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Title: Autographs for Freedom
Author: Various
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Autographs for Freedom" ***
[Illustration: ‘HE IS NOT ASHAMED
TO CALL THEM BRETHREN.’]
AUTOGRAPHS
FOR
FREEDOM.
BOSTON:
JOHN P. JEWETT AND COMPANY.
CLEVELAND, OHIO:
JEWETT, PROCTOR, AND WORTHINGTON
LONDON: LOW AND COMPANY.
1853.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by
JOHN P. JEWETT & COMPANY,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
ALLEN AND FARNHAM, PRINTERS,
CAMBRIDGE.
PREFACE.
There is, perhaps, little need of detaining the kind reader, even for
one moment, in this the vestibule of our Temple of Liberty, to state
the motives and reasons for the publication of this collection of
Anti-slavery testimonies.
The good cause to which the volume is devoted;--the influence which
must ever be exerted by persons of exalted character, and high mental
endowments;--the fact that society is slow to accept any cause that
has not the baptism of the acknowledged noble and good;--the happiness
arising from making any exertion to ameliorate the condition of the
injured race amongst us, will, at once, suggest reasons and motives for
sending forth this offering, which, while it shall prove acceptable as
a GIFT BOOK, may help to swell the tide of that sentiment that, by the
Divine blessing, will sweep away from this otherwise happy land, the
great sin of SLAVERY.
Should this publication be instrumental in casting _one_ ray of hope
on the heart of one poor slave, or should it draw the attention of one
person, hitherto uninterested, to the deep wrongs of the bondman,
or cause one sincere and earnest effort to promote emancipation, we
believe that the kind contributors, who have generously responded
to our call, not less than the members of our Society, will feel
themselves gratified and compensated.
The proceeds of the sale of the “AUTOGRAPHS FOR FREEDOM,” will be
devoted to the dissemination of light and truth on the subject of
slavery throughout the country.
On behalf of “_The Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society_,”
JULIA GRIFFITHS, _Secretary_.
ROCHESTER, 1852.
CONTENTS.
Page.
Be up and doing, _Hon. Wm. H. Seward_. 1
Caste and Christ, _Mrs. H. E. B. Stowe_. 4
Letter from the Earl of Carlisle to Mrs. H. B. Stowe, 7
Momma Charlotte, _Mrs. C. M. Kirkland_. 13
A Name, _Hon. Horace Mann_. 18
Letter from Joseph Sturge, 19
Slavery and Polygamy, _R. Hildreth_. 20
The Way, _John G. Whittier_. 23
The Slave and Slave-Owner, _Miss Sedgwick_. 24
Letter from the Bishop of Oxford, 28
Hide the Outcasts, _Rev. William Goodell_. 29
Can Slaves rightfully resist and fight? _Rev. Geo. W. Perkins_. 33
Death in Life, _Ebenezer Button_. 41
True Reform, _Mrs. C. W. H. Dall_. 43
How Long? _J. M. Whitfield_. 46
Letter from Wilson Armistead, 55
Impromptu Stanzas, _J. M. Eells_. 59
John Murray of Glasgow, _James M’Cune Smith_. 62
Power of American Example, _Lewis Tappan_. 68
The Gospel as a Remedy for Slavery, _Lewis Tappan_. 71
Letter from Rev. C. G. Finney, 74
The Slave’s Prayer, _Miss C. E. Beecher_. 75
The Struggle, _Hon. Charles Sumner_. 77
Work and Wait, _Horace Greeley_. 78
The Great Emancipation, _Gerrit Smith_. 81
Ode, _Rev. John Pierpont_. 82
Passages in the Life of a Slave Woman, _Annie Parker_. 85
Story Telling, “ “ 95
The Man-Owner, _Rev. E. Buckingham_. 99
Damascus in 1851, _Rev. F. W. Holland_. 104
Religious, Moral, and Political Duties, _Lindley Murray Moore_. 114
Why Slavery is in the Constitution, _James G. Birney_. 116
The Two Altars, _Mrs. H. B. Stowe_. 127
Outline of a Man, _Rev. R. R. Raymond_. 148
The Heroic Slave Woman, _Rev. S. J. May_. 161
Kossuth, _John Thomas_. 166
The Heroic Slave, _Frederick Douglass_. 174
A Plea for Free Speech, _Prof. J. H. Raymond_. 240
Placido, _Prof. W. G. Allen_. 256
AUTOGRAPHS FOR FREEDOM.
BE UP AND DOING.
Can nothing be done for Freedom? Yes, much can be done. Everything
can be done. Slavery can be confined within its present bounds. It
can be meliorated. It can be, and it must be abolished. The task is
as simple as its performance would be beneficent and as its rewards
would be glorious. It requires only that we follow this plain rule
of conduct and course of activity, namely, to do, everywhere, and on
every occasion what we can, and not to neglect nor refuse to do what we
can at any time, because at that precise time and on that particular
occasion we cannot do more. Circumstances define possibilities. When we
have done our best to shape them and to make them propitious, we may
rest satisfied that superior wisdom has, nevertheless, controlled them
and us, and that it will be satisfied with us if we do all the good
that shall then be found possible.
But we can, and we must begin deeper and lower than the composition
and combination of factions. Wherein do the security and strength of
slavery consist? You answer, in the constitution of the United States,
and in the constitutions and laws of the slave-holding States. Not
at all. It is in the erroneous sentiments of the American people.
Constitutions and laws can no more rise above the virtue of the people
than the limpid stream can climb above its native spring. Inculcate
the love of freedom and the sacredness of the rights of man under the
paternal roof. See to it, that they are taught in the schools and
in the churches. Reform your own codes and expurgate the vestiges
of slavery. Reform your own manners and customs and rise above the
prejudices of caste. Receive the fugitive who lays his weary limbs at
your door, and defend him as you would your household gods, for he,
not they, has power to bring down blessings on your hearth. Correct
your error that slavery has any constitutional guarantee that may not
be released, and that ought not to be relinquished. Say to slavery,
when it shows its bond and demands its pound of flesh, that if it draws
one drop of blood its life shall pay the forfeit. Inculcate that the
free States can exercise the rights of hospitality and humanity, that
Congress knows no finality and can debate, that Congress can at least
mediate with the slave-holding States, that at least future generations
may be bought and given up to freedom. Do all this, and inculcate
all this, in the spirit of moderation and benevolence, and not of
retaliation and fanaticism, and you will ultimately bring the parties
of this country into a common condemnation and even the slave-holding
States themselves into a renunciation of slavery, which is not less
necessary for them than for the common security and welfare. Whenever
the public mind shall be prepared, and the public conscience shall
demand the abolition of slavery the way to do it will open before us,
and then mankind will be surprised at the ease with which the greatest
of social and political evils can be removed.
William H. Seward.
CASTE AND CHRIST.
He is not ashamed to call them brethren.
Ho! thou dark and weary stranger
From the tropic’s palmy strand,
Bowed with toil, with mind benighted,
What wouldst thou upon our land?
Am I not, O man, thy brother?
Spake the stranger patiently,
All that makes thee, man, immortal,
Tell me, dwells it not in me?
I, like thee, have joy, have sorrow,
I, like thee, have love and fear,
I, like thee, have hopes and longings
Far beyond this earthly sphere.
Thou art happy,--I am sorrowing,
Thou art rich, and I am poor;
In the name of our _one_ Father
Do not spurn me from your door.
Thus the dark one spake, imploring,
To each stranger passing nigh,
But each child and man and woman,
Priest and Levite passed him by.
Spurned of men,--despised, rejected,
Spurned from school and church and hall,
Spurned from business and from pleasure,
Sad he stood, apart from all.
Then I saw a form all glorious,
Spotless as the dazzling light,
As He passed, men veiled their faces,
And the earth, as heaven, grew bright.
Spake he to the dusky stranger,
Awe-struck there on bended knee,
Rise! for _I_ have called thee _brother_,
I am not ashamed of thee.
When I wedded mortal nature
To my Godhead and my throne,
Then I made all mankind sacred,
Sealed all human for mine own.
By Myself, the Lord of ages,
I have sworn to right the wrong,
I have pledged my word, unbroken,
For the weak against the strong.
And upon my gospel banner
I have blazed in light the sign,
He who scorns his lowliest brother,
Never shall have hand of mine.
Hear the word!--who fight for freedom!
Shout it in the battle’s van!
Hope! for bleeding human nature!
Christ the _God_, is Christ the _man_!
H. E. B. Stowe.
ANDOVER, JULY 22, 1852.
LETTER FROM THE EARL OF CARLISLE TO THE SECRETARY OF THE SOCIETY.
LONDON, JULY 8, 1852.
MADAM:--
I should be very sorry indeed to refuse any request addressed to me
from “the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Association.”
At the same time I really should feel at a loss what to send, but as I
am on the point of sending off a letter to the authoress of Uncle Tom’s
Cabin, I venture to submit a copy of it to those who I feel sure must
be fond of such a countrywoman.
Your very faithful Servant,
Carlisle
* * * * *
LONDON, JULY 8, 1852.
MADAM:--
I have allowed some time to elapse before I thanked you for the great
honor and kindness you did me in sending to me, from yourself, a copy
of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I thought it due to the subject of which I
perceived that it treated, not to send a mere acknowledgment, as I
confess from a motive of policy I am apt to do, upon the first arrival
of the book. I therefore determined to read, before I wrote.
Having thus read, it is not in the stiff and conventional form of
compliment, still less in the technical language of criticism, that I
am about to speak of your work. I return my deep and solemn thanks to
Almighty God, who has led and enabled you to write such a book.
I do feel, indeed, the most thorough assurance that in His good
providence such a book cannot have been written in vain. I have long
felt that slavery is by far the _topping_ question of the world and
age we live in, involving all that is most thrilling in heroism, and
most touching in distress,--in short, the real epic of the universe.
The self-interest of the parties most nearly concerned on the one hand,
the apathy and ignorance of unconcerned observers on the other, have
left these august pretensions to drop very much out of sight, and hence
my rejoicing that a writer has appeared who will be read, and must be
felt, and that happen what may to the transactions of slavery, they
will no longer be suppressed, “carent quia vate sacrâ.”
I trust that what I have just said was not required to show the entire
sympathy I entertain with respect to the main truth and leading
scope of your high argument, but we live in a world only too apt to
regard the accessories and accidents of a subject above its real and
vital essence; no one can know so well as you how much the external
appearance of the negro detracts from the romance and sentimentality
which undoubtedly might attach to his position and his wrongs, and on
this account it does seem to me proportionately important that you
should have brought to your portraiture great grace of style, great
power of language, a play of humor which relieves and brightens even
the dark depth of the back-ground which you were called upon to reveal,
a force of pathos which, to give it the highest praise, does not
lay behind even all the dread reality, and, above all, a variety, a
discrimination, and a truth in the delineation of character, which even
to my own scanty and limited experience of the society you describe
accredits itself instantaneously and irresistibly. Seldom, indeed,
could I more forcibly apply the line of a very favorite poet,--
“And truths divine came mended from that tongue.”
I have been told that in an English periodical, the quality of genius
has been denied to your book. The motives which must have guided its
composition will probably have made you supremely indifferent to mere
criticism, especially to any which argues so much obfuscation both of
head and heart. Your work has genius of the highest order, and it is
the lowest of its merits.
There is one point which, in face of all that your book has aimed at
and achieved, I think of extremely slight importance, but which I
will nevertheless just mention, if only to show that I have not been
bribed into this fervor of admiration. I think, then, that whenever
you speak of England and her institutions, it is in a tone which fails
to do them fair justice. I do not know what distinct charges you think
could be established against our aristocracy and capitalists, but you
generally convey the impression that the same oppressions in degree,
though not in kind, might be brought home to them which are now laid to
the charge of Southern slave-holders. Exposed to the same ordeal, they
might very probably not stand the test better. All I contend for is,
that the circumstances in which they are placed, and the institutions
by which they are surrounded, make the parallel wholly inapplicable.
I cannot but suspect that your view has been in many respects derived
from composers of fiction and others among ourselves who, writing with
distinguished ability, have been more successful in delineating and
dissecting the morbid features of our modern society, than in detecting
the principle which is at fault, or suggesting the appropriate remedy.
My own belief is, liable, if you please, to national bias, that our
capitalists are very much the same sort of persons as your own in the
Northern States, with the same mixtures and inequalities of motive and
action. With respect to our aristocracy, I should really be tempted to
say that, tried by their conduct on the question of Free Trade, they
do not sustain an unfavorable comparison with your uppermost classes.
Allow me to add, that when in one place you refer to those who have
already emancipated their slaves, I think a case more directly in point
than the proceedings of the Hungarian nobles might have been selected:
such, at least, I feel sure would have been the case, if the passages
in question had been written by one who certainly was keenly alive to
the faults of England, but who did justice to her good qualities and
deeds with a heartiness exceeding that of most of her own sons,--your
great and good Dr. Channing.
I need not repeat how irrelevant, after all, I feel what I have said
upon this head to be to the main issues involved in your work; there
is little doubt, too, that as a nation we have our special failings,
and one of them probably is that we care too little about what other
nations think of them.
Nor can I wish my countrymen ever to forget that their own past
history should prevent them from being forward in casting accusations
on their transatlantic brethren on the subject of slavery. With great
ignorance of its actual miseries and horrors, there is also among us
great ignorance of the fearful perplexities and difficulties with
which its solution could not fail to be attended. I feel, however,
that there is a considerable difference between reluctant acquiescence
in what you inherit from the past, and voluntary fresh enlargements
and reinforcements of the system. For instance, I should not say that
the mode in which such an enactment as the Fugitive Slave Law has been
considered in this country has at all erred upon the side of overmuch
indignation.
I need not detain you longer: I began my letter with returning thanks
to Almighty God for the appearance of your work, and I offer my humble
and ardent prayer to the same Supreme Source that it may have a marked
agency in hastening the great consummation, which I should feel it a
practical atheism not to believe must be among the unfulfilled purposes
of the Divine power and love.
I have the honor to be, Madam,
Your sincere admirer and well-wisher,
CARLISLE.
MRS. BEECHER STOWE.
MOMMA CHARLOTTE.
“Slavery is merely an idea!” said Mr. S----; “the slaves are, in
reality, better off than we are, if they had sense enough to know
it. They are taken care of--(they must be, you know, because it
is the master’s interest to keep them in good condition, and a
man will always do what is for his interest). They get rid of all
responsibility,--which is what we are groaning under; and if they
were only let alone, they would be happy enough,--happier than their
masters, I dare say.”
“You think it, then, anything but kindness to urge their emancipation?”
“To be sure I do! and I would have every one that teaches them to be
discontented hung up without judge or jury.”
“You seem particularly interested for the slave,--”
“Interested! I would have every one of them sent beyond the Rocky
Mountains, if I could,--or into ‘kingdom come,’ for that matter. They
are the curse of the country; but as long as they are _property_,
I would shoot any man that put bad ideas in their heads or that
interfered with my management of them, as I would shoot a dog that
killed my sheep.”
“But do they never get what you call ‘bad ideas’ from any but white
people?”
“O, there is no knowing where they get them,--but they are full of ’em.
No matter how kind you are to them, they are never satisfied!”
“I can tell you where they get some of their ideas of slavery, if you
will allow me.”
“Certainly,--I am always glad of information.”
“Well,--I will take up your time with nothing but actual facts, for
the truth of which I will be answerable. In a Western tour, not many
years since, I saw one day a young lady, fair as a lily, and with a
sweet expression of countenance, walking in the street with a little
black girl whom she held by the hand. The little girl was about six
years old, neatly dressed and very clean; and on her neck she had a
little gauze shawl that somebody had given her, the border of which was
composed of the figure of the American Eagle many times repeated, each
impression accompanied by the word ‘LIBERTY,’ woven into the fabric.
“This curious decoration, together with the wistful look of the child’s
face, and the benevolent air of the young lady, with whom I was
slightly acquainted, led me to ask some questions, which were answered
with an air in which modesty and sensibility were blended. I learned
that the young lady had undertaken the trying task of accompanying the
little girl through the place--which was a considerable village--for
the purpose of collecting the sum of fifty dollars, with which to
purchase the freedom of the child.
“‘And how,’ said I, ‘did you become interested in the poor little
thing?’
“‘She belongs to a member of my family,’ said Miss C----, with a blush;
‘to my aunt, Mrs. Jones.’
“‘And how did she find her way to the north?’
“‘Her mother, who is the servant of my aunt, got leave to bring Violet
along with her, when her mistress came here for the summer.’
“‘But both mother and child are free by the mere circumstance of being
brought here,--’
“‘O, but Momma Charlotte promised her mistress that she would not leave
her, nor let Violet do so, if she might bring the child with her,
and beg money to buy her. She says she does not care for freedom for
herself.’
“I could not do less than go with the good girl for awhile, to assist
a little in her labor of love, which in the end, and with a good deal
of difficulty, was finally accomplished. It was not until after this
that I became acquainted with Momma Charlotte, the mother of Violet,
and learned a few of the particulars of a story which had made her ‘not
care for freedom.’
“Momma Charlotte was the mother of ten children,--six daughters and
four sons. Her husband had been a free black,--a carpenter, able to
keep a comfortable home for his family, hiring his wife of her master.
At the time of the Southampton insurrection, this man was among the
suspected, and, on suspicion, not proof, he was taken up,--tried, after
the fashion of that time, and hung, with several others,--all between
sunset and sunrise of a single day.
“‘He was innocent,--he had had no hand in the matter, as God is my
judge!’ said poor Momma Charlotte.
“This was but the beginning of troubles. A sense of insecurity made the
sale of slaves more vigorous than ever. Charlotte’s children were sold,
one by one--no two together--the boys for the sugar country,--the girls
for--‘the New Orleans market,’ whence they were dispersed, she never
knew where.
“‘All gone!’ she said; ‘where I could never see ’em nor hear from ’em.
I don’t even know where one of ’em is!’
“‘And Violet?’
“‘O yes,--I mean all but Violet. She’s all I’ve got in the world, and I
want to keep her. I begged Missus to let me keep jist one! and she said
if I could get any body to buy her for me, I might have her,--for you
know I couldn’t own her myself, ’cause I’m a slave.’
“‘But you are no longer a slave, Momma Charlotte; your mistress by
bringing you here voluntarily has freed you,--’
“‘Yes,--I know,--but I promised, you see! And I don’t care to be free.
I’m old, and my children’s gone, and my heart’s broke. I ha’n’t no
more courage. If I can keep Violet, it’s all I expect. My mistress is
good enough to me,--I live pretty easy.’
“Such was Momma Charlotte’s philosophy, but her face told through what
sufferings such philosophy had been acquired. A fixed grief sat on
her brow; since the judicial murder of her husband she had never been
known to laugh,--hardly to smile. Her eyes were habitually cast on the
ground, and her voice seemed always on the brink of tears. She was what
you call ‘_dissatisfied_,’ I think, Mr. S----.”
“O, you have selected an extreme case! those things very seldom
happen.” (Seldom!) “After all, you see the poor old thing knew what was
right; she showed the right spirit,--”
“Yes,--she,--but her _owners_?”
Here Mr. S---- was sure he saw a friend at a distance to whom it was
necessary he should speak immediately; so he darted off, and I lost the
benefit of his defence of the peculiarities of the peculiar institution.
Mrs. C. M. Kirkland
A NAME,
ON BEING ASKED FOR HIS AUTOGRAPH.
Why ask a Name? Small is the good it brings;
Names are but breath; _deeds_, DEEDS alone are Things.
Horace Mann.
WEST NEWTON, OCT. 23, 1852.
TO THE SECRETARY OF THE SOCIETY.
In compliance with the request that I would send a few lines for
insertion in “The Anti-Slavery Autograph,” I may say that I cannot
express too strongly my conviction that, if there be truth in
Revelation, it is the duty of every Christian to promote, by all
legitimate means, not only the universal and total, but the _immediate_
abolition of any system under which man can hold property in his
fellow man. Perhaps few of those who take this view of the subject are
sufficiently careful to avoid, as far as possible, any participation
in, or encouragment of slavery, by refusing to use the produce of the
unrequited toil of the slave. Yet until we do this, I think we have
little right to expect the Divine blessing upon our efforts to promote
the abolition of slavery and of the slave trade.
Joseph Sturge
SLAVERY AND POLYGAMY: DOCTORS OF DIVINITY IN A DILEMMA.
An argument is derived from the Jewish Scriptures in favor of
slave-holding, very plausible and weighty with that large class of
persons so poorly gifted with hearts as to find it difficult to
discriminate between the letter that killeth and the spirit that maketh
alive. The Old Testament shows clearly enough, that slave-holding was
tolerated among the Jews; and it being assumed that the system of
Jewish society, or, at all events, that the Mosaic code was framed
after a Divine model, it is alleged to be at least supererogatory, if
not actually impious, to denounce as inconsistent with Christianity
that which God permitted to his chosen and selected people. Are _we_
to pretend to be better and wiser than Abraham and Moses, David and
Solomon?
