woolen
jacket for winter, with one pair of yarn stockings and a pair of shoes
of the coarsest description. Children under ten years old had neither
shoes, stockings, jackets, nor trowsers. They had two coarse tow-linen
shirts per year, and when these were worn out they went naked till the
next allowance day--and this was the condition of the little girls as
well as the boys. As to beds, they had none. One coarse blanket was
given them, and this only to the men and women. The children stuck
themselves in holes and corners about the quarters, often in the
corners of huge chimneys, with their feet in the ashes to keep them
warm. The want of beds, however, was not considered a great privation
by the field hands. Time to sleep was of far greater importance. For
when the day’s work was done most of these had their washing, mending,
and cooking to do, and having few or no facilities for doing such
things, very many of their needed sleeping hours were consumed in
necessary preparations for the labors of the coming day. The sleeping
apartments, if they could have been properly called such, had little
regard to comfort or decency. Old and young, male and female, married
and single, dropped down upon the common clay floor, each covering up
with his or her blanket, their only protection from cold or exposure.
The night, however, was shortened at both ends. The slaves worked often
as long as they could see, and were late in cooking and mending for
the coming day, and at the first gray streak of the morning they were
summoned to the field by the overseer’s horn. They were whipped for
over-sleeping more than for any other fault. Neither age nor sex found
any favor. The overseer stood at the quarter door, armed with stick and
whip, ready to deal heavy blows upon any who might be a little behind
time. When the horn was blown there was a rush for the door, for the
hindermost one was sure to get a blow from the overseer. Young mothers
who worked in the field were allowed an hour about ten o’clock in the
morning to go home to nurse their children. This was when they were
not required to take them to the field with them, and leave them upon
“turning row,” or in the corner of the fences.
As a general rule the slaves did not come to their quarters to take
their meals, but took their ash-cake (called thus because baked in the
ashes) and piece of pork, or their salt herrings, where they were at
work.
But let us now leave the rough usage of the field, where vulgar
coarseness and brutal cruelty flourished as rank as weeds in the
tropics, where a vile wretch, in the shape of a man, rides, walks, and
struts about, with whip in hand, dealing heavy blows and leaving deep
gashes on the flesh of men and women, and turn our attention to the
less repulsive slave life as it existed in the home of my childhood.
Some idea of the splendor of that place sixty years ago has already
been given. The contrast between the condition of the slaves and that
of their masters was marvelously sharp and striking. There were pride,
pomp, and luxury on the one hand, servility, dejection, and misery on
the other.
CHAPTER VII.
LUXURIES AT THE GREAT HOUSE.
Contrasts--Great House luxuries--Its hospitality--Entertainments--
Fault-finding--Shameful humiliation of an old and faithful
coachman--William Wilks--Curious incident--Expressed satisfaction
not always genuine--Reasons for suppressing the truth.
The close-fisted stinginess that fed the poor slave on coarse corn-meal
and tainted meat, that clothed him in crashy tow-linen and hurried
him on to toil through the field in all weathers, with wind and rain
beating through his tattered garments, that scarcely gave even the
young slave-mother time to nurse her infant in the fence-corner, wholly
vanished on approaching the sacred precincts of the “Great House”
itself. There the scriptural phrase descriptive of the wealthy found
exact illustration. The highly-favored inmates of this mansion were
literally arrayed in “purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously
every day.” The table of this house groaned under the blood-bought
luxuries gathered with painstaking care at home and abroad. Fields,
forests, rivers, and seas were made tributary. Immense wealth and
its lavish expenditures filled the Great House with all that could
please the eye or tempt the taste. Fish, flesh, and fowl were here in
profusion. Chickens of all breeds; ducks of all kinds, wild and tame,
the common and the huge Muscovite; Guinea fowls, turkeys, geese, and
pea-fowls were fat, and fattening for the destined vortex. Here the
graceful swan, the mongrels, the black-necked wild goose, partridges,
quails, pheasants and pigeons, choice water-fowl, with all their
strange varieties, were caught in this huge net. Beef, veal, mutton,
and venison, of the most select kinds and quality, rolled in bounteous
profusion to this grand consumer. The teeming riches of the Chesapeake
Bay, its rock perch, drums, crocus, trout, oysters, crabs, and terrapin
were drawn hither to adorn the glittering table. The dairy, too, the
finest then on the eastern shore of Maryland, supplied by cattle of the
best English stock, imported for the express purpose, poured its rich
donations of fragrant cheese, golden butter, and delicious cream to
heighten the attractions of the gorgeous, unending round of feasting.
Nor were the fruits of the earth overlooked. The fertile garden, many
acres in size, constituting a separate establishment distinct from
the common farm, with its scientific gardener direct from Scotland,
a Mr. McDermott, and four men under his direction, was not behind,
either in the abundance or in the delicacy of its contributions. The
tender asparagus, the crispy celery, and the delicate cauliflower, egg
plants, beets, lettuce, parsnips, peas, and French beans, early and
late, radishes, cantelopes, melons of all kinds; and the fruits of all
climes and of every description, from the hardy apples of the north
to the lemon and orange of the south, culminated at this point. Here
were gathered figs, raisins, almonds, and grapes from Spain, wines and
brandies from France, teas of various flavor from China, and rich,
aromatic coffee from Java, all conspiring to swell the tide of high
life, where pride and indolence lounged in magnificence and satiety.
Behind the tail-backed and elaborately wrought chairs stood the
servants, fifteen in number, carefully selected, not only with a view
to their capacity and adeptness, but with especial regard to their
personal appearance, their graceful agility, and pleasing address. Some
of these servants, armed with fans, wafted reviving breezes to the
over-heated brows of the alabaster ladies, whilst others watched with
eager eye and fawn-like step, anticipating and supplying wants before
they were sufficiently formed to be announced by word or sign.
These servants constituted a sort of black aristocracy. They resembled
the field hands in nothing except their color, and in this they held
the advantage of a velvet-like glossiness, rich and beautiful. The
hair, too, showed the same advantage. The delicately-formed colored
maid rustled in the scarcely-worn silk of her young mistress, while the
servant men were equally well attired from the overflowing wardrobe of
their young masters, so that in dress, as well as in form and feature,
in manner and speech, in tastes and habits, the distance between these
favored few and the sorrow and hunger-smitten multitudes of the quarter
and the field was immense.
In the stables and carriage-houses were to be found the same evidences
of pride and luxurious extravagance. Here were three splendid coaches,
soft within and lustrous without. Here, too, were gigs, phaetons,
barouches, sulkeys, and sleighs. Here were saddles and harnesses,
beautifully wrought and richly mounted. Not less than thirty-five
horses of the best approved blood, both for speed and beauty, were kept
only for pleasure. The care of these horses constituted the entire
occupation of two men, one or the other of them being always in the
stable to answer any call which might be made from the Great House.
Over the way from the stable was a house built expressly for the
hounds, a pack of twenty-five or thirty, the fare for which would have
made glad the hearts of a dozen slaves. Horses and hounds, however,
were not the only consumers of the slave’s toil. The hospitality
practiced at the Lloyd’s would have astonished and charmed many a
health-seeking divine or merchant from the north. Viewed from his
table, and _not_ from the field, Colonel Lloyd was, indeed, a model of
generous hospitality. His house was literally a hotel for weeks, during
the summer months. At these times, especially, the air was freighted
with the rich fumes of baking, boiling, roasting, and broiling. It was
something to me that I could share these odors with the winds, even if
the meats themselves were under a more stringent monopoly. In master
Daniel I had a friend at court, who would sometimes give me a cake, and
who kept me well informed as to their guests and their entertainments.
Viewed from Col. Lloyd’s table, who could have said that his slaves
were not well clad and well cared for? Who would have said they did not
glory in being the slaves of such a master? Who but a fanatic could
have seen, any cause for sympathy for either master or slave? Alas,
this immense wealth, this gilded splendor, this profusion of luxury,
this exemption from toil, this life of ease, this sea of plenty were
not the pearly gates they seemed to a world of happiness and sweet
content. The poor slave, on his hard pine plank, scantily covered with
his thin blanket, slept more soundly than the feverish voluptuary who
reclined upon his downy pillow. Food to the indolent is poison, not
sustenance. Lurking beneath the rich and tempting viands were invisible
spirits of evil, which filled the self-deluded gourmandizer with
aches and pains, passions uncontrollable, fierce tempers, dyspepsia,
rheumatism, lumbago, and gout, and of these the Lloyds had a full share.
[Illustration: COL. LLOYD WHIPPING BARNEY.]
I had many opportunities of witnessing the restless discontent and
capricious irritation of the Lloyds. My fondness for horses attracted
me to the stables much of the time. The two men in charge of this
establishment were old and young Barney--father and son. Old Barney
was a fine looking, portly old man of a brownish complexion, and
a respectful and dignified bearing. He was much devoted to his
profession, and held his office as an honorable one. He was a farrier
as well as an ostler, and could bleed, remove lampers from their
mouths, and administer medicine to horses. No one on the farm knew so
well as old Barney what to do with a sick horse; but his office was
not an enviable one, and his gifts and acquirements were of little
advantage to him. In nothing was Col. Lloyd more unreasonable and
exacting than in respect to the management of his horses. Any supposed
inattention to these animals was sure to be visited with degrading
punishment. His horses and dogs fared better than his men. Their
beds were far softer and cleaner than those of his human cattle.
No excuse could shield old Barney if the Colonel only suspected
something wrong about his horses, and consequently he was often
punished when faultless. It was painful to hear the unreasonable and
fretful scoldings administered by Col. Lloyd, his son Murray, and his
sons-in-law, to this poor man. Three of the daughters of Col. Lloyd
were married, and they with their husbands remained at the great house
a portion of the year, and enjoyed the luxury of whipping the servants
when they pleased. A horse was seldom brought out of the stable to
which no objection could be raised. “There was dust in his hair;”
“there was a twist in his reins;” “his foretop was not combed;” “his
mane did not lie straight;” “his head did not look well;” “his fetlocks
had not been properly trimmed.” Something was always wrong. However
groundless the complaint, Barney must stand, hat in hand, lips sealed,
never answering a word in explanation or excuse. In a free State, a
master thus complaining without cause, might be told by his ostler:
“Sir, I am sorry I cannot please you, but since I have done the best
I can and fail to do so, your remedy is to dismiss me.” But here the
ostler must listen and tremblingly abide his master’s behest. One of
the most heart-saddening and humiliating scenes I ever witnessed was
the whipping of old Barney by Col. Lloyd. These two men were both
advanced in years; there were the silver locks of the master, and the
bald and toil-worn brow of the slave--superior and inferior here,
powerful and weak here, but _equals_ before God. “Uncover your head,”
said the imperious master; he was obeyed. “Take off your jacket, you
old rascal!” and off came Barney’s jacket. “Down on your knees!” down
knelt the old man, his shoulders bare, his bald head glistening in
the sunshine, and his aged knees on the cold, damp ground. In this
humble and debasing attitude, that master, to whom he had devoted the
best years and the best strength of his life, came forward and laid
on thirty lashes with his horse-whip. The old man made no resistance,
but bore it patiently, answering each blow with only a shrug of the
shoulders and a groan. I do not think that the physical suffering from
this infliction was severe, for the whip was a light riding-whip;
but the spectacle of an aged man--a husband and a father--humbly
kneeling before his fellow-man, shocked me at the time; and since I
have grown older, few of the features of slavery have impressed me with
a deeper sense of its injustice and barbarity than this exciting scene.
I owe it to the truth, however, to say that this was the first and last
time I ever saw a slave compelled to kneel to receive a whipping.
Another incident, illustrating a phase of slavery to which I have
referred in another connection, I may here mention. Besides two other
coachmen, Col. Lloyd owned one named William Wilks, and his was one
of the exceptionable cases where a slave possessed a surname, and was
recognized by it, by both colored and white people. Wilks was a very
fine-looking man. He was about as white as any one on the plantation,
and in form and feature bore a very striking resemblance to Murray
Lloyd. It was whispered and generally believed that William Wilks was
a son of Col. Lloyd, by a highly favored slave-woman who was still on
the plantation. There were many reasons for believing this whisper,
not only from his personal appearance, but from the undeniable freedom
which he enjoyed over all others, and his apparent consciousness of
being something more than a slave to his master. It was notorious
too that William had a deadly enemy in Murray Lloyd, whom he so
much resembled, and that the latter greatly worried his father with
importunities to sell William. Indeed, he gave his father no rest,
until he did sell him to Austin Woldfolk, the great slave-trader
at that time. Before selling him, however, he tried to make things
smooth by giving William a whipping, but it proved a failure. It was
a compromise, and like most such, defeated itself,--for soon after
Col. Lloyd atoned to William for the abuse by giving him a gold watch
and chain. Another fact somewhat curious was, that though sold to
the remorseless Woldfolk, taken in irons to Baltimore, and cast into
prison, with a view to being sent to the South, William outbid all his
purchasers, paid for himself, and afterwards resided in Baltimore.
How this was accomplished was a great mystery at the time, explained
only on the supposition that the hand which had bestowed the gold
watch and chain had also supplied the purchase-money, but I have
since learned that this was not the true explanation. Wilks had many
friends in Baltimore and Annapolis, and they united to save him from
a fate which was the one of all others most dreaded by the slaves.
Practical amalgamation was however so common at the South, and so many
circumstances pointed in that direction, that there was little reason
to doubt that William Wilks was the son of Edward Lloyd.
The real feelings and opinions of the slaves were not much known or
respected by their masters. The distance between the two was too great
to admit of such knowledge; and in this respect Col. Lloyd was no
exception to the rule. His slaves were so numerous he did not know
them when he saw them. Nor, indeed, did all his slaves know him. It is
reported of him, that riding along the road one day he met a colored
man, and addressed him in what was the usual way of speaking to colored
people on the public highways of the South: “Well, boy, who do you
belong to?” “To Col. Lloyd,” replied the slave. “Well, does the Colonel
treat you well?” “No, sir,” was the ready reply. “What, does he work
you hard?” “Yes, sir.” “Well, don’t he give you enough to eat?” “Yes,
sir, he gives me enough to eat, such as it is.” The Colonel rode on;
the slave also went on about his business, not dreaming that he had
been conversing with his master. He thought and said nothing of the
matter, until two or three weeks afterwards, he was informed by his
overseer that for having found fault with his master, he was now to be
sold to a Georgia trader. He was immediately chained and handcuffed;
and thus without a moment’s warning, he was snatched away, and forever
sundered from his family and friends by a hand as unrelenting as that
of death. This was the penalty of telling the simple truth, in answer
to a series of plain questions. It was partly in consequence of such
facts, that slaves, when inquired of as to their condition and the
character of their masters, would almost invariably say that they
were contented and their masters kind. Slaveholders are known to have
sent spies among their slaves to ascertain if possible their views and
feelings in regard to their condition; hence the maxim established
among them, that “a still tongue makes a wise head.” They would
suppress the truth rather than take the consequences of telling it, and
in so doing they prove themselves a part of the human family. I was
frequently asked if I had a kind master, and I do not remember ever
to have given a negative reply. I did not consider myself as uttering
that which was strictly untrue, for I always measured the kindness of
my master by the standard of kindness set up by the slaveholders around
us.
CHAPTER VIII
CHARACTERISTICS OF OVERSEERS.
Austin Gore--Sketch of his character--Overseers as a class--Their
peculiar characteristics--The marked individuality of Austin Gore--
His sense of duty--Murder of poor Denby--Sensation--How Gore made
his peace with Col. Lloyd--Other horrible murders--No laws for the
protection of slaves possible of being enforced.
The comparatively moderate rule of Mr. Hopkins as overseer on Col.
Lloyd’s plantation was succeeded by that of another whose name
was Austin Gore. I hardly know how to bring this man fitly before
the reader, for under him there was more suffering from violence
and bloodshed than had, according to the older slaves, ever been
experienced before at this place. He was an overseer, and possessed
the peculiar characteristics of his class, yet to call him merely an
overseer would not give one a fair conception of the man. I speak of
overseers as a class, for they were such. They were as distinct from
the slaveholding gentry of the south as are the fish-women of Paris,
and the coal-heavers of London, distinct from other grades of society.
They constituted a separate fraternity at the south. They were arranged
and classified by that great law of attraction which determines the
sphere and affinities of men; which ordains that men whose malign and
brutal propensities preponderate over their moral and intellectual
endowments shall naturally fall into those employments which
promise the largest gratification to those predominating instincts
or propensities. The office of overseer took this raw material of
vulgarity and brutality, and stamped it as a distinct class in southern
life. But in this class, as in all other classes, there were sometimes
persons of marked individuality, yet with a general resemblance to the
mass. Mr. Gore was one of those to whom a general characterization
would do no manner of justice. He was an overseer, but he was something
more. With the malign and tyrannical qualities of an overseer he
combined something of the lawful master. He had the artfulness and
mean ambition of his class, without its disgusting swagger and noisy
bravado. There was an easy air of independence about him; a calm
self-possession; at the same time a sternness of glance which well
might daunt less timid hearts than those of poor slaves, accustomed
from childhood to cower before a driver’s lash. He was one of those
overseers who could torture the slightest word or look into impudence,
and he had the nerve not only to resent, but to punish promptly and
severely. There could be no answering back. Guilty or not guilty,
to be accused was to be sure of a flogging. His very presence was
fearful, and I shunned him as I would have shunned a rattlesnake. His
piercing black eyes and sharp, shrill voice ever awakened sensations
of dread. Other overseers, how brutal soever they might be, would
sometimes seek to gain favor with the slaves, by indulging in a little
pleasantry; but Gore never said a funny thing, or perpetrated a joke.
He was always cold, distant, and unapproachable--the _overseer_ on
Col. Edward Lloyd’s plantation--and needed no higher pleasure than the
performance of the duties of his office. When he used the lash, it was
from a sense of duty, without fear of consequences. There was a stern
will, an iron-like reality about him, which would easily have made him
chief of a band of pirates, had his environments been favorable to
such a sphere. Among many other deeds of shocking cruelty committed by
him was the murder of a young colored man named Bill Denby. He was a
powerful fellow, full of animal spirits, and one of the most valuable
of Col. Lloyd’s slaves. In some way--I know not what--he offended
this Mr. Austin Gore, and in accordance with the usual custom the
latter undertook to flog him. He had given him but few stripes when
Denby broke away from him, plunged into the creek, and standing
there with the water up to his neck refused to come out; whereupon, for
this refusal, Gore _shot him dead_! It was said that Gore gave Denby
three calls to come out, telling him if he did not obey the last call
he should shoot him. When the last call was given Denby still stood his
ground, and Gore, without further parley, or without making any further
effort to induce obedience, raised his gun deliberately to his face,
took deadly aim at his standing victim, and with one click of the gun
the mangled body sank out of sight, and only his warm red blood marked
the place where he had stood.
[Illustration: GORE SHOOTING DENBY.]
This fiendish murder produced, as it could not help doing, a tremendous
sensation. The slaves were panic-stricken, and howled with alarm. The
atrocity roused my old master, and he spoke out in reprobation of it.
Both he and Col. Lloyd arraigned Gore for his cruelty; but he, calm
and collected, as though nothing unusual had happened, declared that
Denby had become unmanageable; that he set a dangerous example to the
other slaves, and that unless some such prompt measure was resorted to
there would be an end to all rule and order on the plantation. That
convenient covert for all manner of villainy and outrage, that cowardly
alarm-cry, that the slaves would “take the place,” was pleaded, just as
it had been in thousands of similar cases. Gore’s defense was evidently
considered satisfactory, for he was continued in his office, without
being subjected to a judicial investigation. The murder was committed
in the presence of slaves only, and they, being slaves, could neither
institute a suit nor testify against the murderer. Mr. Gore lived in
St. Michaels, Talbot Co., Maryland, and I have no reason to doubt, from
what I know to have been the moral sentiment of the place, that he was
as highly esteemed and as much respected as though his guilty soul had
not been stained with innocent blood.
I speak advisedly when I say that killing a slave, or any colored
person, in Talbot Co., Maryland, was not treated as a crime, either by
the courts or the community. Mr. Thomas Lanman, ship carpenter of St.
Michaels, killed two slaves, one of whom he butchered with a hatchet,
by knocking his brains out. He used to boast of having committed the
awful and bloody deed. I have heard him do so laughingly, declaring
himself a benefactor of his country, and that “when others would do as
much as he had done, they would be rid of the d----d niggers.”
Another notorious fact which I may state was the murder of a young
girl between fifteen and sixteen years of age, by her mistress, Mrs.
Giles Hicks, who lived but a short distance from Col. Lloyd’s. This
wicked woman, in the paroxysm of her wrath, not content at killing her
victim, literally mangled her face, and broke her breast-bone. Wild
and infuriated as she was, she took the precaution to cause the burial
of the girl; but, the facts of the case getting abroad, the remains
were disinterred, and a coroner’s jury assembled, who, after due
deliberation, decided that “the girl had come to her death from severe
beating.” The offense for which this girl was thus hurried out of the
world was this, she had been set that night, and several preceding
nights, to mind Mrs. Hicks’ baby, and having fallen into a sound
sleep the crying of the baby did not wake her, as it did its mother.
The tardiness of the girl excited Mrs. Hicks, who, after calling her
several times, seized a piece of fire-wood from the fire-place, and
pounded in her skull and breast-bone till death ensued. I will not say
that this murder most foul produced no sensation. It _did_ produce
a sensation. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Mrs. Hicks, but
incredible to tell, for some reason or other, that warrant was never
served, and she not only escaped condign punishment, but the pain and
mortification as well of being arraigned before a court of justice.
While I am detailing the bloody deeds that took place during my stay
on Col. Lloyd’s plantation, I will briefly narrate another dark
transaction, which occurred about the time of the murder of Denby.
On the side of the river Wye, opposite from Col. Lloyd’s, there lived
a Mr. Beal Bondley, a wealthy slaveholder. In the direction of his
land, and near the shore, there was an excellent oyster fishing-ground,
and to this some of Lloyd’s slaves occasionally resorted in their
little canoes at night, with a view to make up the deficiency of their
scanty allowance of food by the oysters that they could easily get
there. Mr. Bondley took it into his head to regard this as a trespass,
and while an old man slave was engaged in catching a few of the many
millions of oysters that lined the bottom of the creek, to satisfy his
hunger, the rascally Bondley, lying in ambush, without the slightest
warning, discharged the contents of his musket into the back of the
poor old man. As good fortune would have it, the shot did not prove
fatal, and Mr. Bondley came over the next day to see Col. Lloyd about
it. What happened between them I know not, but there was little said
about it and nothing publicly done. One of the commonest sayings to
which my ears early became accustomed, was that it was “worth but a
half a cent to kill a nigger, and half a cent to bury one.” While I
heard of numerous murders committed by slaveholders on the eastern
shore of Maryland, I never knew a solitary instance where a slaveholder
was either hung or imprisoned for having murdered a slave. The usual
pretext for such crimes was that the slave had offered resistance.
Should a slave, when assaulted, but raise his hand in self-defense,
the white assaulting party was fully justified by southern law, and
southern public opinion in shooting the slave down, and for this there
was no redress.
CHAPTER IX.
CHANGE OF LOCATION.
Miss Lucretia--Her kindness--How it was manifested--“Ike”--A
battle with him--Miss Lucretia’s balsam--Bread--How it was
obtained--Gleams of sunlight amidst the general darkness--Suffering
from cold--How we took our meal mush--Preparations for going
to Baltimore--Delight at the change--Cousin Tom’s opinion of
Baltimore--Arrival there--Kind reception--Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Auld--
Their son Tommy--My relations to them--My duties--A turning-point
in my life.
I have nothing cruel or shocking to relate of my own personal
experience while I remained on Col. Lloyd’s plantation, at the home
of my old master. An occasional cuff from Aunt Katy, and a regular
whipping from old master, such as any heedless and mischievous boy
might get from his father, is all that I have to say of this sort. I
was not old enough to work in the field, and there being little else
than field-work to perform, I had much leisure. The most I had to do
was to drive up the cows in the evening, to keep the front-yard clean,
and to perform small errands for my young mistress, Lucretia Auld. I
had reasons for thinking this lady was very kindly disposed toward me,
and although I was not often the object of her attention, I constantly
regarded her as my friend, and was always glad when it was my privilege
to do her a service. In a family where there was so much that was harsh
and indifferent, the slightest word or look of kindness was of great
value. Miss Lucretia--as we all continued to call her long after her
marriage--had bestowed on me such looks and words as taught me that
she pitied me, if she did not love me. She sometimes gave me a piece
of bread and butter, an article not set down in our bill of fare, but
an extra ration aside from both Aunt Katy and old master, and given
as I believed solely out of the tender regard she had for me. Then
too, I one day got into the wars with Uncle Abel’s son “Ike,” and
had got sadly worsted; the little rascal struck me directly in the
forehead with a sharp piece of cinder, fused with iron, from the old
blacksmith’s forge, which made a cross in my forehead very plainly to
be seen even now. The gash bled very freely, and I roared and betook
myself home. The cold-hearted Aunt Katy paid no attention either to
my wound or my roaring except to tell me it “served me right; I had
no business with Ike; it would do me good; I would now keep away from
‘dem Lloyd niggers.’” Miss Lucretia in this state of the case came
forward, and called me into the parlor (an extra privilege of itself),
and without using toward me any of the hard and reproachful epithets
of Aunt Katy, quietly acted the good Samaritan. With her own soft hand
she washed the blood from my head and face, brought her own bottle of
balsam, and with the balsam wetted a nice piece of white linen and
bound up my head. The balsam was not more healing to the wound in my
head, than her kindness was healing to the wounds in my spirit, induced
by the unfeeling words of Aunt Katy. After this Miss Lucretia was yet
more my friend. I felt her to be such; and I have no doubt that the
simple act of binding up my head did much to awaken in her heart an
interest in my welfare. It is quite true that this interest seldom
showed itself in anything more than in giving me a piece of bread and
butter, but this was a great favor on a slave plantation, and I was the
only one of the children to whom such attention was paid. When very
severely pinched with hunger, I had the habit of singing, which the
good lady very soon came to understand, and when she heard me singing
under her window, I was very apt to be paid for my music. Thus I had
two friends, both at important points,--Mas’r Daniel at the great
house, and Miss Lucretia at home. From Mas’r Daniel I got protection
from the bigger boys, and from Miss Lucretia I got bread by singing
when I was hungry, and sympathy when I was abused by the termagant in
the kitchen. For such friendship I was deeply grateful, and bitter as
are my recollections of slavery, it is a true pleasure to recall any
instances of kindness, any sunbeams of humane treatment, which found
way to my soul, through the iron grating of my house of bondage. Such
beams seem all the brighter from the general darkness into which they
penetrate, and the impression they make there is vividly distinct.
As before intimated, I received no severe treatment from the hands
of my master, but the insufficiency of both food and clothing was a
serious trial to me, especially from the lack of clothing. In hottest
summer and coldest winter, I was kept almost in a state of nudity. My
only clothing--a little coarse sack-cloth or tow-linen sort of shirt,
scarcely reaching to my knees, was worn night and day and changed
once a week. In the day time I could protect myself by keeping on the
sunny side of the house, or in stormy weather, in the corner of the
kitchen chimney. But the great difficulty was to keep warm during the
night. The pigs in the pen had leaves, and the horses in the stable
had straw, but the children had no beds. They lodged anywhere in the
ample kitchen. I slept generally in a little closet, without even a
blanket to cover me. In very cold weather I sometimes got down the bag
in which corn was carried to the mill, and crawled into that. Sleeping
there with my head in and my feet out, I was partly protected, though
never comfortable. My feet have been so cracked with the frost that
the pen with which I am writing might be laid in the gashes. Our corn
meal mush, which was our only regular if not all-sufficing diet, when
sufficiently cooled from the cooking, was placed in a large tray or
trough. This was set down either on the floor of the kitchen, or out of
doors on the ground, and the children were called like so many pigs,
and like so many pigs would come, some with oyster-shells, some with
pieces of shingles, but none with spoons, and literally devour the
mush. He who could eat fastest got most, and he that was strongest got
the best place, but few left the trough really satisfied. I was the
most unlucky of all, for Aunt Katy had no good feeling for me, and if
I pushed the children, or if they told her anything unfavorable of me,
she always believed the worst, and was sure to whip me.
As I grew older and more thoughtful, I became more and more filled with
a sense of my wretchedness. The unkindness of Aunt Katy, the hunger
and cold I suffered, and the terrible reports of wrongs and outrages
which came to my ear, together with what I almost daily witnessed, led
me to wish I had never been born. I used to contrast my condition with
that of the black-birds, in whose wild and sweet songs I fancied them
so happy. Their apparent joy only deepened the shades of my sorrow.
There are thoughtful days in the lives of children--at least there
were in mine--when they grapple with all the great primary subjects
of knowledge, and reach in a moment conclusions which no subsequent
experience can shake. I was just as well aware of the unjust,
unnatural, and murderous character of slavery, when nine years old, as
I am now. Without any appeal to books, to laws, or to authorities of
any kind, to regard God as “Our Father,” condemned slavery as a crime.
I was in this unhappy state when I received from Miss Lucretia the
joyful intelligence that my old master had determined to let me go to
Baltimore to live with Mr. Hugh Auld, a brother to Mr. Thomas Auld,
Miss Lucretia’s husband. I shall never forget the ecstacy with which
I received this information, three days before the time set for my
departure. They were the three happiest days I had ever known. I spent
the largest part of them in the creek, washing off the plantation
scurf, and thus preparing for my new home. Miss Lucretia took a lively
interest in getting me ready. She told me I must get all the dead skin
off my feet and knees, for the people in Baltimore were very cleanly,
and would laugh at me if I looked dirty; and besides she was intending
to give me a pair of trowsers, but which I could not put on unless I
got all the dirt off. This was a warning which I was bound to heed, for
the thought of owning and wearing a pair of trowsers was great indeed.
So I went at it in good earnest, working for the first time in my life
in the hope of reward. I was greatly excited, and could hardly consent
to sleep lest I should be left. The ties that ordinarily bind children
to their homes, had no existence in my case, and in thinking of a home
elsewhere, I was confident of finding none that I should relish less
than the one I was leaving. If I should meet with hardship, hunger,
and nakedness, I had known them all before, and I could endure them
elsewhere, especially in Baltimore, for I had something of the feeling
about that city that is expressed in the saying that “being hanged in
England is better than dying a natural death in Ireland.” I had the
strongest desire to see Baltimore. My cousin Tom, a boy two or three
years older than I, had been there, and, though not fluent in speech
(he stuttered immoderately), he had inspired me with that desire by
his eloquent descriptions of the place. Tom was sometimes cabin-boy on
board the sloop “Sally Lloyd” (which Capt. Thomas Auld commanded), and
when he came home from Baltimore he was always a sort of hero among
us, at least till his trip to Baltimore was forgotten. I could never
tell him anything, or point out anything that struck me as beautiful or
powerful, but that he had seen something in Baltimore far surpassing
it. Even the “great house,” with all its pictures within, and pillars
without, he had the hardihood to say, “was nothing to Baltimore.” He
bought a trumpet (worth sixpence) and brought it home; told what he had
seen in the windows of the stores; that he had heard shooting-crackers,
and seen soldiers; that he had seen a steamboat; that there were ships
in Baltimore that could carry four such sloops as the “Sally Lloyd.”
He said a great deal about the Market house; of the ringing of the
bells, and of many other things which roused my curiosity very much,
and indeed which brightened my hopes of happiness in my new home. We
sailed out of Miles River for Baltimore early on a Saturday morning. I
remember only the day of the week, for at that time I had no knowledge
of the days of the month, nor indeed of the months of the year. On
setting sail I walked aft and gave to Col. Lloyd’s plantation what
I hoped would be the last look I should give to it, or to any place
like it. After taking this last view, I quitted the quarter-deck, made
my way to the bow of the boat, and spent the remainder of the day in
looking ahead; interesting myself in what was in the distance, rather
than in what was near by, or behind. The vessels sweeping along the
bay were objects full of interest to me. The broad bay opened like
a shoreless ocean on my boyish vision, filling me with wonder and
admiration.
Late in the afternoon we reached Annapolis, stopping there not long
enough to admit of going ashore. It was the first large town I had
ever seen, and though it was inferior to many a factory village in New
England, my feelings on seeing it were excited to a pitch very little
below that reached by travelers at the first view of Rome. The dome of
the State house was especially imposing, and surpassed in grandeur the
appearance of the “great house” I had left behind. So the great world
was opening upon me, and I was eagerly acquainting myself with its
multifarious lessons.
We arrived in Baltimore on Sunday morning, and landed at Smith’s
wharf, not far from Bowly’s wharf. We had on board a large flock of
sheep, for the Baltimore market; and after assisting in driving them
to the slaughter house of Mr. Curtiss, on Loudon Slater’s hill, I was
conducted by Rich--one of the hands belonging to the sloop--to my
new home on Alliciana street, near Gardiner’s ship-yard, on Fell’s
point. Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Auld, my new master and mistress, were both
at home and met me at the door with their rosy-cheeked little son
Thomas, to take care of whom was to constitute my future occupation.
In fact it was to “little Tommy,” rather than to his parents, that old
master made a present of me, and, though there was no _legal_ form or
arrangement entered into, I have no doubt that Mr. and Mrs. Auld felt
that in due time I should be the legal property of their bright-eyed
and beloved boy Tommy. I was struck with the appearance especially of
my new mistress. Her face was lighted with the kindliest emotions;
and the reflex influence of her countenance, as well as the tenderness
with which she seemed to regard me, while asking me sundry little
questions, greatly delighted me, and lit up, to my fancy, the pathway
of my future. Little Thomas was affectionately told by his mother,
that “there was his Freddy,” and that “Freddy would take care of him;”
and I was told to “be kind to little Tommy,” an injunction I scarcely
needed, for I had already fallen in love with the dear boy. With these
little ceremonies I was initiated into my new home, and entered upon my
peculiar duties, then unconscious of a cloud to dim its broad horizon.
I may say here that I regard my removal from Col. Lloyd’s plantation as
one of the most interesting and fortunate events of my life. Viewing
it in the light of human likelihoods, it is quite probable that but
for the mere circumstance of being thus removed, before the rigors
of slavery had fully fastened upon me; before my young spirit had
been crushed under the iron control of the slave-driver, I might have
continued in slavery until emancipated by the war.
CHAPTER X.
LEARNING TO READ.
City annoyances--Plantation regrets--My mistress--Her history--
Her kindness--My master--His sourness--My comforts--Increased
sensitiveness--My occupation--Learning to read--Baneful effects
of slaveholding on my dear, good mistress--Mr. Hugh forbids Mrs.
Sophia to teach me further--Clouds gather on my bright prospects--
Master Auld’s exposition of the Philosophy of Slavery--City slaves--
Country slaves--Contrasts--Exceptions--Mr. Hamilton’s two slaves--
Mrs. Hamilton’s cruel treatment of them--Piteous aspect presented by
them--No power to come between the slave and slaveholder.
Established in my new home in Baltimore, I was not very long in
perceiving that in picturing to myself what was to be my life there,
my imagination had painted only the bright side; and that the reality
had its dark shades as well as its light ones. The open country which
had been so much to me, was all shut out. Walled in on every side by
towering brick buildings, the heat of the summer was intolerable to me,
and the hard brick pavements almost blistered my feet. If I ventured
out on to the streets, new and strange objects glared upon me at every
step, and startling sounds greeted my ears from all directions. My
country eyes and ears were confused and bewildered. Troops of hostile
boys pounced upon me at every corner. They chased me, and called me
“Eastern-Shore man,” till really I almost wished myself back on the
Eastern Shore. My new mistress happily proved to be all she had seemed,
and in her presence I easily forgot all outside annoyances. Mrs. Sophia
was naturally of an excellent disposition--kind, gentle, and cheerful.
The supercilious contempt for the rights and feelings of others, and
the petulence and bad humor which generally characterized slaveholding
ladies, were all quite absent from her manner and bearing toward me.
She had never been a slaveholder--a thing then quite unusual at the
South--but had depended almost entirely upon her own industry for
a living. To this fact the dear lady no doubt owed the excellent
preservation of her natural goodness of heart, for slavery could change
a saint into a sinner, and an angel into a demon. I hardly knew how to
behave towards “Miss Sopha,” as I used to call Mrs. Hugh Auld. I could
not approach her even as I had formerly approached Mrs. Thomas Auld.
Why should I hang down my head, and speak with bated breath, when there
was no pride to scorn me, no coldness to repel me, and no hatred to
inspire me with fear? I therefore soon came to regard her as something
more akin to a mother than a slaveholding mistress. So far from deeming
it impudent in a slave to look her straight in the face, she seemed
ever to say, “look up, child; don’t be afraid.” The sailors belonging
to the sloop esteemed it a great privilege to be the bearers of parcels
or messages to her, for whenever they came, they were sure of a most
kind and pleasant reception. If little Thomas was her son, and her most
dearly loved child, she made me something like his half-brother in
her affections. If dear Tommy was exalted to a place on his mother’s
knee, “Feddy” was honored by a place at the mother’s side. Nor did the
slave-boy lack the caressing strokes of her gentle hand, soothing him
into the consciousness that, though motherless, he was not friendless.
Mrs. Auld was not only kind-hearted, but remarkably pious; frequent
in her attendance of public worship, much given to reading the Bible,
and to chanting hymns of praise when alone. Mr. Hugh was altogether a
different character. He cared very little about religion; knew more of
the world and was more a part of the world, than his wife. He set out
doubtless to be, as the world goes, a respectable man, and to get on by
becoming a successful ship-builder, in that city of ship-building. This
was his ambition, and it fully occupied him. I was of course of very
little consequence to him, and when he smiled upon me, as he sometimes
did, the smile was borrowed from his lovely wife, and like all
borrowed light, was transient, and vanished with the source whence it
was derived. Though I must in truth characterize Master Hugh as a sour
man of forbidding appearance, it is due to him to acknowledge that he
was never cruel to me, according to the notion of cruelty in Maryland.
During the first year or two, he left me almost exclusively to the
management of his wife. She was my law-giver. In hands so tender as
hers, and in the absence of the cruelties of the plantation, I became
both physically and mentally much more sensitive, and a frown from my
mistress caused me far more suffering than had Aunt Katy’s hardest
cuffs. Instead of the cold, damp floor of my old master’s kitchen, I
was on carpets; for the corn bag in winter, I had a good straw bed,
well furnished with covers; for the coarse corn meal in the morning, I
had good bread and mush occasionally; for my old tow-linen shirt, I had
good clean clothes. I was really well off. My employment was to run of
errands, and to take care of Tommy; to prevent his getting in the way
of carriages, and to keep him out of harm’s way generally. So for a
time everything went well. I say for a time, because the fatal poison
of irresponsible power, and the natural influence of slave customs,
were not very long in making their impression on the gentle and loving
disposition of my excellent mistress. She regarded me at first as a
child, like any other. This was the natural and spontaneous thought;
afterwards, when she came to consider me as property, our relations
to each other were changed, but a nature so noble as hers could not
instantly become perverted, and it took several years before the
sweetness of her temper was wholly lost.
[Illustration: MRS. AULD LEARNING HIM TO READ.]
The frequent hearing of my mistress reading the Bible aloud, for she
often read aloud when her husband was absent, awakened my curiosity in
respect to this _mystery_ of reading, and roused in me the desire to
learn. Up to this time I had known nothing whatever of this wonderful
art, and my ignorance and inexperience of what it could do for me,
as well as my confidence in my mistress, emboldened me to ask her
to teach me to read. With an unconsciousness and inexperience equal
to my own, she readily consented, and in an incredibly short time,
by her kind assistance, I had mastered the alphabet and could spell
words of three or four letters. My mistress seemed almost as proud of
my progress as if I had been her own child, and supposing that her
husband would be as well pleased, she made no secret of what she was
doing for me. Indeed, she exultingly told him of the aptness of her
pupil, and of her intention to persevere in teaching me, as she felt
her duty to do, at least to read the Bible. And here arose the first
dark cloud over my Baltimore prospects, the precursor of chilling
blasts and drenching storms. Master Hugh was astounded beyond measure,
and probably for the first time proceeded to unfold to his wife the
true philosophy of the slave system, and the peculiar rules necessary
in the nature of the case to be observed in the management of human
chattels. Of course he forbade her to give me any further instruction,
telling her in the first place that to do so was unlawful, as it was
also unsafe; “for,” said he, “if you give a nigger an inch he will take
an ell. Learning will spoil the best nigger in the world. If he learns
to read the Bible it will forever unfit him to be a slave. He should
know nothing but the will of his master, and learn to obey it. As to
himself, learning will do him no good, but a great deal of harm, making
him disconsolate and unhappy. If you teach him how to read, he’ll want
to know how to write, and this accomplished, he’ll be running away with
himself.” Such was the tenor of Master Hugh’s oracular exposition; and
it must be confessed that he very clearly comprehended the nature and
the requirements of the relation of master and slave. His discourse
was the first decidedly anti-slavery lecture to which it had been my
lot to listen. Mrs. Auld evidently felt the force of what he said,
and like an obedient wife, began to shape her course in the direction
indicated by him. The effect of his words _on me_ was neither slight
nor transitory. His iron sentences, cold and harsh, sunk like heavy
weights deep into my heart, and stirred up within me a rebellion not
soon to be allayed. This was a new and special revelation, dispelling a
painful mystery against which my youthful understanding had struggled,
and struggled in vain, to wit, the white man’s power to perpetuate the
enslavement of the black man. “Very well,” thought I. “Knowledge unfits
a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition,
and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to
freedom. It was just what I needed, and it came to me at a time and
from a source whence I least expected it. Of course I was greatly
saddened at the thought of losing the assistance of my kind mistress,
but the information so instantly derived to some extent compensated
me for the loss I had sustained in this direction. Wise as Mr. Auld
was, he underrated my comprehension, and had little idea of the use
to which I was capable of putting the impressive lesson he was giving
to his wife. He wanted me to be a slave; I had already voted against
that on the home plantation of Col. Lloyd. That which he most loved I
most hated; and the very determination which he expressed to keep me in
ignorance only rendered me the more resolute to seek intelligence. In
learning to read, therefore, I am not sure that I do not owe quite as
much to the opposition of my master as to the kindly assistance of my
amiable mistress. I acknowledge the benefit rendered me by the one, and
by the other, believing that but for my mistress I might have grown up
in ignorance.
CHAPTER XI.
GROWING IN KNOWLEDGE.
My mistress--Her slaveholding duties--Their effects on her originally
noble nature--The conflict in her mind--She opposes my learning
to read--Too late--She had given me the “inch,” I was resolved to
take the “ell”--How I pursued my study to read--My tutors--What
progress I made--Slavery--What I heard said about it--Thirteen
years old--Columbian orator--Dialogue--Speeches--Sheridan--
Pitt--Lords Chatham and Fox--Knowledge increasing--Liberty--
Singing--Sadness--Unhappiness of Mrs. Sophia--My hatred of
slavery--One Upas tree overshadows us all.
I lived in the family of Mr. Auld, at Baltimore, seven years, during
which time, as the almanac makers say of the weather, my condition
was variable. The most interesting feature of my history here, was my
learning to read and write under somewhat marked disadvantages. In
attaining this knowledge I was compelled to resort to indirections by
no means congenial to my nature, and which were really humiliating
to my sense of candor and uprightness. My mistress, checked in her
benevolent designs toward me, not only ceased instructing me herself,
but set her face as a flint against my learning to read by any means.
It is due to her to say, however, that she did not adopt this course
in all its stringency at first. She either thought it unnecessary, or
she lacked the depravity needed to make herself forget at once my human
nature. She was, as I have said, naturally a kind and tender-hearted
woman, and in the humanity of her heart and the simplicity of her mind,
she set out, when I first went to live with her, to treat me as she
supposed one human being ought to treat another.
Nature never intended that men and women should be either slaves
or slaveholders, and nothing but rigid training long persisted in,
can perfect the character of the one or the other. Mrs. Auld was
singularly deficient in the qualities of a slaveholder. It was no easy
matter for her to think or to feel that the curly-headed boy, who stood
by her side, and even leaned on her lap, who was loved by little Tommy,
and who loved little Tommy in turn, sustained to her only the relation
of a chattel. I was more than that; she felt me to be more than that.
I could talk and sing; I could laugh and weep; I could reason and
remember; I could love and hate. I was human, and she, dear lady, knew
and felt me to be so. How could she then treat me as a brute without a
mighty struggle with all the noblest powers of her soul. That struggle
came, and the will and power of the husband was victorious. Her noble
soul was overcome, and he who wrought the wrong was injured in the
fall no less than the rest of the household. When I went into that
household, it was the abode of happiness and contentment. The wife and
mistress there was a model of affection and tenderness. Her fervent
piety and watchful uprightness made it impossible to see her without
thinking and feeling “that woman is a Christian.” There was no sorrow
nor suffering for which she had not a tear, and there was no innocent
joy for which she had not a smile. She had bread for the hungry,
clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner who came within
her reach. But slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these
excellent qualities, and her home of its early happiness. Conscience
cannot stand much violence. Once thoroughly injured, who is he who can
repair the damage? If it be broken toward the slave on Sunday, it will
be toward the master on Monday. It cannot long endure such shocks. It
must stand unharmed, or it does not stand at all. As my condition in
the family waxed bad, that of the family waxed no better. The first
step in the wrong direction was the violence done to nature and to
conscience, in arresting the benevolence that would have enlightened
my young mind. In ceasing to instruct me, my mistress had to seek to
justify herself _to_ herself, and once consenting to take sides in such
a debate, she was compelled to hold her position. One needs little
knowledge of moral philosophy to see where she inevitably landed.
She finally became even more violent in her opposition to my learning
to read than was Mr. Auld himself. Nothing now appeared to make her
more angry than seeing me, seated in some nook or corner, quietly
reading a book or newspaper. She would rush at me with the utmost
fury, and snatch the book or paper from my hand, with something of the
wrath and consternation which a traitor might be supposed to feel on
being discovered in a plot by some dangerous spy. The conviction once
thoroughly established in her mind, that education and slavery were
incompatible with each other, I was most narrowly watched in all my
movements. If I remained in a separate room from the family for any
considerable length of time, I was sure to be suspected of having a
book, and was at once called to give an account of myself. But this
was too late: the first and never-to-be-retraced step had been taken.
Teaching me the alphabet had been the “inch” given, I was now waiting
only for the opportunity to “take the ell.”
Filled with the determination to learn to read at any cost, I hit upon
many expedients to accomplish that much desired end. The plan which I
mainly adopted, and the one which was the most successful, was that
of using my young white playmates, with whom I met on the streets,
as teachers. I used to carry almost constantly a copy of Webster’s
spelling-book in my pocket, and when sent on errands, or when play-time
was allowed me, I would step aside with my young friends and take a
lesson in spelling. I am greatly indebted to these boys--Gustavus
Dorgan, Joseph Bailey, Charles Farity, and William Cosdry.
Although slavery was a delicate subject, and very cautiously talked
about among grown up people in Maryland, I frequently talked about it,
and that very freely, with the white boys. I would sometimes say to
them, while seated on a curbstone or a cellar door, “I wish I could
be free, as you will be when you get to be men.” “You will be free,
you know, as soon as you are twenty-one, and can go where you like,
but I am a slave for life. Have I not as good a right to be free as
you have?” Words like these, I observed, always troubled them; and I
had no small satisfaction in drawing out from them, as I occasionally
did, that fresh and bitter condemnation of slavery which ever springs
from nature unseared and unperverted. Of all conscience, let me have
those to deal with, which have not been seared and bewildered with
the cares and perplexities of life. I do not remember ever to have
met with a _boy_ while I was in slavery, who defended the system, but
I do remember many times, when I was consoled by them, and by them
encouraged to hope that something would yet occur by which I would be
made free. Over and over again, they have told me that “they believed
I had as good a right to be free as _they_ had,” and that “they did
not believe God ever made any one to be a slave.” It is easily seen
that such little conversations with my play-fellows had no tendency to
weaken my love of liberty, nor to render me contented as a slave.
When I was about thirteen years old, and had succeeded in learning
to read, every increase of knowledge, especially anything respecting
the free states, was an additional weight to the almost intolerable
burden of my thought--“_I am a slave for life._” To my bondage I could
see no end. It was a terrible reality, and I shall never be able to
tell how sadly that thought chafed my young spirit. Fortunately, or
unfortunately, I had earned a little money in blacking boots for some
gentlemen, with which I purchased of Mr. Knight, on Thames street, what
was then a very popular school book, viz., “The Columbian Orator,”
for which I paid fifty cents. I was led to buy this book by hearing
some little boys say they were going to learn some pieces out of
it for the exhibition. This volume was indeed a rich treasure, and
every opportunity afforded me, for a time, was spent in diligently
perusing it. Among much other interesting matter, that which I read
again and again with unflagging satisfaction was a short dialogue
between a master and his slave. The slave is represented as having
been recaptured in a second attempt to run away; and the master
opens the dialogue with an upbraiding speech, charging the slave
with ingratitude, and demanding to know what he has to say in his
own defense. Thus upbraided and thus called upon to reply, the slave
rejoins that he knows how little anything that he can say will avail,
seeing that he is completely in the hands of his owner; and with noble
resolution, calmly says, “I submit to my fate.” Touched by the slave’s
answer, the master insists upon his further speaking, and recapitulates
the many acts of kindness which he has performed toward the slave,
and tells him he is permitted to speak for himself. Thus invited, the
quondam slave made a spirited defense of himself, and thereafter the
whole argument for and against slavery is brought out. The master
was vanquished at every turn in the argument, and appreciating the
fact he generously and meekly emancipates the slave, with his best
wishes for his prosperity. It is unnecessary to say that a dialogue
with such an origin and such an end, read by me when every nerve of
my being was in revolt at my own condition as a slave, affected me
most powerfully. I could not help feeling that the day might yet come,
when the well-directed answers made by the slave to the master, in
this instance, would find a counterpart in my own experience. This,
however, was not all the fanaticism which I found in the Columbian
Orator. I met there one of Sheridan’s mighty speeches, on the subject
of Catholic Emancipation, Lord Chatham’s speech on the American War,
and speeches by the great William Pitt, and by Fox. These were all
choice documents to me, and I read them over and over again, with an
interest ever increasing, because it was ever gaining in intelligence;
for the more I read them the better I understood them. The reading of
these speeches added much to my limited stock of language, and enabled
me to give tongue to many interesting thoughts which had often flashed
through my mind and died away for want of words in which to give them
utterance. The mighty power and heart-searching directness of truth
penetrating the heart of a slaveholder, compelling him to yield up
his earthly interests to the claims of eternal justice, were finely
illustrated in the dialogue, and from the speeches of Sheridan I got
a bold and powerful denunciation of oppression and a most brilliant
vindication of the rights of man. Here was indeed a noble acquisition.
If I had ever wavered under the consideration that the Almighty, in
some way, had ordained slavery and willed my enslavement for his own
glory, I wavered no longer. I had now penetrated to the secret of all
slavery and all oppression, and had ascertained their true foundation
to be in the pride, the power, and the avarice of man. With a book in
my hand so redolent of the principles of liberty, with a perception of
my own human nature and the facts of my past and present experience, I
was equal to a contest with the religious advocates of slavery, whether
white or black, for blindness in this matter was not confined to the
white people. I have met many good religious colored people at the
south, who were under the delusion that God required them to submit to
slavery and to wear their chains with meekness and humility. I could
entertain no such nonsense as this, and I quite lost my patience when
I found a colored man weak enough to believe such stuff. Nevertheless,
eager as I was to partake of the tree of knowledge, its fruits were
bitter as well as sweet. “Slaveholders,” thought I, “are only a band of
successful robbers, who, leaving their own homes, went into Africa for
the purpose of stealing and reducing my people to slavery.” I loathed
them as the meanest and the most wicked of men. And as I read, behold!
the very discontent so graphically predicted by Master Hugh had already
come upon me. I was no longer the light-hearted, gleesome boy, full of
mirth and play, as when I landed in Baltimore. Light had penetrated the
moral dungeon where I had lain, and I saw the bloody whip for my back,
and the iron chain for my feet, and my _good kind_ master, he was the
author of my situation. The revelation haunted me, stung me, and made
me gloomy and miserable. As I writhed under the sting and torment
of this knowledge I almost envied my fellow slaves their stupid
indifference. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, and revealed the
teeth of the frightful dragon that was ready to pounce upon me; but
alas, it opened no way for my escape. I wished myself a beast, a bird,
anything rather than a slave. I was wretched and gloomy beyond my
ability to describe. This everlasting thinking distressed and tormented
me; and yet there was no getting rid of this subject of my thoughts.
Liberty, as the inestimable birthright of every man, converted every
object into an asserter of this right. I heard it in every sound, and
saw it in every object. It was ever present to torment me with a sense
of my wretchedness. The more beautiful and charming were the smiles of
nature, the more horrible and desolate was my condition. I saw nothing
without seeing it, and I heard nothing without hearing it. I do not
exaggerate when I say it looked at me in every star, it smiled in every
calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm. I have no doubt
that my state of mind had something to do with the change in treatment
which my mistress adopted towards me. I can easily believe that my
leaden, downcast, and disconsolate look was very offensive to her. Poor
lady! She did not understand my trouble, and I could not tell her.
Could I have made her acquainted with the real state of my mind and
given her the reasons therefor, it might have been well for both of us.
As it was, her abuse fell upon me like the blows of the false prophet
upon his ass; she did not know that an angel stood in the way. Nature
made us friends, but slavery had made us enemies. My interests were
in a direction opposite to hers, and we both had our private thoughts
and plans. She aimed to keep me ignorant, and I resolved to _know_,
although knowledge only increased my misery. My feelings were not the
result of any marked cruelty in the treatment I received; they sprung
from the consideration of my being a slave at all. It was _slavery_,
not its mere _incidents_ I hated. I had been cheated. I saw through the
attempt to keep me in ignorance. I saw that slaveholders would have
gladly made me believe that they were merely acting under the authority
of God in making a slave of me and in making slaves of others, and I
felt to them as to robbers and deceivers. The feeding and clothing me
well could not atone for taking my liberty from me. The smiles of my
mistress could not remove the deep sorrow that dwelt in my young bosom.
Indeed, these came in time but to deepen my sorrow. She had changed,
and the reader will see that I had changed too. We were both victims to
the same overshadowing evil, _she_ as mistress, I as slave. I will not
censure her harshly.
CHAPTER XII.
RELIGIOUS NATURE AWAKENED.
Abolitionists spoken of--Eagerness to know the meaning of word--
Consults the dictionary--Incendiary information--The enigma
solved--“Nat Turner” insurrection--Cholera--Religion--Methodist
minister--Religious impressions--Father Lawson--His character and
occupation--His influence over me--Our mutual attachment--New
hopes and aspirations--Heavenly light--Two Irishmen on wharf--
Conversation with them--Learning to write--My aims.
In the unhappy state of mind described in the foregoing chapter,
regretting my very existence because doomed to a life of bondage, so
goaded and so wretched as to be even tempted at times to take my own
life, I was most keenly sensitive to know any and everything possible
that had any relation to the subject of slavery. I was all ears, all
eyes, whenever the words slave or slavery dropped from the lips of any
white person, and the occasions became more and more frequent when
these words became leading ones in high, social debate at our house.
Very often I would overhear Master Hugh, or some of his company,
speak with much warmth of the “_abolitionists_.” _Who_ or what the
_abolitionists_ were, I was totally ignorant. I found, however, that
whoever or whatever they might be, they were most cordially hated
and abused by slaveholders of every grade. I very soon discovered
too, that slavery was, in some sort, under consideration whenever the
abolitionists were alluded to. This made the term a very interesting
one to me. If a slave had made good his escape from slavery, it was
generally alleged that he had been persuaded and assisted to do so
by the abolitionists. If a slave killed his master, or struck down
his overseer, or set fire to his master’s dwelling, or committed
any violence or crime, out of the common way, it was certain to be
said that such a crime was the legitimate fruits of the abolition
movement. Hearing such charges often repeated, I, naturally enough,
received the impression that abolition--whatever else it might be--
was not unfriendly to the slave, nor very friendly to the slaveholder.
I therefore set about finding out, if possible, _who_ and _what_
the abolitionists were, and _why_ they were so obnoxious to the
slaveholders. The dictionary offered me very little help. It taught
me that abolition was “the act of abolishing;” but it left me in
ignorance at the very point where I most wanted information, and that
was, as to the thing to be abolished. A city newspaper--the “Baltimore
_American_”--gave me the incendiary information denied me by the
dictionary. In its columns I found that on a certain day a vast number
of petitions and memorials had been presented to Congress, praying
for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and for the
abolition of the slave trade between the States of the Union. This was
enough. The vindictive bitterness, the marked caution, the studied
reserve, and the ambiguity practiced by our white folks when alluding
to this subject, was now fully explained. Ever after that, when I
heard the word abolition, I felt the matter one of a personal concern,
and I drew near to listen whenever I could do so, without seeming too
solicitous and prying. There was HOPE in those words. Ever and anon
too, I could see some terrible denunciation of slavery in our papers,--
copied from abolition papers at the North,--and the injustice of such
denunciation commented on. These I read with avidity. I had a deep
satisfaction in the thought that the rascality of slaveholders was
not concealed from the eyes of the world, and that I was not alone in
abhorring the cruelty and brutality of slavery. A still deeper train of
thought was stirred. I saw that there was fear as well as rage in the
manner of speaking of the abolitionists, and from this I inferred that
they must have some power in the country, and I felt that they might
perhaps succeed in their designs. When I met with a slave to whom I
deemed it safe to talk on the subject, I would impart to him so much
of the mystery as I had been able to penetrate. Thus the light of this
grand movement broke in upon my mind by degrees; and I must say that
ignorant as I was of the philosophy of that movement, I believed in it
from the first, and I believed in it, partly, because I saw that it
alarmed the consciences of the slaveholders. The insurrection of Nat.
Turner had been quelled, but the alarm and terror which it occasioned
had not subsided. The cholera was then on its way to this country, and
I remember thinking that God was angry with the white people because of
their slaveholding wickedness, and therefore his judgments were abroad
in the land. Of course it was impossible for me not to hope much for
the abolition movement when I saw it supported by the Almighty, and
armed with DEATH.
Previously to my contemplation of the anti-slavery movement and its
probable results, my mind had been seriously awakened to the subject of
religion. I was not more than thirteen years old, when in my loneliness
and destitution I longed for some one to whom I could go, as to a
father and protector. The preaching of a white Methodist minister,
named Hanson, was the means of causing me to feel that in God I had
such a friend. He thought that all men, great and small, bond and free,
were sinners in the sight of God: that they were by nature rebels
against his government; and that they must repent of their sins, and
be reconciled to God through Christ. I cannot say that I had a very
distinct notion of what was required of me, but one thing I did know
well: I was wretched and had no means of making myself otherwise. I
consulted a good colored man named Charles Lawson, and in tones of
holy affection he told me to pray, and to “cast all my care upon God.”
This I sought to do; and though for weeks I was a poor, broken-hearted
mourner, traveling through doubts and fears, I finally found my burden
lightened, and my heart relieved. I loved all mankind, slaveholders
not excepted though I abhorred slavery more than ever. I saw the world
in a new light, and my great concern was to have everybody converted.
My desire to learn increased, and especially did I want a thorough
acquaintance with the contents of the Bible. I have gathered scattered
pages of the Bible from the filthy street-gutters, and washed and
dried them, that in moments of leisure I might get a word or two of
wisdom from them. While thus religiously seeking knowledge, I became
acquainted with a good old colored man named Lawson. This man not
only prayed three times a day, but he prayed as he walked through the
streets, at his work, on his dray--everywhere. His life was a life of
prayer, and his words when he spoke to any one, were about a better
world. Uncle Lawson lived near Master Hugh’s house, and becoming deeply
attached to him, I went often with him to prayer-meeting, and spent
much of my leisure time with him on Sunday. The old man could read a
little, and I was a great help to him in making out the hard words,
for I was a better reader than he. I could teach him “the letter,” but
he could teach me “the spirit,” and refreshing times we had together,
in singing and praying. These meetings went on for a long time without
the knowledge of Master Hugh or my mistress. Both knew, however, that
I had become religious, and seemed to respect my conscientious piety.
My mistress was still a professor of religion, and belonged to class.
Her leader was no less a person than Rev. Beverly Waugh, the presiding
elder, and afterwards one of the bishops of the Methodist Episcopal
church.
In view of the cares and anxieties incident to the life she was
leading, and especially in view of the separation from religious
associations to which she was subjected, my mistress had, as I have
before stated, become lukewarm, and needed to be looked up by her
leader. This often brought Mr. Waugh to our house, and gave me an
opportunity to hear him exhort and pray. But my chief instructor in
religious matters was Uncle Lawson. He was my spiritual father and I
loved him intensely, and was at his house every chance I could get.
This pleasure, however, was not long unquestioned. Master Hugh became
averse to our intimacy, and threatened to whip me if I ever went there
again. I now felt myself persecuted by a wicked man, and I _would_ go.
The good old man had told me that the “Lord had a great work for me to
do,” and I must prepare to do it; that he had been shown that I must
preach the gospel. His words made a very deep impression upon me, and
I verily felt that some such work was before me, though I could not
see how I could ever engage in its performance. “The good Lord would
bring it to pass in his own good time,” he said, and that I must go on
reading and studying the scriptures. This advice and these suggestions
were not without their influence on my character and destiny. He fanned
my already intense love of knowledge into a flame by assuring me that I
was to be a useful man in the world. When I would say to him, “How can
these things be? and what can I do?” his simple reply was, “_Trust in
the Lord_.” When I would tell him, “I am a slave, and a slave for life,
how can I do anything?” he would quietly answer, “The _Lord_ can make
you free, my dear; all things are possible with Him; only have _faith_
in God. ‘Ask, and it shall be given you.’ If you want liberty, ask the
Lord for it _in_ FAITH, _and he will give it to you_.”
Thus assured and thus cheered on under the inspiration of hope, I
worked and prayed with a light heart, believing that my life was under
the guidance of a wisdom higher than my own. With all other blessings
sought at the mercy seat, I always prayed that God would, of his great
mercy and in his own good time, deliver me from my bondage.
I went, one day, on the wharf of Mr. Waters, and seeing two Irishmen
unloading a scow of stone or ballast, I went on board unasked, and
helped them. When we had finished the work one of the men came to me,
aside, and asked me a number of questions, and among them if I were
a slave? I told him “I was a slave for life.” The good Irishman gave
a shrug, and seemed deeply affected. He said it was a pity so fine a
little fellow as I was should be a slave for life. They both had much
to say about the matter, and expressed the deepest sympathy with
me, and the most decided hatred of slavery. They went so far as to
tell me that I ought to run away and go to the north; that I should
find friends there, and that I should then be as free as anybody.
I pretended not to be interested in what they said, for I feared
they might be treacherous. White men were not unfrequently known to
encourage slaves to escape, and then, to get the reward, they would
kidnap them and return them to their masters. While I mainly inclined
to the notion that these men were honest and meant me no ill, I feared
it might be otherwise. I nevertheless remembered their words and their
advice, and looked forward to an escape to the north as a possible
means of gaining the liberty for which my heart panted. It was not my
enslavement at the then present time which most affected me; the being
a slave _for life_ was the saddest thought. I was too young to think of
running away immediately; besides, I wished to learn to write before
going, as I might have occasion to write my own pass. I now not only
had the hope of freedom, but a foreshadowing of the means by which I
might some day gain that inestimable boon. Meanwhile I resolved to add
to my educational attainments the art of writing.
After this manner I began to learn to write. I was much in the
ship-yard--Master Hugh’s, and that of Durgan & Bailey, and I observed
that the carpenters, after hewing and getting ready a piece of timber
to use, wrote on it the initials of the name of that part of the ship
for which it was intended. When, for instance, a piece of timber was
ready for the starboard side, it was marked with a capital “S.” A piece
for the larboard side was marked “L.;” larboard forward was marked
“L. F.;” larboard aft was marked “L. A.;” starboard aft, “S. A.” and
starboard forward “S. F.” I soon learned these letters, and for what
they were placed on the timbers.
My work now was to keep fire under the steam-box, and to watch the
ship-yard while the carpenters had gone to dinner. This interval gave
me a fine opportunity for copying the letters named. I soon astonished
myself with the ease with which I made the letters, and the thought
was soon present, “If I can make four letters I can make more.” Having
made these readily and easily, when I met boys about the Bethel church
or on any of our play-grounds, I entered the lists with them in the art
of writing, and would make the letters which I had been so fortunate
as to learn, and ask them to “beat that if they could.” With playmates
for my teachers, fences and pavements for my copy-books, and chalk
for my pen and ink, I learned to write. I however adopted, afterward,
various methods for improving my hand. The most successful was copying
the _italics_ in Webster’s spelling-book until I could make them all
without looking on the book. By this time my little “Master Tommy” had
grown to be a big boy, and had written over a number of copy-books and
brought them home. They had been shown to the neighbors, had elicited
due praise, and had been laid carefully away. Spending parts of my time
both at the ship-yard and the house, I was often the lone keeper of
the latter as of the former. When my mistress left me in charge of the
house I had a grand time. I got Master Tommy’s copy-books and a pen and
ink, and in the ample spaces between the lines I wrote other lines as
nearly like his as possible. The process was a tedious one, and I ran
the risk of getting a flogging for marking the highly-prized copy-books
of the oldest son. In addition to these opportunities, sleeping as I
did in the kitchen loft, a room seldom visited by any of the family,
I contrived to get a flour-barrel up there and a chair, and upon the
head of that barrel I have written, or endeavored to write, copying
from the Bible and the Methodist hymn-book, and other books which I
had accumulated, till late at night, and when all the family were in
bed and asleep. I was supported in my endeavors by renewed advice and
by holy promises from the good father Lawson, with whom I continued to
meet and pray and read the Scriptures. Although Master Hugh was aware
of these meetings, I must say for his credit that he never executed his
threats to whip me for having thus innocently employed my leisure time.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE VICISSITUDES OF SLAVE LIFE.
Death of old Master’s son Richard, speedily followed by that of old
Master--Valuation and division of all the property, including the
slaves--Sent for to come to Hillsborough to be valued and divided--
Sad prospects and grief--Parting--Slaves have no voice in deciding
their own destinies--General dread of falling into Master Andrew’s
hands--His drunkenness--Good fortune in falling to Miss Lucretia--
She allows my return to Baltimore--Joy at Master Hugh’s--Death
of Miss Lucretia--Master Thomas Auld’s second marriage--The new
wife unlike the old--Again removed from Master Hugh’s--Reasons for
regret--Plan of escape.
I must now ask the reader to go back with me a little in point of
time, in my humble story, and notice another circumstance that entered
into my slavery experience, and which, doubtless, has had a share in
deepening my horror of slavery, and my hostility toward those men and
measures that practically uphold the slave system.
It has already been observed that though I was, after my removal from
Col. Lloyd’s plantation, in _form_ the slave of Master Hugh Auld, I was
in _fact_ and in _law_ the slave of my old master, Capt. Anthony. Very
well. In a very short time after I went to Baltimore my old master’s
youngest son, Richard, died; and in three years and six months after my
old master himself died, leaving only his daughter Lucretia and his son
Andrew to share the estate. The old man died while on a visit to his
daughter in Hillsborough, where Capt. Auld and Mrs. Lucretia now lived,
Master Thomas having given up the command of Col. Lloyd’s sloop and was
now keeping store in that town.
Cut off thus unexpectedly, Capt. Anthony died intestate, and his
property must be equally divided between his two children, Andrew and
Lucretia.
The valuation and division of slaves among contending heirs was a most
important incident in slave life. The characters and tendencies of
the heirs were generally well understood by the slaves who were to be
divided, and all had their aversions and their preferences. But neither
their aversions nor their preferences availed anything.
On the death of old master I was immediately sent for to be valued and
divided with the other property. Personally, my concern was mainly
about my possible removal from the home of Master Hugh, for up to this
time there had no dark clouds arisen to darken the sky of that happy
abode. It was a sad day to me when I left for the Eastern Shore, to be
valued and divided, as it was for my dear mistress and teacher, and for
little Tommy. We all three wept bitterly, for we were parting, and it
might be we were parting forever. No one could tell amongst which pile
of chattels I might be flung. Thus early, I got a foretaste of that
painful uncertainty which in one form or another was ever obtruding
itself in the pathway of the slave. It furnished me a new insight into
the unnatural power to which I was subjected. Sickness, adversity, and
death may interfere with the plans and purposes of all, but the slave
had the added danger of changing homes, in the separations unknown
to other men. Then too, there was the intensified degradation of the
spectacle. What an assemblage! Men and women, young and old, married
and single; moral and thinking human beings, in open contempt of
their humanity, leveled at a blow with horses, sheep, horned cattle,
and swine. Horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children--
all holding the same rank in the scale of social existence, and all
subjected to the same narrow inspection, to ascertain their value in
gold and silver--the only standard of worth applied by slaveholders to
their slaves. Personality swallowed up in the sordid idea of property!
Manhood lost in chattelhood!
The valuation over, then came the division and apportionment. Our
destiny was to be _fixed for life_, and we had no more voice in the
decision of the question than the oxen and cows that stood chewing at
the hay-mow. One word of the appraisers, against all preferences and
prayers, could sunder all the ties of friendship and affection, even
to separating husbands and wives, parents and children. We were all
appalled before that power which, to human seeming, could bless or
blast us in a moment. Added to this dread of separation, most painful
to the majority of the slaves, we all had a decided horror of falling
into the hands of Master Andrew, who was distinguished for his cruelty
and intemperance.
Slaves had a great dread, very naturally, of falling into the hands
of drunken owners. Master Andrew was a confirmed sot, and had already
by his profligate dissipation wasted a large portion of his father’s
property. To fall into his hands, therefore, was considered as the
first step toward being sold away to the far South. He would no doubt
spend his fortune in a few years, it was thought, and his farms and
slaves would be sold at public auction, and the slaves hurried away to
the cotton-fields and rice-swamps of the burning South. This was cause
of deep consternation.
The people of the North, and free people generally, I think, have less
attachment to the places where they are born and brought up, than had
the slaves. Their freedom to come and go, to be here or there, as they
list, prevents any extravagant attachment to any one particular place.
On the other hand, the slave was a fixture; he had no choice, no goal,
but was pegged down to one single spot, and must take root there or
nowhere. The idea of removal elsewhere came generally in shape of a
threat, and in punishment for crime. It was therefore attended with
fear and dread. The enthusiasm which animates the bosoms of young
freemen, when they contemplate a life in the far West, or in some
distant country, where they expect to rise to wealth and distinction,
could have no place in the thought of the slave; nor could those from
whom they separated know anything of that cheerfulness with which
friends and relations yield each other up, when they feel that it is
for the good of the departing one that he is removed from his native
place. Then, too, there is correspondence and the hope of reunion,
but with the slaves all these mitigating circumstances were wanting.
There was no improvement in condition _probable_--no correspondence
_possible_--no reunion attainable. His going out into the world was
like a living man going into the tomb, who with open eyes, sees himself
buried out of sight and hearing of wife, children, and friends of
kindred tie.
In contemplating the likelihoods and possibilities of our
circumstances, I probably suffered more than most of my
fellow-servants. I had known what it was to experience kind and even
tender treatment; they had known nothing of the sort. Life to them
had been rough and thorny, as well as dark. They had--most of them--
lived on my old master’s farm in Tuckahoe, and had felt the rigors
of Mr. Plummer’s rule. He had written his character on the living
parchment of most of their backs, and left them seamed and callous;
my back (thanks to my early removal to Baltimore) was yet tender. I
had left a kind mistress in tears when we parted, and the probability
of ever seeing her again, trembling in the balance as it were, could
not fail to excite in me alarm and agony. The thought of becoming the
slave of Andrew Anthony--who but a few days before the division had
in my presence seized my brother Perry by the throat, dashed him on
the ground, and with the heel of his boot stamped him on the head,
until the blood gushed from his nose and ears--was terrible! This
fiendish proceeding had no better apology than the fact that Perry had
gone to play when Master Andrew wanted him for some trifling service.
After inflicting this cruel treatment on my brother, observing me, as
I looked at him in astonishment, he said: “_That’s_ the way I’ll serve
you, one of these days”; meaning, probably, when I should come into
his possession. This threat, the reader may well suppose, was not very
tranquilizing to my feelings.
At last the anxiety and suspense were ended; and ended, thanks to a
kind Providence, in accordance with my wishes. I fell to the portion
of Mrs. Lucretia, the dear lady who bound up my head in her father’s
kitchen, and shielded me from the maledictions of Aunt Katy.
Capt. Thomas Auld and Mrs. Lucretia at once decided on my return to
Baltimore. They knew how warmly Mrs. Hugh Auld was attached to me, and
how delighted Tommy would be to see me, and withal, having no immediate
use for me, they willingly concluded this arrangement.
I need not stop to narrate my joy on finding myself back in Baltimore.
I was just one month absent, but the time seemed fully six months.
I had returned to Baltimore but a short time when the tidings reached
me that my kind friend, Mrs. Lucretia, was dead. She left one child,
a daughter, named Amanda, of whom I shall speak again. Shortly after
the death of Mrs. Lucretia, Master Andrew died, leaving a wife and one
child. Thus the whole family of Anthonys, as it existed when I went to
Col. Lloyd’s place, was swept away during the first five years’ time of
my residence at Master Hugh Auld’s in Baltimore.
No especial alteration took place in the condition of the slaves, in
consequence of these deaths, yet I could not help the feeling that I
was less secure now that Mrs. Lucretia was gone. While she lived, I
felt that I had a strong friend to plead for me in any emergency.
In a little book which I published six years after my escape from
slavery, entitled, “Narrative of Frederick Douglass,”--when the
distance between the past then described, and the present was not so
great as it is now,--speaking of these changes in my master’s family,
and their results, I used this language: “Now all the property of my
old master, slaves included, was in the hands of strangers--strangers
who had nothing to do in accumulating it. Not a slave was left free.
All remained slaves, from the youngest to the oldest. If any one
thing in my experience, more than another, has served to deepen my
conviction of the infernal character of slavery, and to fill me with
unutterable loathing of slaveholders, it was their base ingratitude to
my poor old grandmother. She had served my old master faithfully from
youth to old age. She had been the source of all his wealth; she had
peopled his plantation with slaves; she had become a great-grandmother
in his service. She had rocked him in his infancy, attended him in
his childhood, served him through life, and at his death wiped from
his icy brow the cold death-sweat, and closed his eyes forever. She
was nevertheless a slave--a slave for life--a slave in the hands of
strangers; and in their hands she saw her children, her grandchildren,
and her great-grandchildren, divided like so many sheep, without being
gratified with the small privilege of a single word as to their or
her own destiny. And to cap the climax of their base ingratitude, my
grandmother, who was now very old, having outlived my old master and
all his children, having seen the beginning and end of them, and her
present owner--his grandson--finding she was of but little value--
her frame already racked with the pains of old age, and complete
helplessness fast stealing over her once active limbs--took her to the
woods, built her a little hut with a mud chimney, and then gave her the
_bounteous_ privilege of supporting herself there in utter loneliness:
thus virtually turning her out to die. If my poor, dear old grandmother
now lives, she lives to remember and mourn over the loss of children,
the loss of grandchildren, and the loss of great-grandchildren. They
are, in the language of Whittier, the slave’s poet:
‘Gone, gone, sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp dank and lone;
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings,
Where the noisome insect stings,
Where the fever-demon strews
Poison with the falling dews,
Where the sickly sunbeams glare
Through the hot and misty air:--
Gone, gone, sold and gone,
To the rice-swamp, dank and lone,
From Virginia’s hills and waters--
Woe is me, my stolen daughters!’
“The hearth is desolate. The unconscious children who once sang
and danced in her presence are gone. She gropes her way, in the
darkness of age, for a drink of water. Instead of the voices of her
children, she hears by day the moans of the dove, and by night the
screams of the hideous owl. All is gloom. The grave is at the door;
and now, weighed down by the pains and aches of old age, when the
head inclines to the feet, when the beginning and ending of human
existence meet, and helpless infancy, and painful old age combine
together, at this time,--this most needed time for the exercise of
that tenderness and affection which children only can bestow on a
declining parent,--my poor old grandmother, the devoted mother of
twelve children, is left all alone, in yonder little hut, before a
few dim cinders.”
Two years after the death of Mrs. Lucretia, Master Thomas married his
second wife. Her name was Rowena Hamilton, the eldest daughter of Mr.
William Hamilton, a rich slaveholder on the Eastern Shore of Maryland,
who lived about five miles from St. Michaels, the then place of Master
Thomas Auld’s residence.
Not long after his marriage, Master Thomas had a misunderstanding with
Master Hugh, and as a means of punishing him, he ordered him to send me
home. As the ground of the misunderstanding will serve to illustrate
the character of Southern chivalry and Southern humanity, fifty years
ago, I will relate it.
Among the children of my Aunt Milly, was a daughter named Henny. When
quite a child, Henny had fallen into the fire and had burnt her hands
so badly that they were of very little use to her. Her fingers were
drawn almost into the palms of her hands. She could make out to do
something, but she was considered hardly worth the having--of little
more value than a horse with a broken leg. This unprofitable piece of
property, ill-shapen and disfigured, Capt. Auld sent off to Baltimore.
After giving poor Henny a fair trial, Master Hugh and his wife came
to the conclusion that they had no use for the poor cripple, and
they sent her back to Master Thomas. This the latter took as an act
of ingratitude on the part of his brother, and as a mark of his
displeasure, he required him to send me immediately to St. Michaels,
saying, “if he cannot keep Hen., he shan’t have Fred.”
Here was another shock to my nerves, another breaking up of my plans,
and another severance of my religious and social alliances. I was now
a big boy. I had become quite useful to several young colored men, who
had made me their teacher. I had taught some of them to read, and was
accustomed to spend many of my leisure hours with them. Our attachment
was strong, and I greatly dreaded the separation. But regrets with
slaves were unavailing: my wishes were nothing; my happiness was the
sport of my master.
My regrets at leaving Baltimore now were not for the same reasons as
when I before left the city to be valued and handed over to a new owner.
A change had taken place, both in Master Hugh and in his once pious and
affectionate wife. The influence of brandy and bad company on him, and
of slavery and social isolation on her, had wrought disastrously upon
the characters of both. Thomas was no longer “little Tommy,” but was a
big boy, and had learned to assume the airs of his class towards me. My
condition, therefore, in the house of Master Hugh was not by any means
so comfortable as in former years. My attachments were now outside of
our family. They were to those to whom I imparted instruction, and to
those little white boys, from whom I received instruction. There, too,
was my dear old father, the pious Lawson, who was in all the Christian
graces the very counterpart of “Uncle Tom”--the resemblance so perfect
that he might have been the original of Mrs. Stowe’s Christian hero.
The thought of leaving these dear friends greatly troubled me, for I
was going without the hope of ever returning again; the feud being most
bitter, and apparently wholly irreconcilable.
In addition to the pain of parting from friends, as I supposed,
forever, I had the added grief of neglected chances of escape to
brood over. I had put off running away until I was now to be placed
where opportunities for escape would be much more difficult, and less
frequent.
As we sailed down the Chesapeake bay, on board the sloop Amanda, to
St. Michaels, and were passed by the steamers plying between Baltimore
and Philadelphia, I formed many a plan for my future, beginning and
ending in the same determination--yet to find some way of escape from
slavery.
CHAPTER XIV.
EXPERIENCE IN ST. MICHAELS.
St. Michaels and its inhabitants--Capt. Auld--His new wife--
Suffering from hunger--Forced to steal--Argument in vindication
thereof--Southern camp-meeting--What Capt. Auld did there--
Hopes--Suspicions--The result--Faith and works at variance--
Position in the church--Poor Cousin Henny--Methodist preachers--
Their disregard of the slaves--One exception--Sabbath-school--
How and by whom broken up--Sad change in my prospects--Covey, the
negro-breaker.
St. Michaels, the village in which was now my new home, compared
favorably with villages in slave States generally, at this time--
1833. There were a few comfortable dwellings in it, but the place as
a whole wore a dull, slovenly, enterprise-forsaken aspect. The mass
of the buildings were of wood; they had never enjoyed the artificial
adornment of paint, and time and storms had worn off the bright color
of the wood, leaving them almost as black as buildings charred by a
conflagration.
St. Michaels had, in former years, enjoyed some reputation as a
ship-building community, but that business had almost entirely given
place to oyster fishing for the Baltimore and Philadelphia markets, a
course of life highly unfavorable to morals, industry, and manners.
Miles river was broad, and its oyster fishing grounds were extensive,
and the fishermen were out often all day and a part of the night,
during autumn, winter, and spring. This exposure was an excuse for
carrying with them, in considerable quantities, spirituous liquors,
the then supposed best antidote for cold. Each canoe was supplied with
its jug of rum, and tippling among this class of the citizens became
general. This drinking habit, in an ignorant population, fostered
coarseness, vulgarity, and an indolent disregard for the social
improvement of the place, so that it was admitted by the few sober
thinking people who remained there, that St. Michaels was an unsaintly,
as well as unsightly place.
I went to St. Michaels to live in March, 1833. I know the year, because
it was the one succeeding the first cholera in Baltimore, and was also
the year of that strange phenomenon when the heavens seemed about to
part with its starry train. I witnessed this gorgeous spectacle, and
was awestruck. The air seemed filled with bright descending messengers
from the sky. It was about daybreak when I saw this sublime scene. I
was not without the suggestion, at the moment, that it might be the
harbinger of the coming of the Son of man; and in my then state of mind
I was prepared to hail Him as my friend and deliverer. I had read that
the “stars shall fall from heaven,” and they were now falling. I was
suffering very much in my mind. It did seem that every time the young
tendrils of my affection became attached they were rudely broken by
some unnatural outside power; and I was looking away to heaven for the
rest denied me on earth.
But to my story. It was now more than seven years since I had lived
with Master Thomas Auld, in the family of my old master, Capt. Anthony,
on the home plantation of Col. Lloyd. As I knew him then it was as the
husband of old master’s daughter; I had now to know him as my master.
All my lessons concerning his temper and disposition, and the best
methods of pleasing him, were yet to be learned. Slaveholders, however,
were not very ceremonious in approaching a slave, and my ignorance of
the new material in the shape of a master was but transient. Nor was
my new mistress long in making known her animus. Unlike Miss Lucretia,
whom I remembered with the tenderness which departed blessings leave,
Mrs. Rowena Auld was cold and cruel, as her husband was stingy, and
possessed the power to make him as cruel as herself, while she could
easily descend to the level of his meanness.
As long as I had lived in Mr. Hugh Auld’s family, whatever changes
had come over them there had been always a bountiful supply of food;
and now, for the first time in seven years, I realized the pitiless
pinchings of hunger. So wretchedly starved were we that we were
compelled to live at the expense of our neighbors, or to steal from the
home larder. This was a hard thing to do; but after much reflection
I reasoned myself into the conviction that there was no other way to
do, and that after all there was no wrong in it. Considering that my
labor and person were the property of Master Thomas, and that I was
deprived of the necessaries of life--necessaries obtained by my own
labor, it was easy to deduce the right to supply myself with what was
my own. It was simply appropriating what was my own to the use of my
master, since the health and strength derived from such food were
exerted in his service. To be sure, this was stealing, according to the
law and gospel I heard from the pulpit; but I had begun to attach less
importance to what dropped from that quarter on such points. It was not
always convenient to steal from Master, and the same reason why I might
innocently steal from him did not seem to justify me in stealing from
others. In the case of my master it was a question of removal--the
taking his meat out of one tub and putting it in another; the ownership
of the meat was not affected by the transaction. At first he owned it
in the tub, and last he owned it in me. His meat-house was not always
open. There was a strict watch kept in that point, and the key was
carried in Mrs. Auld’s pocket. We were oftentimes severely pinched with
hunger, when meat and bread were mouldering under the lock and key.
This was so, when she knew we were nearly half-starved; and yet with
saintly air would she kneel with her husband and pray each morning that
a merciful God would “bless them in basket and store, and save them at
last in His kingdom.” But I proceed with my argument.
It was necessary that the right to steal from others should be
established; and this could only rest upon a wider range of
generalization than that which supposed the right to steal from my
master. It was some time before I arrived at this clear right. To
give some idea of my train of reasoning, I will state the case as I
laid it out in my mind. “I am,” I thought, “not only the slave of
Master Thomas, but I am the slave of society at large. Society at
large has bound itself, in form and in fact, to assist Master Thomas
in robbing me of my rightful liberty, and of the just reward of my
labor; therefore, whatever rights I have against Master Thomas I have
equally against those confederated with him in robbing me of liberty.
As society has marked me out as privileged plunder, on the principle
of self-preservation, I am justified in plundering in turn. Since each
slave belongs to all, all must therefore belong to each.” I reasoned
further, that within the bounds of his just earnings the slave was
fully justified in helping himself to the gold and silver, and the best
apparel of his master, or that of any other slaveholder; and that such
taking was not stealing, in any just sense of the word.
The morality of free society could have no application to slave
society. Slaveholders made it almost impossible for the slave to commit
any crime, known either to the laws of God or to the laws of man. If he
stole he but took his own; if he killed his master, he only imitated
the heroes of the revolution. Slaveholders I held to be individually
and collectively responsible for all the evils which grew out of the
horrid relation, and I believed they would be so held in the sight of
God. To make a man a slave was to rob him of moral responsibility.
Freedom of choice is the essence of all accountability; but my kind
readers are probably less concerned about what were my opinions than
about that which more nearly touched my personal experience, albeit my
opinions have, in some sort, been the outgrowth of my experience.
When I lived with Capt. Auld I thought him incapable of a noble action.
His leading characteristic was intense selfishness. I think he was
fully aware of this fact himself, and often tried to conceal it.
Capt. Auld was not a born slaveholder--not a birthright member of the
slaveholding oligarchy. He was only a slaveholder by marriage-right;
and of all slaveholders these were by far the most exacting. There
was in him all the love of domination, the pride of mastery, and
the swagger of authority; but his rule lacked the vital element of
consistency. He could be cruel; but his methods of showing it were
cowardly, and evinced his meanness, rather than his spirit. His
commands were strong, his enforcements weak.
Slaves were not insensible to the whole-souled qualities of a generous,
dashing slaveholder, who was fearless of consequences, and they
preferred a master of this bold and daring kind, even with the risk of
being shot down for impudence, to the fretful little soul who never
used the lash but at the suggestion of a love of gain.
Slaves too, readily distinguished between the birthright bearing of
the original slaveholder, and the assumed attitudes of the accidental
slaveholder; and while they could have no respect for either, they
despised the latter more than the former.
The luxury of having slaves to wait upon him was new to Master Thomas,
and for it he was wholly unprepared. He was a slaveholder, without the
ability to hold or manage his slaves. Failing to command their respect,
both himself and wife were ever on the alert lest some indignity should
be offered him by the slaves.
It was in the month of August, 1833, when I had become almost desperate
under the treatment of Master Thomas, and entertained more strongly
than ever the oft-repeated determination to run away,--a circumstance
occurred which seemed to promise brighter and better days for us all.
At a Methodist camp-meeting, held in the Bay side (a famous place for
camp-meetings) about eight miles from St. Michaels, Master Thomas
came out with a profession of religion. He had long been an object
of interest to the church, and to the ministers, as I had seen by
the repeated visits and lengthy exhortations of the latter. He was
a fish quite worth catching, for he had money and standing. In the
community of St. Michaels, he was equal to the best citizen. He was
strictly-temperate, and there was little to do for him, to give him
the appearance of piety, and to make him a pillar of the church. Well,
the camp-meeting continued a week; people gathered from all parts of
the country, and two steamboats came loaded from Baltimore. The ground
was happily chosen; seats were arranged; a stand erected; a rude altar
fenced in, fronting the preacher’s stand, with straw in it, making a
soft kneeling-place for the accommodation of mourners. This place would
have held at least one hundred persons. In front and on the sides of
the preacher’s stand, and outside the long rows of seats, rose the
first class of stately tents, each vieing with the other in strength,
neatness, and capacity for accommodation. Behind this first circle of
tents, was another less imposing, which reached round the camp-ground
to the speaker’s stand. Outside this second class of tents were covered
wagons, ox-carts, and vehicles of every shape and size. These served
as tents to their owners. Outside of these, huge fires were burning in
all directions, where roasting and boiling and frying were going on,
for the benefit of those who were attending to their spiritual welfare
within the circle. _Behind_ the preacher’s stand, a narrow space was
marked out for the use of the colored people. There were no seats
provided for this class of persons, and if the preachers addressed them
at all, it was in an _aside_. After the preaching was over, at every
service, an invitation was given to mourners to come forward into the
pen; and in some cases, ministers went out to persuade men and women to
come in. By one of these ministers, Master Thomas was persuaded to go
inside the pen. I was deeply interested in that matter, and followed;
and though colored people were not allowed either in the pen, or in
front of the preacher’s stand, I ventured to take my stand at a sort of
half-way place between the blacks and whites, where I could distinctly
see the movements of the mourners, and especially the progress of
Master Thomas. “If he has got religion,” thought I, “he will emancipate
his slaves; or, if he should not do so much as this, he will at any
rate behave towards us more kindly, and feed us more generously than
he has heretofore done.” Appealing to my own religious experience,
and judging my master by what was true in my own case, I could not
regard him as soundly converted, unless some such good results followed
his profession of religion. But in my expectations I was doubly
disappointed: Master Thomas was _Master Thomas_ still. The fruits of
his righteousness were to show themselves in no such way as I had
anticipated. His conversion was not to change his relation toward men--
at any rate not toward BLACK men--but toward God. My faith, I confess,
was not great. There was something in his appearance that in my mind
cast a doubt over his conversion. Standing where I did, I could see
his every movement. I watched very narrowly while he remained in the
pen; and although I saw that his face was extremely red, and his hair
disheveled, and though I heard him groan, and saw a stray tear halting
on his cheek, as if inquiring, “which way shall I go?”--I could not
wholly confide in the genuineness of the conversion. The hesitating
behavior of that tear-drop, and its loneliness, distressed me, and cast
a doubt upon the whole transaction, of which it was a part. But people
said, “Capt. Auld has come through,” and it was for me to hope for the
best. I was bound to do this in charity, for I, too, was religious, and
had been in the church full three years, although now I was not more
than sixteen years old. Slaveholders might sometimes have confidence in
the piety of some of their slaves, but the slaves seldom had confidence
in the piety of their masters. “He can’t go to heaven without blood on
his skirts,” was a settled point in the creed of every slave; which
rose superior to all teaching to the contrary, and stood forever as a
fixed fact. The highest evidence the slaveholder could give the slave
of his acceptance with God, was the emancipation of his slaves. This
was proof to us that he was willing to give up all to God, and for the
sake of God, and not to do this was, in our estimation, an evidence of
hard-heartedness, and was wholly inconsistent with the idea of genuine
conversion. I had read somewhere in the Methodist Discipline, the
following question and answer: “Question. What shall be done for the
extirpation of slavery?” “Answer. We declare that we are as much as
ever convinced of the great evil of slavery; therefore, no slaveholder
shall be eligible to any official station in our church.” These words
sounded in my ears for a long time, and encouraged me to hope. But as I
have before said, I was doomed to disappointment. Master Thomas seemed
to be aware of my hopes and expectations concerning him. I have thought
before now that he looked at me in answer to my glances, as much as to
say, “I will teach you, young man, that though I have parted with my
sins, I have not parted with my sense. I shall hold my slaves, and go
to heaven too.”
There was always a scarcity of good nature about the man; but now
his whole countenance was _soured_ all over with the _seemings_ of
piety and he became more rigid and stringent in his exactions. If
religion had any effect at all on him, it made him more cruel and
hateful in all his ways. Do I judge him harshly? God forbid. Capt.
Auld made the greatest professions of piety. His house was literally
a house of prayer. In the morning and in the evening loud prayers
and hymns were heard there, in which both himself and wife joined;
yet no more nor better meal was distributed at the quarters, no more
attention was paid to the moral welfare of the kitchen, and nothing
was done to make us feel that the heart of Master Thomas was one whit
better than it was before he went into the little pen, opposite the
preacher’s stand on the camp-ground. Our hopes, too, founded on the
discipline, soon vanished; for he was taken into the church at once,
and before he was out of his term of probation, he lead in class. He
quite distinguished himself among the brethren as a fervent exhorter.
His progress was almost as rapid as the growth of the fabled vine of
Jack and the bean-stalk. No man was more active in revivals, or would
go more miles to assist in carrying them on, and in getting outsiders
interested in religion. His house, being one of the holiest in St.
Michaels, became the “preachers’ home.” They evidently liked to share
his hospitality; for while he _starved_ us, he stuffed them--three or
four of these “ambassadors” being there not unfrequently at a time--
all living on the fat of the land, while we in the kitchen were worse
than hungry. Not often did we get a smile of recognition from these
holy men. They seemed about as unconcerned about our getting to heaven,
as about our getting out of slavery. To this general charge, I must
make one exception--the Reverend George Cookman. Unlike Rev. Messrs.
Storks, Ewry, Nicky, Humphrey, and Cooper (all of whom were on the
St. Michaels circuit), he kindly took an interest in our temporal and
spiritual welfare. Our souls and our bodies were alike sacred in his
sight, and he really had a good deal of genuine anti-slavery feeling
mingled with his colonization ideas. There was not a slave in our
neighborhood who did not love and venerate Mr. Cookman. It was pretty
generally believed that he had been instrumental in bringing one of the
largest slaveholders in that neighborhood--Mr. Samuel Harrison--to
emancipate all his slaves, and the general impression about Mr. Cookman
was, that whenever he met slaveholders he labored faithfully with
them, as a religious duty, to induce them to liberate their bondmen.
When this good man was at our house, we were all sure to be called in
to prayers in the morning; and he was not slow in making inquiries
as to the state of our minds, nor in giving us a word of exhortation
and of encouragement. Great was the sorrow of all the slaves when
this faithful preacher of the gospel was removed from the circuit. He
was an eloquent preacher, and possessed what few ministers, south of
Mason and Dixon’s line, possessed or dared to show; viz., a warm and
philanthropic heart. This Mr. Cookman was an Englishman by birth, and
perished on board the ill-fated steamship “President,” while on his way
to England.
But to my experience with Master Thomas after his conversion. In
Baltimore I could occasionally get into a Sabbath-school, amongst the
free children, and receive lessons with the rest; but having learned
to read and write already, I was more a teacher than a scholar, even
there. When, however, I went back to the eastern shore and was at the
house of Master Thomas, I was not allowed either to teach or to be
taught. The whole community, with but one single exception, among the
whites, frowned upon everything like imparting instruction, either to
slaves or to free colored persons. That single exception, a pious young
man named Wilson, asked me one day if I would like to assist him in
teaching a little Sabbath-school, at the house of a free colored man
named James Mitchell. The idea was to me a delightful one, and I told
him I would gladly devote as much of my Sabbaths as I could command
to that most laudable work. Mr. Wilson soon mustered up a dozen old
spelling-books and a few testaments, and we commenced operations, with
some twenty scholars in our school. Here, thought I, is something worth
living for; here is a chance for usefulness. The first Sunday passed
delightfully, and I spent the week after very joyously. I could not go
to Baltimore, where I and the little company of young friends who had
been so much to me there, and from whom I felt parted forever, but I
could make a little Baltimore here. At our second meeting I learned
there were some objections to the existence of our school; and sure
enough, we had scarcely got to work--_good_ work, simply teaching a
few colored children how to read the gospel of the Son of God--when
in rushed a mob, headed by two class-leaders, Mr. Wright Fairbanks
and Mr. Garrison West, and with them Master Thomas. They were armed
with sticks and other missiles, and drove us off, commanding us never
to meet for such a purpose again. One of this pious crew told me that
as for me, I wanted to be another Nat. Turner, and if I did not look
out I should get as many balls in me as Nat. did into him. Thus ended
the Sabbath-school; and the reader will not be surprised that this
conduct, on the part of class-leaders and professedly holy men, did not
serve to strengthen my religious convictions. The cloud over my St.
Michaels home grew heavier and blacker than ever.
It was not merely the agency of Master Thomas in breaking up our
Sabbath-school, that shook my confidence in the power of that kind of
southern religion to make men wiser or better, but I saw in him all
the cruelty and meanness _after_ his conversion which he had exhibited
before time. His cruelty and meanness were especially displayed in
his treatment of my unfortunate cousin Henny, whose lameness made her
a burden to him. I have seen him tie up this lame and maimed woman
and whip her in a manner most brutal and shocking; and then with
blood-chilling blasphemy he would quote the passage of scripture, “That
servant which knew his lord’s will and prepared not himself, neither
did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.” He would
keep this lacerated woman tied up by her wrists to a bolt in the joist,
three, four, and five hours at a time. He would tie her up early in
the morning, whip her with a cowskin before breakfast, leave her tied
up, go to his store, and returning to dinner repeat the castigation,
laying on the rugged lash on flesh already raw by repeated blows. He
seemed desirous to get the poor girl out of existence, or at any rate
off his hands. In proof of this, he afterwards gave her away to his
sister Sarah (Mrs. Cline), but as in the case of Mr. Hugh, Henny was
soon returned on his hands. Finally, upon a pretense that he could do
nothing for her (I use his own words), he “set her adrift to take care
of herself.” Here was a recently converted man, holding with tight
grasp the well-framed and able-bodied slaves left him by old master--
the persons who in freedom could have taken care of themselves; yet
turning loose the only cripple among them, virtually to starve and die.