A recent application of this same argument can hardly fail to operate
with many, as what the mathematicians call a _reductio ad absurdum_; a
proof, that is, of the falsity of a proposition assumed, by exhibiting
its operation in other cases.
The famous Mormon doctrine of the plurality of wives, now at length
openly avowed by the heads and apostles of that new sect, is upheld and
justified by this very same argument. It plainly appears from the Old
Testament, that polygamy equally with slavery, was one of the social
institutions of the Jews, recognized and sanctioned by their laws.
And borrowing the tone, and indeed the very words of our pro-slavery
theologians,--“Do you pretend,” asks Orson Hyde, one of the Mormon
apostles, addressing himself to those who question this new privilege
of the saints--“Do you pretend to set yourselves above the teaching of
God, and the example of his chosen people?”
Nor does the analogy between the two cases stop here. According to the
pro-slavery biblical argument, slave-holding is only to be justified
in Christian slave-holders, who, in holding slaves, have in view not
only selfish benefit or advantage, but the good of the slaves, (who are
not able to take care of themselves,) and the glory of God. According
to the Mormon biblical argument, polygamy is to be allowed only to the
saints; and that, not for any sensual gratification, but only for the
benefit of the women, (who, according to the Mormon doctrine, cannot
get to heaven without some holy husband to introduce them,) and for the
raising up of a righteous seed to God’s glory.
Their favorite biblical argument, urged with such a tone of triumph and
self-satisfaction in all the southern presbyteries and consociations,
and in some northern ones, being thus newly applied by the Mormons,
our pro-slavery friends are placed in a somewhat delicate dilemma.
For they must either abandon as invalid their dogma of slave-holding
derived from Jewish practices, or, if they still hold on to the
argument, and maintain its force, they must prepare to extend the
right hand of fellowship to Brigham Young and his five and forty
wives. It is, indeed, very natural, in fact inevitable, that slavery
and polygamy, avowed or disavowed, should go together; nor does any
good reason appear why those who find justification for the one in the
Jewish Scriptures should hesitate about accepting the other.
R. Hildreth
THE WAY.
Believe me still, as I have ever been,
The steadfast lover of my fellow men;
My weakness,--love of holy Liberty!
My crime,--the wish that all mankind were free!
Free, not by blood; redeemed, but not by crime;
Each fetter broken, but in God’s good time!
John G. Whittier
AMESBURY, 10th MO. 16, 1852.
THE SLAVE AND SLAVE-OWNER.
“I would rather be anything than a slave,--except a slave-owner!” said
a wise and good man. The slave-owner inflicts wrongs,--the slave but
suffers it. He has friends and champions by thousands. Some men live
only to defend and save him. Many are willing to fight for him. Some
even to die for him.
The most effective romance of our times has been written for slaves.
The genius of more than one of our best poets has been consecrated to
them. They divide the hearts and councils of our great nation. They
are daily remembered in the prayers of the faithful. They are the most
earnest topic of the christian world.
But the slave-owner! who weeps, who prays, who lives, who dies for him!
True, he is of the boasted Saxon race, or descended from the brilliant
Gaul, or gifted Celt. He is enriched by the transmitted civilization of
all ages. He has been nurtured by christian institutions. To him have
been opened the fountains of Divine truth. But from this elevation he
is to be dragged down by the mill-stone of slavery.
If he be a rural landlord, he looks around upon his ancestral
possessions, and sees the curse of slave-ownership upon them,--he knows
the time must come when “the field shall yield no meat, the flock shall
be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stall.”
To him the onward tendencies of the age are reversed. His movement is
steadily backward.
To the slave are held out the rewards of fortitude, of long suffering,
of meekness, of patience in tribulation. What and where are the
promises to the slave-owner?
Thousands among them are in a false position. They are the involuntary
maintainers of wrong, and transmitters of evil. Hundreds among them
have scrupulous consciences and tender feelings. They use power gently.
They feed their servants bountifully. They nurse the sick kindly,--and
devote weary days to their instruction. But alas! they live under the
laws of slave-owners. They are forbidden to teach the slave to read,
write, or cipher, to give them the means of independent progress
and increasing light. Their teaching is as bootless as the labor of
Sysyphus! most wearisome and disheartening.
The great eras of domestic life, bright to the thoughtless slave,
are dark with forecasting shadows to the slave-owner. The mother
cannot forget her sorrows, because a man-child is born. If she dare
contemplate his future, she sees that the activities of his nature must
be repressed, his faculties but half developed, his passions stimulated
by irresponsible power, inflamed by temptation, and solicited by
convenient opportunity. She knows that his path in life must be more
and more entangled as he goes onward,--darker and darker with the
ever-deepening misery of this cruel institution.
Is it a “_merry_ marriage-bell” that rings in the ear of a slave-owning
mother for the bridal of her daughter? Does not her soul recoil
from the possible (probable?) evils before her child; to be placed,
perchance, on an isolated plantation, environed by natural enemies; to
see, it may be, the brothers and sisters of her own children follow
their slave-mother to the field, or severed from her to be sold at the
slave-market?
Compared with these miseries of the slave-owner, what are the toils
and stripes of the slave? what his labor without stimulus or requital?
what his degradation to a chattel? what the deprivation of security to
the ties of kindred, and the annulling of that relation which is their
source and chiefest blessing?
The slave looks forward with ever-growing hope to the struggle that
must come. He joyfully “smells the battle afar off.” The slave-owner
folds his arms, and shuts his eyes in paralyzing despair. He hears the
fearful threatenings of the gathering storm. He knows it must come,--to
him fatally. It is only a question of time!
Who would not “rather be a slave than a slave-owner?”
C M Sedgwick
LETTER FROM THE BISHOP OF OXFORD[A] TO THE SECRETARY OF THE SOCIETY.
CUDDELDON PALACE, JULY 7, 1852.
MADAM:--
I readily comply with your desire. England taught her descendants in
America to injure their African brethren. Every Englishman should aid
the American to get rid of this cleaving wrong and deep injury to his
race and nation.
I am ever yours,
Samuel Wilberforce
“HIDE THE OUTCASTS.”
Hide the outcasts, and bewray not
Him that wand’reth to be free;
Haste!--deliver and delay not;--
Let my outcasts dwell with thee.[B]
Shelter thou shalt not refuse him,
Lest, with him, his Lord ye slight;[C]
When, at noon, the foe pursues him,
Make thy shadow dark as night.
With thee shall he dwell, protected,
Near thee, cherished by thy side;
Though degraded, scorned, neglected,--
Thrust him not away, in pride.[D]
As, in truth, ye would that others
Unto you should succor lend,
So, to them, as equal brothers,
Equal love and help extend.[E]
Thou shalt not the slave deliver
To his master, when he flees:--
Heritage, from GOD, the Giver,
Yield them freely, where they please.[F]
As thyself,[G]--thy babes,--their mother,--
Thou wouldst shield from murd’rous arm,
So the slave, thy equal brother,
And his household, shield from harm.
Hearken, ye that know and fear me,[H]
Ye who in my law delight;
Ye that seek me, and revere me,
Hate the wrong, and love the right.[I]
Fear ye not, when men upbraid you,
Worms shall all their strength devour;
My salvation still shall aid you,
Coming ages learn my power.
Why forget the Lord thy Maker?
Why th’ oppressor’s fury dread?
Zion’s King shall ne’er forsake her;--
Where’s th’ oppressor’s fury fled?[J]
Scorn the mandates of transgressors;[K]
Fear thy God, and fear none other;
’Gainst _thyself_ conspire oppressors,
When they bid thee bind thy _brother_.
Lo! the captive exile hasteth
To be loosed from thrall, forever;[L]
Lo! the power of tyrants wasteth,
Perished soon,--recovered, never!
W^m Goodell
CAN SLAVES RIGHTFULLY RESIST AND FIGHT?
I do not answer this question. But the following facts are submitted as
containing the materials for an answer.
About seventy years ago, three millions of people in America thought
themselves wronged by the powers ordained of God. They resolved not
to endure the wrong. They published to the world a statement of
grievances which justified resistance to the powers ordained of God,
and deliberately revolted against the king, though explicitly commanded
by God to “honor the king.” In the process of revolt, about one hundred
thousand men, Europeans and Americans,--were slaughtered in battle, or
slowly butchered by the sickness, imprisonments, and hardships incident
to a state of war.
It was distinctly maintained in 1776, that men may rightfully
fight for liberty, and resist the powers ordained of God, if those
powers destroyed liberty. Christian men, ministers in their pulpits
strenuously argued that it was men’s _duty_ to fight for liberty, and
to kill those who opposed them. Prayer was offered to God for success
in this process of resistance and blood; and good men implored and
obtained help from other nations, to complete the work of resistance to
oppression, and death to the oppressors.
I do not say that these positions were right, or that the men of
1776 acted right. But I do say, that _if_ they were right, we are
necessarily led to some startling conclusions. For there are now three
millions of people of America grievously wronged by the government
they live under. _If_ it was right in 1776 to resist, fight, and
kill, to secure liberty,--it is right to do the same in 1852. _If_
three millions of whites might rightfully resist the powers ordained
of God, then three millions of blacks may rightfully do the same.
_If_ France was justified in aiding our band of revolutionists to
fight for liberty, then a foreign nation may lawfully aid men now to
vindicate their rights. _If_, as the men of 1776 declared, “when a
long train of abuses evinces a design to reduce them _under absolute
despotism_, it is their right, it is their _duty_, to throw off such
government,”--then it is the duty of three millions of men in 1852,
to throw off the government which reduces them to the frightful and
absolute despotism of chattel slavery.
But what were the oppressions, which, in 1776, justified revolt,
battle, and one hundred thousand deaths? They are stated in the
“Declaration of Independence,” are familiar to all, and will therefore
only be abridged here. The powers ordained of God over the men of
1776,--“restrained their trade,”--“refused assent to laws enacted
by the local legislature,”--“kept soldiers to overawe them,”--“did
not punish soldiers for killing a few colonists,”--“imposed taxes
without their consent,”--“in some cases, did not allow them trial
by jury,”--“abolished good laws,”--“made war on them, in case of
disobedience.”
These were the wrongs they complained of. But nearly all their rights
were untouched. They had schools and colleges, and could educate their
children; they could become intelligent and learned themselves; they
could acquire property, and large numbers of them had become rich; they
could emigrate without hindrance to any other country, when weary of
the oppressions of their own; they could elect their own town and state
officers; they could keep swords, muskets, powder and ball in their own
houses; they could not be lashed and sold like brutes; they were never
compelled to work without wages; they could appeal to courts of justice
for protection.
Let us now hear a statement of the wrongs inflicted on three millions
of Americans in 1852.
We have no rights left to us.
Laws forbid us to be taught even to read, and severe penalties are
inflicted on those who teach us.
The natural right of the parent over the child is wholly taken away;
our children are systematically kept in profound ignorance, and are
worked or sold like brutes, at the will of slave-holders.
We can acquire no property, and are kept in utter and perpetual
pauperism, dependent on the mere caprice or selfishness of other men
for subsistence.
If we attempt peaceably to emigrate from this land of oppression, we
are hunted by bull-dogs, or shot down like beasts,--dragged back to
perpetual slavery without trial by jury.
We are exposed to the most degrading and revolting punishments, without
judge or trial, at the passion, caprice, or cruelty of the basest
overseers.
When our wives and daughters are seduced or ravished, we are forbidden
to appeal to the courts of justice.
Whatever outrage may be perpetrated on ourselves or our families, we
have no redress.
We are compelled to work without wages; the fruits of our labor are
systematically extorted from us.
Many thousands of our people are annually collected by slave-traders,
and sold to distant States; by which means families are broken up, and
the most frightful debasement, anguish, and outrage is inflicted on us.
We have no access to courts of justice, no voice in the election of
rulers, no agency in making the laws,--not even the miserable remnant
of liberty, in choosing the despot who may have absolute power over us.
We are hopelessly consigned to that condition most revolting and
loathsome to one in whom the least vestige of manly or womanly feeling
is left,--that of absolute slavery.
The laws treat us not as human beings, but “as _chattels personal_, to
all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever.”
Great numbers of our people, in, addition to all these enormities,
endure unutterable bodily sufferings, from the cruelty and torturing
punishments inflicted on us.
I do not assert that three millions of people, suffering such
intolerable wrongs and outrages, ought to throttle their oppressors,
and kill fifty thousand of them. I only say, that _if_ it was right to
do so in 1776, it is also right to do the same in 1852. _If_ the light
oppressions which the men of the last century endured justified war
and bloodshed, then oppressions ten thousand times worse, would surely
justify revolt and blood. _If_ the colonists might rightfully refuse
to “remain in the calling wherein they were called,” as subjects of
the English government, then slaves may rightfully refuse to continue
in the calling wherein they were called. _If_ three millions of men
might lawfully disregard the text, “honor the king,” on the ground
that the king oppressed them; then three millions of men may lawfully
disregard the text, “servants, obey your masters,” on the ground that
those masters grievously oppress them. _If_ the _prospect of success_
justified the war of 1776, then as soon as three millions of slaves
feel able and determined to vindicate their rights, they may justly
demand them at the point of the sword; and any black Washington who
shall lead his countrymen to victory and liberty, even through carnage,
will merit our veneration. _If_ “liberty or death” was a noble and
Christian war-cry in 1776 for the oppressed, then it would be noble and
Christian-like for the oppressed men of 1852 practically to adopt the
same.
If these inferences appear startling and even horrible, why do they so
appear? Is there any reason except that inveterate prejudice, which
applies very different principles to the colored man and to the white
man? If three millions of white men were in slavery in Algiers now,
should we not urge them, as soon as there was hope of success, to
imitate the men of 1776, rise and fight for liberty? Therefore, until
we are prepared to condemn our ancestors as guilty rebels, and abhor
their insurrection as a wicked resistance to the ordinance of God,
can we blame _any class_ of people for successful revolt against an
oppressive government?
Let this further question be pondered. Who were to blame for the
destruction of one hundred thousand lives in the war of 1776? The
oppressors, or the oppressed? The men who fought for liberty, or the
men who would not let them have it without fighting? Who then would
be responsible for the death of one hundred thousand men, if the
oppressed men of 1852 should kill so many, in fighting for liberty?
If the reader is shocked by such inquiries and inferences, and as
directly and intentionally designed to encourage servile insurrection
and civil war, he may be assured that my aim is entirely different.
It is my wish, to secure timely precautions against danger. For we
are to remember, that our slave and colored population is advancing
with the same gigantic rate of increase characteristic of our country.
In twenty-five years, we shall have six millions of slaves; in fifty
years, twelve millions; in seventy-five years, twenty-four millions.
Can any one dream of the possibility of retaining twenty-four millions,
or twelve millions, of human beings in slavery? Long before that number
is reached, will not vast multitudes of them learn the simple lessons
of liberty and right, which our books, orations, and politicians
inculcate day by day? Will there not arise among them men of courage,
genius, enthusiasm, who will, at all hazards, lead them on to that
glorious liberty which we have taught them is cheaply purchased at any
peril, or war, or bloodshed? When that day comes, as sure it must,
will there not be horrors such as civil war has never yet produced?
Is it not wise, then, to begin measures for averting so fearful a
catastrophe? Is it not madness to slumber over such a frightful future?
Should not the talent and energies of the country be directed to the
momentous inquiry, How can slavery _now_ be peacefully and rightfully
removed? Does not every attempt to hush agitation, and insist on the
finality of anti-slavery measures, make more sure the awful fact that
slavery is to work out its own emancipation in fighting and blood?
Geo. W. Perkins
DEATH IN LIFE.
SUPPOSED INSCRIPTION UPON THE SEPULCHRE OF A NEGRO SLAVE, WHO, FOR
SOME IMAGINED CRIME, HAD BEEN IMMURED HALF A CENTURY IN A DUNGEON.
Ope, jealous portal! ope thy cavern womb,
Thy pris’ner will not flee its close embrace;
He lived and moved too long within a tomb,
Beyond its narrow bounds to dream of space.
To eat his crust and muse, unvarying lot!
Thus, like his beard, his life slow length’ning grew;
So long shut out, the world the wretch forgot,
His cell his universe,--’twas all he knew.
For Memory soon with loving pinions wheeled
In circles narrowing each successive flight;
Her sickly wings at length enfeebled yield,
Too weak to scale the walls that bound his sight.
But Hope sat with him once, and cheered his day;
And raised his limbs, and kept his lamp alight;
Scared by his groans, at length she fled away;
And left him lone,--to spend one endless night.
What change to him, then, is the vault below,
From that where late the captive was confined?
But this,--a worm _here_ eats his BODY now;
Whilst _there_ it gnawed his slow decaying MIND.
E. Button.
LONDON, 1852.
TRUE REFORM.
I have received your appeal, my friends, and am not sorry to find
myself remembered by you. Every moment of the ages is pregnant with the
fate of humanity, but we are inclined to imagine that in which we live
to have a peculiar significance. At this hour, it seems to us as if
the great balance of justice swayed to and fro, in most disheartening
uncertainty; but this moment, like all others, lies in the hollow of
God’s hand, and his infinite love will not fail to justify to men and
angels its terrible discipline.
I have departed on this occasion from the plan of action once laid down
to myself. I have not presented you in these pages with the revolting
facts of slavery; for to deal with the subject at this moment in a
fitting manner, demands a prudence and tact not likely to be possessed
by one absent from the scene of action, and ignorant of the passing
moment. I wish to convey to you the assurance of my deep sympathy in
all Christ-like opposition to sin; my deep sorrow for every loss of
manly self-control, and failure of faith in God, among reformers; my
conviction that the Constitution of the United States, in so far as
it is not in harmony with the law of God, can be no sure foundation
for the law of man; that until it gives place to a higher ground of
union, or until the nation consent to give it a higher interpretation,
it will depress the national industry, corrupt the national morals,
and palsy the national strength. It is my firm faith, that man owes
his first allegiance to God, and that it is the duty of every citizen
who disobeys the law of a land, to bear its penalties with a patience
and firmness which shall show him adequate to the hour, and neither
unwilling nor unfit to complete the sacrifice he has begun. Above all,
O my friends! I pray that God may fill the hearts of the reformers in
this cause, with the deepest devotion to His absolute truth, the truest
perception of the humility of Christ; that He may show them how, as its
exigencies press, they must not only be men full of anti-slavery zeal,
but filled with Divine prudence, sincere desirers of that peace which
is founded on purity,--possessors of that temperance which is its own
best pledge. In the consciousness of the martyrdom of the affections,
which his position involves, the reformer feels oftentimes secure
of his eternal compensation. But I have wondered, of late, whether
martyrdom may not be as dangerous to his spiritual life as worldly
renown, or pecuniary prosperity.
Stretched upon the rack, I may still be puffed up with pride, or an
unhealthy spirit of self-dependence; and sacrificing my last copper
on the altar of a great truth, I may still refuse to offer there my
personal vanity, my wilful self-esteem, or my bitterness of temper.
Let us be willing, O my friends! to lay these also at the feet of
Christ.
Caroline W. Healey Dall.
TORONTO, CANADA, JULY 22, 1852.
HOW LONG?
How long, O gracious God! how long,
Shall power lord it over right?
The feeble, trampled by the strong,
Remain in slavery’s gloomy night?
In every region of the earth,
Oppression rules with iron power;
And every man of sterling worth,
Whose soul disdains to cringe or cower
Beneath a haughty tyrant’s nod,
And, supplicating, kiss the rod
That, wielded by oppression’s might,
Smites to the earth his dearest right,--
The right to speak, and think, and feel,
And spread his uttered thoughts abroad,
To labor for the common weal,
Responsible to none but God,--
Is threatened with the dungeon’s gloom,
The felon’s cell, the traitor’s doom,
And treacherous politicians league
With hireling priests, to crush and ban
All who expose their vile intrigue,
And vindicate the rights of man.
How long shall Afric’ raise to thee
Her fettered hand, O Lord! in vain,
And plead in fearful agony
For vengeance for her children slain?
I see the Gambia’s swelling flood,
And Niger’s darkly rolling wave,
Bear on their bosoms, stained with blood,
The bound and lacerated slave;
While numerous tribes spread near and far,
Fierce, devastating, barbarous war,
Earth’s fairest scenes in ruin laid,
To furnish victims for that trade,
Which breeds on earth such deeds of shame,
As fiends might blush to hear or name.
I see where Danube’s waters roll,
And where the Magyar vainly strove,
With valiant arm and faithful soul,
In battle for the land he loved,--
A perjured tyrant’s legions tread
The ground where Freedom’s heroes bled,
And still the voice of those who feel
Their country’s wrongs, with Austrian steel.
I see the “Rugged Russian Bear,”
Lead forth his slavish hordes, to war
Upon the right of every State
Its own affairs to regulate;
To help each despot bind the chain
Upon the people’s rights again,
And crush beneath his ponderous paw
All constitutions, rights, and law.
I see in France,--O burning shame!--
The shadow of a mighty name,
Wielding the power her patriot bands
Had boldly wrenched from kingly hands,
With more despotic pride of sway
Than ever monarch dared display.
The Fisher, too, whose world-wide nets
Are spread to snare the souls of men,
By foreign tyrants’ bayonets
Established on his throne again,
Blesses the swords still reeking red
With the best blood his country bore,
And prays for blessings on the head
Of him who wades through Roman gore.
The same unholy sacrifice
Where’er I turn bursts on mine eyes,
Of princely pomp, and priestly pride,
The people trampled in the dust,
Their dearest, holiest rights denied,
Their hopes destroyed, their spirit crushed:
But when I turn the land to view,
Which claims, par excellence, to be
The refuge of the brave and true,
The strongest bulwark of the free,
The grand asylum for the poor
And trodden down of every land,
Where they may rest in peace, secure,
Nor fear the oppressor’s iron hand,--
Worse scenes of rapine, lust, and shame,
Than e’er disgraced the Russian name,
Worse than the Austrian ever saw,
Are sanctioned here as righteous law.
Here might the Austrian butcher[M] make
Progress in shameful cruelty,
Where women-whippers proudly take
The meed and praise of chivalry.
Here might the cunning Jesuit learn,
Though skilled in subtle sophistry,
And trained to persevere in stern
Unsympathizing cruelty,
And call that good, which, right or wrong,
Will tend to make his order strong:
He here might learn from those who stand
High in the gospel ministry,
The very magnates of the land
In evangelic piety,
That conscience must not only bend
To everything the church decrees,
But it must also condescend,
When drunken politicians please
To place their own inhuman acts
Above the “higher law” of God,
And on the hunted victim’s tracks
Cheer the malignant fiends of blood,
To help the man-thief bind the chain
Upon his Christian brother’s limb,
And bear to slavery’s hell again
The bound and suffering child of Him
Who died upon the cross, to save
Alike, the master and the slave.
While all the oppressed from every land
Are welcomed here with open hand,
And fulsome praises rend the heaven
For those who have the fetters riven
Of European tyranny,
And bravely struck for liberty;
And while from thirty thousand fanes
Mock prayers go up, and hymns are sung,
Three million drag their clanking chains,
“Unwept, unhonored, and unsung;”
Doomed to a state of slavery,
Compared with which the darkest night
Of European tyranny,
Seems brilliant as the noonday light.
While politicians void of shame,
Cry this is law and liberty,
The clergy lend the awful name
And sanction of the Deity,
To help sustain the monstrous wrong,
And crush the weak beneath the strong.
Lord, thou hast said the tyrant’s ear
Shall not be always closed to thee,
But that thou wilt in wrath appear,
And set the trembling captive free.
And even now dark omens rise
To those who either see or hear,
And gather o’er the darkening skies
The threatening signs of fate and fear;
Not like the plagues which Egypt saw,
When rising in an evil hour,
A rebel ’gainst the “higher law,”
And glorying in her mighty power,--
Saw blasting fire, and blighting hail,
Sweep o’er her rich and fertile vale,
And heard on every rising gale
Ascend the bitter mourning wail;
And blighted herd, and blasted plain,
Through all the land the first-born slain,
Her priests and magi made to cower
In witness of a higher power,
And darkness like a sable pall
Shrouding the land in deepest gloom,
Sent sadly through the minds of all,
Forebodings of approaching doom.
What though no real shower of fire
Spreads o’er this land its withering blight,
Denouncing wide Jehovah’s ire
Like that which palsied Egypt’s might;
And though no literal darkness spreads
Upon the land its sable gloom,
And seems to fling around our heads
The awful terrors of the tomb;
Yet to the eye of him who reads
The fate of nations past and gone,
And marks with care the wrongful deeds
By which their power was overthrown,--
Worse plagues than Egypt ever felt
Are seen wide-spreading through the land,
Announcing that the heinous guilt
On which the nation proudly stands,
Has risen to Jehovah’s throne,
And kindled his Almighty ire,
And broadcast through the land has sown
The seeds of a devouring fire;
Blasting with foul pestiferous breath,
The fountain springs of moral life,
And planting deep the seeds of death,
And future germs of deadly strife;
And moral darkness spreads its gloom
Over the land in every part,
And buries in a living tomb
Each generous prompting of the heart.
Vice in its darkest, deadliest stains,
Here walks with brazen front abroad,
And foul corruption proudly reigns
Triumphant in the church of God,
And sinks so low the Christian name,
In foul degrading vice and shame,
That Moslem, Heathen, Atheist, Jew,
And men of every faith and creed,
To their professions far more true,
More liberal both in word and deed,
May well reject with loathing scorn
The doctrines taught by those who sell
Their brethren in the Saviour born,
Down into slavery’s hateful hell;
And with the price of Christian blood
Build temples to the Christian’s God,
And offer up as sacrifice,
And incense to the God of heaven,
The mourning wail, and bitter cries,
Of mothers from their children riven;
Of virgin purity profaned
To sate some brutal ruffian’s lust,
Millions of godlike minds ordained
To grovel ever in the dust,
Shut out by Christian power and might
From every ray of Christian light.
How long, O Lord! shall such vile deeds
Be acted in thy holy name,
And senseless bigots o’er their creeds
Fill the whole world with war and flame?
How long shall ruthless tyrants claim
Thy sanction to their bloody laws,
And throw the mantle of thy name
Around their foul, unhallowed cause?
How long shall all the people bow
As vassals of the favored few,
And shame the pride of manhood’s brow,--
Give what to God alone is due,
Homage, to wealth, and rank, and power,
Vain shadows of a passing hour?
Oh for a pen of living fire,
A tongue of flame, an arm of steel!
To rouse the people’s slumbering ire,
And teach the tyrants’ hearts to feel.
O Lord! in vengeance now appear,
And guide the battles for the right,
The spirits of the fainting cheer,
And nerve the patriot’s arm with might;
Till slavery, banished from the world,
And tyrants from their power hurled,
And all mankind from bondage free,
Exult in glorious liberty!
J. M. Whitfield.
LETTER FROM WILSON ARMISTEAD TO THE SECRETARY OF THE SOCIETY.
LEEDS, 7TH MO. 22, 1852.
MY DEAR FRIEND:--
In responding to thy welcome communication, I may say that I rejoice
in the cause of the interruption of our correspondence, so far as
it concerns thyself; thy time and talents being so increasingly
occupied, in union with other of humanity’s advocates, in assisting
to overturn the monster iniquity of our age, that crowning crime of
Christendom,--_negro slavery!_
Go on in this good work! and may God’s blessing abundantly attend, till
the eternal overthrow be effected of a system so fraught with every
evil; so abhorrent to the rights of nature, and so contrary to the
spirit of the Gospel;--till the galling chain be broken off the necks
of America’s three million slaves; till its victims be raised from the
profoundest depths of ignorance and woe, to which they are now degraded.
’Tis a marvel to me, that a system like that of negro slavery, which
admits of such atrocities, can be tolerated for a single hour!
Ought not every one who has a spark of humanity, to say nothing of
Christianity, in his bosom,--ought not all the sound part of every
community in which slavery exists to rise up _en masse_, and declare
that, this abomination shall exist no longer?
Who gave to any man the right to enslave his fellow man? Can any
enactment of human legislators so far sanction robbery, as lawfully to
make one man the property of another? Has God poured the tide of life
through the African’s breast, and animated it with a portion of his
own Divine spirit, and at the same time deprived him of all natural
affections, that _he_ alone is to be struck off the list of rational
beings, and placed on a level with the brute? Is his flesh marble, and
his sinews iron, or his immortal spirit of a class condemned, without
hope, to penal suffering, that he is called upon to endure incessant
toil, and to be subjected to degradation, bodily and mental, such
as no other portion of the family of Adam have ever been destined
to endure, without the vengeance of Heaven being signally displayed
upon the oppressors? Does the African mother feel less love to her
offspring than the white woman? or the African husband regard with
less tenderness the wife of his bosom? Is his heart dead to the ties
of kindred,--his nature so brutalized, that the sacred associations of
home and country awaken no emotions in his breast?
History unanswerably demonstrates that the negro does feel, keenly
feel, the wrongs inflicted upon him by his unrighteous enslavers,
and that his mind, barren as it has been rendered by hard usage, and
desolated with misery, is not unwatered by the pure and gentle streams
of natural affection. Yet the lordly oppressors remain unmoved by the
sad condition of the negro, contemplate with indifference his bodily
and mental sufferings, and still dare to postpone to an indefinite
period the termination of his oppression and of their own guilt.
But thanks be to God! there _is_ some counteracting influence to this
feeling, and that it is on the advance. The night has been long and
dark,--already the horizon brightens; the day of freedom dawns.
Go on, then, my friend; I say, go on! in the good cause thou hast
espoused. Labor, and faint not. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do,
do it with all thy might.” My kind regards to Frederick Douglass; may
he, and all others also, be strengthened and encouraged to labor in
the great work of human freedom; that so, by gradual increase, like
the mighty surge, they may become strong enough to overpower and drown
the oppressor, and be enabled to devise and execute measures of mercy
and justice, which may avert the judgments of the Almighty from their
guilty land. For surely some signal display of Divine displeasure must
await America, unless she repent, and undo the heavy burdens of her
THREE MILLION SLAVES.
Are not the signs of the times calculated to remind us forcibly of this
language of Isaiah, “Behold, the Lord cometh out of his place to punish
the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; the earth also shall
disclose her blood, and no more cover her slain.” Do we not hear already
“----the wheels of an avenging God,
Groan heavily along the distant road?”
Assuredly, he comes to judge the earth. “Who shall abide the day of his
coming; who shall stand when he appeareth?”
Thy Friend, very truly,
Wilson Armistead
IMPROMPTU STANZAS,
SUGGESTED BY THE WORKING OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT, AS ILLUSTRATED IN
THE CASE OF REV. DOCTOR PENNINGTON.
BY THE WORK-SHOP BARD.
Bring out the handcuffs, clank the rusted gyves;
Rain down your curses on the doomed race;
Hang out a terror that shall haunt their lives,
In every place.
Unloose the bloodhounds from oppression’s den;
Arm every brigand in the name of law,
And triple shield of pulpit, press, and pen,
Around them draw.
Ho! politicians, orators, divines!
Ho! cotton-mongers of the North and South!
Strike now for slavery, or our Union’s shrines
Are gone forsooth!
Down from their glory into chaos hurled,
Your thirty States in shivered fragments go,
Like the seared leaves by autumn tempests whirled
To depths below.
Closed be each ear, let every tongue be dumb;
Nor one sad pitying tear o’er man be shed,
Though fainting at your threshold he should come,
And ask for bread.
Though woman, fleeing from the cruel grip
Of foul oppression, scarred and stained with blood,
Where from the severed veins the driver’s whip
Hath drank its flood.
Though helpless childhood ask--O pitying Heaven!--
The merest crumb which falls upon the floor,
Tho’ faint and famished, bread must not be given,
Bolt fast the door.
And must it be, thou just and holy God!
That in our midst thy peeled and stricken poor
Shall kneel and plead amid their tears and blood,
For evermore?
Shall those whom thou hast sent baptized from heaven,
To preach the Gospel the wide world around,
To teach the erring they may be forgiven,
Be seized and bound?
Placed on the auction-block, with chattels sold,
Driven like beasts of burden day by day,
The flock be scattered from the shepherd’s fold,
The spoiler’s prey?
How long--thy people cry--O Lord, how long!
Shall not thine arm “shake down the bolted fire!”
Can deeds like these of God-defying wrongs,
Escape His ire?
Must judgments,--such as swept with fearful tread
O’er Egypt when she made thy people slaves,
Where thy hand strewed with their unburied dead
The Red Sea waves?
Must fire and hail from heaven upon us fall,
Our first-born perish ’neath the Avenger’s brand,
And sevenfold darkness, like a funeral pall
O’erspread the land?
We kneel before thy footstool, gracious God,
Spare thou our nation, in thy mercy spare;
We perish quickly ’neath thy lifted rod
And arm made bare.
J. M. Eells.
WEST TROY, MARCH, 1851.
JOHN MURRAY (OF GLASGOW).
About a year ago, the newspapers announced the death of Mr. John
Murray, for many years the secretary of the Glasgow Emancipation
Society, and I would do violence to truth and humanity whose servant
and soldier he was, should I neglect to pen a few recollections of that
most earnest and efficient man.
He was related to the ancient and honorable family of the Oswalds of
Sheildhall, and received that excellent educational and religious
training which is given to the children of the middle and higher
classes in Scotland. At the age of twenty-two or three, in consequence
of an attack of pulmonary hemorrhage, he sailed for the West Indies
and found employment at his trade, house-building, in St. Kitts. Very
soon, however, he found other matters to engage, and almost engross his
attention and labors; in conjunction with an uncle of George Stephen
of London, and a Dr. Hamilton, resident in St. Kitts, he did manly and
successful fight in behalf of the wronged and bleeding slave.
After a residence in that island of some years, during which he
obtained a thorough knowledge of the workings of slavery, he returned
to Glasgow, poor in pocket, but rich in abolitionism. Soon after his
return, he was united in marriage to Miss Anna ----, a lady whose
perfect harmony in sentiment, softened by feminine delicacy, made a
happy anti-slavery home for the zealous and ardent abolitionism of John
Murray. It was a union of hearts attached in early youth, and which had
remained “leal” during a long separation.
Shortly after marriage, he commenced business as a _spirit-dealer_,
then and now a most reputable calling in the opinion of the good
citizens of Glasgow. Temperate himself, his calling gradually became
unpleasant to him. At first he refused to sell spirits to any person
partly inebriated; then he reasoned himself into a total abandonment
of the death-dealing traffic. With no other business prospect before
him, prevented by his long difficulty from working at his trade, with
a young wife and child dependent on him, he suddenly locked up his
spirit-cellar and never more sold rum!
In 1828 or 1829, through the influence of his kinsman, James Oswald,
Esq., of Sheildhall, Mr. Murray was appointed surveyor on a part of the
Forth and Clyde canal, an office requiring much labor for little pay.
His prospects of promotion depended on Mr. Oswald and other members
of the Kirk of Scotland. Mr. Murray was a full member of the Tron
Church, Glasgow, when, according to law, a minister was appointed there
regardless of the choice, and contrary to the wishes of the great
majority of its members. In consequence of this appointment, and again
unmindful of personal advancement, John Murray shook the dust from his
sandals and quit at once and forever the Tron Church and the Kirk of
Scotland.
About the same time the Glasgow Emancipation Society was formed or
re-organized, on the doctrine of immediate emancipation so splendidly
announced by a secession minister of Edinburgh. The secretaries of
this association were John Murray the surveyor, and William Smead, of
the Gallowgate, grocer; the last a Friend. These two were the head
and front, the thinking and the locomotive power of this well known
association which did notable fight, if not the principal labor, in
effecting emancipation in the British West Indies, and in assaulting
American slavery.
And, twenty odd years ago, it was no trifling matter to do anti-slavery
work in Glasgow, the very names of whose stateliest streets proclaimed
that they were built by money wrung out of the blood and sweat of the
negroes of Jamaica, St. Vincents, etc. The whole of the retired wealth,
nearly all the active business influence, the weight of the Established
Church, the rank and fashion of Glasgow, and though last not least,
the keen wit of the poet Motherwell,[N] and the great statistical
learning and industry of M’Queen were arrayed on the side of the
slave-holder. Sugar and cotton and rum were lords of the ascendant! Yet
the poor surveyor and the humble grocer fought on; nor did they fight
alone; the silvery voice and keen acumen of Ralph Wardlaw, the earnest
and powerful Hugh Heugh, the inexorable logic and burning sarcasm
of swarthy Wully Anderson, and the princely munificence of James
Johnston, combined to awaken the people to the enormity of slavery.
And the Voluntary Church movement, and the fight for the Reform Bill
aroused a varied eloquence in the orators who plead for, and a kindling
enthusiasm in the people who were struggling on the liberal side of
all these questions; for the people, battling for their own rights,
had heart room to hear the prayer for the rights of others more deeply
oppressed. Thus ever will liberty be expansive and expanding in the
direction of human brotherhood.
Then KNIBB came along with his fiery eloquence, which swept over and
warmed the hearts of the people with indignation at the dishonor done
religion in the martyrdom of the missionary Smith; and then the grand
scene in the British emancipation drama, the overthrow of Bostwick by
George Thompson, and the monster petitions and the reluctant assent of
the ministry and the passage of the bill.
Those were stirring times in Glasgow, and it did one’s heart good to
see John Murray in their midst. The arrangements for nearly all those
movements originated with, and were carried out by him; he never made
a speech of one minute long, yet he most effectively arranged all the
speaking, drew up all the resolutions and reports and addresses; and
most of the movements in England, the pressure upon the ministry, and
the advocacy in Parliament were the result of his wide and laborious
correspondence. He used more than one ream of paper for manuscripts
upon the great cause which he seemed born to carry out successfully.
In addition to his other correspondence, nearly every issue of two
of the Glasgow tri-weekly papers contained able articles from his
pen in reply to the elaborate defence of slavery carried on in the
Glasgow Courier by Mr. M’Queen. And yet this man, doing this mighty
work, was so entirely unobtrusive, so quiet in his labors, that few
beyond the committee knew him other than the silent secretary of the
Glasgow Emancipation Society. And I shall not soon forget the perfect
consternation with which he heard a vote of thanks tendered him by
resolution at an annual meeting of the society.
In 1835 or 1836, Mr. Murray was promoted to the office of collector
at Bowling Bay, for the company he had so long and faithfully served.
And many an anti-slavery wayfarer can testify to the warm welcome and
genial hospitality of the snug little stone building so beautifully
packed on the Clyde entrance of the Forth and Clyde canal. A charming
family, consisting of a devoted wife, two most promising boys, and a
retiring, sweet tempered girl, made happy the declining years of this
great friend of the slave, and earnest pioneer in many reforms. Freedom
for Ireland, the Peace Question, Radical Reform, a Free Church, and
Total Abstinence, were questions to all of which Mr. Murray devoted
his pen and his purse. His soul received and advocated whatever looked
towards human progress.
In person, Mr. Murray was tall and gaunt, and would strongly remind one
of Henry Clay. About a mile from Bowling Bay, within the enclosure that
surrounds the Relief Church, in a sweet quiet spot, the green turf now
covers what remains of the once active frame of John Murray; and as,
with moistened cheek, I fling this pebble upon his cairn, I cannot help
thinking how much more has been done for the cause of human progress by
this faithful servant to his own convictions of the truth, than by the
nation-wept sage of Ashland.
James M’Cune Smith
NEW YORK, SEPT. 25, 1852.
POWER OF AMERICAN EXAMPLE.
At the last anniversary of the American Home Missionary Society, Rev.
John P. Gulliver made an eloquent address on the duty of bringing the
American people under the full influence of Christian principle, in an
argument drawn from the bearings of our national example on the people
of other lands. _Christianity_, he said, _alone can make the nations
free_. We fully believe in this sentiment. In answer to the question,
_How is Christianity to effect this result?_--Mr. Gulliver’s answer
was: AMERICA IS TO BE THE AGENT.
Other nations, he thought, might do much in working out this great
result; but the chief hopes of the friends of freedom, he suggested,
are centered upon this country. The world needs _an example_; and he
pointed to what the example of this nation has already done, imperfect
as it is. “It is doing, at this moment, more to change the political
condition of man than all the armies and navies,--than all the
diplomacy and king-craft of the world.” If it be so, if, as the speaker
declared, “the battle of the world’s freedom is to be fought on our
own soil,” it would be interesting to look at the obstacles in the
way. The United States must present a very different example from that
exhibited the last twenty-five years, and now exhibited, before this
country will be the agent of Christianity in evangelizing the world.
Think of three millions of our countrymen in chains! Think of the
large numbers held by ministers of the gospel and members of churches!
Think of the countenance given to slave-holders by our ecclesiastical
assemblies, by Northern preachers, by Christian lawyers, merchants, and
mechanics! Think of the platforms, adopted by the two leading political
parties of the country, composed partly of religious men! Think of the
dumbness of those that minister at the altar, in view of the great
national iniquity, and then consider the effects of _such an example_
upon other nations, Christian and Heathen!
Dr. Hawes is stated to have said at the last annual meeting of the
A. B. C. F. M., that Dr. John H. Rice said, in his hearing, more
than twenty years ago: “I do not believe the Lord will suffer the
existing type or character of the Christian world to be impressed on
the heathen.” We also heard the remark, and believe that Dr. Rice, in
alluding to the state of religion in this country, said, “it was so
far short of what Christianity required, that sanguine as many were
that the United States was speedily to be the agent of the world’s
conversion, he did not believe, for one, that God would suffer the
Christianity of this country, as it then was, to be impressed upon the
heathen world.” If the character of our religion was thus twenty years
ago, what is it now? As a religious people we have been boastful. We
have acted as if we thought God could not convert the world without
the instrumentality of this country. It is far more probable that the
converted heathen will send missionaries to the United States to teach
us the first rudiments of Christianity, than that this country, at the
present low ebb of religion, will be the agent of converting heathen
nations to God.