No doubt, had Master Thomas been asked by some pious northern brother,
_why_ he held slaves? his reply would have been precisely that which
many another slaveholder has returned to the same inquiry, viz.: “I
hold my slaves for their own good.”
The many differences springing up between Master Thomas and myself,
owing to the clear perception I had of his character, and the boldness
with which I defended myself against his capricious complaints, led
him to declare that I was unsuited to his wants; that my city life had
affected me perniciously; that in fact it had almost ruined me for
every good purpose, and had fitted me for everything bad. One of my
greatest faults, or offences, was that of letting his horse get away
and go down to the farm which belonged to his father-in-law. The animal
had a liking for that farm with which I fully sympathized. Whenever I
let it out it would go dashing down the road to Mr. Hamilton’s as if
going on a grand frolic. My horse gone, of course I must go after it.
The explanation of our mutual attachment to the place is the same--
the horse found good pasturage, and I found there plenty of bread. Mr.
Hamilton had his faults, but starving his slaves was not one of them.
He gave food in abundance, and of excellent quality. In Mr. Hamilton’s
cook--Aunt Mary--I found a generous and considerate friend. She never
allowed me to go there without giving me bread enough to make good the
deficiencies of a day or two. Master Thomas at last resolved to endure
my behavior no longer; he could keep neither me nor his horse, we liked
so well to be at his father-in-law’s farm. I had now lived with him
nearly nine months, and he had given me a number of severe whippings,
without any visible improvement in my character or conduct, and now he
was resolved to put me out, as he said, “_to be broken_.”
There was, in the Bay-side, very near the camp-ground where my master
received his religious impressions, a man named Edward Covey, who
enjoyed the reputation of being a first rate hand at breaking young
negroes. This Covey was a poor man, a farm renter; and his reputation
of being a good hand to break in slaves was of immense pecuniary
advantage to him, since it enabled him to get his farm tilled with
very little expense, compared with what it would have cost him
otherwise. Some slaveholders thought it an advantage to let Mr. Covey
have the government of their slaves a year or two, almost free of
charge, for the sake of the excellent training they had under his
management. Like some horse-breakers noted for their skill, who ride
the best horses in the country without expense, Mr. Covey could have
under him the most fiery bloods of the neighborhood, for the simple
reward of returning them to their owners _well broken_. Added to the
natural fitness of Mr. Covey for the duties of his profession, he was
said “to enjoy religion,” and he was as strict in the cultivation of
piety as he was in the cultivation of his farm. I was made aware of
these traits in his character by some one who had been under his hand,
and while I could not look forward to going to him with any degree of
pleasure, I was glad to get away from St. Michaels. I believed I should
get enough to eat at Covey’s, even if I suffered in other respects,
and this to a hungry man is not a prospect to be regarded with
indifference.
CHAPTER XV.
COVEY, THE NEGRO BREAKER.
Journey to Covey’s--Meditations by the way--Covey’s house--Family--
Awkwardness as a field hand--A cruel beating--Why given--
Description of Covey--First attempt at driving oxen--Hair-breadth
escape--Ox and man alike property--Hard labor more effective
than the whip for breaking down the spirit--Cunning and trickery
of Covey--Family worship--Shocking and indecent contempt for
chastity--Great mental agitation--Anguish beyond description.
The morning of January 1, 1834, with its chilling wind and pinching
frost, quite in harmony with the winter in my own mind, found me, with
my little bundle of clothing on the end of a stick swung across my
shoulder, on the main road bending my way towards Covey’s, whither I
had been imperiously ordered by Master Thomas. He had been as good as
his word, and had committed me without reserve to the mastery of that
hard man. Eight or ten years had now passed since I had been taken
from my grandmother’s cabin in Tuckahoe; and these years, for the most
part, I had spent in Baltimore, where, as the reader has already seen,
I was treated with comparative tenderness. I was now about to sound
profounder depths in slave life. My new master was notorious for his
fierce and savage disposition, and my only consolation in going to live
with him was the certainty of finding him precisely as represented by
common fame. There was neither joy in my heart nor elasticity in my
frame as I started for the tyrant’s home. Starvation made me glad to
leave Thomas Auld’s, and the cruel lash made me dread to go to Covey’s.
Escape, however, was impossible; so, heavy and sad, I paced the seven
miles which lay between his house and St. Michaels, _thinking_ much
by the solitary way of my adverse condition. But _thinking_ was all I
could do. Like a fish in a net, allowed to play for a time, I was now
drawn rapidly to the shore, secured at all points. “I am,” thought I,
“but the sport of a power which makes no account, either of my welfare
or my happiness. By a law which I can comprehend, but cannot evade or
resist, I am ruthlessly snatched from the hearth of a fond grandmother
and hurried away to the home of a mysterious old master; again I am
removed from there to a master in Baltimore; thence am I snatched away
to the eastern shore to be valued with the beasts of the field, and
with them divided and set apart for a possessor; then I am sent back to
Baltimore, and by the time I have formed new attachments and have begun
to hope that no more rude shocks shall touch me, a difference arises
between brothers and I am again broken up and sent to St. Michaels;
and now from the latter place I am footing my way to the home of
another master, where I am given to understand that like a wild young
working animal I am to be broken to the yoke of a bitter and life-long
bondage.” With thoughts and reflections like these, I came in sight of
a small wood-colored building, about a mile from the main road, which,
from the description I had received at starting I easily recognized as
my new home. The Chesapeake bay, upon the jutting banks of which the
little wood-colored house was standing, white with foam raised by the
heavy northwest wind; Poplar Island, covered with a thick black pine
forest, standing out amid this half ocean; and Keat Point, stretching
its sandy, desert-like shores out into the foam-crested bay, were all
in sight, and served to deepen the wild and desolate scene.
The good clothes I had brought with me from Baltimore were now worn
thin, and had not been replaced; for Master Thomas was as little
careful to provide against cold as hunger. Met here by a north wind,
sweeping through an open space of forty miles, I was glad to make any
port, and, therefore, I speedily pressed on to the wood-colored house.
The family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Covey; Mrs. Kemp (a broken-backed
woman), sister to Mrs. Covey; William Hughes, cousin to Mr. Covey;
Caroline, the cook; Bill Smith, a hired man, and myself. Bill Smith,
Bill Hughes, and myself were the working force of the farm, which
comprised three or four hundred acres. I was now for the first time in
my life to be a field-hand; and in my new employment I found myself
even more awkward than a green country boy may be supposed to be upon
his first entrance into the bewildering scenes of city life; and my
awkwardness gave me much trouble. Strange and unnatural as it may seem,
I had been in my new home but three days before Mr. Covey (my brother
in the Methodist church) gave me a bitter foretaste of what was in
reserve for me. I presume he thought that since he had but a single
year in which to complete his work, the sooner he begun, the better.
Perhaps he thought by coming to blows at once we should mutually
understand better our relations to each other. But to whatever motive,
direct or indirect, the cause may be referred, I had not been in his
possession three whole days before he subjected me to a most brutal
chastisement. Under his heavy blows blood flowed freely, and wales
were left on my back as large as my little finger. The sores from this
flogging continued for weeks, for they were kept open by the rough
and coarse cloth which I wore for shirting. The occasion and details
of this first chapter of my experience as a field-hand, must be told,
that the reader may see how unreasonable, as well as how cruel, my new
Master Covey was. The whole thing I found to be characteristic of the
man, and I was probably treated no worse by him than scores of lads
who had previously been committed to him, for reasons similar to those
which induced my master to place me with him. But here are the facts
connected with the affair, precisely as they occurred.
On one of the coldest mornings of the whole month of January, 1834, I
was ordered at daybreak to get a load of wood, from a forest about two
miles from the house. In order to perform this work, Mr. Covey gave me
a pair of unbroken oxen, for it seemed that his breaking abilities had
not been turned in that direction. In due form, and with all proper
ceremony, I was introduced to this huge yoke of unbroken oxen, and was
carefully made to understand which was “Buck,” and which was “Darby,”--
which was the “in hand,” and which was the “off hand” ox. The master of
this important ceremony was no less a person than Mr. Covey himself;
and the introduction was the first of the kind I had ever had.
My life, hitherto, had been quite away from horned cattle, and I had
no knowledge of the art of managing them. What was meant by the “in
ox,” as against the “off ox,” when both were equally fastened to one
cart, and under one yoke, I could not very easily divine; and the
difference implied by the names, and the peculiar duties of each, were
alike _Greek_ to me. Why was not the “off ox” called the “in ox?”
Where and what is the reason for this distinction in names, when there
is none in the things themselves? After initiating me into the use
of the “whoa,” “back,” “gee,” “hither,”--the entire language spoken
between oxen and driver,--Mr. Covey took a rope about ten feet long
and one inch thick, and placed one end of it around the horns of the
“in hand ox,” and gave the other end to me, telling me that if the oxen
started to run away (as the scamp knew they would), I must hold on to
the rope and stop them. I need not tell any one who is acquainted with
either the strength or the disposition of an untamed ox, that this
order was about as unreasonable as a command to shoulder a mad bull.
I had never driven oxen before, and I was as awkward, as a driver,
as it is possible to conceive. I could not plead my ignorance to Mr.
Covey; there was that in his manner which forbade any reply. Cold,
distant, morose, with a face wearing all the marks of captious pride
and malicious sternness, he repelled all advances. He was not a large
man--not more than five feet ten inches in height, I should think;
short-necked, round-shouldered, of quick and wiry motion, of thin and
wolfish visage, with a pair of small, greenish-gray eyes, set well
back under a forehead without dignity, and which were constantly in
motion, expressing his passions rather than his thoughts, in sight but
denying them utterance in words. The creature presented an appearance
altogether ferocious and sinister, disagreeable and forbidding, in
the extreme. When he spoke, it was from the corner of his mouth, and
in a sort of light growl, like a dog, when an attempt is made to take
a bone from him. I already believed him a worse fellow than he had
been represented to be. With his directions, and without stopping to
question, I started for the woods, quite anxious to perform my first
exploit in driving in a creditable manner. The distance from the house
to the wood’s gate--a full mile, I should think--was passed over
with little difficulty: for, although the animals ran, I was fleet
enough in the open field to keep pace with them, especially as they
pulled me along at the end of the rope; but on reaching the woods, I
was speedily thrown into a distressing plight. The animals took fright,
and started off ferociously into the woods, carrying the cart full tilt
against trees, over stumps, and dashing from side to side in a manner
altogether frightful. As I held the rope I expected every moment to
be crushed between the cart and the huge trees, among which they were
so furiously dashing. After running thus for several minutes, my oxen
were finally brought to a stand by a tree, against which they dashed
themselves with great violence, upsetting the cart, and entangling
themselves among sundry young saplings. By the shock the body of the
cart was flung in one direction and the wheels and tongue in another,
and all in the greatest confusion. There I was, all alone in a thick
wood to which I was a stranger; my cart upset and shattered, my oxen
entangled, wild, and enraged, and I, poor soul, but a green hand to set
all this disorder right. I knew no more of oxen than the ox-driver is
supposed to know of wisdom.
After standing a few minutes, surveying the damage, and not without a
presentiment that this trouble would draw after it others, even more
distressing, I took one end of the cart body and, by an extra outlay
of strength, I lifted it toward the axle-tree, from which it had been
violently flung; and after much pulling and straining, I succeeded in
getting the body of the cart in its place. This was an important step
out of the difficulty, and its performance increased my courage for
the work which remained to be done. The cart was provided with an ax,
a tool with which I had become pretty well acquainted in the ship-yard
at Baltimore. With this I cut down the saplings by which my oxen were
entangled, and again pursued my journey, with my heart in my mouth,
lest the oxen should again take it into their senseless heads to cut
up a caper. But their spree was over for the present, and the rascals
now moved off as soberly as though their behavior had been natural and
exemplary. On reaching the part of the forest where I had been the
day before chopping wood, I filled the cart with a heavy load, as a
security against another runaway. But the neck of an ox is equal in
strength to iron. It defies ordinary burdens. Tame and docile to a
proverb, when _well_ trained, the ox is the most sullen and intractable
of animals when but half broken to the yoke. I saw in my own situation
several points of similarity with that of the oxen. They were property;
so was I. Covey was to break me--I was to break them. Break and be
broken was the order.
Half of the day was already gone and I had not yet turned my face
homeward. It required only two days’ experience and observation
to teach me that no such apparent waste of time would be lightly
overlooked by Covey. I therefore hurried toward home; but in reaching
the lane gate I met the crowning disaster of the day. This gate was
a fair specimen of southern handicraft. There were two huge posts
eighteen inches in diameter, rough hewed and square, and the heavy gate
was so hung on one of these that it opened only about half the proper
distance. On arriving here it was necessary for me to let go the end of
the rope on the horns of the “in hand ox;” and now as soon as the gate
was open and I let go of it to get the rope again, off went my oxen,
making nothing of their load, full tilt; and in so doing they caught
the huge gate between the wheel and the cart body, literally crushing
it to splinters, and coming only within a few inches of subjecting me
to a similar crushing, for I was just in advance of the wheel when
it struck the left gate post. With these two hair-breadth escapes I
thought I could successfully explain to Mr. Covey the delay and avert
punishment--I was not without a faint hope of being commended for the
stern resolution which I had displayed in accomplishing the difficult
task--a task which I afterwards learned even Covey himself would not
have undertaken without first driving the oxen for some time in the
open field, preparatory to their going to the woods. But in this hope
I was disappointed. On coming to him his countenance assumed an aspect
of rigid displeasure, and as I gave him a history of the casualties of
my trip, his wolfish face, with his greenish eyes, became intensely
ferocious. “Go back to the woods again,” he said, muttering something
else about wasting time. I hastily obeyed, but I had not gone far on
my way when I saw him coming after me. My oxen now behaved themselves
with singular propriety, contrasting their present conduct to my
representation of their former antics. I almost wished, now that Covey
was coming, they _would_ do something in keeping with the character
I had given them; but no, they had already had their spree, and they
could afford now to be extra good, readily obeying orders, and seeming
to understand them quite as well as I did myself. On reaching the woods
my tormentor, who seemed all the time to be remarking to himself upon
the good behavior of the oxen, came up to me and ordered me to stop the
cart, accompanying the same with the threat that he would now teach
me how to break gates and idle away my time when he sent me to the
woods. Suiting the action to the words, Covey paced off, in his own
wiry fashion, to a large black gum tree, the young shoots of which are
generally used for _ox goads_, they being exceedingly tough. Three of
these _goads_, from four to six feet long, he cut off and trimmed up
with his large jack-knife. This done, he ordered me to take off my
clothes. To this unreasonable order I made no reply, but in my apparent
unconsciousness and inattention to this command I indicated very
plainly a stern determination to do no such thing. “If you will beat
me,” thought I, “you shall do so over my clothes.” After many threats,
which made no impression upon me, he rushed at me with something of the
savage fierceness of a wolf, tore off the few and thinly worn clothes I
had on, and proceeded to wear out on my back the heavy goads which he
had cut from the gum tree. This flogging was the first of a series of
floggings, and though very severe, it was less so than many which came
after it, and these for offences far lighter than the gate-breaking.
I remained with Mr. Covey one year (I cannot say I _lived_ with him),
and during the first six months that I was there I was whipped, either
with sticks or cow-skins, every week. Aching bones and a sore back
were my constant companions. Frequent as the lash was used, Mr. Covey
thought less of it as a means of breaking down my spirit than that
of hard and continued labor. He worked me steadily up to the point
of my powers of endurance. From the dawn of day in the morning till
the darkness was complete in the evening I was kept at hard work in
the field or the woods. At certain seasons of the year we were all
kept in the field till eleven and twelve o’clock at night. At these
times Covey would attend us in the field and urge us on with words or
blows, as it seemed best to him. He had, in his life, been an overseer,
and he well understood the business of slave-driving. There was no
deceiving him. He knew just what a man or boy could do, and he held
both to strict account. When he pleased he would work himself like a
very Turk, making everything fly before him. It was, however, scarcely
necessary for Mr. Covey to be really present in the field to have
his work go on industriously. He had the faculty of making us feel
that he was always present. By a series of adroitly managed surprises
which he practiced, I was prepared to expect him at any moment. His
plan was never to approach the spot where his hands were at work in
an open, manly, and direct manner. No thief was ever more artful in
his devices than this man Covey. He would creep and crawl in ditches
and gullies, hide behind stumps and bushes, and practice so much of
the cunning of the serpent, that Bill Smith and I, between ourselves,
never called him by any other name than “the snake.” We fancied that
in his eyes and his gait we could see a snakish resemblance. One half
of his proficiency in the art of negro-breaking consisted, I should
think, in this species of cunning. We were never secure. He could see
or hear us nearly all the time. He was to us behind every stump, tree,
bush, and fence on the plantation. He carried this kind of trickery so
far that he would sometimes mount his horse and make believe he was
going to St. Michaels, and in thirty minutes afterwards you might find
his horse tied in the woods, and the snake-like Covey lying flat in
the ditch with his head lifted above its edge, or in a fence-corner,
watching every movement of the slaves. I have known him walk up to us
and give us special orders as to our work in advance, as if he were
leaving home with a view to being absent several days, and before he
got half way to the house he would avail himself of our inattention to
his movements to turn short on his heel, conceal himself behind a fence
corner or a tree, and watch us until the going down of the sun. Mean
and contemptible as is all this, it is in keeping with the character
which the life of a slaveholder was calculated to produce. There was
no earthly inducement in the slave’s condition to incite him to labor
faithfully. The fear of punishment was the sole motive of any sort
of industry with him. Knowing this fact as the slaveholder did, and
judging the slave by himself, he naturally concluded that the slave
would be idle whenever the cause for this fear was absent. Hence all
sorts of petty deceptions were practiced to inspire fear.
But with Mr. Covey trickery was natural. Everything in the shape of
learning or religion which he possessed was made to conform to this
semi-lying propensity. He did not seem conscious that the practice
had anything unmanly, base, or contemptible about it. It was a part
of an important system with him, essential to the relation of master
and slave. I thought I saw, in his very religious devotions, this
controlling element of his character. A long prayer at night made
up for a short prayer in the morning, and few men could seem more
devotional than he when he had nothing else to do.
Mr. Covey was not content with the cold style of family worship adopted
in the cold latitudes, which begin and end with a simple prayer. No!
the voice of praise as well as of prayer must be heard in his house
night and morning. At first I was called upon to bear some part in
these exercises; but the repeated floggings given me turned the whole
thing into mockery. He was a poor singer, and mainly relied on me
for raising the hymn for the family, and when I failed to do so he
was thrown into much confusion. I do not think he ever abused me on
account of these vexations. His religion was a thing altogether apart
from his worldly concerns. He knew nothing of it as a holy principle
directing and controlling his daily life, making the latter conform to
the requirements of the gospel. One or two facts will illustrate his
character better than a volume of generalities.
I have already implied that Mr. Edward Covey was a poor man. He was,
in fact, just commencing to lay the foundation of his fortune, as
fortune was regarded in a slave state. The first condition of wealth
and respectability there being the ownership of human property, every
nerve was strained by the poor man to obtain it, with little regard
sometimes as to the means. In pursuit of this object, pious as Mr.
Covey was, he proved himself as unscrupulous and base as the worst of
his neighbors. In the beginning he was only able--as he said--“to
buy one slave;” and scandalous and shocking as is the fact, he boasted
that he bought her simply “as a breeder.” But the worst of this is not
told in this naked statement. This young woman (Caroline was her name)
was virtually compelled by Covey to abandon herself to the object for
which he had purchased her; and the result was the birth of twins at
the end of the year. At this addition to his human stock Covey and his
wife were ecstatic with joy. No one dreamed of reproaching the woman
or of finding fault with the hired man, Bill Smith, the father of the
children, for Mr. Covey himself had locked the two up together every
night, thus inviting the result.
But I will pursue this revolting subject no farther. No better
illustration of the unchaste, demoralizing, and debasing character
of slavery can be found, than is furnished in the fact that this
professedly Christian slaveholder, amidst all his prayers and hymns,
was shamelessly and boastfully encouraging and actually compelling,
in his own house, undisguised and unmitigated fornication, as a means
of increasing his stock. It was the _system_ of slavery which made
this allowable, and which condemned the slaveholder for buying a slave
woman and devoting her to this life, no more than for buying a cow and
raising stock from her, and the same rules were observed, with a view
to increasing the number and quality of the one, as of the other.
If at any one time in my life, more than another, I was made to drink
the bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six
months of my stay with this man Covey. We were worked all weathers.
It was never too hot, or too cold; it could never rain, blow, snow,
or hail too hard for us to work in the field. Work, work, work, was
scarcely more the order of the day than of the night. The longest days
were too short for him, and the shortest nights were too long for him.
I was somewhat unmanageable at the first, but a few months of this
discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in _breaking_ me--in body,
soul, and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed; my intellect
languished; the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that
lingered about my eye died out; the dark night of slavery closed in
upon me, and behold a man transformed to a brute!
Sunday was my only leisure time. I spent this in a sort of beast-like
stupor, between sleeping and waking, under some large tree. At times I
would rise up, a flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul,
accompanied with a faint beam of hope that flickered for a moment, and
then vanished. I sank down again, mourning over my wretched condition.
I was sometimes tempted to take my life and that of Covey, but was
prevented by a combination of hope and fear. My sufferings, as I
remember them now, seem like a dream rather than a stern reality.
Our house stood within a few rods of the Chesapeake bay, whose broad
bosom was ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable
globe. Those beautiful vessels, robed in white, and so delightful to
the eyes of freemen, were to me so many shrouded ghosts, to terrify
and torment me with thoughts of my wretched condition. I have often,
in the deep stillness of a summer’s Sabbath, stood all alone upon the
banks of that noble bay, and traced, with saddened heart and tearful
eye, the countless number of sails moving off to the mighty ocean. The
sight of these always affected me powerfully. My thoughts would compel
utterance; and there, with no audience but the Almighty, I would pour
out my soul’s complaint in my rude way with an apostrophe to the moving
multitude of ships.
“You are loosed from your moorings, and free. I am fast in my chains,
and am a slave! You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly
before the bloody whip. You are freedom’s swift-winged angels, that fly
around the world; I am confined in bonds of iron. O, that I were free!
O, that I were on one of your gallant decks, and under your protecting
wing! Alas! betwixt me and you the turbid waters roll. Go on, go on; O,
that I could also go! Could I but swim! If I could fly! O, why was I
born a man, of whom to make a brute! The glad ship is gone: she hides
in the dim distance. I am left in the hell of unending slavery. O,
God, save me! God, deliver me! Let me be free!--Is there any God? Why
am I a slave? I will run away. I will not stand it. Get caught or get
clear, I’ll try it. I had as well die with ague as with fever. I have
only one life to lose. I had as well be killed running as die standing.
Only think of it: one hundred miles north, and I am free! Try it? Yes!
God helping me, I will. It cannot be that I shall live and die a slave.
I will take to the water. This very bay shall yet bear me into freedom.
The steamboats steer in a northeast course from North Point; I will do
the same; and when I get to the head of the bay, I will turn my canoe
adrift, and walk straight through Delaware into Pennsylvania. When I
get there I shall not be required to have a pass: I will travel there
without being disturbed. Let but the first opportunity offer, and come
what will, I am off. Meanwhile I will try to bear the yoke. I am not
the only slave in the world. Why should I fret? I can bear as much as
any of them. Besides I am but a boy yet, and all boys are bound out to
some one. It may be that my misery in slavery will only increase my
happiness when I get free. There is a better day coming.”
I shall never be able to narrate half the mental experience through
which it was my lot to pass, during my stay at Covey’s. I was
completely wrecked, changed, and bewildered; goaded almost to madness
at one time, and at another, reconciling myself to my wretched
condition. All the kindness I had received at Baltimore, all my former
hopes and aspirations for usefulness in the world, and even the happy
moments spent in the exercises of religion, contrasted with my then
present lot, served but to increase my anguish.
I suffered bodily as well as mentally. I had neither sufficient time
in which to eat, or to sleep, except on Sundays. The over-work, and
the brutal chastisements of which I was the victim, combined with that
ever-gnawing and soul-devouring thought--“_I am a slave--a slave for
life--a slave with no rational ground to hope for freedom_”--rendered
me a living embodiment of mental and physical wretchedness.
CHAPTER XVI.
ANOTHER PRESSURE OF THE TYRANT’S VICE.
Experience at Covey’s summed up--First six months severer than the
remaining six--Preliminaries to the change--Reasons for narrating
the circumstances--Scene in the treading-yard--Author taken ill--
Escapes to St. Michaels--The pursuit--Suffering in the woods--
Talk with Master Thomas--His beating--Driven back to Covey’s--
The slaves never sick--Natural to expect them to feign sickness--
Laziness of slaveholders.
The reader has but to repeat, in his mind, once a week the scene in
the woods, where Covey subjected me to his merciless lash, to have a
true idea of my bitter experience, during the first six months of the
breaking process through which he carried me. I have no heart to repeat
each separate transaction. Such a narration would fill a volume much
larger than the present one. I aim only to give the reader a truthful
impression of my slave-life, without unnecessarily affecting him with
harrowing details.
As I have intimated that my hardships were much greater during the
first six months of my stay at Covey’s than during the remainder of
the year, and as the change in my condition was owing to causes which
may help the reader to a better understanding of human nature, when
subjected to the terrible extremities of slavery, I will narrate the
circumstances of this change, although I may seem thereby to applaud my
own courage.
You have, dear reader, seen me humbled, degraded, broken down,
enslaved, and brutalized; and you understand how it was done; now let
us see the converse of all this, and how it was brought about; and this
will take us through the year 1834.
On one of the hottest days of the month of August, of the year just
mentioned, had the reader been passing through Covey’s farm, he might
have seen me at work in what was called the “treading-yard”--a yard
upon which wheat was trodden out from the straw by the horses’ feet. I
was there at work feeding the “fan,” or rather bringing wheat to the
fan, while Bill Smith was feeding. Our force consisted of Bill Hughes,
Bill Smith, and a slave by the name of Eli, the latter having been
hired for the occasion. The work was simple, and required strength
and activity, rather than any skill or intelligence; and yet to one
entirely unused to such work, it came very hard. The heat was intense
and overpowering, and there was much hurry to get the wheat trodden out
that day, through the fan; since if that work was done an hour before
sundown, the hands would have, according to a promise of Covey, that
hour added to their night’s rest. I was not behind any of them in the
wish to complete the day’s work before sundown, and hence I struggled
with all my might to get it forward. The promise of one hour’s repose
on a week day was sufficient to quicken my pace, and to spur me on
to extra endeavor. Besides, we had all planned to go fishing, and I
certainly wished to have a hand in that. But I was disappointed, and
the day turned out to be one of the bitterest I ever experienced.
About three o’clock, while the sun was pouring down his burning rays,
and not a breeze was stirring, I broke down; my strength failed me; I
was seized with a violent aching of the head, attended with extreme
dizziness, and trembling in every limb. Finding what was coming,
and feeling it would never do to stop work, I nerved myself up, and
staggered on, until I fell by the side of the wheat fan, with a feeling
that the earth had fallen in upon me. This brought the entire work to a
dead stand. There was work for four: each one had his part to perform,
and each part depended on the other, so that when one stopped, all were
compelled to stop. Covey, who had become my dread, was at the house,
about a hundred yards from where I was fanning, and instantly, upon
hearing the fan stop, he came down to the treading-yard to inquire into
the cause of the stopping. Bill Smith told him I was sick, and that I
was unable longer to bring wheat to the fan.
I had by this time crawled away under the side of a post-and-rail fence
in the shade, and was exceedingly ill. The intense heat of the sun,
the heavy dust rising from the fan, the stooping to take up the wheat
from the yard, together with the hurrying to get through, had caused a
rush of blood to my head. In this condition Covey, finding out where I
was, came to me; and after standing over me a while he asked what the
matter was. I told him as well as I could, for it was with difficulty
that I could speak. He gave me a savage kick in the side which jarred
my whole frame, and commanded me to get up. The monster had obtained
complete control over me, and if he had commanded me to do any possible
thing I should, in my then state of mind, have endeavored to comply.
I made an effort to rise, but fell back in the attempt before gaining
my feet. He gave me another heavy kick, and again told me to rise. I
again tried, and succeeded in standing up; but upon stooping to get
the tub with which I was feeding the fan I again staggered and fell to
the ground; and I must have so fallen had I been sure that a hundred
bullets would have pierced me through as the consequence. While down in
this sad condition, and perfectly helpless, the merciless negro-breaker
took up the hickory slab with which Hughes had been striking off the
wheat to a level with the sides of the half-bushel measure (a very hard
weapon), and with the edge of it he dealt me a heavy blow on my head
which made a large gash, and caused the blood to run freely, saying at
the same time, “If you have got the headache I’ll cure you.” This done,
he ordered me again to rise, but I made no effort to do so, for I had
now made up my mind that it was useless, and that the heartless villain
might do his worst, he could but kill me and that might put me out of
my misery. Finding me unable to rise, or rather despairing of my doing
so, Covey left me, with a view to getting on with the work without me.
I was bleeding very freely, and my face was soon covered with my warm
blood. Cruel and merciless as was the motive that dealt that blow, the
wound was a fortunate one for me. Bleeding was never more efficacious.
The pain in my head speedily abated, and I was soon able to rise. Covey
had, as I have said, left me to my fate, and the question was, shall
I return to my work, or shall I find my way to St. Michaels and make
Capt. Auld acquainted with the atrocious cruelty of his brother Covey
and beseech him to get me another master? Remembering the object he had
in view in placing me under the management of Covey, and further, his
cruel treatment of my poor crippled cousin Henny, and his meanness in
the matter of feeding and clothing his slaves, there was little ground
to hope for a favorable reception at the hands of Capt. Thomas Auld.
Nevertheless, I resolved to go straight to him, thinking that, if not
animated by motives of humanity, he might be induced to interfere on
my behalf from selfish considerations. “He cannot,” I thought, “allow
his property to be thus bruised and battered, marred and defaced, and
I will go to him about the matter.” In order to get to St. Michaels
by the most favorable and direct road I must walk seven miles, and
this, in my sad condition, was no easy performance. I had already lost
much blood, I was exhausted by over-exertion, my sides were sore from
the heavy blows planted there by the stout boots of Mr. Covey, and I
was in every way in an unfavorable plight for the journey. I however
watched my chance while the cruel and cunning Covey was looking in an
opposite direction, and started off across the field for St. Michaels.
This was a daring step. If it failed it would only exasperate Covey,
and increase the rigors of my bondage during the remainder of my term
of service under him; but the step was taken, and I must go forward. I
succeeded in getting nearly half way across the broad field toward the
woods, when Covey observed me. I was still bleeding, and the exertion
of running had started the blood afresh. “_Come back! Come back!_” he
vociferated, with threats of what he would do if I did not return
instantly. But disregarding his calls and threats, I pressed on toward
the woods as fast as my feeble state would allow. Seeing no signs of
my stopping he caused his horse to be brought out and saddled, as if
he intended to pursue me. The race was now to be an unequal one, and
thinking I might be overhauled by him if I kept the main road I walked
nearly the whole distance in the woods, keeping far enough from the
road to avoid detection and pursuit. But I had not gone far before
my little strength again failed me, and I was obliged to lie down.
The blood was still oozing from the wound in my head, and for a time
I suffered more than I can describe. There I was in the deep woods,
sick and emaciated, pursued by a wretch whose character for revolting
cruelty beggars all opprobrious speech, bleeding and almost bloodless.
I was not without the fear of bleeding to death. The thought of dying
in the woods all alone, and of being torn in pieces by the buzzards,
had not yet been rendered tolerable by my many troubles and hardships,
and I was glad when the shade of the trees and the cool evening breeze
combined with my matted hair to stop the flow of blood. After lying
there about three-quarters of an hour brooding over the singular and
mournful lot to which I was doomed, my mind passing over the whole
scale or circle of belief and unbelief, from faith in the over-ruling
Providence of God, to the blackest atheism, I again took up my journey
toward St. Michaels, more weary and sad than on the morning when I left
Thomas Auld’s for the home of Covey. I was bare-footed, bare-headed,
and in my shirt sleeves. The way was through briers and bogs, and I
tore my feet often during the journey. I was full five hours in going
the seven or eight miles; partly because of the difficulties of the
way, and partly because of the feebleness induced by my illness,
bruises, and loss of blood.
On gaining my master’s store, I presented an appearance of wretchedness
and woe calculated to move any but a heart of stone. From the crown
of my head to the sole of my feet, there were marks of blood. My hair
was all clotted with dust and blood, and the back of my shirt was
literally stiff with the same. Briers and thorns had scarred and torn
my feet and legs. Had I escaped from a den of tigers, I could not
have looked worse. In this plight I appeared before my professedly
_Christian_ master, humbly to invoke the interposition of his power
and authority, to protect me from further abuse and violence. During
the latter part of my tedious journey, I had begun to hope that my
master would now show himself in a nobler light than I had before
seen him. But I was disappointed. I had jumped from a sinking ship
into the sea; I had fled from a tiger to something worse. I told him
all the circumstances, as well as I could: how I was endeavoring to
please Covey; how hard I was at work in the present instance; how
unwillingly I sank down under the heat, toil, and pain; the brutal
manner in which Covey had kicked me in the side, the gash cut in my
head; my hesitation about troubling him (Capt. Auld) with complaints;
but that now I felt it would not be best longer to conceal from him
the outrages committed on me from time to time. At first Master
Thomas seemed somewhat affected by the story of my wrongs, but he
soon repressed whatever feeling he may have had, and became as cold
and hard as iron. It was impossible, _at first_, as I stood before
him, to seem indifferent. I distinctly saw his human nature asserting
its conviction against the slave system, which made cases like mine
_possible_; but, as I have said, humanity fell before the systematic
tyranny of slavery. He first walked the floor, apparently much agitated
by my story, and the spectacle I presented; but soon it was _his_
turn to talk. He began moderately by finding excuses for Covey, and
ended with a full justification of him, and a passionate condemnation
of me. He had no doubt I deserved the flogging. He did not believe I
was sick; I was only endeavoring to get rid of work. My dizziness was
laziness, and Covey did right to flog me as he had done. After thus
fairly annihilating me, and arousing himself by his eloquence, he
fiercely demanded what I wished _him_ to do in the case! With such a
knockdown to all my hopes, and feeling as I did my entire subjection
to his power, I had very little heart to reply. I must not assert my
innocence of the allegations he had piled up against me, for that would
be impudence. The guilt of a slave was always and everywhere presumed,
and the innocence of the slaveholder, or employer, was always asserted.
The word of the slave against this presumption was generally treated
as impudence, worthy of punishment. “Do you dare to contradict me, you
rascal?” was a final silencer of counter-statements from the lips of
a slave. Calming down a little, in view of my silence and hesitation,
and perhaps a little touched at my forlorn and miserable appearance, he
inquired again, what I wanted him to do? Thus invited a second time,
I told him I wished him to allow me to get a new home, and to find a
new master; that as sure as I went back to live again with Mr. Covey,
I should be killed by him; that he would never forgive my coming home
with complaints; that since I had lived with him he had almost crushed
my spirit, and I believed he would ruin me for future service, and that
my life was not safe in his hands. This Master Thomas (_my brother in
the church_) regarded as “nonsense.” There was no danger that Mr. Covey
would kill me; he was a good man, industrious and religious; and he
would not think of removing me from that home; “besides,” said he--and
this I found was the most distressing thought of all to him--“if you
should leave Covey now that your year is but half expired, I should
lose your wages for the entire year. You belong to Mr. Covey for one
year, and you _must go back_ to him, come what will; and you must not
trouble me with any more stories; and if you don’t go immediately home,
I’ll get hold of you myself.” This was just what I expected when I
found he had _prejudged_ the case against me. “But, sir,” I said, “I am
sick and tired, and I _cannot_ get home to-night.” At this he somewhat
relented, and finally allowed me to stay the night, but said I must be
off early in the morning, and concluded his directions by making me
swallow a huge dose of Epsom salts, which was about the only medicine
ever administered to slaves.
It was quite natural for Master Thomas to presume I was feigning
sickness to escape work, for he probably thought that were he in the
place of a slave, with no wages for his work, no praise for well-doing,
no motive for toil but the lash, he would try every possible scheme
by which to escape labor. I say I have no doubt of this; the reason
is, that there were not, under the whole heavens, a set of men who
cultivated such a dread of labor as did the slaveholders. The charge
of laziness against the slaves was ever on their lips, and was the
standing apology for every species of cruelty and brutality. These men
did indeed literally “bind heavy burdens, grievous to be borne, and
laid them upon men’s shoulders, but they themselves would not move them
with one of their fingers.”
CHAPTER XVII.
THE LAST FLOGGING.
A sleepless night--Return to Covey’s--Punished by him--The chase
defeated--Vengeance postponed--Musings in the woods--The
alternative--Deplorable spectacle--Night in the woods--Expected
attack--Accosted by Sandy--A friend, not a master--Sandy’s
hospitality--The ash-cake supper--Interview with Sandy--His
advice--Sandy a conjurer as well as a Christian--The magic root--
Strange meeting with Covey--His manner--Covey’s Sunday face--
Author’s defensive resolve--The fight--The victory, and its results.
Sleep does not always come to the relief of the weary in body,
and broken in spirit; especially is it so when past troubles only
foreshadow coming disasters. My last hope had been extinguished. My
master, who I did not venture to hope would protect me _as a_ MAN, had
now refused to protect me as _his property_, and had cast me back,
covered with reproaches and bruises, into the hands of one who was a
stranger to that mercy which is the soul of the religion he professed.
May the reader never know what it is to spend such a night as was that
to me, which heralded my return to the den of horrors from which I had
made a temporary escape.
I remained--sleep I did not--all night at St. Michaels, and in the
morning (Saturday) I started off, obedient to the order of Master
Thomas, feeling that I had no friend on earth, and doubting if I had
one in heaven. I reached Covey’s about nine o’clock; and just as I
stepped into the field, before I had reached the house, true to his
snakish habits, Covey darted out at me from a fence corner, in which he
had secreted himself for the purpose of securing me. He was provided
with a cowskin and a rope, and he evidently intended to _tie me up_,
and wreak his vengeance on me to the fullest extent. I should have
been an easy prey had he succeeded in getting his hands upon me, for I
had taken no refreshment since noon on Friday; and this, with the other
trying circumstances, had greatly reduced my strength. I, however,
darted back into the woods before the ferocious hound could reach
me, and buried myself in a thicket, where he lost sight of me. The
cornfield afforded me shelter in getting to the woods. But for the tall
corn, Covey would have overtaken me, and made me his captive. He was
much chagrined that he did not, and gave up the chase very reluctantly,
as I could see by his angry movements, as he returned to the house.
Well, now I am clear of Covey and his lash, for a little time. I am in
the wood, buried in its somber gloom, and hushed in its solemn silence;
hidden from all human eyes, shut in with nature, and with nature’s God,
and absent from all human contrivances. Here was a good place to pray;
to pray for help, for deliverance--a prayer I had often made before.
But how could I pray? Covey could pray--Capt. Auld could pray. I would
fain pray; but doubts arising, partly from my neglect of the means of
grace, and partly from the sham religion which everywhere prevailed,
cast in my mind a doubt upon all religion, and led me to the conviction
that prayers were unavailing and delusive.
Life in itself had almost become burdensome to me. All my outward
relations were against me; I must stay here and starve, or go home to
Covey’s and have my flesh torn to pieces and my spirit humbled under
the cruel lash of Covey. These were the alternatives before me. The day
was long and irksome. I was weak from the toils of the previous day,
and from want of food and sleep, and I had been so little concerned
about my appearance that I had not yet washed the blood from my
garments. I was an object of horror, even to myself. Life in Baltimore,
when most oppressive, was a paradise to this. What had I done, what had
my parents done, that such a life as this should be mine? That day, in
the woods, I would have exchanged my manhood for the brutehood of an
ox.
Night came. I was still in the woods, and still unresolved what to do.
Hunger had not yet pinched me to the point of going home, and I laid
myself down in the leaves to rest; for I had been watching for hunters
all day, but not being molested by them during the day, I expected no
disturbance from them during the night. I had come to the conclusion
that Covey relied upon hunger to drive me home, and in this I was quite
correct, for he made no effort to catch me after the morning.
During the night I heard the step of a man in the woods. He was coming
toward the place where I lay. A person lying still has the advantage
over one walking in the woods in the day-time, and this advantage is
much greater at night. I was not able to engage in a physical struggle,
and I had recourse to the common resort of the weak. I hid myself in
the leaves to prevent discovery. But as the night rambler in the woods
drew nearer I found him to be a _friend_, not an enemy, a slave of Mr.
William Groomes of Easton, a kind-hearted fellow named “Sandy.” Sandy
lived with Mr. Kemp that year, about four miles from St. Michaels. He,
like myself, had been hired out that year, but unlike myself had not
been hired out to be broken. He was the husband of a free woman who
lived in the lower part of “Poppie Neck,” and he was now on his way
through the woods to see her and to spend the Sabbath with her.
[Illustration: FOUND IN THE WOODS BY SANDY.]
As soon as I had ascertained that the disturber of my solitude was not
an enemy, but the good-hearted Sandy--a man as famous among the slaves
of the neighborhood for his good nature as for his good sense--I came
out from my hiding-place and made myself known to him. I explained the
circumstances of the past two days which had driven me to the woods,
and he deeply compassionated my distress. It was a bold thing for him
to shelter me, and I could not ask him to do so, for had I been found
in his hut he would have suffered the penalty of thirty-nine lashes on
his bare back, if not something worse. But Sandy was too generous to
permit the fear of punishment to prevent his relieving a brother
bondman from hunger and exposure, and therefore, on his own motion, I
accompanied him home to his wife--for the house and lot were hers, as
she was a free woman. It was about midnight, but his wife was called
up, a fire was made, some Indian meal was soon mixed with salt and
water, and an ash-cake was baked in a hurry, to relieve my hunger.
Sandy’s wife was not behind him in kindness; both seemed to esteem it
a privilege to succor me, for although I was hated by Covey and by my
master I was loved by the colored people, because they thought I was
hated for my knowledge, and persecuted because I was feared. I was the
only slave in that region who could read or write. There had been one
other man, belonging to Mr. Hugh Hamilton, who could read, but he, poor
fellow, had shortly after coming into the neighborhood been sold off to
the far south. I saw him ironed, in the cart, to be carried to Easton
for sale, pinioned like a yearling for the slaughter. My knowledge was
now the pride of my brother slaves, and no doubt Sandy felt something
of the general interest in me on that account. The supper was soon
ready, and though I have since feasted with honorables, lord mayors,
and aldermen over the sea, my supper on ash-cake and cold water, with
Sandy, was the meal of all my life most sweet to my taste, and now most
vivid to my memory.
Supper over, Sandy and I went into a discussion of what was _possible_
for me, under the perils and hardships which overshadowed my path. The
question was, must I go back to Covey, or must I attempt to run away?
Upon a careful survey the latter was found to be impossible; for I was
on a narrow neck of land, every avenue from which would bring me in
sight of pursuers. There was Chesapeake Bay to the right, and “Pot-pie”
river to the left, and St. Michaels and its neighborhood occupied the
only space through which there was any retreat.
I found Sandy an old adviser. He was not only a religious man, but he
professed to believe in a system for which I have no name. He was
a genuine African, and had inherited some of the so-called magical
powers said to be possessed by the eastern nations. He told me that
he could help me; that in those very woods there was an herb which in
the morning might be found, possessing all the powers required for my
protection (I put his words in my own language), and that if I would
take his advice he would procure me the root of the herb of which he
spoke. He told me, further, that if I would take that root and wear it
on my right side it would be impossible for Covey to strike me a blow;
that with this root about my person no white man could whip me. He said
he had carried it for years, and that he had fully tested its virtues.
He had never received a blow from a slaveholder since he carried it,
and he never expected to receive one, for he meant always to carry
that root for protection. He knew Covey well, for Mrs. Covey was the
daughter of Mrs. Kemp; and he (Sandy) had heard of the barbarous
treatment to which I had been subjected, and he wanted to do something
for me.
Now all this talk about the root was to me very absurd and ridiculous,
if not positively sinful. I at first rejected the idea that the simple
carrying a root on my right side (a root, by the way, over which I
walked every time I went into the woods) could possess any such magic
power as he ascribed to it, and I was, therefore, not disposed to
cumber my pocket with it. I had a positive aversion to all pretenders
to “_divination_.” It was beneath one of my intelligence to countenance
such dealings with the devil as this power implied. But with all my
learning--it was really precious little--Sandy was more than a match
for me. “My book-learning,” he said, “had not kept Covey off me” (a
powerful argument just then), and he entreated me, with flashing eyes,
to try this. If it did me no good it could do me no harm, and it would
cost me nothing any way. Sandy was so earnest and so confident of
the good qualities of this weed that, to please him, I was induced
to take it. He had been to me the good Samaritan, and had, almost
providentially, found me and helped me when I could not help myself;
how did I know but that the hand of the Lord was in it? With thoughts
of this sort I took the roots from Sandy and put them in my right-hand
pocket.
This was of course Sunday morning. Sandy now urged me to go home with
all speed, and to walk up bravely to the house, as though nothing had
happened. I saw in Sandy too deep an insight into human nature, with
all his superstition, not to have some respect for his advice; and
perhaps, too, a slight gleam or shadow of his superstition had fallen
on me. At any rate, I started off toward Covey’s as directed. Having,
the previous night, poured my griefs into Sandy’s ears and enlisted
him in my behalf, having made his wife a sharer in my sorrows, and
having also become well refreshed by sleep and food, I moved off quite
courageously toward the dreaded Covey’s. Singularly enough, just as I
entered the yard gate I met him and his wife, dressed in their Sunday
best, looking as smiling as angels, on their way to church. His manner
perfectly astonished me. There was something really benignant in his
countenance. He spoke to me as never before, told me that the pigs had
got into the lot and he wished me to go to drive them out; inquired how
I was, and seemed an altered man. This extraordinary conduct really
made me begin to think that Sandy’s herb had more virtue in it than I,
in my pride, had been willing to allow, and had the day been other than
Sunday I should have attributed Covey’s altered manner solely to the
power of the root. I suspected, however, that the _Sabbath_, not the
root, was the real explanation of the change. His religion hindered him
from breaking the Sabbath, but not from breaking my skin on any other
day than Sunday. He had more respect for the day than for the man for
whom the day was mercifully given; for while he would cut and slash my
body during the week, he would on Sunday teach me the value of my soul,
and the way of life and salvation by Jesus Christ.
All went well with me till Monday morning; and then, whether the root
had lost its virtue, or whether my tormentor had gone deeper into the
black art than I had (as was sometimes said of him), or whether he had
obtained a special indulgence for his faithful Sunday’s worship, it is
not necessary for me to know or to inform the reader; but this much I
may say, the pious and benignant smile which graced the face of Covey
on _Sunday_ wholly disappeared on _Monday_.
Long before daylight I was called up to go feed, rub, and curry the
horses. I obeyed the call, as I should have done had it been made at
an earlier hour, for I had brought my mind to a firm resolve during
that Sunday’s reflection to obey every order, however unreasonable, if
it were possible, and if Mr. Covey should then undertake to beat me to
defend and protect myself to the best of my ability. My religious views
on the subject of resisting my master had suffered a serious shock by
the savage persecution to which I had been subjected, and my hands were
no longer tied by my religion. Master Thomas’ indifference had severed
the last link. I had back-slidden from this point in the slaves’
religious creed, and I soon had occasion to make my fallen state known
to my Sunday-pious brother, Covey.
While I was obeying his order to feed and get the horses ready for the
field, and when I was in the act of going up the stable loft, for the
purpose of throwing down some blades, Covey sneaked into the stable,
in his peculiar way, and seizing me suddenly by the leg, he brought me
to the stable-floor, giving my newly-mended body a terrible jar. I now
forgot all about my _roots_, and remembered my pledge to stand up in
my own defense. The brute was skilfully endeavoring to get a slip-knot
on my legs, before I could draw up my feet. As soon as I found what
he was up to, I gave a sudden spring (my two days’ rest had been of
much service to me) and by that means, no doubt, he was able to bring
me to the floor so heavily. He was defeated in his plan of tying me.
While down, he seemed to think he had me very securely in his power.
He little thought he was--as the rowdies say--“in” for a “rough and
tumble” fight: but such was the fact. Whence came the daring spirit
necessary to grapple with a man, who eight-and-forty hours before,
could, with his slightest word, have made me tremble like a leaf in a
storm, I do not know; at any rate I _was resolved to fight_, and what
was better still, I actually was hard at it. The fighting madness had
come upon me, and I found my strong fingers firmly attached to the
throat of the tyrant, as heedless of consequences, at the moment, as
if we stood as equals before the law. The very color of the man was
forgotten. I felt supple as a cat, and was ready for him at every turn.
Every blow of his was parried, though I dealt no blows in return. I was
strictly on the _defensive_, preventing him from injuring me, rather
than trying to injure him. I flung him on the ground several times when
he meant to have hurled me there. I held him so firmly by the throat
that his blood followed my nails. He held me, and I held him.
All was fair thus far, and the contest was about equal. My resistance
was entirely unexpected, and Covey was taken all aback by it, and he
trembled in every limb. “_Are you going to resist_, you scoundrel?”
said he. To which I returned a polite “_yes, sir_,” steadily gazing
my interrogator in the eye, to meet the first approach or dawning of
the blow which I expected my answer would call forth. But the conflict
did not long remain equal. Covey soon cried lustily for help; not
that I was obtaining any marked advantage over him, or was injuring
him, but because he was gaining none over me, and was not able,
single-handed, to conquer me. He called for his cousin Hughes to come
to his assistance, and now the scene was changed. I was compelled to
give blows, as well as to parry them, and since I was in any case
to suffer for resistance, I felt (as the musty proverb goes) that I
“might as well be hanged for an old sheep as a lamb.” I was still
defensive toward Covey, but aggressive toward Hughes, on whom at his
first approach, I dealt a blow which fairly sickened him. He went off,
bending over with pain, and manifesting no disposition to come again
within my reach. The poor fellow was in the act of trying to catch and
tie my right hand, and while flattering himself with success, I gave
him the kick which sent him staggering away in pain, at the same time
that I held Covey with a firm hand.
Taken completely by surprise, Covey seemed to have lost his usual
strength and coolness. He was frightened, and stood puffing and
blowing, seemingly unable to command words or blows. When he saw that
Hughes was standing half bent with pain, his courage quite gone, the
cowardly tyrant asked if I “meant to persist in my resistance.” I told
him I “_did mean to resist_, come what might; that I had been treated
like a brute during the last six months, and that I should stand it no
longer.” With that he gave me a shake, and attempted to drag me toward
a stick of wood that was lying just outside the stable door. He meant
to knock me down with it, but just as he leaned over to get the stick,
I seized him with both hands, by the collar, and with a vigorous and
sudden snatch, I brought my assailant harmlessly, his full length, on
the not over clean ground, for we were now in the cow-yard. He had
selected the place for the fight, and it was but right that he should
have all the advantages of his own selection.
By this time Bill, the hired man, came home. He had been to Mr.
Helmsley’s to spend Sunday with his nominal wife. Covey and I had been
at skirmishing from before daybreak till now, and the sun was now
shooting his beams almost over the eastern woods, and we were still at
it. I could not see where the matter was to terminate. He evidently
was afraid to let me go, lest I should again make off to the woods,
otherwise he would probably have obtained arms from the house to
frighten me. Holding me, he called upon Bill to assist him. The scene
here had something comic about it. Bill, who knew precisely what Covey
wished him to do, affected ignorance, and pretended he did not know
what to do. “What shall I do, Master Covey?” said Bill. “Take hold
of him!--take hold of him!” said Covey. With a toss of his head,
peculiar to Bill, he said, “indeed Master Covey, I want to go to work.”
“_This is your work_,” said Covey; “take hold of him.” Bill replied,
with spirit: “My master hired me here to work, and not to help you whip
Frederick.” It was my turn to speak. “Bill,” said I, “don’t put your
hands on me.” To which he replied: “My God, Frederick, I ain’t goin’ to
tech ye;” and Bill walked off leaving Covey and myself to settle our
differences as best we might.
But my present advantage was threatened when I saw Caroline (the slave
woman of Covey) coming to the cow-yard to milk, for she was a powerful
woman, and could have mastered me easily, exhausted as I was.
As soon as she came near, Covey attempted to rally her to his aid.
Strangely, and fortunately, Caroline was in no humor to take a hand in
any such sport. We were all in open rebellion that morning. Caroline
answered the command of her master “to take hold of me,” precisely as
Bill had done, but in her it was at far greater peril, for she was the
slave of Covey, and he could do what he pleased with her. It was not
so with Bill, and Bill knew it. Samuel Harris, to whom Bill belonged,
did not allow his slaves to be beaten, unless they were guilty of some
crime which the law would punish. But poor Caroline, like myself,
was at the mercy of the merciless Covey, nor did she escape the dire
effects of her refusal: he gave her several sharp blows.
At length (two hours had elapsed) the contest was given over. Letting
go of me, puffing and blowing at a great rate, Covey said: “Now, you
scoundrel, go to your work; I would not have whipped you half so hard
if you had not resisted.” The fact was, he had not whipped me at all.
He had not in all the scuffle, drawn a single drop of blood from me.
I had drawn blood from him, and should even without this satisfaction
have been victorious, because my aim had not been to injure him, but to
prevent his injuring me.
During the whole six months I lived with Covey after this transaction,
he never again laid the weight of his finger on me in anger. He would
occasionally say he did not want to have to get hold of me again--a
declaration which I had no difficulty in believing; and I had a secret
feeling which answered, “you had better not wish to get hold of me
again, for you will be likely to come off worse in a second fight than
you did in the first.”
Well, my dear reader, this battle with Mr. Covey, undignified as it
was, and as I fear my narration of it is, was the turning-point in my
“life as a slave.” It rekindled in my breast the smouldering embers of
liberty; it brought up my Baltimore dreams, and revived a sense of my
own manhood. I was a changed being after that fight. I was _nothing_
before; _I was a man_ now. It recalled to life my crushed self-respect,
and my self-confidence, and inspired me with a renewed determination to
be a _free man_. A man without force is without the essential dignity
of humanity. Human nature is so constituted, that it cannot _honor_ a
helpless man, though it can _pity_ him, and even this it cannot do long
if signs of power do not arise.
He only can understand the effect of this combat on my spirit, who has
himself incurred something, hazarded something, in repelling the unjust
and cruel aggressions of a tyrant. Covey was a tyrant, and a cowardly
one withal. After resisting him, I felt as I never felt before. It
was a resurrection from the dark and pestiferous tomb of slavery, to
the heaven of comparative freedom. I was no longer a servile coward,
trembling under the frown of a brother worm of the dust, but my
long-cowed spirit was roused to an attitude of independence. I had
reached the point at which I was _not afraid to die_. This spirit made
me a freeman in _fact_, though I still remained a slave in _form_.
When a slave cannot be flogged, he is more than half free. He has a
domain as broad as his own manly heart to defend, and he is really “a
power on earth.” From this time until my escape from slavery, I was
never fairly whipped. Several attempts were made, but they were always
unsuccessful. Bruises I did get, but the instance I have described was
the end of the brutification to which slavery had subjected me.
The reader may like to know why, after I had so grievously offended Mr.
Covey, he did not have me taken in hand by the authorities; indeed, why
the law of Maryland, which assigned hanging to the slave who resisted
his master, was not put in force against me; at any rate why I was
not taken up, as was usual in such cases, and publicly whipped, as an
example to other slaves, and as a means of deterring me from committing
the same offense again. I confess that the easy manner in which I got
off was always a surprise to me, and even now I cannot fully explain
the cause, though the probability is that Covey was ashamed to have it
known that he had been mastered by a boy of sixteen. He enjoyed the
unbounded and very valuable reputation of being a first-rate overseer
and negro-breaker, and by means of this reputation he was able to
procure his hands at very trifling compensation and with very great
ease. His interest and his pride would mutually suggest the wisdom of
passing the matter by in silence. The story that he had undertaken to
whip a lad and had been resisted, would of itself be damaging to him in
the estimation of slaveholders.
It is perhaps not altogether creditable to my natural temper that after
this conflict with Mr. Covey I did, at times, purposely aim to provoke
him to an attack, by refusing to keep with the other hands in the
field, but I could never bully him to another battle. I was determined
on doing him serious damage if he ever again attempted to lay violent
hands on me.
“Hereditary bondmen know ye not
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow!”
CHAPTER XVIII.
NEW RELATIONS AND DUTIES.
Change of masters--Benefits derived by change--Fame of the fight
with Covey--Reckless unconcern--Author’s abhorrence of slavery--
Ability to read a cause of prejudice--The holidays--How spent--
Sharp hit at slavery--Effects of holidays--Difference between Covey
and Freeland--An irreligious master preferred to a religious one--
Hard life at Covey’s useful to the author--Improved condition does
not bring contentment--Congenial society at Freeland’s--Author’s
Sabbath-school--Secresy necessary--Affectionate relations of tutor
and pupils--Confidence and friendship among slaves--Slavery the
inviter of vengeance.
My term of service with Edward Covey expired on Christmas day, 1834.
I gladly enough left him, although he was by this time as gentle as a
lamb. My home for the year 1835 was already secured, my next master
selected. There was always more or less excitement about the changing
of hands, but I had become somewhat reckless and cared little into
whose hands I fell, determined to fight my way. The report got abroad
that I was hard to whip, that I was guilty of kicking back, that
though generally a good-natured negro, I sometimes “got the devil in
me.” These sayings were rife in Talbot County, and they distinguished
me among my servile brethren. Slaves would sometimes fight with each
other, and even die at each other’s hands, but there were very few
who were not held in awe by a white man. Trained from the cradle up
to think and feel that their masters were superior, and invested with
a sort of sacredness, there were few who could rise above the control
which that sentiment exercised. I had freed myself from it, and the
thing was known. One bad sheep will spoil a whole flock. I was a bad
sheep. I hated slavery, slaveholders, and all pertaining to them; and
I did not fail to inspire others with the same feeling wherever and
whenever opportunity was presented. This made me a marked lad among
the slaves, and a suspected one among slaveholders. A knowledge of my
ability to read and write got pretty widely spread, which was very much
against me.
The days between Christmas day and New Year’s were allowed the slaves
as holidays. During these days all regular work was suspended, and
there was nothing to do but to keep fires and look after the stock.
We regarded this time as our own by the grace of our masters, and we
therefore used it or abused it as we pleased. Those who had families at
a distance were expected to visit them and spend with them the entire
week. The younger slaves or the unmarried ones were expected to see to
the cattle, and to attend to incidental duties at home. The holidays
were variously spent. The sober, thinking, industrious ones would
employ themselves in manufacturing corn brooms, mats, horse collars,
and baskets, and some of these were very well made. Another class spent
their time in hunting opossums, coons, rabbits, and other game. But
the majority spent the holidays in sports, ball-playing, wrestling,
boxing, running foot-races, dancing, and drinking whiskey; and this
latter mode was generally most agreeable to their masters. A slave who
would work during the holidays was thought by his master undeserving of
holidays. There was in this simple act of continued work an accusation
against slaves, and a slave could not help thinking that if he made
three dollars during the holidays he might make three hundred during
the year. Not to be drunk during the holidays was disgraceful.
The fiddling, dancing, and “jubilee beating” was carried on in all
directions. This latter performance was strictly southern. It supplied
the place of violin, or of other musical instruments, and was played
so easily that almost every farm had its “Juba” beater. The performer
improvised as he beat the instrument, marking the words as he sang so
as to have them fall pat with the movement of his hands. Among a mass
of nonsense and wild frolic, once in a while a sharp hit was given to
the meanness of slaveholders. Take the following for example:
We raise de wheat,
Dey gib us de corn;
We bake de bread,
Dey gib us de crust;
We sif de meal,
Dey gib us de huss;
We peel de meat,
Dey gib us de skin;
And dat’s de way
Dey take us in;
We skim de pot,
Dey give us de liquor,
And say dat’s good enough for nigger.
Walk over! walk over!
Your butter and de fat;
Poor nigger you cant get over dat.
Walk over--
This is not a bad summary of the palpable injustice and fraud of
slavery, giving, as it does, to the lazy and idle the comforts which
God designed should be given solely to the honest laborer. But to the
holidays. Judging from my own observation and experience, I believe
those holidays were among the most effective means in the hands of
slaveholders of keeping down the spirit of insurrection among the
slaves.
To enslave men successfully and safely it is necessary to keep their
minds occupied with thoughts and aspirations short of the liberty of
which they are deprived. A certain degree of attainable good must
be kept before them. These holidays served the purpose of keeping
the minds of the slaves occupied with prospective pleasure within
the limits of slavery. The young man could go wooing, the married
man to see his wife, the father and mother to see their children,
the industrious and money-loving could make a few dollars, the great
wrestler could win laurels, the young people meet and enjoy each
other’s society, the drunken man could get plenty of whiskey, and the
religious man could hold prayer-meetings, preach, pray, and exhort.
Before the holidays there were pleasures in prospect; after the
holidays they were pleasures of memory, and they served to keep out
thoughts and wishes of a more dangerous character. These holidays were
also sort of conductors or safety-valves, to carry off the explosive
elements inseparable from the human mind when reduced to the condition
of slavery. But for these the rigors of bondage would have become
too severe for endurance, and the slave would have been forced up to
dangerous desperation.
Thus they became a part and parcel of the gross wrongs and inhumanity
of slavery. Ostensibly they were institutions of benevolence designed
to mitigate the rigors of slave life, but practically they were a fraud
instituted by human selfishness, the better to secure the ends of
injustice and oppression. The slave’s happiness was not the end sought,
but the master’s safety. It was not from a generous unconcern for the
slave’s labor, but from a prudent regard for the slave system. I am
strengthened in this opinion from the fact that most slaveholders liked
to have their slaves spend the holidays in such manner as to be of no
real benefit to them. Everything like rational enjoyment was frowned
upon, and only those wild and low sports peculiar to semi-civilized
people were encouraged. The license allowed appeared to have no other
object than to disgust the slaves with their temporary freedom, and
to make them as glad to return to their work as they were to leave
it. I have known slaveholders resort to cunning tricks, with a view
of getting their slaves deplorably drunk. The usual plan was to make
bets on a slave that he could drink more whisky than any other, and so
induce a rivalry among them for the mastery in this degradation. The
scenes brought about in this way were often scandalous and loathsome
in the extreme. Whole multitudes might be found stretched out in
brutal drunkenness, at once helpless and disgusting. Thus, when the
slave asked for hours of “virtuous liberty,” his cunning master took
advantage of his ignorance and cheered him with a dose of vicious and
revolting dissipation artfully labeled with the name of “_liberty_.”
We were induced to drink, I among the rest, and when the holidays were
over we all staggered up from our filth and wallowing, took a long
breath, and went away to our various fields of work, feeling, upon
the whole, rather glad to go from that which our masters had artfully
deceived us into the belief was freedom, back again to the arms of
slavery. It was not what we had taken it to be, nor what it would have
been, had it not been abused by us. It was about as well to be a slave
to master, as to be a slave to whisky and rum. When the slave was drunk
the slaveholder had no fear that he would plan an insurrection, no fear
that he would escape to the North. It was the sober, thoughtful slave
who was dangerous, and needed the vigilance of his master to keep him a
slave. But to proceed with my narrative.
On the first of January, 1835, I proceeded from St. Michaels to Mr.
William Freeland’s--my new home. Mr. Freeland lived only three miles
from St. Michaels, on an old, worn-out farm, which required much labor
to render it anything like a self-supporting establishment.
I found Mr. Freeland a different man from Covey. Though not rich,
he was what might have been called a well-bred Southern gentleman.
Though a slaveholder and sharing in common with them many of the
vices of his class, he seemed alive to the sentiment of honor, and
had also some sense of justice, and some feelings of humanity. He
was fretful, impulsive, and passionate, but free from the mean and
selfish characteristics which distinguished the creature from which
I had happily escaped. Mr. Freeland was open, frank, imperative, and
practiced no concealments, and disdained to play the spy; in all these
qualities the opposite of Covey.
My poor weather-beaten bark now reached smoother water and gentler
breezes. My stormy life at Covey’s had been of service to me. The
things that would have seemed very hard had I gone direct to Mr.
Freeland’s from the home of Master Thomas were now “trifles light as
air.” I was still a field-hand, and had come to prefer the severe labor
of the field to the enervating duties of a house-servant. I had become
large and strong, and had begun to take pride in the fact that I could
do as much hard work as some of the older men. There was much rivalry
among slaves at times as to which could do the most work, and masters
generally sought to promote such rivalry. But some of us were too wise
to race with each other very long. Such racing, we had the sagacity to
see, was not likely to pay. We had our times for measuring each other’s
strength, but we knew too much to keep up the competition so long as to
produce an extraordinary day’s work. We knew that if by extraordinary
exertion a large quantity of work was done in one day, becoming known
to the master, it might lead him to require the same amount every day.
This thought was enough to bring us to a dead halt when ever so much
excited for the race.
At Mr. Freeland’s my condition was every way improved. I was no longer
the scapegoat that I was when at Covey’s, where every wrong thing
done was saddled upon me, and where other slaves were whipped over my
shoulders. Bill Smith was protected by a positive prohibition, made by
his rich master (and the command of the _rich_ slaveholder was _law_ to
the poor one). Hughes was favored by his relationship to Covey, and the
hands hired temporarily escaped flogging. I was the general pack-horse;
but Mr. Freeland held every man individually responsible for his own
conduct. Mr. Freeland, like Mr. Covey, gave his hands enough to eat,
but, unlike Mr. Covey, he gave them time to take their meals. He worked
us hard during the day, but gave us the night for rest. We were seldom
in the field after dark in the evening, or before sunrise in the
morning. Our implements of husbandry were of the most improved pattern,
and much superior to those used at Covey’s.
Notwithstanding all the improvement in my relations, notwithstanding
the many advantages I had gained by my new home and my new master, I
was still restless and discontented. I was about as hard to please by
a master as a master is by a slave. The freedom from bodily torture
and unceasing labor had given my mind an increased sensibility, and
imparted to it greater activity. I was not yet exactly in right
relations. “Howbeit, that was not first which is spiritual, but that
which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual.” When entombed
at Covey’s, shrouded in darkness and physical wretchedness, temporal
well-being was the grand desideratum; but, temporal wants supplied,
the spirit puts in its claims. Beat and cuff your slave, keep him
hungry and spiritless, and he will follow the chain of his master like
a dog; but feed and clothe him well, work him moderately, surround
him with physical comfort, and dreams of freedom intrude. Give him a
_bad_ master, and he aspires to a good master; give him a good master
and he wishes to become his own master. Such is human nature. You may
hurl a man so low beneath the level of his kind, that he loses all just
ideas of his natural position, but elevate him a little, and the clear
conception of rights rises to life and power, and leads him onward.
Thus elevated a little at Freeland’s, the dreams called into being by
that good man, Father Lawson, when in Baltimore, began to visit me
again; shoots from the tree of liberty began to put forth buds, and dim
hopes of the future began to dawn.
I found myself in congenial society. There were Henry Harris,
John Harris, Handy Caldwell, and Sandy Jenkins (this last, of the
root-preventive memory.)
Henry and John Harris were brothers, and belonged to Mr. Freeland. They
were both remarkably bright and intelligent, though neither of them
could read. Now for mischief! I had not been long here before I was
up to my old tricks. I began to address my companions on the subject
of education, and the advantages of intelligence over ignorance, and,
as far as I dared, I tried to show the agency of ignorance in keeping
men in slavery. Webster’s spelling-book and the Columbian Orator
were looked into again. As summer came on, and the long Sabbath days
stretched themselves over our idleness, I became uneasy, and wanted
a Sabbath-school, where to exercise my gifts, and to impart the
little knowledge I possessed to my brother-slaves. A house was hardly
necessary in the summer time; I could hold my school under the shade
of an old oak tree as well as anywhere else. The thing was to get the
scholars, and to have them thoroughly imbued with the desire to learn.
Two such boys were quickly found in Henry and John, and from them
the contagion spread. I was not long in bringing around me twenty or
thirty young men, who enrolled themselves gladly in my Sabbath-school,
and were willing to meet me regularly under the trees or elsewhere,
for the purpose of learning to read. It was surprising with what ease
they provided themselves with spelling-books. These were mostly the
cast-off books of their young masters or mistresses. I taught at first
on our own farm. All were impressed with the necessity of keeping
the matter as private as possible, for the fate of the St. Michaels
attempt was still fresh in the minds of all. Our pious masters at
St. Michaels must not know that a few of their dusky brothers were
learning to read the Word of God, lest they should come down upon us
with the lash and chain. We might have met to drink whisky, to wrestle,
fight, and to do other unseemly things, with no fear of interruption
from the saints or the sinners of St. Michaels. But to meet for the
purpose of improving the mind and heart, by learning to read the sacred
scriptures, was a nuisance to be instantly stopped. The slaveholders
there, like slaveholders elsewhere, preferred to see the slaves engaged
in degrading sports, rather than acting like moral and accountable
beings. Had any one asked a religious white man in St. Michaels at
that time the names of three men in that town whose lives were most
after the pattern of our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, the reply would
have been: Garrison West, class-leader, Wright Fairbanks, and Thomas
Auld, both also class-leaders; and yet these men ferociously rushed in
upon my Sabbath-school, armed with mob-like missiles, and forbade our
meeting again on pain of having our backs subjected to the bloody lash.
This same Garrison West was my class-leader, and I had thought him a
Christian until he took part in breaking up my school. He led me no
more after that.
The plea for this outrage was then, as it is always, the tyrant’s plea
of necessity. If the slaves learned to read they would learn something
more and something worse. The peace of slavery would be disturbed;
slave rule would be endangered. I do not dispute the soundness of the
reasoning. If slavery were right, Sabbath-schools for teaching slaves
to read were wrong, and ought to have been put down. These christian
class-leaders were, to this extent, consistent. They had settled the
question that slavery was right, and by that standard they determined
that Sabbath-schools were wrong. To be sure they were Protestant,
and held to the great protestant right of every man to “search the
Scriptures” for himself; but then, to all general rules there are
exceptions. How convenient! What crimes may not be committed under such
ruling! But my dear class-leading Methodist brethren did not condescend
to give me a reason for breaking up the school at St. Michaels; they
had determined its destruction, and that was enough. However, I am
digressing.
After getting the school nicely started a second time, holding it in
the woods behind the barn, and in the shade of trees, I succeeded in
inducing a free colored man who lived several miles from our house to
permit me to hold my school in a room at his house. He incurred much
peril in doing so, for the assemblage was an unlawful one. I had at one
time more than forty scholars, all of the right sort, and many of them
succeeded in learning to read. I have had various employments during my
life, but I look back to none with more satisfaction. An attachment,
deep and permanent, sprung up between me and my persecuted pupils,
which made my parting from them intensely painful.
Besides my Sunday-school, I devoted three evenings a week to my other
fellow slaves during the winter. Those dear souls who came to my
Sabbath-school came not because it was popular or reputable to do so,
for they came with a liability of having forty stripes laid on their
naked backs. In this Christian country men and women were obliged
to hide in barns and woods and trees from professing Christians, in
order to learn to read the _Holy Bible_. Their minds had been cramped
and starved by their cruel masters; the light of education had been
completely excluded, and their hard earnings had been taken to educate
their master’s children. I felt a delight in circumventing the tyrants,
and in blessing victims of their curses.
The year at Mr. Freeland’s passed off very smoothly, to outward
seeming. Not a blow was given me during the whole year. To the credit
of Mr. Freeland, irreligious though he was, it must be stated that he
was the best master I ever had until I became my own master and assumed
for myself, as I had a right to do, the responsibility of my own
existence and the exercise of my own powers.
For much of the happiness, or absence of misery, with which I passed
this year, I am indebted to the genial temper and ardent friendship of
my brother slaves. They were every one of them manly, generous, and
brave; yes, I say they were brave, and I will add fine looking. It is
seldom the lot of any to have truer and better friends than were the
slaves on this farm. It was not uncommon to charge slaves with great
treachery toward each other, but I must say I never loved, esteemed,
or confided in men more than I did in these. They were as true as
steel, and no band of brothers could be more loving. There were no
mean advantages taken of each other, no tattling, no giving each other
bad names to Mr. Freeland, and no elevating one at the expense of the
other. We never undertook anything of any importance which was likely
to affect each other, without mutual consultation. We were generally
a unit, and moved together. Thoughts and sentiments were exchanged
between us which might well have been considered incendiary had they
been known by our masters. The slaveholder, were he kind or cruel,
was a slaveholder still, the every-hour-violator of the just and
inalienable rights of man, and he was therefore every hour silently but
surely whetting the knife of vengeance for his own throat. He never
lisped a syllable in commendation of the fathers of this republic
without inviting the sword, and asserting the right of rebellion for
his own slaves.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE RUNAWAY PLOT.
New Year’s thoughts and meditations--Again hired by Freeland--
Kindness no compensation for slavery--Incipient steps toward
escape--Considerations leading thereto--Hostility to slavery--
Solemn vow taken--Plan divulged to slaves--Columbian Orator again--
Scheme gains favor--Danger of discovery--Skill of slaveholders--
Suspicion and coercion--Hymns with double meaning--Consultation--
Password--Hope and fear--Ignorance of Geography--Imaginary
difficulties--Patrick Henry--Sandy a dreamer--Route to the north
mapped out--Objections--Frauds--Passes--Anxieties--Fear of
failure--Strange presentiment--Coincidence--Betrayal--Arrests--
Resistance--Mrs. Freeland--Prison--Brutal jests--Passes eaten--
Denial--Sandy--Dragged behind horses--Slave-traders--Alone in
prison--Sent to Baltimore.
I am now at the beginning of the year 1836, when the mind naturally
occupies itself with the mysteries of life in all its phases--the
ideal, the real, and the actual. Sober people look both ways at
the beginning of a new year, surveying the errors of the past, and
providing against the possible errors of the future. I, too, was thus
exercised. I had little pleasure in retrospect, and the future prospect
was not brilliant. “Notwithstanding,” thought I, “the many resolutions
and prayers I have made in behalf of freedom, I am, this first day
of the year 1836, still a slave, still wandering in the depths of a
miserable bondage. My faculties and powers of body and soul are not
my own, but are the property of a fellow-mortal in no sense superior
to me, except that he has the physical power to compel me to be owned
and controlled by him. By the combined physical force of the community
I am his slave--a slave for life.” With thoughts like these I was
chafed and perplexed, and they rendered me gloomy and disconsolate. The
anguish of my mind cannot be written.
At the close of the year, Mr. Freeland renewed the purchase of my
services of Mr. Auld for the coming year. His promptness in doing so
would have been flattering to my vanity had I been ambitious to win the
reputation of being a valuable slave. Even as it was, I felt a slight
degree of complacency at the circumstance. It showed him to be as well
pleased with me as a slave as I with him as a master. But the kindness
of the slave-master only gilded the chain, it detracted nothing from
its weight or strength. The thought that men are made for other and
better uses than slavery throve best under the gentle treatment of a
kind master. Its grim visage could assume no smiles able to fascinate
the partially enlightened slave into a forgetfulness of his bondage, or
of the desirableness of liberty.
I was not through the first month of my second year with the kind
and gentlemanly Mr. Freeland before I was earnestly considering and
devising plans for gaining that freedom which, when I was but a mere
child, I had ascertained to be the natural and inborn right of every
member of the human family. The desire for this freedom had been
benumbed while I was under the brutalizing dominion of Covey, and
it had been postponed and rendered inoperative by my truly pleasant
Sunday-school engagements with my friends during the year at Mr.
Freeland’s. It had, however, never entirely subsided. I hated slavery
_always_, and my desire for freedom needed only a favorable breeze to
fan it to a blaze at any moment. The thought of being only a creature
of the _present_ and the _past_ troubled me, and I longed to have a
_future_--a future with hope in it. To be shut up entirely to the
past and present is to the soul whose life and happiness is unceasing
progress--what the prison is to the body--a blight and mildew, a hell
of horrors. The dawning of this, another year, awakened me from my
temporary slumber, and roused into life my latent but long-cherished
aspirations for freedom. I became not only ashamed to be contented
in slavery, but ashamed to _seem_ to be contented, and in my present
favorable condition under the mild rule of Mr. Freeland, I am not sure
that some kind reader will not condemn me for being over-ambitious,
and greatly wanting in humility, when I say the truth, that I now
drove from me all thoughts of making the best of my lot, and welcomed
only such thoughts as led me away from the house of bondage. The
intensity of my desire to be free, quickened by my present favorable
circumstances, brought me to the determination to _act_ as well as
to think and speak. Accordingly, at the beginning of this year 1836,
I took upon me a solemn vow, that the year which had just now dawned
upon me should not close without witnessing an earnest attempt, on
my part, to gain my liberty. This vow only bound me to make good my
own individual escape, but my friendship for my brother-slaves was
so affectionate and confiding that I felt it my duty, as well as my
pleasure, to give them an opportunity to share in my determination.
Toward Henry and John Harris I felt a friendship as strong as one man
can feel for another, for I could have died with and for them. To them,
therefore, with suitable caution, I began to disclose my sentiments and
plans, sounding them the while on the subject of running away, provided
a good chance should offer. I need not say that I did my _very best_
to imbue the minds of my dear friends with my own views and feelings.
Thoroughly awakened now, and with a definite vow upon me, all my
little reading which had any bearing on the subject of human rights
was rendered available in my communications with my friends. That gem
of a book, the Columbian Orator, with its eloquent orations and spicy
dialogues denouncing oppression and slavery--telling what had been
dared, done, and suffered by men, to obtain the inestimable boon of
liberty, was still fresh in my memory, and whirled into the ranks of
my speech with the aptitude of well-trained soldiers going through the
drill. I here began my public speaking. I canvassed with Henry and John
the subject of slavery, and dashed against it the condemning brand of
God’s eternal justice. My fellow-servants were neither indifferent,
dull, nor inapt. Our feelings were more alike than our opinions. All,
however, were ready to act when a feasible plan should be proposed.
“Show us how the thing is to be done,” said they, “and all else is
clear.”
We were all, except Sandy, quite clear from slaveholding priestcraft.
It was in vain that we had been taught from the pulpit at St. Michaels
the duty of obedience to our masters; to recognize God as the author
of our enslavement; to regard running away an offense, alike against
God and man; to deem our enslavement a merciful and beneficial
arrangement; to esteem our condition in this country a paradise to
that from which we had been snatched in Africa; to consider our hard
hands and dark color as God’s displeasure, and as pointing us out as
the proper subjects of slavery; that the relation of master and slave
was one of reciprocal benefits; that our work was not more serviceable
to our masters than our master’s thinking was to us. I say it was in
vain that the pulpit of St. Michaels had constantly inculcated these
plausible doctrines. Nature laughed them to scorn. For my part, I had
become altogether too big for my chains. Father Lawson’s solemn words
of what I ought to be, and what I might be in the providence of God,
had not fallen dead on my soul. I was fast verging toward manhood, and
the prophesies of my childhood were still unfulfilled. The thought
that year after year had passed away, and my best resolutions to run
away had failed and faded, that I was still a slave, with chances for
gaining my freedom diminished and still diminishing--was not a matter
to be slept over easily. But here came a trouble. Such thoughts and
purposes as I now cherished could not agitate the mind long without
making themselves manifest to scrutinizing and unfriendly observers.
I had reason to fear that my sable face might prove altogether too
transparent for the safe concealment of my hazardous enterprise. Plans
of great moment have leaked through stone walls, and revealed their
projectors. But here was no stone wall to hide my purpose. I would
have given my poor tell-tale face for the immovable countenance of an
Indian, for it was far from proof against the daily searching glances
of those whom I met.
It was the interest and business of slaveholders to study human nature,
and the slave nature in particular, with a view to practical results;
and many of them attained astonishing proficiency in this direction.
They had to deal not with earth, wood, and stone, but with _men_; and
by every regard they had for their safety and prosperity they had need
to know the material on which they were to work. So much intellect as
the slaveholder had round him required watching. Their safety depended
on their vigilance. Conscious of the injustice and wrong they were
every hour perpetrating, and knowing what they themselves would do if
they were victims of such wrongs, they were constantly looking out for
the first signs of the dread retribution. They watched, therefore, with
skilled and practiced eyes, and learned to read, with great accuracy,
the state of mind and heart of the slave through his sable face.
Unusual sobriety, apparent abstraction, sullenness, and indifference,--
indeed, any mood out of the common way,--afforded ground for suspicion
and inquiry. Relying on their superior position and wisdom, they “would
often hector the slave into a confession by affecting to know the truth
of their accusations. “You have got the devil in you, and we’ll whip
him out of you,” they would say. I have often been put thus to the
torture on bare suspicion. This system had its disadvantages as well as
its opposite--the slave being sometimes whipped into the confession
of offenses which he never committed. It will be seen that the good
old rule, “A man is to be held innocent until proved to be guilty,”
did not hold good on the slave plantation. Suspicion and torture were
the approved methods of getting at the truth there. It was necessary,
therefore, for me to keep a watch over my deportment, lest the enemy
should get the better of me. But with all our caution and studied
reserve, I am not sure that Mr. Freeland did not suspect that all was
not right with us. It _did_ seem that he watched us more narrowly
after the plan of escape had been conceived and discussed amongst us.
Men seldom see themselves as others see them; and while to ourselves
everything connected with our contemplated escape appeared concealed,
Mr. Freeland may, with the peculiar prescience of a slaveholder, have
mastered the huge thought which was disturbing our peace. As I now
look back, I am the more inclined to think he suspected us, because,
prudent as we were, I can see that we did many silly things very well
calculated to awaken suspicion. We were at times remarkably buoyant,
singing hymns, and making joyous exclamations, almost as triumphant in
their tone as if we had reached a land of freedom and safety. A keen
observer might have detected in our repeated singing of
“O Canaan, sweet Canaan,
I am bound for the land of Canaan,”
something more than a hope of reaching heaven. We meant to reach the
_North_, and the North was our Canaan.
“I thought I heard them say
There were lions in the way;
I don’t expect to stay
Much longer here.
Run to Jesus, shun the danger--
I don’t expect to stay
Much longer here,”
was a favorite air, and had a double meaning. In the lips of some it
meant the expectation of a speedy summons to a world of spirits; but in
the lips of our company, it simply meant a speedy pilgrimage to a free
State, and deliverance from all the evils and dangers of slavery.
I had succeeded in winning to my scheme a company of five young men,
the very flower of the neighborhood, each one of whom would have
commanded one thousand dollars in the home market. At New Orleans
they would have brought fifteen hundred dollars apiece, and perhaps
more. Their names were as follows: Henry Harris, John Harris, Sandy
Jenkins, Charles Roberts, and Henry Bailey. I was the youngest but one
of the party. I had, however, the advantage of them all in experience,
and in a knowledge of letters. This gave me a great influence over
them. Perhaps not one of them, left to himself, would have dreamed
of escape as a possible thing. They all wanted to be free, but the
serious thought of running away had not entered into their minds until
I won them to the undertaking. They all were tolerably well off--
for slaves--and had dim hopes of being set free some day by their
masters. If any one is to blame for disturbing the quiet of the slaves
and slave-masters of the neighborhood of St. Michaels, I AM THE MAN.
I claim to be the instigator of the high crime (as the slaveholders
regarded it), and I kept life in it till life could be kept in it no
longer.
Pending the time of our contemplated departure out of our Egypt, we met
often by night, and on every Sunday. At these meetings we talked the
matter over, told our hopes and fears, and the difficulties discovered
or imagined; and, like men of sense, we counted the cost of the
enterprise to which we were committing ourselves. These meetings must
have resembled, on a small scale, the meetings of the revolutionary
conspirators in their primary condition. We were plotting against our
(so-called) lawful rulers, with this difference--we sought our own
good, and not the harm of our enemies. We did not seek to overthrow
them, but to escape from them. As for Mr. Freeland, we all liked him,
and would gladly have remained with him _as free men_. _Liberty_ was
our aim, and we had now come to think that we had a right to it against
every obstacle, even against the lives of our enslavers.
We had several words, expressive of things important to us, which we
understood, but which, even if distinctly heard by an outsider, would
have conveyed no certain meaning. I hated this secresy, but where
slavery was powerful, and liberty weak, the latter was driven to
concealment or destruction.
The prospect was not always bright. At times we were almost tempted
to abandon the enterprise, and to try to get back to that comparative
peace of mind which even a man under the gallows might feel when all
hope of escape had vanished. We were confident, bold, and determined,
at times, and again doubting, timid, and wavering, whistling, like the
boy in the grave-yard, to keep away the spirits.
To look at the map and observe the proximity of Eastern shore,
Maryland, to Delaware and Pennsylvania, it may seem to the reader quite
absurd to regard the proposed escape as a formidable undertaking. But
to _understand_, some one has said, a man must _stand under_. The
real distance was great enough, but the imagined distance was, to our
ignorance, much greater. Slaveholders sought to impress their slaves
with a belief in the boundlessness of slave territory, and of their
own limitless power. Our notions of the geography of the country were
very vague and indistinct. The distance, however, was not the chief
trouble, for the nearer the lines of a slave state to the borders of a
free state the greater was the trouble. Hired kidnappers infested the
borders. Then, too, we knew that merely reaching a free state did not
free us, that wherever caught we could be returned to slavery. We knew
of no spot this side the ocean where we could be safe. We had heard of
Canada, then the only real Canaan of the American bondman, simply as
a country to which the wild goose and the swan repaired at the end of
winter to escape the heat of summer, but not as the home of man. I knew
something of Theology, but nothing of Geography. I really did not know
that there was a state of New York or a state of Massachusetts. I had
heard of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey, and all the southern
states, but was utterly ignorant of the free states. New York City was
our northern limit, and to go there and to be forever harassed with
the liability of being hunted down and returned to slavery, with the
certainty of being treated ten times worse than ever before, was a
prospect which might well cause some hesitation. The case sometimes,
to our excited visions, stood thus: At every gate through which we had
to pass we saw a watchman; at every ferry a guard; on every bridge a
sentinel, and in every wood a patrol or slave-hunter. We were hemmed
in on every side. The good to be sought and the evil to be shunned
were flung in the balance and weighed against each other. On the one
hand stood slavery, a stern reality glaring frightfully upon us, with
the blood of millions in its polluted skirts, terrible to behold,
greedily devouring our hard earnings and feeding it upon our flesh.
This was the evil from which to escape. On the other hand, far away,
back in the hazy distance, where all forms seemed but shadows under
the flickering light of the north star, behind some craggy hill or
snow-capped mountain, stood a doubtful freedom, half frozen, beckoning
us to her icy domain. This was the good to be sought. The inequality
was as great as that between certainty and uncertainty. This in itself
was enough to stagger us; but when we came to survey the untrodden
road and conjecture the many possible difficulties we were appalled,
and at times, as I have said, were upon the point of giving over the
struggle altogether. The reader can have little idea of the phantoms
which would flit, in such circumstances, before the uneducated mind
of the slave. Upon either side we saw grim death, assuming a variety
of horrid shapes. Now it was starvation, causing us, in a strange and
friendless land, to eat our own flesh. Now we were contending with the
waves and were drowned. Now we were hunted by dogs and overtaken, and
torn to pieces by their merciless fangs. We were stung by scorpions,
chased by wild beasts, bitten by snakes, and worst of all, after having
succeeded in swimming rivers, encountering wild beasts, sleeping in the
woods, suffering hunger, cold, heat, and nakedness, overtaken by hired
kidnappers, who in the name of law and for the thrice-cursed reward
would, perchance, fire upon us, kill some, wound others, and capture
all. This dark picture, drawn by ignorance and fear, at times greatly
shook our determination, and not unfrequently caused us to
“Rather bear the ills we had,
Than flee to others which we knew not of.”
I am not disposed to magnify this circumstance in my experience, and
yet I think I shall seem to be so disposed to the reader, but no man
can tell the intense agony which was felt by the slave when wavering on
the point of making his escape. All that he has is at stake, and even
that which he has not is at stake also. The life which he has may be
lost, and the liberty which he seeks may not be gained.
Patrick Henry, to a listening senate which was thrilled by his magic
eloquence and ready to stand by him in his boldest flights, could say,
“Give me liberty or give me death,” and this saying was a sublime one,
even for a freeman; but incomparably more sublime is the same sentiment
when _practically_ asserted by men accustomed to the lash and chain,
men whose sensibilities must have become more or less deadened by their
bondage. With us it was a doubtful liberty, at best, that we sought,
and a certain lingering death in the rice swamps and sugar fields if
we failed. Life is not lightly regarded by men of sane minds. It is
precious both to the pauper and to the prince, to the slave and to his
master; and yet I believe there was not one among us who would not
rather have been shot down than pass away life in hopeless bondage.
In the progress of our preparations Sandy (the root man) became
troubled. He began to have distressing dreams. One of these, which
happened on a Friday night, was to him of great significance, and I am
quite ready to confess that I felt somewhat damped by it myself. He
said, “I dreamed last night that I was roused from sleep by strange
noises like the noises of a swarm of angry birds that caused a roar as
they passed, and which fell upon my ear like a coming gale over the
tops of the trees. Looking up to see what it could mean I saw you,
Frederick, in the claws of a huge bird, surrounded by a large number
of birds of all colors and sizes. These were all pecking at you, while
you, with your arms, seemed to be trying to protect your eyes. Passing
over me, the birds flew in a southwesterly direction, and I watched
them until they were clean out of sight. Now I saw this as plainly as
I now see you; and furder, honey, watch de Friday night dream; dare
is sumpon in it shose you born; dare is indeed, honey.” I did not like
the dream, but I showed no concern, attributing it to the general
excitement and perturbation consequent upon our contemplated plan to
escape. I could not, however, shake off its effect at once. I felt that
it boded no good. Sandy was unusually emphatic and oracular, and his
manner had much to do with the impression made upon me.
The plan which I recommended, and to which my comrades consented, for
our escape, was to take a large canoe owned by Mr. Hamilton, and on
the Saturday night previous to the Easter holidays launch out into the
Chesapeake bay and paddle for its head, a distance of seventy miles,
with all our might. On reaching this point we were to turn the canoe
adrift and bend our steps toward the north star till we reached a free
state.
There were several objections to this plan. In rough weather the waters
of the Chesapeake are much agitated, and there would be danger, in
a canoe, of being swamped by the waves. Another objection was that
the canoe would soon be missed, the absent slaves would at once be
suspected of having taken it, and we should be pursued by some of the
fast-sailing craft out of St. Michaels. Then again, if we reached the
head of the bay and turned the canoe adrift, she might prove a guide to
our track and bring the hunters after us.
These and other objections were set aside by the stronger ones, which
could be urged against every other plan that could then be suggested.
On the water we had a chance of being regarded as fishermen, in the
service of a master. On the other hand, by taking the land route,
through the counties adjoining Delaware, we should be subjected to all
manner of interruptions, and many disagreeable questions, which might
give us serious trouble. Any white man, if he pleased, was authorized
to stop a man of color on any road, and examine and arrest him. By
this arrangement many abuses (considered such even by slaveholders)
occurred. Cases have been known where freemen, being called upon to
show their free papers by a pack of ruffians, and on the presentation
of the papers, the ruffians have torn them up, and seized the victim
and sold him to a life of endless bondage.
The week before our intended start, I wrote a pass for each of our
party, giving them permission to visit Baltimore during the Easter
holidays. The pass ran after this manner:
“This is to certify that I, the undersigned, have given the bearer,
my servant John, full liberty to go to Baltimore to spend the
Easter holidays.
W. H.
NEAR ST. MICHAELS, Talbot Co., Md.”
Although we were not going to Baltimore, and were intending to land
east of North Point, in the direction I had seen the Philadelphia
steamers go, these passes might be useful to us in the lower part of
the bay, while steering towards Baltimore. These were not, however,
to be shown by us, until all other answers failed to satisfy the
inquirer. We were all fully alive to the importance of being calm and
self-possessed when accosted, if accosted we should be; and we more
than once rehearsed to each other how we should behave in the hour of
trial.
Those were long, tedious days and nights. The suspense was painful in
the extreme. To balance probabilities, where life and liberty hang on
the result, requires steady nerves. I panted for action, and was glad
when the day, at the close of which we were to start, dawned upon us.
Sleeping the night before was out of the question. I probably felt
more deeply than any of my companions, because I was the instigator
of the movement. The responsibility of the whole enterprise rested
on my shoulders. The glory of success, and the shame and confusion
of failure, could not be matters of indifference to me. Our food
was prepared, our clothes were packed; we were all ready to go, and
impatient for Saturday morning--considering _that_ the last of our
bondage.
I cannot describe the tempest and tumult of my brain that morning. The
reader will please bear in mind that in a slave State an unsuccessful
runaway was not only subjected to cruel torture, and sold away to the
far South, but he was frequently execrated by the other slaves. He
was charged with making the condition of the other slaves intolerable
by laying them all under the suspicion of their masters--subjecting
them to greater vigilance, and imposing greater limitations on their
privileges. I dreaded murmurs from this quarter. It was difficult, too,
for a slave-master to believe that slaves escaping had not been aided
in their flight by some one of their fellow-slaves. When, therefore, a
slave was missing, every slave on the place was closely examined as to
his knowledge of the undertaking.
Our anxiety grew more and more intense, as the time of our intended
departure drew nigh. It was truly felt to be a matter of life and
death with us, and we fully intended to _fight_, as well as _run_,
if necessity should occur for that extremity. But the trial hour
had not yet come. It was easy to resolve, but not so easy to act. I
expected there might be some drawing back at the last; it was natural
there should be; therefore, during the intervening time, I lost no
opportunity to explain away difficulties, remove doubts, dispel fears,
and inspire all with firmness. It was too late to look back, and now
was the time to go forward. I appealed to the pride of my comrades by
telling them that if after having solemnly promised to go, as they had
done, they now failed to make the attempt, they would in effect brand
themselves with cowardice, and might well sit down, fold their arms,
and acknowledge themselves fit only to be slaves. This detestable
character all were unwilling to assume. Every man except Sandy (he,
much to our regret, withdrew) stood firm, and at our last meeting we
pledged ourselves afresh, and in the most solemn manner, that at the
time appointed we _would_ certainly start on our long journey for a
free country. This meeting was in the middle of the week, at the end of
which we were to start.
Early on the appointed morning we went as usual to the field, but with
hearts that beat quickly and anxiously. Any one intimately acquainted
with us might have seen that all was not well with us, and that some
monster lingered in our thoughts. Our work that morning was the same as
it had been for several days past--drawing out and spreading manure.
While thus engaged, I had a sudden presentiment, which flashed upon me
like lightning in a dark night, revealing to the lonely traveler the
gulf before and the enemy behind. I instantly turned to Sandy Jenkins,
who was near me, and said: “_Sandy, we are betrayed!_ something has
just told me so.” I felt as sure of it as if the officers were in
sight. Sandy said: “Man, dat is strange; but I feel just as you do.” If
my mother--then long in her grave--had appeared before me and told
me that we were betrayed, I could not at that moment have felt more
certain of the fact.
In a few minutes after this, the long, low, and distant notes of the
horn summoned us from the field to breakfast. I felt as one may be
supposed to feel before being led forth to be executed for some great
offense. I wanted no breakfast, but I went with the other slaves toward
the house for form’s sake. My feelings were not disturbed as to the
right of running away; on that point I had no misgiving whatever, but
from a sense of the consequences of failure.
In thirty minutes after that vivid impression came the apprehended
crash. On reaching the house, and glancing my eye toward the lane gate,
the worst was at once made known. The lane gate to Mr. Freeland’s house
was nearly half a mile from the door, and much shaded by the heavy wood
which bordered the main road. I was, however, able to descry four white
men and two colored men approaching. The white men were on horseback,
and the colored men were walking behind, and seemed to be tied. “_It
is indeed all over with us; we are surely betrayed_,” I thought to
myself. I became composed, or at least comparatively so, and calmly
awaited the result. I watched the ill-omened company entering the gate.
Successful flight was impossible, and I made up my mind to stand and
meet the evil, whatever it might be, for I was not altogether without
a slight hope that things might turn differently from what I had at
first feared. In a few moments in came Mr. William Hamilton, riding
very rapidly and evidently much excited. He was in the habit of riding
very slowly, and was seldom known to gallop his horse. This time his
horse was nearly at full speed, causing the dust to roll thick behind
him. Mr. Hamilton, though one of the most resolute men in the whole
neighborhood, was, nevertheless, a remarkably mild-spoken man, and,
even when greatly excited, his language was cool and circumspect. He
came to the door, and inquired if Mr. Freeland was in? I told him
that Mr. Freeland was at the barn. Off the old gentleman rode toward
the barn, with unwonted speed. In a few moments Mr. Hamilton and
Mr. Freeland came down from the barn to the house, and just as they
made their appearance in the front-yard three men, who proved to be
constables, came dashing into the lane on horseback, as if summoned
by a sign requiring quick work. A few seconds brought them into the
front-yard, where they hastily dismounted and tied their horses. This
done, they joined Mr. Freeland and Mr. Hamilton, who were standing a
short distance from the kitchen. A few moments were spent as if in
consulting how to proceed, and then the whole party walked up to the
kitchen door. There was now no one in the kitchen but myself and John
Harris; Henry and Sandy were yet in the barn. Mr. Freeland came inside
the kitchen door, and with an agitated voice called me by name, and
told me to come forward, that there were some gentlemen who wished to
see me. I stepped toward them at the door, and asked what they wanted;
when the constables grabbed me, and told me that I had better not
resist; that I had been in a scrape, or was said to have been in one;
that they were merely going to take me where I could be examined; that
they would have me brought before my master at St. Michaels, and if the
evidence against me was not proved true I should be acquitted. I was
now firmly tied, and completely at the mercy of my captors. Resistance
was idle. They were five in number, armed to the teeth. When they had
secured me, they turned to John Harris, and in a few moments succeeded
in tying him as firmly as they had tied me. They next turned toward
Henry Harris, who had now returned from the barn. “Cross your hands,”
said the constable to Henry. “I won’t,” said Henry, in a voice so firm
and clear, and in a manner so determined, as for a moment to arrest
all proceedings. “Won’t you cross your hands?” said Tom Graham, the
constable. “_No, I won’t_,” said Henry, with increasing emphasis. Mr.