Dr. Hawes believed “that if the piety of the church were corrected and
raised to the standard of Paul, God would soon give to the Son the
heathen for his inheritance.” No doubt of it. Such piety would do away
with chattel slavery, with caste, with slavery platforms, with ungodly
rulers, with Indian oppression, with divorcing Christianity from the
ballot-box, with heathenism at home. Let us pray for such piety; and
that hundreds of such men as RICE and HAWES may lift up their voices
like a trumpet, and put forth corresponding action, until the nation
shall be regenerated and become fit to enlighten, and, through the
grace of God, save a dying world.
“THE GOSPEL AS A REMEDY FOR SLAVERY.”
In one of the leading Congregational papers, a writer, W. C. J., has
commenced a series of communications under the above heading. It is
well to discuss the subject. The writer says, “There are, it is true,
many among our three millions of slaves who are acquainted with the
rudiments of religious truth, and are leading lives of sincere piety.”
Dr. Nelson, a native of a slave State, stated, as the result of
experience for many years, that he had never known more than three or
four slaves who he had reason to believe were truly and intelligently
pious. The Synod of South Carolina and Georgia published to the world,
some years since, that the great mass of slaves were heathen, as much
so as the heathen of any portion of the globe. What authority W. C.
J. has for saying there are, among the three millions of American
slaves, “many” who are “leading lives of sincere piety,” I do not know.
It is probably the mere conjecture of an ardent mind. He qualifies
the expression by asking, “What is the type of the religion that too
generally appears among the slaves?” And then replies to his own
question, “It is sickly and weak, like a plant growing in a cellar,
or a cave; a compound of sincere piety with much of superstition and
fanaticism.” What sort of piety is that?
A sagacious observer has remarked, that there never can be, in our day,
intelligent piety where men are not possessed of property, especially
where they are mere serfs or slaves. How many American slaves have
the piety of “Uncle Tom,” we are unable to say. Probably very few.
And it must fill the heart of every one who loves the souls of men,
with anguish to contemplate the spiritual destitution of the slaves in
this country; kept in bondage by the religious and political apathy or
acts of professing Christians, of different denominations, in their
individual or associated capacity. But to the question: _Is the gospel
a remedy for slavery?_ We answer, unhesitatingly, not such a gospel
as is preached to them; for while it does very little to enlighten
either slave or master, it enjoins upon the former passive obedience,
and inculcates upon the latter the right and duty of holding their
fellow men in bondage. Nor have we much hesitation in avowing it as
our belief, that the gospel, as generally preached in the free States,
is quite inadequate to put an end to slavery. It does not reach
the conscience of the tens of thousands who are, in various ways,
connected with slave-holding by relationship, business correspondence,
or political or ecclesiastical ties. As proof of this, we need only
contemplate the action of the Northern divisions of the political and
religious national parties. Slavery is countenanced, strengthened,
increased, extended by their connivance or direct agency. The truth
is, Christianity, as promulgated by the great mass of the preachers
and professors at this day even in the free States, is not a remedy
for slavery. It is a lamentable truth, one that might justly occasion
in the heart of every true Christian the lamentation of the prophet
Jeremiah: “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of
tears, that I might weep, day and night, for the slain of the daughters
of my people!” And it is in view of this truth, that the friends of a
pure and full gospel have great encouragement to persevere in their
work of faith and love. The missionaries connected with the American
Missionary Association, at home and abroad, inculcate, fearlessly
and persistently, a gospel of freedom, and make no more apology or
allowance for slave-holding than for any other sin or crime. Such
missionaries should be sustained, their numbers augmented, and prayer
ascend for them continually.
Lewis Tappan
LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY.
DEAR MADAM:--
Your request to transmit my name, with a short article, for insertion
in your contemplated publication, is before me. I have neither time nor
words in which to express my unalterable abhorrence of slavery, with
all the odious apologies and blasphemous claims of Divine sanction for
it, that have been attempted. I regard all attempts, by legislation or
otherwise, to give the abominable system “aid and comfort” as involving
treason against the government of God, and as insulting the consciences
and common sense of men.
Yours truly,
C. G. Finney
OBERLIN, 24 SEPT., 1852.
THE SLAVE’S PRAYER.
The _first effort_ of my early life in narrative writing, was in behalf
of those who, in even darker days than these, were preëminently those
who, on earth, “had no helper.”
From this tale is selected these few lines--a song introduced into
the story--not because it has any poetic merit, but because to me and
perhaps to others, it seems interesting from the above circumstance.
Catharine E. Beecher.
SONG OF PRAISE.
Though man neglects my sighing,
And mocks the bitter tear,
Yet does not God my crying
With kindest pity hear?
And when with fierce heat panting
His hand can be my shade,
And when with weakness fainting
Support my aching head.
And when I felt my cares
For those his love can save,
Will he not hear the prayers
Of the poor negro slave?
Yes, for the poor and needy
He promises to save,
And who is poor and needy
Like the poor negro slave!
THE STRUGGLE.
Ours is a noble cause; nobler even than that of our fathers, inasmuch
as it is more exalted to struggle for the freedom of _others_, than for
our _own_. The love of right, which is the animating impulse of our
movement, is higher even than the love of freedom. But right, freedom,
and humanity, all concur in demanding the abolition of slavery.
Charles Sumner
BOSTON, OCT. 16, 1852.
WORK AND WAIT.
MY FRIEND:--
I have found no moment till the present that I could devote to a
compliance with your request, and I am now probably too late. However,
let me hastily proffer a few suggestions to opponents of slavery, which
I trust may not be found unprofitable. I would say, then:
1. Do not choose to separate and isolate yourselves from the general
movement of humanity, save as you may be constrained to oppose certain
eddies of that movement. Had WILBERFORCE, CLARKSON, and their associate
pioneers in the cause of British abolition, seen fit to cut themselves
loose from all preëxisting sects and parties, and for a special
anti-slavery church and party, I think the triumph of their cause would
have been still unattained.
2. Do not refuse to do a little good because you would much prefer to
do a greater which is now unattainable. The earth revolves in her vast
orbit gradually; and he who has done whatever good he can, need not
reproach himself for his inability to do more.
3. Be foremost in every good work that the community around you _will_
appreciate,--not _because_ they will appreciate it, but because their
appreciation and sympathy will enable you to do good in other spheres,
and do it more effectually.
4. Be preëminent in your consideration and regard for the rights and
wrongs of labor in your own circle, even the rudest and humblest. An
abolitionist who hires his linen made up at the lowest market rate,
and pays his wash-woman in proportion, will do little good to the
anti-slavery or any other philanthrophic cause. The man of liberal
culture and generous heart who unostentatiously tries to elevate the
most depressed to his own level, is doing a good work against slavery,
however unconsciously.
5. Have faith, with a divine patience; man is privileged to labor
for a good cause, but the glory of its success must redound to his
Maker. Next to a great defeat, the most fatal event for slavery would
be a great triumph. Doubtless, the bolts are now forging in some
celestial armory destined to strike the shackles from the limbs of the
bondman, and cleanse the land from the foulest and blackest iniquity
ever organized and legalized in the christian world. The shout of
deliverance may come when it is least expected,--nay, the very means
employed to render its coming impossible, will probably secure and
hasten it. For that and every other needed reform, let the humane and
hopeful strive, not despairing in the densest midnight, and realizing
that the darkest hour is often that preceding the dawn. Let them,
squandering no opportunity, and sacrificing no principle,
“Learn to labor, and to wait.”
Horace Greeley
THE GREAT EMANCIPATION.
Beautiful and happy will this world be, when slavery and every other
form of oppression shall have ceased. But this change can be produced
only by the religion of Jesus Christ. Reliance on any other power to
overthrow slavery, or restore to order and happiness this sin-crazed
and sin-ruined world, will be vain.
Gerrit Smith
PETERBORO’, SEPT. 22, 1852.
ODE
Sung at the celebration of the First Anniversary of the kidnapping,
at Boston, of Thomas Sims, a fugitive slave:--the kidnapping done
under the forms of law, and by its officers, 12 June 1851. The deed
_celebrated_ at the Melodeon, Boston, 12 June 1852.
BY REV. JOHN PIERPONT.
Souls of the patriot dead,
On Bunker’s height who bled!
The pile, that stands
On your long-buried bones,--
Those monumental stones,--
Should not suppress the groans,
This day demands.
For Freedom there ye stood;
There gave the earth your blood;
There found your graves;
That men of every clime,
Faith, color, tongue, and time,
Might, through your death sublime,
Never be slaves.
[Illustration: LIBERTY]
Over your bed, so low,
Heard ye not, long ago,
A voice of power[O]
Proclaim to earth and sea,
That, where ye sleep, should be
A home for Liberty,
Till Time’s last hour?
Hear ye the chains of slaves,
Now clanking round your graves?
Hear ye the sound
Of that same voice, that calls
From out our Senate halls,[P]
“Hunt down those fleeing thralls,
With horse and hound!”
That voice your sons hath swayed!
’Tis heard, and is obeyed!
This gloomy day
Tells you of ermine stained,
Of Justice’ name profaned,
Of a poor bondman, chained
And borne away!
Over Virginia’s Springs,
Her eagles spread their wings,
Her Blue Ridge towers:--
That voice,[Q]--once heard with awe,--
Now asks,--“Who ever saw,
Up there, a higher law
Than this of ours?”
Must _we_ obey that voice?
When God, or man’s the choice,
Must we postpone
HIM, who from Sinai spoke?
Must we wear slavery’s yoke?
Bear of her lash the stroke,
And prop her throne?
Lashed with her hounds, must we
Run down the poor, who flee
From Slavery’s hell?
Great God! when we _do_ this,
Exclude us from thy bliss;
At us let angels hiss,
From heaven that fell!
Jn. Pierpont
PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE WOMAN.
BY ANNIE PARKER.
“The slaves at Oak Grove did not mourn for poor Elsie when she died,”
said aunt Phillis, continuing her narrative. “She was never a favorite,
and from the time her beauty attracted the notice of the young master,
and he began to pet her, she grew prouder and prouder, and treated the
other slaves as if she were their mistress, rather than their equal.
They hated her for her influence over the master, and she knew it, and
that made matters worse between them.
“When she died in giving birth to her second child, her little boy and
I were the only ones who felt any sorrow. The master had grown tired of
her, though he had once been very fond of her. Besides, he was at this
time making arrangements for his marriage with a beautiful Northern
lady, so that whatever he might have felt, nobody knew anything about
it.
“Elsie was my younger sister. I loved her dearly, and had been almost
as proud as she was of her remarkable beauty. Her little boy was very
fond of his mother, and she doated upon him. He mourned and mourned for
her, after her death, till I almost thought he would die too. He was a
beautiful boy, and at that time looked very much like his father, which
was probably the reason why the master sold him, before he brought his
bride to Oak Grove.
“It was very hard for me to part with poor Elsie’s little boy. But the
master chose to sell him, and my tears availed nothing. Zilpha, Elsie’s
infant, was given me to take care of when her mother died, and with
that I was obliged to be content.
“Marion Lee, the young mistress, was very beautiful, but as different
from poor Elsie as light from darkness. She had deep blue eyes, with
long silken lashes, and a profusion of soft brown hair. She always
made me think of a half-blown rosebud, she was so delicate and fair.
She proved a kind and gentle mistress. All the slaves loved her, as
well they might, for she did everything in her power to make them
comfortable and happy.
“When she came to Oak Grove, she chose me to be her waiting-maid.
Zilpha and I occupied a large pleasant room next to her dressing-room.
“She made a great pet of Zilpha. No one ever told her that she was her
husband’s child. No one would have dared to tell her, even if she had
not been too much beloved, for any one to be willing to grieve her, as
the knowledge of this fact must have done.
“In due time she, too, had a little girl, beautiful like herself.
Zilpha was delighted with the baby. She never wearied of kissing its
tiny hands, and talking to it in her sweet coaxing tones. Mrs. Lee said
Zilpha should be Ida’s little maid. The children, accordingly, grew
up together, and when they were old enough to be taught from books,
everything that Ida learned, Zilpha learned also.
“When Zilpha was seventeen, she was more beautiful than her mother
had ever been, and she was as gentle and loving as Elsie had been
passionate and proud. There was a beautiful, pleading look in her large
dark eyes, when she lifted the long lashes so that you could see into
their clear depths. She was graceful as a young fawn, and playful as a
kitten, and she had read and studied so many books, that _I_ thought
she knew almost as much as the master himself.
“Mr. Minturn lived at Lilybank, the estate joining Oak Grove. He was
an old friend of Mr. Lee, and the families were very intimate. About
this time a relative of Mrs. Minturn died at the far South, and left
her a large number of slaves. I don’t know how they were _all_ disposed
of, but one of the number, a very handsome young man, named Jerry,
was brought to Lilybank, and became Mr. Minturn’s coachman. He was
considered a great prize, for he had a large muscular frame, and was
capable of enduring a great amount of bodily fatigue. He was, also,
for a slave, very intelligent, and from being at first merely the
coachman, he soon became the confidential servant of his master.
“Owing to the intimacy between the heads of the two families, the
young people of both were much together. Ida often spent whole days
at Lilybank, and as Zilpha always accompanied her, she had ample
opportunity to become acquainted with the new man Jerry.
“It so happened that I, being more closely confined by my duties at
home, had never seen Jerry, when in the summer following his coming to
Lilybank, Mrs. Lee went to visit her friends at the North, and took me
with her. Ida and Zilpha remained at home. We were gone three months.
A few days after our return, Zilpha told me that she was soon to be
married to Jerry. The poor child was very happy. She had evidently
given him her whole heart. We talked long that day, for I wanted to
know how it had been brought about, and she told me all, with the
simplicity and artlessness of a child. They had felt great anxiety lest
their masters should oppose the marriage. But that fear was removed.
Mr. Lee had himself proposed it, and Mr. Minturn gladly consented. I
rejoiced to see my darling so happy, and felt truly thankful to God
that the warm love of her heart had not been blighted.
“That same evening Jerry came to see Zilpha. She called me immediately,
for I had never seen him, and she wished us to meet. The moment I
looked upon his face, I knew he was my poor Elsie’s son. I grew sick
and faint, and thought I should have fallen.
“Zilpha made me sit down, and brought me a glass of water, wondering
all the time, poor thing, what had made me ill so suddenly. I soon
recovered sufficiently to remember that I must not betray the cause
of my agitation. I did not speak much, but watched Jerry’s face as
closely as I could, without arresting their attention. Every moment
strengthened the conviction that my suspicion was correct. There was
the same proud look that Elsie had, the same flashing eye, and slightly
curled lip, and when he carelessly brushed back the hair from his
forehead, I saw a scar upon it, which I knew was caused by a fall but a
little while before his mother died. O God! I thought, what will become
of my darling child!
“I soon left the room, on the pretence that my mistress wanted me, but
really that I might shut myself into my own room and think. I did not
close my eyes that night, and when the morning dawned, I was as far as
ever from knowing what I ought to do. At last I resolved to see the
master as early as I could, and tell him all.
“After breakfast I went to the library to fetch a book for my mistress,
and found the master there. He was reading, but looked up as I entered,
and said kindly, ‘What do you wish for, Phillis?’ I named the book my
mistress wanted. He told me where it was. I took it from the shelf, and
stood with it in my hand. The opportunity which I desired had come,
but I trembled from head to foot, and had no power to speak. I don’t
know how I ever found words to tell him that Jerry was his own child.
I tried, afterwards, to remember what I said, but I could not recall a
word. He turned deadly pale, and sat for some minutes silent. At length
in a low, husky voice, he said, ‘You will not be likely to speak of
this, and it is well, for it must not be known. I shall satisfy myself
if what you have told me is true. If I find that it is, I shall know
what to do. You may go.’
“I took the book to my mistress, and was sent by her to find Zilpha.
She was in the garden with Ida, and when I called her, she came
bounding towards me with such a bright, happy face, that I could
scarcely restrain my tears. Zilpha was a beautiful reader. She often
read aloud to her mistress, by the hour together. I liked to take my
sewing and sit with them at such times, but that day I was glad to shut
myself up alone in my room.
“The next day the master sent for me to the library. ‘It is true,
Phillis,’ he said to me, ‘Jerry is without doubt poor Elsie’s child.’
If an arrow had pierced my heart at that moment, I could not have felt
worse, for though I had thought I was sure it was so, all the while a
hope was lingering in my heart that I was mistaken. I did not speak,
and the master seeing how I trembled, kindly told me to sit down, and
went on; ‘I did not see Jerry myself, he said, Mr. Minturn made all
necessary inquiries for me. Jerry remembers his mother, and describes
her in a way that admits of no mistake. He remembers, too, that a
gentleman used sometimes to visit his mother, who took a great deal of
notice of him, and would let him sit upon his lap and play with his
watch seals. His mother used to be very happy when this gentleman came,
and when he went away she would almost smother the little boy with
kisses, and talk to him of his papa. I offered to buy Jerry, but Mr.
Minturn would not part with him. If he would have consented, I might
easily have disposed of the whole matter.’
“A horrible fear took possession of me at these words. Would he _dare_
to sell my darling Zilpha? The thought almost maddened me. Scarce
knowing what I did, I threw myself on my knees before him, and begged
him not to think a second time of selling his own flesh and blood.
He angrily bade me rise, and not meddle with that in which I had no
concern. That he had a right, which he should exercise, to do what he
would with his own. He had thought it proper, he said, to tell me what
I had just heard, but charged me never again to name the subject to any
living being, and not to let any one suspect from my appearance that
anything unusual had occurred. With this he dismissed me.
“What I suffered during that dreadful week, is known only to God. I
could neither eat nor sleep. It seemed to me I should lose my reason.
“Jerry came once to Oak Grove, but I would not see him. Zilpha I
avoided as much as possible. I could not bear to look upon her innocent
happiness, knowing as I did that it would soon be changed into
unspeakable misery.
“The first three days the master was away from home. On Thursday he
returned. When I chanced to meet him, he looked uneasy; and if he came
to his wife’s room and found me with her, he would make some excuse for
sending me away.
“Saturday was a beautiful bright October day, and Ida proposed to
Zilpha that they should take their books and spend the forenoon in the
woods. They went off in high spirits. I thought I had never seen my
Zilpha look so lovely. Love and happiness had added a softer grace to
her whole being. I followed them to the door, and she kissed me twice
before leaving me; then looking back, when she had gone a little way,
and seeing me still standing there, she threw a kiss to me with her
little hand, and looked so bright and joyous, that my aching heart felt
a new pang of sorrow. What was it whispered to me then that I should
never see her again?
“I went back to my work, and presently the master came and asked for
Ida. He wished her to ride with him. I told him where she was, and he
went in search of her. Zilpha did not come back with them. ‘We told her
to stay if she wished,’ Ida said. But my heart misgave me. I should at
once have gone in search of her, but Mrs. Lee wanted me, and I could
not go.
“I cannot bear, even now, to recall the events of that day. My worst
fears were realized. During my master’s absence, he had sold my darling
to a Southern trader, who only waited a favorable opportunity to take
her away without the knowledge of the family. He had been that morning
with Mr. Lee, and was in the house when Mr. Lee returned with Ida from
the woods.
“I don’t know how the master ever satisfied his wife and Ida about
Zilpha’s disappearance. There was a report that she had run away. But I
don’t think they believed it. Certainly _I_ never did.
“I almost forgot my own sorrow when I saw how poor Jerry felt when
he knew what had happened. Of course he did not know what I did. He
_never_ knew why Zilpha was sent away, but he knew she was sold, and
that there was little reason to hope he should ever see her again. He
went about his work as usual, but there was a look in his eye which
made one tremble.
“Before many days he was missing, and though his master searched the
country, and took every possible means to find him, he could discover
no trace of the fugitive. I felt satisfied he had followed the North
Star, but I said nothing, and was glad the poor fellow had gone from
what would constantly remind him of Zilpha.
“During the following winter, Mrs. Lee had a dangerous illness. I
watched over her night and day, and when she recovered, my master was
so grateful for what I had done, that he gave me my freedom, and money
enough to bring me to the North.
“Of Zilpha’s fate I have been able to learn nothing. I can only leave
her with God, who though his vengeance is long delayed, hears and
treasures up every sigh and tear of his poor slave-children.
“I saw, a few days since, a man who knows Jerry. He is living not many
miles from me, and I shall try to see him before I die. But I shall
never tell him the whole extent of the wrongs he suffered in slavery.”
Annie Parker.
STORY TELLING.
BY ANNIE PARKER.
The winter wind blew cold, and the snow was falling fast,
But within the cheerful parlor none listened to the blast;
The fire was blazing brightly, and soft lamps their radiance shed
On rare and costly pictures, and many a fair young head.
The father in the easy chair, to his youngest nestling dove,
Whispered a wondrous fairy tale, such as all children love;
Brothers and sisters gathered round, and the eye might clearly trace
A happiness too deep for words, on the mother’s lovely face.
And when the fairy tale was done, the blue-eyed Ella said,
“Mama, please tell a story, too, before we go to bed,
And let it be a funny one, such as I like to hear,
‘Red Riding Hood,’ or ‘The Three Bears,’ or ‘Chicken Little-dear.’”
A smile beamed on the mother’s face, as the little prattler spoke,
And kissing her soft, rosy cheek, she thus the silence broke,
“I will tell you, my own darlings, a story that is true,
Of a little Southern maiden, with a skin of sable hue.
“Xariffe, her mother called her, a child of beauty rare,
With soft gazelle-like eyes, and curls of dark and shining hair,
A fairy form of perfect grace, and such artless winning ways
That none who saw her, e’er could fail her loveliness to praise.
“She sported mid the orange-groves in gleeful, careless play,
And her mother, as she gazed on her, in agony would pray,
‘My Father, God! be merciful! my cherished darling save
From the curse whose sum of bitterness is to be a female slave.’”
“God heard her prayer, but often He in wisdom doth withhold
The boon we crave, that we may be pure and refined like gold;
And the mother saw Xariffe grow in loveliness and grace,
Till the roses of five summers blushed in beauty on her face.
“At length, one day, one sunny day, when earth and heaven were bright,
The mother to her daily toil went forth at morning light;
At evening, when her task was done,--how can the tale be told?
She came back to her empty hut, to find her darling sold.
“Come nearer, my own precious ones, your soft white arms entwine
Around my neck, and kiss me close, sweet Ella, daughter mine;
Five years in beauty _thou_ hast bloomed, of my happy life a part,
Oh, God! I guess the anguish of that lone slave-mother’s heart.
“Now, darlings, go and kiss papa, and whisper your good-night,
Then hasten to your little beds, and sleep till morning light;
But oh! before you close your eyes, God’s care and blessing crave,
On the saddest of His children, that poor heartbroken slave.”
THE MAN-OWNER.
A friend of mine, on the ---- day of ----, 18--, (the dates it is
unnecessary to specify,) became the owner of a man. He had never owned
one before; and he has had so much trouble with him, that I doubt if he
will ever allow himself to become owner of one again. My friend is not
a Southerner; yet the circumstances by which so singular a dispensation
fell to him, it is unnecessary for me to recount. I will briefly
describe the master and the man, and show how they succeeded in their
relationship.
The master was wholly respectable in his life and character; endowed
with good sense; well enough off in the world, able to hire service,
if he needed, and to pay for it: his temper not bad, though sometimes
irritable;--he could be provoked as others can. He had strong passions,
and sometimes in the course of his life they had got the better of
him, and had led him to conduct which, in the coolness of his mind, he
bitterly repented. Circumstances might have made a bad man of him.
The instructions which he received in his childhood, the example of
his parents, the respectable neighborhood in which he resided, the
church which he attended, all had a favorable influence upon him. So he
became a man of principle. He had not, indeed, the highest principles;
he was no hero; he was not disposed to make himself a martyr. His
religion was no other than the common religion of the church to which
he was attached, and it demanded no peculiar sacrifice of him. He was
a member of one of the leading political parties, and did his full
duty in maintaining its cause. He called himself a patriot, however,
not a partizan; and talked ever of his country, as the highest
exemplification of the great principles of liberty, and considered the
success of our institutions as the hope of humanity. Yet he loved his
country,--not his race. He was not without charity to the poor; and was
not unwilling to see them, individually, rising above destitution. Yet
he did not like to associate with men lower in the social scale than
himself; but had an ambition that impelled him to court the society of
those whose station and influence were superior to his own. Nor did he
care for, or believe in, any suggestions or plans, the object of which
was the elevation of the poor as a class, and the levelling upwards of
the human race. He thought that as a divine authority has declared to
us, “ye have the poor with you always,” it was ordained that we should
always have them,--that they were an exceedingly useful class, as a
foundation in society, that the prosperous men of the world could not
do without them, and that it was not best to give them too much hope of
rising.
Perhaps you will say I have given you no very definite description of
him. You will think, perhaps, were I called to write of him again, I
might, at once, better make use of the words of the poet,
The annals of the human race,
Their ruins, since the world began,
Of him afford no other trace
Than this,--THERE LIVED A MAN!
I fear, however, that I shall be unable to be more particular in my
description of the servant; It is said, “like master, like man,” and,
indeed, leaving out the expressions above, which show the relationship
of the master to the community and the church, the description of
temper and of general, moral, and religious principle, would answer to
be repeated now. Suffice it to say, the man was not bad; that is, not
thoroughly bad. He cherished no secret desire for liberty. His master
had no real fear of his attempting to escape. He loved his master; and
some thought, who did not wholly know him, that never slave loved a
master with more fondness and devotion. Yet I know that he was often
disobedient. Passages,--not of arms,--but of ill-temper, of reproach,
and of insolence, not unfrequently occurred between them. High words
were used, hard looks and moody oftener still, perhaps, yet the master
never struck his servant, nor did the servant ever offer violence
towards his master. But at times, they would have been very glad to
part company, if the one could have easily escaped, or the other could
have made out to do without him. Much of the disobedience which gave
serious offence to the master, was the result of inadvertence. Lessons,
the most frequently enjoined, were forgotten; they were not always
listened to with an obedient mind. Years long the master required this
or that service from day to day, and yet the command was not once a
year, I may say, attended to. Always the master was saying,--“to-morrow
I shall turn over a new leaf with him;” but he had not energy enough to
carry his purpose into effect. He intended to give his servant at least
some moral education, to teach him self-control, to prevent his bursts
of passion, not by the infliction of punishment, but by a true moral
discipline; yet the work was always delayed, and never accomplished.
You will say, the master had himself some idle fancies that he ought
not to have indulged, and that a severer course would have been more
successful. But he was one of those who doubt the advantages and shrink
from the application of severity, and he would have been no more prompt
and resolute and persevering with his servant than with himself.
At the commencement, I seemed to promise a story. But all my narrative
is closed with a word more. The master was at the age of twenty-one,
when he came into possession of his man. The connection will never be
dissolved, except, at least, by death. Indeed, reader, if you have not
already seen it, master and man were but one and the same person.
And this is the moral of my little fiction. Who will believe that any
man ought to have the ownership of another, when it is so rare to find
one of us wholly competent to govern and to own himself? Nay, the
better a man is, and the more qualified to direct and to govern others
with absolute sway, the less is he willing to take the responsibility
of the disposal of them,--but seeing his own unfitness for the office
of lord, even of himself, he prays, not that he may be a master of
others, but himself a servant of God.
E. Buckingham
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., OCT., 1852.
DAMASCUS IN 1851.
No city has been more variously described than Damascus, because
none has more contrasted features. A spruce Yankee, hearing “Silk
Buckingham’s” description of his “Paradise,” and seeing merely narrow,
half-paved, mat-covered streets, and dirty, mud-walled buildings,
would prefer his native “Slabtown” to the “most refreshing scene in
all our travels.” And yet Damascus is one of the wonders of the world,
unrivalled in what is peculiarly its own, admitting no comparison with
any existing city, revelling in a beauty and a splendor belonging to
Islamism more than Christianity, characterizing the age of the Caliphs
rather than of the Crystal Palace.
In antiquity it has no rival. Nineveh, Babylon, Palmyra, its
contemporaries, have wholly perished; while this oldest inhabited place
has lost none of its population, yielded none of its local preëminence,
abandoned but one of the arts for which it was so renowned, and taken
not a tinge of European thought, worship, life. It numbers not far
from one hundred and fifty thousand souls, of whom twenty thousand may
be Greek and Armenian Christians. It lies in an exquisite garden at the
foot of Anti-Lebanon, in a plain of inexhaustible fertility, watered by
innumerable brooklets from those ancient streams “Abana and Pharphar,”
and shut in by vast groves of walnut and poplar, a “verdurous wall of
Paradise,” which are all that the traveller sees for hours as he draws
near the city of “Abraham’s steward.”
Originally the seat of a renowned kingdom, and once the capital of
the Saracen empire, it is now the centre of an Ottoman Pashalik, but
virtually the metropolis of Syria, as it was in the earliest time. Miss
Martineau and some others carelessly give it a length of seven miles;
but the real extent of the city-walls in any one direction is not
more than two. The gardens and groves around, however, take the same
name, and are over twenty miles in circuit, of a studied, picturesque
wildness, shaded lanes, running side by side with merry brooks, the
whole overshadowed by the deepest forest, and forming delicious relief
from the sunburnt plains of Syria. Besides the walnut, so much prized
for its fruit all through the East, and the poplar, the main dependence
for building, the famous damson, or Damascene plum, abounds the
citron, orange, and pomegranate spread their fruit around the vine is
everywhere seen, and only three miles off stands the forest of damask
rose-trees whence the most delicious attar is made. But a genuine
American will prefer the walnut-tree to all others, because of its
freedom of growth, massiveness of trunk, depth of shade, and impressive
reminiscence of home. These trees, together with the mulberry, do
very much for the commerce of the city. But, indeed, Damascus is the
chief depot of manufactures for Syria. Silk goods cannot be bought
to such advantage elsewhere, nor of such antique patterns, nor of
genuine “damask” colors. The business has suffered somewhat of late,
because Turkish husbands discovering that English prints are so much
cheaper, and their wives fancying the flowing calicoes to be so much
prettier than the patterns which their grandmothers wore, foreign goods
are supplanting the domestic; and a macadamized road is contemplated
from the city to its seaport Beiroot, whose effect would be to make
British and French manufactures still more common, but, at the same
time, to give free circulation to the handicraft of Damascus. As at
Constantinople, Cairo, and elsewhere, each trade occupies its own
quarter, the jewellers, pipe-makers, silk-dealers, grocers, saddlers,
having each their exclusive neighborhood; none of the Bazars are such
noble edifices as cluster around the mosque of St. Sophia; and in the
rainy season (that is, during their winter) the pavement is so wretched
and slippery, and such a mass of mud and water oozes down from the
rotten awnings, that one does no justice to the unequalled richness
of some of the fabrics and the grandeur of some of the khans. One
traveller informs the public that there is a grand “Bazar for wholesale
business” of variegated black and white marble, “surmounted by an ample
dome,” with a lively fountain in the centre. There are _thirty-one_
such buildings, which _we_ should call Exchanges, bearing each the name
of the Sultan who erected them. Those that I visited were contiguous to
the only street which wears a name in the East, and that name, familiar
to us in the book of Acts, “Strait,” Dritto, as your guide mumbles the
word, a long avenue containing the only hotel in the city.
An oriental peculiarity which makes the large towns exceedingly
interesting is, that every occupation is carried on out of doors,
and right under your eyes as you stroll along. Here the silk web is
stretched upon the outside wall of some extended building; here the
butcher is dressing the meat, perhaps for your dinner, right upon the
sidewalk; and here a sort of extempore sausage is cooking, so that one
might almost eat it as he walks, a capital idea for hasty eaters, and
a very nice article in its way. There is no other part of the world
where so much cooking is to be seen all the while, and such loads of
sweetmeats gladden the eyes of childhood, and such luscious compounds,
scented with attar, spread temptation before every sense. The business
of “El-Shans” might almost be headed by the five hundred public
bakers, though the silk is still the principal manufacture, and there
are reported to be seven hundred and forty-eight dealers in damask,
thirty-four silk-winders, one hundred silk dyers, and one hundred and
forty-three weavers of the same article.
The famous Damascus blades are nothing but an “antiquity” now,--they
are uniformly called so by the people, were offered to our purchase in
very small quantities by persons who knew nothing of their manufacture,
at exorbitant prices, and in very uncouth forms. They appeared to be
curiosities to them, as they certainly were to us, and are said to be
sometimes manufactured in England. A mace, offered for sale among these
scimetars of wavy steel, smacked of the Crusaders’ time, and was richly
inlaid with gold; the fire-arms, or blunderbusses, were grotesque and
unwieldy, richly mounted, and gorgeously ornamented.
An attempt is making in certain quarters to persuade the civilized
world that Turkey has still some military power. Of this almost
imperial city the citadel is but a mass of ruins. Count Guyon,
a confederate general with Kossuth, and now a Turkish Pasha and
drill-officer, assured us it would be repaired and strengthened;
but the city-walls offer no defence against a modern army; and the
Turkish soldier, notwithstanding his courage and endurance, cannot be
bastinadoed into military science; neither have educated Christian
officers, like Guyon, any real influence. I frequently saw the
sentinels asleep while upon duty, and recent experience has proved them
incapable of standing before a far smaller amount of really trained
troops. Some of the barracks at Damascus are rather the finest which
the Sultan possesses, and among the best in the world,--some, too, of
the military exercises are pursued with a creditable zeal,--but, on
the whole, a more slatternly corps of men was never seen, nor one less
confident in themselves.
The christian curiosities of this oldest of inhabited cities, begin
with the mosque of peculiar sanctity, once the site of St. John’s
Cathedral, whose chamber of relics, containing a pretended head of the
Baptist, is inaccessible even to Mussulmen, the priesthood excepted.
Six huge Corinthian columns, once a part of its proud portico, are
built into houses and stores, so that you get but faint glimpses
of their beauty and size until you mount the flat mud-roof of the
modern buildings and look down into the vast area of the temple,
six hundred and fifty-feet by one hundred and fifty; and there find
towering above you these massive, blackened remains of Christian
architecture,--significant emblems of the triumph of the Crescent over
the Cross,--and yet by their imperishableness a promise of renewed
glory in some brighter future. That Islamism is hastening to decay is
shown impressively enough in the grand dervish mosque and khan, once
quite celebrated as the Syrian enthronement of this advanced guard
of Mohammed; now nothing could seem more deserted, one minaret is
threatening to fall, the spacious garden is all weed-grown, and few
are left to mourn over the reverse: these banner-men of the prophet,
no longer warriors, students, and apostles, do but beg their bread
and drone their prayers, and exchange the reputation of fanatics
for that of hypocrites; they are in fact monks of the mosque, like
their brothers in celibacy, changing sadly enough from enthusiasm to
formality, from the fervor of first love to the grave-like chillness of
an exhausted ritual.
St. Paul is of course the great name at Damascus; and your dragoman
is very certain always as to the place where he was lowered down the
city-wall; then he takes you to the tomb of the soldier who befriended
him, close at hand, and to the little underground chapel where the
Apostle’s sight was restored. But having passed in turn under the
sceptre of Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Jew, Roman, Arabian, Turk,
every stone of these buildings could tell a most interesting tale, and
every timber of the wall could answer with an experience corresponding
to the out-door revolution.
But the grand attractions in this “Flower of the Levant and Florence of
Turkey” are the coffee-houses, and the palaces of the rich. The writer
of Eothen, I think it is, says, “there is one coffee-house at Damascus
capable of containing a hundred persons:” a Damascus friend, a resident
clergyman, carried me into one where he had himself seen, three
thousand people on a gala-day, and several where hundreds of visitors
would not make a crowd. This great necessity of Turkish life, this
deliverance from the loneliness of an oriental home, this luxurious
substitute for the daily newspaper, is carried to perfection here.
First of all, comes the lofty dome-covered hall, surrounded by couches
like beds, enlivened on all festivals by the Arabian Improvisator
with his song and his tale; back of this are a number of rude arbors
interlaced with noble shade-trees, and watered profusely by nimble
brooks, the whole lighted every night by little pale lamps. These are
the gossiping places for the Damascene gentlemen; where the fragrant
tchébouque, the cool narghilch, or water-pipe, the delicious coffee,
the indolent game at dominos, (I never saw chess played at the east,)
is relieved by such domestic anecdotes as, according to my American
friend, brand the domestic life of the city with beastly sensuality.
One would fain hope that these are the prejudices of an earnest
missionary,--but until the residence of years had given familiarity
with the language, any opinions of a visitor would be erroneous as
well as presuming. Nothing, however, can bring back so powerfully the
Arabian tales of enchantment as the interior of the wealthier Damascus
houses. The outside is always mean and forbidding. You have sometimes
to stoop under the rude, low gate; and the first court, surrounded
only by servants’ rooms, has nothing of interest. But the second
and third quadrangles become more and more spacious, and are always
of variegated marble, containing a perpetually playing fountain,
overhung by the orange, the citron, and the vine, whose fragrance
floats dreamily on the moist air, lulling the senses to repose. The
grand saloon I found to be always arranged pretty much the same. A
lower part of the pavement near the door, is the place of deposit for
slippers, shoes, and the pattens which Damascus women use so much in
the winter, articles all of them never intended for ornament, and never
fitted to the foot, but worn as loose as possible, and never within
the sitting-room, but simply as a protection from out-door wet and
soil. The lower portion of the room and its rug-strewn floor are of
variegated marbles, then comes curiously carved woods, then painted
stucco, decorated with mirrors rising to the distant gay-colored
roof. The immense loftiness, the moist coolness, the gorgeous hues,
the emblazoned texts from the Koran, the sweet murmur of the various
fountains, the fragrance of the orange groves, succeed to the out-door
dreariness like a dream of Haroun Al Raschid to the wearied pilgrim on
desert sands. The divan, or wide sofa, on three sides of this hall,
is far more agreeable in this enervating climate than any European
furniture; only, in winter, as the ground underneath is permeated by
leaky clay tubes bearing the waters of the Barrady, and there is no
other heating apparatus save a brazer of charcoal, one is sometimes
very chilly, and is tempted to exchange this tomblike dampness for a
cozy corner near some friendly stove or familiar fire-place.
But the general impression which unintelligent strangers carries from
Damascus is, that the people have what they want, and have gone wisely
to work to realize their idea of earthly blessedness,--an indolent,
sensual, dreamy one to you, but in their eyes no faint type of the
Mussulman’s heaven.
F W Holland
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
RELIGIOUS, MORAL, AND POLITICAL DUTIES.
What is morally wrong, cannot be made practically right. The laws of
morality are taught in the Bible. They are unchangeable truths. No
sophistry, no expediency, no compromise can set them aside.
If politics is the science of government, and if civil government is
a divine institution, intended to protect the rights of all; if “an
injury done to the meanest subject, is an injury done to the whole
body;” and if “rulers must be just, ruling in the fear of God,” all
legislation should be based on moral duty. Any enactments that have not
this basis, are, in the Divine sight, null and void. If man is endowed
by nature with inalienable rights, no legislation can rightfully wrest
them from him. Any attempt to do it, is an infraction of the moral
law. Our religious, moral, and political duties are identical and
inseparable. It is the duty of all christian legislators so to act
_now_, as they know all must act, when truth and righteousness shall
have a universal prevalence on the earth.
Lindley Murray Moore.
WHY SLAVERY IS IN THE CONSTITUTION.
That the constitution of a country should guide its action is a
_truism_ which none, perhaps, will be inclined to controvert. Indeed,
so thoroughly is this sentiment inwrought into us, that we generally
expect _practice_ will conform to the constitution. But does not this
subject States or nations to misapprehension by others? South Carolina,
for instance, abolishes the writ of _habeas corpus_ with regard to the
colored people, and imprisons them, although citizens of the other
States, when they enter her borders in any way. Now these are direct
violations of the constitution of the United States, so direct, that
they cannot be explained away. Nor do we think that South Carolina even
attempts it. She openly says, that it is owing to the existence of
slavery among them, that the _free_ colored man, coming into contact
with the slaves, will taint them with notions of liberty which will
make them discontented,--that therefore her own preservation, the
first law of nature, requires her to do everything she can to keep the
disturbing force out of her limits, even if she have to violate the
constitution of the United States. This she asserts, too, when, at the
formation of the constitution, she was one of the large slave-holding
States,--when she had before her the example of every nation that had
practised slavery, and when now her senators and representatives in
Congress are sworn to support the constitution of the Union. Thus we
see that it would be doing injustice to the constitution, were we to
judge of it by the practice of South Carolina.
But the inquirer will not be satisfied with the South Carolina reason.
He wants something more and better. He says, too, that these give good
occasion to those exercising the powers of the government to confirm
all law-abiding citizens in the belief that they are well protected
by the constitution, and to let the world see how much the United
States prize it. But supposing he were told that those who control the
government feel, in this matter, with South Carolina,--that those who
had the control of the government had no power to coerce South Carolina
to perform her duty,--indeed, in a partizan view, that the person
injured were _no_ party,--that, as a general thing, they could not even
vote,--were unimportant, nay, insignificant. If those reasons will not
satisfy him, he must be content with them, for it is not likely that
he will get any other. We further see that injustice would be done by
considering the _practice_ of a people as fairly representing their
constitution.
A constitution,--the organic-law,--in truth, all other law is, in
some degree, a restraint on men. It makes an umpire of right,--of
reason,--which, if not the same in degree in all of us, is the same
in nature. Yet it must be, to some extent, a restraint on the desires
or selfish passions of men. In fact, it is only carrying out the rule
of doing to others what they should do to us, and tends not only to
preserve, but advance society. If no constitution or law agreeing with
it existed, men would be left to the sway of their own passions--nearly
always selfish--and they being many and very different in different
persons, sometimes, indeed, altogether opposite, and of various
intensity,--would, by their indulgence, tend to confusion, to the
deterioration of society, and to its ultimate dissolution.