Hamilton, Mr. Freeland, and the officers now came near to Henry. Two
of the constables drew out their shining pistols, and swore, by the
name of God, that he should cross his hands or they would shoot him
down. Each of these hired ruffians now cocked their pistols, and, with
fingers apparently on the triggers, presented their deadly weapons to
the breast of the unarmed slave, saying, if he did not cross his hands,
they would “blow his d----d heart out of him.” “_Shoot me, shoot me_,”
said Henry; “you can’t kill me but once. _Shoot, shoot_, and be damned!
I won’t be tied!” This the brave fellow said in a voice as defiant and
heroic in its tone as was the language itself; and at the moment of
saying this, with the pistols at his very breast, he quickly raised his
arms, and dashed them from the puny hands of his assassins, the weapons
flying in all directions. Now came the struggle. All hands rushed upon
the brave fellow, and after beating him for some time they succeeded
in overpowering and tying him. Henry put me to shame; he fought, and
fought bravely. John and I had made no resistance. The fact is, I never
saw much use of fighting where there was no reasonable probability of
whipping anybody. Yet there was something almost providential in the
resistance made by Henry. But for that resistance every soul of us
would have been hurried off to the far South. Just a moment previous
to the trouble with Henry, Mr. Hamilton _mildly_ said,--and this gave
me the unmistakable clue to the cause of our arrest,--“Perhaps we had
now better make a search for those protections, which we understand
Frederick has written for himself and the rest.” Had these passes
been found, they would have been point-blank proof against us, and
would have confirmed all the statements of our betrayer. Thanks to
the resistance of Henry, the excitement produced by the scuffle drew
all attention in that direction, and I succeeded in flinging my pass,
unobserved, into the fire. The confusion attendant on the scuffle, and
the apprehension of still further trouble, perhaps, led our captors
to forego, for the time, any search for “_those protections_ which
Frederick was said to have written for his companions;” so we were not
yet convicted of the purpose to run away, and it was evident that there
was some doubt on the part of all whether we had been guilty of such
purpose.
Just as we were all completely tied, and about ready to start toward
St. Michaels, and thence to jail, Mrs. Betsey Freeland (mother to
William, who was much attached, after the Southern fashion, to Henry
and John, they having been reared from childhood in her house) came to
the kitchen door with her hands full of biscuits, for we had not had
our breakfast that morning, and divided them between Henry and John.
This done, the lady made the following parting address to me, pointing
her bony finger at me: “You devil! you yellow devil! It was you who
put it into the heads of Henry and John to run away. But for you, _you
long-legged, yellow devil_, Henry and John would never have thought of
running away.” I gave the lady a look which called forth from her a
scream of mingled wrath and terror, as she slammed the kitchen door and
went in, leaving me, with the rest, in hands as harsh as her own broken
voice.
[Illustration: DRIVEN TO JAIL FOR RUNNING AWAY.]
Could the kind reader have been riding along the main road to or from
Easton that morning, his eye would have met a painful sight. He would
have seen five young men, guilty of no crime save that of preferring
_liberty_ to _slavery_, drawn along the public highway--firmly bound
together, tramping through dust and heat, bare-footed and bare-headed--
fastened to three strong horses, whose riders were armed with pistols
and daggers, on their way to prison like felons, and suffering every
possible insult from the crowds of idle, vulgar people, who clustered
round, and heartlessly made their failure to escape the occasion for
all manner of ribaldry and sport. As I looked upon this crowd of vile
persons, and saw myself and friends thus assailed and persecuted, I
could not help seeing the fulfilment of Sandy’s dream. I was in the
hands of moral vultures, and held in their sharp talons, and was being
hurried away toward Easton, in a southeasterly direction, amid the
jeers of new birds of the same feather, through every neighborhood we
passed. It seemed to me that everybody was out, and knew the cause of
our arrest, and awaited our passing in order to feast their vindictive
eyes on our misery.
Some said “_I ought to be hanged_;” and others, “_I ought to be
burned_;” others I ought to have the “hide” taken off my back; while no
one gave us a kind word or sympathizing look, except the poor slaves
who were lifting their heavy hoes, and who cautiously glanced at us
through the post-and-rail fences, behind which they were at work. Our
sufferings that morning can be more easily imagined than described. Our
hopes were all blasted at one blow. The cruel injustice, the victorious
crime, and the helplessness of innocence, led me to ask in my ignorance
and weakness: Where is now the God of justice and mercy? and why have
these wicked men the power thus to trample upon our rights, and to
insult our feelings? and yet in the next moment came the consoling
thought, “the day of the oppressor will come at last.” Of one thing
I could be glad: not one of my dear friends upon whom I had brought
this great calamity, either by word or look, reproached me for having
led them into it. We were a band of brothers, and never dearer to
each other than now. The thought which gave us the most pain was the
probable separation which would now take place in case we were sold
off to the far South, as we were likely to be. While the constables
were looking forward, Henry and I, being fastened together, could
occasionally exchange a word without being observed by the kidnappers
who had us in charge. “What shall I do with my pass?” said Henry. “Eat
it with your biscuit,” said I; “it won’t do to tear it up.” We were
now near St. Michaels. The direction concerning the passes was passed
around, and executed. “Own nothing,” said I. “Own nothing” was passed
round, enjoined, and assented to. Our confidence in each other was
unshaken, and we were quite resolved to succeed or fail together; as
much after the calamity which had befallen us as before.
On reaching St. Michaels we underwent a sort of examination at my
master’s store, and it was evident to my mind that Master Thomas
suspected the truthfulness of the evidence upon which they had acted
in arresting us, and that he only affected, to some extent, the
positiveness with which he asserted our guilt. There was nothing said
by any of our company which could, in any manner, prejudice our cause,
and there was hope yet that we should be able to return to our homes,
if for nothing else, at least to find out the guilty man or woman who
betrayed us.
To this end we all denied that we had been guilty of intended flight.
Master Thomas said that the evidence he had of our intention to run
away was strong, enough to hang us in a case of murder. “But,” said
I, “the cases are not equal; if murder were committed,--the thing is
done! but we have not run away. Where is the evidence against us? We
were quietly at our work.” I talked thus, with unusual freedom, to
bring out the evidence against us, for we all wanted, above all things,
to know who had betrayed us, that we might have something tangible on
which to pour our execrations. From something which dropped, in the
course of the talk, it appeared that there was but one witness against
us, and that that witness could not be produced. Master Thomas would
not tell us who his informant was, but we suspected, and suspected
_one_ person only. Several circumstances seemed to point Sandy out as
our betrayer. His entire knowledge of our plans, his participation
in them, his withdrawal from us, his dream and his simultaneous
presentiment that we were betrayed, the taking us and the leaving him,
were calculated to turn suspicion toward him, and yet we could not
suspect him. We all loved him too well to think it possible that he
could have betrayed us. So we rolled the guilt on other shoulders.
We were literally dragged, that morning, behind horses, a distance of
fifteen miles, and placed in the Easton jail. We were glad to reach
the end of our journey, for our pathway had been full of insult and
mortification. Such is the power of public opinion that it is hard,
even for the innocent, to feel the happy consolations of innocence when
they fall under the maledictions of this power. How could we regard
ourselves as in the right, when all about us denounced us as criminals,
and had the power and the disposition to treat us as such.
In jail we were placed under the care of Mr. Joseph Graham, the sheriff
of the county. Henry and John and myself were placed in one room,
and Henry Bailey and Charles Roberts in another by themselves. This
separation was intended to deprive us of the advantage of concert, and
to prevent trouble in jail.
Once shut up, a new set of tormentors came upon us. A swarm of imps
in human shape,--the slave-traders and agents of slave-traders--who
gathered in every country town of the state watching for chances to
buy human flesh (as buzzards watch for carrion), flocked in upon us
to ascertain if our masters had placed us in jail to be sold. Such a
set of debased and villainous creatures I never saw before and hope
never to see again. I felt as if surrounded by a pack of _fiends_ fresh
from _perdition_. They laughed, leered, and grinned at us, saying,
“Ah, boys, we have got you, haven’t we? So you were about to make your
escape? Where were you going to?” After taunting us in this way as long
as they liked they one by one subjected us to an examination, with a
view to ascertain our value, feeling our arms and legs and shaking us
by the shoulders, to see if we were sound and healthy, impudently
asking us, “how we would like to have them for masters?” To such
questions we were quite dumb (much to their annoyance). One fellow told
me, “if he had me he would cut the devil out of me pretty quick.”
These negro-buyers were very offensive to the genteel southern
Christian public. They were looked upon in respectable Maryland society
as necessary but detestable characters. As a class, they were hardened
ruffians, made such by nature and by occupation. Yes, they were the
legitimate fruit of slavery, and were second in villainy only to the
slaveholders themselves who made such a class _possible_. They were
mere hucksters of the slave produce of Maryland and Virginia--coarse,
cruel, and swaggering bullies, whose very breathing was of blasphemy
and blood.
Aside from these slave-buyers who infested the prison from time to
time, our quarters were much more comfortable than we had any right to
expect them to be. Our allowance of food was small and coarse, but our
room was the best in the jail--neat and spacious, and with nothing
about it necessarily reminding us of being in prison but its heavy
locks and bolts and the black iron lattice work at the windows. We were
prisoners of state compared with most slaves who were put into that
Easton jail. But the place was not one of contentment. Bolts, bars,
and grated windows are not acceptable to freedom-loving people of any
color. The suspense, too, was painful. Every step on the stairway was
listened to, in the hope that the comer would cast a ray of light on
our fate. We would have given the hair of our heads for half a dozen
words with one of the waiters in Sol. Lowe’s hotel. Such waiters were
in the way of hearing, at the table, the probable course of things. We
could see them flitting about in their white jackets in front of this
hotel, but could speak to none of them.
Soon after the holidays were over, contrary to all our expectations,
Messrs. Hamilton and Freeland came up to Easton; not to make a bargain
with the “Georgia traders,” nor to send us up to Austin Woldfolk, as
was usual in the case of runaway-slaves, but to release Charles, Henry
Harris, Henry Bailey, and John Harris from prison, and this, too,
without the infliction of a single blow. I was left alone in prison.
The innocent had been taken and the guilty left. My friends were
separated from me, and apparently forever. This circumstance caused
me more pain than any other incident connected with our capture and
imprisonment. Thirty-nine lashes on my naked and bleeding back would
have been joyfully borne, in preference to this separation from these,
the friends of my youth. And yet I could not but feel that I was the
victim of something like justice. Why should these young men, who were
led into this scheme by me, suffer as much as the instigator? I felt
glad that they were released from prison, and from the dread prospect
of a life (or death I should rather say) in the rice swamps. It is due
to the noble Henry to say that he was almost as reluctant to leave the
prison with me in it as he had been to be tied and dragged to prison.
But he and we all knew that we should, in all the likelihoods of the
case, be separated, in the event of being sold; and since we were
completely in the hands of our owners they concluded it would be best
to go peaceably home.
Not until this last separation, dear reader, had I touched those
profounder depths of desolation which it is the lot of slaves often to
reach. I was solitary and alone within the walls of a stone prison,
left to a fate of life-long misery. I had hoped and expected much,
for months before, but my hopes and expectations were now withered
and blasted. The ever dreaded slave life in Georgia, Louisiana, and
Alabama,--from which escape was next to impossible--now in my
loneliness stared me in the face. The possibility of ever becoming
anything but an abject slave, a mere machine in the hands of an owner,
had now fled, and it seemed to me it had fled forever. A life of living
death, beset with the innumerable horrors of the cotton field and the
sugar plantation, seemed to be my doom. The fiends who rushed into the
prison when we were first put there continued to visit me and ply me
with questions and tantalizing remarks. I was insulted, but helpless;
keenly alive to the demands of justice and liberty, but with no means
of asserting them. To talk to those imps about justice or mercy would
have been as absurd as to reason with bears and tigers. Lead and steel
were the only arguments that they were capable of appreciating, as the
events of the subsequent years have proved.
After remaining in this life of misery and despair about a week, which
seemed a month, Master Thomas, very much to my surprise and greatly
to my relief, came to the prison and took me out, for the purpose,
as he said, of sending me to Alabama with a friend of his, who would
emancipate me at the end of eight years. I was glad enough to get
out of prison, but I had no faith in the story that his friend would
emancipate me. Besides, I had never heard of his having a friend in
Alabama, and I took the announcement simply as an easy and comfortable
method of shipping me off to the far south. There was a little scandal,
too, connected with the idea of one Christian selling another to the
Georgia traders, while it was deemed every way proper for them to
sell to others. I thought this friend in Alabama was an invention
to meet this difficulty, for Master Thomas was quite jealous of his
religious reputation, however unconcerned he might have been about his
real Christian character. In these remarks it is possible I do him
injustice. He certainly did not exert his power over me as he might
have done in the case, but acted, upon the whole, very generously,
considering the nature of my offense. He had the power and the
provocation to send me, without reserve, into the very everglades of
Florida, beyond the remotest hope of emancipation; and his refusal to
exercise that power must be set down to his credit.
After lingering about St. Michaels a few days and no friend from
Alabama appearing, Master Thomas decided to send me back again to
Baltimore, to live with his brother Hugh, with whom he was now at
peace; possibly he became so by his profession of religion at the
camp-meeting in the Bay side. Master Thomas told me he wished me to go
to Baltimore and learn a trade; and that if I behaved myself properly
he would _emancipate me at twenty-five_. Thanks for this one beam of
hope in the future. The promise had but one fault--it seemed too good
to be true.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XX.
APPRENTICESHIP LIFE.
Nothing lost in my attempt to run away--Comrades at home--Reasons
for sending me away--Return to Baltimore--Tommy changed--Caulking
in Gardiner’s ship yard--Desperate fight--Its causes--Conflict
between white and black labor--Outrage--Testimony--Master Hugh--
Slavery in Baltimore--My condition improves--New associations--
Slaveholder’s right to the slave’s wages--How to make a discontented
slave.
Well, dear reader, I am not, as you have probably inferred, a loser
by the general upstir described in the foregoing chapter. The little
domestic revolution, notwithstanding the sudden snub it got by the
treachery of somebody, did not, after all, end so disastrously as when
in the iron cage at Easton I conceived it would. The prospect from that
point did look about as dark as any that ever cast its gloom over the
vision of the anxious, out-looking human spirit. “All’s well that ends
well!” My affectionate friends, Henry and John Harris, are still with
Mr. Freeland. Charles Roberts and Henry Bailey are safe at their homes.
I have not, therefore, anything to regret on their account. Their
masters have mercifully forgiven them, probably on the ground suggested
in the spirited little speech of Mrs. Freeland made to me just before
leaving for the jail. My friends had nothing to regret, either: for
while they were watched more closely, they were doubtless treated more
kindly than before, and got new assurances that they should some day
be legally emancipated, provided their behavior from that time forward
should make them deserving. Not a blow was struck any one of them. As
for Master Freeland, good soul, he did not believe we were intending to
run away at all. Having given--as he thought--no occasion to his boys
to leave him, he could not think it probable that they had entertained
a design so grievous. This, however, was not the view taken of the
matter by “Mas’ Billy,” as we used to call the soft-spoken but crafty
and resolute Mr. William Hamilton. He had no doubt that the crime had
been meditated, and regarding me as the instigator of it, he frankly
told Master Thomas that he must remove me from that neighborhood or
he would shoot me. He would not have one so dangerous as “Frederick”
tampering with his slaves. William Hamilton was not a man whose threat
might be safely disregarded. I have no doubt he would have proved
as good as his word, had the warning given been disregarded. He was
furious at the thought of such a piece of high-handed _theft_ as we
were about to perpetrate--the stealing of our own bodies and souls.
The feasibility of the plan, too, could the first steps have been
taken, was marvelously plain. Besides, this was a _new_ idea, this use
of the Bay. Slaves escaping, until now, had taken to the woods; they
had never dreamed of profaning and abusing the waters of the noble
Chesapeake by making them the highway from slavery to freedom. Here was
a broad road leading to the destruction of slavery, which had hitherto
been looked upon as a wall of security by the slaveholders. But Master
Billy could not get Mr. Freeland to see matters precisely as he did,
nor could he get Master Thomas excited as he was. The latter, I must
say it to his credit, showed much humane feeling, and atoned for much
that had been harsh, cruel, and unreasonable in his former treatment
of me and of others. My “Cousin Tom” told me that while I was in jail
Master Thomas was very unhappy, and that the night before his going
up to release me he had walked the floor nearly all night, evincing
great distress; that very tempting offers had been made to him by the
negro-traders, but he had rejected them all, saying that _money could
not tempt him to sell me to the far south_. I can easily believe all
this, for he seemed quite reluctant to send me away at all. He told me
that he only consented to do so because of the very strong prejudice
against me in the neighborhood, and that he feared for my safety if I
remained there.
Thus after three years spent in the country, roughing it in the field,
and experiencing all sorts of hardships, I was again permitted to
return to Baltimore, the very place of all others, short of a free
State, where I most desired to live. The three years spent in the
country had made some difference in me, and in the household of Master
Hugh. “Little Tommy” was no longer little Tommy; and I was not the
slender lad who had left the Eastern Shore just three years before. The
loving relations between Master Tommy and myself were broken up. He was
no longer dependent on me for protection, but felt himself a _man_,
with other and more suitable associates. In childhood he had considered
me scarcely inferior to himself,--certainly quite as good as any other
boy with whom he played--but the time had come when his _friend_ must
be his slave. So we were cold to each other, and parted. It was a sad
thing to me, that loving each other as we had done, we must now take
different roads. To him a thousand avenues were open. Education had
made him acquainted with all the treasures of the world, and liberty
had flung open the gates thereunto; but I, who had attended him seven
years, had watched over him with the care of a big brother, fighting
his battles in the street, and shielding him from harm to an extent
which induced his mother to say, “Oh, Tommy is always safe when he is
with Freddy”--I must be confined to a single condition. He had grown
and become a _man_: I, though grown to the stature of manhood, must all
my life remain a minor--a mere boy. Thomas Auld, junior, obtained a
situation on board the brig Tweed, and went to sea. I have since heard
of his death.
There were few persons to whom I was more sincerely attached than to
him.
Very soon after I went to Baltimore to live, Master Hugh succeeded in
getting me hired to Mr. William Gardiner, an extensive ship-builder
on Fell’s Point. I was placed there to learn to calk, a trade of
which I already had some knowledge, gained while in Mr. Hugh Auld’s
ship-yard. Gardiner’s, however, proved a very unfavorable place for the
accomplishment of the desired object. Mr. Gardiner was that season
engaged in building two large man-of-war vessels, professedly for the
Mexican government. These vessels were to be launched in the month of
July of that year, and in failure thereof Mr. Gardiner would forfeit
a very considerable sum of money. So when I entered the ship-yard,
all was hurry and driving. There were in the yard about one hundred
men; of these, seventy or eighty were regular carpenters--privileged
men. There was no time for a raw hand to learn anything. Every man
had to do that which he knew how to do, and in entering the yard Mr.
Gardiner had directed me to do whatever the carpenters told me to do.
This was placing me at the beck and call of about seventy-five men. I
was to regard all these as my masters. Their word was to be my law.
My situation was a trying one. I was called a dozen ways in the space
of a single minute. I needed a dozen pairs of hands. Three or four
voices would strike my ear at the same moment. It was “Fred, come
help me to cant this timber here,”--“Fred, come carry this timber
yonder,”--“Fred, bring that roller here,”--“Fred, go get a fresh
can of water,”--“Fred, come help saw off the end of this timber,”--
“Fred, go quick and get the crow-bar,”--“Fred, hold on the end of this
fall,”--“Fred, go to the blacksmith’s shop and get a new punch,”--
“Halloo, Fred! run and bring me a cold-chisel,”--“I say, Fred, bear a
hand, and get up a fire under the steam-box as quick as lightning,”--
“Hullo, nigger! come turn this grindstone,”--“Come, come; move, move!
and _bowse_ this timber forward,”--“I say, darkey, blast your eyes!
why don’t you heat up some pitch?”--“Halloo! halloo! halloo! (three
voices at the same time)”--“Come here; go there; hold on where you
are. D----n you, if you move I’ll knock your brains out!” Such, my
dear reader, is a glance at the school which was mine during the first
eight months of my stay at Gardiner’s ship-yard. At the end of eight
months Master Hugh refused longer to allow me to remain with Gardiner.
The circumstances which led to this refusal was the committing of
an outrage upon me, by the white apprentices of the ship-yard. The
fight was a desperate one, and I came out of it shockingly mangled.
I was cut and bruised in sundry places, and my left eye was nearly
knocked out of its socket. The facts which led to this brutal outrage
upon me, illustrate a phase of slavery which was destined to become
an important element in the overthrow of the slave system, and I may
therefore state them with some minuteness. That phase was this--the
conflict of slavery with the interests of white mechanics and laborers.
In the country this conflict was not so apparent; but in cities, such
as Baltimore, Richmond, New Orleans, Mobile, etc., it was seen pretty
clearly. The slaveholders, with a craftiness peculiar to themselves,
by encouraging the enmity of the poor laboring white man against the
blacks, succeeded in making the said white man almost as much a slave
as the black slave himself. The difference between the white slave and
the black slave was this: the latter belonged to one slaveholder, and
the former belonged to the slaveholders collectively. The white slave
had taken from him by indirection what the black slave had taken from
him directly and without ceremony. Both were plundered, and by the same
plunderers. The slave was robbed by his master of all his earnings,
above what was required for his bare physical necessities, and the
white laboring man was robbed by the slave system, of the just results
of his labor, because he was flung into competition with a class of
laborers who worked without wages. The slaveholders blinded them to
this competition by keeping alive their prejudice against the slaves
as _men_--not against them as _slaves_. They appealed to their pride,
often denouncing emancipation as tending to place the white working
man on an equality with negroes, and by this means they succeeded in
drawing off the minds of the poor whites from the real fact, that by
the rich slave-master, they were already regarded as but a single
remove from equality with the slave. The impression was cunningly made
that slavery was the only power that could prevent the laboring white
man from falling to the level of the slave’s poverty and degradation.
To make this enmity deep and broad between the slave and the poor
white man, the latter was allowed to abuse and whip the former without
hindrance. But, as I have said, this state of affairs prevailed
_mostly_ in the country. In the city of Baltimore there were not
unfrequent murmurs that educating slaves to be mechanics might, in the
end, give slave-masters power to dispose altogether with the services
of the poor white man. But with characteristic dread of offending the
slaveholders, these poor white mechanics in Mr. Gardiner’s ship-yard,
instead of applying the natural, honest remedy for the apprehended
evil, and objecting at once to work there by the side of slaves,
made a cowardly attack upon the free colored mechanics, saying they
were eating the bread which should be eaten by American freemen, and
swearing that they would not work with them. The feeling was _really_
against having their labor brought into competition with that of the
colored freeman, and aimed to prevent him from serving himself, in the
evening of life, with the trade with which he had served his master,
during the more vigorous portion of his days. Had they succeeded
in driving the black freemen out of the ship-yard, they would have
determined also upon the removal of the black slaves. The feeling was
very bitter toward all colored people in Baltimore about this time
(1836), and they--free and slave--suffered all manner of insult and
wrong.
Until a very little while before I went there white and black
carpenters worked side by side in the ship-yards of Mr. Gardiner,
Mr. Duncan, Mr. Walter Price, and Mr. Robb. Nobody seemed to see any
impropriety in it. Some of the blacks were first rate workmen and were
given jobs requiring the highest skill. All at once, however, the white
carpenters knocked off and swore that they would no longer work on
the same stage with negroes. Taking advantage of the heavy contract
resting upon Mr. Gardiner to have the vessels for Mexico ready to
launch in July, and of the difficulty of getting other hands at that
season of the year, they swore they would not strike another blow for
him unless he would discharge his free colored workmen. Now, although
this movement did not extend to me _in form_, it did reach me in
_fact_. The spirit which it awakened was one of malice and bitterness
toward colored people _generally_, and I suffered with the rest, and
suffered severely. My fellow-apprentices very soon began to feel it to
be degrading to work with me. They began to put on high looks and to
talk contemptuously and maliciously of “the niggers,” saying that they
would take the “country,” that they “ought to be killed.” Encouraged
by workmen who, knowing me to be a slave, made no issue with Mr.
Gardiner about my being there, these young men did their utmost to make
it impossible for me to stay. They seldom called me to do anything
without coupling the call with a curse, and Edward North, the biggest
in everything, rascality included, ventured to strike me, whereupon I
picked him up and threw him into the dock. Whenever any of them struck
me I struck back again, regardless of consequences. I could manage any
of them _singly_, and so long as I could keep them from combining I got
on very well. In the conflict which ended my stay at Mr. Gardiner’s I
was beset by four of them at once--Ned North, Ned Hays, Bill Stewart,
and Tom Humphreys. Two of them were as large as myself, and they came
near killing me, in broad daylight. One came in front, armed with a
brick; there was one at each side and one behind, and they closed up
all around me. I was struck on all sides; and while I was attending to
those in front I received a blow on my head from behind, dealt with
a heavy hand-spike. I was completely stunned by the blow, and fell
heavily on the ground among the timbers. Taking advantage of my fall
they rushed upon me and began to pound me with their fists. I let them
lay on for a while after I came to myself, with a view of gaining
strength. They did me little damage so far; but finally getting tired
of that sport I gave a sudden surge, and despite their weight I rose
to my hands and knees. Just as I did this one of their number planted
a blow with his boot in my left eye, which for a time seemed to have
burst my eye-ball. When they saw my eye completely closed, my face
covered with blood, and I staggering under the stunning blows they had
given me, they left me. As soon as I gathered strength I picked up the
hand-spike and madly enough attempted to pursue them; but here the
carpenters interfered and compelled me to give up my pursuit. It was
impossible to stand against so many.
Dear reader, you can hardly believe the statement, but it is true,
and therefore I write it down; no fewer than fifty white men stood by
and saw this brutal and shameful outrage committed, and not a man of
them all interposed a single word of mercy. There were four against
one, and that one’s face was beaten and battered most horribly, and
no one said, “that is enough;” but some cried out, “Kill him! kill
him! kill the d----n nigger! knock his brains out! he struck a white
person!” I mention this inhuman outcry to show the character of the
men and the spirit of the times at Gardiner’s ship-yard; and, indeed,
in Baltimore generally, in 1836. As I look back to this period, I am
almost amazed that I was not murdered outright, so murderous was the
spirit which prevailed there. On two other occasions while there I came
near losing my life, on one of which I was driving bolts in the hold
through the keelson with Hays. In its course the bolt bent. Hays cursed
me, and said that it was my blow which bent the bolt. I denied this,
and charged it upon him. In a fit of rage he seized an adze and darted
toward me. I met him with a maul and parried his blow, or I should have
lost my life.
After the united attack of North, Stewart, Hays, and Humphreys, finding
that the carpenters were as bitter toward me as the apprentices, and
that the latter were probably set on by the former, I found my only
chance for life was in flight. I succeeded in getting away without
an additional blow. To strike a white man was death by lynch law, in
Gardiner’s ship-yard; nor was there much of any other law toward the
colored people at that time in any other part of Maryland.
After making my escape from the ship-yard I went straight home and
related my story to Master Hugh; and to his credit I say it, that his
conduct, though he was not a religious man, was every way more humane
than that of his brother Thomas, when I went to him in a somewhat
similar plight, from the hands of his “Brother Edward Covey.” Master
Hugh listened attentively to my narration of the circumstances leading
to the ruffianly assault, and gave many evidences of his strong
indignation at what was done. He was a rough but manly-hearted fellow,
and at this time his best nature showed itself.
The heart of my once kind mistress Sophia was again melted in pity
towards me. My puffed-out eye and my scarred and blood-covered face
moved the dear lady to tears. She kindly drew a chair by me, and with
friendly and consoling words, she took water and washed the blood from
my face. No mother’s hand could have been more tender than hers. She
bound up my head and covered my wounded eye with a lean piece of fresh
beef. It was almost compensation for all I suffered that it occasioned
the manifestation once more of the originally characteristic kindness
of my mistress. Her affectionate heart was not yet dead, though much
hardened by time and circumstances.
As for Master Hugh he was furious, and gave expression to his feelings
in the forms of speech usual in that locality. He poured curses on
the whole of the ship-yard company, and swore that he would have
satisfaction. His indignation was really strong and healthy; but
unfortunately it resulted from the thought that his rights of property,
in my person, had not been respected, more than from any sense of the
outrage perpetrated upon me _as a man_. I had reason to think this from
the fact that he could, himself, beat and mangle when it suited him to
do so.
Bent on having satisfaction, as he said, just as soon as I got a little
the better of my bruises Master Hugh took me to Esquire Watson’s office
on Bond street, Fell’s Point, with a view to procuring the arrest of
those who had assaulted me. He related the outrage to the magistrate
as I had related it to him, and seemed to expect that a warrant would
at once be issued for the arrest of the lawless ruffians. Mr. Watson
heard all he had to say, then coolly inquired, “Mr. Auld, who saw this
assault of which you speak?” “It was done, sir, in the presence of a
ship-yard full of hands.” “Sir,” said Mr. Watson, “I am sorry, but I
cannot move in this matter, except upon the oath of white witnesses.”
“But here’s the boy; look at his head and face,” said the excited
Master Hugh; “_they_ show _what_ has been done.” But Watson insisted
that he was not authorized to do anything, unless white witnesses of
the transaction would come forward and testify to what had taken place.
He could issue no warrant on my word, against white persons, and if I
had been killed in the presence of a _thousand blacks_, their testimony
combined would have been insufficient to condemn a single murderer.
Master Hugh was compelled to say, for once, that this state of things
was _too bad_, and he left the office of the magistrate disgusted.
Of course it was impossible to get any white man to testify against
my assailants. The carpenters saw what was done; but the actors were
but the agents of their malice, and did only what the carpenters
sanctioned. They had cried with one accord, “Kill the nigger! kill
the nigger!” Even those who may have pitied me, if any such were
among them, lacked the moral courage to volunteer their evidence. The
slightest show of sympathy or justice toward a person of color was
denounced as abolitionism; and the name of abolitionist subjected its
bearer to frightful liabilities. “D----n abolitionists,” and “kill the
niggers,” were the watch-words of the foul-mouthed ruffians of those
days. Nothing was done, and probably there would not have been had I
been killed in the affray. The laws and the morals of the Christian
city of Baltimore afforded no protection to the sable denizens of that
city.
Master Hugh, on finding he could get no redress for the cruel wrong,
withdrew me from the employment of Mr. Gardiner and took me into his
own family, Mrs. Auld kindly taking care of me and dressing my wounds
until they were healed and I was ready to go to work again.
While I was on the Eastern Shore, Master Hugh had met with reverses
which overthrew his business; and he had given up ship-building in
his own yard, on the City Block, and was now acting as foreman of Mr.
Walter Price. The best he could do for me was to take me into Mr.
Price’s yard, and afford me the facilities there for completing the
trade which I began to learn at Gardiner’s. Here I rapidly became
expert in the use of calker’s tools, and in the course of a single
year, I was able to command the highest wages paid to journeymen
calkers in Baltimore.
The reader will observe that I was now of some pecuniary value to my
master. During the busy season I was bringing six and seven dollars per
week. I have sometimes brought him as much as nine dollars a week, for
the wages were a dollar and a half per day.
After learning to calk, I sought my own employment, made my own
contracts, and collected my own earnings--giving Master Hugh no
trouble in any part of the transactions to which I was a party.
Here, then, were better days for the Eastern Shore _slave_. I was free
from the vexatious assaults of the apprentices at Mr. Gardiner’s, and
free from the perils of plantation life, and once more in favorable
condition to increase my little stock of education, which had been at a
dead stand since my removal from Baltimore. I had on the Eastern Shore
been only a teacher, when in company with other slaves, but now there
were colored persons here who could instruct me. Many of the young
calkers could read, write, and cipher. Some of them had high notions
about mental improvement, and the free ones on Fell’s Point organized
what they called the “East Baltimore Mental Improvement Society.” To
this society, notwithstanding it was intended that only free persons
should attach themselves, I was admitted, and was several times
assigned a prominent part in its debates. I owe much to the society of
these young men.
The reader already knows enough of the _ill_ effects of good treatment
on a slave to anticipate what was now the case in my improved
condition. It was not long before I began to show signs of disquiet
with slavery, and to look around for means to get out of it by the
shortest route. I was living among _freemen_, and was in all respects
equal to them by nature and attainments. _Why should I be a slave?_
There was _no_ reason why I should be the thrall of any man. Besides,
I was now getting, as I have said, a dollar and fifty cents per day.
I contracted for it, worked for it, collected it; it was paid to me,
and it was _rightfully_ my own; and yet upon every returning Saturday
night, this money--my own hard earnings, every cent of it--was
demanded of me and taken from me by Master Hugh. He did not earn it;
he had no hand in earning it; why, then, should he have it? I owed
him nothing. He had given me no schooling, and I had received from
him only my food and raiment; and for these my services were supposed
to pay from the first. The right to take my earnings was the right of
the robber. He had the power to compel me to give him the fruits of my
labor, and this _power_ was his only right in the case. I became more
and more dissatisfied with this state of things, and in so becoming I
only gave proof of the same human nature which every reader of this
chapter in my life--slaveholder, or non-slaveholder--is conscious of
possessing.
To make a contented slave, you must make a thoughtless one. It is
necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as
possible, to annihilate his power of reason. He must be able to detect
no inconsistencies in slavery. The man who takes his earnings must be
able to convince him that he has a perfect right to do so. It must not
depend upon mere force: the slave must know no higher law than his
master’s will. The whole relationship must not only demonstrate to his
mind its necessity, but its absolute rightfulness. If there be one
crevice through which a single drop can fall, it will certainly rust
off the slave’s chain.
CHAPTER XXI.
ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY.
Closing incidents in my “Life as a Slave”--Discontent--Suspicions--
Master’s generosity--Difficulties in the way of escape--Plan to
obtain money--Allowed to hire my time--A gleam of hope--Attend
camp-meeting--Anger of Master Hugh--The result--Plans of escape--
Day for departure fixed--Harassing doubts and fears--Painful
thoughts of separation from friends.
My condition during the year of my escape (1838) was comparatively a
free and easy one, so far, at least, as the wants of the physical man
were concerned; but the reader will bear in mind that my troubles from
the beginning had been less physical than mental, and he will thus be
prepared to find that slave life was adding nothing to its charms for
me as I grew older, and became more and more acquainted with it. The
practice from week to week of openly robbing me of all my earnings,
kept the nature and character of slavery constantly before me. I could
be robbed by indirection, but this was too open and barefaced to be
endured. I could see no reason why I should, at the end of each week,
pour the reward of my honest toil into the purse of my master. My
obligation to do this vexed me, and the manner in which Master Hugh
received my wages vexed me yet more. Carefully counting the money,
and rolling it out dollar by dollar, he would look me in the face as
if he would search my heart as well as my pocket, and reproachfully
ask me, “Is that all?”--implying that I had perhaps kept back part
of my wages; or, if not so, the demand was made possibly to make me
feel that after all, I was an “unprofitable servant.” Draining me of
the last cent of my hard earnings, he would, however, occasionally,
when I brought home an extra large sum, dole out to me a sixpence or a
shilling, with a view, perhaps, of kindling up my gratitude. But it
had the opposite effect; it was an admission of my right to the whole
sum. The fact that he gave me any part of my wages, was proof that
he suspected I had a right to the whole of them; and I always felt
uncomfortable after having received anything in this way, lest his
giving me a few cents might possibly ease his conscience, and make him
feel himself to be a pretty honorable robber after all.
Held to a strict account, and kept under a close watch,--the old
suspicion of my running away not having been entirely removed,--to
accomplish my escape seemed a very difficult thing. The railroad from
Baltimore to Philadelphia was under regulations so stringent that
even _free_ colored travelers were almost excluded. They must have
free papers; they must be measured and carefully examined before they
could enter the cars, and could go only in the day time; even when so
examined. The steamboats were under regulations equally stringent.
And still more, and worse than all, all the great turnpikes leading
northward were beset with kidnappers; a class of men who watched the
newspapers for advertisements for runaway slaves, thus making their
living by the accursed reward of slave-hunting.
My discontent grew upon me, and I was on a constant lookout for means
to get away. With money I could easily have managed the matter, and
from this consideration I hit upon the plan of soliciting the privilege
of hiring my time. It was quite common in Baltimore to allow slaves
this privilege, and was the practice also in New Orleans. A slave who
was considered trustworthy could, by paying his master a definite sum
regularly, at the end of each week, dispose of his time as he liked.
It so happened that I was not in very good odor, and I was far from
being a trustworthy slave. Nevertheless, I watched my opportunity when
Master Thomas came to Baltimore (for I was still his property, Hugh
only acting as his agent) in the spring of 1838, to purchase his spring
supply of goods, and applied to him directly for the much-coveted
privilege of hiring my time. This request Master Thomas unhesitatingly
refused to grant; and he charged me, with some sternness, with
inventing this stratagem to make my escape. He told me I could go
_nowhere_ but he would catch me; and, in the event of my running away,
I might be assured he should spare no pains in his efforts to recapture
me. He recounted, with a good deal of eloquence, the many kind offices
he had done me, and exhorted me to be contented and obedient. “Lay out
no plans for the future,” said he; “if you behave yourself properly, I
will take care of you.” Now, kind and considerate as this offer was,
it failed to soothe me into repose. In spite of all Master Thomas had
said, and in spite of my own efforts to the contrary, the injustice
and wickedness of slavery was always uppermost in my thoughts,
strengthening my purpose to make my escape at the earliest moment
possible.
About two months after applying to Master Thomas for the privilege
of hiring my time, I applied to Master Hugh for the same liberty,
supposing him to be unacquainted with the fact that I had made a
similar application to Master Thomas, and had been refused. My boldness
in making this request fairly astounded him at first. He gazed at me in
amazement. But I had many good reasons for pressing the matter, and,
after listening to them awhile, he did not absolutely refuse, but told
me he would think of it. There was hope for me in this. Once master of
my own time, I felt sure that I could make over and above my obligation
to him, a dollar or two every week. Some slaves had made enough in this
way to purchase their freedom. It was a sharp spur to their industry;
and some of the most enterprising colored men in Baltimore hired
themselves in that way.
After mature reflection, as I suppose it was, Master Hugh granted
me the privilege in question, on the following terms: I was to be
allowed all my time; to make all bargains for work, and to collect my
own wages; and in return for this liberty, I was required or obliged
to pay him three dollars at the end of each week, and to board and
clothe myself, and buy my own calking tools. A failure in any of these
particulars would put an end to the privilege. This was a hard bargain.
The wear and tear of clothing, the losing and breaking of tools, and
the expense of board made it necessary for me to earn at least six
dollars per week to keep even with the world. All who are acquainted
with calking know how uncertain and irregular that employment is. It
can be done to advantage only in dry weather, for it is useless to put
wet oakum into a ship’s seam. Rain or shine, however, work or no work,
at the end of each week the money must be forthcoming.
Master Hugh seemed much pleased with this arrangement for a time; and
well he might be, for it was decidedly in his favor. It relieved him
of all anxiety concerning me. His money was sure. He had armed my love
of liberty with a lash and a driver far more efficient than any I had
before known; and while he derived all the benefits of slaveholding by
the arrangement, without its evils, I endured all the evils of being
a slave, and yet suffered all the care and anxiety of a responsible
freeman. “Nevertheless,” thought I, “it is a valuable privilege--
another step in my career toward freedom.” It was something even to
be permitted to stagger under the disadvantages of liberty, and I
was determined to hold on to the newly gained footing by all proper
industry. I was ready to work by night as by day, and being in the
possession of excellent health, I was not only able to meet my current
expenses, but also to lay by a small sum at the end of each week. All
went on thus from the month of May till August; then, for reasons which
will become apparent as I proceed, my much-valued liberty was wrested
from me.
During the week previous to this calamitous event, I had made
arrangements with a few young friends to accompany them on Saturday
night to a camp-meeting, to be held about twelve miles from Baltimore.
On the evening of our intended start for the camp-ground, something
occurred in the ship-yard where I was at work which detained me
unusually late, and compelled me either to disappoint my friends, or
to neglect carrying my weekly dues to Master Hugh. Knowing that I had
the money and could hand it to him on another day, I decided to go to
camp-meeting, and to pay him the three dollars for the past week on
my return. Once on the camp-ground, I was induced to remain one day
longer than I had intended when I left home. But as soon as I returned
I went directly to his home on Fell street to hand him his (my) money.
Unhappily the fatal mistake had been made. I found him exceedingly
angry. He exhibited all the signs of apprehension and wrath which a
slaveholder might be surmised to exhibit on the supposed escape of a
favorite slave. “You rascal! I have a great mind to give you a sound
whipping. How dare you go out of the city without first asking and
obtaining my permission?” “Sir,” I said, “I hired my time and paid you
the price you asked for it. I did not know that it was any part of the
bargain that I should ask you when or where I should go.” “You did not
know, you rascal! You are bound to show yourself here every Saturday
night.” After reflecting a few moments, he became somewhat cooled down;
but evidently greatly troubled, he said: “Now, you scoundrel, you have
done for yourself; you shall hire your time no longer. The next thing I
shall hear of will be your running away. Bring home your tools at once.
I’ll teach you how to go off in this way.”
Thus ended my partial freedom. I could hire my time no longer; and I
obeyed my master’s orders at once. The little taste of liberty which I
had had--although as it will be seen, that taste was far from being
unalloyed, by no means enhanced my contentment with slavery. Punished
by Master Hugh, it was now my turn to punish him. “Since,” thought I,
“you _will_ make a slave of me, I will await your order in all things.”
So, instead of going to look for work on Monday morning, as I had
formerly done, I remained at home during the entire week, without the
performance of a single stroke of work. Saturday night came, and he
called upon me as usual for my wages. I, of course, told him I had
done no work, and had no wages. Here we were at the point of coming
to blows. His wrath had been accumulating during the whole week; for
he evidently saw that I was making no effort to get work, but was
most aggravatingly awaiting his orders in all things. As I look back
to this behavior of mine, I scarcely know what possessed me, thus to
trifle with one who had such unlimited power to bless or blast me.
Master Hugh raved, and swore he would “get hold of me,” but wisely for
_him_, and happily for _me_, his wrath employed only those harmless,
impalpable missiles which roll from a limber tongue. In my desperation
I had fully made up my mind to measure strength with him, in case he
should attempt to execute his threats. I am glad there was no occasion
for this, for resistance to him could not have ended so happily for
me as it did in the case of Covey. Master Hugh was not a man to be
safely resisted by a slave; and I freely own that in my conduct toward
him, in this instance, there was more folly than wisdom. He closed his
reproofs by telling me that hereafter I need give myself no uneasiness
about getting work; he “would himself see to getting work for me, and
enough of it at that.” This threat, I confess, had some terror in it,
and on thinking the matter over during the Sunday, I resolved not only
to save him the trouble of getting me work, but that on the third day
of September I would attempt to make my escape. His refusal to allow me
to hire my time therefore hastened the period of my flight. I had three
weeks in which to prepare for my journey.
Once resolved, I felt a certain degree of repose, and on Monday
morning, instead of waiting for Master Hugh to seek employment for me,
I was up by break of day, and off to the ship-yard of Mr. Butler, on
the City Block, near the drawbridge. I was a favorite with Mr. Butler,
and, young as I was, I had served as his foreman, on the float-stage,
at calking. Of course I easily obtained work, and at the end of the
week, which, by the way, was exceedingly fine, I brought Master Hugh
nine dollars. The effect of this mark of returning good sense on my
part, was excellent. He was very much pleased; he took the money,
commended me, and told me I might have done the same thing the week
before. It is a blessed thing that the tyrant may not always know
the thoughts and purposes of his victim. Master Hugh little knew my
plans. The going to camp-meeting without asking his permission, the
insolent answers to his reproaches, the sulky deportment of the week
after being deprived of the privilege of hiring my time, had awakened
the suspicion that I might be cherishing disloyal purposes. My object,
therefore, in working steadily was to remove suspicion; and in this I
succeeded admirably. He probably thought I was never better satisfied
with my condition than at the very time I was planning my escape. The
second week passed, and I again carried him my full week’s wages--
_nine dollars_; and so well pleased was he that he gave me _twenty-five
cents_! and bade me “make good use of it.” I told him I would do so,
for one of the uses to which I intended to put it was to pay my fare on
the “underground railroad.”
Things without went on as usual; but I was passing through the same
internal excitement and anxiety which I had experienced two years and
a half before. The failure in that instance was not calculated to
increase my confidence in the success of this, my second attempt; and
I knew that a second failure could not leave me where my first did. I
must either get to the _far North_ or _be sent_ to the far _South_.
Besides the exercise of mind from this state of facts, I had the
painful sensation of being about to separate from a circle of honest
and warm-hearted friends. The thought of such a separation, where the
hope of ever meeting again was excluded, and where there could be no
correspondence, was very painful. It is my opinion that thousands more
would have escaped from slavery but for the strong affection which
bound them to their families, relatives, and friends. The daughter was
hindered by the love she bore her mother, and the father by the love
he bore his wife and children, and so on to the end of the chapter.
I had no relations in Baltimore, and I saw no probability of ever
living in the neighborhood of sisters and brothers; but the thought of
leaving my friends was the strongest obstacle to my running away. The
last two days of the week, Friday and Saturday, were spent mostly in
collecting my things together for my journey. Having worked four days
that week for my master, I handed him six dollars on Saturday night. I
seldom spent my Sundays at home, and for fear that something might be
discovered in my conduct, I kept up my custom and absented myself all
day. On Monday, the third day of September, 1838, in accordance with
my resolution, I bade farewell to the city of Baltimore, and to that
slavery which had been my abhorrence from childhood.
[Illustration: HIS PRESENT HOME IN WASHINGTON.]
SECOND PART
CHAPTER I.
ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY.
Reasons for not having revealed the manner of escape--Nothing
of romance in the method--Danger--Free Papers--Unjust tax--
Protection papers--“Free trade and sailors’ rights”--American
eagle--Railroad train--Unobserving conductor--Capt. McGowan--
Honest German--Fears--Safe arrival in Philadelphia--Ditto in New
York.
In the first narrative of my experience in slavery, written nearly
forty years ago, and in various writings since, I have given the public
what I considered very good reasons for withholding the manner of my
escape. In substance these reasons were, first, that such publication
at any time during the existence of slavery might be used by the master
against the slave, and prevent the future escape of any who might adopt
the same means that I did. The second reason was, if possible, still
more binding to silence--for publication of details would certainly
have put in peril the persons and property of those who assisted.
Murder itself was not more sternly and certainly punished in the State
of Maryland, than that of aiding and abetting the escape of a slave.
Many colored men, for no other crime than that of giving aid to a
fugitive slave, have, like Charles T. Torrey, perished in prison. The
abolition of slavery in my native State and throughout the country,
and the lapse of time, render the caution hitherto observed no longer
necessary. But even since the abolition of slavery, I have sometimes
thought it well enough to baffle curiosity by saying that while
slavery existed there were good reasons for not telling the manner of
my escape, and since slavery had ceased to exist there was no reason
for telling it. I shall now, however, cease to avail myself of this
formula, and, as far as I can, endeavor to satisfy this very natural
curiosity. I should perhaps have yielded to that feeling sooner,
had there been anything very heroic or thrilling in the incidents
connected with my escape, for I am sorry to say I have nothing of that
sort to tell; and yet the courage that could risk betrayal and the
bravery which was ready to encounter death if need be, in pursuit of
freedom, were essential features in the undertaking. My success was due
to address rather than courage; to good luck rather than bravery. My
means of escape were provided for me by the very men who were making
laws to hold and bind me more securely in slavery. It was the custom
in the State of Maryland to require of the free colored people to have
what were called free papers. This instrument they were required to
renew very often, and by charging a fee for this writing, considerable
sums from time to time were collected by the State. In these papers
the name, age, color, height, and form of the free man were described,
together with any scars or other marks upon his person, which could
assist in his identification. This device of slaveholding ingenuity,
like other devices of wickedness, in some measure defeated itself--
since more than one man could be found to answer the same general
description. Hence many slaves could escape by personating the owner of
one set of papers; and this was often done as follows: A slave nearly
or sufficiently answering the description set forth in the papers,
would borrow or hire them till he could by their means escape to a free
State, and then, by mail or otherwise, return them to the owner. The
operation was a hazardous one for the lender as well as the borrower.
A failure on the part of the fugitive to send back the papers would
imperil his benefactor, and the discovery of the papers in possession
of the wrong man would imperil both the fugitive and his friend. It
was therefore an act of supreme trust on the part of a freeman of
color thus to put in jeopardy his own liberty that another might be
free. It was, however, not unfrequently bravely done, and was seldom
discovered. I was not so fortunate as to sufficiently resemble any of
my free acquaintances as to answer the description of their papers.
But I had one friend--a sailor--who owned a sailor’s protection,
which answered somewhat the purpose of free papers--describing his
person, and certifying to the fact that he was a free American sailor.
The instrument had at its head the American eagle, which gave it the
appearance at once of an authorized document. This protection did
not, when in my hands, describe its bearer very accurately. Indeed,
it called for a man much darker than myself, and close examination of
it would have caused my arrest at the start. In order to avoid this
fatal scrutiny on the part of the railroad official, I had arranged
with Isaac Rolls, a hackman, to bring my baggage to the train just on
the moment of its starting, and jumped upon the car myself when the
train was already in motion. Had I gone into the station and offered to
purchase a ticket, I should have been instantly and carefully examined,
and undoubtedly arrested. In choosing this plan upon which to act,
I considered the jostle of the train, and the natural haste of the
conductor, in a train crowded with passengers, and relied upon my skill
and address in playing the sailor as described in my protection, to do
the rest. One element in my favor was the kind feeling which prevailed
in Baltimore and other seaports at the time, towards “those who go down
to the sea in ships.” “Free trade and sailors’ rights” expressed the
sentiment of the country just then. In my clothing I was rigged out
in sailor style. I had on a red shirt and a tarpaulin hat and black
cravat, tied in sailor fashion, carelessly and loosely about my neck.
My knowledge of ships and sailor’s talk came much to my assistance, for
I knew a ship from stem to stern, and from keelson to cross-trees, and
could talk sailor like an “old salt.” On sped the train, and I was well
on the way to Havre de Grace before the conductor came into the negro
car to collect tickets and examine the papers of his black passengers.
This was a critical moment in the drama. My whole future depended upon
the decision of this conductor. Agitated I was while this ceremony was
proceeding, but still externally, at least, I was apparently calm and
self-possessed. He went on with his duty--examining several colored
passengers before reaching me. He was somewhat harsh in tone, and
peremptory in manner until he reached me, when, strangely enough, and
to my surprise and relief, his whole manner changed. Seeing that I did
not readily produce my free papers, as the other colored persons in the
car had done, he said to me in a friendly contrast with that observed
towards the others: “I suppose you have your free papers?” To which I
answered: “No, sir; I never carry my free papers to sea with me.” “But
you have something to show that you are a free man, have you not?”
“Yes, sir,” I answered; “I have a paper with the American eagle on
it, and that will carry me round the world.” With this I drew from my
deep sailor’s pocket my seaman’s protection, as before described. The
merest glance at the paper satisfied him, and he took my fare and went
on about his business. This moment of time was one of the most anxious
I ever experienced. Had the conductor looked closely at the paper, he
could not have failed to discover that it called for a very different
looking person from myself, and in that case it would have been his
duty to arrest me on the instant, and send me back to Baltimore from
the first station. When he left me with the assurance that I was all
right, though much relieved, I realized that I was still in great
danger: I was still in Maryland, and subject to arrest at any moment. I
saw on the train several persons who would have known me in any other
clothes, and I feared they might recognize me, even in my sailor “rig,”
and report me to the conductor, who would then subject me to a closer
examination, which I knew well would be fatal to me.
Though I was not a murderer fleeing from justice I felt perhaps quite
as miserable as such a criminal. The train was moving at a very high
rate of speed for that time of railroad travel, but to my anxious mind,
it was moving far too slowly. Minutes were hours, and hours were days
during this part of my flight. After Maryland I was to pass through
Delaware--another slave State, where slave catchers generally awaited
their prey, for it was not in the interior of the State, but on its
borders, that these human hounds were most vigilant and active. The
border lines between slavery and freedom were the dangerous ones, for
the fugitives. The heart of no fox or deer, with hungry hounds on his
trail, in full chase, could have beaten more anxiously or noisily than
did mine, from the time I left Baltimore till I reached Philadelphia.
The passage of the Susquehanna river at Havre de Grace was made by
ferry boat at that time, on board of which I met a young colored man
by the name of Nichols, who came very near betraying me. He was a
“hand” on the boat, but instead of minding his business, he insisted
upon knowing me, and asking me dangerous questions as to where I was
going, and when I was coming back, etc. I got away from my old and
inconvenient acquaintance as soon as I could decently do so, and went
to another part of the boat. Once across the river I encountered a new
danger. Only a few days before I had been at work on a revenue cutter,
in Mr. Price’s ship-yard, under the care of Captain McGowan. On the
meeting at this point of the two trains, the one going south stopped
on the track just opposite to the one going north, and it so happened
that this Captain McGowan sat at a window where he could see me very
distinctly, and would certainly have recognized me had he looked at me
but for a second. Fortunately, in the hurry of the moment, he did not
see me; and the trains soon passed each other on their respective ways.
But this was not my only hair-breadth escape. A German blacksmith whom
I knew well, was on the train with me, and looked at me very intently
as if he thought he had seen me somewhere before in his travels. I
really believe he knew me, but had no heart to betray me. At any rate
he saw me escaping and held his peace.
The last point of imminent danger, and the one I dreaded most,
was Wilmington. Here we left the train and took the steamboat for
Philadelphia. In making the change here I again apprehended arrest,
but no one disturbed me, and I was soon on the broad and beautiful
Delaware, speeding away to the Quaker City. On reaching Philadelphia
in the afternoon I inquired of a colored man how I could get on to New
York? He directed me to the Willow street depot, and thither I went,
taking the train that night. I reached New York Tuesday morning, having
completed the journey in less than twenty-four hours. Such is briefly
the manner of my escape from slavery--and the end of my experience as
a slave. Other chapters will tell the story of my life as a freeman.
CHAPTER II.
LIFE AS A FREEMAN.
Loneliness and Insecurity--“Allender’s Jake”--Succored by a Sailor--
David Ruggles--Marriage--Steamer J. W. Richmond--Stage to New
Bedford--Arrival There--Driver’s Detention of Baggage--Nathan
Johnson--Change of Name--Why called “Douglas”--Obtaining Work--
The _Liberator_ and its Editor.
My free life began on the third of September, 1838. On the morning of
the 4th of that month, after an anxious and most perilous but safe
journey, I found myself in the big city of New York, a _free man_; one
more added to the mighty throng which like the confused waves of the
troubled sea, surged to and fro between the lofty walls of Broadway.
Though dazzled with the wonders which met me on every hand, my thoughts
could not be much withdrawn from my strange situation. For the moment
the dreams of my youth, and the hopes of my manhood, were completely
fulfilled. The bonds that had held me to “old master” were broken. No
man now had a right to call me his slave or assert mastery over me.
I was in the rough and tumble of an outdoor world, to take my chance
with the rest of its busy number. I have often been asked, how I felt,
when first I found myself on free soil. And my readers may share the
same curiosity. There is scarcely anything in my experience about which
I could not give a more satisfactory answer. A new world had opened
upon me. If life is more than breath, and the “quick round of blood,”
I lived more in one day than in a year of my slave life. It was a time
of joyous excitement which words can but tamely describe. In a letter
written to a friend soon after reaching New York, I said: “I felt as
one might feel upon escape from a den of hungry lions.” Anguish and
grief, like darkness and rain, may be depicted; but gladness and joy,
like the rainbow, defy the skill of pen or pencil. During ten or
fifteen years I had, as it were, been dragging a heavy chain, which
no strength of mine could break; I was not only a slave, but a slave
for life. I might become a husband, a father, an aged man, but through
all, from birth to death, from the cradle to the grave, I had felt
myself doomed. All efforts I had previously made to secure my freedom,
had not only failed, but had seemed only to rivet my fetters the more
firmly, and to render my escape more difficult. Baffled, entangled,
and discouraged, I had at times asked myself the question, May not my
condition after all be God’s work, and ordered for a wise purpose, and
if so, was not submission my duty? A contest had in fact been going
on in my mind for a long time, between the clear consciousness of
right, and the plausible make-shifts of theology and superstition. The
one held me an abject slave--a prisoner for life, punished for some
transgression in which I had no lot or part; and the other counselled
me to manly endeavor to secure my freedom. This contest was now ended;
my chains were broken, and the victory brought me unspeakable joy. But
my gladness was short lived, for I was not yet out of the reach and
power of the slaveholders. I soon found that New York was not quite so
free, or so safe a refuge as I had supposed, and a sense of loneliness
and insecurity again oppressed me most sadly. I chanced to meet on the
street a few hours after my landing, a fugitive slave whom I had once
known well in slavery. The information received from him alarmed me.
The fugitive in question was known in Baltimore as “Allender’s Jake,”
but in New York he wore the more respectable name of “William Dixon.”
Jake in law was the property of Doctor Allender, and Tolly Allender,
the son of the doctor, had once made an effort to recapture _Mr.
Dixon_, but had failed for want of evidence to support his claim. Jake
told me the circumstances of this attempt, and how narrowly he escaped
being sent back to slavery and torture. He told me that New York was
then full of southerners returning from the watering places north; that
the colored people of New York were not to be trusted; that there were
hired men of my own color who would betray me for a few dollars; that
there were hired men ever on the lookout for fugitives; that I must
trust no man with my secret; that I must not think of going either upon
the wharves, or into any colored boarding-house, for all such places
were closely watched; that he was himself unable to help me; and, in
fact, he seemed while speaking to me to fear lest I myself might be a
spy, and a betrayer. Under this apprehension, as I suppose, he showed
signs of wishing to be rid of me, and with whitewash brush in hand,
in search of work, he soon disappeared. This picture, given by poor
“Jake” of New York, was a damper to my enthusiasm. My little store of
money would soon be exhausted, and since it would be unsafe for me to
go on the wharves for work, and I had no introductions elsewhere, the
prospect for me was far from cheerful. I saw the wisdom of keeping
away from the ship-yards, for, if pursued, as I felt certain I would
be, Mr. Auld would naturally seek me there among the calkers. Every
door seemed closed against me. I was in the midst of an ocean of my
fellowmen, and yet a perfect stranger to every one. I was without home,
without acquaintance, without money, without credit, without work, and
without any definite knowledge as to what course to take, or where to
look for succor. In such an extremity, a man has something beside his
new-born freedom to think of. While wandering about the streets of
New York, and lodging at least one night among the barrels on one of
the wharves, I was indeed free--from slavery, but free from food and
shelter as well. I kept my secret to myself as long as I could, but
was compelled at last to seek some one who should befriend me, without
taking advantage of my destitution to betray me. Such an one I found in
a sailor named Stuart, a warm-hearted and generous fellow, who from his
humble home on Centre street, saw me standing on the opposite sidewalk,
near “The Tombs.” As he approached me I ventured a remark to him which
at once enlisted his interest in me. He took me to his home to spend
the night, and in the morning went with me to Mr. David Ruggles, the
secretary of the New York vigilance committee, a co-worker with Isaac
T. Hopper, Lewis and Arthur Tappan, Theodore S. Wright, Samuel Cornish,
Thomas Downing, Phillip A. Bell and other true men of their time. All
these (save Mr. Bell, who still lives, and is editor and publisher
of a paper called the _Elevator_, in San Francisco) have finished
their work on earth. Once in the hands of these brave and wise men, I
felt comparatively safe. With Mr. Ruggles, on the corner of Lispenard
and Church streets, I was hidden several days, during which time my
intended wife came on from Baltimore at my call, to share the burdens
of life with me. She was a free woman, and came at once on getting the
good news of my safety. We were married by Rev. J. W. C. Pennington,
then a well-known and respected Presbyterian minister. I had no money
with which to pay the marriage fee, but he seemed well pleased with our
thanks.
Mr. Ruggles was the first officer on the underground railroad with whom
I met after coming North; and was indeed the only one with whom I had
anything to do, till I became _such_ an officer myself. Learning that
my trade was that of a calker, he promptly decided that the best place
for me was in New Bedford, Mass. He told me that many ships for whaling
voyages were fitted out there, and that I might there find work at my
trade, and make a good living. So on the day of the marriage ceremony,
we took our little luggage to the steamer John W. Richmond, which at
that time was one of the line running between New York and Newport,
R. I. Forty-three years ago colored travelers were not permitted in the
cabin, nor allowed abaft the paddle-wheels of a steam vessel. They were
compelled, whatever the weather might be, whether cold or hot, wet or
dry, to spend the night on deck. Unjust as this regulation was, it did
not trouble us much. We had fared much harder before. We arrived at
Newport the next morning, and soon after an old-fashioned stage-coach
with “New Bedford” in large, yellow letters on its sides, came down to
the wharf. I had not money enough to pay our fare, and stood hesitating
to know what to do. Fortunately for us, there were two Quaker gentlemen
who were about to take passage on the stage,--Friends William C. Taber
and Joseph Ricketson,--who at once discerned our true situation, and
in a peculiarly quiet way, addressing me, Mr. Taber said: “Thee get
in.” I never obeyed an order with more alacrity, and we were soon on
our way to our new home. When we reached “Stone Bridge” the passengers
alighted for breakfast, and paid their fares to the driver. We took
no breakfast, and when asked for our fares I told the driver I would
make it right with him when we reached New Bedford. I expected some
objection to this on his part, but he made none. When, however, we
reached New Bedford he took our baggage, including three music books,--
two of them collections by Dyer, and one by Shaw,--and held them
until I was able to redeem them by paying to him the sums due for our
rides. This was soon done, for Mr. Nathan Johnson not only received
me kindly, and hospitably, but, on being informed about our baggage,
at once loaned me the two dollars with which to square accounts with
the stage-driver. Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Johnson reached a good old age,
and now rest from their labors. I am under many grateful obligations
to them. They not only “took me in when a stranger,” and “fed me when
hungry,” but taught me how to make an honest living.
Thus, in a fortnight after my flight from Maryland, I was safe in New
Bedford,--a citizen of the grand old commonwealth of Massachusetts.
[Illustration: AT THE WHARF IN NEWPORT.]
Once initiated into my new life of freedom, and assured by Mr.
Johnson that I need not fear recapture in that city, a comparatively
unimportant question arose, as to the name by which I should be known
thereafter, in my new relation as a free man. The name given me by my
dear mother was no less pretentious and long than Frederick Augustus
Washington Bailey. I had, however, while living in Maryland disposed
of the Augustus Washington, and retained only Frederick Bailey.
Between Baltimore and New Bedford, the better to conceal myself from
the slave-hunters, I had parted with Bailey and called myself Johnson;
but finding that in New Bedford the Johnson family was already so
numerous as to cause some confusion in distinguishing one from another,
a change in this name seemed desirable. Nathan Johnson, mine host, was
emphatic as to this necessity, and wished me to allow him to select a
name for me. I consented, and he called me by my present name,--the
one by which I have been known for three and forty years,--Frederick
Douglass. Mr. Johnson had just been reading the “Lady of the Lake,” and
so pleased was he with its great character that he wished me to bear
his name. Since reading that charming poem myself, I have often thought
that, considering the noble hospitality and manly character of Nathan
Johnson, black man though he was, he, far more than I, illustrated the
virtues of the Douglas of Scotland. Sure am I that if any slave-catcher
had entered his domicile with a view to my recapture, Johnson would
have been like him of the “stalwart hand.”
The reader may be surprised, that living in Baltimore as I had done
for many years, when I tell the honest truth of the impressions I had
in some way conceived of the social and material condition of the
people at the north. I had no proper idea of the wealth, refinement,
enterprise, and high civilization of this section of the country. My
Columbian Orator, almost my only book, had done nothing to enlighten
me concerning northern society. I had been taught that slavery was the
bottom-fact of all wealth. With this foundation idea, I came naturally
to the conclusion that poverty must be the general condition of the
people of the free States. A white man holding no slaves in the country
from which I came, was usually an ignorant and poverty-stricken man.
Men of this class were contemptuously called “poor white trash.”
Hence I supposed that since the non-slaveholders at the south were
ignorant, poor, and degraded as a class, the non-slaveholders at the
north must be in a similar condition. New Bedford therefore, which
at that time was really the richest city in the Union, in proportion
to its population, took me greatly by surprise, in the evidences it
gave of its solid wealth and grandeur. I found that even the laboring
classes lived in better houses, that their houses were more elegantly
furnished, and were more abundantly supplied with conveniences and
comforts, than the houses of many who owned slaves on the Eastern Shore
of Maryland. This was true not only of the white people of that city,
but it was so of my friend, Mr. Johnson. He lived in a nicer house,
dined at a more ample board, was the owner of more books, the reader
of more newspapers, was more conversant with the moral, social, and
political condition of the country and the world than nine-tenths of
the slaveholders in all Talbot county. I was not long in finding the
cause of the difference in these respects, between the people of the
north and south. It was the superiority of educated mind over mere
brute force. I will not detain the reader by extended illustrations as
to how my understanding was enlightened on this subject. On the wharves
of New Bedford I received my first light. I saw there industry without
bustle, labor without noise, toil--honest, earnest, and exhaustive,
without the whip. There was no loud singing or hallooing, as at the
wharves of southern ports when ships were loading or unloading; no loud
cursing or quarreling; everything went on as smoothly as well-oiled
machinery. One of the first incidents which impressed me with the
superior mental character of labor in the north over that of the south,
was in the manner of loading and unloading vessels. In a southern
port twenty or thirty hands would be employed to do what five or six
men, with the help of one ox, would do at the wharf in New Bedford.
Main strength--human muscle--unassisted by intelligent skill, was
slavery’s method of labor. With a capital of about sixty dollars in
the shape of a good-natured old ox, attached to the end of a stout
rope, New Bedford did the work of ten or twelve thousand dollars,
represented in the bones and muscles of slaves, and did it far better.
In a word, I found everything managed with a much more scrupulous
regard to economy, both of men and things, time and strength, than in
the country from which I had come. Instead of going a hundred yards to
the spring, the maid-servant had a well or pump at her elbow. The wood
used for fuel was kept dry and snugly piled away for winter. Here were
sinks, drains, self-shutting gates, pounding-barrels, washing-machines,
wringing-machines, and a hundred other contrivances for saving time and
money. The ship-repairing docks showed the same thoughtful wisdom as
seen elsewhere. Everybody seemed in earnest. The carpenter struck the
nail on its head, and the calkers wasted no strength in idle flourishes
of their mallets. Ships brought here for repairs were made stronger
and better than when new. I could have landed in no part of the United
States where I should have found a more striking and gratifying
contrast, not only to life generally in the South, but in the condition
of the colored people there than in New Bedford. No colored man was
really free while residing in a slave State. He was ever more or less
subject to the condition of his slave brother. In his color was his
badge of bondage. I saw in New Bedford the nearest approach to freedom
and equality that I had ever seen. I was amazed when Mr. Johnson told
me that there was nothing in the laws or constitution of Massachusetts,
that would prevent a colored man from being governor of the State,
if the people should see fit to elect him. There too the black man’s
children attended the same public schools with the white man’s
children, and apparently without objection from any quarter. To impress
me with my security from recapture, and return to slavery, Mr. Johnson
assured me that no slaveholder could take a slave out of New Bedford;
that there were men there who would lay down their lives to save me
from such a fate. A threat was once made by a colored man to inform a
southern master where his runaway slave could be found. As soon as this
threat became known to the colored people they were furious. A notice
was read from the pulpit of the Third Christian church (colored) for
a public meeting, when important business would be transacted (not
stating what the important business was). In the meantime special
measures had been taken to secure the attendance of the would-be
Judas, and these had proved successful, for when the hour of meeting
arrived, ignorant of the object for which they were called together,
the offender was promptly in attendance. All the usual formalities were
gone through with, the prayer, appointments of president, secretaries,
etc. Then the president, with an air of great solemnity, rose and
said: “Well, friends and brethren, we have got him here, and I would
recommend that you, young men, should take him outside the door and
kill him.” This was enough; there was a rush for the villain, who would
probably have been killed but for his escape by an open window. He was
never seen again in New Bedford.
The fifth day after my arrival I put on the clothes of a common
laborer, and went upon the wharves in search of work. On my way down
Union street I saw a large pile of coal in front of the house of Rev.
Ephraim Peabody, the Unitarian minister. I went to the kitchen door and
asked the privilege of bringing in and putting away this coal. “What
will you charge?” said the lady. “I will leave that to you, madam.”
“You may put it away,” she said. I was not long in accomplishing the
job, when the dear lady put into my hand _two silver half dollars_. To
understand the emotion which swelled my heart as I clasped this money,
realizing that I had no master who could take it from me--_that it
was mine_--_that my hands were my own_, and could earn more of the
precious coin--one must have been in some sense himself a slave. My
next job was stowing a sloop at Uncle Gid. Howland’s wharf with a cargo
of oil for New York. I was not only a freeman but a free-working man,
and no Master Hugh stood ready at the end of the week to seize my hard
earnings.
The season was growing late and work was plenty. Ships were being
fitted out for whaling, and much wood was used in storing them. The
sawing this wood was considered a good job. With the help of old Friend
Johnson (blessings on his memory) I got a “saw” and “buck” and went
at it. When I went into a store to buy a cord with which to brace up
my saw in the frame, I asked for a “fip’s” worth of cord. The man
behind the counter looked rather sharply at me, and said with equal
sharpness, “You don’t belong about here.” I was alarmed, and thought
I had betrayed myself. A fip in Maryland was six and a quarter cents,
called fourpence in Massachusetts. But no harm came, except my fear,
from the “fipenny-bit” blunder, and I confidently and cheerfully went
to work with my saw and buck. It was new business to me, but I never
did better work, or more of it in the same space of time for Covey,
the negro-breaker, than I did for myself in these earliest years of my
freedom.
Notwithstanding the just and humane sentiment of New Bedford three
and forty years ago, the place was not entirely free from race and
color prejudice. The good influence of the Roaches, Rodmans, Arnolds,
Grinnells, and Robesons did not pervade all classes of its people. The
test of the real civilization of the community came when I applied for
work at my trade, and then my repulse was emphatic and decisive. It so
happened that Mr. Rodney French, a wealthy and enterprising citizen,
distinguished as an anti-slavery man, was fitting out a vessel for
a whaling voyage, upon which there was a heavy job of calking and
coppering to be done. I had some skill in both branches, and applied
to Mr. French for work. He, generous man that he was, told me he would
employ me, and I might go at once to the vessel. I obeyed him, but upon
reaching the float-stage, where other calkers were at work, I was told
that every white man would leave the ship in her unfinished condition,
if I struck a blow at my trade upon her. This uncivil, inhuman, and
selfish treatment was not so shocking and scandalous in my eyes at the
time as it now appears to me. Slavery had inured me to hardships that
made ordinary trouble sit lightly upon me. Could I have worked at my
trade I could have earned two dollars a day, but as a common laborer
I received but one dollar. The difference was of great importance to
me, but if I could not get two dollars, I was glad to get one; and so I
went to work for Mr. French as a common laborer. The consciousness that
I was free--no longer a slave--kept me cheerful under this, and many
similar proscriptions, which I was destined to meet in New Bedford, and
elsewhere on the free soil of Massachusetts. For instance, though white
and colored children attended the same schools, and were treated kindly
by their teachers, the New Bedford Lyceum refused till several years
after my residence in that city to allow any colored person to attend
the lectures delivered in its hall. Not until such men as Hon. Chas.
Sumner, Theodore Parker, Ralph W. Emerson, and Horace Mann refused to
lecture in their course while there was such a restriction, was it
abandoned.
Becoming satisfied that I could not rely on my trade in New Bedford to
give me a living, I prepared myself to do any kind of work that came
to hand. I sawed wood, shoveled coal, dug cellars, moved rubbish from
back-yards, worked on the wharves, loaded and unloaded vessels, and
scoured their cabins.
This was an uncertain and unsatisfactory mode of life, for it kept me
too much of the time in search of work. Fortunately it was not to last
long. One of the gentlemen of whom I have spoken as being in company
with Mr. Taber on the Newport wharf, when he said to me “thee get in,”
was Mr. Joseph Ricketson; and he was the proprietor of a large candle
works in the south part of the city. In this “candle works” as it was
called, though no _candles_ were manufactured there, by the kindness
of Mr. Ricketson, I found what is of the utmost importance to a young
man just starting in life--constant employment and regular wages. My
work in this oil refinery required good wind and muscle. Large casks of
oil were to be moved from place to place, and much heavy lifting to be
done. Happily I was not deficient in the requisite qualities. Young
(21 years), strong, and active, and ambitious to do my full share,
I soon made myself useful, and I think liked by the men who worked
with me, though they were all white. I was retained here as long as
there was anything for me to do; when I went again to the wharves and
obtained work as a laborer on two vessels which belonged to Mr. George
Howland, and which were being repaired and fitted up for whaling.
My employer was a man of great industry: a hard driver, but a good
paymaster, and I got on well with him. I was not only fortunate in
finding work with Mr. Howland, but in my work-fellows. I have seldom
met three working men more intelligent than were John Briggs, Abraham
Rodman, and Solomon Pennington, who labored with me on the “Java”
and “Golconda.” They were sober, thoughtful, and upright, thoroughly
imbued with the spirit of liberty, and I am much indebted to them for
many valuable ideas and impressions. They taught me that all colored
men were not light-hearted triflers, incapable of serious thought or
effort. My next place of work was at the brass foundry owned by Mr.
Richmond. My duty here was to blow the bellows, swing the crane, and
empty the flasks in which castings were made; and at times this was
hot and heavy work. The articles produced here were mostly for ship
work, and in the busy season the foundry was in operation night and
day. I have often worked two nights and each working day of the week.
My foreman, Mr. Cobb, was a good man, and more than once protected me
from abuse that one or more of the hands was disposed to throw upon
me. While in this situation I had little time for mental improvement.
Hard work, night and day, over a furnace hot enough to keep the metal
running like water, was more favorable to action than thought; yet here
I often nailed a newspaper to the post near my bellows, and read while
I was performing the up and down motion of the heavy beam by which the
bellows was inflated and discharged. It was the pursuit of knowledge
under difficulties, and I look back to it now after so many years
with some complacency and a little wonder that I could have been so
earnest and persevering in any pursuit other than for my daily bread. I
certainly saw nothing in the conduct of those around to inspire me with
such interest: they were all devoted exclusively to what their hands
found to do. I am glad to be able to say that during my engagement in
this foundry, no complaint was ever made against me, that I did not do
my work, and do it well. The bellows which I worked by main strength
was after I left moved by a steam engine.
I had been living four or five months in New Bedford when there came
a young man to me with a copy of the _Liberator_, the paper edited by
William Lloyd Garrison, and published by Isaac Knapp, and asked me to
subscribe for it. I told him I had but just escaped from slavery, and
was of course very poor, and had no money then to pay for it. He was
very willing to take me as a subscriber, notwithstanding, and from this
time I was brought into contact with the mind of Mr. Garrison, and his
paper took a place in my heart second only to the Bible. It detested
slavery, and made no truce with the traffickers in the bodies and
souls of men. It preached human brotherhood; it exposed hypocrisy and
wickedness in high places; it denounced oppression, and with all the
solemnity of “Thus saith the Lord,” demanded the complete emancipation
of my race. I loved this paper and its editor. He seemed to me an
all-sufficient match to every opponent, whether they spoke in the
name of the law or the gospel. His words were full of holy fire, and
straight to the point. Something of a hero-worshiper by nature, here
was one to excite my admiration and reverence.
Soon after becoming a reader of the _Liberator_ it was my privilege
to listen to a lecture in Liberty Hall, by Mr. Garrison, its editor.
He was then a young man, of a singularly pleasing countenance, and
earnest and impressive manner. On this occasion he announced nearly
all his heresies. His Bible was his text book--held sacred as the
very word of the Eternal Father. He believed in sinless perfection,
complete submission to insults and injuries, and literal obedience to
the injunction if smitten “on one cheek to turn the other also.” Not
only was Sunday a Sabbath, but all days were Sabbaths, and to be kept
holy. All sectarianism was false and mischievous--the regenerated
throughout the world being members of one body, and the head Christ
Jesus. _Prejudice against color was rebellion against God._ Of all men
beneath the sky, the slaves because most neglected and despised, were
nearest and dearest to his great heart. Those ministers who defended
slavery from the Bible were of their “father the devil”; and those
churches which fellowshiped slaveholders as Christians, were synagogues
of Satan, and our nation was a nation of liars. He was never loud and
noisy, but calm and serene as a summer sky, and as pure. “You are the
man--the Moses, raised up by God, to deliver his modern Israel from
bondage,” was the spontaneous feeling of my heart, as I sat away back
in the hall and listened to his mighty words,--mighty in truth,--
mighty in their simple earnestness. I had not long been a reader of
the _Liberator_, and a listener to its editor, before I got a clear
comprehension of the principles of the anti-slavery movement. I had
already its spirit, and only needed to understand its principles
and measures, and as I became acquainted with these my hope for the
ultimate freedom of my race increased. Every week the _Liberator_
came, and every week I made myself master of its contents. All the
anti-slavery meetings held in New Bedford I promptly attended, my heart
bounding at every true utterance against the slave system, and every
rebuke of it by its friends and supporters. Thus passed the first three
years of my free life. I had not then dreamed of the possibility of my
becoming a public advocate of the cause so deeply imbedded in my heart.
It was enough for me to listen, to receive, and applaud the great words
of others, and only whisper in private, among the white laborers on the
wharves and elsewhere, the truths which burned in my heart.
CHAPTER III.
INTRODUCED TO THE ABOLITIONISTS.
Anti-Slavery Convention at Nantucket--First Speech--Much Sensation--
Extraordinary Speech of Mr. Garrison--Anti-Slavery Agency--Youthful
Enthusiasm--Fugitive Slaveship Doubted--Experience in Slavery
Written--Danger of Recapture.
In the summer of 1841 a grand anti-slavery convention was held in
Nantucket, under the auspices of Mr. Garrison and his friends. I had
taken no holiday since establishing myself in New Bedford, and feeling
the need of a little rest, I determined on attending the meeting,
though I had no thought of taking part in any of its proceedings.
Indeed, I was not aware that any one connected with the convention so
much as knew my name. Mr. William C. Coffin, a prominent abolitionist
in those days of trial, had heard me speaking to my colored friends
in the little school house on Second street, where we worshiped. He
sought me out in the crowd and invited me to say a few words to the
convention. Thus sought out, and thus invited, I was induced to express
the feelings inspired by the occasion, and the fresh recollection of
the scenes through which I had passed as a slave. It was with the
utmost difficulty that I could stand erect, or that I could command
and articulate two words without hesitation and stammering. I trembled
in every limb. I am not sure that my embarrassment was not the most
effective part of my speech, if speech it could be called. At any rate,
this is about the only part of my performance that I now distinctly
remember. The audience sympathized with me at once, and from having
been remarkably quiet, became much excited. Mr. Garrison followed me,
taking me as his text, and now, whether _I_ had made an eloquent plea
in behalf of freedom, or not, his was one, never to be forgotten.
Those who had heard him oftenest, and had known him longest, were
astonished at his masterly effort. For the time he possessed that
almost fabulous inspiration, often referred to but seldom attained,
in which a public meeting is transformed, as it were, into a single
individuality, the orator swaying a thousand heads and hearts at once,
and by the simple majesty of his all-controlling thought, converting
his hearers into the express image of his own soul. That night there
were at least a thousand Garrisonians in Nantucket!
At the close of this great meeting I was duly waited on by Mr. John
A. Collins, then the general agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
Society, and urgently solicited by him to become an agent of that
society, and publicly advocate its principles. I was reluctant to take
the proffered position. I had not been quite three years from slavery
and was honestly distrustful of my ability, and I wished to be excused.
Besides, publicity might discover me to my master, and many other
objections presented themselves. But Mr. Collins was not to be refused,
and I finally consented to go out for three months, supposing I should
in that length of time come to the end of my story and my consequent
usefulness.
Here opened for me a new life--a life for which I had had no
preparation. Mr. Collins used to say when introducing me to an
audience, I was a “graduate from the peculiar institution, with my
diploma _written on my back_.” The three years of my freedom had been
spent in the hard school of adversity. My hands seemed to be furnished
with something like a leather coating, and I had marked out for myself
a life of rough labor, suited to the hardness of my hands, as a means
of supporting my family and rearing my children.
Young, ardent, and hopeful, I entered upon this new life in the full
gush of unsuspecting enthusiasm. The cause was good, the men engaged in
it were good, the means to attain its triumph, good. Heaven’s blessing
must attend all, and freedom must soon be given to the millions pining
under a ruthless bondage. My whole heart went with the holy cause, and
my most fervent prayer to the Almighty Disposer of the hearts of men,
was continually offered for its early triumph. In this enthusiastic
spirit I dropped into the ranks of freedom’s friends and went forth
to the battle. For a time I was made to forget that my skin was dark
and my hair crisped. For a time I regretted that I could not have
shared the hardships and dangers endured by the earlier workers for
the slave’s release. I found, however, full soon that my enthusiasm
had been extravagant, that hardships and dangers were not all over,
and that the life now before me had its shadows also, as well as its
sunbeams.
Among the first duties assigned me on entering the ranks was to
travel in company with Mr. George Foster to secure subscribers to the
_Anti-Slavery Standard_ and the _Liberator_. With him I traveled and
lectured through the eastern counties of Massachusetts. Much interest
was awakened--large meetings assembled. Many came, no doubt from
curiosity to hear what a negro could say in his own cause. I was
generally introduced as a “chattel,”--a “thing”--a piece of southern
property--the chairman assuring the audience that _it_ could speak.
_Fugitive slaves_ were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I
had the advantage of being a “bran new fact”--the first one out. Up
to that time, a colored man was deemed a fool who confessed himself
a runaway slave, not only because of the danger to which he exposed
himself of being retaken, but because it was a confession of a very
low origin. Some of my colored friends in New Bedford thought very
badly of my wisdom in thus exposing and degrading myself. The only
precaution I took at the beginning, to prevent Master Thomas from
knowing where I was and what I was about, was the withholding my
former name, my master’s name, and the name of the State and county
from which I came. During the first three or four months my speeches
were almost exclusively made up of narrations of my own personal
experience as a slave. “Let us have the facts,” said the people. So
also said Friend George Foster, who always wished to pin me down to
my simple narrative. “Give us the facts,” said Collins, “we will take
care of the philosophy.” Just here arose some embarrassment. It was
impossible for me to repeat the same old story, month after month, and
to keep up my interest in it. It was new to the people, it is true,
but it was an old story to me; and to go through with it night after
night, was a task altogether too mechanical for my nature. “Tell your
story, Frederick,” would whisper my revered friend, Mr. Garrison, as I
stepped upon the platform. I could not always follow the injunction,
for I was now reading and thinking. New views of the subject were being
presented to my mind. It did not entirely satisfy me to _narrate_
wrongs; I felt like _denouncing_ them. I could not always curb my
moral indignation for the perpetrators of slaveholding villainy, long
enough for a circumstantial statement of the facts which I felt almost
sure everybody must know. Besides, I was growing, and needed room.
“People won’t believe you ever was a slave, Frederick, if you keep on
this way,” said friend Foster. “Be yourself,” said Collins, “and tell
your story.” “Better have a little of the plantation speech than not,”
it was said to me; “it is not best that you seem too learned.” These
excellent friends were actuated by the best of motives, and were not
altogether wrong in their advice; and still I must speak just the word
that seemed to _me_ the word to be spoken _by_ me.
At last the apprehended trouble came. People doubted if I had ever
been a slave. They said I did not talk like a slave, look like a
slave, nor act like a slave, and that they believed I had never been
south of Mason and Dixon’s line. “He don’t tell us where he came
from--what his master’s name was, nor how he got away; besides he is
educated, and is, in this, a contradiction of all the facts we have
concerning the ignorance of the slaves.” Thus I was in a pretty fair
way to be denounced as an impostor. The committee of the Massachusetts
Anti-Slavery Society knew all the facts in my case, and agreed with me
thus far in the prudence of keeping them private; but going down the
aisles of the churches in which my meetings were held, and hearing the
out-spoken Yankees repeatedly saying, “He’s never been a slave, I’ll
warrant you,” I resolved to dispel all doubt at no distant day, by such
a revelation of facts as could not be made by any other than a genuine
fugitive. In a little less than four years, therefore, after becoming a
public lecturer, I was induced to write out the leading facts connected
with my experience in slavery, giving names of persons, places, and
dates--thus putting it in the power of any who doubted to ascertain
the truth or falsehood of my story. This statement soon became known in
Maryland, and I had reason to believe that an effort would be made to
recapture me.
It is not probable that any open attempt to secure me as a slave
could have succeeded, further than the obtainment, by my master, of
the money value of my bones and sinews. Fortunately for me, in the
four years of my labors in the abolition cause, I had gained many
friends who would have suffered themselves to be taxed to almost any
extent to save me from slavery. It was felt that I had committed the
double offense of running away and exposing the secrets and crimes of
slavery and slaveholders. There was a double motive for seeking my
re-enslavement--avarice and vengeance; and while, as I have said,
there was little probability of successful recapture, if attempted
openly, I was constantly in danger of being spirited away at a moment
when my friends could render me no assistance. In traveling about
from place to place, often alone, I was much exposed to this sort of
attack. Any one cherishing the design to betray me, could easily do so
by simply tracing my whereabouts through the anti-slavery journals,
for my movements and meetings were made through these in advance. My
friends, Mr. Garrison and Mr. Phillips, had no faith in the power of
Massachusetts to protect me in my right to liberty. Public sentiment
and the law, in their opinion, would hand me over to the tormentors.
Mr. Phillips especially considered me in danger, and said when I
showed him the manuscript of my story, if in my place, he would “throw
it into the fire.” Thus the reader will observe that the overcoming
one difficulty only opened the way for another; and that though I
had reached a free State, and had attained a position for public
usefulness, I was still under the liability of losing all I had gained.
CHAPTER IV.
RECOLLECTIONS OF OLD FRIENDS.
Work in Rhode Island--Dorr War--Recollections of old friends--
Further labors in Rhode Island and elsewhere in New England.
In the State of Rhode Island, under the leadership of Thomas W. Dorr,
an effort was made in 1841 to set aside the old colonial charter,
under which that State had lived and flourished since the Revolution,
and to replace it with a new constitution having such improvements
as it was thought that time and experience had shown to be wise and
necessary. This new constitution was especially framed to enlarge
the bases of representation so far as the white people of the State
were concerned--to abolish an odious property qualification, and to
confine the right of suffrage to white male citizens only. Mr. Dorr
was himself a well-meaning man, and, after his fashion, a man of broad
and progressive views, quite in advance of the party with which he
acted. To gain their support, he consented to this restriction to a
class, a right which ought to be enjoyed by all citizens. In this he
consulted policy rather than right, and at last shared the fate of
all compromisers and trimmers, for he was disastrously defeated. The
proscriptive features of his constitution shocked the sense of right
and roused the moral indignation of the abolitionists of the State, a
class which would otherwise have gladly coöperated with him, at the
same time that it did nothing to win support from the conservative
class which clung to the old charter. Anti-slavery men wanted a new
constitution, but they did not want a defective instrument which
required reform at the start. The result was that such men as William
M. Chase, Thomas Davis, George L. Clark, Asa Fairbanks, Alphonso
Janes, and others of Providence, the Perry brothers of Westerly, John
Brown and C. C. Eldridge of East Greenwich, Daniel Mitchell, William
Adams, and Robert Shove of Pawtucket, Peleg Clark, Caleb Kelton,
G. J. Adams, and the Anthonys and Goulds of Coventry and vicinity,
Edward Harris of Woonsocket, and other abolitionists of the State,
decided that the time had come when the people of Rhode Island might
be taught a more comprehensive gospel of human rights than had gotten
itself into this Dorr constitution. The public mind was awake, and
one class of its people at least was ready to work with us to the
extent of seeking to defeat the proposed constitution, though their
reasons for such work were far different from ours. Stephen S. Foster,
Parker Pillsbury, Abby Kelley, James Monroe, and myself, were called
into the State to advocate equal rights as against this narrow and
proscriptive constitution. The work to which we were invited was not
free from difficulty. The majority of the people were evidently with
the new constitution; even the word _white_ in it chimed well with the
popular prejudice against the colored race, and at the first helped to
make the movement popular. On the other hand, all the arguments which
the Dorr men could urge against a property qualification for suffrage
were equally cogent against a color qualification, and this was our
advantage. But the contest was intensely bitter and exciting. We were
as usual denounced as intermeddlers (carpet-bagger had not come into
use at that time) and were told to mind our own business, and the like,
a mode of defense common to men when called to account for mean and
discreditable conduct. Stephen S. Foster, Parker Pillsbury, and the
rest of us were not the kind of men to be ordered off by that sort of
opposition. We cared nothing for the Dorr party on the one hand, nor
the “law and order party” on the other. What we wanted, and what we
labored to obtain, was a constitution free from the narrow, selfish,
and senseless limitation of the word _white_. Naturally enough when
we said a strong and striking word against the Dorr Constitution the
conservatives were pleased and applauded, while the Dorr men were
disgusted and indignant. Foster and Pillsbury were like the rest of
us, young, strong, and at their best in this contest. The splendid
vehemence of the one, and the weird and terrible denunciations of the
other, never failed to stir up mobocratic wrath wherever they spoke.
Foster especially, was effective in this line. His theory was that he
must make converts or mobs. If neither came he charged it either to
his want of skill or his unfaithfulness. I was much with Mr. Foster
during the tour in Rhode Island, and though at times he seemed to me
extravagant and needlessly offensive in his manner of presenting his
ideas, yet take him for all in all, he was one of the most impressive
advocates the cause of the American slave ever had. No white man ever
made the black man’s cause more completely his own. Abby Kelley, since
Abby Kelley Foster, was perhaps the most successful of any of us. Her
youth and simple Quaker beauty combined with her wonderful earnestness,
her large knowledge and great logical power, bore down all opposition
in the end, wherever she spoke, though she was before pelted with foul
eggs, and no less foul words from the noisy mobs which attended us.
Monroe and I were less aggressive than either of our co-workers,
and of course did not provoke the same resistance. He at least, had
the eloquence that charms, and the skill that disarms. I think that
our labors in Rhode Island during this Dorr excitement did more to
abolitionize the State, than any previous, or subsequent work. It was
the “tide,” “taken at the flood.” One effect of those labors was to
induce the old “Law and Order” party, when it set about making its new
constitution, to avoid the narrow folly of the Dorrites, and make a
constitution which should not abridge any man’s rights on account of
race or color. Such a constitution was finally adopted.
Owing perhaps to my efficiency in this campaign I was for a while
employed in farther labors in Rhode Island by the State Anti-Slavery
Society, and made there many friends to my cause as well as to myself.
As a class the abolitionists of this State partook of the spirit of
its founder. They had their own opinions, were independent, and called
no man master. I have reason to remember them most gratefully. They
received me as a man and a brother, when I was new from the house
of bondage, and had few of the graces derived from free and refined
society. They took me with earnest hand to their homes and hearths,
and made me feel that though I wore the burnished livery of the sun I
was still a countryman and kinsman of whom they were never ashamed. I
can never forget the Clarks, Keltons, Chaces, Browns, Adams, Greenes,
Sissons, Eldredges, Mitchells, Shoves, Anthonys, Applins, Janes,
Goulds, and Fairbanks, and many others.
While thus remembering the noble anti-slavery men and women of Rhode
Island, I do not forget that I suffered much rough usage within her
borders. It was like all the northern States at that time, under
the influence of slave power, and often showed a proscription and
persecuting spirit, especially upon its railways, steamboats, and
public houses. The Stonington route was a “hard road” for a colored
man “to travel” in that day. I was several times dragged from the cars
for the _crime_ of being colored. On the Sound between New York and
Stonington, there were the same proscriptions which I have before named
as enforced on the steamboats running between New York and Newport.
No colored man was allowed abaft the wheel, and in all seasons of the
year, in heat or cold, wet or dry, the deck was his only place. If I
would lie down at night I must do so upon the freight on deck, and
this in cold weather was not a very comfortable bed. When traveling in
company with my white friends I always urged them to leave me and go
into the cabin and take their comfortable berths. I saw no reason why
they should be miserable because I was. Some of them took my advice
very readily. I confess, however, that while I was entirely honest in
urging them to go, and saw no principle that should bind them to stay
and suffer with me, I always felt a little nearer to those who did not
take my advice and persisted in sharing my hardships with me.
There is something in the world above fixed rules and the logic of
right and wrong, and there is some foundation for recognizing works,
which may be called works of supererogation. Wendell Phillips, James
Monroe, and William White, were always dear to me for their nice
feeling at this point. I have known James Monroe to pull his coat
about him and crawl upon the cotton bales between decks and pass the
night with me, without a murmur. Wendell Phillips would never go into
a first-class car while I was forced into what was called the Jim Crow
car. True men they were, who could accept welcome at no man’s table
where I was refused. I speak of these gentlemen, not as singular or
exceptional cases, but as representatives of a large class of the early
workers for the abolition of slavery. As a general rule there was
little difficulty in obtaining suitable places in New England after
1840, where I could plead the cause of my people. The abolitionists had
passed the Red Sea of mobs, and had conquered the right to a respectful
hearing. I, however, found several towns in which the people closed
their doors and refused to entertain the subject. Notably among these
was Hartford, Conn., and Grafton, Mass. In the former place Messrs.
Garrison, Hudson, Foster, Abby Kelley, and myself determined to hold
our meetings under the open sky, which we did in a little court under
the eaves of the “sanctuary” ministered unto by the Rev. Dr. Hawes,
with much satisfaction to ourselves, and I think with advantage to
our cause. In Grafton I was alone, and there was neither house, hall,
church, nor market-place in which I could speak to the people, but
_determined to speak_ I went to the hotel and borrowed a dinner bell
with which in hand I passed through the principal streets, ringing the
bell and crying out, “_Notice!_ Frederick Douglass, recently a slave,
will lecture on American Slavery, on Grafton Common, this evening at 7
o’clock. Those who would like to hear of the workings of slavery by one
of the slaves are respectfully invited to attend.” This notice brought
out a large audience, after which the largest church in town was open
to me. Only in one instance was I compelled to pursue this course
thereafter, and that was in Manchester, N. H., and my labors there were
followed by similar results. When people found that I would be heard,
they saw it was the part of wisdom to open the way for me.
My treatment in the use of public conveyances about these times was
extremely rough, especially on the “Eastern Railroad, from Boston to
Portland.” On that road, as on many others, there was a mean, dirty,
and uncomfortable car set apart for colored travelers, called the “Jim
Crow” car. Regarding this as the fruit of slaveholding prejudice, and
being determined to fight the spirit of slavery wherever I might find
it, I resolved to avoid this car, though it sometimes required some
courage to do so. The colored people generally accepted the situation,
and complained of me as making matters worse rather than better by
refusing to submit to this proscription. I, however, persisted, and
sometimes was soundly beaten by conductor and brakeman. On one occasion
six of these “fellows of the baser sort,” under the direction of the
conductor, set out to eject me from my seat. As usual, I had purchased
a first-class ticket, and paid the required sum for it, and on the
requirement of the conductor to leave refused to do so, when he called
on these men “to snake me out.” They attempted to obey with an air
which plainly told me they relished the job. They, however, found me
_much attached_ to my seat, and in removing me I tore away two or
three of the surrounding ones, on which I held with a firm grasp,
and did the car no service in some other respects. I was strong and
muscular, and the seats were not then so firmly attached or of as solid
make as now. The result was that Stephen A. Chase, superintendent of
the road, ordered all passenger trains to pass through Lynn (where I
then lived) without stopping. This was a great inconvenience to the
people, large numbers of whom did business in Boston, and at other
points of the road. Led on, however, by James N. Buffum, Jonathan
Buffum, Christopher Robinson, William Bassett, and others, the people
of Lynn stood bravely by me, and denounced the railroad management in
emphatic terms. Mr. Chase made reply that a railroad corporation was
neither a religious nor reformatory body; that the road was run for
the accommodation of the public, and that _it_ required the exclusion
of colored people from its cars. With an air of triumph he told us
that we ought not to expect a railroad company to be better than the
evangelical church, and that until the churches abolished the “negro
pew,” we ought not to expect the railroad company to abolish the negro
car. This argument was certainly good enough as against the church,
but good for nothing as against the demands of justice and equality.
My old and dear friend, J. N. Buffum, made a point against the company
that they “often allowed dogs and monkeys to ride in first-class cars,
and yet excluded a man like Frederick Douglass!” In a very few years
this barbarous practice was put away, and I think there have been no
instances of such exclusion during the past thirty years; and colored
people now, everywhere in New England, ride upon equal terms with other
passengers.
CHAPTER V.
ONE HUNDRED CONVENTIONS.
Anti-slavery conventions held in parts of New England, and in some of
the Middle and Western States--Mobs--Incidents, etc.
The year 1843 was one of remarkable anti-slavery activity. The New
England Anti-Slavery Society at its annual meeting, held in the spring
of that year, resolved, under the auspices of Mr. Garrison and his
friends, to hold a series of one hundred conventions. The territory
embraced in this plan for creating anti-slavery sentiment included New
Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. I had
the honor to be chosen one of the agents to assist in these proposed
conventions, and I never entered upon any work with more heart and
hope. All that the American people needed, I thought, was light. Could
they know slavery as I knew it, they would hasten to the work of its
extinction. The corps of speakers who were to be associated with me in
carrying on these conventions were Messrs. George Bradburn, John A.
Collins, James Monroe, William A. White, Charles L. Remond, and Sydney
Howard Gay. They were all masters of the subject, and some of them able
and eloquent orators. It was a piece of great good fortune to me, only
a few years from slavery as I was, to be brought into contact with such
men. It was a real campaign, and required nearly six months for its
accomplishment.
Those who only know the State of Vermont as it is to-day, can hardly
understand, and must wonder that there was need for anti-slavery effort
within its borders forty years ago. Our first convention was held
in Middlebury, its chief seat of learning, and the home of William
Slade, who was for years the co-worker with John Quincy Adams in
Congress; and yet in this town the opposition to our anti-slavery
convention was intensely bitter and violent. The only man of note in
the town whom I now remember as giving us sympathy or welcome was
Mr. Edward Barber, who was a man of courage as well as ability, and
did his best to make our convention a success. In advance of our
arrival, the college students had very industriously and mischievously
placarded the town with violent aspersions of our characters, and the
grossest misrepresentations of our principles, measures, and objects.
I was described as an escaped convict from the State Prison, and
the other speakers were assailed not less slanderously. Few people
attended our meeting, and apparently little was accomplished by it.
In the neighboring town of Ferrisburgh the case was different and
more favorable. The way had been prepared for us by such stalwart
anti-slavery workers as Orson S. Murray, Charles C. Burleigh, Rowland
T. Robinson, and others. Upon the whole, however, the several towns
visited showed that Vermont was surprisingly under the influence of
the slave power. Her proud boast that no slave had ever been delivered
up to his master within her borders did not hinder her hatred to
_anti_-slavery. What was true of the Green Mountain State in this
respect, was most discouragingly true of New York, the State next
visited. All along the Erie canal, from Albany to Buffalo, there
was apathy, indifference, aversion, and sometimes mobocratic spirit
evinced. Even Syracuse, afterwards the home of the humane Samuel J.
May, and the scene of the “Jerry rescue,” where Gerrit Smith, Beriah
Greene, William Goodell, Alvin Stewart, and other able men since taught
their noblest lessons, would not at that time furnish us with church,
market, house, or hall in which to hold our meetings. Discovering this
state of things, some of our number were disposed to turn our backs
upon the town, and shake its dust from our feet, but of these, I am
glad to say, I was not one. I had somewhere read of a command to go
into the hedges and highways and compel men to come in. Mr. Stephen
Smith, under whose hospitable roof we were made at home, thought as
I did. It would be easy to silence anti-slavery agitation if refusing
its agents the use of halls and churches could effect that result.
The house of our friend Smith stood on the southwest corner of the
park, which was well covered with young trees, too small to furnish
shade or shelter, but better than none. Taking my stand under a small
tree, in the southeast corner of this park, I began to speak in the
morning to an audience of five persons, and before the close of my
afternoon meeting I had before me not less than five hundred. In the
evening I was waited upon by officers of the Congregational church, and
tendered the use of an old wooden building, which they had deserted
for a better, but still owned; and here our convention was continued
during three days. I believe there has been no trouble to find places
in Syracuse in which to hold anti-slavery meetings since. I never go
there without endeavoring to see that tree, which, like the cause it
sheltered, has grown large and strong and imposing.
I believe my first offence against our Anti-Slavery Israel was
committed during these Syracuse meetings. It was on this wise: Our
general agent, John A. Collins, had recently returned from England
full of communistic ideas, which ideas would do away with individual
property, and have all things in common. He had arranged a corps
of speakers of his communistic persuasion, consisting of John O.
Wattles, Nathaniel Whiting, and John Orvis, to follow our anti-slavery
conventions, and while our meeting was in progress in Syracuse, a
meeting, as the reader will observe, obtained under much difficulty,
Mr. Collins came in with his new friends and doctrines, and proposed
to adjourn our anti-slavery discussions and take up the subject of
communism. To this I ventured to object. I held that it was imposing
an additional burden of unpopularity on our cause, and an act of bad
faith with the people, who paid the salary of Mr. Collins, and were
responsible for these hundred conventions. Strange to say, my course
in this matter did not meet the approval of Mrs. M. W. Chapman, an
influential member of the board of managers of the Massachusetts
Anti-Slavery Society, and called out a sharp reprimand from her, for
my insubordination to my superiors. This was a strange and distressing
revelation to me, and one of which I was not soon relieved. I thought I
had only done my duty, and I think so still. The chief reason for the
reprimand was the use which the liberty party papers would make of my
seeming rebellion against the commanders of our Anti-Slavery Army.
In the growing city of Rochester we had in every way a better
reception. Abolitionists of all shades of opinion were broad enough to
give the Garrisonians (for such we were) a hearing. Samuel D. Porter
and the Avery family, though they belonged to the Gerrit Smith, Myron
Holly, and William Goodell school, were not so narrow as to refuse
us the use of their church for the convention. They heard our moral
suasion arguments, and in a manly way met us in debate. We were opposed
to carrying the anti-slavery cause to the ballot-box, and they believed
in carrying it there. They looked at slavery as a creature of _law_; we
regarded it as a creature of public opinion. It is surprising how small
the difference appears as I look back to it, over the space of forty
years; yet at the time of it this difference was immense.
During our stay at Rochester we were hospitably entertained by Isaac
and Amy Post, two people of all-abounding benevolence, the truest and
best of Long Island and Elias Hicks Quakers. They were not more amiable
than brave, for they never seemed to ask, What will the world say? but
walked straight forward in what seemed to them the line of duty, please
or offend whomsoever it might. Many a poor fugitive slave found shelter
under their roof when such shelter was hard to find elsewhere, and I
mention them here in the warmth and fullness of earnest gratitude.
Pleased with our success in Rochester, we--that is Mr. Bradburn and
myself--made our way to Buffalo, then a rising city of steamboats,
bustle, and business. Buffalo was too busy to attend to such matters as
we had in hand. Our friend, Mr. Marsh, had been able to secure for our
convention only an old delapidated and deserted room, formerly used as
a post-office. We went at the time appointed, and found seated a few
cabmen in their coarse, every-day clothes, whips in hand, while their
teams were standing on the street waiting for a job. Friend Bradburn
looked around upon this unpromising audience, and turned upon his heel,
saying he would not speak to “such a set of ragamuffins,” and took
the first steamer to Cleveland, the home of his brother Charles, and
left me to “do” Buffalo alone. For nearly a week I spoke every day in
this old post-office to audiences constantly increasing in numbers and
respectability, till the Baptist church was thrown open to me; and when
this became too small I went on Sunday into the open Park and addressed
an assembly of four or five thousand persons. After this my colored
friends, Charles L. Remond, Henry Highland Garnett, Theodore S. Wright,
Amos G. Beaman, Charles M. Ray, and other well-known colored men, held
a convention here, and then Remond and myself left for our next meeting
in Clinton county, Ohio. This was held under a great shed, built by the
abolitionists, of whom Dr. Abram Brook and Valentine Nicholson were
the most noted, for this special purpose. Thousands gathered here and
were addressed by Bradburn, White, Monroe, Remond, Gay, and myself.
The influence of this meeting was deep and widespread. It would be
tedious to tell of all, or a small part of all that was interesting and
illustrative of the difficulties encountered by the early advocates of
anti-slavery in connection with this campaign, and hence I leave this
part of it at once.
From Ohio we divided our forces and went into Indiana. At our first
meeting we were mobbed, and some of us got our good clothes spoiled by
evil-smelling eggs. This was at Richmond, where Henry Clay had been
recently invited to the high seat of the Quaker meeting-house just
after his gross abuse of Mr. Mendenhall, because of his presenting
him a respectful petition, asking him to emancipate his slaves. At
Pendleton this mobocratic spirit was even more pronounced. It was found
impossible to obtain a building in which to hold our convention, and
our friends, Dr. Fussell and others, erected a platform in the woods,
where quite a large audience assembled. Mr. Bradburn, Mr. White, and
myself were in attendance. As soon as we began to speak a mob of
about sixty of the roughest characters I ever looked upon ordered us,
through its leaders, to “be silent,” threatening us, if we were not,
with violence. We attempted to dissuade them, but they had not come to
parley but to fight, and were well armed. They tore down the platform
on which we stood, assaulted Mr. White and knocking out several of his
teeth, dealt a heavy blow on William A. White, striking him on the
back part of the head, badly cutting his scalp and felling him to the
ground. Undertaking to fight my way through the crowd with a stick
which I caught up in the mêlée, I attracted the fury of the mob, which
laid me prostrate on the ground under a torrent of blows. Leaving me
thus, with my right hand broken, and in a state of unconsciousness,
the mobocrats hastily mounted their horses and rode to Andersonville,
where most of them resided. I was soon raised up and revived by Neal
Hardy, a kind-hearted member of the Society of Friends, and carried by
him in his wagon about three miles in the country to his home, where I
was tenderly nursed and bandaged by good Mrs. Hardy till I was again
on my feet, but as the bones broken were not properly set my hand has
never recovered its natural strength and dexterity. We lingered long in
Indiana, and the good effects of our labors there are felt at this day.
I have lately visited Pendleton, now one of the best republican towns
in the State, and looked again upon the spot where I was beaten down,
and have again taken by the hand some of the witnesses of that scene,
amongst whom was the kind, good lady--Mrs. Hardy--who, so like the
good Samaritan of old, bound up my wounds, and cared for me so kindly.
A complete history of these hundred conventions would fill a volume
far larger than the one in which this simple reference is to find a
place. It would be a grateful duty to speak of the noble young men, who
forsook ease and pleasure, as did White, Gay, and Monroe, and endured
all manner of privations in the cause of the enslaved and down-trodden
of my race. Gay, Monroe, and myself are the only ones who participated
as agents in the one hundred conventions who now survive. Mr. Monroe
was for many years consul to Brazil, and has since been a faithful
member of Congress from the Oberlin District, Ohio, and has filled
other important positions in his State. Mr. Gay was managing editor of
the _National Anti-Slavery Standard_, and afterwards of the New York
_Tribune_, and still later of the New York _Evening Post_.
[Illustration: FIGHTING THE MOB IN INDIANA.]
CHAPTER VI.
IMPRESSIONS ABROAD.
Danger to be averted--A refuge sought abroad--Voyage on the steamship
Cambria--Refusal of first-class passage--Attractions of the
forecastle-deck--Hutchinson family--Invited to make a speech--
Southerners feel insulted--Captain threatens to put them in irons--
Experiences abroad--Attentions received--Impressions of different
members of Parliament, and of other public men--Contrast with life
in America--Kindness of friends--Their purchase of my person, and
the gift of the same to myself--My return.
As I have before intimated, the publishing of my “Narrative” was
regarded by my friends with mingled feelings of satisfaction and
apprehension. They were glad to have the doubts and insinuations which
the advocates and apologists of slavery had made against me proved to
the world to be false, but they had many fears lest this very proof
would endanger my safety, and make it necessary for me to leave a
position which in a signal manner had opened before me, and one in
which I had thus far been efficient in assisting to arouse the moral
sentiment of the community against a system which had deprived me, in
common with my fellow-slaves, of all the attributes of manhood.
I became myself painfully alive to the liability which surrounded me,
and which might at any moment scatter all my proud hopes, and return
me to a doom worse than death. It was thus I was led to seek a refuge
in monarchial England, from the dangers of republican slavery. A rude,
uncultivated fugitive slave, I was driven to that country to which
American young gentlemen go to increase their stock of knowledge--to
seek pleasure, and to have their rough democratic manners softened by
contact with English aristocratic refinement.
My friend, James N. Buffum of Lynn, Mass., who was to accompany me,
applied on board the steamer Cambria, of the Cunard line, for tickets,
and was told that I could not be received as a cabin passenger.
American prejudice against color had triumphed over British liberality
and civilization, and had erected a color test as condition for
crossing the sea in the cabin of a British vessel.
The insult was keenly felt by my white friends, but to me such insults
were so frequent, and expected, that it was of no great consequence
whether I went in the cabin or in the steerage. Moreover, I felt that
if I could not go in the first cabin, first cabin passengers could
come in the second cabin, and in this thought I was not mistaken, as
I soon found myself an object of more general interest than I wished
to be, and, so far from being degraded by being placed in the second
cabin, that part of the ship became the scene of as much pleasure
and refinement as the cabin itself. The Hutchinson family from New
Hampshire--sweet singers of anti-slavery and the “good time coming”--
were fellow-passengers, and often came to my rude forecastle-deck
and sang their sweetest songs, making the place eloquent with music
and alive with spirited conversation. They not only visited me, but
invited me to visit them; and in two days after leaving Boston one
part of the ship was about as free to me as another. My visits there,
however, were but seldom. I preferred to live within my privileges,
and keep upon my own premises. This course was quite as much in accord
with good policy as with my own feelings. The effect was that with the
majority of the passengers all color distinctions were flung to the
winds, and I found myself treated with every mark of respect from the
beginning to the end of the voyage, except in one single instance;
and in that I came near being mobbed for complying with an invitation
given me by the passengers and the captain of the Cambria to deliver
a lecture on slavery. There were several young men--passengers from
Georgia and New Orleans; and they were pleased to regard my lecture as
an insult offered to them, and swore I should not speak. They went so
far as to threaten to throw me overboard, and but for the firmness of
Captain Judkins, they would probably, under the inspiration of slavery
and brandy, have attempted to put their threats into execution. I
have no space to describe this scene, although its tragic and comic
features are well worth description. An end was put to the _mêlee_
by the captain’s call to the ship’s company to put the salt-water
mobocrats in irons, at which determined order the gentlemen of the lash
scampered, and for the remainder of the voyage conducted themselves
very decorously.
This incident of the voyage brought me, within two days after landing
at Liverpool, before the British public. The gentlemen so promptly
withheld in their attempted violence toward me flew to the press to
justify their conduct, and to denounce me as a worthless and insolent
negro. This course was even less wise than the conduct it was intended
to sustain; for, besides awakening something like a national interest
in me, and securing me an audience, it brought out counter statements,
and threw the blame upon themselves which they had sought to fasten
upon me and the gallant captain of the ship.
My visit to England did much for me every way. Not the least among the
many advantages derived from it was in the opportunity it afforded me
of becoming acquainted with educated people, and of seeing and hearing
many of the most distinguished men of that country. My friend, Mr.
Wendell Phillips, knowing something of my appreciation of orators and
oratory, had said to me before leaving Boston: “Although Americans are
generally better speakers than Englishmen, you will find in England
individual orators superior to the best of ours.” I do not know that
Mr. Phillips was quite just to himself in this remark, for I found in
England few, if any, superior to him in the gift of speech. When I went
to England that country was in the midst of a tremendous agitation. The
people were divided by two great questions of “Repeal;”--the repeal of
the corn laws, and the repeal of the union between England and Ireland.
Debate ran high in Parliament, and among the people everywhere,
especially concerning the corn laws. Two powerful interests of the
country confronted each other: one venerable from age, and the other
young, stalwart, and growing. Both strove for ascendancy. Conservatism
united for retaining the corn laws, while the rising power of commerce
and manufactures demanded repeal. It was interest against interest, but
something more and deeper: for, while there was aggrandizement of the
landed aristocracy on the one side, there was famine and pestilence
on the other. Of the anti-corn law movement, Richard Cobden and John
Bright, both then members of Parliament, were the leaders. They
were the rising statesmen of England, and possessed a very friendly
disposition toward America. Mr. Bright, who is now Right Honorable John
Bright, and occupies a high place in the British Cabinet, was friendly
to the loyal and progressive spirit which abolished our slavery and
saved our country from dismemberment. I have seen and heard both of
these great men, and, if I may be allowed so much egotism, I may say
I was acquainted with both of them. I was, besides, a welcome guest
at the house of Mr. Bright, in Rochdale, and treated as a friend and
brother among his brothers and sisters. Messrs. Cobden and Bright were
well-matched leaders. One was in large measure the complement of the
other. They were spoken of usually as Cobden and Bright, but there was
no reason, except that Cobden was the elder of the two, why their names
might not have been reversed.
They were about equally fitted for their respective parts in the great
movement of which they were the distinguished leaders, and neither was
likely to encroach upon the work of the other. The contrast was quite
marked in their persons as well as in their oratory. The powerful
speeches of the one, as they traveled together over the country,
heightened the effect of the speeches of the other, so that their
difference was about as effective for good as was their agreement. Mr.
Cobden--for an Englishman--was lean, tall, and slightly sallow, and
might have been taken for an American or Frenchman. Mr. Bright was,
in the broadest sense, an Englishman, abounding in all the physical
perfections peculiar to his countrymen--full, round, and ruddy. Cobden
had dark eyes and hair, a well-formed head, high above his shoulders,
and, when sitting quiet, had a look of sadness and fatigue. In the
House of Commons, he often sat with one hand supporting his head.
Bright appeared the very opposite in this and other respects. His eyes
were blue, his hair light, his head massive, and firmly set upon his
shoulders, suggesting immense energy and determination. In his oratory
Mr. Cobden was cool, candid, deliberate, straight-forward, yet at times
slightly hesitating. Bright, on the other hand, was fervid, fluent,
rapid; always ready in thought or word. Mr. Cobden was full of facts
and figures, dealing in statistics by the hour. Mr. Bright was full of
wit, knowledge, and pathos, and possessed amazing power of expression.
One spoke to the cold, calculating side of the British nation, which
asks “if the new idea will pay?” The other spoke to the infinite side
of human nature--the side which asks, first of all, “is it right? is
it just? is it humane?” Wherever these two great men appeared, the
people assembled in thousands. They could, at an hour’s notice, pack
the town hall of Birmingham, which would hold seven thousand persons,
or the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, and Covent Garden theater,
London, each of which was capable of holding eight thousand.
One of the first attentions shown me by these gentlemen was to make me
welcome at the Free Trade club in London.
I was not long in England before a crisis was reached in the anti-corn
law movement. The announcement that Sir Robert Peel, then prime
minister of England, had become a convert to the views of Messrs.
Cobden and Bright, came upon the country with startling effect, and
formed the turning-point in the anti-corn law question. Sir Robert had
been the strong defense of the landed aristocracy of England, and his
defection left them without a competent leader, and just here came
the opportunity for Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, the Hebrew--since Lord
Beaconsfield. To him it was in public affairs, the “tide which led on
to fortune.” With a bitterness unsurpassed, he had been denounced by
reason of his being a Jew, as a lineal descendant of the thief on the
cross. But now his time had come, and he was not the man to permit it
to pass unimproved. For the first time, it seems, he conceived the idea
of placing himself at the head of a great party, and thus become the
chief defender of the landed aristocracy. The way was plain. He was to
transcend all others in effective denunciation of Sir Robert Peel, and
surpass all others in zeal. His ability was equal to the situation, and
the world knows the result of his ambition. I watched him narrowly when
I saw him in the House of Commons, but I saw and heard nothing there
that foreshadowed the immense space he at last came to fill in the mind
of his country and the world. He had nothing of the grace and warmth
of Peel in debate, and his speeches were better in print than when
listened to,--yet when he spoke, all eyes were fixed, and all ears
attent. Despite all his ability and power, however, as the defender
of the landed interests of England, his cause was already lost. The
increasing power of the anti-corn law league--the burden of the tax
upon bread, the cry of distress coming from famine-stricken Ireland,
and the adhesion of Peel to the views of Cobden and Bright made the
repeal of the corn laws speedy and certain.
The repeal of the union between England and Ireland was not so
fortunate. It is still, under one name or another, the cherished hope
and inspiration of her sons. It stands little better or stronger than
it did six and thirty years ago, when its greatest advocate, Daniel
O’Connell, welcomed me to Ireland, and to “Conciliation Hall,” and
where I first had a specimen of his truly wondrous eloquence. Until
I heard this man, I had thought that the story of his oratory and
power were greatly exaggerated. I did not see how a man could speak
to twenty or thirty thousand people at one time, and be heard by
any considerable number of them; but the mystery was solved when
I saw his vast person, and heard his musical voice. His eloquence
came down upon the vast assembly like a summer thunder-shower upon
a dusty road. He could stir the multitude at will, to a tempest of
wrath, or reduce it to the silence with which a mother leaves the
cradle-side of her sleeping babe. Such tenderness--such pathos--
such world-embracing love! and, on the other hand, such indignation--
such fiery and thunderous denunciation, and such wit and humor, I
never heard surpassed, if equaled, at home or abroad. He held Ireland
within the grasp of his strong hand, and could lead it withersoever he
would, for Ireland believed in him and loved him, as she has loved and
believed in no leader since. In Dublin, when he had been absent from
that city a few weeks, I saw him followed through Sackwell street by a
multitude of little boys and girls, shouting in loving accents: “There
goes Dan! there goes Dan!” while he looked at the ragged and shoeless
crowd with the kindly air of a loving parent returning to his gleeful
children. He was called “The Liberator,” and not without cause; for,
though he failed to effect the repeal of the union between England and
Ireland, he fought out the battle of Catholic emancipation, and was
clearly the friend of liberty the world over. In introducing me to
an immense audience in Conciliation Hall, he playfully called me the
“Black O’Connell of the United States;” nor did he let the occasion
pass without his usual word of denunciation of our slave system. O. A.
Brownson had then recently become a Catholic, and taking advantage
of his new Catholic audience, in “Brownson’s _Review_,” had charged
O’Connell with attacking American institutions. In reply, Mr. O’Connell
said: “I am charged with attacking American institutions, as slavery is
called; I am not ashamed of this attack. My sympathy is not confined to
the narrow limits of my own green Ireland; my spirit walks abroad upon
sea and land, and wherever there is oppression, I hate the oppressor,
and wherever the tyrant rears his head, I will deal my bolts upon it;
and wherever there is sorrow and suffering, there is my spirit to
succor and relieve.” No trans-atlantic statesman bore a testimony more
marked and telling against the crime and curse of slavery than did
Daniel O’Connell. He would shake the hand of no slaveholder, nor allow
himself to be introduced to one, if he knew him to be such. When the
friends of repeal in the Southern States sent him money with which to
carry on his work, he, with ineffable scorn, refused the bribe, and
sent back what he considered the blood-stained offering, saying he
would “never purchase the freedom of Ireland with the price of slaves.”
It was not long after my seeing Mr. O’Connell that his health broke
down, and his career ended in death. I felt that a great champion of
freedom had fallen, and that the cause of the American slave, not less
than the cause of his country, had met with a great loss. All the more
was this felt when I saw the kind of men who came to the front when the
voice of O’Connell was no longer heard in Ireland. He was succeeded by
the Duffys, Mitchells, Meagher, and others,--men who loved liberty for
themselves and their country, but were utterly destitute of sympathy
with the cause of liberty in countries other than their own. One of the
first utterances of John Mitchell on reaching this country, from his
exile and bondage, was a wish for a “slave plantation, well stocked
with slaves.”
Besides hearing Cobden, Bright, Peel, Disraeli, O’Connell, Lord John
Russell, and other Parliamentary debaters, it was my good fortune
to hear Lord Brougham when nearly at his best. He was then a little
over sixty, and that for a British statesman is not considered old;
and in his case there were thirty years of life still before him. He
struck me as the most wonderful speaker of them all. How he was ever
reported I cannot imagine. Listening to him was like standing near the
track of a railway train, drawn by a locomotive at the rate of forty
miles an hour. You were riveted to the spot, charmed with the sublime
spectacle of speed and power, but could give no description of the
carriages, nor of the passengers at the windows. There was so much
to see and hear, and so little time left the beholder and hearer to
note particulars, that when this strange man sat down you felt like
one who had hastily passed through the wildering wonders of a world’s
exhibition. On the occasion of my listening to him, his speech was on
the postal relations of England with the outside world, and he seemed
to have a perfect knowledge of the postal arrangements of every nation
in Europe, and, indeed, in the whole universe. He possessed the great
advantage so valuable to a Parliamentary debater, of being able to make
all interruptions serve the purposes of his thought and speech, and
carry on a dialogue with several persons without interrupting the rapid
current of his reasoning. I had more curiosity to see and hear this man
than any other in England, and he more than fulfilled my expectations.
While in England, I saw few literary celebrities, except William and
Mary Howitt, and Sir John Bowering. I was invited to breakfast by the
latter in company with Wm. Lloyd Garrison, and spent a delightful
morning with him, chiefly as a listener to their conversation. Sir John
was a poet, a statesman, and a diplomat, and had represented England
as minister to China. He was full of interesting information, and had
a charming way of imparting his knowledge. The conversation was about
slavery, and about China, and as my knowledge was very slender about
the “Flowery Kingdom,” and its people, I was greatly interested in Sir
John’s description of the ideas and manners prevailing among them.
According to him, the doctrine of substitution was carried so far in
that country that men sometimes procured others to suffer even the
penalty of death in their stead. Justice seemed not intent upon the
punishment of the actual criminal, if only somebody was punished when
the law was violated.
William and Mary Howitt were among the kindliest people I ever met.
Their interest in America, and their well-known testimonies against
slavery, made me feel much at home with them at their house in that
part of London known as Clapham. Whilst stopping here, I met the
Swedish poet and author--Hans Christian Anderson. He, like myself, was
a guest, spending a few days. I saw but little of him, though under the
same roof. He was singular in his appearance, and equally singular in
his silence. His mind seemed to me all the while turned inwardly. He
walked about the beautiful garden as one might in a dream. The Howitts
had translated his works into English, and could of course address
him in his own language. Possibly his bad English and my destitution
of Swedish, may account for the fact of our mutual silence, and yet I
observed he was much the same towards every one. Mr. and Mrs. Howitt
were indefatigable writers. Two more industrious and kind-hearted
people did not breathe. With all their literary work, they always
had time to devote to strangers, and to all benevolent efforts, to
ameliorate the condition of the poor and needy. Quakers though they
were, they took deep interest in the Hutchinsons--Judson, John, Asa,
and Abby, who were much at their house during my stay there. Mrs.
Howitt not inaptly styled them a “_Band of young apostles_.” They sang
for the oppressed and the poor--for liberty and humanity.
Whilst in Edinburgh, so famous for its beauty, its educational
institutions, its literary men, and its history, I had a very intense
desire gratified--and that was to see and converse with George Combe,
the eminent mental philosopher, and author of “Combe’s Constitution of
Man,” a book which had been placed in my hands a few years before, by
Doctor Peleg Clark of Rhode Island, the reading of which had relieved
my path of many shadows. In company with George Thompson, James N.
Buffum, and William L. Garrison, I had the honor to be invited by Mr.
Combe to breakfast, and the occasion was one of the most delightful
I met in dear old Scotland. Of course in the presence of such men,
my part was a very subordinate one. I was a listener. Mr. Combe did
the most of the talking, and did it so well that nobody felt like
interposing a word, except so far as to draw him on. He discussed the
corn laws, and the proposal to reduce the hours of labor. He looked
at all political and social questions through his peculiar mental
science. His manner was remarkably quiet, and he spoke as not expecting
opposition to his views. Phrenology explained everything to him, from
the finite to the infinite. I look back to the morning spent with this
singularly clear-headed man with much satisfaction.
It would detain the reader too long, and make this volume too large, to
tell of the many kindnesses shown me while abroad, or even to mention
all the great and noteworthy persons who gave me a friendly hand and a
cordial welcome; but there is one other, now long gone to his rest, of
whom a few words must be spoken, and that one was Thomas Clarkson--the
last of the noble line of Englishmen who inaugurated the anti-slavery
movement for England and the civilized world--the life-long friend and
co-worker with Granville Sharpe, William Wilberforce, Thomas Fowell
Buxton, and other leaders in that great reform which has nearly put
an end to slavery in all parts of the globe. As in the case of George
Combe, I went to see Mr. Clarkson in company with Messrs. Garrison and
Thompson. They had by note advised him of our coming, and had received
one in reply, bidding us welcome. We found the venerable object of our
visit seated at a table, where he had been busily writing a letter to
America against slavery; for, though in his eighty-seventh year, he
continued to write. When we were presented to him, he rose to receive
us. The scene was impressive. It was the meeting of two centuries.
Garrison, Thompson, and myself were young men. After shaking hands
with my two distinguished friends, and giving them welcome, he took
one of my hands in both of his, and, in a tremulous voice, said, “God
bless you, Frederick Douglass! I have given sixty years of my life to
the emancipation of your people, and if I had sixty years more they
should all be given to the same cause.” Our stay was short with this
great-hearted old man. He was feeble, and our presence greatly excited
him, and we left the house with something of the feeling with which a
man takes final leave of a beloved friend at the edge of the grave.
Some notion may be formed of the difference in my feelings and
circumstances while abroad, from an extract from one of a series
of letters addressed by me to Mr. Garrison, and published in the
_Liberator_. It was written on the 1st day of January, 1846.
“_My Dear Friend Garrison_:
“Up to this time, I have given no direct expression of the views,
feelings, and opinions which I have formed respecting the character
and condition of the people of this land. I have refrained thus
purposely. I wish to speak advisedly, and, in order to do this, I
have waited till, I trust, experience has brought my opinion to
an intelligent maturity. I have been thus careful, not because I
think what I say will have much effect in shaping the opinions
of the world, but because what influence I may possess, whether
little or much, I wish to go in the right direction, and according
to truth. I hardly need say that in speaking of Ireland, I shall
be influenced by no prejudices in favor of America. I think my
circumstances all forbid that. I have no end to serve, no creed
to uphold, no government to defend; and as to nation, I belong
to none. I have no protection at home, or resting-place abroad.
The land of my birth welcomes me to her shores only as a slave,
and spurns with contempt the idea of treating me differently; so
that I am an outcast from the society of my childhood, and an
outlaw in the land of my birth. ‘I am a stranger with thee and a
sojourner, as all my fathers were.’ That men should be patriotic,
is to me perfectly natural; and as a philosophical fact, I am able
to give it an intellectual recognition. But no further can I go.
If ever I had any patriotism, or any capacity for the feeling,
it was whipped out of me long since by the lash of the American
soul-drivers. In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself
admiring her bright blue sky, her grand old woods, her fertile
fields, her beautiful rivers, her mighty lakes, and star-crowned
mountains. But my rapture is soon checked--my joy is soon turned
to mourning. When I remember that all is cursed with the infernal
spirit of slaveholding, robbery, and wrong; when I remember that
with the waters of her noblest rivers, the tears of my brethren
are borne to the ocean, disregarded and forgotten, and that her
most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged
sisters, I am filled with unutterable loathing, and led to reproach
myself that anything could fall from my lips in praise of such a
land. America will not allow her children to love her. She seems
bent on compelling those who would be her warmest friends, to be
her worst enemies. May God give her repentance before it is too
late, is the ardent prayer of my heart. I will continue to pray,
labor, and wait, believing that she cannot always be insensible
to the dictates of justice, or deaf to the voice of humanity. My
opportunities for learning the character and condition of the
people of this land have been very great. I have traveled from
the Hill of Howth to the Giant’s Causeway, and from the Giant’s
Causeway to Cape Clear. During these travels I have met with much
in the character and condition of the people to approve, and much
to condemn; much that has thrilled me with pleasure, and much that
has filled me with pain. I will not, in this letter, attempt to
give any description of those scenes which give me pain. This I
will do hereafter. I have enough, and more than your subscribers
will be disposed to read at one time, of the bright side of the
picture. I can truly say I have spent some of the happiest days of
my life since landing in this country. I seem to have undergone
a transformation. I live a new life. The warm and generous
coöperation extended to me by the friends of my despised race; the
prompt and liberal manner with which the press has rendered me its
aid; the glorious enthusiasm with which thousands have flocked
to hear the cruel wrongs of my down-trodden and long-enslaved
fellow-countrymen portrayed; the deep sympathy for the slave, and
the strong abhorrence of the slaveholder everywhere evinced; the
cordiality with which members and ministers of various religious
bodies, and of various shades of religious opinion have embraced me
and lent me their aid; the kind hospitality constantly proffered me
by persons of the highest rank in society; the spirit of freedom
that seems to animate all with whom I come in contact, and the
entire absence of everything that looks like prejudice against me,
on account of the color of my skin, contrasts so strongly with my
long and bitter experience in the United States, that I look with
wonder and amazement on the transition. In the southern part of
the United States, I was a slave--thought of and spoken of as
property; in the language of _law_, ‘held, taken, reputed, and
adjudged to be a chattel in the hands of my owners and possessors,
and their executors, administrators, and assigns, to all intents,
constructions, and purposes, whatsoever.’ (Brev. Digest., 224.)
In the Northern States, a fugitive slave, liable to be hunted at
any moment like a felon, and to be hurled into the terrible jaws
of slavery--doomed by an inveterate prejudice against color,
to insult and outrage on every hand (Massachusetts out of the
question)--denied the privileges and courtesies common to others
in the use of the most humble means of conveyance--shut out
from the cabins on steamboats, refused admission to respectable
hotels, caricatured, scorned, scoffed, mocked, and maltreated with
impunity by any one (no matter how black his heart), so he has a
white skin. But now behold the change! Eleven days and a half gone,
and I have crossed three thousand miles of perilous deep. Instead
of a democratic government, I am under a monarchial government.
Instead of the bright, blue sky of America, I am covered with the
soft, gray fog of the Emerald Isle. I breathe, and lo! the chattel
becomes a man! I gaze around in vain for one who will question
my equal humanity, claim me as a slave, or offer me an insult.
I employ a cab--I am seated beside white people--I reach the
hotel--I enter the same door--I am shown into the same parlor--
I dine at the same table--and no one is offended. No delicate
nose grows deformed in my presence. I find no difficulty here in
obtaining admission into any place of worship, instruction, or
amusement, on equal terms, with people as white as any I ever saw
in the United States. I meet nothing to remind me of my complexion.
I find myself regarded and treated at every turn with the kindness
and deference paid to white people. When I go to church I am met
by no upturned nose and scornful lip, to tell me--‘We don’t allow
niggers in here.’”
I remember about two years ago there was in Boston, near the southwest
corner of Boston Common, a menagerie. I had long desired to see
such a collection as I understood was being exhibited there. Never
having had an opportunity while a slave, I resolved to seize this,
and as I approached the entrance to gain admission, I was told by
the door-keeper, in a harsh and contemptuous tone, “_We don’t allow
niggers in here_.” I also remember attending a revival meeting in the
Rev. Henry Jackson’s meeting-house, at New Bedford, and going up the
broad aisle for a seat, I was met by a good deacon, who told me, in a
pious tone, “_We don’t allow niggers in here_.” Soon after my arrival
in New Bedford, from the South, I had a strong desire to attend the
lyceum, but was told, “_They don’t allow niggers there_.” While passing
from New York to Boston on the steamer Massachusetts, on the night of
the 9th of December, 1843, when chilled almost through with the cold,
I went into the cabin to get a little warm. I was soon touched upon
the shoulder, and told, “_We don’t allow niggers in here_.” A week or
two before leaving the United States, I had a meeting appointed at
Weymouth, the house of that glorious band of true abolitionists--the
Weston family and others. On attempting to take a seat in the omnibus
to that place, I was told by the driver (and I never shall forget his
fiendish hate), “I don’t allow niggers in here.” Thank heaven for
the respite I now enjoy! I had been in Dublin but a few days when a
gentleman of great respectability kindly offered to conduct me through
all the public buildings of that beautiful city, and soon afterward I
was invited by the lord mayor to dine with him. What a pity there was
not some democratic Christian at the door of his splendid mansion to
bark out at my approach, “They don’t allow niggers in here!” The truth
is, the people here know nothing of the republican negro-hate prevalent
in our glorious land. They measure and esteem men according to their
moral and intellectual worth, and not according to the color of their
skin. Whatever may be said of the aristocracies here, there is none
based on the color of a man’s skin. This species of aristocracy belongs
preëminently to “the land of the free, and the home of the brave.” I
have never found it abroad in any but Americans. It sticks to them
wherever they go. They find it almost as hard to get rid of as to get
rid of their skins.
The second day after my arrival in Liverpool, in company with my friend
Buffum, and several other friends, I went to Eaton Hall, the residence
of the Marquis of Westminster, one of the most splendid buildings in
England. On approaching the door, I found several of our American
passengers who came out with us in the Cambria, waiting for admission,
as but one party was allowed in the house at a time. We all had to wait
till the company within came out, and of all the faces expressive of
chagrin, those of the Americans were preëminent. They looked as sour as
vinegar, and as bitter as gall, when they found I was to be admitted
on equal terms with themselves. When the door was opened, I walked in
on a footing with my white fellow-citizens, and, from all I could see,
I had as much attention paid me by the servants who showed us through
the house, as any with a paler skin. As I walked through the building,
the statuary did not fall down, the pictures did not leap from their
places, the doors did not refuse to open, and the servants did not say,
“_We don’t allow niggers in here_.”
My time and labors while abroad were divided between England, Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales. Upon this experience alone I might fill a volume.
Amongst the few incidents which space will permit me to mention, and
one which attracted much attention and provoked much discussion in
America, was a brief statement made by me in the World’s Temperance
Convention, held in Covent Garden theater, London, August 7, 1846. The
United States was largely represented in this convention by eminent
divines, mostly doctors of divinity. They had come to England for the
double purpose of attending the World’s Evangelical Alliance, and the
World’s Temperance Convention. In the former these ministers were
endeavoring to procure endorsement for the Christian character of
slaveholders; and, naturally enough, they were adverse to the exposure
of slaveholding practices. It was not pleasant to them to see one of
the slaves running at large in England, and telling the other side
of the story. The Rev. Samuel Hanson Cox, D.D., of Brooklyn, N. Y.,
was especially disturbed at my presence and speech in the Temperance
Convention. I will give here, first, the reverend gentleman’s version
of the occasion in a letter from him as it appeared in the New York
_Evangelist_, the organ of his denomination. After a description of the
place (Covent Garden theater) and the speakers, he says:
“They all advocated the same cause, showed a glorious unity of
thought and feeling, and the effect was constantly raised--the
moral scene was superb and glorious--when Frederick Douglass, the
colored abolition agitator and ultraist, came to the platform,
and so spake, _à la mode_, as to ruin the influence almost of all
that preceded! He lugged in anti-slavery, or abolition, no doubt
prompted to it by some of the politic ones, who can use him to do
what they would not themselves adventure to do in person. He is
supposed to have been well paid for the abomination.
“What a perversion, an abuse, an iniquity against the law of
reciprocal righteousness, to call thousands together, and get
them, some certain ones, to seem conspicuous and devoted for one
sole and grand object, and then all at once, with obliquity, open
an avalanche on them for some imputed evil or monstrosity, for
which, whatever be the wound or injury inflicted, they were both
too fatigued and hurried with surprise, and too straightened for
time, to be properly prepared. I say it is a streak of meanness!
It is abominable! On this occasion Mr. Douglass allowed himself
to denounce America and all its temperance societies, together
as a grinding community of the enemies of his people; said evil,
with no alloy of good, concerning the whole of us; was perfectly
indiscriminate in his severities; talked of the American delegates,
and to them, as if he had been our school-master, and we his docile
and devoted pupils; and launched his revengeful missiles at our
country without one palliative, and as if not a Christian or a true
anti-slavery man lived in the whole of the United States. The fact
is, the man has been petted, and flattered, and used, and paid by
certain abolitionists, not unknown to us, of the _ne plus ultra_
stamp, till he forgets himself; and, though he may gratify his
own impulses, and those of old Adam in others, yet sure I am that
all this is just the way to ruin his own influence, to defeat his
own object, and to do mischief--not good--to the very cause he
professes to love. With the single exception of one cold-hearted
parricide, whose character I abhor, and whom I will not name, and
who has, I fear, no feeling of true patriotism or piety within
him, all the delegates from our country were together wounded and
indignant. No wonder at it. I write freely. It was not done in a
corner. It was inspired, I believe, from beneath, and not from
above. It was adapted to re-kindle on both sides of the Atlantic
the flames of national exasperation and war. And this is the game
which Mr. Frederick Douglass and his silly patrons are playing in
England and in Scotland, and wherever they can find ‘some mischief
still for idle hands to do.’ I came here his sympathizing friend;
I am such no more, as I know him. My own opinion is increasingly
that this spirit must be exorcised out of England and America
before any substantial good can be effected for the cause of the
slave. It is adapted only to make bad worse, and to inflame the
passions of indignant millions to an incurable resentment. None but
an ignoramus or a madman could think that this way was that of the
inspired apostles of the Son of God. It may gratify the feelings of
a self-deceived and malignant few, but it will do no good in any
direction--least of all to the poor slave! It is short-sighted,
impulsive, partisan, reckless, and tending only to sanguinary ends.
None of this with men of sense and principle.
“We all wanted to reply, but it was too late; the whole theater
seemed taken with the spirit of the Ephesian uproar; they were
furious and boisterous in the extreme, and Mr. Kirk could hardly
obtain a moment, though many were desirous in his behalf to say
a few words, as he did, very calm and properly, that the cause
of temperance was not at all responsible for slavery, and had no
connection with it.”
Now, to show the reader what ground there was for this tirade from the
pen of this eminent divine, and how easily Americans parted with their
candor and self-possession when slavery was mentioned adversely, I will
give here the head and front of my offence. Let it be borne in mind
that this was a _world’s_ convention of the friends of temperance. It
was not an American or a white man’s convention, but one composed of
men of all nations and races; and as such, the convention had the right
to know all about the temperance cause in every part of the world, and
especially to know what hindrances were interposed in any part of the
world, to its progress. I was perfectly in order in speaking precisely
as I did. I was neither an “intruder,” nor “out of order.” I had been
invited and advertised to speak by the same committee that invited
Doctors Beecher, Cox, Patton, Kirk, Marsh, and others, and my speech
was perfectly within the limits of good order, as the following report
will show:
_“Mr. Chairman--Ladies and Gentlemen_:--
“I am not a delegate to this convention. Those who would have been
most likely to elect me as a delegate, could not, because they are
to-night held in abject slavery in the United States. Sir, I regret
that I cannot fully unite with the American delegates in their
patriotic eulogies of America, and American temperance societies. I
cannot do so for this good reason: there are at this moment three
millions of the American population, by slavery and prejudice,
placed entirely beyond the pale of American temperance societies.
The three million slaves are completely excluded by slavery, and
four hundred thousand free colored people are almost as completely
excluded by an inveterate prejudice against them, on account of
their color. [Cries of shame! shame!]
“I do not say these things to wound the feelings of the American
delegates. I simply mention them in their presence and before this
audience, that, seeing how you regard this hatred and neglect of
the colored people, they may be inclined on their return home to
enlarge the field of their temperance operations, and embrace
within the scope of their influence, my long-neglected race. [Great
cheering, and some confusion on the platform.] Sir, to give you
some idea of the difficulties and obstacles in the way of the
temperance reformation of the colored population in the United
States, allow me to state a few facts.
“About the year 1840, a few intelligent, sober, and benevolent
colored gentlemen in Philadelphia, being acquainted with the
appalling ravages of intemperance among a numerous class of colored
people in that city, and, finding themselves neglected and excluded
from white societies, organized societies among themselves,
appointed committees, sent out agents, built temperance halls, and
were earnestly and successfully rescuing many from the fangs of
intemperance.
“The cause went nobly on till August 1, 1842, the day when
England gave liberty to eight hundred thousand souls in the West
Indies. The colored temperance societies selected this day to
march in procession through the city, in the hope that such a
demonstration would have the effect of bringing others into their
ranks. They formed their procession, unfurled their teetotal
banners, and proceeded to the accomplishment of their purpose. It
was a delightful sight. But, sir, they had not proceeded down two
streets before they were brutally assailed by a ruthless mob; their
banner was torn down, and trampled in the dust, their ranks broken
up, their persons beaten and pelted with stones and brickbats.
One of their churches was burned to the ground, and their best
temperance hall utterly demolished.” [“Shame! shame! shame!” from
the audience--great confusion, and cries of “Sit down” from the
American delegates on the platform.]
In the midst of this commotion, the chairman tapped me on the
shoulder, and whispering, informed me that the fifteen minutes
allotted to each speaker had expired; whereupon the vast audience
simultaneously shouted: “Don’t interrupt!” “don’t dictate!” “go on!”
“go on!” “Douglass!” “Douglass!” This continued several minutes, when
I proceeded as follows: “Kind friends, I beg to assure you that the
chairman has not in the slightest degree sought to alter any sentiment
which I am anxious to express on this occasion. He was simply reminding
me that the time allotted for me to speak had expired. I do not wish
to occupy one moment more than is allotted to other speakers. Thanking
you for your kind indulgence, I will take my seat.” Proceeding to do so
again, there were loud cries of “Go on!” “go on!” with which I complied
for a few moments, but without saying anything more that particularly
related to the colored people of America. I did not allow the letter of
Dr. Cox to go unanswered through the American journals, but promptly
exposed its unfairness. That letter is too long for insertion here.
A part of it was published in the _Evangelist_, and in many other
papers, both in this country and in England. Our eminent divine made no
rejoinder, and his silence was regarded at the time as an admission of
defeat.
Another interesting circumstance connected with my visit to England,
was the position of the Free Church of Scotland with the great Doctors
Chalmers, Cunningham, and Candlish at its head. That church had settled
for itself the question which was frequently asked by the opponents of
abolition at home--“_What have we to do with slavery?_” by accepting
contributions from slaveholders; _i. e._, receiving the price of blood
into its treasury, with which to build churches and pay ministers for
preaching the gospel; and worse than this, when honest John Murray
of Bowlein Bay, with William Smeal, Andrew Paton, Frederick Card, and
other sterling anti-slavery men in Glasgow, denounced the transaction
as disgraceful, and shocking to the religious sentiment of Scotland,
this church, through its leading divines, instead of repenting and
seeking to amend the mistake into which it had fallen, caused that
_mistake_ to become a flagrant sin by undertaking to defend, in the
name of God and the Bible, the principle not only of taking the money
of slave-dealers to build churches and thus extend the gospel, but
of holding fellowship with the traffickers in human flesh. This, the
reader will see, brought up the whole question of slavery, and opened
the way to its full discussion. I have never seen a people more deeply
moved than were the people of Scotland on this very question. Public
meeting succeeded public meeting, speech after speech, pamphlet after
pamphlet, editorial after editorial, sermon after sermon, lashed
the conscientious Scotch people into a perfect _furore_. “SEND BACK
THE MONEY!” was indignantly shouted from Greenock to Edinburgh, and
from Edinburgh to Aberdeen. George Thompson of London, Henry C.
Wright, J. N. Buffum and myself from America, were of course on the
anti-slavery side, and Chalmers, Cunningham, and Candlish on the other.
Dr. Cunningham was the most powerful debater on the slavery side of the
question, Mr. Thompson the ablest on the anti-slavery side. A scene
occurred between these two men, a parallel to which I think I have
never witnessed before or since. It was caused by a single exclamation
on the part of Mr. Thompson, and was on this wise:
The general assembly of the Free Church was in progress at Cannon
Mills, Edinburgh. The building would hold twenty-five hundred persons,
and on this occasion was densely packed, notice having been given that
Doctors Cunningham and Candlish would speak that day in defense of
the relations of the Free Church of Scotland to slavery in America.
Messrs. Thompson, Buffum, myself and a few other anti-slavery friends
attended, but sat at such distance and in such position as not to be
observed from the platform. The excitement was intense, having been
greatly increased by a series of meetings held by myself and friends,
in the most splendid hall in that most beautiful city, just previous
to this meeting of the general assembly. “SEND BACK THE MONEY!” in
large capitals stared from every street corner; “SEND BACK THE MONEY!”
adorned the broad flags of the pavement; “SEND BACK THE MONEY!” was
the chorus of the popular street-song; “SEND BACK THE MONEY!” was the
heading of leading editorials in the daily newspapers. This day, at
Cannon Mills, the great doctors of the church were to give an answer
to this loud and stern demand. Men of all parties and sects were most
eager to hear. Something great was expected. The occasion was great,
the men were great, and great speeches were expected from them.
In addition to the outward pressure there was wavering within. The
conscience of the church itself was not at ease. A dissatisfaction with
the position of the church touching slavery was sensibly manifest among
the members, and something must be done to counteract this untoward
influence. The great Dr. Chalmers was in feeble health at the time, so
his most potent eloquence could not now be summoned to Cannon Mills,
as formerly. He whose voice had been so powerful as to rend asunder
and dash down the granite walls of the Established Church of Scotland,
and to lead a host in solemn procession from it as from a doomed city,
was now old and enfeebled. Besides he had said his word on this very
question, and it had not silenced the clamor without nor stilled the
anxious heavings within. The occasion was momentous, and felt to be so.
The church was in a perilous condition. A change of some sort must take
place, or she must go to pieces. To stand where she did was impossible.
The whole weight of the matter fell on Cunningham and Candlish. No
shoulders in the church were broader than theirs; and I must say, badly
as I detested the principles laid down and defended by them, I was
compelled to acknowledge the vast mental endowments of the men.
Cunningham rose, and his rising was the signal for tumultuous applause.
It may be said that this was scarcely in keeping with the solemnity of
the occasion, but to me it served to increase its grandeur and gravity.
The applause, though tumultuous, was not joyous. It seemed to me, as it
thundered up from the vast audience, like the fall of an immense shaft,
flung from shoulders already galled by its crushing weight. It was like
saying “Doctor, we have borne this burden long enough, and willingly
fling it upon you. Since it was you who brought it upon us, take it now
and do what you will with it, for we are too weary to bear it.”
The Doctor proceeded with his speech--abounding in logic, learning,
and eloquence, and apparently bearing down all opposition; but at the
moment--the fatal moment--when he was just bringing all his arguments
to a point, and that point being that “neither Jesus Christ nor his
holy apostles regarded slaveholding as a sin,” George Thompson, in a
clear, sonorous, but rebuking voice, broke the deep stillness of the
audience, exclaiming “HEAR! HEAR! HEAR!” The effect of this simple
and common exclamation is almost incredible. It was as if a granite
wall had been suddenly flung up against the advancing current of a
mighty river. For a moment speaker and audience were brought to a
dead silence. Both the Doctor and his hearers seemed appalled by the
audacity, as well as the fitness of the rebuke. At length a shout went
up to the cry of “_Put him out!_” Happily no one attempted to execute
this cowardly order, and the discourse went on; but not as before.
The exclamation of Thompson must have re-echoed a thousand times in
his memory, for the Doctor, during the remainder of his speech, was
utterly unable to recover from the blow. The deed was done, however;
the pillars of the church--_the proud Free Church of Scotland_--were
committed, and the humility of repentance was absent. The Free Church
held on to the blood-stained money, and continued to justify itself in
its position.
One good result followed the conduct of the Free Church: it furnished
an occasion for making the people thoroughly acquainted with the
character of slavery and for arraying against it the moral and
religious sentiment of that country; therefore, while we did not
procure the sending back of the money, we were amply justified by the
good which really did result from our labors.
I must add one word in regard to the Evangelical Alliance. This was an
attempt to form a union of all Evangelical Christians throughout the
world, and which held its first session in London, in the year 1846,
at the time of the World’s Temperance Convention there. Some sixty or
seventy ministers from America attended this convention, the object of
some of them being to weave a world-wide garment with which to clothe
evangelical slaveholders; and in this they partially succeeded. But the
question of slavery was too large a question to be finally disposed of
by the Evangelical Alliance, and from its judgment we appealed to the
judgment of the people of Great Britain, with the happiest effect--
this effort of our countrymen to shield the character of slaveholders
serving to open a way to the British ear for anti-slavery discussion.
I may mention here an incident somewhat amusing and instructive, as
it serves to illustrate how easily Americans could set aside their
notoriously inveterate prejudice against color, when it stood in the
way of their wishes, or when in an atmosphere which made that prejudice
unpopular and unchristian.
At the entrance to the House of Commons I had one day been conversing
for a few moments with Lord Morpeth, and just as I was parting from him
I felt an emphatic push against my arm, and, looking around, I saw at
my elbow Rev. Dr. Kirk of Boston. “Introduce me to Lord Morpeth,” he
said. “Certainly,” said I, and introduced him; not without remembering,
however, that the amiable Doctor would scarcely have asked such a favor
of a colored man at home.
The object of my labors in Great Britain was the concentration of the
moral and religious sentiment of its people against American slavery.
To this end, I visited and lectured in nearly all the large towns and
cities in the United Kingdom, and enjoyed many favorable opportunities
for observation and information. I should like to write a book on
those countries, if for nothing else, to make grateful mention of the
many dear friends whose benevolent actions towards me are ineffaceably
stamped upon my memory, and warmly treasured in my heart. To these
friends, I owe my freedom in the United States.
Mrs. Ellen Richardson, an excellent member of the society of friends,
assisted by her sister-in-law Mrs. Henry Richardson,--a lady devoted
to every good word and work--the friend of the Indian and the African,
conceived the plan of raising a fund to effect my ransom from slavery.
They corresponded with Hon. Walter Forward of Pennsylvania, and through
him, ascertained that Captain Auld would take one hundred and fifty
pounds sterling for me; and this sum they promptly raised, and paid
for my liberation; placing the papers of my manumission into my hands,
before they would tolerate the idea of my return to this my native
land. To this commercial transaction, to this blood-money I owe my
immunity from the operation of the fugitive slave law of 1793, and also
from that of 1850. The whole affair speaks for itself and needs no
comment now that slavery has ceased to exist in this country, and is
not likely ever again to be revived.
Some of my uncompromising anti-slavery friends in this country failed
to see the wisdom of this commercial transaction, and were not pleased
that I consented to it, even by my silence. They thought it a violation
of anti-slavery principles, conceding the right of property in man, and
a wasteful expenditure of money. For myself, viewing it simply in the
light of a ransom, or as money extorted by a robber, and my liberty
of more value than one hundred and fifty pounds sterling, I could
not see either a violation of the laws of morality or of economy. It
is true I was not in the possession of my claimants, and could have
remained in England, for my friends would have generously assisted me
in establishing myself there. To this I could not consent. I felt it my
duty to labor and suffer with my oppressed people in my native land.
Considering all the circumstances, the fugitive bill included, I think
now as then, that the very best thing was done in letting Master Hugh
have the money, and thus leave me free to return to my appropriate
field of labor. Had I been a private person, with no relations or
duties other than those of a personal and family nature, I should not
have consented to the payment of so large a sum, for the privilege of
living securely under our glorious republican (?) form of government.
I could have lived elsewhere, or perhaps might have been unobserved
even here, but I had become somewhat notorious, and withal quite as
unpopular in some directions as notorious, and I was therefore much
exposed to arrest and capture.[A]
[A] The following is a copy of these curious papers, both of my
transfer from Thomas to Hugh Auld, and from Hugh to myself:
“Know all men, by these presents: That I, Thomas Auld
of Talbot county and state of Maryland, for and in
consideration of the sum of one hundred dollars, current
money, to me paid by Hugh Auld, of the city of Baltimore,
in the said state, at and before the sealing and delivery
of these presents, the receipt whereof, I the said Thomas
Auld, do hereby acknowledge, have granted, bargained, and
sold, and by these presents do grant, bargain, and sell
unto the said Hugh Auld, his executors, administrators,
and assigns, ONE NEGRO MAN, by the name of FREDERICK
BAILEY--or DOUGLASS as he calls himself--he is now about
twenty-eight years of age--to have and to hold the said
negro man for life. And I the said Thomas Auld, for myself,
my heirs, executors, and administrators, all and singular,
the said FREDERICK BAILY _alias_ DOUGLASS unto the said
Hugh Auld, his executors and administrators, and against
all and every other person or persons whatsoever, shall
and will warrant and forever defend by these presents. In
witness whereof, I set my hand and seal, this thirteenth
day of November, eighteen hundred and forty-six (1846.)
THOMAS AULD.
“Signed, sealed, and delivered, in presence of Wrightson Jones,
John C. Lear.”
The authenticity of this bill of sale is attested by N. Harrington,
a justice of the peace of the state of Maryland, and for the county
of Talbot, dated same day as above.
* * * * *
“To all whom it may concern: Be it known that I, Hugh Auld, of the
city of Baltimore, in Baltimore county in the state of Maryland,
for divers good causes and considerations, me thereunto moving,
have released from slavery, liberated, manumitted, and set free,
and by these presents do hereby release from slavery, liberate,
manumit, and set free, MY NEGRO MAN, named FREDERICK BAILY,
otherwise called DOUGLASS, being of the age of twenty-eight years,
or thereabouts, and able to work and gain a sufficient livelihood
and maintenance; and him the said negro man, named FREDERICK
DOUGLASS, I do declare to be henceforth free, manumitted, and
discharged from all manner of servitude to me, my executors and
administrators forever.
“In witness whereof, I the said Hugh Auld, have hereunto set my
hand and seal the fifth of December, in the year one thousand eight
hundred and forty-six.
HUGH AULD.
“Sealed and delivered in presence of T. Hanson Belt, James N. S. T.
Wright.”
Having remained abroad nearly two years, and being about to return to
America, not as I left it--a slave, but a freeman, prominent friends
of the cause of emancipation intimated their intention to make me a
testimonial both on grounds of personal regard to me, and also to the
cause to which they were so ardently devoted. How such a project would
have succeeded I do not know, but many reasons led me to prefer that
my friends should simply give me the means of obtaining a printing
press and materials, to enable me to start a paper, advocating the
interests of my enslaved and oppressed people. I told them that
perhaps the greatest hindrance to the adoption of abolition principles
by the people of the United States, was the low estimate everywhere
in that country placed upon the negro as a man: that because of his
assumed natural inferiority, people reconciled themselves to his
enslavement and oppression, as being inevitable if not desirable. The
grand thing to be done, therefore, was to change this estimation, by
disproving his inferiority and demonstrating his capacity for a more
exalted civilization than slavery and prejudice had assigned him. In
my judgment a tolerably well conducted press in the hands of persons
of the despised race, would by calling out and making them acquainted
with their own latent powers, by enkindling their hope of a future, and
developing their moral force, prove a most powerful means of removing
prejudice and awakening an interest in them. At that time there was
not a single newspaper regularly published by the colored people in
the country, though many attempts had been made to establish such,
and had from one cause or another failed. These views I laid before
my friends. The result was, that nearly two thousand five hundred
dollars were speedily raised towards my establishing such a paper as I
had indicated. For this prompt and generous assistance, rendered upon
my bare suggestion, without any personal effort on my part, I shall
never cease to feel deeply grateful, and the thought of fulfilling the
expectations of the dear friends who had given me this evidence of
their confidence, was an abiding inspiration for persevering exertion.
Proposing to leave England, and turning my face toward America in the
spring of 1847, I was painfully reminded of the kind of life which
awaited me on my arrival. For the first time in the many months spent
abroad, I was met with proscription on account of my color. While in
London I had purchased a ticket, and secured a berth, for returning
home in the Cambria--the steamer in which I had come from thence--
and paid therefor the round sum of forty pounds, nineteen shillings
sterling. This was first cabin fare; but on going on board I found
that the Liverpool agent had ordered my berth to be given to another,
and forbidden my entering the saloon. It was rather hard after having
enjoyed for so long a time equal social privileges, after dining with
persons of great literary, social, political, and religious eminence,
and never, during the whole time, having met with a single word, look,
or gesture, which gave me the slightest reason to think my color was an
offense to anybody--now to be cooped up in the stern of the Cambria,
and denied the right to enter the saloon, lest my presence should
disturb some democratic fellow-passenger. The reader can easily imagine
what must have been my feelings under such an indignity.
This contemptible conduct met with stern rebuke from the British press.
The London _Times_, and other leading journals throughout the United
Kingdom, held up the outrage to unmitigated condemnation. So good an
opportunity for calling out British sentiment on the subject had not
before occurred, and it was fully embraced. The result was that Mr.
Cunard came out in a letter expressive of his regret, and promising
that the like indignity should never occur again on his steamers, which
promise I believe has been faithfully kept.
CHAPTER VII.
TRIUMPHS AND TRIALS.
New Experiences--Painful Disagreement of Opinion with old Friends--
Final Decision to Publish my Paper in Rochester--Its Fortunes and
its Friends--Change in my own Views Regarding the Constitution of
the United States--Fidelity to Conviction--Loss of Old Friends--
Support of New Ones--Loss of House, etc., by Fire--Triumphs and
Trials--Underground Railroad--Incidents.
Prepared as I was to meet with many trials and perplexities on reaching
home, one of which I little dreamed was awaiting me. My plans for
future usefulness, as indicated in the last chapter, were all settled,
and in imagination I already saw myself wielding my pen as well as my
voice in the great work of renovating the public mind, and building up
a public sentiment, which should send slavery to the grave, and restore
to “liberty and the pursuit of happiness” the people with whom I had
suffered.
My friends in Boston had been informed of what I was intending,
and I expected to find them favorably disposed toward my cherished
enterprise. In this I was mistaken. They had many reasons against it.
First, no such paper was needed; secondly, it would interfere with
my usefulness as a lecturer; thirdly, I was better fitted to speak
than to write; fourthly, the paper could not succeed. This opposition
from a quarter so highly esteemed, and to which I had been accustomed
to look for advice and direction, caused me not only to hesitate,
but inclined me to abandon the undertaking. All previous attempts to
establish such a journal having failed, I feared lest I should but add
another to the list, and thus contribute another proof of the mental
deficiencies of my race. Very much that was said to me in respect to my
imperfect literary attainments, I felt to be most painfully true. The
unsuccessful projectors of all former attempts had been my superiors
in point of education, and if _they_ had failed how could I hope for
success? Yet I did hope for success, and persisted in the undertaking,
encouraged by my English friends to go forward.
I can easily pardon those who saw in my persistence an unwarrantable
ambition and presumption. I was but nine years from slavery. In many
phases of mental experience I was but nine years old. That one under
such circumstances should aspire to establish a printing press,
surrounded by an educated people, might well be considered unpractical
if not ambitious. My American friends looked at me with astonishment.
“A wood-sawyer” offering himself to the public as an editor! A slave,
brought up in the depths of ignorance, assuming to instruct the highly
civilized people of the north in the principles of liberty, justice,
and humanity! The thing looked absurd. Nevertheless I persevered. I
felt that the want of education, great as it was, could be overcome by
study, and that wisdom would come by experience; and further (which
was perhaps the most controlling consideration) I thought that an
intelligent public, knowing my early history, would easily pardon the
many deficiencies which I well knew that my paper must exhibit. The
most distressing part of it all was the offense which I saw I must give
my friends of the old Anti-Slavery organization, by what seemed to them
a reckless disregard of their opinion and advice. I am not sure that I
was not under the influence of something like a slavish adoration of
these good people, and I labored hard to convince them that my way of
thinking about the matter was the right one, but without success.
From motives of peace, instead of issuing my paper in Boston, among
New England friends, I went to Rochester, N. Y., among strangers,
where the local circulation of my paper--“THE NORTH STAR”--would not
interfere with that of the _Liberator_ or the _Anti-Slavery Standard_,
for I was then a faithful disciple of Wm. Lloyd Garrison, and fully
committed to his doctrine touching the pro-slavery character of the
Constitution of the United States, also the _non-voting principle_ of
which he was the known and distinguished advocate. With him, I held it
to be the first duty of the non-slaveholding States to dissolve the
union with the slaveholding States, and hence my cry, like his, was
“No union with slaveholders.” With these views I came into western New
York, and during the first four years of my labors here I advocated
them with pen and tongue, to the best of my ability. After a time, a
careful reconsideration of the subject convinced me that there was no
necessity for dissolving the “union between the northern and southern
States;” that to seek this dissolution was no part of my duty as an
abolitionist; that to abstain from voting was to refuse to exercise
a legitimate and powerful means for abolishing slavery; and that the
Constitution of the United States not only contained no guarantees in
favor of slavery, but on the contrary, was in its letter and spirit
an anti-slavery instrument, demanding the abolition of slavery as a
condition of its own existence, as the supreme law of the land.
This radical change in my opinions produced a corresponding change in
my action. To those with whom I had been in agreement and in sympathy,
I came to be in opposition. What they held to be a great and important
truth I now looked upon as a dangerous error. A very natural, but to me
a very painful thing, now happened. Those who could not see any honest
reasons for changing their views, as I had done, could not easily see
any such reasons for my change, and the common punishment of apostates
was mine.
My first opinions were naturally derived and honestly entertained.
Brought directly, when I escaped from slavery, into contact with
abolitionists who regarded the Constitution as a slaveholding
instrument, and finding their views supported by the united and entire
history of every department of the government, it is not strange
that I assumed the Constitution to be just what these friends made
it seem to be. I was bound not only by their superior knowledge to
take their opinions in respect to this subject, as the true ones, but
also because I had no means of showing their unsoundness. But for
the responsibility of conducting a public journal, and the necessity
imposed upon me of meeting opposite views from abolitionists outside
of New England, I should in all probability have remained firm in my
disunion views. My new circumstances compelled me to re-think the
whole subject, and study with some care not only the just and proper
rules of legal interpretation, but the origin, design, nature, rights,
powers, and duties of civil governments, and also the relations which
human beings sustain to it. By such a course of thought and reading I
was conducted to the conclusion that the Constitution of the United
States--inaugurated “to form a more perfect union, establish justice,
insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote
the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty”--could not
well have been designed at the same time to maintain and perpetuate
a system of rapine and murder like slavery, especially as not one
word can be found in the Constitution to authorize such a belief.
Then, again, if the declared purposes of an instrument are to govern
the meaning of all its parts and details, as they clearly should,
the Constitution of our country is our warrant for the abolition of
slavery in every State of the Union. It would require much time and
space to set forth the arguments which demonstrated to my mind the
unconstitutionality of slavery; but being convinced of the fact my
duty was plain upon this point in the farther conduct of my paper.
_The North Star_ was a large sheet, published weekly, at a cost of $80
per week, and an average circulation of 3,000 subscribers. There were
many times, when in my experience as editor and publisher, I was very
hard pressed for money, but by one means or another I succeeded so
well as to keep my pecuniary engagements, and to keep my anti-slavery
banner steadily flying during all the conflict from the autumn of 1847
till the union of the States was assured and emancipation was a fact
accomplished. I had friends abroad as well as at home who helped me
liberally. I can never be too grateful to Rev. Russell Laut Carpenter
and to Mrs. Carpenter, for the moral and material aid they tendered
me through all the vicissitudes of my paper enterprise. But to no
one person was I more indebted for substantial assistance than to
Mrs. Julia Griffiths Crofts. She came to my relief when my paper had
nearly absorbed all my means, and was heavily in debt, and when I had
mortgaged my house to raise money to meet current expenses; and by
her energetic and effective management, in a single year enabled me
to extend the circulation of my paper from 2,000 to 4,000 copies, pay
off the debts and lift the mortgage from my house. Her industry was
equal to her devotion. She seemed to rise with every emergency, and her
resources appeared inexhaustible. I shall never cease to remember with
sincere gratitude the assistance rendered me by this noble lady, and I
mention her here in the desire in some humble measure to “give honor
to whom honor is due.” During the first three or four years my paper
was published under the name of the _North Star_. It was subsequently
changed to _Frederick Douglass’ Paper_ in order to distinguish it from
the many papers with “Stars” in their titles. There were “North Stars,”
“Morning Stars,” “Evening Stars,” and I know not how many other stars
in the newspaper firmament, and some confusion arose naturally enough
in distinguishing between them; for this reason, and also because some
of these stars were older than my star I felt that mine, not theirs,
ought to be the one to “go out.”
Among my friends in this country, who helped me in my earlier efforts
to maintain my paper, I may proudly count such men as the late Hon.
Gerrit Smith, and Chief Justice Chase, Hon. Horace Mann, Hon. Joshua R.
Giddings, Hon. Charles Sumner, Hon. John G. Palfry, Hon. Wm. H. Seward,
Rev. Samuel J. May, and many others, who though of lesser note were
equally devoted to my cause. Among these latter ones were Isaac and Amy
Post, William and Mary Hallowell, Asa and Hulda Anthony, and indeed
all the committee of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society. They
held festivals and fairs to raise money, and assisted me in every other
possible way to keep my paper in circulation, while I was a non-voting
abolitionist, but withdrew from me when I became a voting abolitionist.
For a time the withdrawal of their coöperation embarrassed me very
much, but soon another class of friends were raised up for me, chief
amongst whom were the Porter family of Rochester. The late Samuel D.
Porter and his wife Susan F. Porter, and his sisters, Maria and Elmira
Porter, deserve grateful mention as among my steadfast friends, who did
much in the way of supplying pecuniary aid.
Of course there were moral forces operating against me in Rochester, as
well as material ones. There were those who regarded the publication of
a “Negro paper” in that beautiful city as a blemish and a misfortune.
The New York _Herald_, true to the spirit of the times, counselled
the people of the place to throw my printing press into Lake Ontario
and to banish me to Canada, and while they were not quite prepared
for this violence, it was plain that many of them did not well relish
my presence amongst them. This feeling, however, wore away gradually,
as the people knew more of me and my works. I lectured every Sunday
evening during an entire winter in the beautiful Corinthian Hall, then
owned by Wm. R. Reynolds, Esq., who though he was not an abolitionist,
was a lover of fair-play and was willing to allow me to be heard. If
in these lectures I did not make abolitionists I did succeed in making
tolerant the moral atmosphere in Rochester; so much so, indeed, that
I came to feel as much at home there as I had ever done in the most
friendly parts of New England. I had been at work there with my paper
but a few years before colored travelers told me that they felt the
influence of my labors when they came within fifty miles. I did not
rely alone upon what I could do by the paper, but would write all day,
then take a train to Victor, Farmington, Canandaigua, Geneva, Waterloo,
Batavia, or Buffalo, or elsewhere, and speak in the evening, returning
home afterwards or early in the morning, to be again at my desk writing
or mailing papers. There were times when I almost thought my Boston
friends were right in dissuading me from my newspaper project. But
looking back to those nights and days of toil and thought, compelled
often to do work for which I had no educational preparation, I have
come to think that, under the circumstances it was the best school
possible for me. It obliged me to think and read, it taught me to
express my thoughts clearly, and was perhaps better than any other
course I could have adopted. Besides it made it necessary for me to
lean upon myself, and not upon the heads of our Anti-Slavery church. To
be a principal, and not an agent. I had an audience to speak to every
week, and must say something worth their hearing, or cease to speak
altogether. There is nothing like the lash and sting of necessity to
make a man work, and my paper furnished this motive power. More than
one gentleman from the south, when stopping at Niagara, came to see me,
that they might know for themselves if I could indeed write, having
as they said believed it impossible that an uneducated fugitive slave
could write the articles attributed to me. I found it hard to get
credit in some quarters either for what I wrote or what I said. While
there was nothing very profound or learned in either, the low estimate
of Negro possibilities induced the belief that both my editorials
and my speeches were written by white persons. I doubt if this
scepticism does not still linger in the minds of some of my democratic
fellow-citizens.
The 2d of June, 1872, brought me a very grievous loss. My house in
Rochester was burnt to the ground, and among other things of value,
twelve volumes of my paper, covering the period from 1848 to 1860, were
devoured by the flames. I have never been able to replace them, and
the loss is immeasurable. Only a few weeks before, I had been invited
to send these bound volumes to the library of Harvard University where
they would have been preserved in a fire-proof building, and the result
of my procrastination attests the wisdom of more than one proverb.
Outside the years embraced in the late tremendous war, there has been
no period, more pregnant with great events, or better suited to call
out the best mental and moral energies of men, than that covered by
these lost volumes. If I have at any time said or written that which is
worth remembering or repeating, I must have said such things between
the years 1848 and 1860, and my paper was a chronicle of most of what
I said during that time. Within that space we had the great Free Soil
Convention at Buffalo, the Nomination of Martin Van Buren, the Fugitive
Slave Law, the 7th March Speech by Daniel Webster, the Dred Scott
decision, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas Nebraska
bill, the Border war in Kansas, the John Brown raid upon Harper’s
Ferry, and a part of the War against the Rebellion, with much else,
well calculated to fire the souls of men having one spark of Liberty
and Patriotism within them. I have only fragments now, of all the work
accomplished during these twelve years, and must cover this chasm, as
best I can from memory and the incidental items, which I am able to
glean from various sources. Two volumes of the _North Star_ have been
kindly supplied me, by my friend, Marshall Pierce of Saco, Me. He had
these carefully preserved and bound in one cover and sent to me in
Washington. He was one of the most systematically careful men of all my
anti-slavery friends, for I doubt if another entire volume of the paper
exists.
One important branch of my anti-slavery work in Rochester, in addition
to that of speaking and writing against slavery, must not be forgotten
or omitted. My position gave me the chance of hitting that old enemy
some telling blows, in another direction than these. I was on the
southern border of Lake Ontario, and the Queen’s Dominions were right
over the way--and my prominence as an abolitionist, and as the editor
of an anti-slavery paper, naturally made me the station master and
conductor of the underground railroad passing through this goodly city.
Secrecy and concealment were necessary conditions to the successful
operation of this railroad, and hence its prefix “underground.”
My agency was all the more exciting and interesting, because not
altogether free from danger. I could take no step in it without
exposing myself to fine and imprisonment, for these were the penalties
imposed by the fugitive slave law, for feeding, harboring, or otherwise
assisting a slave to escape from his master; but in face of this fact,
I can say, I never did more congenial, attractive, fascinating, and
satisfactory work. True as a means of destroying slavery, it was like
an attempt to bail out the ocean with a teaspoon, but the thought that
there was _one_ less slave, and one more freeman,--having myself been
a slave, and a fugitive slave--brought to my heart unspeakable joy.
On one occasion I had eleven fugitives at the same time under my roof,
and it was necessary for them to remain with me, until I could collect
sufficient money to get them on to Canada. It was the largest number
I ever had at any one time, and I had some difficulty in providing so
many with food and shelter, but as may well be imagined, they were not
very fastidious in either direction, and were well content with very
plain food, and a strip of carpet on the floor for a bed, or a place on
the straw in the barn loft.
The underground railroad had many branches; but that one with which
I was connected had its main stations in Baltimore, Wilmington,
Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, and St. Catharines
(Canada). It is not necessary to tell who were the principal agents in
Baltimore; Thomas Garrett was the agent in Wilmington; Melloe McKim,
William Still, Robert Purvis, Edward M. Davis, and others did the work
in Philadelphia; David Ruggles, Isaac T. Hopper, Napolian, and others,
in New York city; the Misses Mott and Stephen Myers, were forwarders
from Albany; Revs. Samuel J. May and J. W. Loguen, were the agents
in Syracuse; and J. P. Morris and myself received and dispatched
passengers from Rochester to Canada, where they were received by Rev.
Hiram Wilson. When a party arrived in Rochester, it was the business of
Mr. Morris and myself to raise funds with which to pay their passages
to St. Catharines, and it is due to truth to state, that we seldom
called in vain upon whig or democrat for help. Men were better than
their theology, and truer to humanity, than to their politics, or their
offices.
On one occasion while a slave master was in the office of a United
States commissioner, procuring the papers necessary for the arrest
and rendition of three young men who had escaped from Maryland, (one
of whom was under my roof at the time, another at Farmington, and the
other at work on the farm of Asa Anthony just a little outside the city
limits,) the law partner of the commissioner, then a distinguished
democrat, sought me out, and told me what was going on in his office,
and urged me by all means to get these young men out of the way of
their pursuers and claimants. Of course no time was to be lost. A swift
horseman was dispatched to Farmington, eighteen miles distant, another
to Asa Anthony’s farm about three miles, and another to my house on
the south side of the city, and before the papers could be served, all
three of the young men were on the free waves of Lake Ontario, bound to
Canada. In writing to their old master, they had dated their letter at
Rochester, though they had taken the precaution to send it to Canada to
be mailed, but this blunder in the date had betrayed their whereabouts,
so that the hunters were at once on their tracks.
So numerous were the fugitives passing through Rochester that I was
obliged at last to appeal to my British friends for the means of
sending them on their way, and when Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter and Mrs.
Croffts took the matter in hand, I had never any further trouble in
that respect. When slavery was abolished I wrote to Mrs. Carpenter,
congratulating her that she was relieved of the work of raising funds
for such purposes, and the characteristic reply of that lady was that
she had been very glad to do what she had done, and had no wish for
relief.
My pathway was not entirely free from thorns in Rochester, and the
wounds and pains inflicted by them were perhaps much less easily borne,
because of my exemption from such annoyances while in England. Men can
in time become accustomed to almost anything, even to being insulted
and ostracised, but such treatment comes hard at first, and when to
some extent unlooked for. The vulgar prejudice against color, so common
to Americans, met me in several disagreeable forms. A seminary for
young ladies and misses, under the auspices of Miss Tracy, was near my
house on Alexander street, and desirous of having my daughter educated
like the daughters of other men, I applied to Miss Tracy for her
admission to her school. All seemed fair, and the child was duly sent
to “Tracy Seminary,” and I went about my business happy in the thought
that she was in the way of a refined and Christian education. Several
weeks elapsed before I knew how completely I was mistaken. The little
girl came home to me one day and told me she was lonely in that school;
that she was in fact kept in solitary confinement; that she was not
allowed in the room with the other girls, nor to go into the yard when
they went out; that she was kept in a room by herself and not permitted
to be seen or heard by the others. No man with the feeling of a parent
could be less than moved by such a revelation, and I confess that I
was shocked, grieved, and indignant. I went at once to Miss Tracy to
ascertain if what I had heard was true, and was coolly told it was, and
the miserable plea was offered that it would have injured her school
if she had done otherwise. I told her she should have told me so at
the beginning, but I did not believe that any girl in the school would
be opposed to the presence of my daughter, and that I should be glad
to have the question submitted to them. She consented to this, and to
the credit of the young ladies, not one made objection. Not satisfied
with this verdict of the natural and uncorrupted sense of justice and
humanity of these young ladies, Miss Tracy insisted that the parents
must be consulted, and if one of them objected she should not admit
my child to the same apartment and privileges of the other pupils.
One parent only had the cruelty to object, and he was Mr. Horatio G.
Warner, a democratic editor, and upon his adverse conclusion, my
daughter was excluded from “Tracy Seminary.” Of course Miss Tracy was
a devout Christian lady after the fashion of the time and locality, in
good and regular standing in the church.
My troubles attending the education of my children were not to end
here. They were not allowed in the public school in the district in
which I lived, owned property, and paid taxes, but were compelled,
if they went to a public school, to go over to the other side of the
city, to an inferior colored school. I hardly need say that I was not
prepared to submit tamely to this proscription, any more than I had
been to submit to slavery, so I had them taught at home for a while,
by Miss Thayer. Meanwhile I went to the people with the question and
created considerable agitation. I sought and obtained a hearing before
the Board of Education, and after repeated efforts with voice and pen,
the doors of the public schools were opened and colored children were
permitted to attend them in common with others.
There were barriers erected against colored people in most other places
of instruction and amusements in the city, and until I went there
they were imposed without any apparent sense of injustice or wrong,
and submitted to in silence; but one by one they have gradually been
removed and colored people now enter freely all places of public resort
without hindrance or observation. This change has not been wholly
effected by me. From the first I was cheered on and supported in my
demands for equal rights by such respectable citizens as Isaac Post,
Wm. Hallowell, Samuel D. Porter, Wm. C. Bloss, Benj. Fish, Asa Anthony,
and many other good and true men of Rochester.
Notwithstanding what I have said of the adverse feeling exhibited
by some of its citizens at my selection of Rochester as the place
to establish my paper, and the trouble in educational matters just
referred to, that selection was in many respects very fortunate.
The city was, and still is, the center of a virtuous, intelligent,
enterprising, liberal, and growing population. The surrounding country
is remarkable for its fertility; and the city itself possesses one of
the finest water-powers in the world. It is on the line of the New York
Central railroad--a line that with its connections, spans the whole
country. Its people were industrious and in comfortable circumstances;
not so rich as to be indifferent to the claims of humanity, and not
so poor as to be unable to help any good cause which commanded the
approval of their judgment.
The ground had been measurably prepared for me by the labors of
others--notably by Hon. Myron Holley, whose monument of enduring
marble now stands in the beautiful cemetery at Mount Hope, upon an
eminence befitting his noble character. I know of no place in the
Union where I could have located at the time with less resistance,
or received a larger measure of sympathy and coöperation, and I now
look back to my life and labors there with unalloyed satisfaction, and
having spent a quarter of a century among its people, I shall always
feel more at home there than any where else in this country.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF JOHN BROWN.]
CHAPTER VIII.
JOHN BROWN AND MRS. STOWE.
My First Meeting with Capt. John Brown--The Free Soil Movement--
Colored Convention--Uncle Tom’s Cabin--Industrial School for
Colored People--Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe.
About the time I began my enterprise in Rochester I chanced to
spend a night and a day under the roof of a man whose character and
conversation, and whose objects and aims in life made a very deep
impression upon my mind and heart. His name had been mentioned to me by
several prominent colored men, among whom were the Rev. Henry Highland
Garnet and J. W. Loguen. In speaking of him their voices would drop to
a whisper, and what they said of him made me very eager to see and know
him. Fortunately I was invited to see him in his own house. At the time
to which I now refer this man was a respectable merchant in a populous
and thriving city, and our first place of meeting was at his store.
This was a substantial brick building, on a prominent, busy street. A
glance at the interior, as well as at the massive walls without, gave
me the impression that the owner must be a man of considerable wealth.
From this store I was conducted to his house, where I was kindly
received as an expected guest. My welcome was all I could have asked.
Every member of the family, young and old, seemed glad to see me, and I
was made much at home in a very little while. I was, however, a little
disappointed with the appearance of the house and with its location.
After seeing the fine store I was prepared to see a fine residence,
in an eligible locality, but this conclusion was completely dispelled
by actual observation. In fact, the house was neither commodious nor
elegant, nor its situation desirable. It was a small wooden building,
on a back street, in a neighborhood chiefly occupied by laboring men
and mechanics; respectable enough to be sure, but not quite the place,
I thought, where one would look for the residence of a flourishing and
successful merchant. Plain as was the outside of this man’s house,
the inside was plainer. Its furniture would have satisfied a Spartan.
It would take longer to tell what was not in this house than what was
in it. There was an air of plainness about it which almost suggested
destitution. My first meal passed under the misnomer of tea, though
there was nothing about it resembling the usual significance of that
term. It consisted of beef soup, cabbage, and potatoes; a meal such
as a man might relish after following the plow all day, or performing
a forced march of a dozen miles over a rough road in frosty weather.
Innocent of paint, veneering, varnish, or table-cloth, the table
announced itself unmistakably of pine and of the plainest workmanship.
There was no hired help visible. The mother, daughters, and sons did
the serving and did it well. They were evidently used to it, and had no
thought of any impropriety or degradation in being their own servants.
It is said that a house in some measure reflects the character of its
occupants; this one certainly did. In it there were no disguises, no
illusions, no make believes. Everything implied stern truth, solid
purpose, and rigid economy. I was not long in company with the master
of this house before I discovered that he was indeed the master of it,
and was likely to become mine too if I stayed long enough with him. He
fulfilled St. Paul’s idea of the head of the family. His wife believed
in him, and his children observed him with reverence. Whenever he spoke
his words commanded earnest attention. His arguments, which I ventured
at some points to oppose, seemed to convince all; his appeals touched
all, and his will impressed all. Certainly I never felt myself in the
presence of a stronger religious influence than while in this man’s
house.
In person he was lean, strong, and sinewy, of the best New England
mould, built for times of trouble, fitted to grapple with the flintiest
hardships. Clad in plain American woolen, shod in boots of cowhide
leather, and wearing a cravat of the same substantial material, under
six feet high, less than 150 pounds in weight, aged about fifty, he
presented a figure, straight and symmetrical as a mountain pine. His
bearing was singularly impressive. His head was not large, but compact
and high. His hair was coarse, strong, slightly gray and closely
trimmed, and grew low on his forehead. His face was smoothly shaved,
and revealed a strong square mouth, supported by a broad and prominent
chin. His eyes were bluish gray, and in conversation they were full of
light and fire. When on the street, he moved with a long, springing
race horse step, absorbed by his own reflections, neither seeking or
shunning observation. Such was the man, whose name I had heard in
whispers, such was the spirit of his house and family, such was the
house in which he lived, and such was Captain John Brown, whose name
has now passed into history, as one of the most marked characters, and
greatest heroes known to American fame.
After the strong meal already described, Captain Brown cautiously
approached the subject which he wished to bring to my attention; for
he seemed to apprehend opposition to his views. He denounced slavery
in look and language fierce and bitter, thought that slaveholders had
forfeited their right to live, that the slaves had the right to gain
their liberty in any way they could, did not believe that moral suasion
would ever liberate the slave, or that political action would abolish
the system. He said that he had long had a plan which could accomplish
this end, and he had invited me to his house to lay that plan before
me. He said he had been for some time looking for colored men to whom
he could safely reveal his secret, and at times he had almost despaired
of finding such men, but that now he was encouraged, for he saw heads
of such rising up in all directions. He had observed my course at
home and abroad, and he wanted my coöperation. His plan as it then
lay in his mind, had much to commend it. It did not, as some suppose,
contemplate a general rising among the slaves, and a general slaughter
of the slave masters. An insurrection he thought would only defeat the
object, but his plan did contemplate the creating of an armed force
which should act in the very heart of the south. He was not averse to
the shedding of blood, and thought the practice of carrying arms would
be a good one for the colored people to adopt, as it would give them
a sense of their manhood. No people he said could have self respect,
or be respected, who would not fight for their freedom. He called my
attention to a map of the United States, and pointed out to me the
far-reaching Alleghanies, which stretch away from the borders of New
York, into the Southern States. “These mountains,” he said, “are the
basis of my plan. God has given the strength of the hills to freedom,
they were placed here for the emancipation of the negro race; they are
full of natural forts, where one man for defense will be equal to a
hundred for attack; they are full also of good hiding places, where
large numbers of brave men could be concealed, and baffle and elude
pursuit for a long time. I know these mountains well, and could take a
body of men into them and keep them there despite of all the efforts
of Virginia to dislodge them. The true object to be sought is first of
all to destroy the money value of slave property; and that can only be
done by rendering such property insecure. My plan then is to take at
first about twenty-five picked men, and begin on a small scale; supply
them arms and ammunition, post them in squads of fives on a line of
twenty-five miles, the most persuasive and judicious of whom shall go
down to the fields from time to time, as opportunity offers, and induce
the slaves to join them, seeking and selecting the most restless and
daring.”
He saw that in this part of the work the utmost care must be used
to avoid treachery and disclosure. Only the most conscientious and
skillful should be sent on this perilous duty; with care and enterprise
he thought he could soon gather a force of one hundred hardy men, men
who would be content to lead the free and adventurous life to which he
proposed to train them, when these were properly drilled, and each man
had found the place for which he was best suited, they would begin work
in earnest; they would run off the slaves in large numbers, retain the
brave and strong ones in the mountains, and send the weak and timid to
the north by the underground railroad; his operations would be enlarged
with increasing numbers, and would not be confined to one locality.
When I asked him, how he would support these men? he said emphatically,
he would subsist them upon the enemy. Slavery was a state of war, and
the slave had a right to anything necessary to his freedom. But said
I, “suppose you succeed in running off a few slaves, and thus impress
the Virginia slaveholder with a sense of insecurity in their slaves,
the effect will be only to make them sell their slaves further south.”
“That,” said he, “will be first what I want to do; then I would follow
them up. If we could drive slavery out of _one county_, it would be a
great gain; it would weaken the system throughout the state.” “But they
would employ bloodhounds to hunt you out of the mountains.” “That they
might attempt,” said he, “but the chances are, we should whip them, and
when we should have whipt one squad, they would be careful how they
pursued.” “But you might be surrounded and cut off from your provisions
or means of subsistence.” He thought that could not be done so they
could not cut their way out, but even if the worst came, he could but
be killed, and he had no better use for his life than to lay it down
in the cause of the slave. When I suggested that we might convert the
slaveholders, he became much excited, and said that could never be,
“he knew their proud hearts and that they would never be induced to
give up their slaves, until they felt a big stick about their heads.”
He observed that I might have noticed the simple manner in which he
lived, adding that he had adopted this method in order to save money to
carry out his purposes. This was said in no boastful tone, for he felt
that he had delayed already too long and had no room to boast either
his zeal or his self denial. Had some men made such display of rigid
virtue, I should have rejected it, as affected, false and hypocritical,
but in John Brown, I felt it to be real as iron or granite. From
this night spent with John Brown in Springfield, Mass., 1847, while
I continued to write and speak against slavery, I became all the
same less hopeful of its peaceful abolition. My utterances became
more and more tinged by the color of this man’s strong impressions.
Speaking at an anti-slavery convention in Salem, Ohio, I expressed this
apprehension that slavery could only be destroyed by bloodshed, when I
was suddenly and sharply interrupted by my good old friend Sojourner
Truth with the question, “Frederick, is God dead?” “No.” I answered,
and “because God is not dead slavery can only end in blood.” My quaint
old sister was of the Garrison school of non-resistants, and was
shocked at my sanguinary doctrine, but she too became an advocate of
the sword, when the war for the maintenance of the Union was declared.
In 1848 it was my privilege to attend, and in some measure to
participate in the famous Free-Soil Convention held in Buffalo, New
York. It was a vast and variegated assemblage, composed of persons
from all sections of the North, and may be said to have formed a new
departure in the history of forces organized to resist the growing and
aggressive demands of slavery and the slave power. Until this Buffalo
convention anti-slavery agencies had been mainly directed to the work
of changing public sentiment by exposing through the press and on the
platform the nature of the slave system. Anti-slavery thus far had
only been sheet lightning; the Buffalo convention sought to make it a
thunderbolt. It is true the Liberty party, a political organization,
had been in existence since 1840, when it cast seven thousand votes
for James G. Birney, a former slaveholder, but who in obedience to an
enlightened conscience, had nobly emancipated his slaves, and was now
devoting his time and talents to the overthrow of slavery. It is true
that this little party of brave men had increased their numbers at
one time to sixty thousand voters. It, however, had now apparently
reached its culminating point, and was no longer able to attract to
itself and combine all the available elements at the North, capable of
being marshaled against the growing and aggressive measures and aims
of the slave power. There were many in the old Whig party known as
Conscience-Whigs, and in the Democratic party known as Barnburners and
Free Democrats, who were anti-slavery in sentiment and utterly opposed
to the extension of the slave system to territory hitherto uncursed
by its presence, but who nevertheless were not willing to join the
Liberty party. It was held to be deficient in numbers and wanting in
prestige. Its fate was the fate of all pioneers. The work it had been
required to perform had exposed it to assaults from all sides, and it
wore on its front the ugly marks of conflict. It was unpopular for its
very fidelity to the cause of liberty and justice. No wonder that some
of its members, such as Gerrit Smith, William Goodell, Beriah Green,
and Julius Lemoyne refused to quit the old for the new. They felt that
the Free-Soil party was a step backward, a lowering of the standard,
that the people should come to them, not they to the people. The party
which had been good enough for them ought to be good enough for all
others. Events, however, over-ruled this reasoning. The conviction
became general that the time had come for a new organization, which
should embrace all who were in any manner opposed to slavery and the
slave power, and this Buffalo Free-Soil convention was the result of
that conviction. It is easy to say that this or that measure would
have been wiser and better than the one adopted. But any measure is
vindicated by its necessity and its results. It was impossible for the
mountain to go to Mahomet, or for the Free-Soil element to go to the
old Liberty party, so the latter went to the former. “All is well that
ends well.” This Buffalo convention of free-soilers, however low was
their standard, did lay the foundation of a grand superstructure. It
was a powerful link in the chain of events by which the slave system
has been abolished, the slave emancipated, and the country saved from
dismemberment.
It is nothing against the actors in this new movement that they did
not see the end from the beginning; that they did not at first take
the high ground that further on in the conflict their successors felt
themselves called upon to take, or that their free-soil party, like the
old liberty party, was ultimately required to step aside and make room
for the great Republican party. In all this and more it illustrates the
experience of reform in all ages, and conforms to the laws of human
progress--Measures change, principles never.
I was not the only colored man well known to the country who was
present at this convention. Samuel Ringold Ward, Henry Highland Garnet,
Charles L. Remond, and Henry Bibb, were there and made speeches which
were received with surprise and gratification by the thousands there
assembled. As a colored man I felt greatly encouraged and strengthened
for my cause while listening to these men--in the presence of the
ablest men of the Caucasian race. Mr. Ward especially attracted
attention at that convention. As an orator and thinker he was vastly
superior, I thought, to any of us, and being perfectly black and of
unmixed African descent, the splendors of his intellect went directly
to the glory of his race. In depth of thought, fluency of speech,
readiness of wit, logical exactness, and general intelligence, Samuel
R. Ward has left no successor among the colored men amongst us, and
it was a sad day for our cause when he was laid low in the soil of a
foreign country.
After the Free Soil party, with “Free Soil,” “Free Labor,” “Free
States,” “Free Speech,” and “Free Men,” on its banner, had defeated the
almost permanently victorious Democratic party under the leadership
of so able and popular a standard-bearer as General Lewis Cass, Mr.
Calhoun and other southern statesmen were more than ever alarmed at
the rapid increase of anti-slavery feeling in the North, and devoted
their energies more and more to the work of devising means to stay the
torrents and tie up the storm. They were not ignorant of whereunto
this sentiment would grow if unsubjected and unextinguished. Hence
they became fierce and furious in debate, and more extravagant than
ever in their demands for additional safeguards for their system of
robbery and murder. Assuming that the Constitution guaranteed their
rights of property in their fellowmen, they held it to be in open
violation of the Constitution for any American citizen in any part
of the United States to speak, write, or act against this right. But
this shallow logic they plainly saw could do them no good unless they
could obtain further safeguards for slavery. In order to effect this,
the idea of so changing the Constitution was suggested, that there
should be two instead of one President of the United States--one from
the North and the other from the South--and that no measure should
become a law without the assent of both. But this device was so utterly
impracticable that it soon dropped out of sight, and it is mentioned
here only to show the desperation of slaveholders to prop up their
system of barbarism against which the sentiment of the North was being
directed with destructive skill and effect. They clamored for more
slave States, more power in the Senate and House of Representatives,
and insisted upon the suppression of free speech. At the end of two
years, in 1850, when Clay and Calhoun, two of the ablest leaders
the South ever had, were still in the Senate, we had an attempt at
a settlement of differences between the North and South which our
legislators meant to be final. What those measures were I need not here
enumerate except to say that chief among them was the Fugitive Slave
Bill, framed by James M. Mason of Virginia, and supported by Daniel
Webster of Massachusetts; a bill undoubtedly more designed to involve
the North in complicity with slavery and deaden its moral sentiment
than to procure the return of fugitives to their so-called owners.
For a time this design did not altogether fail. Letters, speeches,
and pamphlets literally rained down upon the people of the North,
reminding them of their constitutional duty to hunt down and return to
bondage runaway slaves. In this the preachers were not much behind the
press and the politicians, especially that class of preachers known
as Doctors of Divinity. A long list of these came forward with their
Bibles to show that neither Christ nor his holy apostles objected to
returning fugitives to slavery. Now that that evil day is past a sight
of those sermons would, I doubt not, bring the red blush of shame to
the cheeks of many.
Living as I then did in Rochester, on the border of Canada, I was
compelled to see the terribly distressing effects of this cruel
enactment. Fugitive slaves, who had lived for many years safely and
securely in Western New York and elsewhere, some of whom had by
industry and economy saved money and bought little homes for themselves
and their children, were suddenly alarmed and compelled to flee to
Canada for safety as from an enemy’s land--a doomed city--and take up
a dismal march to a new abode, empty-handed, among strangers. My old
friend Ward, of whom I have just now spoken, found it necessary to give
up the contest and flee to Canada, and thousands followed his example.
Bishop Daniel A. Payne, of the African Methodist Episcopal church,
came to me about this time to consult me as to whether it was best to
stand our ground or flee to Canada. When I told him I could not desert
my post until I saw I could not hold it, adding that I did not wish to
leave while Garnet and Ward remained, “Why,” said he, “Ward, Ward, he
is already gone. I saw him crossing from Detroit to Windsor.” I asked
him if he was going to stay, and he answered, “Yes; we are whipped, we
are whipped! and we might as well retreat in order.” This was indeed
a stunning blow. This man had power to do more to defeat this inhuman
enactment than any other colored man in the land, for no other could
bring such brain power to bear against it. I felt like a besieged city
at news that its defenders had fallen at its gates.