Now the people of the United States, without the least hesitation
declare,--and they fully believe it--that we are the freest nation
on earth. Other nations, doubtless, with equal sincerity say of
themselves the same thing. In England where, as in other countries of
the old world, there is a crowded population, raising to a high price
everything eatable, the _operatives_, as they are called, find it
difficult to sustain life. They work all the time they can, and, even
after doing this, they sometimes perish for want of such food as a
human being ought to eat. No one will say that affairs are well ordered
here. Having no such state of things ourselves--for except in some of
our large cities, no one starves to death--we think that to suffer one
to die in this way is cruel and heartless. And we greatly upbraid them
for it.
But here we have slavery,--a vicious usage which European nations,
excepting one, have long since laid aside. This they have done not only
because it was productive of innumerable visible evils, but because
it greatly and injuriously affected the character of all concerned in
it, and in this way the character of the whole community,--making one
part of it proud and imperious,--another suppliant and servile. They
upbraid us with it, as being more inconsistent with the high principles
we profess, than any act tolerated among them is or can be with the
principles they profess. Then whilst we wonder that with so much wealth
as England unquestionably has, she should suffer her operatives to
die for something to eat, she wonders that slavery--the worst thing
known among men--should be permitted to raise its head, not only as
high as the many good and exalted things we possess, but above them,
making them, when necessary, give way to it and even contribute to its
support. Indeed, it appears to them like Satan appearing in company
with the sons of God, to accuse and try one of his children.
But all this is of no avail. It produces no satisfying results,--in
fact nothing but mutual ill-will and irritation. It is no difficult
thing to select from the _practices_ of many people such as are not
what they ought to be,--still the theory, the foundation of the
government may be opposed to them, but may be unable to put them down.
They may exist in spite of it, and in entire opposition to its _main_
object. Indeed, it appears to be much like reasoning in a circle. We
come to no end,--no conclusion. To come to any satisfactory end,--any
useful conclusion,--we must take something permanent,--something
believed by both to be unchangeably right and moral, and compare our
governments with it. Whichever comes nearest to the standard agreed
on by both, must of course be nearest right. But what shall this be?
Now as it is utterly in vain for one to be happy unless he conform
to the laws of his being, so it is in vain that governments are
instituted unless they aim to secure the happiness and safety of the
governed,--the people. The peculiar benefit or enrichment of those
that administer the laws, has nothing to do with good government. Then
it ought, by all means, to resemble the Divine government. We do not
mean a _theocracy_ as it has been administered, the worst, perhaps, of
all governments,--but it should be remarkable for its sacred regard to
justice and right.
But it is objected, this deals with persons as individuals and not as
members of the body politic, and that all Christ’s exhortations were
of this kind. Well, be it so,--what of it? There is not the least
danger, if one will acquit himself well in his various relations as an
individual,--a MAN,--but what he will make a good citizen.
Taking this as our standard, and recurring for a moment to the
assertion of our superior happiness as a people--an assertion sometimes
regarded as the boastful grandiloquence of our people--is it not
true that our government, _our constitution of government we mean_,
more nearly resembles the Divine government than any other does, and
_therefore_, that those under it _are_ more happy? Some, while they are
inclined to admit the fact of our superior happiness, yet seem rather
to attribute it to our great abundance of land than to the nature
of the government. We do not wish, in any way, to deny or even to
neutralize this statement about the abundance of our land, but still it
is one of the _facts_ of the government,--the government was made with
this in view,--it constitutes a subject for its action, and it makes
of it a strong auxiliary. This, though undeniably a _great_ cause, is
not, in our judgment, the _chief_ one. It is intellect,--mind united to
such feelings and desires that most advance others to be like God in
intelligence and worth,--that makes the chief cause. Where this _is_
not,--or is not called forth and put into activity, nothing to purpose
can be done. Indeed, it is the most powerful agent for good anywhere to
be found,--for it is behind all others, and sets all others to work.
We have among us here no form of religion, as they have in other
countries, to which one must conform before he can have any share in
the government,--no religion that is made part of the government,
and which is, therefore, _national_. Religion--how we shall serve or
worship a Being or beings superior to ourselves, and who are thought to
influence our destiny forever--is, certainly, the highest concern of
man. As no church or nation can answer for him at the judgment-seat, he
ought to be left free on this matter. On this point he is free in this
country, he is under no necessity to think in a particular channel. In
his inquiries after truth, he has nothing to fear from the government
about the changes through which his mind may pass, or the conclusions
to which it maybe led; although he may draw on him the prejudice and
hatred of the sects from whom he feels compelled to differ.[R] We may
truly say, that in this country, however far we may go in imitating
foreign forms, we have nothing higher than the preacher of the truth.
We have no monarch _born_ to rule over us, whether we will or not; nor
are we obliged to support this costly leech according to _his_ dignity
by money wrung from the labor of the country, nor a host of relatives
according to _their_ dignity, as connected with the monarch.
Nor have we a class _born_ to be our legislators. We have no
legislative castes, nor social castes, but we may truly say, that any
native-born citizen of the United States may aspire to any position,
be it governmental or social.
Nor have we fought so long--though it must be confessed we are ready
pupils here--as most of the countries of the old world have; still we
begin to make fighting almost a part of the government, and a part of
the religion of the land. But all this does not answer the question
that many have asked, and that our intelligence and exemption from bias
in many things make more remarkable,--why did we suffer slavery to find
a place in a constitution in which there are so many good things,--why
did we make a garden of healthful fruits and enchanting flowers, and
place this serpent in it?
The answer to this question may be easily given by one that well knows
the condition of the country that soon followed on the treaty of 1783.
Till we were governed by the present constitution we were governed by
the Articles of Confederation. The United States, though nominally a
nation, had no power to enforce any stipulation she might make. For
instance,--if she should promise by a treaty to pay interest on the
debt that we had contracted to secure our national independence, each
State by its _own_ power and authority were to raise its quota of
the whole amount. If a State failed to raise it, the _United States_
had no redress. It had no authority to coerce any State, no matter
what was the cause of failure. This is given as only an instance, and
did we not think it made our position very plain, others might be
given in manifold abundance,--all tending to show the unfaithfulness
of the States to the engagements of the United States, and the utter
powerlessness of the latter to keep her word. It was owing to this that
the _main_ object of the Convention was the more perfect union of the
States, and that in this way there might be conferred on the United
States the same plenary power to carry out her engagements that a State
had to carry out hers.
The Convention did not meet to do away with slavery, but chiefly to
form such a union as would obviate the difficulty already mentioned,
and so keenly felt by some of the most earnest friends of the country.
Although slavery was pretty well understood then, and seen to be
opposed to all the principles of freedom asserted, yet as it had
been embraced by so many, that if they should be united against the
constitution its adoption would be endangered, it was thought best not
to insist on its instant abolition. Men as yet had too much selfishness
in them, and although reasonable beings, they have too much of the
animal in them to see that, in the long run, honesty is the best
policy. Many of the opponents of slavery, even from the slave States
themselves, took this opportunity of showing the baseness and turpitude
of the whole system,--its advocates from the far South defending it
as well as they could. These advocates gave it as their opinion, that
owing to the Declaration of 1776, one which had already done wonders
at the North,--owing to the influence of the principles of liberty
inserted into the constitution, and to the feeling of justice pervading
all classes of persons, and to the progress of refinement and true
civilization, slavery would ultimately disappear.[S]
At the time this opinion was expressed by the conventionists from the
South, although we cultivated cotton to a small extent, it could not
be regarded as a staple. Soon after making the constitution, it began
to be important. It could be produced only at the South. As it grew in
value, the notion of abolishing slavery began to wane, till now some of
the leading men of that part of the country say it is not only a good
thing, but an indispensable one to the highest perfection of the social
system.
James G. Birney.
THE TWO ALTARS;
OR,
TWO PICTURES IN ONE.
BY MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
I.--THE ALTAR OF LIBERTY, OR 1776.
The well-sweep of the old house on the hill was relieved, dark and
clear, against the reddening sky, as the early winter sun was going
down in the west. It was a brisk, clear, metallic evening; the long
drifts of snow blushed crimson red on their tops, and lay in shades
of purple and lilac in the hollows; and the old wintry wind brushed
shrewdly along the plain, tingling people’s noses, blowing open
their cloaks, puffing in the back of their necks, and showing other
unmistakable indications that he was getting up steam for a real
roystering night.
“Hurra! how it blows!” said little Dick Ward, from the top of the mossy
wood-pile.
Now Dick had been sent to said wood-pile, in company with his little
sister Grace, to pick up chips, which, every-body knows, was in the
olden time considered a wholesome and gracious employment, and the
peculiar duty of the rising generation. But said Dick, being a boy, had
mounted the wood-pile, and erected there a flag-staff, on which he was
busily tying a little red pocket-handkerchief, occasionally exhorting
Gracie “to be sure and pick up fast.” “O, yes, I will,” said Grace;
“but you see the chips have got ice on ’em, and make my hands so cold!”
“O! don’t stop to suck your thumbs!--who cares for ice? Pick away, I
say, while I set up the flag of Liberty.”
So Grace picked away as fast as she could, nothing doubting but that
her cold thumbs were in some mysterious sense an offering on the shrine
of Liberty; while soon the red handkerchief, duly secured, fluttered
and snapped in the brisk evening wind.
“Now you must hurra, Gracie, and throw up your bonnet,” said Dicky, as
he descended from the pile.
“But won’t it lodge down in some place in the wood-pile?” suggested
Gracie, thoughtfully.
“O, never fear; give it to me, and just holler now, Gracie, ‘Hurra for
Liberty;’ and we’ll throw up your bonnet and my cap; and we’ll play,
you know, that we were a whole army, and I’m General Washington.”
So Gracie gave up her little red hood, and Dick swung his cap, and up
they both went into the air; and the children shouted, and the flag
snapped and fluttered, and altogether they had a merry time of it. But
then the wind--good-for-nothing, roguish fellow!--made an ungenerous
plunge at poor Gracie’s little hood, and snipped it up in a twinkling,
and whisked it off, off, off,--fluttering and bobbing up and down,
quite across a wide, waste, snowy field, and finally lodged it on the
top of a tall strutting rail, that was leaning very independently,
quite another way from all the other rails of the fence.
“Now see, do see!” said Gracie; “there goes my bonnet! What will Aunt
Hitty say?” and Gracie began to cry.
“Don’t you cry, Gracie; you offered it up to Liberty, you know,--it’s
glorious to give up everything for Liberty.”
“O! but Aunt Hitty won’t think so.”
“Well, don’t cry, Gracie, you foolish girl! Do you think I can’t get
it? Now, only play that that great rail was a fort, and your bonnet was
a prisoner in it, and see how quick I’ll take the fort, and get it!”
and Dick shouldered a stick, and started off.
* * * * *
“What upon ’arth keeps those children so long? I should think they were
making chips!” said Aunt Mehetabel; “the fire’s just a-going out under
the tea-kettle.”
By this time Gracie had lugged her heavy basket to the door, and was
stamping the snow off her little feet, which were so numb that she
needed to stamp, to be quite sure they were yet there. Aunt Mehetabel’s
shrewd face was the first that greeted her, as the door opened.
“Gracie--what upon ’airth!--wipe your nose, child; your hands are
frozen. Where alive is Dick, and what’s kept you out all this
time,--and where’s your bonnet?”
Poor Gracie, stunned by this cataract of questions, neither wiped her
nose nor gave any answer; but sidled up into the warm corner, where
grandmamma was knitting, and began quietly rubbing and blowing her
fingers, while the tears silently rolled down her cheeks, as the fire
made their former ache intolerable.
“Poor little dear!” said grandmamma, taking her hands in hers; “Hitty
shan’t scold you. Grandma knows you’ve been a good girl,--the wind blew
poor Gracie’s bonnet away;” and grandmamma wiped both eyes and nose,
and gave her, moreover, a stalk of dried fennel out of her pocket,
whereat Gracie took heart once more.
“Mother always makes fools of Roxy’s children,” said Mehetabel, puffing
zealously under the tea-kettle. “There’s a little maple sugar in that
saucer up there, mother, if you will keep giving it to her,” she said,
still vigorously puffing. “And now, Gracie,” she said, when, after
a while, the fire seemed in tolerable order, “will you answer my
question?--Where is Dick?”
“Gone over in the lot, to get my bonnet.”
“How came your bonnet off?” said Aunt Mehetabel. “I tied it on firm
enough.”
“Dick wanted me to take it off for him, to throw up for Liberty,” said
Grace.
“Throw up for fiddlestick! just one of Dick’s cut-ups, and you was
silly enough to mind him!”
“Why, he put up a flag-staff on the wood-pile, and a flag to Liberty,
you know, that papa’s fighting for,” said Grace, more confidently, as
she saw her quiet, blue-eyed mother, who had silently walked into the
room during the conversation.
Grace’s mother smiled, and said, encouragingly, “And what then?”
“Why, he wanted me to throw up my bonnet and he his cap, and shout for
Liberty; and then the wind took it and carried it off, and he said I
ought not to be sorry if I did lose it,--it was an offering to Liberty.”
“And so I did,” said Dick, who was standing as straight as a poplar
behind the group; “and I heard it in one of father’s letters to mother,
that we ought to offer up everything on the altar of Liberty! And so I
made an altar of the wood-pile.”
“Good boy!” said his mother, “always remember everything your father
writes. He has offered up everything on the altar of Liberty, true
enough; and I hope you, son, will live to do the same.”
“Only, if I have the hoods and caps to make,” said Aunt Hitty, “I hope
he won’t offer them up every week--that’s all!”
“O! well, Aunt Hitty, I’ve got the hood,--let me alone for that. It
blew clear over into the Daddy Ward pasture-lot, and there stuck on
the top of the great rail; and I played that the rail was a fort, and
besieged it, and took it.”
“O! yes, you’re always up to taking forts, and anything else that
nobody wants done. I’ll warrant, now, you left Gracie to pick up every
blessed one of them chips!”
“Picking up chips is girl’s work,” said Dick; “and taking forts and
defending the country is men’s work.”
“And pray, Mister Pomp, how long have you been a man?” said Aunt Hitty.
“If I a’nt a man, I soon shall be; my head is ’most up to my mother’s
shoulder, and I can fire off a gun too. I tried, the other day, when I
was up to the store. Mother, I wish you’d let me clean and load the old
gun; so that, if the British should come!”
“Well, if you are so big and grand, just lift me out that table, sir,”
said Aunt Hitty, “for its past supper-time.”
Dick sprung, and had the table out in a trice, with an abundant
clatter, and put up the leaves with quite an air. His mother, with the
silent and gliding motion characteristic of her, quietly took out the
table-cloth and spread it, and began to set the cups and saucers in
order, and to put on the plates and knives, while Aunt Hitty bustled
about the tea.
“I’ll be glad when the war’s over, for one reason,” said she. “I’m
pretty much tired of drinking sage-tea, for one, I know.”
“Well, Aunt Hitty, how you scolded that pedler, last week, that brought
along that real tea.”
“To be sure I did. S’pose I’d be taking any of his old tea, bought of
the British?--fling every tea-cup in his face, first!”
“Well, mother,” said Dick, “I never exactly understood what it was
about the tea, and why the Boston folks threw it all overboard.”
“Because there was an unlawful tax laid upon it, that the government
had no right to lay. It wasn’t much in itself; but it was a part of a
whole system of oppressive meanness, designed to take away our rights,
and make us slaves of a foreign power!”
“Slaves!” said Dicky, straightening himself proudly. “Father a slave!”
“But they would not be slaves! They saw clearly where it would all end,
and they would not begin to submit to it in ever so little,” said the
mother.
“I wouldn’t, if I was they,” said Dicky.
“Besides,” said his mother, drawing him towards her, “it wasn’t for
themselves alone they did it. This is a great country, and it will be
greater and greater: and it’s very important that it should have free
and equal laws, because it will by and by be so great. This country, if
it is a free one, will be a light of the world,--a city set on a hill,
that cannot be hid; and all the oppressed and distressed from other
countries shall come here to enjoy equal rights and freedom. This, dear
boy, is why your father and uncles have gone to fight, and why they do
stay and fight, though God knows what they suffer, and--” and the large
blue eyes of the mother were full of tears; yet a strong, bright beam
of pride and exultation shone through those tears.
“Well, well, Roxy, you can always talk, every-body knows,” said Aunt
Hitty, who had been not the least attentive listener of this little
patriotic harangue; “but, you see, the tea is getting cold, and yonder
I see the sleigh is at the door, and John’s come,--so let’s set up our
chairs for supper.”
The chairs were soon set up, when John, the eldest son, a lad of about
fifteen, entered with a letter. There was one general exclamation, and
stretching out of hands towards it. John threw it into his mother’s
lap;--the tea-table was forgotten, and the tea-kettle sang unnoticed
by the fire, as all hands piled themselves up by mother’s chair to
hear the news. It was from Captain Ward, then in the American army, at
Valley Forge. Mrs. Ward ran it over hastily, and then read it aloud. A
few words we may extract: “There is still,” it said, “much suffering.
I have given away every pair of stockings you sent me, reserving to
myself only one; for I will not be one whit better off than the poorest
soldier that fights for his country. Poor fellows! it makes my heart
ache sometimes to go round among them, and see them with their worn
clothes and torn shoes, and often bleeding feet, yet cheerful and
hopeful, and every one willing to do his very best. Often the spirit
of discouragement comes over them, particularly at night, when, weary,
cold, and hungry, they turn into their comfortless huts, on the snowy
ground. Then sometimes there is a thought of home, and warm fires,
and some speak of giving up; but next morning out comes Washington’s
general orders,--little short note, but it’s wonderful the good it
does! and then they all resolve to hold on, come what may. There are
commissioners going all through the country to pick up supplies. If
they come to you, I need not tell you what to do. I know all that will
be in your hearts.”
“There, children, see what your father suffers,” said the mother, “and
what it costs these poor soldiers to gain our liberty.”
“Ephraim Scranton told me that the commissioners had come as far as the
Three-mile Tavern, and that he rather ’spected they’d be along here
to-night,” said John, as he was helping round the baked beans to the
silent company at the tea-table.
“To-night?--Do tell, now!” said Aunt Hitty. “Then it’s time we were
awake and stirring. Let’s see what can be got.”
“I’ll send my new over-coat, for one,” said John. “That old one an’t
cut up yet, is it, Aunt Hitty?”
“No,” said Aunt Hitty; “I was laying out to cut it over, next
Wednesday, when Desire Smith could be here to do the tailoring.”
“There’s the south room,” said Aunt Hitty, musing; “that bed has the
two old Aunt Ward blankets on it, and the great blue quilt, and two
comforters. Then mother’s and my room, two pair--four comforters--two
quilts--the best chamber has got----”
“O! Aunt Hitty, send all that’s in the best chamber. If any company
comes, we can make it up off from our beds!” said John. “I can send a
blanket or two off from my bed, I know;--can’t but just turn over in
it, so many clothes on, now.”
“Aunt Hitty, take a blanket off from our bed,” said Grace and Dicky, at
once.
“Well, well, we’ll see,” said Aunt Hitty, bustling up.
Up rose grandmamma, with great earnestness, now, and going into the
next room, and opening a large cedar-wood chest, returned, bearing in
her arms two large snow-white blankets, which she deposited flat on the
table, just as Aunt Hitty was whisking off the table-cloth.
“Mortal! mother, what are you going to do?” said Aunt Hitty.
“There,” she said, “I spun those, every thread of ’em, when my name
was Mary Evans. Those were my wedding blankets, made of real nice wool,
and worked with roses in all the corners. I’ve got _them_ to give!”
and grandmamma stroked and smoothed the blankets, and patted them
down, with great pride and tenderness. It was evident she was giving
something that lay very near her heart; but she never faltered.
“La! mother, there’s no need of that,” said Aunt Hitty. “Use them on
your own bed, and send the blankets off from that;--they are just as
good for the soldiers.”
“No, I shan’t!” said the old lady, waxing warm; “’t an’t a bit too good
for ’em. I’ll send the very best I’ve got, before they shall suffer.
Send ’em the _best_!” and the old lady gestured oratorically!
They were interrupted by a rap at the door, and two men entered,
and announced themselves as commissioned by Congress to search out
supplies for the army. Now the plot thickens. Aunt Hitty flew in every
direction,--through entry-passage, meal-room, milk-room, down cellar,
up chamber,--her cap-border on end with patriotic zeal; and followed by
John, Dick, and Gracie, who eagerly bore to the kitchen the supplies
that she turned out, while Mrs. Ward busied herself in quietly sorting,
bundling, and arranging in the best possible travelling order, the
various contributions that were precipitately launched on the kitchen
floor.
Aunt Hitty soon appeared in the kitchen with an armful of stockings,
which, kneeling on the floor, she began counting and laying out.
“There,” she said, laying down a large bundle on some blankets, “that
leaves just two pair apiece all round.”
“La!” said John, “what’s the use of saving two pair for me? I can do
with one pair, as well as father.”
“Sure enough,” said his mother; “besides, I can knit you another pair
in a day.”
“And I can do with one pair,” said Dicky.
“Yours will be too small,” young master, I guess, said one of the
commissioners.
“No,” said Dicky; “I’ve got a pretty good foot of my own, and Aunt
Hitty will always knit my stockings an inch too long, ’cause she says I
grow so. See here,--these will do;” and the boy shook his, triumphantly.