The hardships imposed by this atrocious and shameless law were
cruel and shocking, and yet only a few of all the fugitives of the
Northern States were returned to slavery under its infamously wicked
provisions. As a means of recapturing their runaway property in human
flesh the law was an utter failure. Its efficiency was destroyed by
its enormity. Its chief effect was to produce alarm and terror among
the class subject to its operation, and this it did most effectually
and distressingly. Even colored people who had been free all their
lives felt themselves very insecure in their freedom, for under this
law the oaths of any two villains were sufficient to consign a free
man to slavery for life. While the law was a terror to the free, it
was a still greater terror to the escaped bondman. To him there was
no peace. Asleep or awake, at work or at rest, in church or market,
he was liable to surprise and capture. By the law the judge got ten
dollars a head for all he could consign to slavery, and only five
dollars apiece for any which he might adjudge free. Although I was
now myself free, I was not without apprehension. My purchase was of
doubtful validity, having been bought when out of the possession of
my owner and when he must take what was given or take nothing. It was
a question whether my claimant could be estopped by such a sale from
asserting certain or supposable equitable rights in my body and soul.
From rumors that reached me my house was guarded by my friends several
nights, when kidnappers, had they come, would have got anything but a
cool reception, for there would have been “blows to take as well as
blows to give.” Happily this reign of terror did not continue long.
Despite the efforts of Daniel Webster and Millard Fillmore and our
Doctors of Divinity, the law fell rapidly into disrepute. The rescue of
Shadrack resulting in the death of one of the kidnappers, in Boston,
the cases of Simms and Anthony Burns, in the same place, created the
deepest feeling against the law and its upholders. But the thing which
more than all else destroyed the fugitive slave law was the resistance
made to it by the fugitives themselves. A decided check was given to
the execution of the law at Christiana, Penn., where three colored men,
being pursued by Mr. Gorsuch and his son, slew the father, wounded the
son, and drove away the officers, and made their escape to my house
in Rochester. The work of getting these men safely into Canada was a
delicate one. They were not only fugitives from slavery but charged
with murder, and officers were in pursuit of them. There was no time
for delay. I could not look upon them as murderers. To me, they were
heroic defenders of the just rights of man against manstealers and
murderers. So I fed them, and sheltered them in my house. Had they
been pursued then and there, my home would have been stained with
blood, for these men who had already tasted blood were well armed and
prepared to sell their lives at any expense to the lives and limbs of
their probable assailants. What they had already done at Christiana
and the cool determination which showed very plainly especially in
Parker, (for that was the name of the leader,) left no doubt on my mind
that their courage was genuine and that their deeds would equal their
words. The situation was critical and dangerous. The telegraph had
that day announced their deeds at Christiana, their escape, and that
the mountains of Pennsylvania were being searched for the murderers.
These men had reached me simultaneously with this news in the New York
papers. Immediately after the occurrence at Christiana, they, instead
of going into the mountains, were placed on a train which brought them
to Rochester. They were thus almost in advance of the lightning, and
much in advance of probable pursuit, unless the telegraph had raised
agents already here. The hours they spent at my house were therefore
hours of anxiety as well as activity. I dispatched my friend Miss Julia
Griffiths to the landing three miles away on the Genesee River to
ascertain if a steamer would leave that night for any port in Canada,
and remained at home myself to guard my tired, dust-covered, and
sleeping guests, for they had been harassed and traveling for two days
and nights, and needed rest. Happily for us the suspense was not long,
for it turned out, that that very night a steamer was to leave for
Toronto, Canada.
This fact, however, did not end my anxiety. There was danger that
between my house and the landing or at the landing itself we might meet
with trouble. Indeed the landing was the place where trouble was likely
to occur if at all. As patiently as I could, I waited for the shades
of night to come on, and then put the men in my “Democrat carriage,”
and started for the landing on the Genesee. It was an exciting ride,
and somewhat speedy withal. We reached the boat at least fifteen
minutes before the time of its departure, and that without remark or
molestation. But those fifteen minutes seemed much longer than usual.
I remained on board till the order to haul in the gang-way was given;
I shook hands with my friends, received from Parker the revolver that
fell from the hand of Gorsuch when he died, presented now as a token of
gratitude and a memento of the battle for Liberty at Christiana, and I
returned to my home with a sense of relief which I cannot stop here to
describe. This affair, at Christiana, and the Jerry Rescue at Syracuse,
inflicted fatal wounds on the fugitive slave bill. It became thereafter
almost a dead letter, for slaveholders found that not only did it fail
to put them in possession of their slaves, but that the attempt to
enforce it brought odium upon themselves and weakened the slave system.
In the midst of these fugitive slave troubles came the book known as
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a work of marvelous depth and power. Nothing could
have better suited the moral and humane requirements of the hour.
Its effect was amazing, instantaneous, and universal. No book on the
subject of slavery had so generally and favorably touched the American
heart. It combined all the power and pathos of preceding publications
of the kind, and was hailed by many as an inspired production. Mrs.
Stowe at once became an object of interest and admiration. She had made
fortune and fame at home, and had awakened a deep interest abroad.
Eminent persons in England roused to anti-slavery enthusiasm by her
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” invited her to visit that country, and promised
to give her a testimonial. Mrs. Stowe accepted the invitation and the
proffered testimonial. Before sailing for England, however, she invited
me from Rochester, N. Y., to spend a day at her house in Andover,
Mass. Delighted with an opportunity to become personally acquainted
with the gifted authoress, I lost no time in making my way to Andover.
I was received at her home with genuine cordiality. There was no
contradiction between the author and her book. Mrs. Stowe appeared in
conversation equally as well as she appeared in her writing. She made
to me a nice little speech in announcing her object in sending for
me. “I have invited you here,” she said, “because I wish to confer
with you as to what can be done for the free colored people of the
country. I am going to England and expect to have a considerable sum
of money placed in my hands, and I intend to use it in some way, for
the permanent improvement of the free colored people, and especially
for that class which has become free by their own exertions. In what
way I can do this most successfully is the subject I wish to talk with
you about. In any event I desire to have some monument rise after Uncle
Tom’s Cabin, which shall show that it produced more than a transient
influence.” She said several plans had been suggested, among others
an educational institution pure and simple, but that she thought
favorably of the establishment of an industrial school; and she desired
me to express my views as to what I thought would be the best plan
to help the free colored people. I was not slow to tell Mrs. Stowe
all I knew and had thought on the subject. As to a purely educational
institution, I agreed with her that it did not meet our necessities. I
argued against expending money in that way. I was also opposed to an
ordinary industrial school where pupils should merely earn the means of
obtaining an education in books. There were such schools, already. What
I thought of as best was rather a series of workshops, where colored
people could learn some of the handicrafts, learn to work in iron,
wood, and leather, and where a plain English education could also be
taught. I argued that the want of money was the root of all evil to
the colored people. They were shut out from all lucrative employments
and compelled to be merely barbers, waiters, coachmen and the like at
wages so low that they could lay up little or nothing. Their poverty
kept them ignorant and their ignorance kept them degraded. We needed
more to learn how to make a good living than to learn Latin and Greek.
After listening to me at considerable length, she was good enough to
tell me that she favored my views, and would devote the money she
expected to receive abroad to meeting the want I had described as the
most important; by establishing an institution in which colored youth
should learn trades as well as to read, write, and count. When about
to leave Andover, Mrs. Stowe asked me to put my views on the subject
in the form of a letter, so that she could take it to England with her
and show it to her friends there, that they might see to what their
contributions were to be devoted. I acceded to her request and wrote
her the following letter for the purpose named.
ROCHESTER, March 8, 1853.
MY DEAR MRS. STOWE:
You kindly informed me, when at your house a fortnight ago, that
you designed to do something which should permanently contribute
to the improvement and elevation of the free colored people in the
United States. You especially expressed an interest in such of
this class as had become free by their own exertions, and desired
most of all to be of service to them. In what manner, and by what
means you can assist this class most successfully, is the subject
upon which you have done me the honor to ask my opinion.... I
assert then that _poverty_, _ignorance_, and _degradation_ are the
combined evils; or in other words, these constitute the social
disease of the free colored people of the United States.
To deliver them from this triple malady, is to improve and elevate
them, by which I mean simply to put them on an equal footing with
their white fellow countrymen in the sacred right to “_Life_,
_Liberty_, and the pursuit of happiness.” I am for no fancied or
artificial elevation, but only ask fair play. How shall this be
obtained? I answer, first, not by establishing for our use high
schools and colleges. Such institutions are, in my judgment,
beyond our immediate occasions and are not adapted to our present
most pressing wants. High schools and colleges are excellent
institutions, and will in due season be greatly subservient to
our progress; but they are the result, as well as they are the
demand of a point of progress, which we as a people have not yet
attained. Accustomed as we have been, to the rougher and harder
modes of living, and of gaining a livelihood, we cannot, and we
ought not to hope that in a single leap from our low condition, we
can reach that of _Ministers_, _Lawyers_, _Doctors_, _Editors_,
_Merchants_, etc. These will doubtless be attained by us; but this
will only be, when we have patiently and laboriously, and I may
add successfully, mastered and passed through the intermediate
gradations of agriculture and the mechanic arts. Besides, there
are (and perhaps this is a better reason for my view of the case)
numerous institutions of learning in this country, already thrown
open to colored youth. To my thinking, there are quite as many
facilities now afforded to the colored people, as they can spare
the time, from the sterner duties of life, to avail themselves of.
In their present condition of poverty, they cannot spare their sons
and daughters two or three years at boarding-schools or colleges,
to say nothing of finding the means to sustain them while at such
institutions. I take it, therefore, that we are well provided
for in this respect; and that it may be fairly inferred from the
fact, that the facilities for our education, so far as schools and
colleges in the Free States are concerned, will increase quite
in proportion with our future wants. Colleges have been open to
colored youth in this country during the last dozen years. Yet few
comparatively, have acquired a classical education; and even this
few have found themselves educated far above a living condition,
there being no methods by which they could turn their learning to
account. Several of this latter class have entered the ministry;
but you need not be told that an educated people is needed to
sustain an educated ministry. There must be a certain amount of
cultivation among the people, to sustain such a ministry. At
present we have not that cultivation amongst us; and therefore, we
value in the preacher, strong lungs, rather than high learning.
I do not say, that educated ministers are not needed amongst us,
far from it! I wish there were more of them! but to increase their
number, is _not_ the largest benefit you can bestow upon us.
We have two or three colored lawyers in this country; and I
rejoice in the fact; for it affords very gratifying evidence of
our progress. Yet it must be confessed, that in point of success,
our lawyers are as great failures as our ministers. White people
will not employ them to the obvious embarrassment of their causes,
and the blacks, taking their _cue_ from the whites, have not
sufficient confidence in their abilities to employ them. Hence
educated colored men, among the colored people, are at a very great
discount. It would seem that education and emigration go together
with us, for as soon as a man rises amongst us, capable, by his
genius and learning, to do us great service, just so soon he finds
that he can serve himself better by going elsewhere. In proof of
this, I might instance the Russwurms, the Garnetts, the Wards, the
Crummells and others, all men of superior ability and attainments,
and capable of removing mountains of prejudice against their race,
by their simple presence in the country; but these gentlemen,
finding themselves embarrassed here by the peculiar disadvantages
to which I have referred, disadvantages in part growing out of
their education, being repelled by ignorance on the one hand, and
prejudice on the other, and having no taste to continue a contest
against such odds, they have sought more congenial climes, where
they can live more peaceable and quiet lives. I regret their
election, but I cannot blame them; for with an equal amount of
education and the hard lot which was theirs, I might follow their
example....
There is little reason to hope that any considerable number of the
free colored people will ever be induced to leave this country,
even if such a thing were desirable. The black man (_un_like the
Indian) loves civilization. He does not make very great progress
in civilization himself but he likes to be in the midst of it,
and prefers to share its most galling evils, to encountering
barbarism. Then the love of country, the dread of isolation, the
lack of adventurous spirit, and the thought of seeming to desert
their “brethren in bonds,” are a powerful check upon all schemes
of colonization, which look to the removal of the colored people,
without the slaves. The truth is, dear madam, we are _here_, and
here we are likely to remain. Individuals emigrate--nations
never. We have grown up with this republic, and I see nothing in
her character, or even in the character of the American people,
as yet which compels the belief that we must leave the United
States. If then, we are to remain here the question for the wise
and good is precisely that you have submitted to me--namely: What
can be done to improve the condition of the free people of color
in the United States? The plan which I humbly submit in answer
to this inquiry (and in the hope that it may find favor with
you, and with the many friends of humanity who honor, love, and
coöperate with you) is the establishment in Rochester, N. Y., or
in some other part of the United States equally favorable to such
an enterprise, of an INDUSTRIAL COLLEGE in which shall be taught
several important branches of the mechanic arts. This college to
be open to colored youth. I will pass over the details of such an
institution as I propose.... Never having had a day’s schooling
in all my life I may not be expected to map out the details of a
plan so comprehensive as that involved in the idea of a college. I
repeat, then, I leave the organization and administration to the
superior wisdom of yourself and the friends who second your noble
efforts. The argument in favor of an Industrial College (a college
to be conducted by the best men, and the best workmen which the
mechanic arts can afford; a college where colored youth can be
instructed to use their hands, as well as their heads; where they
can be put in possession of the means of getting a living whether
their lot in after life may be cast among civilized or uncivilized
men; whether they choose to stay here, or prefer to return to the
land of their fathers) is briefly this: Prejudice against the free
colored people in the United States has shown itself nowhere so
invincible as among mechanics. The farmer and the professional man
cherish no feeling so bitter as that cherished by these. The latter
would starve us out of the country entirely. At this moment I can
more easily get my son into a lawyer’s office to study law than
I can into a blacksmith’s shop to blow the bellows and to wield
the sledge-hammer. Denied the means of learning useful trades we
are pressed into the narrowest limits to obtain a livelihood. In
times past we have been the hewers of wood and drawers of water
for American society, and we once enjoyed a monopoly in menial
employments, but this is so no longer. Even these employments are
rapidly passing away out of our hands. The fact is (every day
begins with the lesson, and ends with the lesson) that colored
men must learn trades; must find new employments; new modes of
usefulness to society, or that they must decay under the pressing
wants to which their condition is rapidly bringing them.
We must become mechanics; we must build as well as live in houses;
we must make as well as use furniture; we must construct bridges as
well as pass over them, before we can properly live or be respected
by our fellow men. We need mechanics as well as ministers. We need
workers in iron, clay, and leather. We have orators, authors, and
other professional men, but these reach only a certain class, and
get respect for our race in certain select circles. To live here
as we ought we must fasten ourselves to our countrymen through
their every day cardinal wants. We must not only be able to _black_
boots, but to _make_ them. At present we are unknown in the
northern States as mechanics. We give no proof of genius or skill
at the county, State, or national fairs. We are unknown at any of
the great exhibitions of the industry of our fellow-citizens, and
being unknown we are unconsidered.
The fact that we make no show of our ability is held conclusive of
our inability to make any, hence all the indifference and contempt
with which incapacity is regarded fall upon us, and that too when
we have had no means of disproving the infamous opinion of our
natural inferiority. I have during the last dozen years denied
before the Americans that we are an inferior race; but this has
been done by arguments based upon admitted principles rather than
by the presentation of facts. Now firmly believing, as I do, that
there are skill, invention, power, industry, and real mechanical
genius, among the colored people, which will bear favorable
testimony for them, and which only need the means to develop them,
I am decidedly in favor of the establishment of such a college as
I have mentioned. The benefits of such an institution would not be
confined to the Northern States, nor to the free colored people.
They would extend over the whole Union. The slave not less than
the freeman would be benefited by such an institution. It must be
confessed that the most powerful argument now used by the southern
slaveholder, and the one most soothing to his conscience, is that
derived from the low condition of the free colored people of the
north. I have long felt that too little attention has been given by
our truest friends in this country to removing this stumbling block
out of the way of the slave’s liberation.
The most telling, the most killing refutation of slavery, is
the presentation of an industrious, enterprising, thrifty, and
intelligent free black population. Such a population I believe
would rise in the Northern States under the fostering care of such
a college as that supposed.
To show that we are capable of becoming mechanics I might adduce
any amount of testimony; but, dear madam, I need not ring the
changes on such a proposition. There is no question in the mind of
any unprejudiced person that the Negro is capable of making a good
mechanic. Indeed, even those who cherish the bitterest feelings
towards us have admitted that the apprehension that negroes might
be employed in their stead, dictated the policy of excluding them
from trades altogether. But I will not dwell upon this point as I
fear I have already trespassed too long upon your precious time,
and written more than I ought to expect you to read. Allow me to
say in conclusion, that I believe every intelligent colored man
in America will approve and rejoice at the establishment of some
such institution as that now suggested. There are many respectable
colored men, fathers of large families, having boys nearly grown
up, whose minds are tossed by day and by night with the anxious
inquiry, what shall I do with my boys? Such an institution would
meet the wants of such persons. Then, too, the establishment of
such an institution would be in character with the eminently
practical philanthropy of your trans-Atlantic friends. America
could scarcely object to it as an attempt to agitate the public
mind on the subject of slavery, or to _dissolve the Union_. It
could not be tortured into a cause for hard words by the American
people, but the noble and good of all classes would see in the
effort an excellent motive, a benevolent object, temperately,
wisely, and practically manifested.
Wishing you, dear madam, renewed health, a pleasant passage and
safe return to your native land,
I am most truly, your grateful friend,
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
_Mrs. H. B. Stowe._
I was not only requested to write the foregoing letter for the purpose
indicated, but I was also asked, with admirable foresight, to see and
ascertain, as far as possible, the views of the free colored people
themselves in respect to the proposed measure for their benefit. This
I was able to do in July, 1853, at the largest and most enlightened
colored convention that, up to that time, had ever assembled in this
country. This convention warmly approved the plan of a manual labor
school, as already described, and expressed high appreciation of the
wisdom and benevolence of Mrs. Stowe. This convention was held in
Rochester, N. Y., and will long be remembered there for the surprise
and gratification it caused our friends in that city. They were not
looking for such exhibition of enlightened zeal and ability as were
there displayed in speeches, addresses, and resolutions; and in the
conduct of the business for which it had assembled. Its proceedings
attracted wide-spread attention at home and abroad.
While Mrs. Stowe was abroad, she was attacked by the pro-slavery
press of our country so persistently and vigorously, for receiving
money for her own private use, that the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher felt
called upon to notice and reply to them in the columns of the New
York _Independent_, of which he was then the editor. He denied that
Mrs. Stowe was gathering British gold for herself, and referred her
assailants to me, if they would learn what she intended to do with the
money. In answer to her maligners, I denounced their accusations as
groundless, and assured the public through the columns of my paper,
that the testimonial then being raised in England by Mrs. Stowe, would
be sacredly devoted to the establishment of an industrial school for
colored youth. This announcement was circulated by other journals, and
the attacks ceased. Nobody could well object to such application of
money, received from any source, at home or abroad. After her return to
this country, I called again on Mrs. Stowe, and was much disappointed
to learn from her that she had reconsidered her plan for the industrial
school. I have never been able to see any force in the reasons for this
change. It is enough, however, to say that they were sufficient for
her, and that she no doubt acted conscientiously, though her change
of purpose was a great disappointment, and placed me in an awkward
position before the colored people of this country, as well as to
friends abroad, to whom I had given assurances that the money would be
appropriated in the manner I have described.
CHAPTER IX.
INCREASING DEMANDS OF THE SLAVE POWER.
Increased demands of slavery--War in Kansas--John Brown’s raid--
His capture and execution--My escape to England from United States
marshals.
Notwithstanding the natural tendency of the human mind to weary of an
old story, and to turn away from chronic abuses for which it sees no
remedy, the anti-slavery agitation for thirty long years--from 1830
to 1860--was sustained with ever increasing intensity and power.
This was not entirely due to the extraordinary zeal and ability of
the anti-slavery agitators themselves; for with all their admitted
ardor and eloquence, they could have done very little without the aid
rendered them, unwittingly, by the aggressive character of slavery
itself. It was in the nature of the system never to rest in obscurity,
although that condition was in a high degree essential to its security.
It was forever forcing itself into prominence. Unconscious, apparently,
of its own deformity, it omitted no occasion for inviting disgust by
seeking approval and admiration. It was noisiest when it should have
been most silent and unobtrusive. One of its defenders, when asked
what would satisfy him as a slaveholder, said “he never would be
satisfied until he could call the roll of his slaves in the shadow
of Bunker Hill monument.” Every effort made to put down agitation
only served to impart to it new strength and vigor. Of this class
was the “gag rule,” attempted and partially enforced in Congress--
the attempted suppression of the right of petition--the mobocratic
demonstrations against the exercise of free speech--the display of
pistols, bludgeons, and plantation manners in the Congress of the
nation--the demand, shamelessly made by our government upon England,
for the return of slaves who had won their liberty by their valor on
the high seas--the bill for the recapture of runaway slaves--the
annexation of Texas for the avowed purpose of increasing the number of
slave States, and thus increasing the power of slavery in the union--
the war with Mexico--the fillibustering expeditions against Cuba and
Central America--the cold-blooded decision of Chief Justice Taney in
the Dred Scott case, wherein he states, as it were, a historical fact,
that “negroes are deemed to have no rights which white men are bound to
respect”--the perfidious repeal of the Missouri compromise, when all
its advantages to the South had been gained and appropriated, and when
nothing had been gained by the North--the armed and bloody attempt to
force slavery upon the virgin soil of Kansas--the efforts of both of
the great political parties to drive from place and power every man
suspected of ideas and principles hostile to slavery--the rude attacks
made upon Giddings, Hale, Chase, Wilson, Wm. H. Seward, and Charles
Sumner--the effort to degrade these brave men, and drive them from
positions of prominence--the summary manner in which Virginia hanged
John Brown;--in a word, whatever was done or attempted, with a view to
the support and security of slavery, only served as fuel to the fire,
and heated the furnace of agitation to a higher degree than any before
attained. This was true up to the moment when the nation found it
necessary to gird on the sword for the salvation of the country and the
destruction of slavery.
At no time during all the ten years preceding the war, was the public
mind at rest. Mr. Clay’s compromise measures in 1850, whereby all the
troubles of the country about slavery were to be “in the deep bosom
of the ocean buried,” was hardly dry on the pages of the statute book
before the whole land was rocked with rumored agitation, and for one,
I did my best by pen and voice, and by ceaseless activity to keep it
alive and vigorous. Later on, in 1854, we had the Missouri compromise,
which removed the only grand legal barrier against the spread of
slavery over all the territory of the United States. From this time
there was no pause, no repose. Every body, however dull, could see that
this was a phase of the slavery question which was not to be slighted
or ignored. The people of the North had been accustomed to ask, in a
tone of cruel indifference, “What have we to do with slavery?” and
now no labored speech was required in answer. Slaveholding aggression
settled this question for us. The presence of slavery in a territory
would certainly exclude the sons and daughters of the free States more
effectually than statutes or yellow fever. Those who cared nothing
for the slave, and were willing to tolerate slavery inside the slave
States, were nevertheless not quite prepared to find themselves and
their children excluded from the common inheritance of the nation.
It is not surprising therefore, that the public mind of the North
was easily kept intensely alive on this subject, nor that in 1856 an
alarming expression of feeling on this point was seen in the large
vote given for John C. Fremont and William L. Dayton for President
and Vice-President of the United States. Until this last uprising
of the North against the slave power the anti-slavery movement was
largely retained in the hands of the original abolitionists, whose most
prominent leaders have already been mentioned elsewhere in this volume.
After 1856 a mightier arm and a more numerous host was raised against
it, the agitation becoming broader and deeper. The times at this point
illustrated the principle of tension and compression, action and
reaction. The more open, flagrant, and impudent the slave power, the
more firmly it was confronted by the rising anti-slavery spirit of the
North. No one act did more to rouse the north to a comprehension of the
infernal and barbarous spirit of slavery and its determination to “rule
or ruin,” than the cowardly and brutal assault made in the American
Senate upon Charles Sumner, by Preston S. Brooks, a member of Congress
from South Carolina. Shocking and scandalous as was this attack, the
spirit in which the deed was received and commended by the community,
was still more disgraceful. Southern ladies even applauded the armed
bully for his murderous assault upon an unarmed northern Senator,
because of words spoken in debate! This more than all else told the
thoughtful people of the North the kind of civilization to which they
were linked, and how plainly it foreshadowed a conflict on a larger
scale.
As a measure of agitation, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise
alluded to, was perhaps the most effective. It was that which brought
Abraham Lincoln into prominence, and into conflict with Stephen A.
Douglas (who was the author of that measure) and compelled the Western
States to take a deeper interest than they ever had done before in
the whole question. Pregnant words were now spoken on the side of
freedom, words which went straight to the heart of the nation. It was
Mr. Lincoln who told the American people at this crisis that the “Union
could not long endure half slave and half free; that they must be all
one or the other, and that the public mind could find no resting place
but in the belief in the ultimate extinction of slavery.” These were
not the words of an abolitionist--branded a fanatic, and carried
away by an enthusiastic devotion to the Negro--but the calm, cool,
deliberate utterance of a statesman, comprehensive enough to take in
the welfare of the whole country. No wonder that the friends of freedom
saw in this plain man of Illinois the proper standard-bearer of all the
moral and political forces which could be united and wielded against
the slave power. In a few simple words he had embodied the thought of
the loyal nation, and indicated the character fit to lead and guide the
country amid perils present and to come.
The South was not far behind the North in recognizing Abraham Lincoln
as the natural leader of the rising political sentiment of the country
against slavery, and it was equally quick in its efforts to counteract
and destroy his influence. Its papers teemed with the bitterest
invectives against the “backwoodsman of Illinois,” the “flat-boatman,”
the “rail-splitter,” the “third-rate lawyer,” and much else and worse.
Preceding the repeal of the Missouri Compromise I gave, at the
anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York, the
following picture of the state of the anti-slavery conflict as it then
existed:
“It is evident that there is in this country a purely slavery
party, a party which exists for no other earthly purpose but to
promote the interest of slavery. It is known by no particular
name, and has assumed no definite shape, but its branches reach
far and wide in church and state. This shapeless and nameless
party is not intangible in other and more important respects.
It has a fixed, definite, and comprehensive policy towards the
whole free colored population of the United States. I understand
that policy to comprehend: First, the complete suppression of all
anti-slavery discussion; second, the expulsion of the entire free
people of the United States; third, the nationalization of slavery;
fourth, guarantees for the endless perpetuation of slavery and its
extension over Mexico and Central America. Sir, these objects are
forcibly presented to us in the stern logic of passing events, and
in all the facts that have been before us during the last three
years. The country has been and is dividing on these grand issues.
Old party ties are broken. Like is finding its like on both sides
of these issues, and the great battle is at hand. For the present
the best representative of the slavery party is the Democratic
party. Its great head for the present is President Pierce, whose
boast it was before his election, that his whole life had been
consistent with the interests of slavery--that he is above
reproach on that score. In his inaugural address he reassures the
South on this point, so there shall be no misapprehension. Well,
the head of the slave power being in power it is natural that the
pro-slavery elements should cluster around his administration, and
that is rapidly being done. The stringent protectionist and the
free-trader strike hands. The supporters of Fillmore are becoming
the supporters of Pierce. Silver Gray Whigs shake-hands with
Hunker Democrats, the former only differing from the latter in
name. They are in fact of one heart and one mind, and the union is
natural and perhaps inevitable. Pilate and Herod made friends. The
key-stone to the arch of this grand union of forces of the slave
party is the so-called Compromise of 1850. In that measure we have
all the objects of our slaveholding policy specified. It is, sir,
favorable to this view of the situation, that the whig party and
the democratic party bent lower, sunk deeper, and strained harder
in their conventions, preparatory to the late presidential election
to meet the demands of slavery. Never did parties come before the
northern people with propositions of such undisguised contempt for
the moral sentiment and religious ideas of that people. They dared
to ask them to unite with them in a war upon free speech, upon
conscience, and to drive the Almighty presence from the councils
of the nation. Resting their platforms upon the fugitive slave
bill they have boldly asked this people for political power to
execute its horrible and hell-black provisions. The history of that
election reveals with great clearness, the extent to which slavery
has “shot its leprous distillment” through the lifeblood of the
nation. The party most thoroughly opposed to the cause of justice
and humanity triumphed, while the party only suspected of a leaning
toward those principles was overwhelmingly defeated, and some say
annihilated. But here is a still more important fact, and still
better discloses the designs of the slave power. It is a fact full
of meaning, that no sooner did the democratic party come into power
than a system of legislation was presented to all the legislatures
of the Northern States designed to put those States in harmony with
the fugitive slave law, and with the malignant spirit evinced by
the national government towards the free colored inhabitants of
the country. The whole movement on the part of the States bears
unmistakable evidence of having one origin, of emanating from one
head, and urged forward by one power. It was simultaneous, uniform,
and general, and looked only to one end. It was intended to put
thorns under feet already bleeding; to crush a people already bowed
down; to enslave a people already but half free; in a word, it was
intended and well calculated to discourage, dishearten, and if
possible to drive the whole free colored people out of the country.
In looking at the black law then recently enacted in the State of
Illinois one is struck dumb by its enormity. It would seem that the
men who passed that law, had not only successfully banished from
their minds all sense of justice, but all sense of shame as well;
these law codes propose to sell the bodies and souls of the blacks
to provide the means of intelligence and refinement for the whites;
to rob every black stranger who ventures among them to increase
their educational fund.
“While this kind of legislation is going on in the States, a
pro-slavery political board of health is being established at
Washington. Senators Hale, Chase, and Sumner are robbed of their
senatorial rights and dignity as representatives of sovereign
States, because they have refused to be inoculated with the
pro-slavery virus of the times. Among the services which a senator
is expected to perform, are many that can only be done efficiently
as members of important committees, and the slave power in the
Senate, in saying to these honorable senators, you shall not
serve on the committees of this body, took the responsibility of
insulting and robbing the States which has sent them there. It is
an attempt at Washington to decide for the States who the States
shall send to the Senate. Sir, it strikes me that this aggression
on the part of the slave power did not meet at the hands of the
proscribed and insulted senators the rebuke which we had a right to
expect from them. It seems to me that a great opportunity was lost,
that the great principle of senatorial equality was left undefended
at a time when its vindication was sternly demanded. But it is not
to the purpose of my present statement to criticize the conduct
of friends. Much should be left to the discretion of anti-slavery
men in Congress. Charges of recreancy should never be made but on
the most sufficient grounds. For of all places in the world where
an anti-slavery man needs the confidence and encouragement of his
friends, I take Washington--the citadel of slavery--to be that
place.
“Let attention now be called to the social influences operating and
coöperating with the slave power of the time, designed to promote
all its malign objects. We see here the black man attacked in his
most vital interests: prejudice and hate are systematically excited
against him. The wrath of other laborers is stirred up against him.
The Irish, who, at home, readily sympathize with the oppressed
everywhere, are instantly taught when they step upon our soil to
hate and despise the negro. They are taught to believe that he eats
the bread that belongs to them. The cruel lie is told them, that we
deprive them of labor and receive the money which would otherwise
make its way into their pockets. Sir, the Irish-American will
find out his mistake one day. He will find that in assuming our
avocation, he has also assumed our degradation. But for the present
we are the sufferers. Our old employments by which we have been
accustomed to gain a livelihood are gradually slipping from our
hands: every hour sees us elbowed out of some employment to make
room for some newly arrived emigrant from the Emerald Isle, whose
hunger and color entitle him to special favor. These white men are
becoming house-servants, cooks, stewards, waiters, and flunkies.
For aught I see they adjust themselves to their stations with all
proper humility. If they cannot rise to the dignity of white men,
they show that they can fall to the degradation of black men.
But now, sir, look once more! While the colored people are thus
elbowed out of employment; while a ceaseless enmity in the Irish
is excited against us; while State after State enacts laws against
us; while we are being hunted down like wild beasts; while we are
oppressed with a sense of increasing insecurity, the American
Colonization Society, with hypocrisy written on its brow, comes to
the front, awakens to new life, and vigorously presses its scheme
for our expatriation upon the attention of the American people.
Papers have been started in the North and the South to promote
this long cherished object--to get rid of the negro, who is
presumed to be a standing menace to slavery. Each of these papers
is adapted to the latitude in which it is published, but each and
all are united in calling upon the government for appropriations
to enable the Colonization Society to send us out of the country
by steam. Evidently this society looks upon our extremity as their
opportunity, and whenever the elements are stirred against us,
they are stimulated to unusual activity. They do not deplore our
misfortunes, but rather rejoice in them, since they prove that
the two races cannot flourish on the same soil. But, sir, I must
hasten. I have thus briefly given my view of one aspect of the
present condition and future prospects of the colored people of
the United States. And what I have said is far from encouraging to
my afflicted people. I have seen the cloud gather upon the sable
brows of some who hear me. I confess the case looks bad enough.
Sir, I am not a hopeful man. I think I am apt to undercalculate the
benefits of the future. Yet, sir, in this seemingly desperate case,
I do not despair for my people. There is a bright side to almost
every picture, and ours is no exception to the general rule. If the
influences against us are strong, those for us are also strong.
To the inquiry, will our enemies prevail in the execution of their
designs--in my God, and in my soul, I believe they _will not_.
Let us look at the first object sought for by the slavery party of
the country, viz., the suppression of the anti-slavery discussion.
They desire to suppress discussion on this subject, with a view to
the peace of the slaveholder and the security of slavery. Now, sir,
neither the principle nor the subordinate objects, here declared,
can be at all gained by the slave power, and for this reason: it
involves the proposition to padlock the lips of the whites, in
order to secure the fetters on the limbs of the blacks. The right
of speech, precious and priceless, _cannot_--_will not_--be
surrendered to slavery. Its suppression is asked for, as I have
said, to give peace and security to slaveholders. Sir, that thing
cannot be done. God has interposed an insuperable obstacle to
any such result. “There can be _no peace_, saith my God, to the
wicked.” Suppose it were possible to put down this discussion,
what would it avail the guilty slaveholder, pillowed as he is upon
the heaving bosoms of ruined souls? He could not have a peaceful
spirit. If every anti-slavery tongue in the nation were silent--
every anti-slavery organization dissolved--every anti-slavery
periodical, paper, pamphlet, book, or what not, searched out,
burned to ashes, and their ashes given to the four winds of heaven,
still, still the slaveholder could have _no peace_. In every
pulsation of his heart, in every throb of his life, in every glance
of his eye, in the breeze that soothes, and in the thunder that
startles, would be waked up an accuser, whose cause is, ‘thou art
verily guilty concerning thy brother.’”
This is no fancy sketch of the times indicated. The situation during
all the administration of President Pierce was only less threatening
and stormy than that under the administration of James Buchanan. One
sowed, the other reaped. One was the wind, the other was the whirlwind.
Intoxicated by their success in repealing the Missouri compromise--
in divesting the native-born colored man of American citizenship--in
harnessing both the Whig and Democratic parties to the car of slavery,
and in holding continued possession of the national government, the
propagandists of slavery threw off all disguises, abandoned all
semblance of moderation, and very naturally and inevitably proceeded
under Mr. Buchanan, to avail themselves of all the advantages of their
victories. Having legislated out of existence the great national wall,
erected in the better days of the republic, against the spread of
slavery, and against the increase of its power--having blotted out
all distinction, as they thought, between freedom and slavery in the
law, theretofore, governing the Territories of the United States, and
having left the whole question of the legislation or prohibition of
slavery to be decided by the people of a Territory, the next thing in
order was to fill up the Territory of Kansas--the one likely to be
first organized--with a people friendly to slavery, and to keep out
all such as were opposed to making that Territory a free State. Here
was an open invitation to a fierce and bitter strife; and the history
of the times shows how promptly that invitation was accepted by both
classes to which it was given, and the scenes of lawless violence and
blood that followed.
All advantages were at first on the side of those who were for making
Kansas a slave State. The moral force of the repeal of the Missouri
compromise was with them; the strength of the triumphant Democratic
party was with them; the power and patronage of the federal government
was with them; the various governors, sent out under the Territorial
government, was with them; and, above all, the proximity of the
Territory to the slave State of Missouri favored them and all their
designs. Those who opposed the making Kansas a slave State, for the
most part were far away from the battleground, residing chiefly in
New England, more than a thousand miles from the eastern border of
the Territory, and their direct way of entering it was through a
country violently hostile to them. With such odds against them, and
only an idea--though a grand one--to support them, it will ever be
a wonder that they succeeded in making Kansas a free State. It is not
my purpose to write particularly of this or of any other phase of
the conflict with slavery, but simply to indicate the nature of the
struggle, and the successive steps, leading to the final result. The
important point to me, as one desiring to see the slave power crippled,
slavery limited and abolished, was the effect of this Kansas battle
upon the moral sentiment of the North: how it made abolitionists
before they themselves became aware of it, and how it rekindled the
zeal, stimulated the activity, and strengthened the faith of our
old anti-slavery forces. “Draw on me for $1,000 per month while the
conflict lasts,” said the great-hearted Gerrit Smith. George L. Stearns
poured out his thousands, and anti-slavery men of smaller means were
proportionally liberal. H. W. Beecher shouted the right word at the
head of a mighty column; Sumner in the Senate spoke as no man had ever
spoken there before. Lewis Tappan representing one class of the old
opponents of slavery, and William L. Garrison the other, lost sight of
their former differences, and bent all their energies to the freedom
of Kansas. But these and others were merely generators of anti-slavery
force. The men who _went_ to Kansas with the purpose of making it a
free State, were the heroes and martyrs. One of the leaders in this
holy crusade for freedom, with whom I was brought into near relations,
was John Brown, whose person, house, and purposes I have already
described. This brave old man and his sons were amongst the first to
hear and heed the trumpet of freedom calling them to battle. What they
did and suffered, what they sought and gained, and by what means, are
matters of history, and need not be repeated here.
When it became evident, as it soon did, that the war for and against
slavery in Kansas was not to be decided by the peaceful means of words
and ballots, but that swords and bullets were to be employed on both
sides, Captain John Brown felt that now, after long years of waiting,
his hour had come, and never did man meet the perilous requirements of
any occasion more cheerfully, courageously, and disinterestedly than
he. I met him often during this struggle, and saw deeper into his soul
than when I met him in Springfield seven or eight years before, and
all I saw of him gave me a more favorable impression of the man, and
inspired me with a higher respect for his character. In his repeated
visits to the East to obtain necessary arms and supplies, he often
did me the honor of spending hours and days with me at Rochester. On
more than one occasion I got up meetings and solicited aid to be
used by him for the cause, and I may say without boasting that my
efforts in this respect were not entirely fruitless. Deeply interested
as “Ossawatamie Brown” was in Kansas he never lost sight of what he
called his greater work--the liberation of all the slaves in the
United States. But for the then present he saw his way to the great end
through Kansas. It would be a grateful task to tell of his exploits
in the border struggle, how he met persecution with persecution, war
with war, strategy with strategy, assassination and house-burning
with signal and terrible retaliation, till even the blood-thirsty
propagandists of slavery were compelled to cry for quarter. The horrors
wrought by his iron hand cannot be contemplated without a shudder,
but it is the shudder which one feels at the execution of a murderer.
The amputation of a limb is a severe trial to feeling, but necessity
is a full justification of it to reason. To call out a murderer at
midnight, and without note or warning, judge or jury, run him through
with a sword, was a terrible remedy for a terrible malady. The question
was not merely which class should prevail in Kansas, but whether
free-state men should live there at all. The border ruffians from
Missouri had openly declared their purpose not only to make Kansas a
slave state, but that they would make it impossible for free-state men
to live there. They burned their towns, burned their farm-houses, and
by assassination spread terror among them until many of the free-state
settlers were compelled to escape for their lives. John Brown was
therefore the logical result of slaveholding persecutions. Until the
lives of tyrants and murderers shall become more precious in the sight
of men than justice and liberty, John Brown will need no defender. In
dealing with the ferocious enemies of the free-state cause in Kansas he
not only showed boundless courage but eminent military skill. With men
so few and odds against him so great, few captains ever surpassed him
in achievements, some of which seem too disproportionate for belief,
and yet no voice has yet called them in question. With only eight men
he met, fought, whipped, and captured Henry Clay Pate with twenty-five
well-armed and well-mounted men. In this battle he selected his ground
so wisely, handled his men so skillfully, and attacked his enemies so
vigorously, that they could neither run nor fight, and were therefore
compelled to surrender to a force less than one-third their own. With
just thirty men on another memorable occasion he met and vanquished
400 Missourians under the command of General Read. These men had come
into the territory under an oath never to return to their homes in
Missouri till they had stamped out the last vestige of the free-state
spirit in Kansas. But a brush with old Brown instantly took this high
conceit out of them, and they were glad to get home upon any terms,
without stopping to stipulate. With less than 100 men to defend the
town of Lawrence, he offered to lead them and give battle to 1,400
men on the banks of the Waukerusia river, and was much vexed when his
offer was refused by General Jim Lane and others, to whom the defense
of the place was committed. Before leaving Kansas he went into the
border of Missouri and liberated a dozen slaves in a single night, and
despite of slave laws and marshals, he brought these people through
a half dozen States and landed them safe in Canada. The successful
efforts of the North in making Kansas a free State, despite all the
sophistical doctrines, and the sanguinary measures of the South to
make it a slave State, exercised a potent influence upon subsequent
political forces and events in the then near future. It is interesting
to note the facility with which the statesmanship of a section of the
country adapted its convictions to changed conditions. When it was
found that the doctrine of popular sovereignty (first I think invented
by General Cass, and afterwards adopted by Stephen A. Douglas) failed
to make Kansas a slave State, and could not be safely trusted in other
emergencies, southern statesmen promptly abandoned and reprobated that
doctrine, and took what they considered firmer ground. They lost faith
in the rights, powers, and wisdom of the people and took refuge in
the Constitution. Henceforth the favorite doctrine of the South was
that the people of a territory had no voice in the matter of slavery
whatever; that the Constitution of the United States, of its own
force and effect, carried slavery safely into any territory of the
United States and protected the system there until it ceased to be a
territory and became a State. The practical operation of this doctrine
would be to make all the future new States slaveholding States, for
slavery once planted and nursed for years in a territory would easily
strengthen itself against the evil day and defy eradication. This
doctrine was in some sense supported by Chief Justice Taney, in the
infamous Dred Scott decision. This new ground, however, was destined
to bring misfortune to its inventors, for it divided for a time the
democratic party, one faction of it going with John C. Breckenridge
and the other espousing the cause of Stephen A. Douglas; the one held
firmly to the doctrine that the United States Constitution, without
any legislation, territorial, national, or otherwise, by its own force
and effect, carried slavery into all the territories of the United
States; the other held that the people of a territory had the right
to admit slavery or reject slavery, as in their judgment they might
deem best. Now, while this war of words--this conflict of doctrines--
was in progress, the portentous shadow of a stupendous civil war
became more and more visible. Bitter complaints were raised by the
slaveholders that they were about to be despoiled of their proper share
in territory won by a common valor, or bought by a common treasure. The
North, on the other hand, or rather a large and growing party at the
North, insisted that the complaint was unreasonable and groundless;
that nothing properly considered as property was excluded or meant to
be excluded from the territories; that southern men could settle in
any territory of the United States with some kinds of property, and
on the same footing and with the same protection as citizens of the
North; that men and women are not property in the same sense as houses,
lands, horses, sheep, and swine are property, and that the fathers of
the Republic neither intended the extension nor the perpetuity of
slavery; that liberty is national, and slavery is sectional. From 1856
to 1860 the whole land rocked with this great controversy. When the
explosive force of this controversy had already weakened the bolts of
the American Union; when the agitation of the public mind was at its
topmost height; when the two sections were at their extreme points of
difference; when comprehending the perilous situation, such statesmen
of the North as William H. Seward sought to allay the rising storm by
soft, persuasive speech, and when all hope of compromise had nearly
vanished, as if to banish even the last glimmer of hope for peace
between the sections, John Brown came upon the scene. On the night
of the 16th of October, 1859, there appeared near the confluence of
the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, a party of 19 men--14 white and 5
colored. They were not only armed themselves, but they brought with
them a large supply of arms for such persons as might join them. These
men invaded the town of Harper’s Ferry, disarmed the watchman, took
possession of the arsenal, rifle factory, armory, and other government
property at that place, arrested and made prisoners of nearly all the
prominent citizens in the neighborhood, collected about 50 slaves, put
bayonets into the hands of such as were able and willing to fight for
their liberty, killed 3 men, proclaimed general emancipation, held the
ground more than thirty hours, were subsequently overpowered and nearly
all killed, wounded, or captured by a body of United States troops
under command of Col. Robert E. Lee, since famous as the rebel General
Lee. Three out of the nineteen invaders were captured while fighting,
and one of them was Capt. John Brown--the man who originated, planned,
and commanded the expedition. At the time of his capture Capt. Brown
was supposed to be mortally wounded, as he had several ugly gashes and
bayonet wounds on his head and body, and apprehending that he might
speedily die, or that he might be rescued by his friends, and thus the
opportunity to make him a signal example of slaveholding vengeance,
would be lost, his captors hurried him to Charlestown, 10 miles
further within the border of Virginia, placed him in prison strongly
guarded by troops, and before his wounds were healed he was brought
into court, subjected to a nominal trial, convicted of high-treason and
inciting slaves to insurrection, and was executed.
His corpse was given up to his woe-stricken widow, and she, assisted
by anti-slavery friends, caused it to be borne to North Elba, Essex
county, N. Y., and there his dust now reposes amid the silent, solemn,
and snowy grandeurs of the Adirondacks. This raid upon Harper’s Ferry
was as the last straw to the camel’s back. What in the tone of southern
sentiment had been fierce before became furious and uncontrollable now.
A scream for vengeance came up from all sections of the slave States
and from great multitudes in the North. All who were supposed to have
been any way connected with John Brown were to be hunted down and
surrendered to the tender mercies of slaveholding and panic-stricken
Virginia, and there to be tried after the fashion of John Brown’s
trial, and of course to be summarily executed.
On the evening when the news came that John Brown had taken and was
then holding the town of Harper’s Ferry, it so happened that I was
speaking to a large audience in National Hall, Philadelphia. The
announcement came upon us with the startling effect of an earthquake.
It was something to make the boldest hold his breath. I saw at once
that my old friend had attempted what he had long ago resolved to do,
and I felt certain that the result must be his capture and destruction.
As I expected, the next day brought the news that with two or three
men he had fortified and was holding a small engine house, but that
he was surrounded by a body of Virginia militia, who thus far had not
ventured to capture the insurgents, but that escape was impossible.
A few hours later and word came that Colonel Robert E. Lee with a
company of United States troops had made a breach in Capt. Brown’s
fort, and had captured him alive though mortally wounded. His carpet
bag had been secured by Governor Wise, and that it was found to contain
numerous letters and documents which directly implicated Gerritt Smith,
Joshua R. Giddings, Samuel G. Howe, Frank P. Sanborn, and myself. This
intelligence was soon followed by a telegram saying that we were all to
be arrested. Knowing that I was then in Philadelphia, stopping with my
friend, Thomas J. Dorsey, Mr. John Hern, the telegraph operator, came
to me and with others urged me to leave the city by the first train, as
it was known through the newspapers that I was then in Philadelphia,
and officers might even then be on my track. To me there was nothing
improbable in all this. My friends for the most part were appalled at
the thought of my being arrested then or there, or while on my way
across the ferry from Walnut street wharf to Camden, for there was
where I felt sure the arrest would be made, and asked some of them to
go so far as this with me merely to see what might occur, but upon
one ground or another they all thought it best not to be found in my
company at such a time, except dear old Franklin Turner--a true man.
The truth is, that in the excitement which prevailed my friends had
reason to fear that the very fact that they were with me would be a
sufficient reason for their arrest with me. The delay in the departure
of the steamer seemed unusually long to me, for I confess I was seized
with a desire to reach a more northern latitude. My friend Frank did
not leave my side till “all ashore” was ordered and the paddles began
to move. I reached New York at night, still under the apprehension of
arrest at any moment, but no signs of such event being made, I went
at once to the Barclay street ferry, took the boat across the river
and went direct to Washington street, Hoboken, the home of Mrs. Marks,
where I spent the night, and I may add without undue profession of
timidity, an _anxious_ night. The morning papers brought no relief, for
they announced that the government would spare no pains in ferretting
out and bringing to punishment all who were connected with the Harper’s
Ferry outrage, and that papers as well as persons would be searched
for. I was now somewhat uneasy from the fact that sundry letters and
a constitution written by John Brown were locked up in my desk in
Rochester. In order to prevent these papers from falling into the hands
of the government of Virginia, I got my friend Miss Ottilia Assing to
write at my dictation the following telegram to B. F. Blackall, the
telegraph operator in Rochester, a friend and frequent visitor at my
house, who would readily understand the meaning of the dispatch:
“B. F. BLACKALL, Esq.,
“Tell Lewis (my oldest son) to secure all the important papers in
my high desk.”
I did not sign my name, and the result showed that I had rightly judged
that Mr. Blackall would understand and promptly attend to the request.
The mark of the chisel with which the desk was opened is still on
the drawer, and is one of the traces of the John Brown raid. Having
taken measures to secure my papers the trouble was to know just what
to do with myself. To stay in Hoboken was out of the question, and
to go to Rochester was to all appearance to go into the hands of the
hunters, for they would naturally seek me at my home if they sought
me at all. I, however, resolved to go home and risk my safety there.
I felt sure that once in the city I could not be easily taken from
there without a preliminary hearing upon the requisition, and not then
if the people could be made aware of what was in progress. But how to
get to Rochester became a serious question. It would not do to go to
New York city and take the train, for that city was not less incensed
against the John Brown conspirators than many parts of the South. The
course hit upon by my friends, Mr. Johnston and Miss Assing, was to
take me at night in a private conveyance from Hoboken to Paterson,
where I could take the Erie railroad for home. This plan was carried
out and I reached home in safety, but had been there but a few moments
when I was called upon by Samuel D. Porter, Esq., and my neighbor,
Lieutenant-Governor Selden, who informed me that the governor of the
State would certainly surrender me on a proper requisition from the
governor of Virginia, and that while the people of Rochester would
not permit me to be taken South, yet in order to avoid collision with
the government and consequent bloodshed, they advised me to quit the
country, which I did--going to Canada. Governor Wise in the meantime,
being advised that I had left Rochester for the State of Michigan, made
requisition on the governor of that State for my surrender to Virginia.
The following letter from Governor Wise to President James Buchanan
(which since the war was sent me by B. J. Lossing, the historian,)
will show by what means the governor of Virginia meant to get me in
his power, and that my apprehensions of arrest were not altogether
groundless:
[Confidential.]
RICHMOND, VA., Nov. 13, 1859.
_To His Excellency, James Buchanan, President of the United
States, and to the Honorable Postmaster-General of the United
States_:
GENTLEMEN--I have information such as has caused me, upon proper
affidavits, to make requisition upon the Executive of Michigan
for the delivery up of the person of Frederick Douglass, a negro
man, supposed now to be in Michigan, charged with murder, robbery,
and inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. My
agents for the arrest and reclamation of the person so charged
are Benjamin M. Morris and William N. Kelly. The latter has the
requisition, and will wait on you to the end of obtaining nominal
authority as post-office agents. They need be very secretive in
this matter, and some pretext for traveling through the dangerous
section for the execution of the laws in this behalf, and some
protection against obtrusive, unruly, or lawless violence. If it be
proper so to do, will the postmaster-general be pleased to give to
Mr. Kelly, for each of these men, a permit and authority to act as
detectives for the post-office department, without pay, but to pass
and repass without question, delay or hindrance?
Respectfully submitted by your obedient servant,
HENRY A. WISE.
There is no reason to doubt that James Buchanan afforded Governor
Wise all the aid and coöperation for which he was asked. I have been
informed that several United States marshals were in Rochester in
search of me within six hours after my departure. I do not know that I
can do better at this stage of my story than to insert the following
letter, written by me to the Rochester _Democrat and American_:
CANADA WEST, Oct 31st, 1859.
MR. EDITOR:
I notice that the telegraph makes Mr. Cook (one of the unfortunate
insurgents at Harper’s Ferry, and now a prisoner in the hands of
the thing calling itself the Government of Virginia, but which
in fact is but an organized conspiracy by one part of the people
against another and weaker) denounce me as a coward, and assert
that I promised to be present in person at the Harper’s Ferry
insurrection. This is certainly a very grave impeachment whether
viewed in its bearings upon friends or upon foes, and you will not
think it strange that I should take a somewhat serious notice of
it. Having no acquaintance whatever with Mr. Cook, and never having
exchanged a word with him about Harper’s Ferry insurrection, I am
disposed to doubt if he could have used the language concerning
me, which the wires attribute to him. The lightning when speaking
for itself, is among the most direct, reliable, and truthful of
things; but when speaking of the terror-stricken slaveholders at
Harper’s Ferry, it has been made the swiftest of liars. Under its
nimble and trembling fingers it magnifies 17 men into 700 and
has since filled the columns of the New York _Herald_ for days
with its interminable contradictions. But assuming that it has
told only the simple truth as to the sayings of Mr. Cook in this
instance, I have this answer to make to my accuser: Mr. Cook may be
perfectly right in denouncing me as a coward; I have not one word
to say in defense or vindication of my character for courage; I
have always been more distinguished for running than fighting, and
tried by the Harper’s-Ferry-insurrection-test, I am most miserably
deficient in courage, even more so than Cook when he deserted his
brave old captain and fled to the mountains. To this extent Mr.
Cook is entirely right, and will meet no contradiction from me, or
from anybody else. But wholly, grievously and most unaccountably
wrong is Mr. Cook when he asserts that I promised to be present
in person at the Harper’s Ferry insurrection. Of whatever other
imprudence and indiscretion I may have been guilty, I have never
made a promise so rash and wild as this. The taking of Harper’s
Ferry was a measure never encouraged by my word or by my vote. At
any time or place, my wisdom or my cowardice, has not only kept
me from Harper’s Ferry, but has equally kept me from making any
promise to go there. I desire to be quite emphatic here, for of
all guilty men, he is the guiltiest who lures his fellowmen to an
undertaking of this sort, under promise of assistance which he
afterwards fails to render. I therefore declare that there is no
man living, and no man dead, who if living, could truthfully say
that I ever promised him, or anybody else, either conditionally, or
otherwise, that I would be present in person at the Harper’s Ferry
insurrection. My field of labor for the abolition of slavery has
not extended to an attack upon the United States arsenal. In the
teeth of the documents already published and of those which may
hereafter be published, I affirm that no man connected with that
insurrection, from its noble and heroic leader down, can connect
my name with a single broken promise of any sort whatever. So much
I deem it proper to say negatively. The time for a full statement
of what I know and of ALL I know of this desperate but sublimely
disinterested effort to emancipate the slaves of Maryland and
Virginia from their cruel taskmasters, has not yet come, and may
never come. In the denial which I have now made, my motive is more
a respectful consideration for the opinions of the slave’s friends
than from my fear of being made an accomplice in the general
conspiracy against slavery, when there is a reasonable hope for
success. Men who live by robbing their fellowmen of their labor
and liberty have forfeited their right to know anything of the
thoughts, feelings, or purposes of those whom they rob and plunder.
They have by the single act of slaveholding, voluntarily placed
themselves beyond the laws of justice and honor, and have become
only fitted for companionship with thieves and pirates--the common
enemies of God and of all mankind. While it shall be considered
right to protect oneself against thieves, burglars, robbery, and
assassins, and to slay a wild beast in the act of devouring his
human prey, it can never be wrong for the imbruted and whip-scarred
slaves, or their friends, to hunt, harass, and even strike down the
traffickers in human flesh. If any body is disposed to think less
of me on account of this sentiment, or because I may have had a
knowledge of what was about to occur, and did not assume the base
and detestable character of an informer, he is a man whose good or
bad opinion of me may be equally repugnant and despicable.
Entertaining these sentiments, I may be asked why I did not join
John Brown--the noble old hero whose one right hand has shaken
the foundation of the American Union, and whose ghost will haunt
the bed-chambers of all the born and unborn slaveholders of
Virginia through all their generations, filling them with alarm and
consternation. My answer to this has already been given; at least
impliedly given--“The tools to those who can use them!” Let every
man work for the abolition of slavery in his own way. I would help
all and hinder none. My position in regard to the Harper’s Ferry
insurrection may be easily inferred from these remarks, and I shall
be glad if those papers which have spoken of me in connection with
it, would find room for this brief statement. I have no apology
for keeping out of the way of those gentlemanly United States
marshals, who are said to have paid Rochester a somewhat protracted
visit lately, with a view to an interview with me. A government
recognizing the validity of the _Dred Scott_ decision at such a
time as this, is not likely to have any very charitable feelings
towards me, and if I am to meet its representatives I prefer to
do so at least upon equal terms. If I have committed any offense
against society I have done so on the soil of the State of New
York, and I should be perfectly willing to be arraigned there
before an impartial jury; but I have quite insuperable objections
to being caught by the hounds of Mr. Buchanan, and “_bagged_”
by Gov. Wise. For this appears to be the arangement. Buchanan
does the fighting and hunting, and Wise “_bags_” the game. Some
reflections may be made upon my leaving on a tour to England just
at this time. I have only to say that my going to that country has
been rather delayed than hastened by the insurrection at Harper’s
Ferry. All know that I had intended to leave here in the first week
of November.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.”
CHAPTER X.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END.
My connection with John Brown--To and from England--Presidential
contest--Election of Abraham Lincoln.
What was my connection with John Brown, and what I knew of his scheme
for the capture of Harper’s Ferry, I may now proceed to state. From the
time of my visit to him in Springfield, Mass., in 1847, our relations
were friendly and confidential. I never passed through Springfield
without calling on him, and he never came to Rochester without calling
on me. He often stopped over night with me, when we talked over the
feasibility of his plan for destroying the value of slave property,
and the motive for holding slaves in the border States. That plan, as
already intimated elsewhere, was to take twenty or twenty-five discreet
and trustworthy men into the mountains of Virginia and Maryland, and
station them in squads of five, about five miles apart, on a line of
twenty-five miles; each squad to co-operate with all, and all with
each. They were to have selected for them, secure and comfortable
retreats in the fastnesses of the mountains, where they could easily
defend themselves in case of attack. They were to subsist upon the
country roundabout. They were to be well armed, but were to avoid
battle or violence, unless compelled by pursuit or in self-defense. In
that case, they were to make it as costly as possible to the assailing
party, whether that party should be soldiers or citizens. He further
proposed to have a number of stations from the line of Pennsylvania
to the Canada border, where such slaves as he might, through his men,
induce to run away, should be supplied with food and shelter and be
forwarded from one station to another till they should reach a place
of safety either in Canada or the Northern States. He proposed to add
to his force in the mountains any courageous and intelligent fugitives
who might be willing to remain and endure the hardships and brave the
dangers of this mountain life. These, he thought, if properly selected,
on account of their knowledge of the surrounding country, could be made
valuable auxiliaries. The work of going into the valley of Virginia and
persuading the slaves to flee to the mountains, was to be committed to
the most courageous and judicious man connected with each squad.
Hating slavery as I did, and making its abolition the object of my
life, I was ready to welcome any new mode of attack upon the slave
system which gave any promise of success. I readily saw that this plan
could be made very effective in rendering slave property in Maryland
and Virginia valueless by rendering it insecure. Men do not like to
buy runaway horses, nor to invest their money in a species of property
likely to take legs and walk off with itself. In the worse case, too,
if the plan should fail, and John Brown should be driven from the
mountains, a new fact would be developed by which the nation would be
kept awake to the existence of slavery. Hence, I assented to this, John
Brown’s scheme or plan for running off slaves.
To set this plan in operation, money and men, arms and ammunition,
food and clothing, were needed; and these, from the nature of the
enterprise, were not easily obtained, and nothing was immediately done.
Captain Brown, too, notwithstanding his rigid economy, was poor, and
was unable to arm and equip men for the dangerous life he had mapped
out. So the work lingered till after the Kansas trouble was over, and
freedom was a fact accomplished in that Territory. This left him with
arms and men, for the men who had been with him in Kansas, believed in
him, and would follow him in any humane but dangerous enterprise he
might undertake.
After the close of his Kansas work, Captain Brown came to my house in
Rochester, and said he desired to stop with me several weeks; “but,”
he added, “I will not stay unless you will allow me to pay board.”
Knowing that he was no trifler and meant all he said, and desirous of
retaining him under my roof, I charged three dollars a week. While
here, he spent most of his time in correspondence. He wrote often to
George L. Stearns of Boston, Gerrit Smith of Peterboro, N. Y., and many
others, and received many letters in return. When he was not writing
letters, he was writing and revising a constitution which he meant to
put in operation by the men who should go with him in the mountains. He
said that to avoid anarchy and confusion, there should be a regularly
constituted government, to which each man who came with him should
be sworn to honor and support. I have a copy of this constitution in
Captain Brown’s own handwriting, as prepared by himself at my house.
He called his friends from Chatham (Canada) to come together that
he might lay his constitution before them, for their approval and
adoption. His whole time and thought were given to this subject. It
was the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night, till I
confess it began to be something of a bore to me. Once in a while he
would say he could, with a few resolute men, capture Harper’s Ferry,
and supply himself with arms belonging to the government at that place,
but he never announced his intention to do so. It was however, very
evidently passing in his mind as a thing he might do. I paid but little
attention to such remarks, though I never doubted that he thought just
what he said. Soon after his coming to me, he asked me to get for him
two smoothly planed boards, upon which he could illustrate, with a pair
of dividers, by a drawing, the plan of fortification which he meant to
adopt in the mountains.
These forts were to be so arranged as to connect one with the other,
by secret passages, so that if one was carried, another could easily
be fallen back upon, and be the means of dealing death to the enemy
at the very moment when he might think himself victorious. I was less
interested in these drawings than my children were, but they showed
that the old man had an eye to the means as well as to the end, and was
giving his best thought to the work he was about to take in hand.
It was his intention to begin this work in ’58 instead of ’59. Why he
did not will appear from the following circumstances.
While in Kansas, he made the acquaintance of one Colonel Forbes, an
Englishman, who had figured somewhat in revolutionary movements in
Europe, and, as it turned out, had become an adventurer--a soldier
of fortune in this country. This Forbes professed to be an expert in
military matters, and easily fastened upon John Brown, and, becoming
master of his scheme of liberation, professed great interest in it, and
offered his services to him in the preparation of his men for the work
before them. After remaining with Brown a short time, he came to me
in Rochester, with a letter from him, asking me to receive and assist
him. I was not favorably impressed with Colonel Forbes at first, but I
“conquered my prejudice,” took him to a hotel and paid his board while
he remained. Just before leaving, he spoke of his family in Europe as
in destitute circumstances, and of his desire to send them some money.
I gave him a little--I forget how much--and through Miss Assing,
a German lady, deeply interested in the John Brown scheme, he was
introduced to several of my German friends in New York. But he soon
wore them out by his endless begging; and when he could make no more
money by professing to advance the John Brown project, he threatened
to expose it, and all connected with it. I think I was the first to be
informed of his tactics, and I promptly communicated them to Captain
Brown. Through my friend Miss Assing, I found that Forbes had told of
Brown’s designs to Horace Greeley, and to the government officials at
Washington, of which I informed Captain Brown, and this led to the
postponement of the enterprise another year. It was hoped that by this
delay, the story of Forbes would be discredited, and this calculation
was correct, for nobody believed the scoundrel, though in this he told
the truth.
While at my house, John Brown made the acquaintance of a colored man
who called himself by different names--sometimes “Emperor,” at other
times, “Shields Green.” He was a fugitive slave, who had made his
escape from Charleston, South Carolina, a State from which a slave
found it no easy matter to run away. But Shields Green was not one to
shrink from hardships or dangers. He was a man of few words, and his
speech was singularly broken; but his courage and self-respect made him
quite a dignified character. John Brown saw at once what “stuff” Green
“was made of,” and confided to him his plans and purposes. Green easily
believed in Brown, and promised to go with him whenever he should be
ready to move. About three weeks before the raid on Harper’s Ferry,
John Brown wrote to me, informing me that a beginning in his work would
soon be made, and that before going forward he wanted to see me, and
appointed an old stone quarry near Chambersburg, Penn., as our place of
meeting. Mr. Kagi, his secretary, would be there, and they wished me to
bring any money I could command, and Shields Green along with me. In
the same letter, he said that his “mining tools” and stores were then
at Chambersburg, and that he would be there to remove them. I obeyed
the old man’s summons. Taking Shields, we passed through New York city,
where we called upon Rev. James Glocester and his wife, and told them
where and for what we were going, and that our old friend needed money.
Mrs. Glocester gave me ten dollars, and asked me to hand the same to
John Brown, with her best wishes.
When I reached Chambersburg, a good deal of surprise was expressed (for
I was instantly recognized) that I should come there unannounced, and I
was pressed to make a speech to them, with which invitation I readily
complied. Meanwhile, I called upon Mr. Henry Watson, a simple-minded
and warm-hearted man, to whom Capt. Brown had imparted the secret of
my visit, to show me the road to the appointed rendezvous. Watson was
very busy in his barber’s shop, but he dropped all and put me on the
right track. I approached the old quarry very cautiously, for John
Brown was generally well armed, and regarded strangers with suspicion.
He was there under the ban of the government, and heavy rewards were
offered for his arrest, for offenses said to have been committed in
Kansas. He was passing under the name of John Smith. As I came near, he
regarded me rather suspiciously, but soon recognized me, and received
me cordially. He had in his hand when I met him, a fishing-tackle, with
which he had apparently been fishing in a stream hard by; but I saw
no fish, and did not suppose that he cared much for his “fisherman’s
luck.” The fishing was simply a disguise, and was certainly a good one.
He looked every way like a man of the neighborhood, and as much at home
as any of the farmers around there. His hat was old, and storm-beaten,
and his clothing was about the color of the stone quarry itself--his
then present dwelling-place.
His face wore an anxious expression, and he was much worn by thought
and exposure. I felt that I was on a dangerous mission, and was as
little desirous of discovery as himself, though no reward had been
offered for me.
We--Mr. Kagi, Captain Brown, Shields Green, and myself, sat down
among the rocks and talked over the enterprise which was about to be
undertaken. The taking of Harper’s Ferry, of which Captain Brown had
merely hinted before, was now declared as his settled purpose, and he
wanted to know what I thought of it. I at once opposed the measure
with all the arguments at my command. To me, such a measure would be
fatal to running off slaves (as was the original plan), and fatal
to all engaged in doing so. It would be an attack upon the federal
government, and would array the whole country against us. Captain Brown
did most of the talking on the other side of the question. He did not
at all object to rousing the nation; it seemed to him that something
startling was just what the nation needed. He had completely renounced
his old plan, and thought that the capture of Harper’s Ferry would
serve as notice to the slaves that their friends had come, and as a
trumpet to rally them to his standard. He described the place as to its
means of defense, and how impossible it would be to dislodge him if
once in possession. Of course I was no match for him in such matters,
but I told him, and these were my words, that all his arguments, and
all his descriptions of the place, convinced me that he was going into
a perfect steel-trap, and that once in he would never get out alive;
that he would be surrounded at once and escape would be impossible.
He was not to be shaken by anything I could say, but treated my views
respectfully, replying that even if surrounded he would find means for
cutting his way out; but that would not be forced upon him; he should
have a number of the best citizens of the neighborhood as his prisoners
at the start, and that holding them as hostages, he should be able if
worse came to worse, to dictate terms of egress from the town. I looked
at him with some astonishment, that he could rest upon a reed so weak
and broken, and told him that Virginia would blow him and his hostages
sky-high, rather than that he should hold Harper’s Ferry an hour. Our
talk was long and earnest; we spent the most of Saturday and a part of
Sunday in this debate--Brown for Harper’s Ferry, and I against it; he
for striking a blow which should instantly rouse the country, and I for
the policy of gradually and unaccountably drawing off the slaves to the
mountains, as at first suggested and proposed by him. When I found that
he had fully made up his mind and could not be dissuaded, I turned to
Shields Green and told him he heard what Captain Brown had said; his
old plan was changed, and that I should return home, and if he wished
to go with me he could do so. Captain Brown urged us both to go with
him, but I could not do so, and could but feel that he was about to
rivet the fetters more firmly than ever on the limbs of the enslaved.
In parting he put his arms around me in a manner more than friendly,
and said: “Come with me, Douglass, I will defend you with my life. I
want you for a special purpose. When I strike the bees will begin to
swarm, and I shall want you to help hive them.” But my discretion or my
cowardice made me proof against the dear old man’s eloquence--perhaps
it was something of both which determined my course. When about to
leave I asked Green what he had decided to do, and was surprised by his
coolly saying in his broken way, “I b’leve I’ll go wid de ole man.”
Here we separated; they to go to Harper’s Ferry, I to Rochester. There
has been some difference of opinion as to the propriety of my course
in thus leaving my friend. Some have thought that I ought to have gone
with him, but I have no reproaches for myself at this point, and since
I have been assailed only by colored men who kept even farther from
this brave and heroic man than I did, I shall not trouble myself much
about their criticisms. They compliment me in assuming that I should
perform greater deeds than themselves.
Such then was my connection with John Brown, and it may be asked if
this is all, why should I have objected to being sent to Virginia to
be tried for the offence charged. The explanation is not difficult. I
knew if my enemies could not prove me guilty of the offence of being
with John Brown they could prove that I was Frederick Douglass; they
could prove that I was in correspondence and conspiracy with Brown
against slavery; they could prove that I brought Shields Green, one
of the bravest of his soldiers, all the way from Rochester to him at
Chambersburg; they could prove that I brought money to aid him, and in
what was then the state of the public mind I could not hope to make a
jury of Virginia believe I did not go the whole length which he went,
or that I was not one of his supporters, and I knew that all Virginia,
were I once in her clutches, would say “let him be hanged.” Before I
had left Canada for England Jeremiah Anderson, one of Brown’s men, who
was present and took part in the raid, but escaped by the mountains,
joined me, and he told me that he and Shields Green were sent out on
special duty as soon as the capture of the arsenal, etc., was effected.
Their business was to bring in the slaves from the surrounding country,
and hence they were on the outside when Brown was surrounded. I said to
him, “Why then did not Shields come with you?” “Well,” he said, “I told
him to come; that we could do nothing more, but he simply said he must
go down to de ole man.” Anderson further told me that Captain Brown
was careful to keep his plans from his men, and that there was much
opposition among them when they found what were the precise movements
determined upon; but they were an oath-bound company and like good
soldiers were agreed to follow their captain wherever he might lead.
On the 12th of November, 1859, I took passage from Quebec on board
the steamer Scotia, Captain Thompson, of the Allan line. My going to
England was not at first suggested by my connection with John Brown,
but the fact that I was now in danger of arrest on the ground of
complicity with him, made what I had intended a pleasure a necessity,
for though in Canada, and under British law, it was not impossible
that I might be kidnapped and taken to Virginia. England had given me
shelter and protection when the slavehounds were on my track fourteen
years before, and her gates were still open to me now that I was
pursued in the name of Virginia justice. I could but feel that I was
going into exile, perhaps for life. Slavery seemed to be at the very
top of its power; the national government with all its powers and
appliances were in its hands, and it bade fair to wield them for many
years to come. Nobody could then see that in the short space of four
years this power would be broken and the slave system destroyed. So
I started on my voyage with feelings far from cheerful. No one who
has not himself been compelled to leave his home and country and go
into permanent banishment, can well imagine the state of mind and
heart which such a condition brings. The voyage out was by the north
passage, and at this season, as usual, it was cold, dark, and stormy.
Before quitting the coast of Labrador, we had four degrees below zero.
Although I had crossed the Atlantic twice before, I had not experienced
such unfriendly weather as during the most of this voyage. Our great
ship was dashed about upon the surface of the sea, as though she had
been the smallest “dugout.” It seemed to tax all the seamanship of our
captain to keep her in manageable condition; but after battling with
the waves on an angry ocean during fourteen long days, I gratefully
found myself upon the soil of Great Britian, beyond the reach of
Buchanan’s power and Virginia’s prisons. On reaching Liverpool, I
learned that England was nearly as much alive to what had happened at
Harper’s Ferry as the United States, and I was immediately called upon
in different parts of the country to speak on the subject of slavery,
and especially to give some account of the men who had thus flung away
their lives in a desperate attempt to free the slaves. My own relation
to the affair was a subject of much interest, as was the fact of my
presence there being in some sense to elude the demands of Governor
Wise, who having learned that I was not in Michigan, but _was_ on a
British steamer bound for England, publicly declared that “could he
overtake that vessel, he would take me from her deck at any cost.”
While in England, and wishing to visit France, I wrote to Mr. George
M. Dallas, the American minister at the British court, to obtain a
passport. The attempt upon the life of Napoleon III about that time,
and the suspicion that the conspiracy against him had been hatched in
England, made the French government very strict in the enforcement of
its passport system. I might possibly have been permitted to visit
that country without a certificate of my citizenship, but wishing to
leave nothing to chance, I applied to the only competent authority;
but true to the traditions of the Democratic party--true to the
slaveholding policy of his country--true to the decision of the United
States supreme court, and true, perhaps, to the petty meanness of his
own nature, Mr. George M. Dallas, the Democratic American minister,
refused to grant me a passport, on the ground that I was not a citizen
of the United States. I did not beg or remonstrate with this dignitary
further, but simply addressed a note to the French minister at London,
asking for a permit to visit France, and that paper came without delay.
I mention this, not to belittle the civilization of my native country,
but as a part of the story of my life. I could have borne this denial
with more serenity, could I have foreseen what has since happened, but,
under the circumstances, it was a galling disappointment.
I had at this time been about six months out of the United States.
My time had been chiefly occupied in speaking on slavery, and other
subjects, in different parts of England and Scotland, meeting and
enjoying the while the society of many of the kind friends whose
acquaintance I had made during my visit to those countries fourteen
years before. Much of the excitement caused by the Harper’s Ferry
insurrection had subsided, both at home and abroad, and I should have
now gratified a long-cherished desire to visit France, and availed
myself, for that purpose, of the permit so promptly and civilly given
by the French minister, had not news reached me from home of the death
of my beloved daughter Annie, the light and life of my house. Deeply
distressed by this bereavement, and acting upon the impulse of the
moment, regardless of the peril, I at once resolved to return home,
and took the first outgoing steamer for Portland, Maine. After a
rough passage of seventeen days, I reached home by way of Canada, and
remained in my house nearly a month before the knowledge got abroad
that I was again in this country. Great changes had now taken place in
the public mind touching the John Brown raid. Virginia had satisfied
her thirst for blood. She had executed all the raiders who had fallen
into her hands. She had not given Captain Brown the benefit of a
reasonable doubt, but hurried him to the scaffold in panic-stricken
haste. She had made herself ridiculous by her fright, and despisable
by her fury. Emerson’s prediction that Brown’s gallows would become
like the cross, was already being fulfilled. The old hero, in the trial
hour, had behaved so grandly that men regarded him not as a murderer,
but as a martyr. All over the North men were singing the John Brown
song. His body was in the dust, but his soul was marching on. His
defeat was already assuming the form and pressure of victory, and
his death was giving new life and power to the principles of justice
and liberty. He had spoken great words in the face of death and the
champions of slavery. He had quailed before neither. What he had lost
by the sword, he had more than gained by the truth. Had he wavered, had
he retreated or apologized, the case had been different. He did not
even ask that the cup of death might pass from him. To his own soul
he was right, and neither “principalities nor powers, life nor death,
things present or things to come,” could shake his dauntless spirit,
or move him from his ground. He may not have stooped on his way to
the gallows to kiss a little colored child, as it is reported he did,
but the act would have been in keeping with the tender heart, as well
as with the heroic spirit of the man. Those who looked for confession
heard only the voice of rebuke and warning.
Early after the insurrection at Harper’s Ferry, an investigating
committee was appointed by Congress, and a “drag net” was spread
all over the country, in the hope of inculpating many distinguished
persons. They had imprisoned Thaddeus Hyatt, who denied their right
to interrogate him, and had called many witnesses before them, as if
the judicial power of the nation had been confided to their committee,
and not to the supreme court of the United States. But Captain Brown
implicated nobody. Upon his own head he invited all the bolts of
slaveholding vengeance. He said that he, and he alone, was responsible
for all that had happened. He had many friends, but no instigators. In
all their efforts, this committee signally failed, and soon after my
arrival home, they gave up the search, and asked to be discharged, not
having half fulfilled the duty for which they were appointed.
I have never been able to account satisfactorily for the sudden
abandonment of this investigation on any other ground than that the men
engaged in it expected soon to be in rebellion themselves, and that
not a rebellion for liberty like that of John Brown, but a rebellion
for slavery, and that they saw that by using their senatorial power in
search of rebels they might be whetting a knife for their own throats.
At any rate the country was soon relieved of the congressional drag-net
and was now engaged in the heat and turmoil of a presidential canvass--
a canvass which had no parallel, involving as it did the question of
peace or war, the integrity or the dismemberment of the Republic; and
I may add, the maintenance or destruction of slavery. In some of the
southern States the people were already organizing and arming to be
ready for an apprehended contest, and with this work on their hands
they had no time to spare to those they had wished to convict as
instigators of the raid, however desirous they might have been to do
so under other circumstances, for they had parted with none of their
hate. As showing their feeling toward me I may state that a colored
man appeared about this time in Knoxville, Tenn., and was beset by a
furious crowd with knives and bludgeons, because he was supposed to be
Fred. Douglass. But, however perilous it would have been for me to have
shown myself in any southern State, there was no especial danger for me
at the North.
Though disappointed in my tour on the Continent, and called home by
one of the saddest events that can afflict the domestic circle, my
presence here was fortunate, since it enabled me to participate in the
most important and memorable presidential canvass ever witnessed in
the United States, and to labor for the election of a man who in the
order of events was destined to do a greater service to his country and
to mankind, than any man who had gone before him in the presidential
office. It is something to couple one’s name with great occasions, and
it was a great thing to me to be permitted to bear some humble part in
this, the greatest that had thus far come to the American people. It
was a great thing to achieve American independence when we numbered
three millions, but it was a greater thing to save this country from
dismemberment and ruin when it numbered thirty millions. He alone of
all our Presidents was to have the opportunity to destroy slavery,
and to lift into manhood millions of his countrymen hitherto held as
chattels and numbered with the beasts of the field.
The presidential canvass of 1860 was three sided, and each side had
its distinctive doctrine as to the question of slavery and slavery
extension. We had three candidates in the field. Stephen A. Douglas
was the standard bearer of what may be called the western faction
of the old divided democratic party, and John C. Breckenridge was
the standard-bearer of the southern or slaveholding faction of that
party. Abraham Lincoln represented the then young, growing, and united
republican party. The lines between these parties and candidates were
about as distinctly and clearly drawn as political lines are capable of
being drawn. The name of Douglas stood for territorial sovereignty, or
in other words, for the right of the people of a territory to admit or
exclude, to establish or abolish, slavery, as to them might seem best.
The doctrine of Breckenridge was that slaveholders were entitled to
carry their slaves into any territory of the United States and to hold
them there, with or without the consent of the people of the territory;
that the Constitution of its own force carried slavery and protected
it into any territory open for settlement in the United States. To
both these parties, factions, and doctrines, Abraham Lincoln and the
republican party stood opposed. They held that the Federal Government
had the right and the power to exclude slavery from the territories of
the United States, and that that right and power ought to be exercised
to the extent of confining slavery inside the slave States, with a
view to its ultimate extinction. The position of Mr. Douglas gave him
a splendid pretext for the display of a species of oratory of which
he was a distinguished master. He alone of the three candidates took
the stump, as the preacher of popular sovereignty, called in derision
at the time “Squatter” Sovereignty. This doctrine, if not the times,
gave him a chance to play fast and loose, and blow hot and cold, as
occasion might require. In the South and among slaveholders he could
say, “My great principle of popular sovereignty does not and was not
intended by me to prevent the extension of slavery; on the contrary it
gives you the right to take your slaves into the territories and secure
legislation legalizing slavery; it denies to the Federal Government all
right of interference against you, and hence is eminently favorable to
your interests.” When among people known to be indifferent he could
say, “I do not care whether slavery is voted up or voted down in the
territory,” but when addressing the known opponents of the extension
of slavery, he could say that the people of the territories were in
no danger of having slavery forced upon them since they could keep
it out by adverse legislation. Had he made these representations
before railroads, electric wires, phonography, and newspapers had
become the powerful auxiliaries they have done Mr. Douglas might
have gained many votes, but they were of little avail now. The South
was too sagacious to leave slavery to the chance of defeat in a fair
vote by the people of a territory. Of all property none could less
afford to take such a risk, for no property can require more strongly
favoring conditions for its existence. Not only the intelligence of
the slave, but the instincts of humanity, must be barred by positive
law, hence Breckenridge and his friends erected the flinty walls of the
Constitution and the Supreme Court for the protection of slavery at the
outset. Against both Douglas and Breckenridge Abraham Lincoln proposed
his grand historic doctrine of the power and duty of the National
Government to prevent the spread and perpetuity of slavery. Into this
contest I threw myself, with firmer faith and more ardent hope than
ever before, and what I could do by pen or voice was done with a will.
The most remarkable and memorable feature of this canvass, was that it
was prosecuted under the portentous shadow of a threat: leading public
men of the South had with the vehemence of fiery purpose, given it
out in advance that in case of their failure to elect their candidate
(Mr. John C. Breckenridge) they would proceed to take the slaveholding
States out of the Union, and that in no event whatever would they
submit to the rule of Abraham Lincoln. To many of the peace-loving
friends of the Union, this was a fearful announcement, and it doubtless
cost the Republican candidates many votes. To many others, however, it
was deemed a mere bravado--sound and fury signifying nothing. With
a third class its effect was very different. They were tired of the
rule-or-ruin intimidation adopted by the South, and felt then, if never
before, that they had quailed before it too often and too long. It came
as an insult and a challenge in one, and imperatively called upon them
for independence, self-assertion, and resentment. Had Southern men
puzzled their brains to find the most effective means to array against
slavery and slaveholding manners the solid opposition of the North,
they could not have hit upon any expedient better suited to that end,
than was this threat. It was not only unfair, but insolent, and more
like an address to cowardly slaves than to independent freemen; it
had in it the meanness of the horse-jockey, who, on entering a race,
proposes, if beaten, to run off with the stakes. In all my speeches
made during this canvass, I did not fail to take advantage of this
southern bluster and bullying.
As I have said, this southern threat lost many votes, but it gained
more than would cover the lost. It frightened the timid, but stimulated
the brave; and the result was--the triumphant election of Abraham
Lincoln.
Then came the question, what will the South do about it? Will she eat
her bold words, and submit to the verdict of the people, or proceed to
the execution of the programme she had marked out for herself prior
to the election? The inquiry was an anxious one, and the blood of
the North stood still, waiting for the response. It had not to wait
long, for the trumpet of war was soon sounded, and the tramp of armed
men was heard in that region. During all the winter of 1860 notes of
preparation for a tremendous conflict came to us from that quarter on
every wind. Still the warning was not taken. Few of the North could
really believe that this insolent display of arms would end in anything
more substantial than dust and smoke.
The shameful and shocking course of President Buchanan and his Cabinet
towards this rising rebellion against the government which each and
all of them had solemnly sworn to “support, defend, and maintain”--
that the treasury was emptied, that the army was scattered, that our
ships of war were sent out of the way, that our forts and arsenals in
the South were weakened and crippled,--purposely left an easy prey to
the prospective insurgents,--that one after another the States were
allowed to secede, that these rebel measures were largely encouraged
by the doctrine of Mr. Buchanan, that he found no power in the
constitution to coerce a State, are all matters of history, and need
only the briefest mention here.
To arrest this tide of secession and revolution, which was sweeping
over the South, the southern papers, which still had some dread of
the consequences likely to ensue from the course marked out before
the election, proposed as a means for promoting conciliation and
satisfaction, that “each northern State, through her legislature, or
in convention assembled, should repeal all laws passed for the injury
of the constitutional rights of the South (meaning thereby all laws
passed for the protection of personal liberty); that they should pass
laws for the easy and prompt execution of the fugitive slave law; that
they should pass other laws imposing penalties on all malefactors who
should hereafter assist or encourage the escape of fugitive slaves;
also, laws declaring and protecting the right of slaveholders to travel
and sojourn in Northern States, accompanied by their slaves; also, that
they should instruct their representatives and senators in Congress
to repeal the law prohibiting the sale of slaves in the District of
Columbia, and pass laws sufficient for the full protection of slave
property in the Territories of the Union.”
It may indeed be well regretted that there was a class of men in the
North willing to patch up a peace with this rampant spirit of disunion
by compliance with these offensive, scandalous, and humiliating
terms, and to do so without any guarantee that the South would then
be pacified; rather with the certainty, learned by past experience,
that it would by no means promote this end. I confess to a feeling
allied to satisfaction at the prospect of a conflict between the
North and the South. Standing outside the pale of American humanity,
denied citizenship, unable to call the land of my birth my country,
and adjudged by the supreme court of the United States to have no
rights which white men were bound to respect, and longing for the end
of the bondage of my people, I was ready for any political upheaval
which should bring about a change in the existing condition of things.
Whether the war of words would or would not end in blows was for a
time a matter of doubt; and when it became certain that the South was
wholly in earnest, and meant at all hazards to execute its threats of
disruption, a visible change in the sentiment of the North was apparent.
The reaction from the glorious assertion of freedom and independence
on the part of the North in the triumphant election of Abraham
Lincoln, was a painful and humiliating development of its weakness. It
seemed as if all that had been gained in the canvass was about to be
surrendered to the vanquished: that the South, though beaten at the
polls, were to be victorious and have every thing its own way in the
final result. During all the intervening months, from November to the
ensuing March, the drift of northern sentiment was towards compromise.
To smooth the way for this, most of the northern legislatures repealed
their personal liberty bills, as they were supposed to embarrass the
surrender of fugitive slaves to their claimants. The feeling everywhere
seemed to be that something must be done to convince the South that
the election of Mr. Lincoln meant no harm to slavery or the slave
power, and that the North was sound on the question of the right of
the master to hold and hunt his slave as long as he pleased, and that
even the right to hold slaves in the Territories should be submitted
to the supreme court, which would probably decide in favor of the
most extravagant demands of the slave States. The northern press
took on a more conservative tone towards the slavery propagandists,
and a corresponding tone of bitterness towards anti-slavery men and
measures. It came to be a no uncommon thing to hear men denouncing
South Carolina and Massachusetts in the same breath, and in the same
measure of disapproval. The old pro-slavery spirit which, in 1835,
mobbed anti-slavery prayer-meetings, and dragged William Lloyd Garrison
through the streets of Boston with a halter about his neck, was
revived. From Massachusetts to Missouri, anti-slavery meetings were
ruthlessly assailed and broken up. With others, I was roughly handled
by a mob in Tremont Temple, Boston, headed by one of the wealthiest men
of that city. The talk was that the blood of some abolitionist must
be shed to appease the wrath of the offended South, and to restore
peaceful relations between the two sections of the country. A howling
mob followed Wendell Phillips for three days whenever he appeared on
the pavements of his native city, because of his ability and prominence
in the propagation of anti-slavery opinions.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.]
While this humiliating reaction was going on at the North, various
devices were suggested and pressed at Washington, to bring about peace
and reconciliation. Committees were appointed to listen to southern
grievances, and, if possible, devise means of redress for such as might
be alleged. Some of these peace propositions would have been shocking
to the last degree to the moral sense of the North, had not fear for
the safety of the Union overwhelmed all moral conviction. Such men as
William H. Seward, Charles Francis Adams, Henry B. Anthony, Joshua
R. Giddings, and others--men whose courage had been equal to all
other emergencies--bent before this southern storm, and were ready to
purchase peace at any price. Those who had stimulated the courage of
the North before the election, and had shouted “Who’s afraid?” were now
shaking in their shoes with apprehension and dread. One was for passing
laws in the northern States for the better protection of slave hunters,
and for the greater efficiency of the fugitive slave bill. Another
was for enacting laws to punish the invasion of the slave States, and
others were for so altering the constitution of the United States that
the federal government should never abolish slavery while any one State
should object to such a measure.[B] Everything that could be demanded
by insatiable pride and selfishness on the part of the slaveholding
South, or could be surrendered by abject fear and servility on the part
of the North, had able and eloquent advocates.
[B] See History of American Conflict, Vol. II, by Horace Greeley.
Happily for the cause of human freedom, and for the final unity of the
American nation, the South was mad, and would listen to no concessions.
They would neither accept the terms offered, nor offer others to be
accepted. They had made up their minds that under a given contingency
they would secede from the Union and thus dismember the Republic.
That contingency had happened, and they should execute their threat.
Mr. Ireson of Georgia, expressed the ruling sentiment of his section
when he told the northern peacemakers that if the people of the South
were given a blank sheet of paper upon which to write their own terms
on which they would remain in the Union, they would not stay. They
had come to hate everything which had the prefix “Free”--free soil,
free states, free territories, free schools, free speech, and freedom
generally, and they would have no more such prefixes. This haughty and
unreasonable and unreasoning attitude of the imperious South saved the
slave and saved the nation. Had the South accepted our concessions and
remained in the Union the slave power would in all probability have
continued to rule; the north would have become utterly demoralized;
the hands on the dial-plate of American civilization would have been
reversed, and the slave would have been dragging his hateful chains
to-day wherever the American flag floats to the breeze. Those who may
wish to see to what depths of humility and self-abasement a noble
people can be brought under the sentiment of fear, will find no chapter
of history more instructive than that which treats of the events in
official circles in Washington during the space between the months of
November, 1859, and March, 1860.
CHAPTER XI.
SECESSION AND WAR
Recruiting of the 54th and 55th Colored Regiments--Visit to President
Lincoln and Secretary Stanton--Promised a Commission as Adjutant
General to General Thomas--Disappointment.
The cowardly and disgraceful reaction, from a courageous and manly
assertion of right principles, as described in the foregoing pages,
continued surprisingly long after secession and war were commenced.
The patience and forbearance of the loyal people of the North were
amazing. Speaking of this feature of the situation in Corinthian Hall,
Rochester, at the time, I said:
“We (the people of the North) are a charitable people, and in
the excess of this feeling we were disposed to put the very best
construction upon the strange behavior of our southern brethren. We
hoped that all would yet go well. We thought that South Carolina
might secede; it was entirely like her to do so. She had talked
extravagantly about going out of the Union, and it was natural
that she should do something extravagant and startling if for
nothing else, to save a show of consistency. Georgia too, we
thought might possibly secede. But strangely enough we thought
and felt quite sure that these twin rebellious States would stand
alone and unsupported in their infamy and their impotency; that
they would soon tire of their isolation, repent of their folly and
come back to their places in the Union. Traitors withdrew from the
Cabinet, from the House of Representatives, and from the Senate,
and hastened to their several States to ‘fire the southern heart,’
and to fan the hot flames of treason at home. Still we doubted if
anything serious would come of it. We treated it as a bubble on the
wave--a nine days’ wonder. Calm and thoughtful men ourselves, we
relied upon the sober second thought of the southern people. Even
the capture of a fort, a shot at one of our ships--an insult to
the national flag--caused only a momentary feeling of indignation
and resentment. We could not but believe that there existed at the
South a latent and powerful Union sentiment which would assert
itself at last. Though loyal soldiers had been fired upon in the
streets of Baltimore; though loyal blood had stained the pavements
of that beautiful city, and the national government was warned to
send no troops through Baltimore to the defense of the National
Capital, we could not be made to believe that the border States
would plunge madly into the bloody vortex of rebellion.
“But this confidence, patience, and forbearance could not last
forever. These blissful illusions of hope were in a measure
dispelled when the batteries of Charleston harbor were opened upon
the starving garrison at Fort Sumpter. For the moment the northern
lamb was transformed into a lion, and his roar was terrible. But
he only showed his teeth, and clearly had no wish to use them. We
preferred to fight with dollars and not daggers. ‘The fewer battles
the better,’ was the hopeful motto at Washington. ‘Peace in sixty
days,’ was held out by the astute Secretary of State. In fact,
there was at the North no disposition to fight; no spirit of hate;
no comprehension of the stupendous character and dimensions of the
rebellion, and no proper appreciation of its inherent wickedness.
Treason had shot its poisonous roots deeper, and had spread its
death-dealing branches further than any northern calculation had
covered. Thus while rebels were waging a barbarous war, marshaling
savage Indians to join them in the slaughter; while rifled cannon
balls were battering down the walls of our forts, and the iron-clad
hand of monarchical power was being invoked to assist in the
destruction of our government and the dismemberment of our country;
while a tremendous rebel ram was sinking our fleet and threatening
the cities of our coast, we were still dreaming of peace. This
infatuation, this blindness to the significance of passing events,
can only be accounted for by the rapid passage of these events, and
by the fact of the habitual leniency and good-will cherished by
the North towards the South. Our very lack of preparation for the
conflict disposed us to look for some other than the way of blood
out of the difficulty. Treason had largely infected both army and
navy. Floyd had scattered our arms. Cobb had depleted our treasury,
and Buchanan had poisoned the political thought of the times by his
doctrines of anti-coercion. It was in such a condition of things
as this that Abraham Lincoln (compelled from fear of assassination
to enter the capital in disguise) was inaugurated and issued his
proclamation for the ‘repossession of the forts, places, and
property which had been seized from the Union,’ and his call upon
the militia of the several States to the number of 75,000 men--a
paper which showed how little even he comprehended the work then
before the loyal nation. It was perhaps better for the country
and for mankind that the good man could not know the end from
the beginning. Had he foreseen the thousands who must sink into
bloody graves; the mountains of debt to be laid on the breast of
the nation; the terrible hardships and sufferings involved in the
contest; and his own death by an assassin’s hand, he too might have
adopted the weak sentiment of those who said ‘erring sisters depart
in peace.’”
From the first, I, for one, saw in this war the end of slavery; and
truth requires me to say that my interest in the success of the North
was largely due to this belief. True it is that this faith was many
times shaken by passing events, but never destroyed. When Secretary
Seward instructed our ministers to say to the governments to which
they were accredited, that, “terminate however it might, the status
of no class of the people of the United States would be changed by
the rebellion--that the slaves would be slaves still, and that the
masters would be masters still”--when General McClellan and General
Butler warned the slaves in advance that if any attempt was made by
them to gain their freedom, it would be suppressed with an iron hand--
when the government persistently refused to employ colored troops--
when the emancipation proclamation of General John C. Freemont in
Missouri was withdrawn--when slaves were being returned from our
lines to their masters--when Union soldiers were stationed about the
farm houses of Virginia to guard and protect the master in holding his
slaves--when Union soldiers made themselves more active in kicking
colored men out of their camps than in shooting rebels--when even
Mr. Lincoln could tell the poor negro that “he was the cause of the
war,” I still believed, and spoke as I believed, all over the North,
that the mission of the war was the liberation of the slave, as well
as the salvation of the Union; and hence from the first I reproached
the North that they fought the rebels with only one hand, when they
might strike effectually with two--that they fought with their soft
white hand while they kept their black iron hand chained and helpless
behind them--that they fought the effect while they protected the
cause, and that the Union cause would never prosper till the war
assumed an anti-slavery attitude, and the negro was enlisted on the
loyal side. In every way possible, in the columns of my paper and on
the platform, by letters to friends, at home and abroad, I did all
that I could to impress this conviction upon this country. But nations
seldom listen to advice from individuals, however reasonable. They
are taught less by theories than by facts and events. There was much
that could be said against making the war an abolition war--much
that seemed wise and patriotic. “Make the war an abolition war,” we
were told, “and you drive the border States into the rebellion, and
thus add power to the enemy, and increase the number you will have to
meet on the battle-field. You will exasperate and intensify southern
feeling, making it more desperate, and put far away the day of peace
between the two sections.” “Employ the arm of the negro, and the loyal
men of the North will throw down their arms and go home.” “This is
the white man’s country, and the white man’s war.” “It would inflict
an intolerable wound upon the pride and spirit of white soldiers of
the Union, to see the negro in the United States uniform. Besides,
if you make the negro a soldier, you cannot depend on his courage: a
crack of his old master’s whip would send him scampering in terror
from the field.” And so it was that custom, pride, prejudice, and
the old-time respect for southern feeling, held back the government
from an anti-slavery policy, and from arming the negro. Meanwhile the
rebellion availed itself of the negro most effectively. He was not only
the stomach of the rebellion, by supplying its commissary department,
but he built its forts, and dug its intrenchments, and performed other
duties of its camp, which left the rebel soldier more free to fight
the loyal army than he could otherwise have been. It was the cotton
and corn of the negro that made the rebellion sack stand on end, and
caused a continuance of the war. “Destroy these,” was the burden of
all my utterances during this part of the struggle, “and you cripple
and destroy the rebellion.” It is surprising how long and bitterly
the government resisted and rejected this view of the situation. The
abolition heart of the North ached over the delay, and uttered its
bitter complaints, but the administration remained blind and dumb.