“And mine, too,” said Gracie, nothing doubting, having been busy all
the time in pulling off her little stockings.
“Here,” she said to the man who was packing the things into a
wide-mouthed sack; “here’s mine,” and her large blue eyes looked
earnestly through her tears.
Aunt Hitty flew at her.--“Good land! the child’s crazy! Don’t think the
men could wear your stockings,--take ’em away!”
Gracie looked around with an air of utter desolation, and began to cry.
“I wanted to give them something,” said she. “I’d rather go barefoot on
the snow all day, than not send ’em anything.”
“Give me the stockings, my child,” said the old soldier, tenderly.
“There, I’ll take ’em, and show ’em to the soldiers, and tell them what
the little girl said that sent them. And it will do them as much good
as if they could wear them. They’ve got little girls at home, too.”
Gracie fell on her mother’s bosom completely happy, and Aunt Hitty only
muttered,
“Everybody does spile that child; and no wonder, neither!”
Soon the old sleigh drove off from the brown house, tightly packed and
heavily loaded. And Gracie and Dicky were creeping up to their little
beds.
“There’s been something put on the altar of Liberty to-night, hasn’t
there, Dick?”
“Yes, indeed,” said Dick; and, looking up to his mother, he said, “But,
mother, what did you give?”
“I?” said the mother, musingly.
“Yes, you, mother; what have you given to the country?”
“All that I have, dears,” said she, laying her hands gently on their
heads,--“my husband and my children!”
II.--THE ALTAR OF ----, OR 1850.
The setting sun of chill December lighted up the solitary front
window of a small tenement on ---- street, which we now have occasion
to visit. As we push gently aside the open door, we gain sight of a
small room, clean as busy hands can make it, where a neat, cheerful
young mulatto woman is busy at an ironing-table. A basket full of
glossy-bosomed shirts, and faultless collars and wristbands, is beside
her, into which she is placing the last few items with evident pride
and satisfaction. A bright, black-eyed boy, just come in from school,
with his satchel of books over his shoulder, stands, cap in hand,
relating to his mother how he has been at the head of his class, and
showing his school-tickets, which his mother, with untiring admiration,
deposits in the little real china tea-pot,--which, as being their most
reliable article of gentility, is made the deposit of all the money and
most especial valuables of the family.
“Now, Henry,” says the mother, “look out and see if father is coming
along the street;” and she begins filling the little black tea-kettle,
which is soon set singing on the stove.
From the inner room now daughter Mary, a well-grown girl of thirteen,
brings the baby, just roused from a nap, and very impatient to renew
his acquaintance with his mamma.
“Bless his bright eyes!--mother will take him,” ejaculates the busy
little woman, whose hands are by this time in a very floury condition,
in the incipient stages of wetting up biscuit,--“in a minute;” and she
quickly frees herself from the flour and paste, and, deputing Mary to
roll out her biscuit, proceeds to the consolation and succor of young
master.
“Now, Henry,” says the mother, “you’ll have time, before supper, to
take that basket of clothes up to Mr. Sheldin’s;--put in that nice
bill, that you made out last night. I shall give you a cent for every
bill you write out for me. What a comfort it is, now, for one’s
children to be gettin’ learnin’ so!”
Henry shouldered the basket, and passed out the door, just as a
neatly-dressed colored man walked up, with his pail and white-wash
brushes.
“O, you’ve come, father, have you?--Mary, are the biscuits in?--you may
as well set the table, now. Well, George, what’s the news?”
“Nothing, only a pretty smart day’s work. I’ve brought home five
dollars, and shall have as much as I can do, these two weeks;” and the
man, having washed his hands, proceeded to count out his change on the
ironing-table.
“Well, it takes you to bring in the money,” said the delighted wife;
“nobody but you could turn off that much in a day!”
“Well, they do say--those that’s had me once--that they never want any
other hand to take hold in their rooms. I s’pose its a kinder practice
I’ve got, and kinder natural!”
“Tell ye what,” said the little woman, taking down the family strong
box,--to wit, the china tea-pot, aforenamed,--and pouring the contents
on the table, “we’re getting mighty rich, now! We can afford to get
Henry his new Sunday-cap, and Mary her muslin-de-laine dress;--take
care, baby, you rogue!” she hastily interposed, as young master made a
dive at a dollar bill, for his share in the proceeds.
“He wants something, too, I suppose,” said the father; “let him get his
hand in while he’s young.”
The baby gazed, with round, astonished eyes, while mother, with some
difficulty, rescued the bill from his grasp; but, before any one could
at all anticipate his purpose, he dashed in among the small change with
such zeal as to send it flying all over the table.
“Hurra!--Bob’s a smasher!” said the father, delighted; “he’ll make it
fly, he thinks;” and, taking the baby on his knee, he laughed merrily,
as Mary and her mother pursued the rolling coin all over the room.
“He knows now, as well as can be, that he’s been doing mischief,”
said the delighted mother, as the baby kicked and crowed
uproariously;--“he’s such a forward child, now, to be only six
months old!--O, you’ve no idea, father, how mischievous he grows,”
and therewith the little woman began to roll and tumble the little
mischief-maker about, uttering divers frightful threats, which
appeared to contribute, in no small degree, to the general hilarity.
“Come, come, Mary,” said the mother, at last, with a sudden burst of
recollection; “you mustn’t be always on your knees fooling with this
child!--Look in the oven at them biscuits.”
“They’re done exactly, mother,--just the brown!”--and, with the
word, the mother dumped baby on to his father’s knee, where he sat
contentedly munching a very ancient crust of bread, occasionally
improving the flavor thereof by rubbing it on his father’s coat-sleeve.
“What have you got in that blue dish, there?” said George, when the
whole little circle were seated around the table.
“Well, now, what _do_ you suppose?” said the little woman,
delighted;--“a quart of nice oysters,--just for a treat, you know. I
wouldn’t tell you till this minute,” said she, raising the cover.
“Well,” said George, “we both work hard for our money, and we don’t owe
anybody a cent; and why shouldn’t we have our treats, now and then, as
well as rich folks?”
And gayly passed the supper hour; the tea-kettle sung, the baby crowed,
and all chatted and laughed abundantly.
“I’ll tell you,” said George, wiping his mouth, “wife, these times
are quite another thing from what it used to be down in Georgia. I
remember then old Mas’r used to hire me out by the year; and one
time, I remember, I came and paid him in two hundred dollars,--every
cent I’d taken. He just looked it over, counted it, and put it in his
pocket-book, and said, ‘You are a good boy, George,’--and he gave me
_half-a-dollar_!”
“I want to know, now!” said his wife.
“Yes, he did, and that was every cent I ever got of it; and, I tell
you, I was mighty bad off for clothes, them times.”
“Well, well, the Lord be praised, they’re over, and you are in a free
country now!” said the wife, as she rose thoughtfully from the table,
and brought her husband the great Bible. The little circle were ranged
around the stove for evening prayers.
“Henry, my boy, you must read,--you are a better reader than your
father,--thank God, that let you learn early!”
The boy, with a cheerful readiness, read, “The Lord is my shepherd,”
and the mother gently stilled the noisy baby, to listen to the holy
words. Then all kneeled, while the father, with simple earnestness,
poured out his soul to God.
They had but just risen,--the words of Christian hope and trust scarce
died on their lips,--when lo! the door was burst open, and two men
entered; and one of them advancing, laid his hand on the father’s
shoulder. “This is the fellow,” said he.
“You are arrested in the name of the United States!” said the other.
“Gentlemen, what is this?” said the poor man, trembling.
“Are you not the property of _Mr. B._, of Georgia?” said the officer.
“Gentlemen, I’ve been a free, hard-working man, these ten years.”
“Yes, but you are arrested, on suit of Mr. B., as his slave.”
Shall we describe the leave-taking?--the sorrowing wife, the dismayed
children, the tears, the anguish,--that simple, honest, kindly home, in
a moment so desolated! Ah, ye who defend this because it is law, think,
for one hour, what if this that happens to your poor brother should
happen to you! * * * * *
It was a crowded court-room, and the man stood there to be tried--for
life?--no; but for the life of life--for liberty!
Lawyers hurried to and fro, buzzing, consulting, bringing
authorities,--all anxious, zealous, engaged,--for what?--to save
a fellow-man from bondage?--no; anxious and zealous lest he might
escape,--full of zeal to deliver him over to slavery. The poor man’s
anxious eyes follow vainly the busy course of affairs, from which he
dimly learns that he is to be sacrificed--on the altar of the Union;
and that his heart-break and anguish, and the tears of his wife, and
the desolation of his children, are, in the eyes of these well-informed
men, only the bleat of a sacrifice, bound to the horns of the glorious
American altar! * * * * *
Again it is a bright day, and business walks brisk in this market.
Senator and statesman, the learned and patriotic, are out, this day,
to give their countenance to an edifying and impressive, and truly
American spectacle,--the sale of a man! All the preliminaries of the
scene are there; dusky-browed mothers, looking with sad eyes while
speculators are turning round their children,--looking at their teeth,
and feeling of their arms; a poor, old, trembling woman, helpless,
half-blind, whose last child is to be sold, holds on to her bright
boy with trembling hands. Husbands and wives, sisters and friends,
all soon to be scattered like the chaff of the threshing-floor, look
sadly on each other with poor nature’s last tears; and among them walk
briskly glib, oily politicians, and thriving men of law, letters, and
religion, exceedingly sprightly and in good spirits,--for why?--it
isn’t _they_ that are going to be sold; it’s only somebody else. And
so they are very comfortable, and look on the whole thing as quite
a matter-of-course affair; and, as it is to be conducted to-day, a
decidedly valuable and judicious exhibition.
And now, after so many hearts and souls have been knocked and
thumped this way and that way by the auctioneer’s hammer, comes the
_instructive_ part of the whole; and the husband and father, whom we
saw in his simple home, reading and praying with his children, and
rejoicing, in the joy of his poor ignorant heart, that he lived in a
free country, is now set up to be admonished of his mistake.
Now there is great excitement, and pressing to see, and exultation and
approbation; for it is important and interesting to see a man put down
that has tried to be a _free man_.
“That’s he, is it?--Couldn’t come it, could he?” says one.
“No, and he will never come it, that’s more,” says another,
triumphantly.
“I don’t generally take much interest in scenes of this nature,” says
a grave representative;--“but I came here to-day for the sake of the
_principle_!”
“Gentlemen,” says the auctioneer, “we’ve got a specimen here that some
of your Northern abolitionists would give any price for; but they
shan’t have him!--no! we’ve looked out for that. The man that buys him
must give bonds never to sell him to go North again!”
“Go it!” shout the crowd, “good!--good!--hurra!” “An impressive idea!”
says a senator; “a noble maintaining of principle!” and the man is bid
off, and the hammer falls with a last crash on his hearth, and hopes,
and manhood, and he lies a bleeding wreck on the altar of Liberty!
Such was the altar in 1776;--such is the altar in 1850!
OUTLINE OF A MAN.
In some of those castle-building day-dreams, in which, like all youth
of an imaginative turn, I was wont, in my early days, to indulge, a
favorite image of my creation was an _Africo-American for the time_,--a
colored man, who had known by experience the bitterness of slavery, and
now by some process free, so endowed with natural powers, and a certain
degree of attainments, all the more rare and effective for being
acquired under great disadvantages,--as to be a sort of Moses to his
oppressed and degraded tribe. He was to be gifted with a noble person,
of course, and refinement of manners, and some elegance of thought
and expression; by what unprecedented miracle such a paragon was to
be graduated through the educational appliances of American slavery,
imagination did not trouble herself to inquire. She was painting
fancy-pieces, not portraits.
Having thus irresponsibly struck out upon the canvas her central
figure, she would not be slow to complete the picture with many a
rose-colored vision of brilliant successes and magic triumphs won by
her hero, in his great enterprise of the redemption of his people. A
burning sense of their wrongs fired his eloquence with an undying,
passionate earnestness, and as he alternately reproached the injustice,
and appealed to the generosity of his oppressors, all opposition gave
way before him; the masses, as one man, demanded the emancipation of
his long-degraded, deeply injured race; and millions of regenerated men
rose up, upon their broken chains and called him blessed.
Years rolled away, and these poetic fancies faded “into the light of
common day.” The cold, stern, pitiless reality remained. The dark
incubus of slavery yet rested down upon more than three millions of
the victims of democratic despotism. But the triumphant champion of
the devoted race had melted away, with the morning mists of my boyish
conjuring.
One morning in the summer of 1844, walking up Main-street in the city
of Hartford, I was attracted by the movements of a group of some
twenty-five or thirty men and women, in a small recess, or court, by
the side of the old Centre Church. They appeared to be organized into
an assembly, and a tall mulatto was addressing them. I drew near to
listen. The speaker was recounting the oft-enacted history of a flight
from slavery. With his eye upon the cold, but true north star, and his
ear ever and anon bent to the ground, listening for the “blood-hound’s
savage bay,” sure-footed and panting, the fugitive was before me! My
attention had been arrested; I was profoundly interested. The audience
was the American Anti-slavery Society, then just excluded from some of
the public halls of the city, and fain to content themselves, after an
apostolic sort, with the _next best_ accommodations. The orator was
FREDERICK DOUGLASS, the most remarkable man of this country, and of
this age; and--may I not dare to add--the almost complete fulfilment of
my early dream!
Since that day, through assiduous application, and a varied experience,
he has continued to develop in the same wonderful ratio of improvement,
which even then distinguished him as a prodigy in self-education.
Unusually favored in personal appearance and address, full of generous
impulse and delicate sensibility, exuberant in playful wit, or biting
sarcasm, or stern denunciation, ever commanding in his moral attitude,
earnest and impressive in manner, with a voice eminently sonorous and
flexible, and gesture full of dramatic vivacity, I have many times
seen large audiences swayed at his will; at one moment convulsed with
laughter, and at the next, bathed in tears; now lured with admiration
of the orator, and now with indignation at the oppressor, against
whom he hurled his invective. But in my boyhood’s quasi-prophetic
fancy of such a man and his inimitable success, I had not counted upon
one antagonist, whose reality and potency, the observation of every
day now forces painfully upon me. I mean the strange and unnatural
_prejudice against mere color_, which is so all-prevalent in the
American breast, as almost to nullify the influence of _such_ a man,
_so_ pleading; while his dignity, his urbanity, his imperturbable
serenity and good nature, his genuine purity and worth all fail, at
times, to secure him from the grossest indignities, at the hands
of the coarse and brutal. Nobody who knows him will be inclined to
question our estimate of his character, but it still comports with the
intelligence and refinement and piety of a large proportion of American
society to label him “nigger,” and the name itself invites to safe
contumely, and irresponsible violence.
I have spoken of Frederick Douglass as an interesting man--a wonderful
man. Look at him as he stands to-day before this nation; and then
contemplate his history.
Begin with him when, a little slave-child, he lay down on his rude
pallet, and that slave-mother, from a plantation twelve miles away,
availed herself of the privilege granted grudgingly, of travelling
the whole distance, after the day’s work, (on peril of the lash,
unless back again by sunrise to her task,) that she might lie there
by his side, and sing him with her low sweet song to sleep. “I do not
recollect,” says he, “of ever seeing my mother by the light of day.
She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to
sleep, but long before I awaked, she was gone.” How touching the love
of that dark-browed bondwoman for her boy! How precious must the memory
of that dim but sweet remembrance be to him, who though once a vassal,
bound and scourged, and still a Helot, proscribed and wronged, may not
be robbed of this dear token that he, too, _had once a mother_! Her low
sad lullaby yet warps his life’s dark woof--for she watches over his
pathway now with spirit-eyes, and still keeps singing on in his heart,
and nursing his courage and his patience.
Follow him through all the tempestuous experience of his bondage. His
lashings, his longings, his perseverance in possessing himself of the
key of knowledge, which, after all, only unlocked to him the fatal
secret that he was a slave, a thing to be bought and sold like oxen.
Imagine the tumult of his soul, as standing by the broad Chesapeake,
he watched the receding vessels, “while they flew on their white wings
before the breeze, and apostrophized them as animated by the living
spirit of freedom;”[T] or when reading in a stray copy of the old
“Columbian Orator,” (verily, all our school-books must be expurgated of
the incendiary “perilous stuff” in which they abound,) the “Dialogue
between a Master and his Slave,” and Sheridan’s great speech on
Catholic Emancipation.[U] See to what heroic resistance his proud heart
had swollen, when he turned outright upon his tormentor--pious Mr.
Corey, the “nigger-breaker”--and inflicted condign retribution on his
heartless ribs; “after which,” says he, significantly, “I was never
whipped again; _I had several fights_, but was never whipped.” Attend
him in his exodus from our republican Egypt. Witness his struggles
with poverty; his vain attempts to find employment at his trade, as a
colored man, in the _free_ North. Behold him at last emerging from his
obscurity at the Anti-slavery Convention in Nantucket. Somebody, who is
aware of his extraordinary natural intelligence, invites him to speak.
Tremblingly he consents. “As soon as he had taken his seat,” said Mr.
Garrison, after describing the tremendous effect of his remarks upon
the audience, “filled with hope and admiration, I rose and declared
that Patrick Henry, of revolutionary fame, never made a speech more
eloquent in the cause of liberty, than the one we had just listened to
from the hunted fugitive.”
That was just _eleven years_ ago,--and what is Frederick Douglass
now? I would fain avoid the language of exaggeration. It is ever
a cruel kindness which over-praises, exciting expectations, which
cannot but be disappointed. But when, in view of the fact that the
subject of this sketch was but thirteen years ago A SLAVE, in all
the darkness and disability of Southern bondage, I affirm that his
present character, attainments, and position constitute a phenomenon
hitherto perhaps unprecedented in the history of intellectual and
moral achievement, none who know and are competent to weigh the
facts, will account the terms extravagant. It is not to be expected
but that his mental condition should betray his early disadvantages.
His information, though amazing, under the circumstances, will not of
course bear comparison, in fulness and accuracy, with that of men who
have been accumulating their resources from childhood. In his writings,
the deficiency of early discipline is most manifest, rendering them
diffuse and unequal, though always interesting, and often exceedingly
effective. He is properly an _orator_. His addresses, like those of
Whitfield, and many other popular speakers, lose a large proportion
of their effect in reading. They require the living voice, and the
magnetic presence of the orator. But even in this respect, Douglass
is not uniform in his performance, but is quite dependent on his
_surroundings_, and the inspiration of the moment. But when, all these
consenting, he becomes thoroughly possessed of his theme, and his tall
form--six feet high and straight as an arrow,--his bearing dignified
and graceful,--self-possessed, yet modest,--his countenance flexible,
and wonderful in power of expression, and his voice, with its rich and
varied modulation, are all summoned to the work of enchantment, many a
rapt assembly, insignificant in neither numbers nor intelligence, can
testify to the witchery of his eloquence.
And, after all, the _moral_ features of this interesting character
constitute its principal charm. The integrity and manliness of
Frederick Douglass, potent and acknowledged where he is at all known,
have much to do with his influence as a popular orator. It has been
customary, with a certain class of Shibboleth-pronouncers to class him
with infidels, but this is only the appropriate and characteristic
retort of a certain sort of “highly respectable” Christianity to his
uncompromising denunciations of its hollow and selfish character. _I_
think Frederick Douglass is a Christian; he is a gentleman, I _know_.
There are few white men of my acquaintance, who could have borne so
much adulation, without losing the balance of their self-appreciation.
Nobody ever knew Frederick Douglass to over-rate himself, or to thrust
himself anywhere where he did not belong, or upon anybody who might by
any possibility object to his companionship,--unless, in the latter
case, when he deemed necessary the assertion of a simple right. Whence
he got his retiring and graceful modesty, and his nice sense of the
minute proprieties,--unless it be somehow in his _blood_,--is a mystery
to me. Can it be possible that such refinements are _scourged_ into
men “down South?” An illustration of this may be seen in his response
to those gentlemen of Rochester, who, by way of gratifying a grudge
against the Anti-slavery faction of their party, nominated Douglass for
Congress in derision.
“GENTLEMEN:--I have learned with some surprise, that in the Whig
Convention held in this city on Saturday last, you signified, by your
votes, a desire to make me your representative in the Legislature
of this State. Never having, at any time that I recollect, thought,
spoken, or acted, in any way, to commit myself to either the
principles or the policy of the Whig party; but on the contrary,
having always held, and publicly expressed opinions diametrically
opposed to those held by that part of the Whig party which you are
supposed to represent, your voting for me, I am bound in courtesy to
suppose, is founded in a misapprehension of my political sentiments.
“Lest you should, at any other time, commit a similar blunder, I
beg to state, once for all, that I do not believe that the slavery
question is settled, and settled forever. I do not believe that
slave-catching is either a Christian duty, or an innocent amusement.