Bull Run, Ball’s Bluff, Big Bethel, Fredericksburg, and the Peninsula
disasters were the only teachers whose authority was of sufficient
importance to excite the attention or respect of our rulers, and they
were even slow in being taught by these. An important point was gained,
however, when General B. F. Butler, at Fortress Monroe, announced the
policy of treating the slaves as “contrabands,” to be made useful
to the Union cause, and was sustained therein at Washington, and
sentiments of a similar nature were expressed on the floor of Congress
by Hon. A. G. Riddle of Ohio. A grand accession was made to this view
of the case when Hon. Simon Cameron, then secretary of war, gave it
his earnest support, and General David Hunter put the measure into
practical operation in South Carolina. General Phelps from Vermont, in
command at Carrollton, La., also advocated the same plan though under
discouragements which cost him his command. And many and grievous
disasters on flood and field were needed to educate the loyal nation
and President Lincoln up to the realization of the necessity, not to
say justice, of this position, and many devices, intermediate steps,
and make-shifts were suggested to smooth the way to the ultimate policy
of freeing the slave, and arming the freedmen.
When at last the truth began to dawn upon the administration that the
negro might be made useful to loyalty, as well as to treason, to the
Union as well as to the Confederacy, it then considered in what way it
could employ him, which would in the least shock and offend the popular
prejudice against him. He was already in the army as a waiter, and in
that capacity there was no objection to him, and so it was thought that
as this was the case, the feeling which tolerated him as a waiter would
not seriously object if he should be admitted to the army as a laborer,
especially as no one under a southern sun cared to have a monopoly of
digging and toiling in trenches. This was the first step in employing
negroes in the United States service. The second step was to give them
a peculiar costume which should distinguish them from soldiers, and
yet mark them as a part of the loyal force. As the eyes of the loyal
administration still further opened, it was proposed to give these
laborers something better than spades and shovels with which to defend
themselves in cases of emergency. Still later it was proposed to make
them soldiers, but soldiers without the blue uniform. Soldiers with
a mark upon them to show that they were inferior to other soldiers;
soldiers with a badge of degradation upon them. However, once in the
army as a laborer, once there with a red shirt on his back and a
pistol in his belt, the negro was not long in appearing on the field
as a soldier. But still he was not to be a soldier in the sense, and
on an equal footing, with white soldiers. It was given out that he
was not to be employed in the open field with white troops, under
the inspiration of doing battle and winning victories for the Union
cause, and in the face and teeth of his old masters, but that he should
be made to garrison forts in yellow fever and otherwise unhealthy
localities of the South, to save the health of white soldiers, and
in order to keep up the distinction further the black soldiers were
to have only half the wages of the white soldiers, and were to be
commanded entirely by white commissioned officers. While of course I
was deeply pained and saddened by the estimate thus put upon my race,
and grieved at the slowness of heart which marked the conduct of the
loyal government, I was not discouraged, and urged every man who could
to enlist; to get an eagle on his button, a musket on his shoulder,
and the star-spangled banner over his head. Hence, as soon as Governor
Andrew of Massachusetts received permission from Mr. Lincoln to raise
two colored regiments, the 54th and 55th, I made the following address
to the colored citizens of the North through my paper, then being
published in Rochester, which was copied in the leading journals:
“MEN OF COLOR, TO ARMS.
“When first the rebel cannon shattered the walls of Sumpter and
drove away its starving garrison, I predicted that the war then
and there inaugurated would not be fought out entirely by white
men. Every month’s experience during these dreary years has
confirmed that opinion. A war undertaken and brazenly carried on
for the perpetual enslavement of colored men, calls logically and
loudly for colored men to help suppress it. Only a moderate share
of sagacity was needed to see that the arm of the slave was the
best defense against the arm of the slaveholder. Hence with every
reverse to the national arms, with every exulting shout of victory
raised by the slaveholding rebels, I have implored the imperiled
nation to unchain against her foes, her powerful black hand. Slowly
and reluctantly that appeal is beginning to be heeded. Stop not
now to complain that it was not heeded sooner. It may or it may not
have been best that it should not. This is not the time to discuss
that question. Leave it to the future. When the war is over, the
country is saved, peace is established, and the black man’s rights
are secured, as they will be, history with an impartial hand will
dispose of that and sundry other questions. Action! Action! not
criticism, is the plain duty of this hour. Words are now useful
only as they stimulate to blows. The office of speech now is only
to point out when, where, and how to strike to the best advantage.
There is no time to delay. The tide is at its flood that leads on
to fortune. From East to West, from North to South, the sky is
written all over, ‘NOW OR NEVER.’ Liberty won by white men would
lose half its luster. ‘Who would be free themselves must strike the
blow.’ ‘Better even die free, than to live slaves.’ This is the
sentiment of every brave colored man amongst us. There are weak and
cowardly men in all nations. We have them amongst us. They tell
you this is the ‘white man’s war’; that you will be no ‘better
off after than before the war’; that the getting of you into the
army is to ‘sacrifice you on the first opportunity.’ Believe them
not; cowards themselves, they do not wish to have their cowardice
shamed by your brave example. Leave them to their timidity, or to
whatever motive may hold them back. I have not thought lightly
of the words I am now addressing you. The counsel I give comes
of close observation of the great struggle now in progress, and
of the deep conviction that this is your hour and mine. In good
earnest then, and after the best deliberation, I now for the first
time during this war, feel at liberty to call and counsel you to
arms. By every consideration which binds you to your enslaved
fellow-countrymen, and the peace and welfare of your country; by
every aspiration which you cherish for the freedom and equality of
yourselves and your children; by all the ties of blood and identity
which make us one with the brave black men now fighting our battles
in Louisiana and in South Carolina, I urge you to fly to arms,
and smite with death the power that would bury the government and
your liberty in the same hopeless grave. I wish I could tell you
that the State of New York calls you to this high honor. For the
moment her constituted authorities are silent on the subject. They
will speak by and by, and doubtless on the right side; but we are
not compelled to wait for her. We can get at the throat of treason
and slavery through the State of Massachusetts. She was first in
the War of Independence; first to break the chains of her slaves;
first to make the black man equal before the law; first to admit
colored children to her common schools, and she was first to answer
with her blood the alarm cry of the nation, when its capital was
menanced by rebels. You know her patriotic governor, and you know
Charles Sumner. I need not add more.
“Massachusetts now welcomes you to arms as soldiers. She has but
a small colored population from which to recruit. She has full
leave of the general government to send one regiment to the war,
and she has undertaken to do it. Go quickly and help fill up the
first colored regiment from the North. I am authorized to assure
you that you will receive the same wages, the same rations, the
same equipments, the same protection, the same treatment, and the
same bounty, secured to white soldiers. You will be led by able
and skillful officers, men who will take especial pride in your
efficiency and success. They will be quick to accord to you all the
honor you shall merit by your valor, and see that your rights and
feelings are respected by other soldiers. I have assured myself on
these points, and can speak with authority. More than twenty years
of unswerving devotion to our common cause may give me some humble
claim to be trusted at this momentous crisis. I will not argue. To
do so implies hesitation and doubt, and you do not hesitate. You
do not doubt. The day dawns; the morning star is bright upon the
horizon! The iron gate of our prison stands half open. One gallant
rush from the North will fling it wide open, while four millions of
our brothers and sisters shall march out into liberty. The chance
is now given you to end in a day the bondage of centuries, and to
rise in one bound from social degradation to the plane of common
equality with all other varieties of men. Remember Denmark Vesey of
Charleston; remember Nathaniel Turner of South Hampton; remember
Shields Green and Copeland, who followed noble John Brown, and
fell as glorious martyrs for the cause of the slave. Remember that
in a contest with oppression, the Almighty has no attribute which
can take sides with oppressors. The case is before you. This is
our golden opportunity. Let us accept it, and forever wipe out the
dark reproaches unsparingly hurled against us by our enemies. Let
us win for ourselves the gratitude of our country, and the best
blessings of our posterity through all time. The nucleus of this
first regiment is now in camp at Readville, a short distance from
Boston. I will undertake to forward to Boston all persons adjudged
fit to be mustered into the regiment, who shall apply to me at any
time within the next two weeks.
“ROCHESTER, March 2, 1863.”
Immediately after authority had been given by President Lincoln to
Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts to raise and equip two
regiments of colored men for the war, I received a letter from George
L. Stearns of Boston, a noble worker for freedom in Kansas, and a warm
friend of John Brown, earnestly entreating me to assist in raising
the required number of men. It was presumed that by my labors in the
anti-slavery cause, I had gained some influence with the colored men of
the country, and that they would listen to me in this emergency; which
supposition, I am happy to say, was supported by the results. There
were fewer colored people in Massachusetts then than now, and it was
necessary in order to make up the full quota of these regiments, to
recruit for them in other northern States. The nominal conditions upon
which colored men were asked to enlist, were not satisfactory to me or
them; but assurances from Governor Andrew that they would in the end
be made just and equal, together with my faith in the logic of events,
and my conviction that the wise thing to do was for the colored man to
get into the army by any door open to him, no matter how narrow, made
me accept with alacrity the work to which I was invited. The raising of
these two regiments--the 54th and 55th--and their splendid behavior
in South and North Carolina was the beginning of great things for the
colored people of the whole country; and not the least satisfaction I
now have in contemplating my humble part in raising them, is the fact
that my two sons, Charles and Lewis, were the two first in the State
of New York to enlist in them. The 54th was not long in the field
before it proved itself gallant and strong, worthy to rank with the
most courageous of its white companions in arms. Its assault upon Fort
Wagner, in which it was so fearfully cut to pieces, and lost nearly
half its officers, including its beloved and trusted commander, Col.
Shaw, at once gave it a name and a fame throughout the country. In
that terrible battle, under the wing of night, more cavils in respect
of the quality of negro manhood were set at rest than could have been
during a century of ordinary life and observation. After that assault
we heard no more of sending negroes to garrison forts and arsenals, to
fight miasma, yellow fever, and small-pox. Talk of his ability to meet
the foe in the open field, and of his equal fitness with the white man
to stop a bullet, then began to prevail. From this time (and the fact
ought to be remembered) the colored troops were called upon to occupy
positions which required the courage, steadiness, and endurance of
veterans, and even their enemies were obliged to admit that they proved
themselves worthy the confidence reposed in them. After the 54th and
55th Massachusetts colored regiments were placed in the field, and one
of them had distinguished itself with so much credit in the hour of
trial, the desire to send more such troops to the front became pretty
general. Pennsylvania proposed to raise ten regiments. I was again
called by my friend Mr. Stearns to assist in raising these regiments,
and I set about the work with full purpose of heart, using every
argument of which I was capable, to persuade every colored man able
to bear arms to rally around the flag, and help to save the country
and save the race. It was during this time that the attitude of the
government at Washington caused me deep sadness and discouragement,
and forced me in a measure to suspend my efforts in that direction. I
had assured colored men that once in the Union army they would be put
upon an equal footing with other soldiers; that they would be paid,
promoted, and exchanged as prisoners of war, Jeff. Davis’ threats that
they would be treated as felons to the contrary notwithstanding. But
thus far, the government had not kept its promise, or the promise made
for it. The following letter which I find published in my paper of the
same date will show the course I felt it my duty to take under the
circumstances:
“ROCHESTER, August 1st, 1863.
“MAJOR GEORGE L. STEARNS:
“_My Dear Sir_--Having declined to attend the meeting to
promote enlistments, appointed for me at Pittsburgh, in present
circumstances, I owe you a word of explanation. I have hitherto
deemed it a duty, as it certainly has been a pleasure, to coöperate
with you in the work of raising colored troops in the free States
to fight the battles of the Republic against slaveholding rebels
and traitors. Upon the first call you gave me to this work I
responded with alacrity. I saw, or thought I saw a ray of light,
brightening the future of my whole race as well as that of our
war-troubled country, in arousing colored men to fight for the
nation’s life. I continue to believe in the black man’s arm, and
still have some hope in the integrity of our rulers. Nevertheless I
must for the present leave to others the work of persuading colored
men to join the Union army. I owe it to my long-abused people, and
especially to those already in the army, to expose their wrongs and
plead their cause. I cannot do that in connection with recruiting.
When I plead for recruits I want to do it with all my heart,
without qualification. I cannot do that now. The impression settles
upon me that colored men have much over-rated the enlightenment,
justice, and generosity of our rulers at Washington. In my humble
way I have contributed somewhat to that false estimate. You know
that when the idea of raising colored troops was first suggested,
the special duty to be assigned them, was the garrisoning of forts
and arsenals in certain warm, unhealthy, and miasmatic localities
in the South. They were thought to be better adapted to that
service than white troops. White troops trained to war, brave,
and daring, were to take fortifications, and the blacks were to
hold them from falling again into the hands of the rebels. Three
advantages were to arise out of this wise division of labor: 1st,
the spirit and pride of white troops was not to waste itself in
dull monotonous inactivity in fort life; their arms were to be kept
bright by constant use. 2d, The health of white troops was to be
preserved. 3d, Black troops were to have the advantage of sound
military training and to be otherwise useful, at the same time that
they should be tolerably secure from capture by the rebels, who
early avowed their determination to enslave and slaughter them in
defiance of the laws of war. Two out of the three advantages were
to accrue to the white troops. Thus far, however, I believe that no
such duty as holding fortifications has been committed to colored
troops. They have done far other and more important work than
holding fortifications. I have no special complaint to make at this
point, and I simply mention it to strengthen the statement, that
from the beginning of this business it was the confident belief
among both the colored and white friends of colored enlistments
that President Lincoln as commander-in-chief of the army and navy,
would certainly see to it that his colored troops should be so
handled and disposed of as to be but little exposed to capture
by the rebels, and that, if so exposed, as they have repeatedly
been from the first, the President possessed both the disposition
and the means for compelling the rebels to respect the rights of
such as might fall into their hands. The piratical proclamation of
Jefferson Davis, announcing slavery and assassination to colored
prisoners was before the country and the world. But men had faith
in Mr. Lincoln and his advisers. He was silent to be sure, but
charity suggested that being a man of action rather than words he
only waited for a case in which he should be required to act. This
faith in the man enabled us to speak with warmth and effect in
urging enlistments among colored men. That faith, my dear sir, is
now nearly gone. Various occasions have arisen during the last six
months for the exercise of his power in behalf of the colored men
in his service. But no word comes to us from the war department,
sternly assuring the rebel chief that inquisition shall yet be made
for innocent blood. No word of retaliation when a black man is
slain by a rebel in cold blood. No word was said when free men from
Massachusetts were caught and sold into slavery in Texas. No word
is said when brave black men who, according to the testimony of
both friend and foe, fought like heroes to plant the star-spangled
banner on the blazing parapets of Fort Wagner, and in doing so were
captured, some mutilated and killed, and others sold into slavery.
The same crushing silence reigns over this scandalous outrage as
over that of the slaughtered teamsters at Murfreesboro; the same
as over that at Milliken’s Bend and Vicksburg. I am free to say, my
dear sir, that the case looks as if the confiding colored soldiers
had been betrayed into bloody hands by the very government in whose
defence they were heroically fighting. I know what you will say to
this; you will say ‘wait a little longer, and after all the best
way to have justice done to your people is to get them into the
army as fast as you can.’ You may be right in this; my argument
has been the same, but have we not already waited, and have we
not already shown the highest qualities of soldiers, and on this
account deserve the protection of the government for which we are
fighting? Can any case stronger than that before Charleston ever
arise! If the President is ever to demand justice and humanity, for
black soldiers, is not this the time for him to do it? How many
54th’s must be cut to pieces, its mutilated prisoners killed, and
its living sold into slavery, to be tortured to death by inches,
before Mr. Lincoln shall say, ‘Hold, enough!’
“You know the 54th. To you, more than to any one man belongs the
credit of raising that regiment. Think of its noble and brave
officers literally hacked to pieces, while many of its rank and
file have been sold into slavery worse than death, and pardon me,
if I hesitate about assisting in raising a fourth regiment until
the President shall give the same protection to them as to white
soldiers.
With warm and sincere regards,
FREDERICK DOUGLAS.”
“Since writing the foregoing letter, which we have now put upon
record, we have received assurances from Major Stearns that the
government of the United States is already taking measures which
will secure the captured colored soldiers at Charleston and
elsewhere the same protection against slavery and cruelty extended
to white soldiers. What ought to have been done at the beginning,
comes late, but it comes. The poor colored soldiers have purchased
interference dearly. It really seems that nothing of justice,
liberty, or humanity can come to us except through tears and blood.”
THE BLACK MAN AT THE WHITE HOUSE.
My efforts to secure just and fair treatment for the colored soldiers
did not stop at letters and speeches. At the suggestion of my friend,
Major Stearns, to whom the foregoing letter was addressed, I was
induced to go to Washington and lay the complaints of my people before
President Lincoln and the secretary of war; and to urge upon them
such action as should secure to the colored troops then fighting for
the country, a reasonable degree of fair play. I need not say that at
the time I undertook this mission it required much more nerve than a
similar one would require now. The distance then between the black man
and the white American citizen, was immeasurable. I was an ex-slave,
identified with a despised race; and yet I was to meet the most exalted
person in this great republic. It was altogether an unwelcome duty, and
one from which I would gladly have been excused. I could not know what
kind of a reception would be accorded me. I might be told to go home
and mind my business, and leave such questions as I had come to discuss
to be managed by the men wisely chosen by the American people to deal
with them. Or I might be refused an interview altogether. Nevertheless,
I felt bound to go; and my acquaintance with Senators Charles Sumner,
Henry Wilson, Samuel Pomeroy, Secretary Salmon P. Chase, Secretary
William H. Seward, and Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana,
encouraged me to hope at least for a civil reception. My confidence
was fully justified in the result. I shall never forget my first
interview with this great man. I was accompanied to the executive
mansion and introduced to President Lincoln by Senator Pomeroy.
The room in which he received visitors was the one now used by the
president’s secretaries. I entered it with a moderate estimate of my
own consequence, and yet there I was to talk with, and even to advise,
the head man of a great nation. Happily for me, there was no vain pomp
and ceremony about him. I was never more quickly or more completely
put at ease in the presence of a great man, than in that of Abraham
Lincoln. He was seated, when I entered, in a low arm chair, with his
feet extended on the floor, surrounded by a large number of documents,
and several busy secretaries. The room bore the marks of business,
and the persons in it, the president included, appeared to be much
over-worked and tired. Long lines of care were already deeply written
on Mr. Lincoln’s brow, and his strong face, full of earnestness,
lighted up as soon as my name was mentioned. As I approached and was
introduced to him, he rose and extended his hand, and bade me welcome.
I at once felt myself in the presence of an honest man--one whom I
could love, honor, and trust without reserve or doubt. Proceeding to
tell him who I was, and what I was doing, he promptly, but kindly,
stopped me, saying, “I know who you are, Mr. Douglass; Mr. Seward has
told me all about you. Sit down. I am glad to see you.” I then told him
the object of my visit: that I was assisting to raise colored troops;
that several months before I had been very successful in getting men to
enlist, but that now it was not easy to induce the colored men to enter
the service, because there was a feeling among them that the government
did not deal fairly with them in several respects. Mr. Lincoln asked me
to state particulars. I replied that there were three particulars which
I wished to bring to his attention. First, that colored soldiers ought
to receive the same wages as those paid to white soldiers. Second,
that colored soldiers ought to receive the same protection when taken
prisoners, and be exchanged as readily, and on the same terms, as any
other prisoners, and if Jefferson Davis should shoot or hang colored
soldiers in cold blood, the United States government should retaliate
in kind and degree without delay upon Confederate prisoners in its
hands. Third, when colored soldiers, seeking the “bauble-reputation
at the cannon’s mouth,” performed great and uncommon service on the
battle-field, they should be rewarded by distinction and promotion,
precisely as white soldiers are rewarded for like services.
Mr. Lincoln listened with patience and silence to all I had to say. He
was serious and even troubled by what I had said, and by what he had
evidently thought himself before upon the same points. He impressed me
with the solid gravity of his character, by his silent listening not
less than by his earnest reply to my words.
He began by saying that the employment of colored troops at all was
a great gain to the colored people; that the measure could not have
been successfully adopted at the beginning of the war; that the
wisdom of making colored men soldiers was still doubted; that their
enlistment was a serious offense to popular prejudice; that they had
larger motives for being soldiers than white men; that they ought to
be willing to enter the service upon any conditions; that the fact
that they were not to receive the same pay as white soldiers, seemed
a necessary concession to smooth the way to their employment at all
as soldiers; but that ultimately they would receive the same. On the
second point, in respect to equal protection, he said the case was more
difficult. Retaliation was a terrible remedy, and one which it was very
difficult to apply; one which if once begun, there was no telling where
it would end; that if he could get hold of the confederate soldiers who
had been guilty of treating colored soldiers as felons, he could easily
retaliate, but the thought of hanging men for a crime perpetrated by
others, was revolting to his feelings. He thought that the rebels
themselves would stop such barbarous warfare, and less evil would be
done if retaliation were not resorted to. That he had already received
information that colored soldiers were being treated as prisoners of
war. In all this I saw the tender heart of the man rather than the
stern warrior and commander-in-chief of the American army and navy, and
while I could not agree with him, I could but respect his humane spirit.
On the third point he appeared to have less difficulty, though he did
not absolutely commit himself. He simply said that he would sign any
commission to colored soldiers whom his secretary of war should commend
to him. Though I was not entirely satisfied with his views, I was so
well satisfied with the man and with the educating tendency of the
conflict, I determined to go on with the recruiting.
From the president, I went to see Secretary Stanton. The manner of no
two men could be more widely different. I was introduced by Assistant
Secretary Dana, whom I had known many years before at “Brook Farm,”
Mass., and afterwards as managing editor of the New York _Tribune_.
Every line in Mr. Stanton’s face told me that my communication with him
must be brief, clear, and to the point; that he might turn his back
upon me as a bore at any moment; that politeness was not one of his
weaknesses. His first glance was that of a man who says, “Well, what
do you want? I have no time to waste upon you or any body else, and I
shall waste none. Speak quick, or I shall leave you.” The man and the
place seemed alike busy. Seeing I had no time to lose, I hastily went
over the ground I had gone over to President Lincoln. As I ended, I was
surprised by seeing a changed man before me. Contempt and suspicion,
and brusqueness, had all disappeared from his face and manner, and
for a few minutes he made the best defense that I had then heard from
any body of the treatment of colored soldiers by the government. I
was not satisfied, yet I left in the full belief that the true course
to the black man’s freedom and citizenship was over the battle-field,
and that my business was to get every black man I could into the
Union armies. Both the President and Secretary of War assured me that
justice would ultimately be done my race, and I gave full faith and
credit to their promise. On assuring Mr. Stanton of my willingness
to take a commission, he said he would make me assistant adjutant to
General Thomas, who was then recruiting and organizing troops in the
Mississippi valley. He asked me how soon I could be ready. I told him
in two weeks, and that my commission might be sent me to Rochester.
For some reason, however, my commission never came. The government, I
fear, was still clinging to the idea that positions of honor in the
service should be occupied by white men, and that it would not do to
inaugurate just then the policy of perfect equality. I wrote to the
department for my commission, but was simply told to report to General
Thomas. This was so different from what I expected and from what I had
been promised, that I wrote to Secretary Stanton that I would report to
General Thomas on receipt of my commission, but it did not come, and
I did not go to the Mississippi valley as I had fondly hoped. I knew
too much of camp life and the value of shoulder straps in the army to
go into the service without some visible mark of my rank. I have no
doubt that Mr. Stanton in the moment of our meeting meant all he said,
but thinking the matter over he felt that the time had not then come
for a step so radical and aggressive. Meanwhile my three sons were in
the service. Lewis and Charles, as already named, in the Massachusetts
regiments and Frederick recruiting colored troops in the Mississippi
valley.
CHAPTER XII.
HOPE FOR THE NATION.
Proclamation of emancipation--Its reception in Boston--Objections
brought against it--Its effect on the country--Interview with
President Lincoln--New York riots--Re-election of Mr. Lincoln--His
inauguration, and inaugural--Vice-President Johnson--Presidential
reception--The fall of Richmond--Fanueil Hall--The assassination--
Condolence.
The first of January, 1863, was a memorable day in the progress of
American liberty and civilization. It was the turning-point in the
conflict between freedom and slavery. A death blow was then given to
the slaveholding rebellion. Until then the federal arm had been more
than tolerant to that relict of barbarism. It had defended it inside
the slave States; it had countermanded the emancipation policy of John
C. Fremont in Missouri; it had returned slaves to their so-called
owners; and had threatened that any attempt on the part of the slaves
to gain their freedom by insurrection, or otherwise, would be put
down with an iron hand; it had even refused to allow the Hutchinson
family to sing their anti-slavery songs in the camps of the Army of the
Potomac; it had surrounded the houses of slaveholders with bayonets for
their protection; and through its secretary of war, William H. Seward,
had given notice to the world that, “however the war for the Union
might terminate, no change would be made in the relation of master and
slave.” Upon this pro-slavery platform the war against the rebellion
had been waged during more than two years. It had not been a war of
conquest, but rather a war of conciliation. McClellan, in command
of the army, had been trying, apparently, to put down the rebellion
without hurting the rebels, certainly without hurting slavery, and
the government had seemed to coöperate with him in both respects.
Charles Sumner, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Gerrit
Smith, and the whole anti-slavery phalanx at the North, had denounced
this policy, and had besought Mr. Lincoln to adopt an opposite one,
but in vain. Generals, in the field, and councils in the Cabinet, had
persisted in advancing this policy through defeats and disasters, even
to the verge of ruin. We fought the rebellion, but not its cause. The
key to the situation was the four million of slaves; yet the slave
who loved us, was hated, and the slaveholder who hated us, was loved.
We kissed the hand that smote us, and spurned the hand that helped
us. When the means of victory were before us,--within our grasp,--
we went in search of the means of defeat. And now, on this day of
January 1st, 1863, the formal and solemn announcement was made that
thereafter the government would be found on the side of emancipation.
This proclamation changed everything. It gave a new direction to the
councils of the Cabinet, and to the conduct of the national arms. I
shall leave to the statesman, the philosopher, and historian, the
more comprehensive discussion of this document, and only tell how it
touched me, and those in like condition with me at the time. I was in
Boston, and its reception there may indicate the importance attached to
it elsewhere. An immense assembly convened in Tremont Temple to await
the first flash of the electric wires announcing the “new departure.”
Two years of war prosecuted in the interests of slavery, had made free
speech possible in Boston, and we were now met together to receive and
celebrate the first utterance of the long-hoped-for proclamation, _if_
it came, and, if it did _not_ come, to speak our minds freely; for, in
view of the past, it was by no means certain that it would come. The
occasion, therefore, was one of both hope and fear. Our ship was on the
open sea, tossed by a terrible storm; wave after wave was passing over
us, and every hour was fraught with increasing peril. Whether we should
survive or perish, depended in large measure upon the coming of this
proclamation. At least so we felt. Although the conditions on which
Mr. Lincoln had promised to withhold it, had not been complied with,
yet, from many considerations, there was room to doubt and fear. Mr.
Lincoln was known to be a man of tender heart, and boundless patience:
no man could tell to what length he might go, or might refrain from
going in the direction of peace and reconciliation. Hitherto, he had
not shown himself a man of heroic measures, and, properly enough, this
step belonged to that class. It must be the end of all compromises with
slavery--a declaration that thereafter the war was to be conducted on
a new principle, with a new aim. It would be a full and fair assertion
that the government would neither trifle, or be trifled with any
longer. But would it come? On the side of doubt, it was said that Mr.
Lincoln’s kindly nature might cause him to relent at the last moment;
that Mrs. Lincoln, coming from an old slaveholding family, would
influence him to delay, and give the slaveholders one other chance.[C]
Every moment of waiting chilled our hopes, and strengthened our fears.
A line of messengers was established between the telegraph office and
the platform of Tremont Temple, and the time was occupied with brief
speeches from Hon. Thomas Russell of Plymouth, Miss Anna E. Dickinson
(a lady of marvelous eloquence), Rev. Mr. Grimes, J. Sella Martin,
William Wells Brown, and myself. But speaking or listening to speeches
was not the thing for which the people had come together. The time for
argument was passed. It was not logic, but the trump of jubilee, which
everybody wanted to hear. We were waiting and listening as for a bolt
from the sky, which should rend the fetters of four million of slaves;
we were watching, as it were, by the dim light of the stars, for the
dawn of a new day; we were longing for the answer to the agonizing
prayers of centuries. Remembering those in bonds as bound with them,
we wanted to join in the shout for freedom, and in the anthem of the
redeemed.
[C] I have reason to know that this supposition did Mrs. Lincoln
great injustice.
Eight, nine, ten o’clock came and went, and still no word. A visible
shadow seemed falling on the expecting throng, which the confident
utterances of the speakers sought in vain to dispel. At last, when
patience was well-nigh exhausted, and suspense was becoming agony, a
man (I think it was Judge Russell) with hasty step advanced through
the crowd, and with a face fairly illumined with the news he bore,
exclaimed in tones that thrilled all hearts, “It is coming!” “It is
on the wires!!” The effect of this announcement was startling beyond
description, and the scene was wild and grand. Joy and gladness
exhausted all forms of expression from shouts of praise, to sobs and
tears. My old friend Rue, a colored preacher, a man of wonderful vocal
power, expressed the heartfelt emotion of the hour, when he led all
voices in the anthem, “Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea,
Jehovah hath triumphed, his people are free.” About twelve o’clock,
seeing there was no disposition to retire from the hall, which must
be vacated, my friend Grimes (of blessed memory), rose and moved that
the meeting adjourn to the Twelfth Baptist church, of which he was
pastor, and soon that church was packed from doors to pulpit, and
this meeting did not break up till near the dawn of day. It was one
of the most affecting and thrilling occasions I ever witnessed, and a
worthy celebration of the first step on the part of the nation in its
departure from the thraldom of ages.
There was evidently no disposition on the part of this meeting to
criticise the proclamation; nor was there with any one at first. At
the moment we saw only its anti-slavery side. But further and more
critical examination showed it to be extremely defective. It was not
a proclamation of “liberty throughout all the land, unto all the
inhabitants thereof,” such as we had hoped it would be; but was one
marked by discriminations and reservations. Its operation was confined
within certain geographical and military lines. It only abolished
slavery where it did not exist, and left it intact where it did exist.
It was a measure apparently inspired by the law motive of military
necessity, and by so far as it was so, it would become inoperative and
useless when military necessity should cease. There was much said in
this line, and much that was narrow and erroneous. For my own part,
I took the proclamation, first and last, for a little more than it
purported; and saw in its spirit, a life and power far beyond its
letter. Its meaning to me was the entire abolition of slavery, wherever
the evil could be reached by the Federal arm, and I saw that its moral
power would extend much further. It was in my estimation an immense
gain to have the war for the Union committed to the extinction of
Slavery, even from a military necessity. It is not a bad thing to have
individuals or nations do right though they do so from selfish motives.
I approved the one-spur-wisdom of “Paddy” who thought if he could get
one side of his horse to go, he could trust the speed of the other side.
The effect of the proclamation abroad was highly beneficial to the
loyal cause. Disinterested parties could now see in it a benevolent
character. It was no longer a mere strife for territory and dominion,
but a contest of civilization against barbarism.
The Proclamation itself was like Mr. Lincoln throughout. It was
framed with a view to the least harm and the most good possible in
the circumstances, and with especial consideration of the latter. It
was thoughtful, cautious, and well guarded at all points. While he
hated Slavery, and really desired its destruction, he always proceeded
against it in a manner the least likely to shock or drive from him any
who were truly in sympathy with the preservation of the union, but who
were not friendly to Emancipation. For this he kept up the distinction
between loyal and disloyal slaveholders, and discriminated in favor
of the one, as against the other. In a word, in all that he did, or
attempted, he made it manifest that the one great and all commanding
object with him, was the peace and preservation of the Union, and
that this was the motive and main spring of all his measures. His
wisdom and moderation at this point were for a season useful to the
loyal cause in the border states, but it may be fairly questioned,
whether it did not chill the union ardor of the loyal people of the
north in some degree, and diminish rather than increase the sum of
our power against the rebellion: for moderate cautions and guarded
as was this proclamation it created a howl of indignation and wrath
amongst the rebels and their allies. The old cry was raised by the
copperhead organs of “an abolition war,” and a pretext was thus found
for an excuse for refusing to enlist, and for marshaling all the negro
prejudice of the north on the rebel side. Men could say they were
willing to fight for the union, but that they were not willing to
fight for the freedom of the negroes; and thus it was made difficult
to procure enlistments or to enforce the draft. This was especially
true of New York, where there was a large Irish population. The
attempt to enforce the draft in that city was met by mobs, riot, and
bloodshed. There is perhaps no darker chapter in the whole history of
the war, than this cowardly and bloody uprising in July, 1863. For
three days and nights New York was in the hands of a ferocious mob,
and there was not sufficient power in the government of the country
or of the city itself, to stay the hand of violence, and the effusion
of blood. Though this mob was nominally against the draft which had
been ordered, it poured out its fiercest wrath upon the colored people
and their friends. It spared neither age nor sex; it hanged negroes
simply because they were negroes, it murdered women in their homes, and
burned their homes over their heads, it dashed out the brains of young
children against the lamp posts, it burned the colored orphan asylum, a
noble charity on the corner of 5th ave., and scarce allowing time for
the helpless two hundred children to make good their escape, plundering
the building of every valuable piece of furniture; and colored men,
women, and children were forced to seek concealment in cellars or
garrets or wheresoever else it could be found until this high carnival
of crime and reign of terror should pass away.
In connection with Geo. L. Stearns, Thomas Webster, and Col. Wagner,
I had been at Camp William Penn, Philadelphia, assisting in the work
of filling up the colored regiments, and was on my way home from
there just as these events were transpiring in New York. I was met by
a friend at Newark who informed me of this condition of things. I,
however, pressed on my way to the Chambers street station of the Hudson
River Railroad in safety, the mob being in the upper part of the city,
fortunately for me, for not only my color, but my known activity in
procuring enlistments would have made me especially obnoxious to its
murderous spirit. This was not the first time I had been in imminent
peril in New York city. My first arrival there, after my escape from
slavery, was full of danger. My passage through its borders after
the attack of John Brown on Harper’s Ferry was scarcely less safe. I
had encountered Isaiah Rynders and his gang of ruffians in the old
Broadway Tabernacle at our Anti-slavery anniversary meeting, and I knew
something of the crazy temper of such crowds; but this anti-draft--
anti-negro mob was something more and something worse--it was a part
of the rebel force, without the rebel uniform, but with all its deadly
hate; it was the fire of the enemy opened in the rear of the loyal
army. Such men as Franklin Pierce and Horatio Seymour had done much in
their utterances to encourage resistance to the drafts. Seymour was
then Governor of the State of New York, and while the mob was doing its
deadly work he addressed them as “My friends,” telling them to desist
then, while he could arrange at Washington to have the draft arrested.
Had Governor Seymour been loyal to his country, and to his country’s
cause, in this her moment of need, he would have burned his tongue with
a red hot iron sooner than allow it to call these thugs, thieves, and
murderers his “friends.”
My interviews with President Lincoln and his able Secretary, before
narrated, greatly increased my confidence in the anti-slavery integrity
of the government, although I confess I was greatly disappointed at my
failure to receive the commission promised me by Secretary Stanton. I,
however, faithfully believed, and loudly proclaimed my belief, that
the rebellion would be suppressed, the Union preserved, the slaves
emancipated, and the colored soldiers would in the end have justice
done them. This confidence was immeasurably strengthened when I saw
Gen. George B. McClellan relieved from the command of the army of the
Potomac and Gen U. S. Grant placed at its head, and in command of all
the armies of the United States. My confidence in Gen. Grant was not
entirely due to the brilliant military successes achieved by him, but
there was a moral as well as military basis for my faith in him. He had
shown his single mindedness and superiority to popular prejudice by his
prompt co-operation with President Lincoln in his policy of employing
colored troops, and his order commanding his soldiers to treat such
troops with due respect. In this way he proved himself to be not only
a wise General, but a great man--one who could adjust himself to new
conditions, and adopt the lessons taught by the events of the hour.
This quality in General Grant was and is made all the more conspicuous
and striking in contrast with his West Point education and his former
political associations; for neither West Point nor the Democratic party
have been good schools in which to learn justice and fair play to the
negro.
It was when General Grant was fighting his way through the Wilderness
to Richmond, on the “line” he meant to pursue “if it took all summer,”
and every reverse to his arms was made the occasion for a fresh demand
for peace without emancipation, that President Lincoln did me the
honor to invite me to the Executive Mansion for a conference on the
situation. I need not say I went most gladly. The main subject on which
he wished to confer with me was as to the means most desirable to be
employed outside the army to induce the slaves in the rebel States to
come within the Federal lines. The increasing opposition to the war,
in the north, and the mad cry against it, because it was being made an
abolition war, alarmed Mr. Lincoln, and made him apprehensive that
a peace might be forced upon him which would leave still in slavery
all who had not come within our lines. What he wanted was to make his
proclamation as effective as possible in the event of such a peace. He
said in a regretful tone, “The slaves are not coming so rapidly and so
numerously to us as I had hoped.” I replied that the slaveholders knew
how to keep such things from their slaves, and probably very few knew
of his proclamation. “Well,” he said, “I want you to set about devising
some means of making them acquainted with it, and for bringing them
into our lines.” He spoke with great earnestness and much solicitude,
and seemed troubled by the attitude of Mr. Greeley, and the growing
impatience there was being manifested through the north at the war. He
said he was being accused of protracting the war beyond its legitimate
object, and of failing to make peace, when he might have done so to
advantage. He was afraid of what might come of all these complaints,
but was persuaded that no solid and lasting peace could come short
of absolute submission on the part of the rebels, and he was not for
giving them rest by futile conferences at Niagara Falls, or elsewhere,
with unauthorized persons. He saw the danger of premature peace, and,
like a thoughtful and sagacious man as he was, he wished to provide
means of rendering such consummation as harmless as possible. I was the
more impressed by this benevolent consideration because he before said,
in answer to the peace clamor, that his object was to _save the Union_,
and to do so with or without slavery. What he said on this day showed
a deeper moral conviction against slavery than I had even seen before
in anything spoken or written by him. I listened with the deepest
interest and profoundest satisfaction, and, at his suggestion, agreed
to undertake the organizing a band of scouts, composed of colored men,
whose business should be somewhat after the original plan of John
Brown, to go into the rebel States, beyond the lines of our armies, and
carry the news of emancipation, and urge the slaves to come within our
boundaries.
This plan, however, was very soon rendered unnecessary by the success
of the war in the Wilderness and elsewhere, and by its termination in
the complete abolition of slavery.
I refer to this conversation because I think it is evidence conclusive
on Mr. Lincoln’s part that the proclamation, so far at least as he was
concerned, was not effected merely as a “necessity.”
An incident occurred during this interview which illustrates the
character of this great man, though the mention of it may savor a
little of vanity on my part. While in conversation with him his
Secretary twice announced “Governor Buckingham of Connecticut,” one
of the noblest and most patriotic of the loyal Governors. Mr. Lincoln
said, “Tell Governor Buckingham to wait, for I want to have a long
talk with my friend Frederick Douglass.” I interposed, and begged him
to see the Governor at once, as I could wait; but no, he persisted he
wanted to talk with me, and Governor Buckingham could wait. This was
probably the first time in the history of this Republic when its chief
magistrate found occasion or disposition to exercise such an act of
impartiality between persons so widely different in their positions and
supposed claims upon his attention. From the manner of the Governor,
when he was finally admitted, I inferred that he was as well satisfied
with what Mr. Lincoln had done, or had omitted to do, as I was.
I have often said elsewhere what I wish to repeat here, that Mr.
Lincoln was not only a great President, but a GREAT MAN--too great to
be small in anything. In his company I was never in any way reminded
of my humble origin, or of my unpopular color. While I am, as it may
seem, bragging of the kind consideration which I have reason to believe
that Mr. Lincoln entertained towards me, I may mention one thing
more. At the door of my friend John A. Gray, where I was stopping in
Washington, I found one afternoon the carriage of Secretary Dole, and
a messenger from President Lincoln with an invitation for me to take
tea with him at the Soldiers Home, where he then passed his nights,
riding out after the business of the day was over at the Executive
Mansion. Unfortunately I had an engagement to speak that evening, and
having made it one of the rules of my conduct in life never to break
an engagement if possible to keep it, I felt obliged to decline the
honor. I have often regretted that I did not make this an exception to
my general rule. Could I have known that no such opportunity could come
to me again, I should have justified myself in disappointing a large
audience for the sake of such a visit with Abraham Lincoln.
It is due perhaps to myself to say here that I did not take Mr.
Lincoln’s attentions as due to my merits or personal qualities. While
I have no doubt that Messrs. Seward and Chase had spoken well of me to
him, and the fact of my having been a slave, and gained my freedom,
and of having picked up some sort of an education, and being in some
sense a “self-made man,” and having made myself useful as an advocate
of the claims of my people, gave me favor in his eyes; yet I am quite
sure that the main thing which gave me consideration with him was
my well known relation to the colored people of the Republic, and
especially the help which that relation enabled me to give to the work
of suppressing the rebellion and of placing the Union on a firmer basis
than it ever had or could have sustained in the days of slavery.
So long as there was any hope whatsoever of the success of Rebellion,
there was of course a corresponding fear that a new lease of life
would be granted to slavery. The proclamation of Fremont in Missouri,
the letter of Phelps in the Department of the Gulf, the enlistment of
colored troops by Gen. Hunter, the “Contraband” letter of Gen. B. F.
Butler, the soldierly qualities surprisingly displayed by colored
soldiers in the terrific battles of Port Hudson, Vicksburg, Morris
Island, and elsewhere, the Emancipation proclamation by Abraham Lincoln
had given slavery many and deadly wounds, yet it was in fact only
wounded and crippled, not disabled and killed. With this condition of
national affairs came the summer of 1864, and with it the revived
Democratic party, with the story in its mouth that the war was a
failure, and with Gen. George B. McClellan, the greatest failure of the
war, as its candidate for the Presidency. It is needless to say that
the success of such a party, on such a platform, with such a candidate,
at such a time would have been a fatal calamity. All that had been done
towards suppressing the rebellion and abolishing slavery would have
proved of no avail, and the final settlement between the two sections
of the Republic, touching slavery and the right of secession, would
have been left to tear and rend the country again at no distant future.
It was said that this Democratic party, which under Mr. Buchanan had
betrayed the Government into the hands of secession and treason, was
the only party which could restore the country to peace and union.
No doubt it would have “patched up” a peace, but it would have been
a peace more to be dreaded than war. So at least I felt and worked.
When we were thus asked to exchange Abraham Lincoln for McClellan--a
successful Union President for an unsuccessful Union General--a party
earnestly endeavoring to save the Union, torn and rent by a gigantic
rebellion, I thought with Mr. Lincoln, that it was not wise to “swap
horses while crossing a stream.” Regarding, as I did, the continuance
of the war to the complete suppression of the rebellion, and the
retention in office of President Lincoln as essential to the total
destruction of slavery, I certainly exerted myself to the uttermost, in
my small way, to secure his re-election. This most important object was
not attained, however, by speeches, letters, or other electioneering
appliances. The staggering blows dealt upon the rebellion that year
by the armies under Grant and Sherman, and his own great character,
ground all opposition to dust, and made his election sure, even before
the question reached the polls. Since William the Silent, who was the
soul of the mighty war for religious liberty against Spain and the
Spanish inquisition, no leader of men has been loved and trusted in
such generous measure as Abraham Lincoln. His election silenced, in
a good degree, the discontent felt at the length of the war, and the
complaints of its being an Abolition war. Every victory of our arms,
on flood and field, was a rebuke to McClellan and the Democratic
party, and an endorsement of Abraham Lincoln for President, and his
new policy. It was my good fortune to be present at his inauguration
in March, and to hear on that occasion his remarkable inaugural
address. On the night previous I took tea with Chief Justice Chase,
and assisted his beloved daughter, Mrs. Sprague, in placing over her
honored father’s shoulders the new robe, then being made, in which
he was to administer the oath of office to the re-elected President.
There was a dignity and grandeur about the Chief Justice which marked
him as one born great. He had known me in early anti-slavery days, and
had conquered his race-prejudice, if he ever had any; at any rate, he
had welcomed me to his home and his table, when to do so was a strange
thing in Washington; and the fact was by no means an insignificant one.
The inauguration, like the election, was a most important event. Four
years before, after Mr. Lincoln’s first election, the pro-slavery
spirit determined against his inauguration, and it no doubt would have
accomplished its purpose had he attempted to pass openly and recognized
through Baltimore. There was murder in the air then, and there was
murder in the air now. His first inauguration arrested the fall of the
Republic, and the second was to restore it to enduring foundations.
At the time of the second inauguration the rebellion was apparently
vigorous, defiant, and formidable; but in reality weak, dejected, and
desperate. It had reached that verge of madness when it had called upon
the negro for help to fight against the freedom which he so longed to
find, for the bondage he would escape--against Lincoln the Emancipator
for Davis the enslaver. But desperation discards logic as well as law,
and the South was desperate. Sherman was marching to the sea, and
Virginia with its rebel capital was in the firm grip of Ulysses S.
Grant. To those who knew the situation it was evident that unless some
startling change was made the confederacy had but a short time to live,
and that time full of misery. This condition of things made the air
at Washington dark and lowering. The friends of the confederate cause
here were neither few nor insignificant. They were among the rich and
influential. A wink or a nod from such men might unchain the hand of
violence and set order and law at defiance. To those who saw beneath
the surface it was clearly perceived that there was danger abroad; and
as the procession passed down Pennsylvania Avenue, I for one felt an
instinctive apprehension that at any moment a shot from some assassin
in the crowd might end the glittering pageant, and throw the country
into the depths of anarchy. I did not then know, what has since
become history, that the plot was already formed and its execution
contemplated for that very day, which though several weeks delayed,
at last accomplished its deadly work. Reaching the Capitol, I took
my place in the crowd where I could see the Presidential procession
as it came upon the east portico, and where I could hear and see all
that took place. There was no such throng as that which celebrated the
inauguration of President Garfield, nor that of President Rutherford B.
Hayes. The whole proceeding was wonderfully quiet, earnest, and solemn.
From the oath, as administered by Chief Justice Chase, to the brief but
weighty address delivered by Mr. Lincoln, there was a leaden stillness
about the crowd. The address sounded more like a sermon than a state
paper. In the fewest words possible it referred to the condition of the
country four years before, on his first accession to the presidency--
to the causes of the war, and the reasons on both sides for which
it had been waged. “Neither party,” he said, “expected for the war
the magnitude or the duration which it had already attained. Neither
anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even
before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier
triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.” Then in a few
short sentences, admitting the conviction that slavery had been the
“offense which, in the providence of God, must needs come, and the war
as the woe due to those by whom the offense came,” he asks if there
can be “discerned in this, any departure from those Divine attributes
which the believers in a loving God always ascribe to him? Fondly do
we hope,” he continued, “fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge
of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until
all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of
unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with
the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said
three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘The judgments of
the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the
work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who
shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to
do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among
ourselves and with all nations.”
I know not how many times, and before how many people I have quoted
these solemn words of our martyred president; they struck me at the
time, and have seemed to me ever since to contain more vital substance
than I have ever seen compressed in a space so narrow; yet on this
memorable occasion when I clapped my hands in gladness and thanksgiving
at their utterance, I saw in the faces of many about me expressions of
widely different emotion.
On this inauguration day, while waiting for the opening of the
ceremonies, I made a discovery in regard to the Vice-President--Andrew
Johnson. There are moments in the lives of most men, when the doors
of their souls are open, and unconsciously to themselves, their true
characters may be read by the observant eye. It was at such an instant
I caught a glimpse of the real nature of this man, which all subsequent
developments proved true. I was standing in the crowd by the side
of Mrs. Thomas J. Dorsey, when Mr. Lincoln touched Mr. Johnson, and
pointed me out to him. The first expression which came to his face,
and which I think was the true index of his heart, was one of bitter
contempt and aversion. Seeing that I observed him, he tried to assume a
more friendly appearance; but it was too late; it was useless to close
the door when all within had been seen. His first glance was the frown
of the man, the second was the bland and sickly smile of the demagogue.
I turned to Mrs. Dorsey and said, “Whatever Andrew Johnson may be, he
certainly is no friend of our race.”
No stronger contrast could well be presented between two men than
between President Lincoln and Vice-President Johnson on this day. Mr.
Lincoln was like one who was treading the hard and thorny path of duty
and self-denial; Mr. Johnson was like one just from a drunken debauch.
The face of the one was full of manly humility, although at the topmost
height of power and pride, the other was full of pomp and swaggering
vanity. The fact was, though it was yet early in the day, Mr. Johnson
was drunk.
In the evening of the day of the inauguration, another new experience
awaited me. The usual reception was given at the executive mansion,
and though no colored persons had ever ventured to present themselves
on such occasions, it seemed now that freedom had become the law of
the republic, now that colored men were on the battle-field mingling
their blood with that of white men in one common effort to save the
country, it was not too great an assumption for a colored man to offer
his congratulations to the President with those of other citizens.
I decided to go, and sought in vain for some one of my own color
to accompany me. It is never an agreeable experience to go where
there can be any doubt of welcome, and my colored friends had too
often realized discomfiture from this cause to be willing to subject
themselves to such unhappiness; they wished me to go, as my New
England colored friends in the long ago liked very well to have me
take passage on the first-class cars, and be hauled out and pounded
by rough-handed brakemen, to make way for them. It was plain, then,
that some one must lead the way, and that if the colored man would
have his rights, he must take them; and now, though it was plainly
quite the thing for me to attend President Lincoln’s reception, “they
all with one accord began to make excuse.” It was finally arranged
that Mrs. Dorsey should bear me company, so together we joined in
the grand procession of citizens from all parts of the country, and
moved slowly towards the executive mansion. I had for some time looked
upon myself as a man, but now in this multitude of the élite of the
land, I felt myself a man among men. I regret to be obliged to say,
however, that this comfortable assurance was not of long duration, for
on reaching the door, two policemen stationed there took me rudely by
the arm and ordered me to stand back, for their directions were to
admit no persons of my color. The reader need not be told that this
was a disagreeable set-back. But once in the battle, I did not think
it well to submit to repulse. I told the officers I was quite sure
there must be some mistake, for no such order could have emanated from
President Lincoln; and if he knew I was at the door he would desire
my admission. They then, to put an end to the parley, as I suppose,
for we were obstructing the door way, and were not easily pushed
aside, assumed an air of politeness, and offered to conduct me in. We
followed their lead, and soon found ourselves walking some planks out
of a window, which had been arranged as a temporary passage for the
exit of visitors. We halted so soon as we saw the trick, and I said
to the officers: “You have deceived me. I shall not go out of this
building till I see President Lincoln.” At this moment a gentleman who
was passing in, recognized me, and I said to him: “Be so kind as to
say to Mr. Lincoln that Frederick Douglass is detained by officers at
the door.” It was not long before Mrs. Dorsey and I walked into the
spacious East Room, amid a scene of elegance such as in this country
I had never witnessed before. Like a mountain pine high above all
others, Mr. Lincoln stood, in his grand simplicity, and _home-like
beauty_. Recognizing me, even before I reached him, he exclaimed, so
that all around could hear him, “Here comes my friend Douglass.” Taking
me by the hand, he said, “I am glad to see you. I saw you in the crowd
to-day, listening to my inaugural address; how did you like it?” I
said, “Mr. Lincoln, I must not detain you with my poor opinion, when
there are thousands waiting to shake hands with you.” “No, no,” he
said, “you must stop a little, Douglass; there is no man in the country
whose opinion I value more than yours. I want to know what you think
of it?” I replied, “Mr. Lincoln, that was a sacred effort.” “I am glad
you liked it!” he said, and I passed on, feeling that any man, however
distinguished, might well regard himself honored by such expressions,
from such a man.
It came out that the officers at the White House had received no orders
from Mr. Lincoln, or from any one else. They were simply complying
with an old custom, the outgrowth of slavery, as dogs will sometimes
rub their necks, long after their collars are removed, thinking they
are still there. My colored friends were well pleased with what had
seemed to them a doubtful experiment, and I believe were encouraged by
its success to follow my example. I have found in my experience that
the way to break down an unreasonable custom, is to contradict it in
practice. To be sure in pursuing this course I have had to contend not
merely with the white race, but with the black. The one has condemned
me for my presumption in daring to associate with them, and the other
for pushing myself where they take it for granted I am not wanted. I
am pained to think that the latter objection springs largely from a
consciousness of inferiority, for as colors alone can have nothing
against each other, and the conditions of human association are founded
upon character rather than color, and character depends upon mind and
morals, there can be nothing blame-worthy in people thus equal in
meeting each other on the plain of civil or social rights.
A series of important events followed soon after the second
inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, conspicuous amongst which was the fall
of Richmond. The strongest endeavor, and the best generalship of
the Rebellion was employed to hold that place, and when it fell the
pride, prestige, and power of the rebellion fell with it, never to
rise again. The news of this great event found me again in Boston. The
enthusiasm of that loyal City cannot be easily described. As usual
when anything touches the great heart of Boston, Faneuil Hall became
vocal and eloquent. This Hall is an immense building, and its history
is correspondingly great. It has been the theatre of much patriotic
declamation from the days of the “Revolution” and before; as it has
since my day been the scene, where the strongest efforts of the most
popular orators of Massachusetts have been made. Here Webster the
great “expounder” addressed the “sea of upturned faces.” Here Choate,
the wonderful Boston barrister, by his weird, electric eloquence,
enchained his thousands; here Everett charmed with his classic periods
the flower of Boston aristocracy; and here, too, Charles Sumner, Horace
Mann, John A. Andrew, and Wendell Phillips, the last superior to most,
and equal to any, have for forty years spoken their great words for
justice, liberty, and humanity, sometimes in the calm and sunshine of
unruffled peace, but oftener in the tempest and whirlwind of mobocratic
violence. It was here that Mr. Phillips made his famous speech in
denunciation of the murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy in 1837, which changed
the whole current of his life and made him preëminently the leader of
anti-slavery thought in New England. Here too Theodore Parker, whose
early death not only Boston, but the lovers of liberty throughout the
world, still mourn, gave utterance to his deep and lifegiving thoughts
in words of fullness and power. But I set out to speak of the meeting
which was held there, in celebration of the fall of Richmond, for it
was a meeting as remarkable for its composition, as for its occasion.
Among the speakers by whom it was addressed, and who gave voice to the
patriotic sentiments which filled and overflowed each loyal heart, were
Hon. Henry Wilson, and Hon. Robert C. Winthrop. It would be difficult
to find two public men more distinctly opposite than these. If any one
may properly boast an aristocratic descent, or if there be any value or
worth in that boast, Robert C. Winthrop may without undue presumption,
avail himself of it. He was born in the midst of wealth and luxury,
and never felt the flint of hardship or the grip of poverty. Just the
opposite to this was the experience of Henry Wilson. The son of common
people, wealth and education had done little for him; but he had in him
a true heart, and a world of common sense; and these with industry,
good habits, and perseverance, had carried him further and lifted
him higher, than the brilliant man with whom he formed such striking
contrast. Winthrop, before the war, like many others of his class, had
resisted the anti-slavery current of his state, had sided largely with
the demands of the slave power, had abandoned many of his old whig
friends, when they went for free soil and free men in 1848, and gone
into the democratic party.
During the war he was too good to be a rebel sympathizer, and not quite
good enough to become as Wilson was--a power in the union cause.
Wilson had risen to eminence by his devotion to liberal ideas, while
Winthrop had sunken almost to obscurity from his indifference to such
ideas. But now either himself or his friends, most likely the latter,
thought that the time had come when some word implying interest in the
loyal cause should fall from his lips. It was not so much the need
of the union, as the need of himself, that he should speak; the time
when the union needed him, and all others, was when the slaveholding
rebellion raised its defiant head, not when as now, that head was in
the dust and ashes of defeat and destruction. But the beloved Winthrop,
the proud representative of what Daniel Webster once called the “solid
men of Boston,” had great need to speak now. It had been no fault of
the loyal cause that he had not spoken sooner. Its “gates like those
of Heaven stood open night and day.” If he did not come in, it was
his own fault. Regiment after regiment, brigade after brigade, had
passed over Boston Common to endure the perils and hardships of war;
Governor Andrew had poured out his soul, and exhausted his wonderful
powers of speech in patriotic words to the brave departing sons of old
Massachusetts, and a word from Winthrop would have gone far to nerve up
those young soldiers going forth to lay down their lives for the life
of the republic; but no word came. [See Note on page 413.] Yet now in
the last quarter of the eleventh hour, when the days’ work was nearly
done, Robert C. Winthrop was seen standing upon the same platform with
the veteran Henry Wilson. He was there in all his native grace and
dignity, elegantly and aristocratically clothed, his whole bearing
marking his social sphere as widely different from many present. Happy
for his good name, and for those who shall bear it when he is no longer
among the living, that he was found even at the last hour, in the right
place--in old Faneuil Hall--side by side with plain Henry Wilson--
the shoemaker senator. But this was not the only contrast on that
platform on that day. It was my strange fortune to follow Mr. Winthrop
on this interesting occasion. I remembered him as the guest of John H.
Clifford of New Bedford, afterwards Governor of Massachusetts, when
twenty-five years before, I had been only a few months from slavery--
I was behind his chair as waiter, and was even then charmed by his
elegant conversation--and now after this lapse of time, I found myself
no longer behind the chair of this princely man, but announced to
succeed him in the order of speakers, before that brilliant audience.
I was not insensible to the contrast in our history and positions, and
was curious to observe if it effected him, and how. To his credit I am
happy to say he bore himself grandly throughout. His speech was fully
up to the enthusiasm of the hour, and the great audience greeted his
utterances with merited applause. I need not speak of the speeches
of Henry Wilson and others, or of my own. The meeting was every way
a remarkable expression of popular feeling, created by a great and
important event.
After the fall of Richmond the collapse of the rebellion was not long
delayed, though it did not perish without adding to its long list of
atrocities one which sent a thrill of horror throughout the civilized
world, in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln; a man so amiable,
so kind, humane, and honest, that one is at a loss to know how he
could have had an enemy on earth. The details of his “taking off” are
too familiar to be more than mentioned here. The recently attempted
assassination of James Abraham Garfield has made us all too painfully
familiar with the shock and sensation produced by the hell-black crime,
to make any description necessary. The curious will note that the
Christian name of both men is the same, and that both were remarkable
for their kind qualities, and for having risen by their own energies
from among the people, and that both were victims of assassins at the
beginning of a presidential term.
Mr. Lincoln had reason to look forward to a peaceful and happy term
of office. To all appearance, we were on the eve of a restoration of
the union, and a solid and lasting peace. He had served one term as
President of the Disunited States, he was now for the first time to be
President of the United States. Heavy had been his burden, hard had
been his toil, bitter had been his trials, and terrible had been his
anxiety; but the future seemed now bright and full of hope. Richmond
had fallen, Grant had General Lee and the army of Virginia firmly in
his clutch; Sherman had fought and found his way from the banks of
the great river to the shores of the sea, leaving the two ends of the
rebellion squirming and twisting in agony, like the severed parts
of a serpent, doomed to inevitable death; and now there was but a
little time longer for the good President to bear his burden, and be
the target of reproach. His accusers, in whose opinion he was always
too fast or too slow, too weak or too strong, too conciliatory or
too aggressive, would soon become his admirers; it was soon to be
seen that he had conducted the affairs of the nation with singular
wisdom, and with absolute fidelity to the great trust confided in him.
A country, redeemed and regenerated from the foulest crime against
human nature that ever saw the sun! What a bright vision of peace,
prosperity, and happiness must have come to that tired and over-worked
brain, and weary spirit. Men used to talk of his jokes, and he no doubt
indulged them, but I seemed never to have the faculty of calling them
to the surface. I saw him oftener than many who have reported him, but
I never saw any levity in him. He always impressed me as a strong,
earnest man, having no time or disposition to trifle; grappling with
all his might the work he had in hand. The expression of his face was
a blending of suffering with patience and fortitude. Men called him
homely, and homely he was; but it was manifestly a human homeliness,
for there was nothing of the tiger or other wild animal about him.
His eyes had in them the tenderness of motherhood, and his mouth
and other features the highest perfection of a genuine manhood. His
picture, now before me in my study, by Marshall, corresponds well with
the impression I have of him. But, alas! what are all good and great
qualities; what are human hopes and human happiness to the revengeful
hand of an assassin? What are sweet dreams of peace; what are visions
of the future? A simple leaden bullet, and a few grains of powder, in
the shortest limit of time, are sufficient to blast and ruin all that
is precious in human existence, not alone of the murdered, but of the
murderer. I write this in the deep gloom flung over my spirit by the
cruel, wanton, and cold-blooded attempted assassination of Abraham
Garfield, as well as that of Abraham Lincoln.
I was in Rochester, N. Y., where I then resided, when news of the death
of Mr. Lincoln was received. Our citizens, not knowing what else to do
in the agony of the hour, betook themselves to the City Hall. Though
all hearts ached for utterance, few felt like speaking. We were stunned
and overwhelmed by a crime and calamity hitherto unknown to our
country and our government. The hour was hardly one for speech, for no
speech could rise to the level of feeling. Doctor Robinson, then of
Rochester University, but now of Brown University, Providence, R. I.,
was prevailed upon to take the stand, and made one of the most touching
and eloquent speeches I ever heard. At the close of his address, I was
called upon, and spoke out of the fullness of my heart, and, happily, I
gave expression to so much of the soul of the people present, that my
voice was several times utterly silenced by the sympathetic tumult of
the great audience. I had resided long in Rochester, and had made many
speeches there which had more or less touched the hearts of my hearers,
but never till this day was I brought into such close accord with them.
We shared in common a terrible calamity, and this “touch of nature,
made us,” more than countrymen, it made us “kin.”[D]
[D] I sincerely regret that I have done Mr. Winthrop great
injustice. This Faneuil Hall speech of his was not the
first manifestation of his zealous interest in the loyal
cause during the late war. While it is quite true that Mr.
Winthrop was strongly against the anti-slavery movement at
the North, his addresses and speeches delivered during the
war, as they have come to my knowledge since writing the
foregoing chapter, prove him to have been among the most
earnest in his support of the National Government in its
efforts to suppress the rebellion and to restore the Union.
FREDERICK DOUGLAS.
CHAPTER XIII.
VAST CHANGES.
Satisfaction and anxiety--New fields of labor opening--Lyceums and
colleges soliciting addresses--Literary attractions--Pecuniary
gain--Still pleading for human rights--President Andy Johnson--
Colored delegation--Their reply to him--National Loyalist
Convention, 1866, and its procession--Not wanted--Meeting with
an old friend--Joy and surprise--The old master’s welcome,
and Miss Amanda’s friendship--Enfranchisement discussed--its
accomplishment--The negro a citizen.
When the war for the union was substantially ended, and peace had
dawned upon the land as was the case almost immediately after the
tragic death of President Lincoln; when the gigantic system of American
slavery which had defied the march of time, resisted all the appeals
and arguments of the abolitionists, and the humane testimonies of good
men of every generation during two hundred and fifty years, was finally
abolished and forever prohibited by the organic law of the land; a
strange and, perhaps, perverse feeling came over me. My great and
exceeding joy over these stupendous achievements, especially over the
abolition of slavery (which had been the deepest desire and the great
labor of my life), was slightly tinged with a feeling of sadness.
I felt I had reached the end of the noblest and best part of my
life; my school was broken up, my church disbanded, and the beloved
congregation dispersed, never to come together again. The anti-slavery
platform had performed its work, and my voice was no longer needed.
“Othello’s occupation was gone.” The great happiness of meeting with
my fellow-workers was now to be among the things of memory. Then,
too, some thought of my personal future came in. Like Daniel Webster,
when asked by his friends to leave John Tyler’s Cabinet, I naturally
inquired: “Where shall I go?” I was still in the midst of my years,
and had something of life before me, and as the minister urged by my
old friend George Bradburn to preach anti-slavery, when to do so was
unpopular, said, “It is necessary for ministers to live,” I felt it
was necessary for me to live, and to live honestly. But where should I
go, and what should I do? I could not now take hold of life as I did
when I first landed in New Bedford, twenty-five years before: I could
not go to the wharf of either Gideon or George Howland, to Richmond’s
brass foundry, or Richetson’s candle and oil works, load and unload
vessels, or even ask Governor Clifford for a place as a servant.
Rolling oil casks and shoveling coal were all well enough when I was
younger, immediately after getting out of slavery. Doing this was a
step up, rather than a step down; but all these avocations had had
their day for me, and I had had my day for them. My public life and
labors had unfitted me for the pursuits of my earlier years, and yet
had not prepared me for more congenial and higher employment. Outside
the question of slavery my thoughts had not been much directed, and
I could hardly hope to make myself useful in any other cause than
that to which I had given the best twenty-five years of my life. A
man in the situation I found myself, has not only to divest himself
of the old, which is never easily done, but to adjust himself to the
new, which is still more difficult. Delivering lectures under various
names, John B. Gough says, “whatever may be the title, my lecture is
always on Temperance;” and such is apt to be the case with any man who
has devoted his time and thoughts to one subject for any considerable
length of time. But what should I do, was the question? I had a few
thousand dollars (a great convenience, and one not generally so highly
prized by my people as it ought to be) saved from the sale of “my
bondage and my freedom,” and the proceeds of my lectures at home and
abroad, and with this sum I thought of following the noble example
of my old friends Stephen and Abby Kelley Foster, purchase a little
farm and settle myself down to earn an honest living by tilling the
soil. My children were all grown up, and ought to be able to take
care of themselves. This question, however, was soon decided for
me. I had after all acquired (a very unusual thing) a little more
knowledge and aptitude fitting me for the new condition of things
than I knew, and had a deeper hold upon public attention than I had
supposed. Invitations began to pour in upon me from colleges, lyceums,
and literary societies, offering me one hundred, and even two hundred
dollars for a single lecture.
I had, sometime before, prepared a lecture on “Self-made men,” and
also one upon Ethnology, with special reference to Africa. The latter
had cost me much labor, though as I now look back upon it, it was a
very defective production. I wrote it at the instance of my friend
Doctor M. B. Anderson, President of Rochester University, himself a
distinguished Ethnologist, a deep thinker and scholar. I had been
invited by one of the literary societies of Western Reserve College
(then at Hudson, but recently removed to Cleveland, Ohio), to address
it on Commencement day; and never having spoken on such an occasion,
never, indeed, having been myself inside of a school-house for the
purpose of an education, I hesitated about accepting the invitation,
and finally called upon Prof. Henry Wayland, son of the great Doctor
Wayland of Brown University, and on Doctor Anderson, and asked their
advice whether I ought to accept. Both gentlemen advised me to do
so. They knew me, and evidently thought well of my ability. But the
puzzling question now was, what shall I say if I do go there? It won’t
do to give them an old-fashioned anti-slavery discourse. (I learned
afterwards that such a discourse was precisely what they needed, though
not what they wished; for the faculty, including the President, was in
great distress because I, a colored man, had been invited, and because
of the reproach this circumstance might bring upon the College.) But
what shall I talk about? became the difficult question. I finally hit
upon the one before mentioned. I had read, when in England a few years
before, with great interest, parts of Doctor Pritchard’s “Natural
History of Man,” a large volume marvelously calm and philosophical
in its discussion of the science of the origin of the races, and was
thus in the line of my then convictions. I sought this valuable book
at once in our bookstores, but could not obtain it anywhere in this
country. I sent to England, where I paid the sum of seven and a half
dollars for it. In addition to this valuable work, President Anderson
kindly gave me a little book entitled, “Man and His Migrations,” by
Dr. R. G. Latham, and loaned me the large work of Dr. Morton the
famous Archaeologist, and that of Messrs. Nott and Glidden, the latter
written evidently to degrade the negro and support the then prevalent
Calhoun doctrine of the rightfulness of slavery. With these books,
and occasional suggestions from Dr. Anderson and Prof. Wayland, I set
about preparing my Commencement address. For many days and nights I
toiled, and succeeded at last in getting something together in due
form. Written orations had not been in my line. I had usually depended
upon my unsystematized knowledge, and the inspiration of the hour
and the occasion; but I had now got the “scholar bee in my bonnet,”
and supposed that inasmuch as I was to speak to college professors
and students, I must at least make a show of some familiarity with
letters. It proved, as to its immediate effect, a great mistake, for
my carefully studied and written address, full of learned quotations,
fell dead at my feet, while a few remarks I made extemporaneously at
collation, were enthusiastically received. Nevertheless, the reading
and labor expended were of much value to me. They were needed steps
preparatory to the work upon which I was about to enter. If they failed
at the beginning, they helped to success in the end. My lecture on
“The Races of Men” was seldom called for, but that on “Self-made Men”
was in great demand, especially through the West. I found that the
success of a lecturer depends more upon the quality of his stock in
store, than the amount. My friend, Wendell Phillips (for such I esteem
him), who has said more cheering words to me, and in vindication of my
race, than any man now living, has delivered his famous lecture on the
“Lost Arts” during the last forty years; and I doubt if among all his
lectures, and he has many, there is one in such requisition as this.
When Daniel O’Connell was asked why he did not make a new speech he
playfully replied, that “it would take Ireland twenty years to learn
his old ones.” Upon some such consideration as this, I adhered pretty
closely to my old lecture on “Self-made Men,” retouching and shading it
a little from time to time as occasion seemed to require.
Here, then, was a new vocation before me, full of advantages, mentally
and pecuniarily. When in the employment of the American Anti-Slavery
Society, my salary was about four hundred and fifty dollars a year, and
I felt I was well paid for my services; but I could now make from fifty
to a hundred dollars a night, and have the satisfaction, too, that I
was in some small measure helping to lift my race into consideration;
for no man who lives at all, lives unto himself; he either helps or
hinders all who are in anywise connected with him. I never rise to
speak before an American audience without something of the feeling
that my failure or success will bring blame or benefit to my whole
race. But my activities were not now confined entirely to lectures
before lyceums. Though slavery was abolished, the wrongs of my people
were not ended. Though they were not slaves they were not yet quite
free. No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the
thought, feeling, and action of others; and who has himself no means
in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending, and maintaining
that liberty. Yet the negro after his emancipation was precisely in
this state of destitution. The law on the side of freedom is of great
advantage only where there is power to make that law respected. I know
no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which
can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any
other class. Protestants are excellent people, but it would not be wise
for Catholics to depend entirely upon them to look after their rights
and interests. Catholics are a pretty good sort of people (though
there is a soul-shuddering history behind them), yet no enlightened
Protestants would commit their liberty to their care and keeping. And
yet the government had left the freedmen in a worse condition than
either of these. It felt that it had done enough for him. It had made
him free, and henceforth he must make his own way in the world, or
as the slang phrase has it, “Root, pig, or die”; yet he had none of
the conditions for self-preservation or self-protection. He was free
from the individual master, but the slave of society. He had neither
property, money, nor friends. He was free from the old plantation,
but he had nothing but the dusty road under his feet. He was free
from the old quarter that once gave him shelter, but a slave to the
rains of summer and the frosts of winter. He was in a word literally
turned loose naked, hungry, and destitute to the open sky. The first
feeling towards him by the old master classes, was full of bitterness
and wrath. They resented his emancipation as an act of hostility
towards them, and since they could not punish the emancipator, they
felt like punishing the object which that act had emancipated. Hence
they drove him off the old plantation, and told him he was no longer
wanted there. They not only hated him because he had been freed as a
punishment to them, but because they felt that they had been robbed
of his labor. An element of greater bitterness still came into their
hearts: the freedman had been the friend of the Government, and many
of his class had borne arms against them during the war. The thought
of paying cash for labor that they could formerly extort by the lash
did not in anywise improve their disposition to the emancipated slave,
or improve his own condition. Now, since poverty has, and can have
no chance against wealth, the landless against the land owner, the
ignorant against the intelligent, the freedman was powerless. He had
nothing left him but a slavery-distorted and diseased body, and lame
and twisted limbs with which to fight the battle of life. I, therefore,
soon found that the negro had still a cause, and that he needed my
voice and pen with others to plead for it. The American Anti-Slavery
Society, under the lead of Mr. Garrison, had disbanded, its newspapers
were discontinued, its agents were withdrawn from the field, and
all systematic efforts by abolitionists were abandoned. Many of the
Society, Mr. Phillips and myself amongst the number, differed from Mr.
Garrison as to the wisdom of this course. I felt that the work of the
Society was not done, that it had not fulfilled its mission, which
was not merely to emancipate, but to elevate the enslaved class; but
against Mr. Garrison’s leadership and the surprise and joy occasioned
by the emancipation, it was impossible to keep the association alive,
and the cause of the freedmen was left mainly to individual effort and
to hastily extemporized societies of an ephemeral character, brought
together under benevolent impulse, but having no history behind them,
and being new to the work, they were not as effective for good as the
old society would have been had it followed up its work and kept its
old instrumentalities in operation.
From the first I saw no chance of bettering the condition of the
freedman, until he should cease to be merely a freedman, and should
become a citizen. I insisted that there was no safety for him, or for
any body else in America, outside the American Government: that to
guard, protect, and maintain his liberty, the freedman should have the
ballot; that the liberties of the American people were dependent upon
the Ballot-box, the Jury-box, and the Cartridge-box, that without these
no class of people could live and flourish in this country, and this
was now the word for the hour with me, and the word to which the people
of the north willingly listened when I spoke. Hence regarding as I did,
the elective franchise as the one great power by which all civil rights
are obtained, enjoyed, and maintained under our form of government,
and the one without which freedom to any class is delusive if not
impossible, I set myself to work with whatever force and energy I
possessed to secure this power for the recently emancipated millions.
[Illustration: Wendell Phillips]
The demand for the ballot was such a vast advance upon the former
objects proclaimed by the friends of the colored race, that it startled
and struck men as preposterous and wholly inadmissible. Anti-slavery
men themselves were not united as to the wisdom of such demand. Mr.
Garrison himself, though foremost for the abolition of slavery, was
not yet quite ready to join this advanced movement. In this respect
he was in the rear of Mr. Phillips; who saw not only the justice, but
the wisdom and necessity of the measure. To his credit it may be said,
that he gave the full strength of his character and eloquence to its
adoption. While Mr. Garrison thought it too much to ask, Mr. Phillips
thought it too little. While the one thought it might be postponed to
the future, the other thought it ought to be done at once. But Mr.
Garrison was not a man to lag far in the rear of truth and right, and
he soon came to see with the rest of us that the ballot was essential
to the freedom of the freedman. A man’s head will not long remain
wrong, when his heart is right. The applause awarded to Mr. Garrison by
the conservatives, for his moderation both in respect of his views on
this question, and the disbandment of the American Anti-Slavery Society
must have disturbed him. He was at any rate soon found on the right
side of the suffrage question.
The enfranchisement of the freedmen was resisted on many grounds,
but mainly these two: first the tendency of the measure to bring the
freedmen into conflict with the old master-class, and the white people
of the South generally. Secondly, their unfitness, by reason of their
ignorance, servility, and degradation, to exercise so great a power as
the ballot, over the destinies of this great nation.
These reasons against the measure which were supposed to be
unanswerable, were in some sense the most powerful arguments in its
favor. The argument that the possession of suffrage would be likely
to bring the negro into conflict with the old master-class at the
South, had its main force in the admission that the interests of the
two classes antagonized each other and that the maintenance of the
one would prove inimical to the other. It resolved itself into this,
if the negro had the means of protecting his civil rights, those who
had formerly denied him these rights would be offended and make war
upon him. Experience has shown in a measure the correctness of this
position. The old master was offended to find the negro whom he lately
possessed the right to enslave and flog to toil, casting a ballot equal
to his own, and resorted to all sorts of meanness, violence, and crime,
to dispossess him of the enjoyment of this point of equality. In this
respect the exercise of the right of suffrage by the negro has been
attended with the evil, which the opponents of the measure predicted,
and they could say “I’ve told you so,” but immeasurably and intolerably
greater would have been the evil consequences resulting from the denial
to one class of this natural means of protection, and granting it to
the other, and hostile class. It would have been, to have committed the
lamb to the care of the wolf--the arming of one class and disarming
the other--protecting one interest, and destroying the other--making
the rich strong, and the poor weak--the white man a tyrant, and the
black man a slave. The very fact therefore that the old master-classes
of the South felt that their interests were opposed to those of the
freedmen, instead of being a reason against their enfranchisement, was
the most powerful one in its favor. Until it shall be safe to leave
the lamb in the hold of the lion, the laborer in the power of the
capitalist, the poor in the hands of the rich, it will not be safe
to leave a newly emancipated people completely in the power of their
former masters, especially when such masters have not ceased to be such
from enlightened moral convictions but by irresistible force. Then on
the part of the Government itself, had it denied this great right to
the freedmen, it would have been another proof that “Republics are
ungrateful”. It would have been rewarding its enemies, and punishing
its friends--embracing its foes, and spurning its allies,--setting
a premium on treason, and degrading loyalty. As to the second point,
viz.: the negro’s ignorance and degradation, there was no disputing
either. It was the nature of slavery from whose depths he had arisen
to make him so, and it would have kept it so. It was the policy of the
system to keep him both ignorant and degraded, the better and more
safely to defraud him of his hard earnings; and this argument never
staggered me. The ballot in the hands of the negro was necessary to
open the door of the school house, and to unlock the treasures of
knowledge to him. Granting all that was said of his ignorance, I used
to say, “if the negro knows enough to fight for his country he knows
enough to vote; if he knows enough to pay taxes for the support of the
government, he knows enough to vote; if he knows as much when sober, as
an Irishman knows when drunk, he knows enough to vote.”
And now while I am not blind to the evils which have thus far attended
the enfranchisement of the colored people, I hold that the evils
from which we escaped, and the good we have derived from that act,
amply vindicate its wisdom. The evils it brought are in their nature
temporary, and the good is permanent. The one is comparatively small,
the other absolutely great. The young child has staggered on his little
legs, and he has sometimes fallen and hurt his head in the fall, but
then he has learned to walk. The boy in the water came near drowning,
but then he has learned to swim. Great changes in the relations of
mankind can never come, without evils analogous to those which have
attended the emancipation and enfranchisement of the colored people
of the United States. I am less amazed at these evils, than by the
rapidity with which they are subsiding and not more astonished at the
facility with which the former slave has become a free man, than at the
rapid adjustment of the master-class to the new situation.
Unlike the movement for the abolition of Slavery, the success of the
effort for the enfranchisement of the freedmen was not long delayed.
It is another illustration of how any advance in pursuance of a right
principle, prepares and makes easy the way to another. The way of
transgression is a bottomless pit, one step in that direction invites
the next, and the end is never reached; and it is the same with the
path of righteous obedience. Two hundred years ago, the pious Doctor
Godwin dared affirm that it was “not a sin to baptize a negro,” and
won for him the rite of baptism. It was a small concession to his
manhood; but it was strongly resisted by the slaveholders of Jamaica,
and Virginia. In this they were logical in their argument, but they
were not logical in their object. They saw plainly that to concede the
negro’s right to baptism was to receive him into the Christian Church,
and make him a brother in Christ; and hence they opposed the first step
sternly and bitterly. So long as they could keep him beyond the circle
of human brotherhood, they could scourge him to toil, as a beast of
burden, with a good Christian conscience, and without reproach. “What!”
said they, “baptize a negro? preposterous!” Nevertheless the negro was
baptized and admitted to church fellowship; and though for a long time
his soul belonged to God, his body to his master, and he poor fellow
had nothing left for himself, he is at last not only baptized, but
emancipated and enfranchised.
In this achievement, an interview with President Andrew Johnson, on
the 7th of February, 1866, by a delegation consisting of George T.
Downing, Lewis H. Douglass, Wm. E. Matthews, John Jones, John F. Cook,
Joseph E. Otis, A. W. Ross, William Whipper, John M. Brown, Alexander
Dunlop, and myself, will take its place in history as one of the first
steps. What was said on that occasion brought the whole question
virtually before the American people. Until that interview the country
was not fully aware of the intentions and policy of President Johnson
on the subject of reconstruction, especially in respect of the newly
emancipated class of the South. After having heard the brief addresses
made to him by Mr. Downing and myself, he occupied at least three
quarters of an hour in what seemed a set speech, and refused to listen
to any reply on our part, although solicited to grant a few moments for
that purpose. Seeing the advantage that Mr. Johnson would have over
us in getting his speech paraded before the country in the morning
papers, the members of the delegation met on the evening of that day,
and instructed me to prepare a brief reply which should go out to the
country simultaneously with the President’s speech to us. Since this
reply indicates the points of difference between the President and
ourselves, I produce it here as a part of the history of the times, it
being concurred in by all the members of the delegation.
Both the speech and the reply were commented upon very extensively.
MR. PRESIDENT: In consideration of a delicate sense of propriety as
well as your own repeated intimations of indisposition to discuss
or listen to a reply to the views and opinions you were pleased
to express to us in your elaborate speech to-day, the undersigned
would respectfully take this method of replying thereto. Believing
as we do that the views and opinions you expressed in that address
are entirely unsound and prejudicial to the highest interests of
our race as well as our country at large, we cannot do other than
expose the same, and, as far as may be in our power, arrest their
dangerous influence. It is not necessary at this time to call
attention to more than two or three features of your remarkable
address:
1. The first point to which we feel especially bound to take
exception, is your attempt to found a policy opposed to our
enfranchisement, upon the alleged ground of an existing hostility
on the part of the former slaves, toward the poor white people of
the South. We admit the existence of this hostility, and hold that
it is entirely reciprocal. But you obviously commit an error by
drawing an argument from an incident of slavery, and making it a
basis for a policy adapted to a state of freedom. The hostility
between the whites and blacks of the South is easily explained. It
has its root and sap in the relation of slavery, and was incited
on both sides by the cunning of the slave master. Those masters
secured their ascendency over both the poor whites and blacks by
putting enmity between them.
They divided both to conquer each. There was no earthly reason
why the blacks should not hate and dread the poor whites when in
a state of slavery, for it was from this class that their masters
received their slave catchers, slave drivers, and overseers. They
were the men called in upon all occasions by the masters, whenever
any fiendish outrage was to be committed upon the slave. Now, sir,
you cannot but perceive, that the cause of this hatred removed,
the effect must be removed also. Slavery is abolished. The cause of
this antagonism is removed, and you must see, that it is altogether
illogical (and “putting new wine into old bottles”) to legislate
from slaveholding and slave driving premises for a people whom you
have repeatedly declared your purpose to maintain in freedom.
2. Besides, even if it were true as you allege, that the hostility
of the blacks toward the poor whites must necessarily project
itself into a state of freedom, and that this enmity between the
two races is even more intense in a state of freedom than in a
state of slavery, in the name of Heaven, we reverently ask how can
you, in view of your professed desire to promote the welfare of the
black man, deprive him of all means of defence, and clothe him whom
you regard as his enemy in the panoply of political power? Can it
be that you recommend a policy which would arm the strong and cast
down the defenceless? Can you, by any possibility of reasoning,
regard this as just, fair, or wise? Experience proves that those
are most abused who can be abused with the greatest impunity. Men
are whipped oftenest who are whipped easiest. Peace between races
is not to be secured by degrading one race and exalting another,
by giving power to one race and withholding it from another, but
by maintaining a state of equal justice between all classes. First
pure, then peaceable.
3. On the colonization theory you were pleased to broach, very
much could be said. It is impossible to suppose, in view of the
usefulness of the black man in time of peace as a laborer in the
South, and in time of war as a soldier at the North, and the
growing respect for his rights among the people, and his increasing
adaptation to a high state of civilization in his native land,
there can ever come a time when he can be removed from this country
without a terrible shock to its prosperity and peace. Besides,
the worst enemy of the nation could not cast upon its fair name a
greater infamy than to admit that negroes could be tolerated among
them in a state of the most degrading slavery and oppression, and
must be cast away, driven into exile, for no other cause than
having been freed from their chains.
WASHINGTON, February 7th, 1866.
From this time onward, the question of suffrage for the freedmen, was
not allowed to rest. The rapidity with which it gained strength, was
something quite marvelous and surprising even to its advocates. Senator
Charles Sumner soon took up the subject in the Senate and treated
it in his usually able and exhaustive manner. It was a great treat
to listen to his argument running through two days, abounding as it
did in eloquence, learning, and conclusive reasoning. A committee of
the Senate had reported a proposition giving to the States lately in
rebellion in so many words complete option as to the enfranchisement
of their colored citizens: only coupling with that proposition the
condition that, to such States as chose to enfranchise such citizens,
the basis of their representation in Congress should be proportionately
increased; or, in other words, only three-fifths of the colored
citizens should be counted in the basis of representation in States
where colored citizens were not allowed to vote, while in the States
granting suffrage to colored citizens, the entire colored people should
be counted in the basis of representation. Against this proposition,
myself and associates addressed to the Senate of the United States the
following memorial:
“_To the honorable the Senate of the United States_:
“The undersigned, being a delegation representing the colored
people of the several States, and now sojourning in Washington,
charged with the duty to look after the best interests of the
recently emancipated, would most respectfully, but earnestly, pray
your honorable body to favor no amendment of the Constitution of
the United States which will grant any one or all of the States of
this Union to disfranchise any class of citizens on the ground of
race or color, for any consideration whatever. They would further
respectfully represent that the Constitution as adopted by the
fathers of the Republic in 1789, evidently contemplated the result
which has now happened, to wit, the abolition of slavery. The men
who framed it, and those who adopted it, framed and adopted it for
the people, and the whole people--colored men being at that time
legal voters in most of the States. In that instrument as it now
stands, there is not a sentence or a syllable conveying any shadow
of right or authority by which any State may make color or race a
disqualification for the exercise of the right of suffrage; and the
undersigned will regard as a real calamity the introduction of any
words, expressly or by implication, giving any State or States such
power; and we respectfully submit that if the amendment now pending
before your honorable body shall be adopted, it will enable any
State to deprive any class of citizens of the elective franchise,
notwithstanding it was obviously framed with a view to affect the
question of negro suffrage only.
“For these and other reasons the undersigned respectfully pray that
the amendment to the Constitution, recently passed by the House and
now before your body, be not adopted. And as in duty bound, etc.”
It was the opinion of Senator Wm. Pitt Fessenden, Senator Henry
Wilson, and many others, that the measure here memorialized against
would, if incorporated into the Constitution, certainly bring about
the enfranchisement of the whole colored population of the South. It
was held by them to be an inducement to the States to make suffrage
universal, since the basis of representation would be enlarged or
contracted, according as suffrage should be extended or limited; but
the judgment of these leaders was not the judgment of Senator Sumner,
Senator Wade, Yates, Howe, and others, or of the colored people. Yet,
weak as this measure was, it encountered the united opposition of
Democratic senators. On that side, the Hon. Thomas H. Hendricks of
Indiana, took the lead in appealing to popular prejudice against the
negro. He contended that among other objectionable and insufferable
results that would flow from its adoption, would be, that a negro would
ultimately be a member of the United States Senate. I never shall
forget the ineffable scorn and indignation with which Mr. Hendricks
deplored the possibility of such an event. In less, however, than a
decade from that debate, Senators Revels and Bruce, both colored men,
had fulfilled the startling prophecy of the Indiana senator. It was
not, however, by the half-way measure, which he was opposing for its
radicalism, but by the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, that these
gentlemen reached their honorable positions.
In defeating the option proposed to be given to the States, to extend
or deny suffrage to their colored population, much credit is due to the
delegation already named as visiting President Johnson. That delegation
made it their business to personally see and urge upon leading
Republican statesmen the wisdom and duty of impartial suffrage. Day
after day, Mr. Downing and myself saw and conversed with such members
of the Senate, whose advocacy of suffrage would be likely to insure its
success.
The second marked step in effecting the enfranchisement of the negro,
was made at the “National Loyalist’s Convention,” held at Philadelphia
in September, 1866. This body was composed of delegates from the
South, North, and West. Its object was, to diffuse clear views of the
situation of affairs at the South, and to indicate the principles
deemed advisable by it to be observed in the reconstruction of society
in the Southern States.
This convention was, as its history shows, numerously attended by the
ablest and most influential men from all sections of the country, and
its deliberations participated in by them.
The policy foreshadowed by Andrew Johnson (who, by the grace of the
assassin’s bullet, was then in Abraham Lincoln’s seat)--a policy based
upon the idea that the rebel States were never out of the union, and
hence had forfeited no rights which his pardon could not restore--
gave importance to this convention, more than anything which was then
occurring at the South; for through the treachery of this bold, bad
man, we seemed then about to lose nearly all that had been gained by
the war.
I was residing in Rochester at the time, and was duly elected as a
delegate from that city to attend this convention. The honor was a
surprise and a gratification to me. It was unprecedented for a city of
over sixty thousand white citizens and only about two hundred colored
residents, to elect a colored man to represent them in a national
political convention, and the announcement of it gave a shock to the
country of no inconsiderable violence. Many Republicans, with every
feeling of respect for me personally, were unable to see the wisdom
of such a course. They dreaded the clamor of social equality and
amalgamation which would be raised against the party, in consequence
of this startling innovation. They, dear fellows, found it much
more agreeable to talk of the principles of liberty as glittering
generalities, than to reduce those principles to practice.
When the train on which I was going to the convention reached
Harrisburgh, it met and was attached to another from the West crowded
with Western and Southern delegates on the way to the convention, and
among them were several loyal Governors, chief among whom was the loyal
Governor of Indiana, Oliver P. Morton, a man of Websterian mould in all
that appertained to mental power. When my presence became known to
these gentlemen, a consultation was immediately held among them, upon
the question as to what was best to do with me. It seems strange now,
in view of all the progress which has been made, that such a question
could arise. But the circumstances of the times made me the Jonah
of the Republican ship, and responsible for the contrary winds and
misbehaving weather. Before we reached Lancaster, on our eastward bound
trip, I was duly waited upon by a committee of my brother delegates,
which had been appointed by other honorable delegates, to represent to
me the undesirableness of my attendance upon the National Loyalist’s
Convention. The spokesman of these sub-delegates was a gentleman from
New Orleans with a very French name, which has now escaped me, but
which I wish I could recall, that I might credit him with a high degree
of politeness and the gift of eloquence. He began by telling me that
he knew my history and my works, and that he entertained a very high
respect for me, that both himself and the gentlemen who sent him, as
well as those who accompanied him, regarded me with admiration; that
there was not among them the remotest objection to sitting in the
convention with me, but their personal wishes in the matter they felt
should be set aside for the sake of our common cause; that whether I
should or should not go into the convention was purely a matter of
expediency; that I must know that there was a very strong and bitter
prejudice against my race in the North as well as at the South; and
that the cry of social and political equality would not fail to be
raised against the Republican party if I should attend this loyal
national convention. He insisted that it was a time for the sacrifice
of my own personal feeling, for the good of the Republican cause;
that there were several districts in the State of Indiana so evenly
balanced that a very slight circumstance would be likely to turn the
scale against us, and defeat our Congressional candidates, and thus
leave Congress without a two-thirds vote to control the headstrong and
treacherous man then in the presidential chair. It was urged that this
was a terrible responsibility for me or any other man to take.
I listened very attentively to this address, uttering no word during
its delivery; but when it was finished, I said to the speaker and
the committee, with all the emphasis I could throw into my voice and
manner: “Gentlemen, with all respect, you might as well ask me to put
a loaded pistol to my head and blow my brains out, as to ask me to
keep out of this convention, to which I have been duly elected. Then,
gentlemen, what would you gain by this exclusion? Would not the charge
of cowardice, certain to be brought against you, prove more damaging
than that of amalgamation? Would you not be branded all over the land
as dastardly hypocrites, professing principles which you have no wish
or intention of carrying out? As a mere matter of policy or expediency,
you will be wise to let me in. Everybody knows that I have been duly
elected as a delegate by the city of Rochester. The fact has been
broadly announced and commented upon all over the country. If I am not
admitted, the public will ask, ‘Where is Douglass? Why is he not seen
in the convention?’ and you would find that enquiry more difficult to
answer than any charge brought against you for favoring political or
social equality; but, ignoring the question of policy altogether, and
looking at it as one of right and wrong, I am bound to go into that
convention; not to do so, would contradict the principle and practice
of my life.” With this answer, the committee retired from the car in
which I was seated, and did not again approach me on the subject; but
I saw plainly enough then, as well as on the morning when the Loyalist
procession was to march through the streets of Philadelphia, that
while I was not to be formally excluded, I was to be ignored by the
Convention.
I was the ugly and deformed child of the family, and to be kept out
of sight as much as possible while there was company in the house.
Especially was it the purpose to offer me no inducement to be present
in the ranks of the procession of its members and friends, which was to
start from Independence Hall on the first morning of its meeting.
In good season, however, I was present at this grand starting point. My
reception there confirmed my impression as to the policy intended to
be pursued towards me. Few of the many I knew were prepared to give me
a cordial recognition, and among these few I may mention Gen. Benj. F.
Butler, who, whatever others may say of him, has always shown a courage
equal to his convictions. Almost everybody else on the ground whom I
met seemed to be ashamed or afraid of me. On the previous night I had
been warned that I should not be allowed to walk through the city in
the procession; fears had been expressed that my presence in it would
so shock the prejudices of the people of Philadelphia, as to cause the
procession to be mobbed.
The members of the convention were to walk two abreast, and as I was
the only colored member of the convention, the question was, as to who
of my brother members would consent to walk with me? The answer was
not long in coming. There was _one man_ present who was broad enough
to take in the whole situation, and brave enough to meet the duty of
the hour; one who was neither afraid nor ashamed to own me as a man
and a brother; one man of the purest Caucasian type, a poet and a
scholar, brilliant as a writer, eloquent as a speaker, and holding a
high and influential position--the editor of a weekly journal having
the largest circulation of any weekly paper in the city or State of
New York--and that man was _Mr. Theodore Tilton_. He came to me in my
isolation, seized me by the hand in a most brotherly way, and proposed
to walk with me in the procession.
I have been in many awkward and disagreeable positions in my life, when
the presence of a friend would have been highly valued, but I think I
never appreciated an act of courage and generous sentiment more highly
than I did of this brave young man, when we marched through the streets
of Philadelphia on this memorable day.
Well! what came of all these dark forebodings of timid men? How was my
presence regarded by the populace? and what effect did it produce? I
will tell you. The fears of the loyal Governors who wished me excluded
to propitiate the favor of the crowd, met with a signal reproof, their
apprehensions were shown to be groundless, and they were compelled, as
many of them confessed to me afterwards, to own themselves entirely
mistaken. The people were more enlightened and had made more progress
than their leaders had supposed. An act for which those leaders
expected to be pelted with stones, only brought to them unmeasured
applause. Along the whole line of march my presence was cheered
repeatedly and enthusiastically. I was myself utterly surprised by the
heartiness and unanimity of the popular approval. We were marching
through a city remarkable for the depth and bitterness of its hatred of
the abolition movement; a city whose populace had mobbed anti-slavery
meetings, burned temperance halls and churches owned by colored people,
and burned down Pennsylvania Hall because it had opened its doors to
people of different colors upon terms of equality. But now the children
of those who had committed these outrages and follies, were applauding
the very principles which their fathers had condemned. After the
demonstrations of this first day, I found myself a welcome member of
the convention, and cordial greeting took the place of cold aversion.
The victory was short, signal, and complete.
During the passage of the procession, as we were marching through
Chestnut street, an incident occurred which excited some interest in
the crowd, and was noticed by the press at the time, and may perhaps
be properly related here as a part of the story of my eventful life.
It was my meeting Mrs. Amanda Sears, the daughter of my old mistress,
Miss Lucretia Auld, the same Lucretia to whom I was indebted for so
many acts of kindness when under the rough treatment of Aunt Katy, on
the “old plantation home” of Col. Edward Lloyd. Mrs. Sears now resided
in Baltimore, and as I saw her on the corner of Ninth and Chestnut
streets, I hastily ran to her, and expressed my surprise and joy at
meeting her. “But what brought you to Philadelphia at this time?” I
asked. She replied, with animated voice and countenance, “I heard you
were to be here, and I came to see you walk in this procession.” The
dear lady, with her two children, had been following us for hours. Here
was the daughter of the owner of a slave, following with enthusiasm
that slave as a free man, and listening with joy to the plaudits he
received as he marched along through the crowded streets of the great
city. And here I may relate another circumstance which should have
found place earlier in this story, which will further explain the
feeling subsisting between Mrs. Sears and myself.
Seven years prior to our meeting, as just described, I delivered a
lecture in National Hall, Philadelphia, and at its close a gentleman
approached me and said, “Mr. Douglass, do you know that your once
mistress has been listening to you to-night?” I replied that I did
not, nor was I inclined to believe it. The fact was, that I had four
or five times before had a similar statement made to me by different
individuals in different states, and this made me skeptical in this
instance. The next morning, however, I received a note from a Mr. Wm.
Needles, very elegantly written, which stated that she who was Amanda
Auld, daughter of Thomas and Lucretia Auld, and granddaughter to my
old master, Capt. Aaron Anthony, was now married to Mr. John L. Sears,
a coal merchant in West Philadelphia. The street and number of Mr.
Sears’s office was given, so that I might, by seeing him, assure myself
of the facts in the case, and perhaps learn something of the relatives
whom I left in slavery. This note, with the intimation given me the
night before, convinced me there was something in it, and I resolved to
know the truth. I had now been out of slavery twenty years, and no word
had come to me from my sisters, or my brother Perry, or my grandmother.
My separation had been as complete as if I had been an inhabitant of
another planet. A law of Maryland at that time visited with heavy fine
and imprisonment any colored person who should come into the State; so
I could not go to them any more than they could come to me.
Eager to know if my kinsfolk still lived, and what was their condition,
I made my way to the office of Mr. Sears, found him in, and handed
him the note I had received from Mr. Needles, and asked him to be so
kind as to read it and tell me if the facts were as there stated.
After reading the note, he said it was true, but he must decline any
conversation with me, since not to do so would be a sacrifice to the
feelings of his father-in-law. I deeply regretted his decision, and
spoke of my long separation from my relations, and appealed to him to
give me some information concerning them. I saw that my words were not
without their effect. Presently he said, “You publish a newspaper, I
believe?” “I do,” I said, “but if that is your objection to speaking
with me, no word shall go into its columns of our conversation.”
To make a long story short, we had then quite a long conversation,
during which Mr. Sears said that in my “Narrative” I had done his
father-in-law injustice, for he was really a kind-hearted man, and a
good master. I replied that there must be two sides to the relation of
master and slave, and what was deemed kind and just to the one was the
opposite to the other. Mr. Sears was not disposed to be unreasonable,
and the longer we talked the nearer we came together. I finally asked
permission to see Mrs. Sears, the little girl of seven or eight years
when I left the eastern shore of Maryland. This request was a little
too much for him at first, and he put me off by saying that she was
a mere child when I last saw her, and she was now the mother of a
large family of children, and I would not know her. He could tell me
everything about my people as well as she. I pressed my suit, however,
insisting that I could select Miss Amanda out of a thousand other
ladies, my recollection of her was so perfect, and begged him to test
my memory at this point. After much parley of this nature, he at length
consented to my wishes, giving me the number of his house and name of
street, with permission to call at three o’clock P. M. on the next
day. I left him delighted, and prompt to the hour was ready for my
visit. I dressed myself in my best, and hired the finest carriage I
could get to take me, partly because of the distance, and partly to
make the contrast between the slave and the free man as striking as
possible. Mr. Sears had been equally thoughtful. He had invited to his
house a number of friends to witness the meeting between Mrs. Sears and
myself.
I was somewhat disconcerted when I was ushered into the large parlors
occupied by about thirty ladies and gentlemen, to all of whom I was
a perfect stranger. I saw the design to test my memory by making it
difficult for me to guess who of the company was “Miss Amanda.” In her
girlhood she was small and slender, and hence a thin and delicately
formed lady was seated in a rocking chair near the center of the room
with a little girl by her side. The device was good, but it did not
succeed. Glancing around the room, I saw in an instant the lady who
was a child twenty-five years before, and the wife and mother now.
Satisfied of this, I said, “Mr. Sears, if you will allow me, I will
select Miss Amanda from this company.” I started towards her, and she,
seeing that I recognized her, bounded to me with joy in every feature,
and expressed her great happiness at seeing me. All thought of slavery,
color, or what might seem to belong to the dignity of her position
vanished, and the meeting was as the meeting of friends long separated,
yet still present in each other’s memory and affection.
Amanda made haste to tell me that she agreed with me about slavery,
and that she had freed all her slaves as they had become of age. She
brought her children to me, and I took them in my arms, with sensations
which I could not if I would stop here to describe. One explanation
of the feeling of this lady towards me was, that her mother, who died
when she was yet a tender child, had been briefly described by me in a
little “Narrative of my life,” published many years before our meeting,
and when I could have had no motive but the highest for what I said
of her. She had read my story, and learned something of the amiable
qualities of her mother through me. She also recollected that as I
had had trials as a slave, she had had her trials under the care of a
stepmother, and that when she was harshly spoken to by her father’s
second wife she could always read in my dark face the sympathy of one
who had often received kind words from the lips of her beloved mother.
Mrs. Sears died three years ago in Baltimore, but she did not depart
without calling me to her bedside, that I might tell her as much as I
could about her mother, whom she was firm in the faith that she should
meet in another and better world. She especially wished me to describe
to her the personal appearance of her mother, and desired to know if
any of her own children then present resembled her. I told her that
the young lady standing in the corner of the room was the image of her
mother in form and features. She looked at her daughter and said, “Her
name is Lucretia--after my mother.” After telling me that her life
had been a happy one, and thanking me for coming to see her on her
death-bed, she said she was ready to die. We parted to meet no more
in life. The interview touched me deeply, and was, I could not help
thinking, a strange one--another proof that “Truth is often stranger
than Fiction.”
If any reader of this part of my life shall see in it the evidence of
a want of manly resentment for wrongs inflicted upon myself and race
by slavery, and by the ancestors of this lady, so it must be. No man
can be stronger than nature, one touch of which, we are told, makes all
the world akin. I esteem myself a good, persistent hater of injustice
and oppression, but my resentment ceases when they cease, and I have no
heart to visit upon children the sins of their fathers.
It will be noticed, when I first met Mr. Sears in Philadelphia, he
declined to talk with me, on the ground that I had been unjust to
Capt. Auld, his father-in-law. Soon after that meeting, Capt. Auld
had occasion to go to Philadelphia, and, as usual, went straight to
the house of his son-in-law, and had hardly finished the ordinary
salutations, when he said: “Sears, I see by the papers that Frederick
has recently been in Philadelphia. Did you go to hear him?” “Yes, sir,”
was the reply. After asking something more about my lecture, he said,
“Well, Sears, did Frederick come to see you?” “Yes, sir,” said Sears.
“Well, how did you receive him?” Mr. Sears then told him all about my
visit, and had the satisfaction of hearing the old man say that he had
done right in giving me welcome to his house. This last fact I have
from Rev. J. D. Long, who, with his wife, was one of the party invited
to meet me at the house of Mr. Sears, on the occasion of my visit to
Mrs. Sears.
But I must now return from this digression, and further relate my
experience in the Loyalist National Convention, and how from that time
there was an impetus given to the enfranchisement of the freedmen,
which culminated in the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of
the United States. From the first, the members of the convention were
divided in their views of the proper measures of reconstruction,
and this division was in some sense sectional. The men from the far
South, strangely enough, were quite radical, while those from the
border States were mostly conservative, and, unhappily, these last had
control of the convention from the first. A Kentucky gentleman was made
President, and its other officers were for the most part Kentuckians,
and all opposed to colored suffrage in sentiment. There was a “whole
heap” (to use a Kentucky phrase) of “halfness” in that State during
the war for the union, and there was much more there after the war.
The Maryland delegates, with the exception of Hon. John L. Thomas,
were in sympathy with Kentucky. Those from Virginia, except Hon. John
Miner Botts, were unwilling to entertain the question. The result was,
that the convention was broken square in two. The Kentucky President
declared it adjourned, and left the chair against the earnest protests
of the friends of manhood suffrage.
But the friends of this measure were not to be out-generaled and
suppressed in this way, and instantly reorganized, elected John M.
Botts of Virginia, President, discussed and passed resolutions in favor
of enfranchising the freedmen, and thus placed the question before the
country in such a manner that it could not be ignored. The delegates
from the Southern States were quite in earnest, and bore themselves
grandly in support of the measure; but the chief speakers and advocates
of suffrage on that occasion were Mr. Theodore Tilton and Miss Anna E.
Dickinson. Of course, on such a question, I could not be expected to be
silent. I was called forward, and responded with all the energy of my
soul, for I looked upon suffrage to the negro as the only measure which
could prevent him from being thrust back into slavery.
From this time onward the question of suffrage had no rest. The
rapidity with which it gained strength was more than surprising to me.
In addition to the justice of the measure, it was soon commended by
events as a political necessity. As in the case of the abolition of
slavery, the white people of the rebellious States have themselves
to thank for its adoption. Had they accepted, with moderate grace,
the decision of the court to which they appealed, and the liberal
conditions of peace offered to them, and united heartily with the
national government in its efforts to reconstruct their shattered
institutions, instead of sullenly refusing as they did, their counsel
and their votes to that end, they might easily have defeated the
argument based upon necessity for the measure. As it was, the question
was speedily taken out of the hands of colored delegations and mere
individual efforts, and became a part of the policy of the Republican
party; and President U. S. Grant, with his characteristic nerve and
clear perception of justice, promptly recommended the great amendment
to the Constitution by which colored men are to-day invested with
complete citizenship--the right to vote and to be voted for in the
American Republic.
CHAPTER XIV.
LIVING AND LEARNING.
Inducements to a political career--Objections--A newspaper
enterprise--The new National Era--Its abandonment--The Freedmen’s
Savings and Trust Company--Sad experience--Vindication.
The adoption of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments and their
incorporation into the Constitution of the United States opened a very
tempting field to my ambition, and one to which I should probably have
yielded, had I been a younger man. I was earnestly urged by many of my
respected fellow-citizens, both colored and white and from all sections
of the country, to take up my abode in some one of the many districts
of the South where there was a large colored vote, and get myself
elected, as they were sure I easily could do, to a seat in Congress--
possibly in the Senate. That I did not yield to this temptation was not
entirely due to my age; for the idea did not square well with my better
judgment and sense of propriety. The thought of going to live among a
people in order to gain their votes and acquire official honors, was
repugnant to my self-respect, and I had not lived long enough in the
political atmosphere of Washington to have this sentiment sufficiently
blunted to make me indifferent to its suggestions. I do not deny that
the arguments of my friends had some weight in them, and from their
stand-point it was all right; but I was better known to myself than
to them. I had small faith in my aptitude as a politician, and could
not hope to cope with rival aspirants. My life and labors in the North
had in a measure unfitted me for such work, and I could not readily
have adapted myself to the peculiar oratory found to be most effective
with the newly enfranchised class. In the New England and Northern
atmosphere I had acquired a style of speaking which in the South would
have been considered tame and spiritless; and, consequently, he who
“could tear a passion to tatters and split the ear of groundlings,” had
far better chance of success with the masses there, than one so little
boisterous as myself.
Upon the whole, I have never regretted that I did not enter the arena
of Congressional honors to which I was invited.
Outside of mere personal considerations I saw, or thought I saw, that
in the nature of the case the sceptre of power had passed from the old
slave and rebellious States to the free and loyal States, and that
hereafter, at least for some time to come, the loyal North, with its
advanced civilization, must dictate the policy and control the destiny
of the republic. I had an audience ready made in the free States; one
which the labors of thirty years had prepared for me, and before this
audience the freedmen of the South needed an advocate as much as they
needed a member of Congress. I think in this I was right; for thus far
our colored members of Congress have not largely made themselves felt
in the legislation of the country; and I have little reason to think I
could have done any better than they.
I was not, however, to remain long in my retired home in Rochester,
where I had planted my trees and was reposing under their shadows.
An effort was being made about this time to establish a large weekly
newspaper in the city of Washington, which should be devoted to the
defence and enlightenment of the newly emancipated and enfranchised
people; and I was urged by such men as George T. Downing, J. H.
Hawes, J. Sella Martin, and others, to become its editor-in-chief. My
sixteen years’ experience as editor and publisher of my own paper,
and the knowledge of the toil and anxiety which such a relation to a
public journal must impose, caused me much reluctance and hesitation:
nevertheless, I yielded to the wishes of my friends and counsellors,
went to Washington, threw myself into the work, hoping to be able
to lift up a standard at the national capital, for my people, which
should cheer and strengthen them in the work of their own improvement
and elevation.
I was not long connected with this enterprise, before I discovered
my mistake. The coöperation so liberally promised, and the support
which had been assured, were not very largely realized. By a series
of circumstances a little bewildering as I now look back upon them,
I found myself alone, under the mental and pecuniary burden involved
in the prosecution of the enterprise. I had been misled by loud talk
of a grand incorporated publishing company, in which I should have
shares if I wished, and in any case a fixed salary for my services;
and after all these fair-seeming conditions, I had not been connected
with the paper one year before its affairs had been so managed by the
agent appointed by this invisible company or corporate body, as to
compel me to bear the burden alone, and to become the sole owner of
the printing establishment. Having become publicly associated with the
enterprise, I was unwilling to have it prove a failure, and had allowed
it to become in debt to me, both for money loaned, and for services,
and at last it seemed wise that I should purchase the whole concern,
which I did, and turned it over to my sons Lewis and Frederic, who
were practical printers, and who, after a few years, were compelled to
discontinue its publication. This paper was the _New National Era_,
to the columns of which the colored people are indebted for some of
the best things ever uttered in behalf of their cause; for, aside from
its editorials and selections, many of the ablest colored men of the
country made it the medium through which to convey their thoughts to
the public. A misadventure though it was, which cost me from nine to
ten thousand dollars, over it I have no tears to shed. The journal was
valuable while it lasted, and the experiment was full of instruction to
me, which has to some extent been heeded, for I have kept well out of
newspaper undertakings since.
Some one has said that “experience is the best teacher.” Unfortunately
the wisdom acquired in one experience seems not to serve for another
and new one; at any rate, my first lesson at the National Capital,
bought rather dearly as it was, did not preclude the necessity of
a second whetstone to sharpen my wits in this my new home and new
surroundings. It is not altogether without a feeling of humiliation
that I must narrate my connection with the “Freedmen’s Savings and
Trust Company.”
This was an institution designed to furnish a place of security and
profit for the hard earnings of the colored people, especially at
the South. Though its title was “The Freedmen’s Savings and Trust
Company,” it is known generally as the “Freedmen’s Bank.” According to
its managers it was to be this and something more. There was something
missionary in its composition, and it dealt largely in exhortations as
well as promises. The men connected with its management were generally
church members, and reputed eminent for their piety. Some of its agents
had been preachers of the “Word.” Their aim was now to instil into
the minds of the untutored Africans lessons of sobriety, wisdom, and
economy, and to show them how to rise in the world. Circulars, tracts,
and other papers were scattered like snowflakes in winter by this
benevolent institution among the sable millions, and they were told to
“look” to the Freedman’s Bank and “live.” Branches were established in
all the Southern States, and as a result, money flowed into its vaults
to the amount of millions. With the usual effect of sudden wealth,
the managers felt like making a little display of their prosperity.
They accordingly erected one of the most costly and splendid buildings
of the time on one of the most desirable and expensive sites in the
national capital, finished on the inside with black walnut, and
furnished with marble counters and all the modern improvements.
The magnificent dimensions of the building bore testimony to its
flourishing condition. In passing it on the street I often peeped into
its spacious windows, and looked down the row of its gentlemanly and
elegantly dressed colored clerks, with their pens behind their ears
and button-hole bouquets in their coat-fronts, and felt my very eyes
enriched. It was a sight I had never expected to see. I was amazed
with the facility with which they counted the money; they threw off
the thousands with the dexterity, if not the accuracy, of old and
experienced clerks. The whole thing was beautiful. I had read of this
Bank when I lived in Rochester, and had indeed been solicited to become
one of its trustees, and had reluctantly consented to do so; but when
I came to Washington and saw its magnificent brown stone front, its
towering height, and its perfect appointments, and the fine display it
made in the transaction of its business, I felt like the Queen of Sheba
when she saw the riches of Solomon, “the half had not been told me.”
After settling myself down in Washington in the office of the _New
Era_, I could and did occasionally attend the meetings of the Board
of Trustees, and had the pleasure of listening to the rapid reports
of the condition of the institution, which were generally of a most
encouraging character. My confidence in the integrity and wisdom of
the management was such that at one time I had entrusted to its vaults
about twelve thousand dollars. It seemed fitting to me to cast in my
lot with my brother freedmen, and help to build up an institution which
represented their thrift and economy to so striking advantage; for the
more millions accumulated there, I thought, the more consideration and
respect would be shown to the colored people of the whole country.
About four months before this splendid institution was compelled to
close its doors in the starved and deluded faces of its depositors,
and while I was assured by its President and by its Actuary of its
sound condition, I was solicited by some of its trustees to allow
them to use my name in the board as a candidate for its Presidency.
So I waked up one morning to find myself seated in a comfortable arm
chair, with gold spectacles on my nose, and to hear myself addressed
as President of the Freedmen’s Bank. I could not help reflecting on
the contrast between Frederick the slave boy, running about at Col.
Lloyd’s with only a tow linen shirt to cover him, and Frederick--
President of a Bank counting its assets by millions. I had heard of
golden dreams, but such dreams had no comparison with this reality. And
yet this seeming reality was scarcely more substantial than a dream.
My term of service on this golden height covered only the brief space
of three months, and these three months were divided into two parts,
during the first part of which I was quietly employed in an effort to
find out the real condition of the Bank and its numerous branches.
This was no easy task. On paper, and from the representations of its
management, its assets amounted to three millions of dollars, and its
liabilities were about equal to its assets. With such a showing I
was encouraged in the belief that by curtailing expenses, doing away
with non-paying branches, which policy the trustees had now adopted,
we could be carried safely through the financial distress then upon
the country. So confident was I of this, that in order to meet what
was said to be a temporary emergency, I was induced to loan the Bank
ten thousand dollars of my own money, to be held by it until it could
realize on a part of its abundant securities. This money, though it was
repaid, was not done so promptly as under the supposed circumstances I
thought it should be, and these circumstances increased my fears lest
the chasm was not so easily bridged as the Actuary of the institution
had assured me it could be. The more I observed and learned the more
my confidence diminished. I found that those trustees who wished to
issue cards and publish addresses professing the utmost confidence
in the Bank, had themselves not one dollar deposited there. Some of
them, while strongly assuring me of its soundness, had withdrawn their
money and opened accounts elsewhere. Gradually I discovered that the
Bank had sustained heavy losses at the South through dishonest agents,
that there was a discrepancy on the books of forty thousand dollars,
for which no account could be given, that instead of our assets being
equal to our liabilities we could not in all likelihoods of the case
pay seventy-two cents on the dollar. There was an air of mystery, too,
about the spacious and elegant apartments of the Bank building which
greatly troubled me, and which I have only been able to explain to
myself on the supposition that the employees, from the Actuary and the
Inspector down to the messengers, were (perhaps) naturally anxious to
hold their places, and consequently have the business continued. I am
not a violent advocate of the doctrine of the total depravity of human
nature. I am inclined, on the whole, to believe it a tolerably good
nature, yet instances do occur which oblige me to concede that men can
and do act from mere personal and selfish motives. In this case, at any
rate, it seemed not unreasonable to conclude that the finely dressed
young gentlemen, adorned with pens and bouquets, the most fashionable
and genteel of all our colored youth, stationed behind those marble
counters, should desire to retain their places as long as there was
money in the vaults to pay them their salaries.
Standing on the platform of this large and complicated establishment,
with its thirty-four branches, extending from New Orleans to
Philadelphia, its machinery in full operation, its correspondence
carried on in cipher, its actuary dashing in and out of the bank with
an air of pressing business, if not of bewilderment, I found the path
of enquiry I was pursuing an exceedingly difficult one. I knew there
had been very lately several runs on the bank, and that there had been
a heavy draft made upon its reserve fund, but I did not know what I
should have been told before being allowed to enter upon the duties
of my office, that this reserve, which the bank by its charter was
required to keep, had been entirely exhausted, and that hence there
was nothing left to meet any future emergency. Not to make too long
a story, I was, in six weeks after my election as president of this
bank, convinced that it was no longer a safe custodian of the hard
earnings of my confiding people. This conclusion once reached, I could
not hesitate as to my duty in the premises, and this was, to save as
much as possible of the assets held by the bank for the benefit of the
depositors; and to prevent their being further squandered in keeping up
appearances, and in paying the salaries of myself and other officers in
the bank. Fortunately, Congress, from which we held our charter, was
then in session, and its committees on finance were in daily session.
I felt it my duty to make known as speedily as possible to Hon. John
Sherman, chairman of the Senate committee on finance, and to Senator
Scott of Pennsylvania, also of the same committee, that I regarded the
institution as insolvent and irrecoverable, and that I could no longer
ask my people to deposit their money in it. This representation to the
finance committee subjected me to very bitter opposition on the part
of the officers of the bank. Its actuary, Mr. Stickney, immediately
summoned some of the trustees, a dozen or so of them, to go before
the finance committee and make a counter statement to that made by
me; and this they did. Some of them who had assisted me by giving me
facts showing the insolvency of the bank, now made haste to contradict
that conclusion and to assure the committee that it was abundantly
able to weather the financial storm, and pay dollar for dollar to its
depositors if allowed to go on.
I was not exactly thunderstruck, but I was much amazed by this
contradiction. I, however, adhered to my statement that the bank ought
to stop. The finance committee substantially agreed with me, and in a
few weeks so legislated as to bring this imposing banking business to a
close by appointing three commissioners to take charge of its affairs.
This is a fair and unvarnished narration of my connection with the
Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company, otherwise known as the Freedmen’s
Savings Bank, a connection which has brought upon my head an amount of
abuse and detraction greater than any encountered in any other part of
my life.
Before leaving the subject I ought in justice to myself to state that
when I found that the affairs of the bank were to be closed up, I
did not, as I might easily have done, and as others did, make myself
a preferred creditor and take my money out of the bank, but on the
contrary, I determined to take my chances with other depositors, and
left my money, to the amount of two thousand dollars, to be divided
with the assets among the creditors of the bank. And now, after seven
years have been allowed for the value of the securities to appreciate
and the loss of interests on the deposits for that length of time, the
depositors may deem themselves fortunate if they receive sixty cents
on the dollar of what they placed in the care of this fine savings
institution.
It is also due to myself to state, especially since I have seen myself
accused of bringing the Freedmen’s Bank into ruin, and squandering
in senseless loans on bad security the hardly-earned moneys of my
race, that all the loans ever made by the bank were made prior to
my connection with it as its president. Not a dollar, not a dime of
its millions were loaned by me, or with my approval. The fact is,
and all investigation shows it, that I was married to a corpse. The
fine building was there with its marble counters and black walnut
finishings, the affable and agile clerks, and the discreet and comely
colored cashier; but the LIFE, which was the money, was gone, and I
found that I had been placed there with the hope that by “some drugs,
some charms, some conjuration, or some mighty magic,” I would bring it
back.
When I became connected with the bank I had a tolerably fair name
for honest dealing; I had expended in the publication of my paper in
Rochester thousands of dollars annually, and had often to depend upon
my credit to bridge over immediate wants, but no man there or elsewhere
can say I ever wronged him out of a cent; and I could, to-day, with
the confidence of the converted centurion, offer “to restore fourfold
to any from whom I have unjustly taken aught.” I say this, not for the
benefit of those who know me, but for the thousands of my own race
who hear of me mostly through the malicious and envious assaults of
unscrupulous aspirants who vainly fancy that they lift themselves into
consideration by wanton attacks upon the characters of men who receive
a larger share of respect and esteem than themselves.
CHAPTER XV.
WEIGHED IN THE BALANCE.
The Santo Domingo controversy--Decoration day at Arlington, 1871--
Speech delivered there--National colored convention at New Orleans,
1872--Elector at large for the State of New York--Death of Hon.
Henry Wilson.
The most of my story is now before the reader. Whatever of good or ill
the future may have in store for me, the past at least is secure. As I
review the last decade up to the present writing, I am impressed with a
sense of completeness; a sort of rounding up of the arch to the point
where the key stone may be inserted, the scaffolding removed, and the
work, with all its perfections or faults, left to speak for itself.
This decade, from 1871 to 1881, has been crowded, if time is capable of
being thus described, with incidents and events which may well enough
be accounted remarkable. To me they certainly appear strange, if not
wonderful. My early life not only gave no visible promise, but no hint
of such experience. On the contrary, that life seemed to render it,
in part at least, impossible. In addition to what is narrated in the
foregoing chapter, I have to speak of my mission to Santo Domingo,
my appointment as a member of the council for the government of the
District of Columbia; my election as elector at large for the State of
New York; my invitation to speak at the monument of the unknown loyal
dead, at Arlington, on Decoration day; my address on the unveiling of
Lincoln monument, at Lincoln Park, Washington; my appointment to bring
the electoral vote from New York to the National Capital; my invitation
to speak near the statue of Abraham Lincoln, Madison Square, New York;
my accompanying the body of Vice-President Wilson from Washington to
Boston; my conversations with Senator Sumner and President Grant; my
welcome to the receptions of Secretary Hamilton Fish; my appointment
by President R. B. Hayes to the office of Marshal of the District of
Columbia; my visit to Thomas Auld, the man who claimed me as his
slave, and from whom I was purchased by my English friends; and my
visit to Lloyd’s plantation, the home of my childhood, after an absence
of fifty-six years; my appointment by President James A. Garfield to
the office of Recorder of Deeds of the District of Columbia, are some
of the matters which belong to this decade, and may come into the
chapter I am now about to write.
Those who knew of my more than friendly relations with Hon. Charles
Sumner, and of his determined opposition to the annexation of Santo
Domingo to the United States, were surprised to find me earnestly
taking sides with Gen. Grant upon that question. Some of my white
friends, and a few of those of my own color--who, unfortunately,
allow themselves to look at public questions more through the medium
of feeling than of reason, and who follow the line of what is
grateful to their friends rather than what is consistent with their
own convictions--thought my course was an ungrateful return for the
eminent services of the Massachusetts senator. I am free to say that,
had I been guided only by the promptings of my heart, I should in this
controversy have followed the lead of Charles Sumner. He was not only
the most clearsighted, brave, and uncompromising friend of my race who
had ever stood upon the floor of the Senate, but was to me a loved,
honored, and precious personal friend; a man possessing the exalted and
matured intellect of a statesman, with the pure and artless heart of a
child. Upon any issue, as between him and others, when the right seemed
in anywise doubtful, I should have followed his counsel and advice. But
the annexation of Santo Domingo, to my understanding, did not seem to
be any such question. The reasons in its favor were many and obvious;
and those against it, as I thought, were easily answered. To Mr.
Sumner, annexation was a measure to extinguish a colored nation, and to
do so by dishonorable means and for selfish motives. To me it meant the
alliance of a weak and defenceless people, having few or none of the
attributes of a nation, torn and rent by internal feuds, unable to
maintain order at home, or command respect abroad, to a government
which would give it peace, stability, prosperity, and civilization,
and make it helpful to both countries. To favor annexation at the time
when Santo Domingo asked for a place in our union, was a very different
thing from what it was when Cuba and Central America were sought by
fillibustering expeditions. When the slave power bore rule, and a
spirit of injustice and oppression animated and controlled every part
of our government, I was for limiting our dominion to the smallest
possible margin; but since liberty and equality have become the law
of our land, I am for extending our dominion whenever and wherever
such extension can peaceably and honorably, and with the approval and
desire of all the parties concerned, be accomplished. Santo Domingo
wanted to come under our government upon the terms thus described; and
for more reasons than I can stop here to give, I then believed, and
do now believe, it would have been wise to have received her into our
sisterhood of States.
[Illustration: Charles Sumner]
The idea that annexation meant degradation to a colored nation, was
altogether fanciful; there was no more dishonor to Santo Domingo in
making her a State of the American union, than in making Kansas,
Nebraska, or any other territory such a State. It was giving to a part
the strength of the whole, and lifting what must be despised for its
isolation into an organization and relationship which would compel
consideration and respect.
Though I differed from Mr. Sumner in respect of this measure, and
although I told him I thought he was unjust to President Grant,
it never disturbed our friendship. After his great speech against
annexation, which occupied six hours in its delivery, and in which he
arraigned the President in a most bitter and fierce manner, being at
the White House one day, I was asked by President Grant what I “now
thought of my friend Mr. Sumner”? I replied that I believed Mr. Sumner
sincerely thought, that in opposing annexation, he was defending the
cause of the colored race as he always had done, but that I thought he
was mistaken. I saw my reply was not very satisfactory, and said: “What
do you, Mr. President, think of Senator Sumner?” He answered, with some
feeling, “I think he is mad.”
The difference in opinion on this question between these two great
men was the cause of bitter personal estrangement, and one which I
intensely regretted. The truth is, that neither one was entirely just
to the other, because neither saw the other in his true character; and
having once fallen asunder, the occasion never came when they could be
brought together.
Variance between great men finds no healing influence in the atmosphere
of Washington. Interested parties are ever ready to fan the flame of
animosity and magnify the grounds of hostility in order to gain the
favor of one or the other. This is perhaps true in some degree in
every community; but it is especially so of the National Capital, and
this for the reason that there is ever a large class of people here
dependent upon the influence and favor of powerful public men for their
daily bread.
My selection to visit Santo Domingo with the commission sent thither,
was another point indicating the difference between the OLD TIME and
the NEW. It placed me on the deck of an American man-of-war, manned
by one hundred marines and five hundred men-of-wars-men, under the
national flag, which I could now call mine, in common with other
American citizens, and gave me a place not in the fore-castle, among
the hands, nor in the caboose with the cooks, but in the captain’s
saloon and in the society of gentlemen, scientists, and statesmen. It
would be a pleasing task to narrate the varied experiences and the
distinguished persons encountered in this Santo Domingo tour, but the
material is too boundless for the limits of these pages. I can only
say, it was highly interesting and instructive. The conversations at
the Captain’s table (at which I had the honor of a seat) were usually
led by Messrs. Wade, Howe, and White--the three commissioners; and
by Mr. Hurlburt of the _New York World_; the last-named gentleman
impressed me as one remarkable for knowledge and refinement, in which
he was no whit behind Messrs. Howe and White. As for Hon. Benj.
F. Wade, he was there, as everywhere, abundant in knowledge and
experience, fully able to take care of himself in the discussion of any
subject in which he chose to take a part. In a circle so brilliant,
it is no affectation of modesty to say I was for the most part a
listener and a learner. The commander of our good ship on this voyage,
Capt. Temple, now promoted to the position of Commodore, was a very
imposing man, and deported himself with much dignity towards us all.
For his treatment to me I am especially grateful. A son of the United
States navy as he was,--a department of our service considerably
distinguished for its aristocratic tendencies, I expected to find
something a little forbidding in his manner; but I am bound to say
that in this I was agreeably disappointed. Both the commander and the
officers under him bore themselves in a friendly manner towards me
during all the voyage, and this is saying a great thing for them, for
the spectacle presented by a colored man seated at the captain’s table
was not only unusual, but had never before occurred in the history of
the United States navy. If during this voyage there was anything to
complain of, it was not in the men in authority, or in the conduct
of the thirty gentlemen who went out as the honored guests of the
expedition, but in the colored waiters. My presence and position seemed
to trouble them for its incomprehensibility; and they did not know
exactly how to deport themselves towards me. Possibly they may have
detected in me something of the same sort in respect of themselves;
at any rate we seemed awkwardly related to each other during several
weeks of the voyage. In their eyes I was Fred. Douglass suddenly, and
possibly undeservedly, lifted above them. The fact that I was colored
and they were colored had so long made us equal, that the contradiction
now presented was too much for them. After all, I have no blame for Sam
and Garrett. They were trained in the school of servility to believe
that white men alone were entitled to be waited upon by colored men;
and the lesson taught by my presence on the “Tennessee” was not to
be learned upon the instant, without thought and experience. I refer
to the matter simply as an incident quite commonly met with in the
lives of colored men who, by their own exertions or otherwise, have
happened to occupy positions of respectability and honor. While the
rank and file of our race quote with much vehemence the doctrine of
human equality, they are often among the first to deny and denounce
it in practice. Of course this is true only of the more ignorant.
Intelligence is a great leveler here as elsewhere. It sees plainly the
real worth of men and things, and is not easily imposed upon by the
dressed up emptiness of human pride.
With a colored man on a sleeping car as its conductor, the last to
have his bed made up at night, and the last to have his boots blacked
in the morning, and the last to be served in any way, is the colored
passenger. This conduct is the homage which the black man pays to the
white man’s prejudice whose wishes, like a well-trained servant, he
is taught to anticipate and obey. Time, education, and circumstances
are rapidly destroying these mere color distinctions, and men will be
valued in this country as well as in others, for what they are, and for
what they can do.
My appointment at the hands of President Grant to a seat in the
council--by way of eminence sometimes called the upper house of the
territorial legislature of the District of Columbia--at the time it
was made, must be taken as a signal evidence of his high sense of
justice, fairness, and impartiality. The colored people of the district
constituted then as now about one-third of the whole population. They
were given by Gen. Grant, three members of this legislative council--a
representation more proportionate than any that has existed since the
government has passed into the hands of commissioners, for they have
all been white men.
[Illustration: COMMISSIONERS TO SANTO DOMINGO.]
It has sometimes been asked why I am called “Honorable.” My appointment
to this council must explain this, as it explains the impartiality of
Gen. Grant, though I fear it will hardly sustain this prodigious handle
to my name, as well as it does the former part of this proposition. The
members of this district council were required to be appointed by the
President, with the advice and consent of the United States Senate.
This is the ground, and only ground that I know of, upon which anybody
has claimed this title for me. I do not pretend that the foundation is
a very good one, but as I have generally allowed people to call me what
they have pleased, and as there is nothing necessarily dishonorable
in this, I have never taken the pains to dispute its application and
propriety; and yet I confess that I am never so spoken of without
feeling a trifle uncomfortable--about as much so as when I am called,
as I sometimes am, the _Rev._ Frederick Douglass. My stay in this
legislative body was of short duration. My vocation abroad left me
little time to study the many matters of local legislation; hence my
resignation, and the appointment of my son Lewis to fill out my term.
I have thus far told my story without copious quotations from my
letters, speeches, or other writings, and shall not depart from this
rule in what remains to be told, except to insert here my speech,
delivered at Arlington, near the monument to the “Unknown Loyal
Dead,” on Decoration Day, 1871. It was delivered under impressive
circumstances, in presence of President Grant, his Cabinet, and a great
multitude of distinguished people, and expresses, as I think, the true
view which should be taken of the great conflict between slavery and
freedom to which it refers.
“Friends and Fellow Citizens: Tarry here for a moment. My words
shall be few and simple. The solemn rites of this hour and place
call for no lengthened speech. There is in the very air of
this resting ground of the unknown dead a silent, subtle, and
an all-pervading eloquence, far more touching, impressive, and
thrilling than living lips have ever uttered. Into the measureless
depths of every loyal soul it is now whispering lessons of all
that is precious, priceless, holiest, and most enduring in human
existence.
“Dark and sad will be the hour to this nation when it forgets to
pay grateful homage to its greatest benefactors. The offering we
bring to-day is due alike to the patriot soldiers dead and their
noble comrades who still live; for whether living or dead, whether
in time or eternity, the loyal soldiers who imperiled all for
country and freedom are one and inseparable.
“Those unknown heroes whose whitened bones have been piously
gathered here, and whose green graves we now strew with sweet and
beautiful flowers, choice emblems alike of pure hearts and brave
spirits, reached in their glorious career that last highest point
of nobleness beyond which human power cannot go. They died for
their country.
“No loftier tribute can be paid to the most illustrious of all the
benefactors of mankind than we pay to these unrecognized soldiers,
when we write above their graves this shining epitaph.
“When the dark and vengeful spirit of slavery, always ambitious,
preferring to rule in hell than to serve in heaven, fired the
Southern heart and stirred all the malign elements of discord;
when our great Republic, the hope of freedom and self-government
throughout the world, had reached the point of supreme peril; when
the Union of these States was torn and rent asunder at the center,
and the armies of a gigantic rebellion came forth with broad
blades and bloody hands to destroy the very foundation of American
society, the unknown braves who flung themselves into the yawning
chasm, where cannon roared and bullets whistled, fought and fell.
They died for their country.
“We are sometimes asked, in the name of patriotism, to forget
the merits of this fearful struggle, and to remember with equal
admiration those who struck at the nation’s life and those who
struck to save it,--those who fought for slavery and those who
fought for liberty and justice.
“I am no minister of malice. I would not strike the fallen. I would
not repel the repentant, but may my “right hand forget her cunning,
and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,” if I forget the
difference between the parties to that terrible, protracted, and
bloody conflict.
“If we ought to forget a war which has filled our land with widows
and orphans, which has made stumps of men of the very flower of our
youth; sent them on the journey of life armless, legless, maimed
and mutilated; which has piled up a debt heavier than a mountain
of gold--swept uncounted thousands of men into bloody graves, and
planted agony at a million hearthstones; I say if this war is to be
forgotten, I ask in the name of all things sacred what shall men
remember?
“The essence and significance of our devotions here to-day are
not to be found in the fact that the men whose remains fill these
graves were brave in battle. If we met simply to show our sense
of bravery, we should find enough to kindle admiration on both
sides. In the raging storm of fire and blood, in the fierce torrent
of shot and shell, of sword and bayonet, whether on foot or on
horse, unflinching courage marked the rebel not less than the loyal
soldier.
“But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been
displayed in a noble cause. We must never forget that victory to
the rebellion meant death to the republic. We must never forget
that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves
between the nation and the nation’s destroyers. If to-day we have
a country not boiling in an agony of blood like France; if now we
have a united country, no longer cursed by the hell-black system
of human bondage; if the American name is no longer a by-word and
a hissing to a mocking earth; if the star spangled banner floats
only over free American citizens in every quarter of the land, and
our country has before it a long and glorious career of justice,
liberty, and civilization, we are indebted to the unselfish
devotion of the noble army who rest in these honored graves all
around us.”
In the month of April, 1872, I had the honor to attend and preside over
a National Convention of colored citizens, held in New Orleans. It was
a critical period in the history of the Republican party, as well as
in that of the country. Eminent men who had hitherto been looked upon
as the pillars of Republicanism had become dissatisfied with President
Grant’s administration, and determined to defeat his nomination for
a second term. The leaders in this unfortunate revolt were Messrs.
Trumbull, Schurz, Greeley, and Sumner. Mr. Schurz had already succeeded
in destroying the Republican party in the State of Missouri, and it
seemed to be his ambition to be the founder of a new party, and to him
more than to any other man belongs the credit of what was once known
as the Liberal Republican party which made Horace Greeley its standard
bearer in the campaign of that year.
At the time of the Convention in New Orleans the elements of this new
combination were just coming together. The division in the Republican
ranks seemed to be growing deeper and broader every day. The colored
people of the country were much affected by the threatened disruption,
and their leaders were much divided as to the side upon which they
should give their voice and their votes. The names of Greeley and
Sumner, on account of their long and earnest advocacy of justice
and liberty to the blacks, had powerful attractions for the newly
enfranchised class; and there was in this Convention at New Orleans
naturally enough a strong disposition to fraternize with the new
party and follow the lead of their old friends. Against this policy
I exerted whatever influence I possessed, and, I think, succeeded in
holding back that Convention from what I felt sure then would have
been a fatal political blunder, and time has proved the correctness
of that position. My speech on taking the chair on that occasion was
telegraphed from New Orleans in full to the New York _Herald_, and the
key-note of it was that there was no path out of the Republican party
that did not lead directly into the Democratic party--away from our
friends and directly to our enemies. Happily this Convention pretty
largely agreed with me, and its members have not since regretted that
agreement.
From this Convention onward, until the nomination and election of
Grant and Wilson, I was actively engaged on the stump, a part of the
time in Virginia with Hon. Henry Wilson, in North Carolina with John
M. Longston and John H. Smyth, and in the State of Maine with Senator
Hamlin, Gen. B. F. Butler, Gen. Woodford, and Hon. James G. Blaine.
Since 1872 I have been regularly what my old friend Parker Pillsbury
would call a “field hand” in every important political campaign, and
at each National Convention have sided with what has been called
the stalwart element of the Republican party. It was in the Grant
Presidential campaign that New York took an advanced step in the
renunciation of a timid policy. The Republicans of that State not
having the fear of popular prejudice before their eyes placed my name
as an Elector at large at the head of their Presidential ticket.
Considering the deep-rooted sentiment of the masses against negroes,
the noise and tumult likely to be raised, especially among our adopted
citizens of Irish descent, this was a bold and manly proceeding, and
one for which the Republicans of the State of New York deserve the
gratitude of every colored citizen of the Republic, for it was a blow
at popular prejudice in a quarter where it was capable of making the
strongest resistance. The result proved not only the justice and
generosity of the measure, but its wisdom. The Republicans carried the
State by a majority of fifty thousand over the heads of the Liberal
Republican and the Democratic parties combined.
Equally significant of the turn now taken in the political sentiment
of the country, was the action of the Republican Electoral College at
its meeting in Albany, when it committed to my custody the sealed up
electoral vote of the great State of New York, and commissioned me to
bring that vote to the National Capital. Only a few years before, any
colored man was forbidden by law to carry a United States mail bag from
one post-office to another. He was not allowed to touch the sacred
leather, though locked in “triple steel,” but now, not a mail bag, but
a document which was to decide the Presidential question with all its
momentous interests, was committed to the hands of one of this despised
class; and around him, in the execution of his high trust, was thrown
all the safeguards provided by the Constitution and the laws of the
land. Though I worked hard and long to secure the nomination and the
election of Gen. Grant in 1872, I neither received nor sought office
under him. He was my choice upon grounds altogether free from selfish
or personal considerations. I supported him because he had done all,
and would do all, he could to save not only the country from ruin, but
the emancipated class from oppression and ultimate destruction; and
because Mr. Greeley, with the Democratic party behind him, would not
have the power, even if he had the disposition, to afford us the needed
protection which our peculiar condition required. I could easily have
secured the appointment as Minister to Hayti, but preferred to urge the
claims of my friend, Ebenezer Bassett, a gentleman and a scholar, and
a man well fitted by his good sense and amiable qualities to fill the
position with credit to himself and his country. It is with a certain
degree of pride that I am able to say that my opinion of the wisdom of
sending Mr. Bassett to Hayti has been fully justified by the creditable
manner in which, for eight years, he discharged the difficult duties
of that position; for I have the assurance of Hon. Hamilton Fish,
Secretary of State of the United States, that Mr. Bassett was a
good Minister. In so many words, the ex-Secretary told me, that he
“wished that one-half of his ministers abroad performed their duties
as well as Mr. Bassett.” To those who knew Hon. Hamilton Fish, this
compliment will not be deemed slight, for few men are less given to
exaggeration and are more scrupulously exact in the observance of law,
and in the use of language, than is that gentleman. While speaking
in this strain of complacency in reference to Mr. Bassett, I take
pleasure also in bearing my testimony based upon knowledge obtained
at the State Department, that Mr. John Mercer Langston, the present
Minister to Hayti, has acquitted himself with equal wisdom and ability
to that of Mr. Bassett in the same position. Having known both these
gentlemen in their youth, when the one was at Yale, and the other at
Oberlin College, and witnessed their efforts to qualify themselves for
positions of usefulness, it has afforded me no limited satisfaction to
see them rise in the world. Such men increase the faith of all in the
possibilities of their race, and make it easier for those who are to
come after them.
The unveiling of Lincoln Monument in Lincoln Park, Washington, April
14th, 1876, and the part taken by me in the ceremonies of that grand
occasion, takes rank among the most interesting incidents of my life,
since it brought me into mental communication with a greater number of
the influential and distinguished men of the country than any I had
before known. There were present the President of the United States
and his Cabinet, Judges of the Supreme Court, the Senate and House
of Representatives, and many thousands of citizens to listen to my
address upon the illustrious man in whose memory the colored people
of the United States had, as a mark of their gratitude, erected that
impressive monument. Occasions like this have done wonders in the
removal of popular prejudice, and in lifting into consideration the
colored race; and I reckon it one of the high privileges of my life,
that I was permitted to have a share in this and several other like
celebrations.
The progress of a nation is sometimes indicated by small things. When
Henry Wilson, an honored Senator and Vice-President of the United
States, died in the capitol of the nation, it was a significant and
telling indication of national advance, when three colored citizens,
Mr. Robert Purvis, Mr. James Wormley, and myself, were selected with
the Senate committee, to accompany his honored remains from Washington
to the grand old commonwealth he loved so well, and whom in turn she
had so greatly loved and honored. It was meet and right that we should
be represented in the long procession that met those remains in every
State between here and Massachusetts, for Henry Wilson was among the
foremost friends of the colored race in this country, and this was the
first time in its history when a colored man was made a pall-bearer
at the funeral, as I was in this instance, of a Vice-President of the
United States.
An appointment to any important and lucrative office under the United
States government, usually brings its recipient a large measure
of praise and congratulation on the one hand, and much abuse and
disparagement on the other; and he may think himself singularly
fortunate if the censure does not exceed the praise. I need not dwell
upon the causes of this extravagance, but I may say there is no office
of any value in the country which is not desired and sought by many
persons equally meritorious and equally deserving. But as only one
person can be appointed to any one office, only one can be pleased,
while many are offended; unhappily, resentment follows disappointment,
and this resentment often finds expression in disparagement and abuse
of the successful man. As in most else I have said, I borrow this
reflection from my own experience.
My appointment as United States Marshal of the District of Columbia,
was in keeping with the rest of my life, as a freeman. It was an
innovation upon long established usage, and opposed to the general
current of sentiment in the community. It came upon the people of the
District as a gross surprise, and almost a punishment; and provoked
something like a scream--I will not say a _yell_--of popular
displeasure. As soon as I was named by President Hayes for the place,
efforts were made by members of the bar to defeat my confirmation
before the Senate. All sorts of reasons against my appointment, but the
true one, were given, and that was withheld more from a sense of shame,
than from a sense of justice. The apprehension doubtless was, that
if appointed marshal, I would surround myself with colored deputies,
colored bailiffs, colored messengers, and pack the jury box with
colored jurors; in a word, Africanize the courts. But the most dreadful
thing threatened, was a colored man at the _Executive Mansion_ in white
kid gloves, sparrow-tailed coat, patent leather boots, and alabaster
cravat, performing the ceremony--a very empty one--of introducing the
aristocratic citizens of the republic to the President of the United
States. This was something entirely too much to be borne; and men asked
themselves in view of it, to what is the world coming? and where will
these things stop? Dreadful! Dreadful!
It is creditable to the manliness of the American Senate, that it was
moved by none of these things, and that it lost no time in the matter
of my confirmation. I learn, and believe my information correct,
that foremost among those who supported my confirmation against the
objections made to it, was Hon. Roscoe Conkling of New York. His speech
in executive session is said by the senators who heard it, to have been
one of the most masterly and eloquent ever delivered on the floor of
the Senate; and this too I readily believe, for Mr. Conkling possesses
the ardor and fire of Henry Clay, the subtlety of Calhoun, and the
massive grandeur of Daniel Webster.
The effort to prevent my confirmation having failed, nothing could
be done but to wait for some overt act to justify my removal; and
for this my _un_friends had not long to wait. In the course of one
or two months I was invited by a number of citizens of Baltimore to
deliver a lecture in that city in Douglass Hall--a building named
in honor of myself, and devoted to educational purposes. With this
invitation I complied, giving the same lecture which I had two years
before delivered in the city of Washington, and which was at the time
published in full in the newspapers, and very highly commended by
them. The subject of the lecture was, “Our National Capital,” and in
it I said many complimentary things of the city, which were as true as
they were complimentary. I spoke of what it had been in the past, what
it was at that time, and what I thought it destined to become in the
future; giving it all credit for its good points, and calling attention
to some of its ridiculous features. For this I got myself pretty
roughly handled. The newspapers worked themselves up to a frenzy of
passion, and committees were appointed to procure names to a petition
to President Hayes demanding my removal. The tide of popular feeling
was so violent, that I deemed it necessary to depart from my usual
custom when assailed, so far as to write the following explanatory
letter, from which the reader will be able to measure the extent and
quality of my offense:
“To the Editor of the Washington Evening _Star_:
“Sir:--You were mistaken in representing me as being off on a
lecturing tour, and, by implication, neglecting my duties as
United States Marshal of the District of Columbia. My absence
from Washington during two days was due to an invitation by the
managers to be present on the occasion of the inauguration of the
International Exhibition in Philadelphia.
“In complying with this invitation, I found myself in company with
other members of the government who went thither in obedience to
the call of patriotism and civilization. No one interest of the
Marshal’s office suffered by my temporary absence, as I had seen
to it that those upon whom the duties of the office devolved were
honest, capable, industrious, painstaking, and faithful. My Deputy
Marshal is a man every way qualified for his position, and the
citizens of Washington may rest assured that no unfaithful man will
be retained in any position under me. Of course I can have nothing
to say as to my own fitness for the position I hold. You have a
right to say what you please on that point; yet I think it would be
only fair and generous to wait for some dereliction of duty on my
part before I shall be adjudged as incompetent to fill the place.
“You will allow me to say also that the attacks upon me on account
of the remarks alleged to have been made by me in Baltimore, strike
me as both malicious and silly. Washington is a great city, not
a village nor a hamlet, but the capital of a great nation, and
the manners and habits of its various classes are proper subjects
for presentation and criticism, and I very much mistake if this
great city can be thrown into a tempest of passion by any humorous
reflections I may take the liberty to utter. The city is too great
to be small, and I think it will laugh at the ridiculous attempt to
rouse it to a point of furious hostility to me for any thing said
in my Baltimore lecture.
“Had the reporters of that lecture been as careful to note what
I said in praise of Washington as what I said, if you please,
in disparagement of it, it would have been impossible to awaken
any feeling against me in this community for what I said. It is
the easiest thing in the world, as all editors know, to pervert
the meaning and give a one-sided impression of a whole speech by
simply giving isolated passages from the speech itself, without any
qualifying connections. It would hardly be imagined from anything
that has appeared here that I had said one word in that lecture in
honor of Washington, and yet the lecture itself, as a whole, was
decidedly in the interest of the national capital. I am not such a
fool as to decry a city in which I have invested my money and made
my permanent residence.
“After speaking of the power of the sentiment of patriotism I held
this language: ‘In the spirit of this noble sentiment I would have
the American people view the national capital. It is our national
center. It belongs to us; and whether it is mean or majestic,
whether arrayed in glory or covered with shame, we cannot but
share its character and its destiny. In the remotest section of
the republic, in the most distant parts of the globe, amid the
splendors of Europe or the wilds of Africa, we are still held and
firmly bound to this common center. Under the shadow of Bunker Hill
monument, in the peerless eloquence of his diction, I once heard
the great Daniel Webster give welcome to all American citizens,
assuring them that wherever else they might be strangers, they
were all at home there. The same boundless welcome is given to
all American citizens by Washington. Elsewhere we may belong to
individual States, but here we belong to the whole United States.
Elsewhere we may belong to a section, but here we belong to a
whole country, and the whole country belongs to us. It is national
territory, and the one place where no American is an intruder or
a carpet-bagger. The new comer is not less at home than the old
resident. Under its lofty domes and stately pillars, as under the
broad blue sky, all races and colors of men stand upon a footing of
common equality.
“‘The wealth and magnificence which elsewhere might oppress the
humble citizen has an opposite effect here. They are felt to be a
part of himself and serve to ennoble him in his own eyes. He is an
owner of the marble grandeur which he beholds about him,--as much
so as any of the forty millions of this great nation. Once in his
life every American who can should visit Washington: not as the
Mahometan to Mecca; not as the Catholic to Rome; not as the Hebrew
to Jerusalem, nor as the Chinaman to the Flowery kingdom, but in
the spirit of enlightened patriotism, knowing the value of free
institutions and how to perpetuate and maintain them.
“‘Washington should be contemplated not merely as an assemblage of
fine buildings; not merely as the chosen resort of the wealth and
fashion of the country; not merely as the honored place where the
statesmen of the nation assemble to shape the policy and frame the
laws; not merely as the point at which we are most visibly touched
by the outside world, and where the diplomatic skill and talent of
the old continent meet and match themselves against those of the
new, but as the national flag itself--a glorious symbol of civil
and religious liberty, leading the world in the race of social
science, civilization, and renown.’
“My lecture in Baltimore required more than an hour and a half
for its delivery, and every intelligent reader will see the
difficulty of doing justice to such a speech when it is abbreviated
and compressed into a half or three-quarters of a column. Such
abbreviation and condensation has been resorted to in this
instance. A few stray sentences, called out from their connections,
would be deprived of much of their harshness if presented in the
form and connection in which they were uttered; but I am taking
up too much space, and will close with the last paragraph of the
lecture, as delivered in Baltimore. ‘No city in the broad world has
a higher or more beneficent mission. Among all the great capitals
of the world it is preëminently the capital of free institutions.
Its fall would be a blow to freedom and progress throughout the
world. Let it stand then where it does now stand--where the father
of his country planted it, and where it has stood for more than
half a century; no longer sandwiched between two slave States; no
longer a contradiction to human progress; no longer the hot-bed of
slavery and the slave trade; no longer the home of the duelist,
the gambler, and the assassin; no longer the frantic partisan of
one section of the country against the other; no longer anchored
to a dark and semi-barbarous past, but a redeemed city, beautiful
to the eye and attractive to the heart, a bond of perpetual union,
an angel of peace on earth and good will to men, a common ground
upon which Americans of all races and colors, all sections, North
and South, may meet and shake hands, not over a chasm of blood, but
over a free, united, and progressive republic.’”
I have already alluded to the fact that much of the opposition to my
appointment to the office of United States Marshal of the District
of Columbia was due to the possibility of my being called to attend
President Hayes at the Executive Mansion upon state occasions, and
having the honor to introduce the guests on such occasions. I now
wish to refer to reproaches liberally showered upon me for holding
the office of Marshal while denied this distinguished honor, and to
show that the complaint against me at this point is not a well founded
complaint.
1st. Because the office of United States Marshal is distinct and
separate and complete in itself, and must be accepted or refused upon
its own merits. If, when offered to any person, its duties are such
as he can properly fulfill, he may very properly accept it; or, if
otherwise, he may as properly refuse it.
2d. Because the duties of the office are clearly and strictly defined
in the law by which it was created; and because nowhere among these
duties is there any mention or intimation that the Marshal may or shall
attend upon the President of the United States at the Executive Mansion
on state occasions.
3d. Because the choice as to who shall have the honor and privilege
of such attendance upon the President belongs exclusively and
reasonably to the President himself, and that therefore no one, however
distinguished, or in whatever office, has any just cause to complain of
the exercise by the President of this right of choice, or because he is
not himself chosen.
In view of these propositions, which I hold to be indisputable, I
should have presented to the country a most foolish and ridiculous
figure had I, as absurdly counseled by some of my colored friends,
resigned the office of Marshal of the District of Columbia, because
President Rutherford B. Hayes, for reasons that must have been
satisfactory to his judgment, preferred some person other than myself
to attend upon him at the Executive Mansion and perform the ceremony of
introduction on state occasions. But it was said, that this statement
did not cover the whole ground; that it was customary for the United
States Marshal of the District of Columbia to perform this social
office; and that the usage had come to have almost the force of law.
I met this at the time, and I meet it now by denying the binding
force of this custom. No former President has any right or power to
make his example the rule for his successor. The custom of inviting
the Marshal to do this duty was made by a President, and could be
as properly unmade by a President. Besides, the usage is altogether
a modern one, and had its origin in peculiar circumstances, and was
justified by those circumstances. It was introduced in time of war
by President Lincoln when he made his old law partner and intimate
acquaintance Marshal of the District, and was continued by Gen. Grant
when he appointed a relative of his, Gen. Sharp, to the same office.
But again it was said that President Hayes only departed from this
custom because the Marshal in my case was a colored man. The answer
I made to this, and now make to it, is, that it is a gratuitous
assumption and entirely begs the question. It may or may not be true
that my complexion was the cause of this departure, but no man has any
right to assume that position in advance of a plain declaration to that
effect by President Hayes himself. Never have I heard from him any such
declaration or intimation. In so far as my intercourse with him is
concerned, I can say that I at no time discovered in him a feeling of
aversion to me on account of my complexion, or on any other account,
and, unless I am greatly deceived, I was ever a welcome visitor at the
Executive Mansion on state occasions and all others, while Rutherford
B. Hayes was President of the United States. I have further to say
that I have many times during his administration had the honor to
introduce distinguished strangers to him, both of native and foreign
birth, and never had reason to feel myself slighted by himself or his
amiable wife; and I think he would be a very unreasonable man who could
desire for himself, or for any other, a larger measure of respect and
consideration than this at the hands of a man and woman occupying the
exalted positions of Mr. and Mrs. Hayes.
I should not do entire justice to the Honorable ex-President if I did
not bear additional testimony to his noble and generous spirit. When
all Washington was in an uproar, and a wild clamor rent the air for my
removal from the office of Marshal on account of the lecture delivered
by me in Baltimore, when petitions were flowing in upon him demanding
my degradation, he nobly rebuked the mad spirit of persecution by
openly declaring his purpose to retain me in my place.
One other word. During the tumult raised against me in consequence of
this lecture on the “National Capital,” Mr. Columbus Alexander, one
of the old and wealthy citizens of Washington, who was on my bond for
twenty thousand dollars, was repeatedly besought to withdraw his name,
and thus leave me disqualified; but like the President, both he and my
other bondsman, Mr. George Hill, Jr., were steadfast and immovable.
I was not surprised that Mr. Hill stood bravely by me, for he was a
Republican; but I was surprised and gratified that Mr. Alexander, a
Democrat, and, I believe, once a slaveholder, had not only the courage,
but the magnanimity to give me fair play in this fight. What I have
said of these gentlemen, can be extended to very few others in this
community, during that period of excitement, among either the white or
colored citizens, for, with the exception of Dr. Charles B. Purvis,
no colored man in the city uttered one public word in defence or
extenuation of me or of my Baltimore speech.
This violent hostility kindled against me was singularly evanescent.
It came like a whirlwind, and like a whirlwind departed. I soon saw
nothing of it, either in the courts among the lawyers, or on the
streets among the people; for it was discovered that there was really
in my speech at Baltimore nothing which made me “worthy of stripes or
of bonds.”
[Illustration: MARSHAL AT THE INAUGURATION OF PRES. GARFIELD.]
I can say from my experience in the office of United States Marshal
of the District of Columbia, it was every way agreeable. When it
was an open question whether I should take the office or not, it
was apprehended and predicted if I should accept it in face of the
opposition of the lawyers and judges of the courts, I should be
subjected to numberless suits for damages, and so vexed and worried
that the office would be rendered valueless to me; that it would not
only eat up my salary, but possibly endanger what little I might have
laid up for a rainy day. I have now to report that this apprehension
was in no sense realized. What might have happened had the members
of the District bar been half as malicious and spiteful as they had
been industriously represented as being, or if I had not secured as my
assistant a man so capable, industrious, vigilant, and careful as Mr.
L. P. Williams, of course I cannot know. But I am bound to praise the
bridge that carries me safely over it. I think it will ever stand as
a witness to my fitness for the position of Marshal, that I had the
wisdom to select for my assistant a gentleman so well instructed and
competent. I also take pleasure in bearing testimony to the generosity
of Mr. Phillips, the assistant Marshal who preceded Mr. Williams in
that office, in giving the new assistant valuable information as to the
various duties he would be called upon to perform. I have further to
say of my experience in the Marshal’s office, that while I have reason
to know that the eminent Chief Justice of the District of Columbia and
some of his associates were not well pleased with my appointment, I was
always treated by them, as well as by the chief clerk of the courts,
Hon. J. R. Meigs, and the subordinates of the latter (with a single
exception), with the respect and consideration due to my office. Among
the eminent lawyers of the District I believe I had many friends, and
there were those of them to whom I could always go with confidence in
an emergency for sound advice and direction, and this fact, after all
the hostility felt in consequence of my appointment, and revived by my
speech at Baltimore, is another proof of the vincibility of all feeling
arising out of popular prejudices.
In all my forty years of thought and labor to promote the freedom and
welfare of my race, I never found myself more widely and painfully at
variance with leading colored men of the country, than when I opposed
the effort to set in motion a wholesale exodus of colored people of the
South to the Northern States; and yet I never took a position in which
I felt myself better fortified by reason and necessity. It was said
of me, that I had deserted to the old master class, and that I was a
traitor to my race; that I had run away from slavery myself, and yet I
was opposing others in doing the same. When my opponents condescended
to argue, they took the ground that the colored people of the South
needed to be brought into contact with the freedom and civilization
of the North; that no emancipated and persecuted people ever had or
ever could rise in the presence of the people by whom they had been
enslaved, and that the true remedy for the ills which the freedmen were
suffering, was to initiate the Israelitish departure from our modern
Egypt to a land abounding, if not in “milk and honey,” certainly in
pork and hominy.
Influenced, no doubt, by the dazzling prospects held out to them by the
advocates of the exodus movement, thousands of poor, hungry, naked,
and destitute colored people were induced to quit the South amid the
frosts and snows of a dreadful winter in search of a better country. I
regret to say there was something sinister in this so-called exodus,
for it transpired that some of the agents most active in promoting
it had an understanding with certain railroad companies, by which
they were to receive one dollar per head upon all such passengers.
Thousands of these poor people, traveling only so far as they had
money to bear their expenses, were dropped on the levees of St. Louis,
in the extremest destitution; and their tales of woe were such as to
move a heart much less sensitive to human suffering than mine. But
while I felt for these poor deluded people, and did what I could to
put a stop to their ill-advised and ill-arranged stampede, I also
did what I could to assist such of them as were within my reach, who
were on their way to this land of promise. Hundreds of these people
came to Washington, and at one time there were from two to three
hundred lodged here, unable to get further for the want of money. I
lost no time in appealing to my friends for the means of assisting
them. Conspicuous among these friends was Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson of
New York city--the lady who, several years ago, made the nation a
present of Carpenter’s great historical picture of the “Signing of
the Emancipation Proclamation,” and who has expended large sums of her
money in investigating the causes of yellow-fever, and in endeavors to
discover means for preventing its ravages in New Orleans and elsewhere.
I found Mrs. Thompson consistently alive to the claims of humanity
in this, as in other instances, for she sent me, without delay, a
draft for two hundred and fifty dollars, and in doing so expressed
the wish that I would promptly inform her of any other opportunity of
doing good. How little justice was done me by those who accused me
of indifference to the welfare of the colored people of the South on
account of my opposition to the so-called exodus will be seen by the
following extracts from a paper on that subject laid before the Social
Science Congress at Saratoga, when that question was before the country:
* * * * *
“Important as manual labor is everywhere, it is nowhere more
important and absolutely indispensable to the existence of society
than in the more southern of the United States. Machinery may
continue to do, as it has done, much of the work of the North,
but the work of the South requires bone, sinew, and muscle of the
strongest and most enduring kind for its performance. Labor in that
section must know no pause. Her soil is pregnant and prolific with
life and energy. All the forces of nature within her borders are
wonderfully vigorous, persistent, and active. Aided by an almost
perpetual summer abundantly supplied with heat and moisture, her
soil readily and rapidly covers itself with noxious weeds, dense
forests, and impenetrable jungles. Only a few years of non-tillage
would be needed to give the sunny and fruitful South to the bats
and owls of a desolate wilderness. From this condition, shocking
for a southern man to contemplate, it is now seen that nothing less
powerful than the naked iron arm of the negro, can save her. For
him as a Southern laborer, there is no competitor or substitute.
The thought of filling his place by any other variety of the human
family, will be found delusive and utterly impracticable. Neither
Chinaman, German, Norwegian, nor Swede can drive him from the
sugar and cotton fields of Louisiana and Mississippi. They would
certainly perish in the black bottoms of these states if they could
be induced, which they cannot, to try the experiment.
“Nature itself, in those States, comes to the rescue of the negro,
fights his battles, and enables him to exact conditions from those
who would unfairly treat and oppress him. Besides being dependent
upon the roughest and flintiest kind of labor, the climate of
the South makes such labor uninviting and harshly repulsive to
the white man. He dreads it, shrinks from it, and refuses it. He
shuns the burning sun of the fields and seeks the shade of the
verandas. On the contrary, the negro walks, labors, and sleeps in
the sunlight unharmed. The standing apology for slavery was based
upon a knowledge of this fact. It was said that the world must have
cotton and sugar, and that only the negro could supply this want;
and that he could be induced to do it only under the “beneficent
whip” of some bloodthirsty _Legree_. The last part of this argument
has been happily disproved by the large crops of these productions
since Emancipation; but the first part of it stands firm,
unassailed and unassailable.
“Even if climate and other natural causes did not protect the negro
from all competition in the labor-market of the South, inevitable
social causes would probably effect the same result. The slave
system of that section has left behind it, as in the nature of the
case it must, manners, customs, and conditions to which free white
laboring men will be in no haste to submit themselves and their
families. They do not emigrate from the free North, where labor
is respected, to a lately enslaved South, where labor has been
whipped, chained, and degraded for centuries. Naturally enough such
emigration follows the lines of latitude in which they who compose
it were born. Not from South to North, but from East to West ‘the
Star of Empire takes its way.’
“Hence it is seen that the dependence of the planters, land-owners,
and old master-class of the South upon the negro, however galling
and humiliating to Southern pride and power, is nearly complete
and perfect. There is only one mode of escape for them, and that
mode they will certainly not adopt. It is to take off their own
coats, cease to whittle sticks and talk politics at cross-roads,
and go themselves to work in their broad and sunny fields of
cotton and sugar. An invitation to do this is about as harsh and
distasteful to all their inclinations as would be an invitation to
step down into their graves. With the negro, all this is different.
Neither natural, artificial, or traditional causes stand in the
way of the freedman to labor in the South. Neither the heat
nor the fever-demon which lurks in her tangled and oozy swamps
affright him, and he stands to-day the admitted author of whatever
prosperity, beauty, and civilization are now possessed by the
South, and the admitted arbiter of her destiny.
“This then, is the high vantage ground of the negro; he has labor;
the South wants it, and must have it or perish. Since he is free
he can now give it or withhold it, use it where he is, or take it
elsewhere as he pleases. His labor made him a slave, and his labor
can, if he will, make him free, comfortable, and independent. It
is more to him than fire, swords, ballot-boxes, or bayonets. It
touches the heart of the South through its pocket. This power
served him well years ago, when in the bitterest extremity of
destitution. But for it, he would have perished when he dropped
out of slavery. It saved him then, and it will save him again.
Emancipation came to him, surrounded by extremely unfriendly
circumstances. It was not the choice or consent of the people
among whom he lived, but against their will, and a death struggle
on their part to prevent it. His chains were broken in the tempest
and whirlwind of civil war. Without food, without shelter, without
land, without money, and without friends, he with his children,
his sick, his aged and helpless ones, were turned loose and naked
to the open sky. The announcement of his freedom was instantly
followed by an order from his master to quit his old quarters, and
to seek bread thereafter from the hands of those who had given him
his freedom. A desperate extremity was thus forced upon him at the
outset of his freedom, and the world watched with humane anxiety,
to see what would become of him. His peril was imminent. Starvation
and death stared him in the face and marked him for their victim.
“It will not soon be forgotten that at the close of a five hours’
speech by the late Senator Sumner, in which he advocated with
unequaled learning and eloquence the enfranchisement of the
freedmen, the best argument with which he was met in the Senate,
was that legislation at that point would be utterly superfluous;
that the negro was rapidly dying out, and must inevitably and
speedily disappear and become extinct.
“Inhuman and shocking as was this consignment of millions of human
beings to extinction, the extremity of the negro, at that date,
did not contradict, but favored, the prophecy. The policy of the
old master-class dictated by passion, pride, and revenge, was then
to make the freedom of the negro, a greater calamity to him, if
possible, than had been his slavery. But happily, both for the old
master-class, and for the recently emancipated, there came then, as
there will come now, the sober second thought. The old master-class
then found it had made a great mistake. It had driven away the
means of its own support. It had destroyed the hands, and left the
mouths. It had starved the negro, and starved itself. Not even to
gratify its own anger and resentment could it afford to allow its
fields to go uncultivated, and its tables unsupplied with food.
Hence the freedman, less from humanity than cupidity, less from
choice than necessity, was speedily called back to labor and life.
“But now, after fourteen years of service, and fourteen years of
separation from the visible presence of slavery, during which he
has shown both disposition and ability to supply the labor market
of the South, and that he could do so far better as a freedman than
he ever did as a slave; that more cotton and sugar can be raised by
the same hands, under the inspiration of liberty and hope, than can
be raised under the influence of bondage and the whip, he is again,
alas! in the deepest trouble; again without a home, out under
the open sky, with his wife and little ones. He lines the Sunny
banks of the Mississippi, fluttering in rags and wretchedness,
mournfully imploring hard-hearted Steamboat Captains to take him on
board; while the friends of the emigration movement are diligently
soliciting funds all over the North to help him away from his old
home to the new Canaan of Kansas.”
I am sorry to be obliged to omit the statement which here follows, of
the reasons given for the Exodus movement, and my explanation of them,
but from want of space I can present only such portions of the paper as
express most vividly and in fewest words, my position in regard to the
question. I go on to say:
“Bad as is the condition of the negro to-day at the South, there
was a time when it was flagrantly and incomparably worse. A few
years ago he had nothing--he had not even himself. He belonged
to somebody else, who could dispose of his person and his labor
as he pleased. Now he has himself, his labor, and his right to
dispose of one and the other as shall best suit his own happiness.
He has more. He has a standing in the supreme law of the land--
in the Constitution of the United States--not to be changed or
affected by any conjunction of circumstances likely to occur in the
immediate or remote future. The Fourteenth Amendment makes him a
citizen and the Fifteenth makes him a voter. With power behind him,
at work for him, and which cannot be taken from him, the negro of
the South may wisely bide his time. The situation at the moment is
exceptional and transient. The permanent powers of the government
are all on his side. What though for the moment the hand of
violence strikes down the negro’s rights in the South, those rights
will revive, survive, and flourish again. They are not the only
people who have been, in a moment of popular passion, maltreated
and driven from the polls. The Irish and Dutch have frequently been
so treated. Boston, Baltimore, and New York have been the scenes
of lawless violence; but those scenes have now disappeared....
Without abating one jot of our horror and indignation at the
outrages committed in some parts of the Southern States against the
negro, we cannot but regard the present agitation of an African
exodus from the South as ill-timed and in some respects hurtful. We
stand to-day at the beginning of a grand and beneficent reaction.
There is a growing recognition of the duty and obligation of the
American people to guard, protect, and defend the personal and
political rights of all the people of all the States; to uphold the
principles upon which rebellion was suppressed, slavery abolished,
and the country saved from dismemberment and ruin.
“We see and feel to-day, as we have not seen and felt before, that
the time for conciliation and trusting to the honor of the late
rebels and slaveholders has passed. The President of the United
States himself, while still liberal, just, and generous toward the
South, has yet sounded a halt in that direction, and has bravely,
firmly, and ably asserted the constitutional authority to maintain
the public peace in every State in the Union, and upon every day in
the year, and has maintained this ground against all the powers of
House and Senate.
“We stand at the gateway of a marked and decided change in the
statesmanship of our rulers. Every day brings fresh and increasing
evidence that we are, and of right ought to be, a nation; that
Confederate notions of the nature and powers of our government
ought to have perished in the rebellion which they supported; that
they are anachronisms and superstitions and no longer fit to be
above ground....
“At a time like this, so full of hope and courage, it is
unfortunate that a cry of despair should be raised in behalf of
the colored people of the South; unfortunate that men are going
over the country begging in the name of the poor colored man of the
South, and telling the people that the government has no power to
enforce the Constitution and laws in that section, and that there
is no hope for the poor negro but to plant him in the new soil of
Kansas or Nebraska.
“These men do the colored people of the South a real damage.
They give their enemies an advantage in the argument for their
manhood and freedom. They assume their inability to take care
of themselves. The country will be told of the hundreds who go
to Kansas, but not of the thousands who stay in Mississippi and
Louisiana.
“It will be told of the destitute who require material aid, but not
of the multitude who are bravely sustaining themselves where they
are.
“In Georgia the negroes are paying taxes upon six millions of
dollars; in Louisiana upon forty or fifty millions; and upon
unascertained sums elsewhere in the Southern States.
“Why should a people who have made such progress in the course of a
few years be humiliated and scandalized by exodus agents, begging
money to remove them from their homes? especially at a time when
every indication favors the position that the wrongs and hardships
which they suffer are soon to be redressed?
“Besides the objection thus stated, it is manifest that the
public and noisy advocacy of a general stampede of the colored
people from the South to the North is necessarily an abandonment
of the great and paramount principle of protection to person and
property in every State in the Union. It is an evasion of a solemn
obligation and duty. The business of this nation is to protect
its citizens _where they are_, not to transport them where they
will not need protection. The best that can be said of this exodus
in this respect is, that it is an attempt to climb up some other
way; it is an expedient, a half-way measure, and tends to weaken
in the public mind a sense of absolute right, power, and duty of
the government, inasmuch as it concedes by implication at least,
that on the soil of the South the law of the land cannot command
obedience, the ballot-box cannot be kept pure, peaceable elections
cannot be held, the Constitution cannot be enforced, and the lives
and liberties of loyal and peaceable citizens cannot be protected.
It is a surrender, a premature disheartening surrender, since it
would secure freedom and free institutions by migration rather
than by protection; by flight rather than by right; by going into
a strange land rather than by staying in one’s own. It leaves the
whole question of equal rights on the soil of the South open and
still to be settled, with the moral influence of exodus against us;
since it is a confession of the utter impracticability of equal
rights and equal protection in any State where those rights may be
struck down by violence.
“It does not appear that the friends of freedom should spend either
time or talent in furtherance of this exodus, as a desirable
measure, either for the North or the South. If the people of this
country cannot be protected in every State of the Union, the
government of the United States is shorn of its rightful dignity
and power, the late rebellion has triumphed, the sovereignty of the
nation is an empty name, and the power and authority in individual
States is greater than the power and authority of the United
States....
“The colored people of the South, just beginning to accumulate a
little property, and to lay the foundation of family, should not
be in haste to sell that little and be off to the banks of the
Mississippi. The habit of roaming from place to place in pursuit of
better conditions of existence is never a good one. A man should
never leave his home for a new one till he has earnestly endeavored
to make his immediate surroundings accord with his wishes. The time
and energy expended in wandering from place to place, if employed
in making him a comfortable home where he is, will, in nine cases
out of ten, prove the best investment. No people ever did much for
themselves or for the world without the sense and inspiration of
native land, of a fixed home, of familiar neighborhood and common
associations. The fact of being to the manner born has an elevating
power upon the mind and heart of a man. It is a more cheerful thing
to be able to say I was born here and know all the people, than to
say I am a stranger here and know none of the people.
“It cannot be doubted that in so far as this exodus tends to
promote restlessness in the colored people of the South, to
unsettle their feeling of home, and to sacrifice positive
advantages where they are, for fancied ones in Kansas or elsewhere,
it is an evil. Some have sold their little homes, their chickens,
mules, and pigs, at a sacrifice, to follow the exodus. Let it be
understood that you are going, and you advertise the fact that
your mule has lost half its value; for your staying with him makes
half his value. Let the colored people of Georgia offer their six
millions’ worth of property for sale, with the purpose to leave
Georgia, and they will not realize half its value. Land is not
worth much where there are no people to occupy it, and a mule is
not worth much where there is no one to drive him.
“It may be safely asserted that whether advocated and commended to
favor on the ground that it will increase the political power of
the Republican party, and thus help to make a solid North against
a solid South, or upon the ground that it will increase the power
and influence of the colored people as a political element, and
enable them the better to protect their rights, and insure their
moral and social elevation, the exodus will prove a disappointment,
a mistake, and a failure; because, as to strengthening the
Republican party, the emigrants will go only to those States where
the Republican party is strong and solid enough already with their
votes; and in respect to the other part of the argument, it will
fail because it takes colored voters from a section of the country
where they are sufficiently numerous to elect some of their number
to places of honor and profit, and places them in a country where
their proportion to other classes will be so small as not to be
recognized as a political element or entitled to be represented by
one of themselves. And further, because go where they will, they
must for a time inevitably carry with them poverty, ignorance, and
other repulsive incidents, inherited from their former condition
as slaves--a circumstance which is about as likely to make votes
for Democrats as for Republicans, and to raise up bitter prejudice
against them as to raise up friends for them....
“Plainly enough, the exodus is less harmful as a measure than are
the arguments by which it is supported. The one is the result of
a feeling of outrage and despair; but the other comes of cool,
selfish calculation. One is the result of honest despair, and
appeals powerfully to the sympathies of men; the other is an appeal
to our selfishness, which shrinks from doing right because the way
is difficult.
“Not only is the South the best locality for the negro, on the
ground of his political powers and possibilities, but it is best
for him as a field of labor. He is there, as he is nowhere else,
an absolute necessity. He has a monopoly of the labor market. His
labor is the only labor which can successfully offer itself for
sale in that market. This fact, with a little wisdom and firmness,
will enable him to sell his labor there on terms more favorable
to himself than he can elsewhere. As there are no competitors or
substitutes he can demand living prices with the certainty that
the demand will be complied with. Exodus would deprive him of this
advantage....
“The negro, as already intimated, is preëminently a Southern man.
He is so both in constitution and habits, in body as well as mind.
He will not only take with him to the North, southern modes of
labor, but southern modes of life. The careless and improvident
habits of the South cannot be set aside in a generation. If they
are adhered to in the North, in the fierce winds and snows of
Kansas and Nebraska, the emigration must be large to keep up their
numbers....
“As an assertion of power by a people hitherto held in bitter
contempt, as an emphatic and stinging protest against high-handed,
greedy, and shameless injustice to the weak and defenceless, as
a means of opening the blind eyes of oppressors to their folly
and peril, the exodus has done valuable service. Whether it has
accomplished all of which it is capable in this direction, for the
present is a question which may well be considered. With a moderate
degree of intelligent leadership among the laboring class of the
South, properly handling the justice of their cause, and wisely
using the exodus example, they can easily exact better terms for
their labor than ever before. Exodus is medicine, not food; it is
for disease, not health; it is not to be taken from choice, but
necessity. In anything like a normal condition of things, the South
is the best place for the negro. Nowhere else is there for him a
promise of a happier future. Let him stay there if he can, and save
both the South and himself to civilization. While, however, it may
be the highest wisdom in the circumstances for the freedmen to stay
where they are, no encouragement should be given to any measures
of coercion to keep them there. The American people are bound, if
they are or can be bound to anything, to keep the north gate of the
South open to black and white and to all the people. The time to
assert a right, Webster says, is when it is called in question. If
it is attempted, by force or fraud to compel the colored people to
stay there, they should by all means go--go quickly, and die if
need be in the attempt.”...
CHAPTER XVI.
“TIME MAKES ALL THINGS EVEN.”
Return to the “old master”--A last interview--Capt. Auld’s admission
“had I been in your place, I should have done as you did”--Speech at
Easton--The old jail there--Invited to a sail on the revenue cutter
Guthrie--Hon. John L. Thomas--Visit to the old plantation--Home of
Col. Lloyd--Kind reception and attentions--Familiar scenes--Old
memories--Burial-ground--Hospitality--Gracious reception from Mrs.
Buchanan--A little girl’s floral gift--A promise of a “good time
coming”--Speech at Harper’s Ferry, Decoration day, 1881--Storer
College--Hon. A. J. Hunter.
The leading incidents to which it is my purpose to call attention and
make prominent in the present chapter, will, I think, address the
imagination of the reader with peculiar and poetic force, and might
well enough be dramatized for the stage. They certainly afford another
striking illustration of the trite saying, that “truth is stranger than
fiction.”
The first of these events occurred four years ago, when, after a period
of more than forty years, I visited and had an interview with Captain
Thomas Auld, at St. Michaels, Talbot County, Maryland. It will be
remembered by those who have followed the thread of my story, that St.
Michaels was at one time the place of my home, and the scene of some
of my saddest experiences of slave life; and that I left there, or,
rather, was compelled to leave there, because it was believed that I
had written passes for several slaves to enable them to escape from
slavery, and that prominent slaveholders in that neighborhood had, for
this alleged offense, threatened to shoot me on sight, and to prevent
the execution of this threat, my master had sent me to Baltimore.
My return, therefore, to this place, in peace, among the same people,
was strange enough of itself, but that I should, when there, be
formally invited by Capt. Thomas Auld, then over eighty years old, to
come to the side of his dying bed, evidently with a view to a friendly
talk over our past relations, was a fact still more strange, and one
which, until its occurrence, I could never have thought possible. To
me, Capt. Auld had sustained the relation of master--a relation which
I had held in extremest abhorrence, and which, for forty years, I had
denounced in all bitterness of spirit and fierceness of speech. He had
struck down my personality, had subjected me to his will, made property
of my body and soul, reduced me to a chattel, hired me out to a noted
slave breaker to be worked like a beast and flogged into submission;
he had taken my hard earnings, sent me to prison, offered me for sale,
broken up my Sunday-school, forbidden me to teach my fellow slaves
to read on pain of nine and thirty lashes on my bare back; he had
sold my body to his brother Hugh, and pocketed the price of my flesh
and blood without any apparent disturbance of his conscience. I, on
my part, had traveled through the length and breadth of this country
and of England, holding up this conduct of his in common with that of
other slaveholders to the reprobation of all men who would listen to
my words. I had made his name and his deeds familiar to the world by
my writings in four different languages, yet here we were after four
decades once more face to face--he on his bed, aged and tremulous,
drawing near the sunset of life, and I, his former slave, United
States Marshal of the District of Columbia, holding his hand and in
friendly conversation with him, in a sort of final settlement of past
differences, preparatory to his stepping into his grave, where all
distinctions are at an end, and where the great and the small, the
slave and his master, are reduced to the same level. Had I been asked
in the days of slavery to visit this man, I should have regarded the
invitation as one to put fetters on my ankles and handcuffs on my
wrists. It would have been an invitation to the auction-block and the
slave whip. I had no business with this man under the old regime but
to keep out of his way. But now that slavery was destroyed, and the
slave and the master stood upon equal ground, I was not only willing
to meet him, but was very glad to do so. The conditions were favorable
for remembrance of all his good deeds, and generous extenuation of all
his evil ones. He was to me no longer a slaveholder either in fact
or in spirit, and I regarded him as I did myself, a victim of the
circumstances of birth, education, law, and custom.
Our courses had been determined for us, not by us. We had both been
flung, by powers that did not ask our consent, upon a mighty current
of life, which we could neither resist nor control. By this current he
was a master, and I a slave; but now our lives were verging towards a
point where differences disappear, where even the constancy of hate
breaks down, where the clouds of pride, passion, and selfishness vanish
before the brightness of infinite light. At such a time, and in such a
place, when a man is about closing his eyes on this world and ready to
step into the eternal unknown, no word of reproach or bitterness should
reach him or fall from his lips; and on this occasion there was to this
rule no transgression on either side.
As this visit to Capt. Auld has been made the subject of mirth by
heartless triflers, and regretted as a weakening of my life-long
testimony against slavery, by serious-minded men, and as the report of
it, published in the papers immediately after it occurred, was in some
respects defective and colored, it may be proper to state exactly what
was said and done at this interview.
It should in the first place be understood that I did not go to St.
Michaels upon Capt. Auld’s invitation, but upon that of my colored
friend, Charles Caldwell; but when once there, Capt. Auld sent Mr.
Green, a man in constant attendance upon him during his sickness, to
tell me he would be very glad to see me, and wished me to accompany
Green to his house, with which request I complied. On reaching the
house I was met by Mr. Wm. H. Bruff, a son-in-law of Capt. Auld, and
Mrs. Louisa Bruff, his daughter, and was conducted by them immediately
to the bed-room of Capt. Auld. We addressed each other simultaneously,
he calling me “Marshal Douglass,” and I, as I had always called him,
“Captain Auld.” Hearing myself called by him “Marshal Douglass,” I
instantly broke up the formal nature of the meeting by saying, “not
_Marshal_, but Frederick to you as formerly.” We shook hands cordially,
and in the act of doing so, he, having been long stricken with palsy,
shed tears as men thus afflicted will do when excited by any deep
emotion. The sight of him, the changes which time had wrought in him,
his tremulous hands constantly in motion, and all the circumstances of
his condition affected me deeply, and for a time choked my voice and
made me speechless. We both, however, got the better of our feelings,
and conversed freely about the past.
Though broken by age and palsy, the mind of Capt. Auld was remarkably
clear and strong. After he had become composed I asked him what he
thought of my conduct in running away and going to the north. He
hesitated a moment as if to properly formulate his reply, and said:
“Frederick, I always knew you were too smart to be a slave, and had I
been in your place I should have done as you did.” I said, “Capt. Auld,
I am glad to hear you say this. I did not run away from _you_, but from
_slavery_; it was not that I loved Cæsar less, but Rome more.” I told
him that I had made a mistake in my narrative, a copy of which I had
sent him, in attributing to him ungrateful and cruel treatment of my
grandmother; that I had done so on the supposition that in the division
of the property of my old master, Mr. Aaron Anthony, my grandmother
had fallen to him, and that he had left her in her old age, when she
could be no longer of service to him, to pick up her living in solitude
with none to help her, or in other words had turned her out to die
like an old horse. “Ah!” he said, “that was a mistake, I never owned
your grandmother; she in the division of the slaves was awarded to my
brother-in-law, Andrew Anthony; but,” he added quickly, “I brought her
down here and took care of her as long as she lived.” The fact is, that
after writing my narrative describing the condition of my grandmother,
Capt. Auld’s attention being thus called to it, he rescued her from
her destitution. I told him that this mistake of mine was corrected as
soon as I discovered it, and that I had at no time any wish to do him
injustice; that I regarded both of us as victims of a system. “Oh, I
never liked slavery,” he said, “and I meant to emancipate all of my
slaves when they reached the age of twenty-five years.” I told him
I had always been curious to know how old I was, that it had been a
serious trouble to me, not to know when was my birthday. He said he
could not tell me that, but he thought I was born in February, 1818.
This date made me one year younger than I had supposed myself from what
was told me by Mistress Lucretia, Captain Auld’s former wife, when I
left Lloyd’s for Baltimore in the Spring of 1825; she having then said
that I was eight, going on nine. I know that it was in the year 1825
that I went to Baltimore, because it was in that year that Mr. James
Beacham built a large frigate at the foot of Alliceana street, for one
of the South American Governments. Judging from this, and from certain
events which transpired at Col. Lloyd’s, such as a boy without any
knowledge of books, under eight years old, would hardly take cognizance
of, I am led to believe that Mrs. Lucretia was nearer right as to my
age than her husband.
Before I left his bedside Captain Auld spoke with a cheerful confidence
of the great change that awaited him, and felt himself about to depart
in peace. Seeing his extreme weakness I did not protract my visit. The
whole interview did not last more than twenty minutes, and we parted to
meet no more. His death was soon after announced in the papers, and the
fact that he had once owned me as a slave was cited as rendering that
event noteworthy.
It may not, perhaps, be quite artistic to speak in this connection of
another incident of something of the same nature as that which I have
just narrated, and yet it quite naturally finds place here; and that
is, my visit to the town of Easton, county seat of Talbot County, two
years later, to deliver an address in the Court House, for the benefit
of some association in that place. This visit was made interesting to
me, by the fact that forty-five years before I had, in company with
Henry and John Harris, been dragged to Easton behind horses, with my
hands tied, put in jail, and offered for sale, for the offense of
intending to run away from slavery.
It may easily be seen that this visit, after this lapse of time,
brought with it feelings and reflections such as only unusual
circumstances can awaken. There stood the old jail, with its
white-washed walls and iron gratings, as when in my youth I heard its
heavy locks and bolts clank behind me.
Strange too, Mr. Joseph Graham, who was then Sheriff of the County, and
who locked me in this gloomy place, was still living, though verging
towards eighty, and was one of the gentlemen who now gave me a warm
and friendly welcome, and was among my hearers when I delivered my
address at the Court House. There too in the same old place stood Sol.
Law’s Tavern, where once the slave traders were wont to congregate, and
where I now took up my abode and was treated with a hospitality and
consideration undreamed of as possible by me in the olden time.
When one has advanced far in the journey of life, when he has seen and
traveled over much of this great world, and has had many and strange
experiences of shadow and sunshine, when long distances of time and
space have come between him and his point of departure, it is natural
that his thoughts should return to the place of his beginning, and
that he should be seized with a strong desire to revisit the scenes
of his early recollection, and live over in memory the incidents of
his childhood. At least such for several years had been my thoughts
and feeling in respect of Col. Lloyd’s plantation on Wye River, Talbot
County, Maryland; for I had never been there since I left it, when
eight years old, in 1825.
While slavery continued, of course this very natural desire could not
be safely gratified; for my presence among slaves was dangerous to
the public peace, and could no more be tolerated than could a wolf
among sheep, or fire in a magazine. But now that the results of the
war had changed all this, I had for several years determined to return
to my old home upon the first opportunity. Speaking of this desire
of mine last winter, to Hon. John L. Thomas, the efficient collector
at the port of Baltimore, and a leading Republican of the State of
Maryland, he urged me very much to go, and added that he often took a
trip to the eastern shore in his Revenue Cutter, Guthrie, (otherwise
known in time of war as the Ewing,) and would be much pleased to have
me accompany him on one of these trips. I expressed some doubt as to
how such a visit would be received by the present Col. Edward Lloyd,
now proprietor of the old place, and grandson of Governor Ed. Lloyd
whom I remembered. Mr. Thomas promptly assured me that from his own
knowledge I need have no trouble on that score. Mr. Lloyd was a liberal
minded gentleman, and he had no doubt would take a visit from me very
kindly. I was very glad to accept the offer. The opportunity for the
trip however did not occur till the 12th of June, and on that day, in
company with Messrs. Thomas, Thompson, and Chamberlain, on board the
Cutter, we started for the contemplated visit. In four hours after
leaving Baltimore, we were anchored in the River off the Lloyd estate,
and from the deck of our vessel I saw once more the stately chimneys
of the grand old mansion which I had last seen from the deck of the
Sallie Lloyd when a boy. I left there as a slave, and returned as a
freeman: I left there unknown to the outside world, and returned well
known: I left there on a freight boat and returned on a Revenue Cutter:
I left on a vessel belonging to Col. Edward Lloyd, and returned on one
belonging to the United States.
As soon as we had come to anchor, Mr. Thomas despatched a note to Col.
Edward Lloyd, announcing my presence on board his Cutter, and inviting
him to meet me, informing him it was my desire, if agreeable to him,
to revisit my old home. In response to this note, Mr. Howard Lloyd, a
son of Col. Lloyd, a young gentleman of very pleasant address, came
on board the Cutter, and was introduced to the several gentlemen and
myself.
He told us that his father was gone to Easton on business, expressed
his regret at his absence, hoped he would return before we should
leave, and in the meantime received us cordially and invited us ashore,
escorted us over the grounds, and gave us as hearty a welcome as we
could have wished. I hope I shall be pardoned for speaking of this
incident with much complacency. It was one which could happen to but
few men, and only once in the life time of any. The span of human life
is too short for the repetition of events which occur at the distance
of fifty years. That I was deeply moved, and greatly affected by it,
can be easily imagined. Here I was, being welcomed and escorted by the
great grandson of Colonel Edward Lloyd--a gentleman I had known well
56 years before, and whose form and features were as vividly depicted
on my memory as if I had seen him but yesterday. He was a gentleman of
the olden time, elegant in his apparel, dignified in his deportment,
a man of few words and of weighty presence; and I can easily conceive
that no Governor of the State of Maryland ever commanded a larger
measure of respect than did this great grandfather of the young
gentleman now before me. In company with Mr. Howard was his little
brother Decosa, a bright boy of eight or nine years, disclosing his
aristocratic descent in the lineaments of his face, and in all his
modest and graceful movements. As I looked at him I could not help the
reflections naturally arising from having seen so many generations of
the same family on the same estate. I had seen the elder Lloyd, and was
now walking around with the youngest member of that name. In respect
to the place itself, I was most agreeably surprised to find that time
had dealt so gently with it, and that in all its appointments it was so
little changed from what it was when I left it, and from what I have
elsewhere described it. Very little was missing except the squads of
little black children which were once seen in all directions, and the
great number of slaves on its fields. Col. Lloyd’s estate comprised
twenty-seven thousand acres, and the home-farm seven thousand. In my
boyhood sixty men were employed in cultivating the home farm alone.
Now, by the aid of machinery, the work is accomplished by ten men. I
found the buildings, which gave it the appearance of a village, nearly
all standing, and I was astonished to find that I had carried their
appearance and location so accurately in my mind during so many years.
There was the long quarter, the quarter on the hill, the dwelling-house
of my old master, Aaron Anthony; the overseer’s house, once occupied
by William Sevier, Austin Gore, James Hopkins, and other overseers.
In connection with my old master’s house was the kitchen where Aunt
Katy presided, and where my head had received many a thump from her
unfriendly hand. I looked into this kitchen with peculiar interest,
and remembered that it was there I last saw my mother. I went round to
the window at which Miss Lucretia used to sit with her sewing, and at
which I used to sing when hungry, a signal which she well understood,
and to which she readily responded with bread. The little closet in
which I slept in a bag had been taken into the room; the dirt floor,
too, had disappeared under plank. But upon the whole, the house is
very much as it was in the olden time. Not far from it was the stable
formerly in charge of old Barney. The store-house at the end of it, of
which my master carried the keys, had been removed. The large carriage
house, too, which in my boy days contained two or three fine coaches,
several phaetons, gigs, and a large sleigh (for the latter there was
seldom any use) was gone. This carriage house was of much interest to
me because Col. Lloyd sometimes allowed his servants the use of it for
festal occasions, and in it there was at such times music and dancing.
With these two exceptions, the houses of the estate remained. There
was the shoemaker’s shop, where Uncle Abe made and mended shoes; and
there the blacksmith’s shop, where Uncle Tony hammered iron, and the
weekly closing of which first taught me to distinguish Sundays from
other days. The old barn, too, was there--time-worn, to be sure, but
still in good condition--a place of wonderful interest to me in my
childhood, for there I often repaired to listen to the chatter and
watch the flight of swallows among its lofty beams, and under its
ample roof. Time had wrought some changes in the trees and foliage.
The Lombardy poplars, in the branches of which the red-winged black
birds used to congregate and sing, and whose music awakened in my young
heart sensations and aspirations deep and undefinable, were gone; but
the oaks and elms where young Daniel (the uncle of the present Edward
Lloyd) used to divide with me his cakes and biscuits, were there as
umbrageous and beautiful as ever. I expressed a wish to Mr. Howard to
be shown into the family burial ground, and thither we made our way. It
is a remarkable spot--the resting place for all the deceased Lloyds
for two hundred years, for the family have been in possession of the
estate since the settlement of the Maryland colony.
The tombs there remind one of what may be seen in the grounds of
moss-covered churches in England. The very names of those who sleep
within the oldest of them are crumbled away and become undecipherable.
Everything about it is impressive, and suggestive of the transient
character of human life and glory. No one could stand under its
weeping willows, amidst its creeping ivy and myrtle, and look
through its somber shadows, without a feeling of unusual solemnity.
The first interment I ever witnessed was in this place. It was the
great-great-grandmother, brought from Annapolis in a mahogany coffin,
and quietly, without ceremony, deposited in this ground.
While here, Mr. Howard gathered for me a bouquet of flowers and
evergreens from the different graves around us, and which I carefully
brought to my home for preservation.
[Illustration: REVISITS HIS OLD HOME.]
Notable among the tombs were those of Admiral Buchanan, who commanded
the Merrimac in the action at Hampton Roads with the Monitor, March
8, 1862, and that of General Winder of the Confederate army, both
sons-in-law of the elder Lloyd. There was also pointed out to me the
grave of a Massachusetts man, a Mr. Page, a teacher in the family,
whom I had often seen and wondered what he could be thinking about
as he silently paced up and down the garden walks, always alone, for
he associated neither with Captain Anthony, Mr. McDermot, nor the
overseers. He seemed to be one by himself. I believe he originated
somewhere near Greenfield, Massachusetts, and members of his family
will perhaps learn for the first time, from these lines, the place of
his burial; for I have had intimation that they knew little about him
after he once left home.
We then visited the garden, still kept in fine condition, but not as
in the days of the elder Lloyd, for then it was tended constantly by
Mr. McDermot, a scientific gardener, and four experienced hands, and
formed, perhaps, the most beautiful feature of the place. From this
we were invited to what was called by the slaves the Great House--
the mansion of the Lloyds, and were helped to chairs upon its stately
veranda, where we could have a full view of its garden, with its broad
walks, hedged with box and adorned with fruit trees and flowers of
almost every variety. A more tranquil and tranquilizing scene I have
seldom met in this or any other country.
We were soon invited from this delightful outlook into the large dining
room, with its old-fashioned furniture, its mahogany side-board, its
cut-glass chandeliers, decanters, tumblers, and wine glasses, and
cordially invited to refresh ourselves with wine of most excellent
quality.
To say that our reception was every way gratifying is but a feeble
expression of the feeling of each and all of us.
Leaving the Great House, my presence became known to the colored
people, some of whom were children of those I had known when a boy.
They all seemed delighted to see me, and were pleased when I called
over the names of many of the old servants, and pointed out the cabin
where Dr. Copper, an old slave, used to teach us with a hickory stick
in hand, to say the “Lord’s Prayer.” After spending a little time with
these, we bade good-bye to Mr. Howard Lloyd, with many thanks for his
kind attentions, and steamed away to St. Michael’s, a place of which I
have already spoken.
The next part of this memorable trip took us to the home of Mrs.
Buchanan, the widow of Admiral Buchanan, one of the two only living
daughters of old Governor Lloyd, and here my reception was as kindly
as that received at the Great House, where I had often seen her when a
slender young lady of eighteen. She is now about seventy-four years,
but marvelously well preserved. She invited me to a seat by her side,
introduced me to her grandchildren, conversed with me as freely and
with as little embarrassment as if I had been an old acquaintance and
occupied an equal station with the most aristocratic of the Caucasian
race. I saw in her much of the quiet dignity as well as the features
of her father. I spent an hour or so in conversation with Mrs.
Buchanan, and when I left a beautiful little granddaughter of hers,
with a pleasant smile on her face, handed me a bouquet of many-colored
flowers. I never accepted such a gift with a sweeter sentiment of
gratitude than from the hand of this lovely child. It told me many
things, and among them that a new dispensation of justice, kindness,
and human brotherhood was dawning not only in the North, but in the
South; that the war and the slavery that caused the war were things of
the past, and that the rising generation are turning their eyes from
the sunset of decayed institutions to the grand possibilities of a
glorious future.
The next, and last noteworthy incident in my experience, and one which
further and strikingly illustrates the idea with which this chapter
sets out, is my visit to Harper’s Ferry on 30th of May, of this year,
and my address on John Brown, delivered in that place before Storer
College, an Institution established for the education of the children
of those whom John Brown endeavored to liberate. It is only a little
more than twenty years ago when the subject of my discourse (as will
be seen elsewhere in this volume) made a raid upon Harper’s Ferry;
when its people, and we may say the whole nation, were filled with
astonishment, horror, and indignation at the mention of his name;
when the Government of the United States co-operated with the State
of Virginia in efforts to arrest and bring to capital punishment all
persons in any way connected with John Brown and his enterprise; when
United States Marshals visited Rochester and elsewhere in search of
me, with a view to my apprehension and execution, for my supposed
complicity with Brown; when many prominent citizens of the North
were compelled to leave the country to avoid arrest, and men were
mobbed, even in Boston, for daring to speak a word in vindication or
extenuation of what was considered Brown’s stupendous crime; and yet
here I was, after two decades upon the very soil he had stained with
blood, among the very people he had startled and outraged, and who a
few years ago would have hanged me to the first tree, in open daylight,
allowed to deliver an address, not merely defending John Brown, but
extolling him as a hero and martyr to the cause of liberty, and doing
it with scarcely a murmur of disapprobation. I confess that as I
looked out upon the scene before me and the towering heights around
me, and remembered the bloody drama there enacted; saw the log house
in the distance where John Brown collected his men, saw the little
engine house where the brave old Puritan fortified himself against
a dozen companies of Virginia Militia, and the place where he was
finally captured by United States troops under Col. Robert E. Lee, I
was a little shocked at my own boldness in attempting to deliver an
address in such presence, and of the character advertised in advance
of my coming. But there was no cause of apprehension. The people of
Harper’s Ferry have made wondrous progress in their ideas of freedom,
of thought, and speech. The abolition of slavery has not merely
emancipated the negro, but liberated the whites; taken the lock from
their tongues, and the fetters from their press. On the platform from
which I spoke, sat Hon. Andrew J. Hunter, the prosecuting attorney for
the State of Virginia, who conducted the cause of the State against
John Brown, that consigned him to the gallows. This man, now well
stricken in years, greeted me cordially, and in conversation with me
after the address, bore testimony to the manliness and courage of John
Brown, and though he still disapproved of the raid made by him upon
Harper’s Ferry, he commended me for my address, and gave me a pressing
invitation to visit Charlestown, where he lives, and offered to give me
some facts which might prove interesting to me, as to the sayings and
conduct of Captain Brown while in prison and on trial, up to the time
of his execution. I regret that my engagements and duties were such
that I could not then and there accept his invitation, for I could not
doubt the sincerity with which it was given, or fail to see the value
of compliance. Mr. Hunter not only congratulated me upon my speech, but
at parting, gave me a friendly grip, and added that if Robert E. Lee
were alive and present, he knew he would give me his hand also.
This man’s presence added much to the interest of the occasion by his
frequent interruptions, approving, and condemning my sentiments as they
were uttered. I only regret that he did not undertake a formal reply to
my speech, but this, though invited, he declined to do. It would have
given me an opportunity of fortifying certain positions in my address
which were perhaps insufficiently defended. Upon the whole, taking
the visit to Capt. Auld, to Easton with its old jail, to the home of
my old master at Col. Lloyd’s, and this visit to Harper’s Ferry, with
all their associations, they fulfill the expectation created at the
beginning of this chapter.
CHAPTER XVII.
INCIDENTS AND EVENTS.
Hon. Gerrit Smith and Mr. E. C. Delevan--Experiences at Hotels and on
Steamboats and other modes of travel--Hon. Edward Marshall--Grace
Greenwood--Hon. Moses Norris--Rob’t J. Ingersoll--Reflections and
conclusions--Compensations.
In escaping from the South, the reader will have observed that I did
not escape from its wide-spread influence in the North. That influence
met me almost everywhere outside of pronounced anti-slavery circles,
and sometimes even within them. It was in the air, and men breathed it
and were permeated by it, often when they were quite unconscious of its
presence.
I might recount many occasions when I have encountered this feeling,
some painful and melancholy, some ridiculous and amusing. It has been a
part of my mission to expose the absurdity of this spirit of caste and
in some measure help to emancipate men from its control.
Invited to accompany Hon. Gerrit Smith to dine with Mr. E. C. Delevan,
at Albany many years ago, I expressed to Mr. Smith, my awkwardness and
embarrassment in the society I was likely to meet there. “Ah!” said
that good man, “you must go, Douglass, it is your mission to break down
the walls of separation between the two races.” I went with Mr. Smith,
and was soon made at ease by Mr. Delevan and the ladies and gentlemen
there. They were among the most refined and brilliant people I had ever
met. I felt somewhat surprised that I could be so much at ease in such
company, but I found it then, as I have since, that the higher the
gradation in intelligence and refinement, the farther removed are all
artificial distinctions, and restraints of mere caste or color.
In one of my anti-slavery campaigns in New York, five and thirty years
ago, I had an appointment at Victor, a town in Ontario County. I was
compelled to stop at the hotel. It was the custom at that time, to seat
the guests at a long table running the length of the dining room. When
I entered I was shown a little table off in a corner. I knew what it
meant, but took my dinner all the same. When I went to the desk to pay
my bill, I said, “Now, Landlord, be good enough to tell me just why you
gave me my dinner at the little table in the corner by myself?” He was
equal to the occasion, and quickly replied: “Because you see, I wished
to give you something better than the others.” The cool reply staggered
me, and I gathered up my change, muttering only that I did not want to
be treated better than other people, and bade him good morning.
On an anti-slavery tour through the West, in company with H. Ford
Douglas, a young colored man of fine intellect and much promise, and
my old friend John Jones, (both now deceased,) we stopped at a Hotel
in Janesville, and were seated by ourselves to take our meals, where
all the bar-room loafers of the town could stare us. Thus seated I took
occasion to say, loud enough for the crowd to hear me, that I had just
been out to the stable and had made a great discovery. Asked by Mr.
Jones what my discovery was, I said that I saw there, black horses and
white horses eating together from the same trough in peace, from which
I inferred that the horses of Janesville were more civilized than its
people. The crowd saw the hit, and broke out into a good-natured laugh.
We were afterwards entertained at the same table with other guests.
Many years ago, on my way from Cleveland to Buffalo, on one of the
Lake Steamers, the gong sounded for supper. There was a rough element
on board, such as at that time might be found anywhere between Buffalo
and Chicago. It was not to be trifled with especially when hungry. At
the first sound of the gong there was a furious rush for the table.
From prudence, more than from lack of appetite, I waited for the
second table, as did several others. At this second table I took a
seat far apart from the few gentlemen scattered along its side, but
directly opposite a well dressed, finely-featured man, of the fairest
complexion, high forehead, golden hair and light beard. His whole
appearance told me he was _somebody_. I had been seated but a minute or
two, when the steward came to me, and roughly ordered me away. I paid
no attention to him, but proceeded to take my supper, determined not
to leave, unless compelled to do so by superior force, and being young
and strong I was not entirely unwilling to risk the consequences of
such a contest. A few moments passed, when on each side of my chair,
there appeared a stalwart of my own race. I glanced at the gentleman
opposite. His brow was knit, his color changed from white to scarlet,
and his eyes were full of fire. I saw the lightning flash, but I could
not tell where it would strike. Before my sable brethren could execute
their captain’s order, and just as they were about to lay violent
hands upon me, a voice from that man of golden hair and fiery eyes
resounded like a clap of summer thunder. “Let the gentleman alone! I am
not ashamed to take my tea with Mr. Douglass.” His was a voice to be
obeyed, and my right to my seat and my supper was no more disputed.
I bowed my acknowledgments to the gentleman, and thanked him for
his chivalrous interference; and as modestly as I could, asked him
his name. “I am Edward Marshall of Kentucky, now of California,” he
said. “Sir, I am very glad to know you, I have just been reading your
speech in Congress,” I said. Supper over, we passed several hours in
conversation with each other, during which he told me of his political
career in California, of his election to Congress, and that he was a
Democrat, but had no prejudice against color. He was then just coming
from Kentucky where he had been in part to see his black mammy, for,
said he, “I nursed at the breasts of a colored mother.”
I asked him if he knew my old friend John A. Collins in California.
“Oh, yes,” he replied, “he is a smart fellow; he ran against me for
Congress. I charged him with being an abolitionist, but he denied it,
so I sent off and got the evidence of his having been general agent of
the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and that settled him.”
During the passage, Mr. Marshall invited me into the bar-room to take
a drink. I excused myself from drinking, but went down with him. There
were a number of thirsty looking individuals standing around, to whom
Mr. Marshall said, “Come, boys, take a drink.” When the drinking was
over, he threw down upon the counter a twenty dollar gold piece, at
which the bar-keeper made large eyes, and said he could not change it.
“Well, keep it,” said the gallant Marshall, “it will all be gone before
morning.” After this, we naturally fell apart, and he was monopolized
by other company; but I shall never fail to bear willing testimony to
the generous and manly qualities of this brother of the gifted and
eloquent Thomas Marshall of Kentucky.
In 1842 I was sent by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society to hold
a Sunday meeting in Pittsfield, N. H., and was given the name of Mr.
Hilles, a subscriber to the _Liberator_. It was supposed that any man
who had the courage to take and read the _Liberator_, edited by Wm.
Lloyd Garrison, or the _Herald of Freedom_, edited by Nathaniel P.
Rodgers, would gladly receive and give food and shelter to any colored
brother laboring in the cause of the slave. As a general rule this was
very true.
There were no railroads in New Hampshire in those days, so I reached
Pittsfield by stage, glad to be permitted to ride upon the top thereof,
for no colored person could be allowed inside. This was many years
before the days of civil rights bills, black Congressmen, colored
United States Marshals, and such like.
Arriving at Pittsfield, I was asked by the driver where I would stop.
I gave him the name of my subscriber to the _Liberator_. “That is two
miles beyond,” he said. So after landing his other passengers, he took
me on to the house of Mr. Hilles.
I confess I did not seem a very desirable visitor. The day had been
warm, and the road dusty. I was covered with dust, and then I was not
of the color fashionable in that neighborhood, for colored people were
scarce in that part of the old Granite State. I saw in an instant, that
though the weather was warm, I was to have a cool reception; but cool
or warm, there was no alternative left me but to stay and take what I
could get.
Mr. Hilles scarcely spoke to me, and from the moment he saw me jump
down from the top of the stage, carpet-bag in hand, his face wore a
troubled look. His good wife took the matter more philosophically,
and evidently thought my presence there for a day or two could do
the family no especial harm; but her manner was restrained, silent,
and formal, wholly unlike that of anti-slavery ladies I had met in
Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
When tea time came, I found that Mr. Hilles had lost his appetite, and
could not come to the table. I suspected his trouble was colorphobia,
and though I regretted his malady, I knew his case was not necessarily
dangerous; and I was not without some confidence in my skill and
ability in healing diseases of that type. I was, however, so affected
by his condition that I could not eat much of the pie and cake before
me, and felt so little in harmony with things about me that I was, for
me, remarkably reticent during the evening, both before and after the
family worship, for Mr. Hilles was a pious man.
Sunday morning came, and in due season the hour for meeting. I had
arranged a good supply of work for the day. I was to speak four times:
at ten o’clock A. M., at one P. M., at five, and again at half-past
seven in the evening.
When meeting time came, Mr. Hilles brought his fine phaeton to the
door, assisted his wife in, and, although there were two vacant seats
in his carriage, there was no room in it for me. On driving off from
his door, he merely said, addressing me, “You can find your way to the
town hall, I suppose?” “I suppose I can,” I replied, and started along
behind his carriage on the dusty road toward the village. I found the
hall, and was very glad to see in my small audience the face of good
Mrs. Hilles. Her husband was not there, but had gone to his church.
There was no one to introduce me, and I proceeded with my discourse
without introduction. I held my audience till twelve o’clock--noon--
and then took the usual recess of Sunday meetings in country towns, to
allow the people to take their lunch. No one invited me to lunch, so
I remained in the town hall till the audience assembled again, when I
spoke till nearly three o’clock, when the people again dispersed and
left me as before. By this time I began to be hungry, and seeing a
small hotel near, I went into it, and offered to buy a meal; but I was
told “they did not entertain niggers there.” I went back to the old
town hall hungry and chilled, for an infant “New England northeaster”
was beginning to chill the air, and a drizzling rain to fall. I saw
that my movements were being observed, from the comfortable homes
around, with apparently something of the feeling that children might
experience in seeing a bear prowling about town. There was a grave-yard
near the town hall, and attracted thither, I felt some relief in
contemplating the resting places of the dead, where there was an end to
all distinctions between rich and poor, white and colored, high and low.
While thus meditating on the vanities of the world and my own
loneliness and destitution, and recalling the sublime pathos of the
saying of Jesus, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have
nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head,” I was
approached rather hesitatingly by a gentleman, who inquired my name.
“My name is Douglass,” I replied. “You do not seem to have any place
to stay while in town?” I told him I had not. “Well,” said he, “I am
no abolitionist, but if you will go with me I will take care of you.”
I thanked him, and turned with him towards his fine residence. On the
way I asked him his name. “Moses Norris,” he said. “What! Hon. Moses
Norris?” I asked. “Yes,” he answered. I did not for a moment know what
to do, for I had read that this same man had literally dragged the
Reverend George Storrs from the pulpit, for preaching abolitionism. I,
however, walked along with him and was invited into his house, when I
heard the children running and screaming “Mother, mother, there is a
nigger in the house, there’s a nigger in the house”; and it was with
some difficulty that Mr. Norris succeeded in quieting the tumult. I
saw that Mrs. Norris, too, was much disturbed by my presence, and I
thought for a moment of beating a retreat, but the kind assurances of
Mr. Norris decided me to stay. When quiet was restored, I ventured the
experiment of asking Mrs. Norris to do me a kindness. I said, “Mrs.
Norris, I have taken cold, and am hoarse from speaking, and I have
found that nothing relieves me so readily as a little loaf sugar and
cold water.” The lady’s manner changed, and with her own hands she
brought me the water and sugar. I thanked her with genuine earnestness,
and from that moment I could see that her prejudices were more than
half gone, and that I was more than half welcome at the fireside of
this Democratic Senator. I spoke again in the evening, and at the close
of the meeting there was quite a contest between Mrs. Norris and Mrs.
Hilles, as to which I should go home with. I considered Mrs. Hilles’
kindness to me, though her manner had been formal; I knew the cause,
and I thought, especially as my carpet-bag was there, I would go with
her. So giving Mr. and Mrs. Norris many thanks, I bade them good-bye,
and went home with Mr. and Mrs. Hilles, where I found the atmosphere
wondrously and most agreeably changed. Next day, Mr. Hilles took me
in the same carriage in which I did _not ride_ on Sunday, to my next
appointment, and on the way told me he felt more honored by having
me in it, than he would be if he had the President of the United
States. This compliment would have been a little more flattering to my
self-esteem, had not John Tyler then occupied the Presidential chair.
In those unhappy days of the Republic, when all presumptions were in
favor of slavery, and a colored man as a slave met less resistance
in the use of public conveyances than a colored man as a freeman, I
happened to be in Philadelphia, and was afforded an opportunity to
witness this preference. I took a seat in a street car by the side of
my friend Mrs. Amy Post, of Rochester, New York, who, like myself, had
come to Philadelphia to attend an anti-slavery meeting. I had no sooner
seated myself when the conductor hastened to remove me from the car.
My friend remonstrated, and the amazed conductor said, “Lady, does he
belong to you?” “He does,” said Mrs. Post, and there the matter ended.
I was allowed to ride in peace, not because I was a man, and had paid
my fare, but because I belonged to somebody? My color was no longer
offensive when it was supposed that I was not a person, but a piece of
property.
Another time, in the same city, I took a seat, unobserved, far up
in the street car, among the white passengers. All at once I heard
the conductor, in an angry tone, order another colored man, who was
modestly standing on the platform of the rear end of the car, to get
off, and actually stopped the car to push him off, when I, from within,
with all the emphasis I could throw into my voice, in imitation of
my chivalrous friend Marshall of Kentucky, sung out, “Go on! let the
gentleman alone; no one here objects to his riding!” Unhappily the
fellow saw where the voice came from, and turned his wrathful attention
to me, and said, “You shall get out also!” I told him I would do no
such thing, and if he attempted to remove me by force he would do it at
his peril. Whether the young man was afraid to tackle me, or did not
wish to disturb the passengers, I do not know. At any rate he did not
attempt to execute his threat, and I rode on in peace till I reached
Chestnut street, when I got off and went about my business.
On my way down the Hudson river, from Albany to New York, at one time,
on the steamer Alida, in company with some English ladies who had seen
me in their own country, received and treated me as a gentleman, I
ventured, like any other passenger, to go, at the call of the dinner
bell, into the cabin and take a seat at the table; but I was forcibly
taken from it and compelled to leave the cabin. My friends, who wished
to enjoy a day’s trip on the beautiful Hudson, left the table with me,
and went to New York hungry and not a little indignant and disgusted at
such barbarism. There were influential persons on board the Alida, on
this occasion, a word from whom might have spared me this indignity;
but there was no Edward Marshall among them to defend the weak and
rebuke the strong.
When Miss Sarah Jane Clark, one of America’s brilliant literary ladies,
known to the world under the _nom de plume_ of Grace Greenwood, was
young, and as brave as she was beautiful, I encountered a similar
experience to that on the Alida on one of the Ohio river steamers; and
that lady, being on board, arose from her seat at the table, expressed
her disapprobation, and moved majestically away with her sister to the
upper deck. Her conduct seemed to amaze the lookers on, but it filled
me with grateful admiration.
When on my way to attend the great Free Soil Convention at Pittsburg,
in 1852, which nominated John P. Hale for President, and George W.
Julian for Vice-President, the train stopped for dinner at Alliance,
Ohio, and I attempted to enter the hotel with the other delegates, but
was rudely repulsed, when many of them, learning of it, rose from the
table, and denounced the outrage, and refused to finish their dinners.
In anticipation of our return, at the close of the Convention, Mr. Sam.
Beck, the proprietor of the hotel, prepared dinner for three hundred
guests, but when the train arrived, not one of the large company went
into his place, and his dinner was left to spoil.
A dozen years ago, or more, on one of the frostiest and coldest nights
I ever experienced, I delivered a lecture in the town of Elmwood,
Illinois, twenty miles distant from Peoria. It was one of those bleak
and flinty nights, when prairie winds pierce like needles, and a step
on the snow sounds like a file on the steel teeth of a saw. My next
appointment after Elmwood was on Monday night, and in order to reach
it in time, it was necessary to go to Peoria the night previous, so as
to take an early morning train, and I could only accomplish this by
leaving Elmwood after my lecture at midnight, for there was no Sunday
train. So a little before the hour at which my train was expected
at Elmwood, I started for the station with my friend Mr. Brown, the
gentleman who had kindly entertained me during my stay. On the way I
said to him, “I am going to Peoria with something like a real dread
of the place. I expect to be compelled to walk the streets of that
city all night to keep from freezing.” I told him “that the last time
I was there I could obtain no shelter at any hotel, and that I feared
I should meet a similar exclusion to-night.” Mr. Brown was visibly
affected by the statement, and for some time was silent. At last, as
if suddenly discovering a way out of a painful situation, he said, “I
know a man in Peoria, should the hotels be closed against you there,
who would gladly open his doors to you--a man who will receive you
at any hour of the night, and in any weather, and that man is Robert
J. Ingersoll.” “Why,” said I, “it would not do to disturb a family at
such a time as I shall arrive there, on a night so cold as this.” “No
matter about the hour,” he said; “neither he nor his family would be
happy if they thought you were shelterless on such a night. I know
Mr. Ingersoll, and that he will be glad to welcome you at midnight or
at cock-crow.” I became much interested by this description of Mr.
Ingersoll. Fortunately I had no occasion for disturbing him or his
family. I found quarters at the best hotel in the city for the night.
In the morning I resolved to know more of this now famous and noted
“infidel.” I gave him an early call, for I was not so abundant in
cash as to refuse hospitality in a strange city when on a mission of
“good will to men.” The experiment worked admirably. Mr. Ingersoll was
at home, and if I have ever met a man with real living human sunshine
in his face, and honest, manly kindness in his voice, I met one who
possessed these qualities that morning. I received a welcome from Mr.
Ingersoll and his family which would have been a cordial to the bruised
heart of any proscribed and storm-beaten stranger, and one which I
can never forget or fail to appreciate. Perhaps there were Christian
ministers and Christian families in Peoria at that time by whom I might
have been received in the same gracious manner. In charity I am bound
to say there probably were such ministers and such families, but I
am equally bound to say that in my former visits to this place I had
failed to find them. Incidents of this character have greatly tended
to liberalize my views as to the value of creeds in estimating the
character of men. They have brought me to the conclusion that genuine
goodness is the same, whether found inside or outside the church, and
that to be an “infidel” no more proves a man to be selfish, mean, and
wicked, than to be evangelical proves him to be honest, just, and
humane.
It may possibly be inferred from what I have said of the prevalence
of prejudice, and the practice of proscription, that I have had a
very miserable sort of life, or that I must be remarkably insensible
to public aversion. Neither inference is true. I have neither been
miserable because of the ill-feeling of those about me, nor indifferent
to popular approval; and I think, upon the whole, I have passed a
tolerably cheerful and even joyful life. I have never felt myself
isolated since I entered the field to plead the cause of the slave,
and demand equal rights for all. In every town and city where it has
been my lot to speak, there have been raised up for me friends of both
colors to cheer and strengthen me in my work. I have always felt, too,
that I had on my side all the invisible forces of the moral government
of the universe. Happily for me I have had the wit to distinguish
between what is merely artificial and transient and what is fundamental
and permanent; and resting on the latter, I could cheerfully encounter
the former. “How do you feel,” said a friend to me, “when you are
hooted and jeered on the street on account of your color?” “I feel as
if an ass had kicked but had hit nobody,” was my answer.
I have been greatly helped to bear up under unfriendly conditions,
too, by a constitutional tendency to see the funny sides of things
which has enabled me to laugh at follies that others would soberly
resent. Besides, there were compensations as well as drawbacks in my
relations to the white race. A passenger on the deck of a Hudson River
steamer, covered with a shawl, well-worn and dingy, I was addressed by
a remarkably-religiously-missionary-looking man in black coat and white
cravat, who took me for one of the noble red men of the far West, with
“From away back?” I was silent, and he added, “Indian, Indian?” “No,
no,” I said; “I am a negro.” The dear man seemed to have no missionary
work with me, and retreated with evident marks of disgust.
On another occasion, traveling by a night train on the New York Central
railroad, when the cars were crowded and seats were scarce, and I
was occupying a whole seat, the only luxury my color afforded me in
traveling, I had laid down with my head partly covered, thinking myself
secure in my possession, when a well dressed man approached and wished
to share the seat with me. Slightly rising, I said, “Don’t sit down
here, my friend, I am a nigger.” “I don’t care who the devil you are,”
he said, “I mean to sit with you.” “Well, if it must be so,” I said,
“I can stand it if you can,” and we at once fell into a very pleasant
conversation, and passed the hours on the road very happily together.
These two incidents illustrate my career in respect of popular
prejudice. If I have had kicks, I have also had kindness. If cast down,
I have been exalted; and the latter experience has, after all, far
exceeded the former.
During a quarter of a century I resided in the city of Rochester,
N. Y. When I removed from there, my friends caused a marble bust to
be made from me, and have since honored it with a place in Sibley
Hall, of Rochester University. Less in a spirit of vanity than that
of gratitude, I copy here the remarks of the Rochester _Democrat and
Chronicle_ on the occasion, and on my letter of thanks for the honor
done me by my friends and fellow-citizens of that beautiful city:
ROCHESTER, June 28, 1879.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
“It will be remembered that a bust of Frederick Douglass was
recently placed in Sibley Hall of the University of Rochester.
The ceremonies were quite informal, too informal, we think, as
commemorating a deserved tribute from the people of Rochester
to one who will always rank as among her most distinguished
citizens. Mr. Douglass himself was not notified officially of the
event, and therefore could, in no public manner, take notice of
it. He was, however, informed privately of it by the gentleman
whose address is given below, and responded to it most happily,
as will be seen by the following letter which we are permitted
to publish.” Then follows the letter which I omit, and add the
further comments of the _Chronicle_. “It were alone worth all the
efforts of the gentlemen who united in the fitting recognition of
the public services and the private worth of Frederick Douglass,
to have inspired a letter thus tender in its sentiment, and so
suggestive of the various phases of a career than which the
republic has witnessed none more strange or more noble. Frederick
Douglass can hardly be said to have risen to greatness on account
of the opportunities which the republic offers to self-made men,
and concerning which we are apt to talk with an abundance of
self-gratulation. It sought to fetter his mind equally with his
body. For him it builded no school-house, and for him it erected
no church. So far as he was concerned freedom was a mockery, and
law was the instrument of tyranny. In spite of law and gospel,
despite of statutes which thralled him and opportunities which
jeered at him, he made himself by trampling on the law and
breaking through the thick darkness that encompassed him. There
is no sadder commentary upon American slavery than the life of
Frederick Douglass. He put it under his feet and stood erect in
the majesty of his intellect; but how many intellects as brilliant
and as powerful as his it stamped upon and crushed, no mortal
can tell until the secrets of its terrible despotism are fully
revealed. Thanks to the conquering might of American freemen, such
sad beginnings of such illustrious lives as that of Frederick
Douglass are no longer possible; and that they are no longer
possible, is largely due to him who, when his lips were unlocked,
became a deliverer of his people. Not alone did his voice proclaim
emancipation. Eloquent as was that voice, his life in its pathos
and in its grandeur, was more eloquent still; and where shall be
found, in the annals of humanity, a sweeter rendering of poetic
justice than that he, who has passed through such vicissitudes
of degradation and exaltation, has been permitted to behold the
redemption of his race?
“Rochester is proud to remember that Frederick Douglass was, for
many years, one of her citizens. He who pointed out the house
where Douglass lived, hardly exaggerated when he called it the
residence of the greatest of our citizens; for Douglass must rank
as among the greatest men, not only of this city, but of the nation
as well--great in gifts, greater in utilizing them, great in his
inspiration, greater in his efforts for humanity, great in the
persuasion of his speech, greater in the purpose that informed it.
“Rochester could do nothing more graceful than to perpetuate in
marble the features of this citizen in her hall of learning; and
it is pleasant for her to know that he so well appreciates the
esteem in which he is held here. It was a thoughtful thing for
Rochester to do, and the response is as heartfelt as the tribute is
appropriate.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
“HONOR TO WHOM HONOR.”
Grateful recognition--Friends in need--Lucretia Mott--Lydia Maria
Child--Sarah and Angelina Grimke--Abby Kelly--H. Beecher Stowe--
Other Friends--Woman Suffrage.
Gratitude to benefactors is a well recognized virtue, and to express
it in some form or other, however imperfectly, is a duty to ourselves
as well as to those who have helped us. Never reluctant or tardy, I
trust, in the discharge of this duty, I have seldom been satisfied
with the manner of its performance. When I have made my best effort in
this line, my words have done small justice to my feelings. And now,
in mentioning my obligations to my special friends, and acknowledging
the help I received from them in the days of my need, I can hope
to do no better than give a faint hint of my sense of the value of
their friendship and assistance. I have sometimes been credited with
having been the architect of my own fortune, and have pretty generally
received the title of a “self-made man;” and while I cannot altogether
disclaim this title, when I look back over the facts of my life, and
consider the helpful influences exerted upon me, by friends more
fortunately born and educated than myself, I am compelled to give them
at least an equal measure of credit, with myself, for the success
which has attended my labors in life. The little energy, industry, and
perseverance which have been mine, would hardly have availed me, in
the absence of thoughtful friends, and highly favoring circumstances.
Without these, the last forty years of my life might have been spent
on the wharves of New Bedford, rolling oil casks, loading ships for
whaling voyages, sawing wood, putting in coal, picking up a job here
and there, wherever I could find one, holding my own with difficulty
against gauntsided poverty, in the race for life and bread. I never
see one of my old companions of the lower strata, begrimed by toil,
hard handed, and dust covered, receiving for wages scarcely enough to
keep the “wolf” at a respectful distance from his door and hearthstone,
without a fellow feeling and the thought that I have been separated
from him only by circumstances other than those of my own making. Much
to be thankful for, but little room for boasting here. It was mine to
take the “Tide at its flood.” It was my good fortune to get out of
slavery at the right time, and to be speedily brought into contact with
that circle of highly cultivated men and women, banded together for the
overthrow of slavery, of which Wm. Lloyd Garrison was the acknowledged
leader. To these friends, earnest, courageous, inflexible, ready to own
me as a man and brother, against all the scorn, contempt, and derision
of a slavery-polluted atmosphere, I owe my success in life. The story
is simple, and the truth plain. They thought that I possessed qualities
that might be made useful to my race, and through them I was brought to
the notice of the world, and gained a hold upon the attention of the
American people, which I hope remains unbroken to this day. The list of
these friends is too long certainly to be inserted here, but I cannot
forbear to recall in this connection the names of Francis Jackson,
Joseph Southwick, Samuel E. Sewell, Samuel J. May, John Pierpont,
Henry I. Bowditch, Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, Edmund Quincy,
Isaac T. Hopper, James N. Buffum, Ellis Gray Loring, Andrew Robeson,
Seth Hunt, Arnold Buffum, Nathaniel B. Borden, Boone Spooner, William
Thomas, John Milton Earle, John Curtis, George Foster, Clother Gifford,
John Bailey, Nathaniel P. Rodgers, Stephen S. Foster, Parker Pillsbury,
the Hutchinson family, Dr. Peleg Clark, the Burleigh brothers, William
Chase, Samuel and Harvey Chase, John Brown, C. C. Eldredge, Daniel
Mitchell, William Adams, Isaac Kenyon, Joseph Sisson, Daniel Goold,
Kelton brothers, Geo. James Adams, Martin Cheeney, Edward Harris,
Robert Shove, Alpheus Jones, Asa Fairbanks, Gen. Sam’l Fessenden,
William Aplin, John Clark, Thomas Davis, George L. Clark; these all
took me to their hearts and homes, and inspired me with an incentive
which a confiding and helpful friendship can alone impart.
Nor were my influential friends all of the Caucasian race. While many
of my own people thought me unwise and somewhat fanatical in announcing
myself a fugitive slave, and in practically asserting the rights of
my people, on all occasions, in season and out of season, there were
brave and intelligent men of color all over the United States who gave
me their cordial sympathy and support. Among these, and foremost, I
place the name of Doctor James McCune Smith; educated in Scotland, and
breathing the free air of that country, he came back to his native land
with ideas of liberty which placed him in advance of most of his fellow
citizens of African descent. He was not only a learned and skillful
physician, but an effective speaker, and a keen and polished writer.
In my newspaper enterprise, I found in him an earnest and effective
helper. The cause of his people lost an able advocate when he died. He
was never among the timid who thought me too aggressive and wished me
to tone down my testimony to suit the times. A brave man himself, he
knew how to esteem courage in others.
Of David Ruggles I have already spoken. He gave me my send off from
New York to New Bedford, and when I came into public life, he was
among the first with words of cheer. Jehial C. Beman too, a noble man,
kindly took me by the hand. Thomas Van Rauselear was among my fast
friends. No young man, starting in an untried field of usefulness,
and needing support, could find that support in larger measure than
I found it, in William Whipper, Robert Purvis, William P. Powell,
Nathan Johnson, Charles B. Ray, Thomas Downing, Theodore S. Wright,
Charles L. Reason. Notwithstanding what I have said of my treatment,
at times, by people of my own color, when traveling, I am bound to say
that there is another and brighter side to that picture. Among the
waiters and attendants on public conveyances, I have often found real
gentlemen; intelligent, aspiring, and those who fully appreciated all
my efforts in behalf of our common cause. Especially have I found this
to be the case in the East. A more gentlemanly and self-respecting
class of men it would be difficult to find, than those to be met on the
various lines between New York and Boston. I have never wanted for kind
attention, or any effort they could make to render my journeying with
them smooth and pleasant. I owe this solely to my work in our common
cause, and to their intelligent estimate of the value of that work.
Republics are said to be ungrateful, but ingratitude is not among the
weaknesses of my people. No people ever had a more lively sense of the
value of faithful endeavor to serve their interests than they. But for
this feeling towards me on their part, I might have passed many nights
hungry and cold, and without any place to lay my head. I need not name
my colored friends to whom I am thus indebted. They do not desire such
mention, but I wish any who have shown me kindness, even so much as to
give me a cup of cold water, to feel themselves included in my thanks.
It is also due to myself, to make some more emphatic mention than I
have yet done, of the honorable women, who have not only assisted me,
but who according to their opportunity and ability, have generously
contributed to the abolition of slavery and the recognition of the
equal manhood of the colored race. When the true history of the
anti-slavery cause shall be written, woman will occupy a large
space in its pages; for the cause of the slave has been peculiarly
woman’s cause. Her heart and her conscience have supplied in large
degree its motive and mainspring. Her skill, industry, patience, and
perseverance have been wonderfully manifest in every trial hour. Not
only did her feet run on “willing errands,” and her fingers do the work
which in large degree supplied the sinews of war, but her deep moral
convictions, and her tender human sensibilities, found convincing and
persuasive expression by her pen and her voice. Foremost among these
notable American women, who in point of clearness of vision, breadth of
understanding, fullness of knowledge, catholicity of spirit, weight of
character, and widespread influence, was Lucretia Mott of Philadelphia.
Great as this woman was in speech, and persuasive as she was in her
writings, she was incomparably greater in her presence. She spoke to
the world through every line of her countenance. In her there was
no lack of symmetry--no contradiction between her thought and act.
Seated in an anti-slavery meeting, looking benignantly around upon the
assembly, her silent presence made others eloquent, and carried the
argument home to the heart of the audience.
The known approval of such a woman of any cause, went far to commend it.
I shall never forget the first time I ever saw and heard Lucretia
Mott. It was in the town of Lynn, Massachusetts. It was not in a
magnificent hall, where such as she seemed to belong, but in a little
hall over Jonathan Buffum’s store, the only place then open, even in
that so-called radical anti-slavery town, for an anti-slavery meeting
on Sunday. But in this day of small things, the smallness of the place
was no matter of complaint or murmuring. It was a cause of rejoicing
that any kind of place could be had for such a purpose. But Jonathan
Buffum’s courage was equal to this and more.
The speaker was attired in the usual Quaker dress, free from startling
colors, plain, rich, elegant, and without superfluity--the very sight
of her a sermon. In a few moments after she began to speak, I saw
before me no more a woman, but a glorified presence, bearing a message
of light and love from the Infinite to a benighted and strangely
wandering world, straying away from the paths of truth and justice
into the wilderness of pride and selfishness, where peace is lost and
true happiness is sought in vain. I heard Mrs. Mott thus, when she
was comparatively young. I have often heard her since, sometimes in
the solemn temple, and sometimes under the open sky, but whenever and
wherever I have listened to her, my heart was always made better, and
my spirit raised by her words; and in speaking thus for myself I am
sure I am expressing the experience of thousands.
Kindred in spirit with Mrs. Mott was Lydia Maria Child. They both
exerted an influence with a class of the American people which neither
Garrison, Phillips, nor Gerrit Smith could reach. Sympathetic in her
nature, it was easy for her to “remember those in bonds as bound with
them;” and her “appeal for that class of Americans called Africans,”
issued, as it was, at an early stage in the anti-slavery conflict,
was one of the most effective agencies in arousing attention to the
cruelty and injustice of slavery. When with her husband, David Lee
Child, she edited the _National Anti-Slavery Standard_, that paper was
made attractive to a broad circle of readers, from the circumstance
that each issue contained a “Letter from New York,” written by her on
some passing subject of the day, in which she always managed to infuse
a spirit of brotherly love and good will, with an abhorrence of all
that was unjust, selfish, and mean, and in this way won many hearts to
anti-slavery who else would have remained cold and indifferent.
Of Sarah and Angelina Grimke I knew but little personally. These brave
sisters from Charleston, South Carolina, had inherited slaves, but
in their conversion from Episcopacy to Quakerism, in 1828, became
convinced that they had no right to such inheritance. They emancipated
their slaves and came North and entered at once upon the pioneer work
in the advancing education of woman, though they saw then in their
course only their duty to the slave. They had “fought the good fight”
before I came into the ranks, but by their unflinching testimony and
unwavering courage, they had opened the way and made it possible, if
not easy, for other women to follow their example.
It is memorable of them that their public advocacy of anti-slavery
was made the occasion of the issuing of a papal bull in the form of a
“Pastoral letter,” by the Evangelical clergy of Boston, in which the
churches and all God-fearing people were warned against their influence.
For solid, persistent, indefatigable work for the slave, Abby Kelley
was without rival. In the “History of Woman Suffrage,” just published
by Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, and Mrs. Goslin Gage, there is this
fitting tribute to her: “Abby Kelley was the most untiring and most
persecuted of all the women who labored throughout the anti-slavery
struggle. She traveled up and down, alike in winter’s cold and
summer’s heat, with scorn, ridicule, violence, and mobs accompanying
her, suffering all kinds of persecutions, still speaking whenever and
wherever she gained an audience,--in the open air, in school-house,
barn, depot, church, or public hall, on weekday or Sunday, as she found
opportunity.” And, incredible as it will soon seem, if it does not
appear so already, “for listening to her on Sunday many men and women
were expelled from their churches.”
When the abolitionists of Rhode Island were seeking to defeat the
restricted constitution of the Dorr party, already referred to in this
volume, Abby Kelley was more than once mobbed in the old Town Hall in
the city of Providence, and pelted with bad eggs.
And what can be said of the gifted authoress of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,”
Harriet Beecher Stowe? Happy woman must she be, that to her was given
the power, in such unstinted measure, to touch and move the popular
heart! More than to reason or religion are we indebted to the influence
which this wonderful delineation of American chattel slavery produced
on the public mind.
Nor must I omit to name the daughter of the excellent Myron Holley,
who in her youth and beauty espoused the cause of the slave; nor of
Lucy Stone, and Antoinette Brown; for when the slave had few friends
and advocates they were noble enough to speak their best word in his
behalf.
Others there were, who, though they were not known on the platform,
were none the less earnest and effective for anti-slavery in their more
retired lives. There were many such to greet me, and welcome me to my
newly found heritage of freedom. They met me as a brother, and by their
kind consideration did much to make endurable the rebuffs I encountered
elsewhere. At the anti-slavery office in Providence, Rhode Island, I
remember with a peculiar interest Lucinda Wilmarth, whose acceptance
of life’s duties and labors, and whose heroic struggle with sickness
and death, taught me more than one lesson; and Amorancy Paine, never
weary in performing any service, however arduous, which fidelity to the
slave demanded of her. Then there was Phebe Jackson, Elizabeth Chace,
the Sisson sisters, the Chases, the Greenes, the Browns, the Goolds,
the Shoves, the Anthonys, the Roses, the Fayerweathers, the Motts,
the Earles, the Spooners, the Southwicks, the Buffums, the Fords, the
Wilburs, the Henshaws, the Burgesses, and others whose names are lost,
but whose deeds are living yet in the regenerated life of our new
Republic, cleansed from the curse and sin of slavery.
Observing woman’s agency, devotion, and efficiency in pleading the
cause of the slave, gratitude for this high service early moved me to
give favorable attention to the subject of what is called “Woman’s
Rights,” and caused me to be denominated a woman’s-rights-man. I
am glad to say I have never been ashamed to be thus designated.
Recognizing not sex, nor physical strength, but moral intelligence and
the ability to discern right from wrong, good from evil, and the power
to choose between them, as the true basis of Republican government, to
which all are alike subject, and bound alike to obey, I was not long
in reaching the conclusion that there was no foundation in reason or
justice for woman’s exclusion from the right of choice in the selection
of the persons who should frame the laws, and thus shape the destiny of
all the people, irrespective of sex.
In a conversation with Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, when she was yet
a young lady, and an earnest abolitionist, she was at the pains of
setting before me, in a very strong light, the wrong and injustice of
this exclusion. I could not meet her arguments except with the shallow
plea of “custom,” “natural division of duties,” “indelicacy of woman’s
taking part in politics,” the common talk of “woman’s sphere,” and
the like, all of which that able woman, who was then no less logical
than now, brushed away by those arguments which she has so often and
effectively used since, and which no man has yet successfully refuted.
If intelligence is the only true and rational basis of government,
it follows that that is the best government which draws its life and
power from the largest sources of wisdom, energy, and goodness at its
command. The force of this reasoning would be easily comprehended and
readily assented to in any case involving the employment of physical
strength. We should all see the folly and madness of attempting to
accomplish with a part what could only be done with the united strength
of the whole. Though this folly may be less apparent, it is just as
real, when one-half of the moral and intellectual power of the world
is excluded from any voice or vote in civil government. In this denial
of the right to participate in government, not merely the degradation
of woman and the perpetuation of a great injustice happens, but the
maiming and repudiation of one-half of the moral and intellectual power
for the government of the world. Thus far all human governments have
been failures, for none have secured, except in a partial degree, the
ends for which governments are instituted.
War, slavery, injustice, and oppression, and the idea that might makes
right, have been uppermost in all such governments; and the weak,
for whose protection governments are ostensibly created, have had
practically no rights which the strong have felt bound to respect.
The slayers of thousands have been exalted into heroes, and the
worship of mere physical force has been considered glorious. Nations
have been and still are but armed camps, expending their wealth and
strength and ingenuity in forging weapons of destruction against each
other; and while it may not be contended that the introduction of the
feminine element in government would entirely cure this tendency to
exalt might over right, many reasons can be given to show that woman’s
influence would greatly tend to check and modify this barbarous and
destructive tendency. At any rate, seeing that the male governments of
the world have failed, it can do no harm to try the experiment of a
government by man and woman united. But it is not my purpose to argue
the question here, but simply to state, in a brief way, the ground
of my espousal of the cause of woman’s suffrage. I believed that the
exclusion of my race from participation in government was not only a
wrong, but a great mistake, because it took from that race motives
for high thought and endeavor, and degraded them in the eyes of the
world around them. Man derives a sense of his consequence in the world
not merely subjectively, but objectively. If from the cradle through
life the outside world brands a class as unfit for this or that work,
the character of the class will come to resemble and conform to the
character described. To find valuable qualities in our fellows, such
qualities must be presumed and expected. I would give woman a vote,
give her a motive to qualify herself to vote, precisely as I insisted
upon giving the colored man the right to vote, in order that he should
have the same motives for making himself a useful citizen as those in
force in the case of other citizens. In a word, I have never yet been
able to find one consideration, one argument, or suggestion in favor of
man’s right to participate in civil government which did not equally
apply to the right of woman.
CHAPTER XIX.
RETROSPECTION.
Meeting of colored citizens in Washington to express their sympathy at
the great national bereavement, the death of President Garfield--
Concluding reflections and convictions.
On the day of the interment of the late James A. Garfield, at Lake View
Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio, a day of gloom long to be remembered as
the closing scene in one of the most tragic and startling dramas ever
witnessed in this, or in any other country, the colored people of the
District of Columbia assembled in the Fifteenth street Presbyterian
church, and expressed by appropriate addresses and resolutions, their
respect for the character and memory of the illustrious deceased. On
that occasion I was called on to preside, and by way of introducing
the subsequent proceedings, (leaving to others the grateful office of
delivering eulogies) made the following brief reference to the solemn
and touching event.
“_Friends and fellow citizens_:
To-day our common mother Earth has closed over the mortal remains of
James A. Garfield, at Cleveland, Ohio. The light of no day in our
national history has brought to the American people a more intense
bereavement, a deeper sorrow, or a more profound sense of humiliation.
It seems only as yesterday, that in my quality as United States Marshal
of the District of Columbia, it was made my duty and privilege to walk
at the head of the column in advance of this our President-elect,
from the crowded Senate Chamber of the National Capitol, through the
long corridors, and the grand rotunda, beneath the majestic dome, to
the platform on the portico, where amid a sea of transcendent pomp
and glory, he who is now dead, was hailed with tumultuous applause
from uncounted thousands of his fellow citizens, and was inaugurated
Chief Magistrate of the United States. The scene was one never to be
forgotten by those who beheld it. It was a great day for the nation,
glad and proud to do honor to their chosen ruler. It was a glad day
for James A. Garfield. It was a glad day for me, that I--one of the
proscribed race, was permitted to bear so prominent a part in its
august ceremonies. Mr. Garfield was then in the midst of his years, in
the fullness and vigor of his manhood, covered with honors beyond the
reach of princes, entering upon a career more abundant in promise than
ever invited president or potentate before.
Alas, what a contrast, as he lay in state under the same broad dome,
viewed by sorrowful thousands day after day! What is the life of man?
What are all his plans, purposes, and hopes? What are the shouts
of the multitude, the pride and pomp of this world? How vain and
unsubstantial, in the light of this sad and shocking experience, do
they all appear! Who can tell what a day or an hour will bring forth?
Such reflections inevitably present themselves, as most natural and
fitting on an occasion like this.
Fellow citizens, we are here to take suitable notice of the sad and
appalling event of the hour. We are here, not merely as American
citizens, but as colored American citizens. Although our hearts have
gone along with those of the nation at large, with every expression,
with every token and demonstration of honor to the dead, sympathy with
the living, and abhorrence for the horrible deed which has at last done
its final work; though we have watched with beating hearts, the long
and heroic struggle for life, and endured all the agony of suspense and
fear; we have felt that something more, something more specific and
distinctive, was due from us. Our relation to the American people makes
us in some sense a peculiar class, and unless we speak separately, our
voice is not heard. We therefore propose to put on record to-night our
sense of the worth of President Garfield, and of the calamity involved
in his death. Called to preside on this occasion, my part in the
speaking shall be brief. I cannot claim to have been on intimate terms
with the late President. There are other gentlemen here, who are better
qualified to speak of his character than myself. I may say, however,
that soon after he came to Washington, I had a conversation with him
of much interest to the colored people, since it indicated his just and
generous intentions towards them, and goes far to present him in the
light of a wise and patriotic statesman, and a friend of our race.
I called at the Executive Mansion, and was received very kindly by Mr.
Garfield, who, in the course of the conversation said, that he felt the
time had come when a step should be taken in advance, in recognition of
the claims of colored citizens, and expressed his intention of sending
some colored representatives abroad to other than colored nations. He
enquired of me how I thought such representations would be received?
I assured him that I thought they would be well received; that in my
own experience abroad, I had observed that the higher we go in the
gradations of human society, the farther we get from prejudice of race
or color. I was greatly pleased with the assurance of his liberal
policy towards us. I remarked to him, that no part of the American
people would be treated with respect, if systematically ignored by the
government, and denied all participation in its honors and emoluments.
To this he assented, and went so far as to propose my going in a
representative capacity to an important post abroad--a compliment
which I gratefully acknowledged, but respectfully declined. To say the
truth, I wished to remain at home, and retain the office of United
States Marshal of the District of Columbia.
It is a great thing for Hon. John Mercer Langston to represent this
republic at Port au Prince, and for Henry Highland Garnet to represent
us in Liberia, but it would be indeed a step in advance, to have some
colored men sent to represent us in white nationalities, and we have
reason for profound regret that Mr. Garfield could not have lived to
carry out his just and wise intentions towards us. I might say more
of this conversation, but I will not detain you except to say, that
America has had many great men, but no man among them all has had
better things said of him, than he who has been reverently committed to
the dust in Cleveland to-day.”
Mr. Douglass then called upon Professor Greener, who read a series of
resolutions eloquently expressive of their sense of the great loss that
had been sustained, and their sympathy with the family of the late
President. Prof. Greener then spoke briefly and was followed by Prof.
John M. Langston and Rev. W. W. Hicks. All the speakers expressed their
confidence in President Arthur and in his ability to give the country a
wise and beneficial administration.
CONCLUSION.
As far as this volume can reach that point I have now brought my
readers to the end of my story. What may remain of life to me, through
what experiences I may pass, what heights I may attain, into what
depths I may fall, what good or ill may come to me, or proceed from
me in this breathing world, where all is change, uncertainty, and
largely at the mercy of powers over which the individual man has no
absolute control, if thought worthy and useful, will probably be told
by others when I have passed from the busy stage of life. I am not
looking for any great changes in my fortunes or achievements in the
future. The most of the space of life is behind me, and the sun of my
day is nearing the horizon. Notwithstanding all that is contained in
this book my day has been a pleasant one. My joys have far exceeded
my sorrows, and my friends have brought me far more than my enemies
have taken from me. I have written out my experience here, not to
exhibit my wounds and bruises to awaken and attract sympathy to myself
personally, but as a part of the history of a profoundly interesting
period in American life and progress. I have meant it to be a small
individual contribution to the sum of knowledge of this special period,
to be handed down to after-coming generations which may want to know
what things were allowed and what prohibited; what moral, social, and
political relations subsisted between the different varieties of the
American people down to the last quarter of the nineteenth century;
and by what means they were modified and changed. The time is at hand
when the last American slave, and the last American slaveholder will
disappear behind the curtain which separates the living from the dead,
and when neither master nor slave will be left to tell the story of
their respective relations, and what happened in those relations to
either. My part has been to tell the story of the slave. The story of
the master never wanted for narrators. They have had all the talent
and genius that wealth and influence could command to tell their
story. They have had their full day in court. Literature, theology,
philosophy, law, and learning, have come willingly to their service,
and if condemned they have not been condemned unheard.
It will be seen in these pages that I have lived several lives in one.
First, the life of slavery; secondly, the life of a fugitive from
slavery; thirdly, the life of comparative freedom; fourthly, the life
of conflict and battle; and, fifthly, the life of victory, if not
complete, at least assured. To those who have suffered in slavery, I
can say I too have suffered. To those who have taken some risks and
encountered hardships in the flight from bondage, I can say I too have
endured and risked. To those who have battled for liberty, brotherhood,
and citizenship, I can say I too have battled; and to those who have
lived to enjoy the fruits of victory, I can say I too live and rejoice.
If I have pushed my example too prominently for the good taste of my
Caucasian readers I beg them to remember that I have written in part
for the encouragement of a class whose aspirations need the stimulus of
success.
I have aimed to assure them that knowledge can be obtained under
difficulties; that poverty may give place to competency; that obscurity
is not an absolute bar to distinction, and that a way is open to
welfare and happiness to all who will resolutely and wisely pursue that
way; that neither slavery, stripes, imprisonment, or proscription, need
extinguish self-respect, crush manly ambition, or paralyze effort;
that no power outside of himself can prevent a man from sustaining an
honorable character and a useful relation to his day and generation;
that neither institutions nor friends can make a race to stand unless
it has strength in its own legs; that there is no power in the world
which can be relied upon to help the weak against the strong--the
simple against the wise; that races like individuals must stand or fall
by their own merits; that all the prayers of Christendom cannot stop
the force of a single bullet, divest arsenic of poison, or suspend
any law of nature. In my communication with the colored people I have
endeavored to deliver them from the power of superstition, bigotry,
and priest-craft. In theology I have found them strutting about in the
old clothes of the masters, just as the masters strut about in the old
clothes of the past. The falling power remains among them long since
it has ceased to be the religious fashion of our refined and elegant
white churches. I have taught that the “fault is not in our stars
but in ourselves that we are underlings,” that “who would be free,
themselves must strike the blow.” I have urged upon them self-reliance,
self-respect, industry, perseverance, and economy--to make the best
of both worlds--but to make the best of this world first because it
comes first, and that he who does not improve himself by the motives
and opportunities afforded by this world gives the best evidence that
he would not improve in any other world. Schooled as I have been among
the abolitionists of New England, I recognize that the universe is
governed by laws which are unchangeable and eternal, that what men sow
they will reap, and that there is no way to dodge or circumvent the
consequences of any act or deed. My views at this point receive but
limited endorsement among my people. They for the most part think they
have means of procuring special favor and help from the Almighty, and
as their “faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence
of things not seen,” they find much in this expression which is true to
faith but utterly false to fact. But I meant here only to say a word in
conclusion. Forty years of my life have been given to the cause of my
people, and if I had forty years more they should all be sacredly given
to the great cause. If I have done something for that cause, I am after
all more a debtor to it than it is debtor to me.
APPENDIX.
ORATION BY FREDERICK DOUGLASS, DELIVERED ON THE OCCASION OF THE
UNVEILING OF THE FREEDMEN’S MONUMENT, IN MEMORY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
IN LINCOLN PARK, WASHINGTON, D. C., APRIL 14, 1876.
_Friends and fellow citizens_:
I warmly congratulate you upon the highly interesting object which has
caused you to assemble in such numbers and spirit as you have to-day.
This occasion is in some respects remarkable. Wise and thoughtful men
of our race, who shall come after us, and study the lesson of our
history in the United States; who shall survey the long and dreary
spaces over which we have traveled; who shall count the links in the
great chain of events by which we have reached our present position,
will make a note of this occasion; they will think of it and speak of
it with a sense of manly pride and complacency.
I congratulate you, also, upon the very favorable circumstances in
which we meet to-day. They are high, inspiring, and uncommon. They
lend grace, glory, and significance to the object for which we have
met. Nowhere else in this great country, with its uncounted towns and
cities, unlimited wealth, and immeasurable territory extending from sea
to sea, could conditions be found more favorable to the success of this
occasion than here.
We stand to-day at the national center to perform something like a
national act--an act which is to go into history; and we are here
where every pulsation of the national heart can be heard, felt, and
reciprocated. A thousand wires, fed with thought and winged with
lightning, put us in instantaneous communication with the loyal and
true men all over this country.
Few facts could better illustrate the vast and wonderful change which
has taken place in our condition as a people, than the fact of our
assembling here for the purpose we have to-day. Harmless, beautiful,
proper, and praiseworthy as this demonstration is, I cannot forget that
no such demonstration would have been tolerated here twenty years ago.
The spirit of slavery and barbarism, which still lingers to blight and
destroy in some dark and distant parts of our country, would have made
our assembling here the signal and excuse for opening upon us all the
flood-gates of wrath and violence. That we are here in peace to-day
is a compliment and a credit to American civilization, and a prophecy
of still greater national enlightenment and progress in the future. I
refer to the past not in malice, for this is no day for malice; but
simply to place more distinctly in front the gratifying and glorious
change which has come both to our white fellow-citizens and ourselves,
and to congratulate all upon the contrast between now and then; the
new dispensation of freedom with its thousand blessings to both races,
and the old dispensation of slavery with its ten thousand evils to
both races--white and black. In view, then, of the past, the present,
and the future, with the long and dark history of our bondage behind
us, and with liberty, progress, and enlightenment before us, I again
congratulate you upon this auspicious day and hour.
Friends and fellow citizens, the story of our presence here is soon and
easily told. We are here in the District of Columbia, here in the city
of Washington, the most luminous point of American territory; a city
recently transformed and made beautiful in its body and in its spirit;
we are here in the place where the ablest and best men of the country
are sent to devise the policy, enact the laws, and shape the destiny of
the Republic; we are here, with the stately pillars and majestic dome
of the Capitol of the nation looking down upon us; we are here, with
the broad earth freshly adorned with the foliage and flowers of spring
for our church, and all races, colors, and conditions of men for our
congregation--in a word, we are here to express, as best we may, by
appropriate forms and ceremonies, our grateful sense of the vast, high,
and preëminent services rendered to ourselves, to our race, to our
country, and to the whole world by Abraham Lincoln.
The sentiment that brings us here to-day is one of the noblest that
can stir and thrill the human heart. It has crowned and made glorious
the high places of all civilized nations with the grandest and most
enduring works of art, designed to illustrate the characters and
perpetuate the memories of great public men. It is the sentiment which
from year to year adorns with fragrant and beautiful flowers the graves
of our loyal, brave, and patriotic soldiers who fell in defence of the
Union and liberty. It is the sentiment of gratitude and appreciation,
which often, in the presence of many who hear me, has filled yonder
heights of Arlington with the eloquence of eulogy and the sublime
enthusiasm of poetry and song; a sentiment which can never die while
the Republic lives.
For the first time in the history of our people, and in the history
of the whole American people, we join in this high worship, and march
conspicuously in the line of this time-honored custom. First things
are always interesting, and this is one of our first things. It is
the first time that, in this form and manner, we have sought to do
honor to an American great man, however deserving and illustrious.
I commend the fact to notice; let it be told in every part of the
Republic; let men of all parties and opinions hear it; let those who
despise us, not less than those who respect us, know that now and
here, in the spirit of liberty, loyalty, and gratitude, let it be
known everywhere, and by everybody who takes an interest in human
progress and in the amelioration of the condition of mankind, that,
in the presence and with the approval of the members of the American
House of Representatives, reflecting the general sentiment of the
country: that in the presence of that august body, the American Senate,
representing the highest intelligence and the calmest judgment in the
country; in presence of the Supreme Court and Chief-Justice of the
United States, to whose decisions we all patriotically bow; in the
presence and under the steady eye of the honored and trusted President
of the United States, with the members of his wise and patriotic
Cabinet, we, the colored people, newly emancipated and rejoicing in our
blood-bought freedom, near the close of the first century in the life
of this Republic, have now and here unveiled, set apart, and dedicated
a monument of enduring granite and bronze, in every line, feature,
and figure of which the men of this generation may read, and those of
after-coming generations may read, something of the exalted character
and great works of Abraham Lincoln, the first martyr President of the
United States.
Fellow citizens, in what we have said and done to-day, and in what
we may say and do hereafter, we disclaim everything like arrogance
and assumption. We claim for ourselves no superior devotion to the
character, history, and memory of the illustrious name whose monument
we have here dedicated to-day. We fully comprehend the relation of
Abraham Lincoln both to ourselves and to the white people of the
United States. Truth is proper and beautiful at all times and in all
places, and it is never more proper and beautiful in any case than when
speaking of a great public man whose example is likely to be commended
for honor and imitation long after his departure to the solemn
shades,--the silent continents of eternity. It must be admitted, truth
compels me to admit, even here in the presence of the monument we have
erected to his memory, Abraham Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense
of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his
associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a
white man.
He was preëminently the white man’s President, entirely devoted to
the welfare of white men. He was ready and willing at any time during
the first years of his administration to deny, postpone, and sacrifice
the rights of humanity in the colored people to promote the welfare
of the white people of this country. In all his education and feeling
he was an American of the Americans. He came into the Presidential
chair upon one principle alone, namely, opposition to the extension of
slavery. His arguments in furtherance of this policy had their motive
and mainspring in his patriotic devotion to the interests of his own
race. To protect, defend, and perpetuate slavery in the States where
it existed Abraham Lincoln was not less ready than any other President
to draw the sword of the nation. He was ready to execute all the
supposed constitutional guarantees of the United States Constitution
in favor of the slave system anywhere inside the slave States. He was
willing to pursue, recapture, and send back the fugitive slave to his
master, and to suppress a slave rising for liberty, though his guilty
master were already in arms against the Government. The race to which
we belong were not the special objects of his consideration. Knowing
this, I concede to you, my white fellow citizens, a preëminence in
this worship at once full and supreme. First, midst, and last, you and
yours were the objects of his deepest affection and his most earnest
solicitude. You are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best
only his step-children; children by adoption, children by force of
circumstances and necessity. To you it especially belongs to sound
his praises, to preserve and perpetuate his memory, to multiply his
statues, to hang his pictures high upon your walls, and commend his
example, for to you he was a great and glorious friend and benefactor.
Instead of supplanting you at this altar, we would exhort you to build
high his monuments; let them be of the most costly material, of the
most cunning workmanship; let their forms be symmetrical, beautiful,
and perfect; let their bases be upon solid rocks, and their summits
lean against the unchanging blue, overhanging sky, and let them endure
forever! But while in the abundance of your wealth, and in the fullness
of your just and patriotic devotion, you do all this, we entreat you
to despise not the humble offering we this day unveil to view; for
while Abraham Lincoln saved for you a country, he delivered us from a
bondage, according to Jefferson, one hour of which was worse than ages
of the oppression your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose.
Fellow citizens, ours is no new-born zeal and devotion--merely a thing
of this moment. The name of Abraham Lincoln was near and dear to our
hearts in the darkest and most perilous hours of the Republic. We were
no more ashamed of him when shrouded in clouds of darkness, of doubt,
and defeat than when we saw him crowned with victory, honor, and glory.
Our faith in him was often taxed and strained to the uttermost, but it
never failed. When he tarried long in the mountain; when he strangely
told us that we were the cause of the war; when he still more strangely
told us to leave the land in which we were born; when he refused to
employ our arms in defence of the Union; when, after accepting our
services as colored soldiers, he refused to retaliate our murder
and torture as colored prisoners; when he told us he would save the
Union if he could with slavery; when he revoked the Proclamation of
Emancipation of General Frémont; when he refused to remove the popular
commander of the Army of the Potomac, in the days of its inaction
and defeat, who was more zealous in his efforts to protect slavery
than to suppress rebellion; when we saw all this, and more, we were
at times grieved, stunned, and greatly bewildered; but our hearts
believed while they ached and bled. Nor was this, even at that time,
a blind and unreasoning superstition. Despite the mist and haze that
surround him; despite the tumult, the hurry, and confusion of the hour,
we were able to take a comprehensive view of Abraham Lincoln, and to
make reasonable allowance for the circumstances of his position. We
saw him, measured him, and estimated him; not by stray utterances to
injudicious and tedious delegations, who often tried his patience;
not by isolated facts torn from their connection; not by any partial
and imperfect glimpses, caught at inopportune moments; but by a broad
survey, in the light of the stern logic of great events, and in view
of that “divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will,”
we came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption
had somehow met in the person of Abraham Lincoln. It mattered little
to us what language he might employ on special occasions; it mattered
little to us, when we fully knew him, whether he was swift or slow in
his movements; it was enough for us that Abraham Lincoln was at the
head of a great movement, and was in living and earnest sympathy with
that movement, which, in the nature of things, must go on until slavery
should be utterly and forever abolished in the United States.
When, therefore, it shall be asked what we have to do with the memory
of Abraham Lincoln, or what Abraham Lincoln had to do with us, the
answer is ready, full, and complete. Though he loved Cæsar less than
Rome, though the Union was more to him than our freedom or our future,
under his wise and beneficent rule we saw ourselves gradually lifted
from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood; under
his wise and beneficent rule, and by measures approved and vigorously
pressed by him, we saw that the handwriting of ages, in the form of
prejudice and proscription, was rapidly fading away from the face of
our whole country; under his rule, and in due time, about as soon
after all as the country could tolerate the strange spectacle, we
saw our brave sons and brothers laying off the rags of bondage, and
being clothed all over in the blue uniforms of the soldiers of the
United States; under his rule we saw two hundred thousand of our dark
and dusky people responding to the call of Abraham Lincoln, and with
muskets on their shoulders, and eagles on their buttons, timing their
high footsteps to liberty and union under the national flag; under
his rule we saw the independence of the black republic of Hayti, the
special object of slaveholding aversion and horror, fully recognized,
and her minister, a colored gentleman, duly received here in the city
of Washington; under his rule we saw the internal slave-trade, which
so long disgraced the nation, abolished, and slavery abolished in the
District of Columbia; under his rule we saw for the first time the law
enforced against the foreign slave-trade, and the first slave-trader
hanged like any other pirate or murderer; under his rule, assisted
by the greatest captain of our age, and his inspiration, we saw the
Confederate States, based upon the idea that our race must be slaves,
and slaves forever, battered to pieces and scattered to the four winds;
under his rule, and in the fullness of time, we saw Abraham Lincoln,
after giving the slaveholders three months’ grace in which to save
their hateful slave system, penning the immortal paper, which, though
special in its language, was general in its principles and effect,
making slavery forever impossible in the United States. Though we
waited long, we saw all this and more.
Can any colored man, or any white man friendly to the freedom of all
men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January,
1863, when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to
be as good as his word? I shall never forget that memorable night,
when in a distant city I waited and watched at a public meeting, with
three thousand others not less anxious than myself, for the word
of deliverance which we have heard read to-day. Nor shall I ever
forget the outburst of joy and thanksgiving that rent the air when
the lightning brought to us the emancipation proclamation. In that
happy hour we forgot all delay, and forgot all tardiness, forgot
that the President had bribed the rebels to lay down their arms by a
promise to withhold the bolt which would smite the slave-system with
destruction; and we were thenceforward willing to allow the President
all the latitude of time, phraseology, and every honorable device
that statesmanship might require for the achievement of a great and
beneficent measure of liberty and progress.
Fellow citizens, there is little necessity on this occasion to speak
at length and critically of this great and good man, and of his
high mission in the world. That ground has been fully occupied and
completely covered both here and elsewhere. The whole field of fact
and fancy has been gleaned and garnered. Any man can say things that
are true of Abraham Lincoln, but no man can say anything that is new
of Abraham Lincoln. His personal traits and public acts are better
known to the American people than are those of any other man of his
age. He was a mystery to no man who saw him and heard him. Though high
in position, the humblest could approach him and feel at home in his
presence. Though deep he was transparent; though strong, he was gentle;
though decided and pronounced in his convictions, he was tolerant
towards those who differed from him, and patient under reproaches.
Even those who only knew him through his public utterances obtained a
tolerably clear idea of his character and his personality. The image of
the man went out with his words, and those who read them, knew him.
I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the
prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking
back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled
to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set
down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal
American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing
them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish
two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin;
and second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To
do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and
the powerful coöperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this
primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been
vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before
the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him
a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to
rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr.
Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by
the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman
to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.
Though Mr. Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow countrymen
against the negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of
hearts he loathed and hated slavery.[E] The man who could say, “Fondly
do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war shall
soon pass away, yet if God wills it continue till all the wealth piled
by two hundred years of bondage shall have been wasted, and each drop
of blood drawn by the lash shall have been paid for by one drawn by the
sword, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether,”
gives all needed proof of his feeling on the subject of slavery. He was
willing, while the South was loyal, that it should have its pound of
flesh, because he thought it was so nominated in the bond; but farther
than this no earthly power could make him go.
[E] “I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong,
nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think
and feel.”--_Letter of Mr. Lincoln to Mr. Hodges, of
Kentucky, April 4, 1864._
Fellow citizens, whatever else in the world may be partial, unjust,
and uncertain, time, time! is impartial, just, and certain in its
action. In the realm of mind, as well as in the realm of matter, it is
a great worker, and often works wonders. The honest and comprehensive
statesman, clearly discerning the needs of his country, and earnestly
endeavoring to do his whole duty, though covered and blistered with
reproaches, may safely leave his course to the silent judgment of time.
Few great public men have ever been the victims of fiercer denunciation
than Abraham Lincoln was during his administration. He was often
wounded in the house of his friends. Reproaches came thick and fast
upon him from within and from without, and from opposite quarters. He
was assailed by abolitionists; he was assailed by slaveholders; he was
assailed by the men who were for peace at any price; he was assailed
by those who were for a more vigorous prosecution of the war; he was
assailed for not making the war an abolition war; and he was most
bitterly assailed for making the war an abolition war.
But now behold the change: the judgment of the present hour is, that
taking him for all in all, measuring the tremendous magnitude of the
work before him, considering the necessary means to ends, and surveying
the end from the beginning, infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man
into the world better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln.
His birth, his training, and his natural endowments, both mental and
physical, were strongly in his favor. Born and reared among the lowly,
a stranger to wealth and luxury, compelled to grapple single-handed
with the flintiest hardships of life, from tender youth to sturdy
manhood, he grew strong in the manly and heroic qualities demanded
by the great mission to which he was called by the votes of his
countrymen. The hard condition of his early life, which would have
depressed and broken down weaker men, only gave greater life, vigor,
and buoyancy to the heroic spirit of Abraham Lincoln. He was ready for
any kind and quality of work. What other young men dreaded in the shape
of toil, he took hold of with the utmost cheerfulness.
A spade, a rake, a hoe,
A pick-axe, or a bill;
A hook to reap, a scythe to mow,
A flail, or what you will.
All day long he could split heavy rails in the woods, and half the
night long he could study his English Grammar by the uncertain flare
and glare of the light made by a pine-knot. He was at home on the
land with his axe, with his maul, with gluts, and his wedges; and he
was equally at home on water, with his oars, with his poles, with
his planks, and with his boat-hooks. And whether in his flat-boat on
the Mississipi river, or on the fireside of his frontier cabin, he
was a man of work. A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly
sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic.
This very fact gave him tremendous power with the American people, and
materially contributed not only to selecting him to the Presidency, but
in sustaining his administration of the government.
Upon his inauguration as President of the United States, an office,
even where assumed under the most favorable conditions, fitted to
tax and strain the largest abilities, Abraham Lincoln was met by a
tremendous crisis. He was called upon not merely to administer the
government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of
the Republic.
A formidable rebellion rose in his path before him; the Union was
practically dissolved; his country was torn and rent asunder at the
center. Hostile armies were already organized against the republic,
armed with the munitions of war which the republic had provided for
its own defence. The tremendous question for him to decide was whether
his country should survive the crisis and flourish, or be dismembered
and perish. His predecessor in office had already decided the question
in favor of national dismemberment, by denying to it the right of
self-defence and self-preservation--a right which belongs to the
meanest insect.
Happily for the country, happily for you and for me, the judgment of
James Buchanan, the patrician, was not the judgment of Abraham Lincoln,
the plebeian. He brought his strong common sense, sharpened in the
school of adversity, to bear upon the question. He did not hesitate,
he did not doubt, he did not falter; but at once resolved at whatever
peril, at whatever cost, the union of the States should be preserved. A
patriot himself, his faith was strong and unwavering in the patriotism
of his countrymen. Timid men said before Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration,
that we had seen the last President of the United States. A voice in
influential quarters said “Let the Union slide.” Some said that a
Union maintained by the sword was worthless. Others said a rebellion
of 8,000,000 cannot be suppressed; but in the midst of all this tumult
and timidity, and against all this, Abraham Lincoln was clear in his
duty, and had an oath in heaven. He calmly and bravely heard the
voice of doubt and fear all around him; but he had an oath in heaven,
and there was not power enough on earth to make this honest boatman,
backwoodsman, and broad-handed splitter of rails evade or violate
that sacred oath. He had not been schooled in the ethics of slavery;
his plain life had favored his love of truth. He had not been taught
that treason and perjury were the proof of honor and honesty. His
moral training was against his saying one thing when he meant another.
The trust which Abraham Lincoln had in himself and in the people was
surprising and grand, but it was also enlightened and well-founded.
He knew the American people better than they knew themselves, and his
truth was based upon this knowledge.
Fellow citizens, the fourteenth day of April, 1865, of which this is
the eleventh anniversary, is now and will ever remain a memorable day
in the annals of this republic. It was on the evening of this day,
while a fierce and sanguinary rebellion was in the last stages of its
desolating power; while its armies were broken and scattered before the
invincible armies of Grant and Sherman; while a great nation, torn and
rent by war, was already beginning to raise to the skies loud anthems
of joy at the dawn of peace, it was startled, amazed, and overwhelmed
by the crowning crime of slavery--the assassination of Abraham
Lincoln. It was a new crime, a pure act of malice. No purpose of the
rebellion was to be served by it. It was the simple gratification of a
hell-black spirit of revenge. But it has done good after all. It has
filled the country with a deeper abhorrence of slavery and a deeper
love for the great liberator.
Had Abraham Lincoln died from any of the numerous ills to which flesh
is heir; had he reached that good old age of which his vigorous
constitution and his temperate habits gave promise; had he been
permitted to see the end of his great work; had the solemn curtain
of death come down but gradually--we should still have been smitten
with a heavy grief, and treasured his name lovingly. But dying as he
did die, by the red hand of violence, killed, assassinated, taken off
without warning, not because of personal hate--for no man who knew
Abraham Lincoln could hate him--but because of his fidelity to union
and liberty, he is doubly dear to us, and his memory will be precious
forever.
Fellow citizens, I end as I begun, with congratulations. We have done
a good work for our race to-day. In doing honor to the memory of our
friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honors to ourselves
and those who come after us; we have been fastening ourselves to a
name and fame imperishable and immortal; we have also been defending
ourselves from a blighting scandal. When now it shall be said that the
colored man is soulless, that he has no appreciation of benefits or
benefactors; when the foul reproach of ingratitude is hurled at us, and
it is attempted to scourge us beyond the range of human brotherhood, we
may calmly point to the monument we have this day erected to the memory
of Abraham Lincoln.
WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION.
Extract from a speech delivered by Frederick Douglass in Elmira, N. Y.,
August 1, 1880, at a great meeting of colored people, met to celebrate
West India emancipation, and where he was received with marked respect
and approval by the president of the day and the immense crowd there
assembled. It is placed in this book partly as a grateful tribute to
the noble transatlantic men and women through whose unwearied exertions
the system of negro slavery was finally abolished in all the British
Isles.
[Illustration: _A. Lincoln_]
_Mr. President_:--I thank you very sincerely for this cordial
greeting. I hear in your speech something like a welcome home after
a long absence. More years of my life and labors have been spent in
this than in any other State of the Union. Anywhere within a hundred
miles of the goodly city of Rochester, I feel myself at home and among
friends. Within that circumference, there resides a people which have
no superiors in point of enlightenment, liberality, and civilization.
Allow me to thank you also, for your generous words of sympathy and
approval. In respect to this important support to a public man, I have
been unusually fortunate. My forty years of work in the cause of the
oppressed and enslaved, has been well noted, well appreciated, and well
rewarded. All classes and colors of men, at home and abroad, have in
this way assisted in holding up my hands. Looking back through these
long years of toil and conflict, during which I have had blows to
take as well as blows to give, and have sometimes received wounds and
bruises, both in body and in mind, my only regret is that I have been
enabled to do so little to lift up and strengthen our long enslaved
and still oppressed people. My apology for these remarks personal to
myself, is in the fact that I am now standing mainly in the presence
of a new generation. Most of the men with whom I lived and labored
in the early years of the abolition movement, have passed beyond the
borders of this life. Scarcely any of the colored men who advocated our
cause, and who started when I did, are now numbered among the living,
and I begin to feel somewhat lonely. But while I have the sympathy and
approval of men and women like these before me, I shall give with joy
my latest breath in support of your claim to justice, liberty, and
equality among men. The day we celebrate is preëminently the colored
man’s day. The great event by which it is distinguished, and by which
it will forever be distinguished from all other days of the year,
has justly claimed thoughtful attention among statesmen and social
reformers throughout the world. While to them it is a luminous point in
human history, and worthy of thought in the colored man, it addresses
not merely the intelligence, but the feeling. The emancipation of our
brothers in the West Indies comes home to us and stirs our hearts and
fills our souls with those grateful sentiments which link mankind in a
common brotherhood.
In the history of the American conflict with slavery, the day we
celebrate has played an important part. Emancipation in the West Indies
was the first bright star in a stormy sky; the first smile after a long
providential frown; the first ray of hope; the first tangible fact
demonstrating the possibility of a peaceable transition from slavery to
freedom of the negro race. Whoever else may forget or slight the claims
of this day, it can never be other to us than memorable and glorious.
The story of it shall be brief and soon told. Six-and-forty years ago,
on the day we now celebrate, there went forth over the blue waters of
the Carribean sea a great message from the British throne, hailed with
startling shouts of joy and thrilling songs of praise. That message
liberated, set free, and brought within the pale of civilization eight
hundred thousand people, who, till then, had been esteemed as beasts
of burden. How vast, sudden, and startling was this transformation! In
one moment, a mere tick of a watch, the twinkle of an eye, the glance
of the morning sun, saw a bondage which had resisted the humanity of
ages, defied earth and heaven, instantly ended; saw the slave-whip
burnt to ashes; saw the slave’s chains melted; saw his fetters broken,
and the irresponsible power of the slave-master over his victim forever
destroyed.
I have been told by eye-witnesses of the scene, that, in the first
moment of it, the emancipated hesitated to accept it for what it was.
They did not know whether to receive it as a reality, a dream, or a
vision of the fancy.
No wonder they were thus amazed, and doubtful, after their terrible
years of darkness and sorrow, which seemed to have no end. Like much
other good news, it was thought too good to be true. But the silence
and hesitation they observed was only momentary. When fully assured the
good tidings which had come across the sea to them, were not only good
but true; that they were indeed no longer slaves, but free; that the
lash of the slave-driver was no longer in the air, but buried in the
earth; that their limbs were no longer chained, but subject to their
own will, the manifestations of their joy and gratitude knew no bounds,
and sought expression in the loudest and wildest possible forms. They
ran about, they danced, they sang, they gazed into the blue sky,
bounded into the air, kneeled, prayed, shouted, rolled upon the ground,
embraced each other. They laughed and wept for joy. Those who witnessed
the scene say they never saw anything like it before.
We are sometimes asked why we American citizens annually celebrate West
India emancipation when we might celebrate American emancipation. Why
go abroad, say they, when we might as well stay at home?
The answer is easily given. Human liberty excludes all idea of home and
abroad. It is universal and spurns localization.
“When a deed is done for freedom,
Through the broad earth’s aching breast
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic,
Trembling on from East to West.”
It is bounded by no geographical lines and knows no national
limitations. Like the glorious sun of the heavens, its light shines
for all. But besides this general consideration, this boundless power
and glory of liberty, West India Emancipation has claims upon us as
an event in this nineteenth century in which we live, for rich as
this century is in moral and material achievements, in progress and
civilization, it can claim nothing for itself greater and grander than
this act of West India Emancipation.
Whether we consider the matter or the manner of it, the tree or its
fruit, it is noteworthy, memorable, and sublime. Especially is the
manner of its accomplishment worthy of consideration. Its best lesson
to the world, its most encouraging word to all who toil and trust in
the cause of justice and liberty, to all who oppose oppression and
slavery, is a word of sublime faith and courage--faith in the truth
and courage in the expression.
Great and valuable concessions have in different ages been made to the
liberties of mankind. They have, however, come not at the command of
reason and persuasion, but by the sharp and terrible edge of the sword.
To this rule West India Emancipation is a splendid exception. It came,
not by the sword, but by the word; not by the brute force of numbers,
but by the still small voice of truth; not by barricades, bayonets,
and bloody revolution, but by peaceful agitation; not by divine
interference, but by the exercise of simple, human reason and feeling.
I repeat, that, in this peculiarity, we have what is most valuable to
the human race generally.
It is a revelation of a power inherent in human society. It shows what
can be done against wrong in the world, without the aid of armies on
the earth or of angels in the sky. It shows that men have in their
own hands the peaceful means of putting all their moral and political
enemies under their feet, and of making this world a healthy and happy
dwelling-place, if they will faithfully and courageously use them.
The world needed just such a revelation of the power of conscience and
of human brotherhood, one that overleaped the accident of color and
of race, and set at naught the whisperings of prejudice. The friends
of freedom in England saw in the negro a man, a moral and responsible
being. Having settled this in their own minds, they, in the name of
humanity, denounced the crime of his enslavement. It was the faithful,
persistent, and enduring enthusiasm of Thomas Clarkson, William
Wilberforce, Granville Sharpe, William Knibb, Henry Brougham, Thomas
Fowell Buxton, Daniel O’Connell, George Thompson, and their noble
co-workers that finally thawed the British heart into sympathy for the
slave, and moved the strong arm of that Government in mercy to put an
end to his bondage.
Let no American, especially no colored American, withhold a generous
recognition of this stupendous achievement. What though it was
not American, but British; what though it was not Republican, but
Monarchical; what though it was not from the American Congress, but
from the British Parliament; what though it was not from the chair of
a President, but from the throne of a Queen, it was none the less a
triumph of right over wrong, of good over evil, and a victory for the
whole human race.
Besides: We may properly celebrate this day because of its special
relation to our American Emancipation. In doing this we do not
sacrifice the general to the special, the universal to the local. The
cause of human liberty is one the whole world over. The downfall of
slavery under British power meant the downfall of slavery, ultimately,
under American power, and the downfall of negro slavery everywhere. But
the effect of this great and philanthropic measure, naturally enough,
was greater here than elsewhere. Outside the British Empire no other
nation was in a position to feel it so much as we. The stimulus it gave
to the American anti-slavery movement was immediate, pronounced, and
powerful. British example became a tremendous lever in the hands of
American abolitionists. It did much to shame and discourage the spirit
of caste and the advocacy of slavery in church and state. It could not
well have been otherwise. No man liveth unto himself.
What is true in this respect of individual men, is equally true of
nations. Both impart good or ill to their age and generation. But
putting aside this consideration, so worthy of thought, we have
special reasons for claiming the First of August as the birthday of
negro emancipation, not only in the West Indies, but in the United
States. Spite of our national Independence, a common language, a
common literature, a common history, and a common civilization makes
us and keeps us still a part of the British nation, if not a part of
the British Empire. England can take no step forward in the pathway
of a higher civilization without drawing us in the same direction.
She is still the mother country, and the mother, too, of our abolition
movement. Though her emancipation came in peace, and ours in war;
though hers cost treasure, and ours blood; though hers was the result
of a sacred preference, and ours resulted in part from necessity, the
motive and mainspring of the respective measures were the same in both.
The abolitionists of this country have been charged with bringing on
the war between the North and South, and in one sense this is true.
Had there been no anti-slavery agitation at the North, there would
have been no active anti-slavery anywhere to resist the demands of the
slave-power at the South, and where there is no resistance there can
be no war. Slavery would then have been nationalized, and the whole
country would then have been subjected to its power. Resistance to
slavery and the extension of slavery invited and provoked secession and
war to perpetuate and extend the slave system. Thus in the same sense,
England is responsible for our civil war. The abolition of slavery
in the West Indies gave life and vigor to the abolition movement in
America. Clarkson of England gave us Garrison of America; Granville
Sharpe of England gave us our Wendell Phillips; and Wilberforce of
England gave us our peerless Charles Sumner.
These grand men and their brave co-workers here, took up the moral
thunder-bolts which had struck down slavery in the West Indies, and
hurled them with increased zeal and power against the gigantic system
of slavery here, till, goaded to madness, the trafficers in the souls
and bodies of men flew to arms, rent asunder the Union at the center,
and filled the land with hostile armies and the ten thousand horrors of
war. Out of this tempest, out of this whirlwind and earthquake of war,
came the abolition of slavery, came the employment of colored troops,
came colored citizens, came colored jurymen, came colored congressmen,
came colored schools in the South, and came the great amendments of our
national constitution.
We celebrate this day, too, for the very good reason that we have
no other to celebrate. English emancipation has one advantage over
American emancipation. Hers has a definite anniversary. Ours has none.
Like our slaves, the freedom of the negro has no birthday. No man can
tell the day of the month, or the month of the year, upon which slavery
was abolished in the United States. We cannot even tell when it began
to be abolished. Like the movement of the sea, no man can tell where
one wave begins and another ends. The chains of slavery with us were
loosened by degrees. First, we had the struggle in Kansas with border
ruffians; next, we had John Brown at Harper’s Ferry; next, the firing
upon Fort Sumter; a little while after, we had Fremont’s order, freeing
the slaves of the rebels in Missouri. Then we had General Butler
declaring and treating the slaves of rebels as contraband of war; next
we had the proposition to arm colored men and make them soldiers for
the Union. In 1862 we had the conditional promise of a proclamation
of emancipation from President Lincoln, and, finally, on the 1st of
January, 1863, we had the proclamation itself--and still the end was
not yet. Slavery was bleeding and dying, but it was not dead, and no
man can tell just when its foul spirit departed from our land, if,
indeed, it has yet departed, and hence we do not know what day we may
properly celebrate as coupled with this great American event.
When England behaved so badly during our late civil war, I, for one,
felt like giving up these 1st of August celebrations. But I remembered
that during that war, there were two Englands, as there were two
Americas, and that one was true to liberty while the other was true to
slavery. It was not the England which gave us West India emancipation
that took sides with the slaveholder’s rebellion. It was not the
England of John Bright and William Edward Forster, that permitted
Alabamas to escape from British ports, and prey upon our commerce,
or that otherwise favored slaveholding in the South, but it was the
England which had done what it could to prevent West India emancipation.
It was the tory party in England that fought the abolition party
at home, and the same party it was, that favored our slaveholding
rebellion.
Under a different name, we had the same, or a similar party, here; a
party which despised the negro and consigned him to perpetual slavery;
a party which was willing to allow the American Union to be shivered
into fragments, rather than that one hair of the head of slavery should
be injured.
But, fellow-citizens, I should but very imperfectly fulfil the duty of
this hour if I confined myself to a merely historical or philosophical
discussion of West India emancipation. The story of the 1st of August
has been told a thousand times over, and may be told a thousand times
more. The cause of freedom and humanity has a history and destiny
nearer home.
How stands the case with the recently emancipated millions of colored
people in our own country? What is their condition to-day? What is
their relation to the people who formerly held them as slaves? These
are important questions, and they are such as trouble the minds
of thoughtful men of all colors, at home and abroad. By law, by
the constitution of the United States, slavery has no existence in
our country. The legal form has been abolished. By the law and the
constitution, the negro is a man and a citizen, and has all the rights
and liberties guaranteed to any other variety of the human family,
residing in the United States.
He has a country, a flag, and a government, and may legally claim
full and complete protection under the laws. It was the ruling wish,
intention, and purpose of the loyal people after rebellion was
suppressed, to have an end to the entire cause of that calamity by
forever putting away the system of slavery and all its incidents.
In pursuance of this idea, the negro was made free, made a citizen,
made eligible to hold office, to be a juryman, a legislator, and a
magistrate. To this end, several amendments to the constitution were
proposed, recommended, and adopted. They are now a part of the supreme
law of the land, binding alike upon every State and Territory of
the United States, North and South. Briefly, this is our legal and
theoretical condition. This is our condition on paper and parchment.
If only from the national statute book we were left to learn the
true condition of the colored race, the result would be altogether
creditable to the American people. It would give them a clear title to
a place among the most enlightened and liberal nations of the world. We
could say of our country, as Curran once said of England, “The spirit
of British law makes liberty commensurate with and inseparable from the
British soil.” Now I say that this eloquent tribute to England, if only
we looked into our constitution, might apply to us. In that instrument
we have laid down the law, now and forever, that there shall be no
slavery or involuntary servitude in this republic, except for crime.
We have gone still further. We have laid the heavy hand of the
constitution upon the matchless meanness of caste, as well as the
hell-black crime of slavery. We have declared before all the world
that there shall be no denial of rights on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude. The advantage gained in this respect
is immense.
It is a great thing to have the supreme law of the land on the side of
justice and liberty. It is the line up to which the nation is destined
to march--the law to which the nation’s life must ultimately conform.
It is a great principle, up to which we may educate the people, and to
this extent its value exceeds all speech.
But to-day, in most of the Southern States, the fourteenth and
fifteenth amendments are virtually nullified.
The rights which they were intended to guarantee are denied and held
in contempt. The citizenship granted in the fourteenth amendment is
practically a mockery, and the right to vote, provided for in the
fifteenth amendment, is literally stamped out in face of government.
The old master class is to-day triumphant, and the newly enfranchised
class in a condition but little above that in which they were found
before the rebellion.
Do you ask me how, after all that has been done, this state of things
has been made possible? I will tell you. Our reconstruction measures
were radically defective. They left the former slave completely in the
power of the old master, the loyal citizen in the hands of the disloyal
rebel against the government. Wise, grand, and comprehensive in scope
and design, as were the reconstruction measures, high and honorable
as were the intentions of the statesmen by whom they were framed and
adopted, time and experience, which try all things, have demonstrated
that they did not successfully meet the case.
In the hurry and confusion of the hour, and the eager desire to have
the Union restored, there was more care for sublime superstructure of
the republic than for the solid foundation upon which it could alone be
upheld. They gave freedmen the machinery of liberty, but denied them
the steam to put it in motion. They gave them the uniform of soldiers,
but no arms; they called them citizens, and left them subjects; they
called them free, and almost left them slaves. They did not deprive
the old master class of the power of life and death which was the soul
of the relation of master and slave. They could not of course sell
them, but they retained the power to starve them to death, and wherever
this power is held, there is the power of slavery. He who can say to
his fellow-man, “You shall serve me or starve,” is a master, and his
subject is a slave. This was seen and felt by Thaddeus Stevens, Charles
Sumner, and leading stalwart Republicans, and had their counsels
prevailed the terrible evils from which we now suffer would have been
averted. The negro to-day would not be on his knees, as he is, abjectly
supplicating the old master class to give him leave to toil. Nor would
he now be leaving the South as from a doomed city and seeking a home
in the uncongenial North, but tilling his native soil in comparative
independence. Though no longer a slave, he is in a thraldom grievous
and intolerable, compelled to work for whatever his employer is pleased
to pay him, swindled out of his hard earnings by money orders redeemed
in stores, compelled to pay the price of an acre of ground for its use
during a single year, to pay four times more than a fair price for a
pound of bacon, and be kept upon the narrowest margin between life and
starvation. Much complaint has been made that the freedmen have shown
so little ability to take care of themselves since their emancipation.
Men have marvelled that they have made so little progress. I question
the justice of this complaint. It is neither reasonable, nor in any
sense just. To me, the wonder is, not that the freedmen have made so
little progress, but, rather, that they have made so much; not that
they have been standing still, but that they have been able to stand at
all.
We have only to reflect for a moment upon the situation in which these
people found themselves when liberated: consider their ignorance, their
poverty, their destitution, and their absolute dependence upon the very
class by which they had been held in bondage for centuries, a class
whose every sentiment was averse to their freedom, and we shall be
prepared to marvel that they have under the circumstances done so well.
History does not furnish an example of emancipation under conditions
less friendly to the emancipated class, than this American example.
Liberty came to the freedmen of the United States, not in mercy but
in wrath; not by moral choice but by military necessity; not by the
generous action of the people among whom they were to live, and
whose good will was essential to the success of the measure, but by
strangers, foreigners, invaders, trespassers, aliens, and enemies.
The very manner of their emancipation invited to the heads of the
freedmen the bitterest hostility of race and class. They were hated
because they had been slaves, hated because they were now free, and
hated because of those who had freed them. Nothing was to have been
expected other than what has happened, and he is a poor student of the
human heart who does not see that the old master class would naturally
employ every power and means in their reach to make the great measure
of emancipation unsuccessful and utterly odious. It was born in the
tempest and whirlwind of war, and has lived in a storm of violence and
blood. When the Hebrews were emancipated, they were told to take spoil
from the Egyptians. When the serfs of Russia were emancipated, they
were given three acres of ground upon which they could live and make
a living. But not so when our slaves were emancipated. They were sent
away empty-handed, without money, without friends, and without a foot
of land to stand upon. Old and young, sick and well, were turned loose
to the open sky, naked to their enemies. The old slave quarter that had
before sheltered them, and the fields that had yielded them corn, were
now denied them. The old master class in its wrath said, “Clear out!
The Yankees have freed you, now let them feed and shelter you!”
Inhuman as was this treatment, it was the natural result of the bitter
resentment felt by the old master class, and in view of it, the wonder
is, not that the colored people of the South have done so little in the
way of acquiring a comfortable living, but that they live at all.
Taking all the circumstances into consideration, the colored people
have no reason to despair. We still live, and while there is life there
is hope. The fact that we have endured wrongs and hardships, which
would have destroyed any other race, and have increased in numbers and
public consideration, ought to strengthen our faith in ourselves and
our future. Let us then, wherever we are, whether at the North or at
the South, resolutely struggle on in the belief that there is a better
day coming, and that we by patience, industry, uprightness, and economy
may hasten that better day. I will not listen, myself, and I would not
have you listen to the nonsense, that no people can succeed in life
among a people by whom they have been despised and oppressed.
The statement is erroneous and contradicted by the whole history
of human progress. A few centuries ago, all Europe was cursed with
serfdom, or slavery. Traces of this bondage still remain but are not
easily visible.
The Jews, only a century ago were despised, hated, and oppressed, but
they have defied, met, and vanquished the hard conditions imposed upon
them, and are now opulent and powerful, and compel respect in all
countries.
Take courage from the example of all religious denominations that have
sprung up since Martin Luther. Each in its turn, has been oppressed and
persecuted.
Methodists, Baptists, and Quakers, have all been compelled to feel the
lash and sting of popular disfavor--yet all in turn have conquered the
prejudice and hate of their surroundings.
Greatness does not come to any people on flowery beds of ease. We must
fight to win the prize. No people to whom liberty is given, can hold it
as firmly and wear it as grandly as those who wrench their liberty from
the iron hand of the tyrant. The hardships and dangers involved in the
struggle give strength and toughness to the character, and enable it to
stand firm in storm as well as in sunshine.
One thought more before I leave this subject, and it is a thought I
wish you all to lay to heart. Practice it yourselves and teach it to
your children. It is this, neither we, nor any other people, will ever
be respected till we respect ourselves, and we will never respect
ourselves till we have the means to live respectably. An exceptionally
poor and dependent people will be despised by the opulent and despise
themselves.
You cannot make an empty sack stand on end. A race which cannot save
its earnings, which spends all it makes and goes in debt when it is
sick, can never rise in the scale of civilization, no matter under what
laws it may chance to be. Put us in Kansas or in Africa, and until we
learn to save more than we spend, we are sure to sink and perish. It
is not in the nature of things that we should be equally rich in this
world’s goods. Some will be more successful than others, and poverty,
in many cases, is the result of misfortune rather than of crime; but no
race can afford to have all its members the victims of this misfortune,
without being considered a worthless race. Pardon me, therefore, for
urging upon you, my people, the importance of saving your earnings; of
denying yourselves in the present, that you may have something in the
future, of consuming less for yourselves that your children may have a
start in life when you are gone.
With money and property comes the means of knowledge and power. A
poverty-stricken class will be an ignorant and despised class, and no
amount of sentiment can make it otherwise. This part of our destiny
is in our own hands. Every dollar you lay up, represents one day’s
independence, one day of rest and security in the future. If the time
shall ever come when we shall possess in the colored people of the
United States, a class of men noted for enterprise, industry, economy,
and success, we shall no longer have any trouble in the matter of civil
and political rights. The battle against popular prejudice will have
been fought and won, and in common with all other races and colors, we
shall have an equal chance in the race of life.
Do I hear you ask in a tone of despair if this time will ever come to
our people in America? The question is not new to me. I have tried to
answer it many times and in many places, when the outlook was less
encouraging than now. There was a time when we were compelled to walk
by faith in this matter, but now, I think, we may walk by sight.
Notwithstanding the great and all-abounding darkness of our past, the
clouds that still overhang us in the moral and social sky, the defects
inherited from a bygone condition of servitude, it is the faith of my
soul that this brighter and better day will yet come. But whether it
shall come late or come soon will depend mainly upon ourselves.
The laws which determine the destinies of individuals and nations are
impartial and eternal. We shall reap as we sow. There is no escape. The
conditions of success are universal and unchangeable. The nation or
people which shall comply with them will rise, and those which violate
them will fall, and perhaps will disappear altogether. No power beneath
the sky can make an ignorant, wasteful, and idle people prosperous, or
a licentious people happy.
One ground of hope for my people is founded upon the returns of the
last census. One of the most disheartening ethnological speculations
concerning us has been that we shall die out; that, like the Indian, we
shall perish in the blaze of Caucasian civilization. The census sets
that heresy concerning us to rest. We are more than holding our own in
all the southern states. We are no longer four millions of slaves, but
six millions of freemen.
Another ground of hope for our race is in the progress of education.
Everywhere in the south the colored man is learning to read. None now
denies the ability of the colored race to acquire knowledge of anything
which can be communicated to the human understanding by letters. Our
colored schools in the city of Washington compare favorably with the
white schools, and what is true of Washington is equally true of other
cities and towns of the south. Still another ground of hope I find in
the fact that colored men are strong in their gratitude to benefactors,
and firm in their political convictions. They cannot be coaxed or
driven to vote with their enemies against their friends.
Nothing but the shot-gun or the bull-dozer’s whip can keep them from
voting their convictions. Then another ground of hope is that as a
general rule we are an industrious people. I have traveled extensively
over the south, and almost the only people I saw at work there were the
colored people. In any fair condition of things the men who till the
soil will become proprietors of the soil. Only arbitrary conditions
can prevent this. To-day the negro, starting from nothing, pays taxes
upon six millions in Georgia, and forty millions in Louisiana. Not less
encouraging than this is the political situation at the south.
The vote of the colored man, formerly beaten down and stamped out by
intimidation, is now revived, sought, and defended by powerful allies,
and this from no transient sentiment of the moment, but from the
permanent laws controlling the action of political parties.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs
and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support
hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to
the corresponding illustrations.
Pages 410 and 413: “See Note” was printed at the bottom of page 409,
but wasn’t referenced on any page. The note on page 413 was not
referenced on that page. Both of these omissions were corrected in a
later printing of the same edition of this book, and Transcriber has
adjusted both notes to be consistent with those corrections.
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