I do not believe that he who breaks the arm of the kidnapper, or
wrests the trembling captive from his grasp is ‘a traitor.’ I do not
believe that Daniel Webster is the saviour of the Union, nor that the
Union stands in need of such a saviour. I do not believe that human
enactments are to be obeyed when they are point-blank against the law
of the living God. And believing most fully, as I do, the reverse of
all this, you will easily believe me to be a person wholly unfit to
receive the suffrages of gentlemen holding the opinion and favoring
the policy of that wing of the Whig party denominated ‘the _Silver
Grays_.’
“With all the respect which your derision permits me to entertain for
you,
I am, gentlemen,
Your faithful fellow-citizen,
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.”
The perpetrators of the wanton and gratuitous insult which elicited
this beautiful rebuke, would be sadly outraged, were we to insist
on withholding the title of “Gentlemen” from those who could, on
any pretence, trample on the feelings of such as they esteem their
inferiors. If they half begin to comprehend the meaning of the term,
much more to feel its power, their cheeks must have crimsoned with
shame, when they saw their own unprovoked assault, contrasted with the
calm and self-respectful serenity of this reply.
Another instance of this dignity under circumstances of peculiar trial,
may be found in his own account--in the columns of “Frederick Douglass’
paper”--of a rencontre with a hotel clerk in Cleveland. It is as
follows:
At the ringing of the morning bell for breakfast, I made my way to
the table, supposing myself included in the call; but I was scarcely
seated, when there stepped up to me a young man, apparently much
agitated, saying: “Sir, you must leave this table.” “And why,” said I,
“must I leave this table?” “I want no controversy with you. You must
leave this table.” I replied, “that I had regularly enrolled myself as
a boarder in that house; I expected to pay the same charges imposed
upon others; and I came to the table in obedience to the call of the
bell; and if I left the table I must know the reason.” “We will serve
you in your room. It is against our rules.” “You should have informed
me of _your rules_ earlier. Where are your rules? Let me see them.”
“I don’t want any altercation with you. You must leave this table.”
“But have I not deported myself as a gentleman? What have I done? Is
there any gentleman who objects to my being seated here?” (There was
silence round the table.) “Come, sir, come, sir, you must leave this
table at once.” “Well, sir, I cannot leave it unless you will give me
a better reason than you have done for my removal.” “Well, I’ll give
you a reason if you’ll leave the table and go to another room.” “That,
sir, I will not do. You have invidiously selected me out of all this
company, to be dragged from this table, and have thereby reflected upon
me as a man and a gentleman; and the reason for this treatment shall
be as public as the insult you have offered.” At these remarks, my
carrot-headed assailant left me, _as he said_, to get help to remove
me from the table. Meanwhile I called upon one of the servants (who
appeared to wait upon me with alacrity) to help me to a cup of coffee,
and assisting myself to some of the good things before me, I quietly
and thankfully partook of my morning meal without further annoyance.
Whatever may have been the duty of Mr. Douglass, (and none who know
him can for a moment doubt what his inclination would have been,) in
case the proscriptive “rules of the house” had been previously made
known to him, the justice, as well as the gentlemanly self-possession
of his bearing, in relation to this public outrage, must, I think, be
sufficiently obvious.
* * * * *
Rob^t. R. Raymond
[Illustration]
THE HEROIC SLAVE-WOMAN.
It was my privilege to see much of Edward S. Abdy, Esq., of England,
during his visit to our country, in 1833 and 1834. The first time I met
him was at the house of Mr. James Forten, of Philadelphia, in company
with two other English gentlemen, who had come to the United States,
commissioned by the British Parliament to examine our systems of prison
and penitentiary discipline. Mr. Abdy was interested in whatsoever
affected the welfare of man. But he was more particularly devoted to
the investigation of slavery. He travelled extensively in our Southern
States, and contemplated with his own eyes the manifold abominations
of our American despotism. He was too much exasperated by our tyranny
to be enamoured of our democratic institutions; and on his return to
England, he published two very sensible volumes, that were so little
complimentary to our nation, that our booksellers thought it not worth
their while to republish them.
This warm-hearted philanthropist visited me several times at my home
in Connecticut. The last afternoon that he was there, we were sitting
together at my study window, when our attention was arrested by a
very handsome carriage driving up to the hotel opposite my house. A
gentleman and lady occupied the back seat; and on the front were two
children tended by a black woman, who wore the turban, that was then
more than now, usually worn by _slave_ women.
We hastened over to the hotel, and soon entered into conversation
with the slave-holder. He was polite, but somewhat nonchalant, and
defiant of our sympathy with his victim. He readily acknowledged, as
slave-holders of that day generally did, that, abstractly considered,
the enslavement of fellow men was a great wrong; but then he contended
that it had become a necessary evil, necessary to the enslaved, no less
than to the enslavers; the former being unable to do without masters,
as much as the latter were to do without servants. And he added, in a
very confident tone, “you are at liberty to persuade our servant-woman
to remain here, if you can.”
Thus challenged, we of course sought an interview with the slave; and
informed her that having been brought by her master into the free
States, she was, by the laws of the land, set at liberty. “No, I am
not, gentlemen,” was her prompt reply. We adduced cases, and quoted
authorities to establish our assertion that she was free. But she
significantly shook her head, and still insisted that the examples
and the legal decisions did not reach her case. “For,” said she, “_I
promised_ mistress that I would go back with her and the children.” Mr.
Abdy undertook to argue with her that such a promise was not binding.
He had been drilled in the moral philosophy of Dr. Paley, and in that
debate seemed to be possessed of its spirit. But he failed to make any
visible impression upon the woman. She had bound herself by a promise
to her mistress, that she would not leave her; and that promise had
fastened upon her conscience an obligation, from which she could not be
persuaded, that even her natural right to liberty could exonerate her.
Mr. Abdy at last was impatient with her, and said, in his haste, “is
it possible that you do not wish to be free?” She replied with solemn
earnestness, “was there ever a slave that did not wish to be free? I
long for liberty. I will get out of slavery, if I can, the day after I
have returned, but go back I must, because I _promised_ that I would.”
At this, we desisted from our endeavor to induce her to take the boon
that was, apparently to us, within her reach. We could not but feel a
profound respect for that moral sensibility which would not allow her
to embrace even her freedom, at the expense of violating a promise.
The next morning, at an early hour, the slave-holder with his wife and
children drove off, leaving the slave-woman and their heaviest trunk to
be brought on after them in the stage-coach. We could not refrain from
again trying to persuade her to remain and be free. We told her that
her master had given us leave to persuade her if we could. She pointed
to the trunk, and to a very valuable gold watch and chain, which her
mistress had committed to her care, and insisted that fidelity to a
trust was of more consequence to her soul even than the attainment of
liberty. Mr. Abdy offered to take the trunk and watch into his charge,
follow her master, and deliver them into his hands. But she could not
be made to see that in this there would be no violation of her duty.
And then her own person, that, too, she had promised should be returned
to the home of her master; and much as she longed for liberty, she
longed for a clear conscience more.
Mr. Abdy was astonished, delighted at this instance of heroice virtue
in a poor, ignorant slave. He packed his trunk, gave me a hearty adieu,
and, when the coach drove up, he took his seat on the outside with the
trunk and the slave--chattels of a Mississippi slave-holder--that he
might study for a few hours more the morality of that strong-hearted
woman, who could not be bribed to violate her promise, even by the gift
of liberty.
It was the last time I saw Mr. Abdy,--and it was a sight to be
remembered,--he an accomplished English gentleman, a Fellow of Oxford
or Cambridge University, riding on the driver’s box of a stage-coach,
side by side with an American slave-woman, that he might learn more of
her history and character.
“Full many a gem, of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”
Yours, respectfully,
Samuel J. May
SYRACUSE, OCT. 9, 1852.
KOSSUTH.
You ask me what I think of Kossuth. The history of Kossuth is but
partly told. An opinion of him now, is, of course, founded on the past
and present. But so decisive have been the manifestations in regard to
his abilities and aims, that we may confidently say he is the great man
of the age. I don’t mean that there is no other man who is responsible
for as great or greater physical and intellectual endowments and
education. We measure men by what they _do_, not by what they are
_able_ to do. He is great, because he has manifested great thoughts and
corresponding deeds. In this regard he has no superior.
When I speak of Kossuth as _great_, I mean that the divine elements of
power, wisdom, and goodness are so mixed in him, as to qualify him to
embrace the largest interests, and attract the agencies to secure those
interests. That his eye sees, and his heart feels, and his philanthropy
embraces a larger area, and is acknowledged by a larger portion of the
human family than any other living man. I do not say there are not
men living whose hearts are as large, whose abilities are as great,
and whose virtues are as exalted as Kossuth’s. Men, too, whose great
qualities under like contingencies would, and by future contingencies
may, brighten into a glory as large as his. Nor would I say it does
not often require as great, or even greater talents and virtues to
accomplish deeds of humanity or patriotism on a theatre vastly less
dazzling and imposing. It is not necessary to my argument to exclude
such conclusions. When God decrees great events, he brings upon the
stage and qualifies the human instrumentalities by which such events
are accomplished; and that, too, at the very time they are needed. We
don’t know the future; but if we are to measure the present and the
past in the life of Kossuth, leaving alone the shadows which coming
events cast in the path of our hopes, we must rank Kossuth with the
greatest, and if we couple his heart with his deeds, with the best of
mankind.
I am aware that the opinion I here give of the great Magyar, is widely
different from the opinions of some others for whom I have very high
respect. Gerrit Smith honors Kossuth; but he honors him only as a
patriot, a christian patriot. Professor Atler of McGranville College in
an oration that does him credit as a philosopher and orator, says, that
“he who thinks the largest thought is the ruler of the world,”--and yet
he dwarfs the character of Kossuth to the simple patriot of Hungary.
To my mind, these are strange conclusions. It is the greatest thoughts
illustrated by corresponding action that denotes the ruler of the
world. It is the external manifestation of the mighty spiritual that
demonstrates the right to rule mankind. Apply that rule to Kossuth, and
I maintain his right to the sceptre of the world.
The brotherhood of nations is an idea to which philanthropy only could
give birth. Its home is in the hearts of all good men, and yet, until
Kossuth came before the world, that idea had been esteemed so vast in
its circumference, so out of the reach of means, so far beyond the
grasp of present experience and possibility, that he would have been
thought a fanatic or a fool who attempted it. He, indeed, by power
strictly personal, not only seized upon it as a practical thought,
and nobly argued it, but has actually and bravely entered upon the
experiment, and forced it upon the conceptions of the world, and
organized, not in our country only, but in Europe, plans and parties
for its realization. Here is not only a great _thought_, but a great
_deed_. To gather up the philanthropic minds or the patriot minds of
the world to embrace such an enterprise as not only a dutiful but
practicable scheme, is an achievement that leaves out of sight any
other achievement of eighteen hundred years.
It is not the development of abstract principles in science, in
philosophy, or in religion, that establishes the highest claim to the
world’s gratitude and admiration. It is the successful application
of those principles to human life and conduct, the setting them to
work to restore the world to the shape and aspect which God gave it,
that demonstrates the God-like in man. It is the manifestation of a
great idea upon the external, as God’s great thoughts are manifested
by the landscape, the ocean, and the heavens, by which we arrive at
the spiritual power that conceived them. A patriot indeed! The great
Hungarian _did_ attempt to link America to his great purpose by appeals
to her patriotism. It was the only common sentiment between our country
and him. It is America’s loftiest thought. Her beau-ideal of public
virtue. I don’t mean that there was no Christianity or philanthropy in
the United States when Kossuth came amongst us; but I do mean that,
as a nation, we had none of them. He came on an errand of practical
philanthropy; to appeal to our national heart, and cause the only cord
of humanity in it that could be touched, to vibrate in unison with
his own in behalf of the down-trodden nations of the world. He wished
to engage its organic power in behalf of national law. Had Kossuth
appealed to any higher principle, he would have overshot his mark. Love
of country is common, to the Christian and to the mere patriot. In the
latter it is only selfishness, in the former genuine philanthropy.
American patriotism was the only aperture through which he could reach
our nation’s heart, to raise it to the higher region of philanthropy,
and place it in his own bosom, and impregnate it with his own holy
sentiments, that their sympathies might circulate together for a
common brotherhood. He represented Hungary. He appeared at our door
as an outraged brother, to enlist us in behalf of a brother’s rights
and wrongs. He sought to excite in the nation’s bosom the activity of
a common principle, due at all times, and from nations no less than
individuals. It is the core of Christianity, described in these words,
“do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”
Our Washington had told us “to cultivate peace with all nations, and
form entangling alliances with none.” Our sensual and short-sighted
statesmen construed the sentiment as the rule of active power.
Instead of adopting it as Washington probably intended it, as a
rule of temporary policy, they inculcated the notion that we were
to cut ourselves clear from the family of nations, and live only
for ourselves. The large patriotism of Washington they had shrunken
to the merest selfishness. We may well thank God for the providence
which sent Kossuth among us, to relieve his fame from the suspicion of
having begot, and our country from the sin of cherishing, so weak and
dishonoring a delusion. Heaven-assisted man only could have dreamed of
believing a nation so securely blinded. Like the prophet of God, whose
lips were touched with celestial fire, he breathed upon the spell,
and it vanished. The nation’s eyes were opened. It saw, and all true
men admitted, that the sentiment was designed and adapted only to our
infancy, and, to use his own figure, no more fitting our manhood, than
the clothes of an infant are fitting the full grown man.
Now I admit we had philanthropists, wise men, orators, and some
statesmen, who asserted the doctrine of the human brotherhood, yet
we had no Kossuth to dissolve (if I may so speak) this Washingtonian
delusion. Kossuth touched it and it disappeared. The nation seemed to
have come to a new birth. Its heart, like the rock in the desert which
was touched by the staff of the prophet, opened, and its imprisoned
waters poured over the world. We all felt as the bondman feels who is
set free by a strong man. From that moment we grew larger, saw farther,
and felt our hearts moving over an unlimited area of humanity. From
that moment we felt that a new day was dawning. From that moment the
principle of the human brotherhood struck its deep roots in our soil,
as immovable as our mountains, as irradicable as our religion. Nor was
it in America alone that this sentiment was then awakened. Touched by
his notes, it trembled in the bosom of Europe. The heart of humanity
throbbed with a common sympathy throughout the civilized world. Kossuth
and Mazzini, crushed from beneath, ascended above the despotisms of
the world in the clear upper sky, and, in sight of heaven and earth,
reflected God’s light and curse upon them; and called into being the
activities which we hope is to tumble them in a common ruin, as the
precursor of the holy compact which shall secure all human rights.
It is objected that Kossuth did not denounce our slavery. The same
objection has equal strength against the philanthropy of Paul and
Jesus. I shall not dwell on this point. He did denounce American
slavery. The presence of Kossuth was a killing rebuke, his words a
consuming fire to it. The former is still felt as an incurable wound,
and the latter still scorches to the very centre of its vitality.
I have it from high authority, when Kossuth first came upon the
soil, and into the atmosphere of American slavery, his soul was so
shocked and disgusted by its offensiveness, that he proposed to
abandon his mission in those States where it existed, and denounce it
specifically; and was only deterred from doing so, by his sense of the
more comprehensive claims of that mission, which embraced the utter
destruction of all human oppression. I drop this topic with the remark,
that this objection, and all objections to his philanthropy, within my
knowledge, were made antecedent to his inimitable speech in New York
city, in behalf of his mother and sisters, a short time before he took
his departure for Europe. If there is not Christianity, philanthropy,
anti-slavery in that speech, we may despair of finding it in earth, or
even in the heavens. I have never read anything so representative of
heaven’s mercy, or angels’ eloquence, as that. Oh! I wish the world
knew it by heart. Methinks if it did, all wrong and oppression would
disappear from among men.
I was going to speak of the future, and of Mazzini, the twin apostle
of liberty, whose exile was wrung from the heart of poor Italy. But
the subject exceeds the brevity which must govern me. These rulers of
the world are linked with the mighty events which are fast becoming
history. From their hiding-places in London, they are moving and
controlling the passions which seem ready to break forth and obliterate
every cruel code under the sun, and hasten the time when all men shall
feel as brethren, and mingle their hearts in anthems of gratitude and
love.
John Thomas
SYRACUSE, NOV. 14, 1852.
THE HEROIC SLAVE.
PART I.
Oh! child of grief, why weepest thou?
Why droops thy sad and mournful brow?
Why is thy look so like despair?
What deep, sad sorrow lingers there?
The State of Virginia is famous in American annals for the
multitudinous array of her statesmen and heroes. She has been dignified
by some the mother of statesmen. History has not been sparing in
recording their names, or in blazoning their deeds. Her high position
in this respect, has given her an enviable distinction among her sister
States. With Virginia for his birth-place, even a man of ordinary
parts, on account of the general partiality for her sons, easily rises
to eminent stations. Men, not great enough to attract special attention
in their native States, have, like a certain distinguished citizen in
the State of New York, sighed and repined that they were not born in
Virginia. Yet not all the great ones of the Old Dominion have, by
the fact of their birth-place, escaped undeserved obscurity. By some
strange neglect, _one_ of the truest, manliest, and bravest of her
children,--one who, in after years, will, I think, command the pen
of genius to set his merits forth, holds now no higher place in the
records of that grand old Commonwealth than is held by a horse or an
ox. Let those account for it who can, but there stands the fact, that a
man who loved liberty as well as did Patrick Henry,--who deserved it as
much as Thomas Jefferson,--and who fought for it with a valor as high,
an arm as strong, and against odds as great, as he who led all the
armies of the American colonies through the great war for freedom and
independence, lives now only in the chattel records of his native State.
Glimpses of this great character are all that can now be presented. He
is brought to view only by a few transient incidents, and these afford
but partial satisfaction. Like a guiding star on a stormy night, he is
seen through the parted clouds and the howling tempests; or, like the
gray peak of a menacing rock on a perilous coast, he is seen by the
quivering flash of angry lightning, and he again disappears covered
with mystery.
Curiously, earnestly, anxiously we peer into the dark, and wish even
for the blinding flash, or the light of northern skies to reveal him.
But alas! he is still enveloped in darkness, and we return from the
pursuit like a wearied and disheartened mother, (after a tedious and
unsuccessful search for a lost child,) who returns weighed down with
disappointment and sorrow. Speaking of marks, traces, possibles, and
probabilities, we come before our readers.
* * * * *
In the spring of 1835, on a Sabbath morning, within hearing of the
solemn peals of the church bells at a distant village, a Northern
traveller through the State of Virginia drew up his horse to drink at a
sparkling brook, near the edge of a dark pine forest. While his weary
and thirsty steed drew in the grateful water, the rider caught the
sound of a human voice, apparently engaged in earnest conversation.
Following the direction of the sound, he descried, among the tall
pines, the man whose voice had arrested his attention. “To whom can
he be speaking?” thought the traveller. “He seems to be alone.” The
circumstance interested him much, and he became intensely curious to
know what thoughts and feelings, or, it might be, high aspirations,
guided those rich and mellow accents. Tieing his horse at a short
distance from the brook, he stealthily drew near the solitary speaker;
and, concealing himself by the side of a huge fallen tree, he
distinctly heard the following soliloquy:--
“What, then, is life to me? it is aimless and worthless, and worse than
worthless. Those birds, perched on yon swinging boughs, in friendly
conclave, sounding forth their merry notes in seeming worship of the
rising sun, though liable to the sportsman’s fowling-piece, are still
my superiors. They _live free_, though they may die slaves. They fly
where they list by day, and retire in freedom at night. But what is
freedom to me, or I to it? I am a _slave_,--born a slave, an abject
slave,--even before I made part of this breathing world, the scourge
was platted for my back; the fetters were forged for my limbs. How mean
a thing am I. That accursed and crawling snake, that miserable reptile,
that has just glided into its slimy home, is freer and better off than
I. He escaped my blow, and is safe. But here am I, a man,--yes, _a
man!_--with thoughts and wishes, with powers and faculties as far as
angel’s flight above that hated reptile,--yet he is my superior, and
scorns to own me as his master, or to stop to take my blows. When he
saw my uplifted arm, he darted beyond my reach, and turned to give me
battle. I dare not do as much as that. I neither run nor fight, but do
meanly stand, answering each heavy blow of a cruel master with doleful
wails and piteous cries. I am galled with irons; but even these are
more tolerable than the consciousness, the _galling_ consciousness of
cowardice and indecision. Can it be that I _dare_ not run away? _Perish
the thought_, I _dare_ do any thing which may be done by another. When
that young man struggled with the waves _for life_, and others stood
back appalled in helpless horror, did I not plunge in, forgetful of
life, to save his? The raging bull from whom all others fled, pale with
fright, did I not keep at bay with a single pitch-fork? Could a coward
do that? _No_,--_no_,--I wrong myself,--I am no coward. _Liberty_ I
will have, or die in the attempt to gain it. This working that others
may live in idleness! This cringing submission to insolence and curses!
This living under the constant dread and apprehension of being sold
and transferred, like a mere brute, is _too_ much for me. I will stand
it no longer. What others have done, I will do. These trusty legs, or
these sinewy arms shall place me among the free. Tom escaped; so can I.
The North Star will not be less kind to me than to him. I will follow
it. I will at least make the trial. I have nothing to lose. If I am
caught, I shall only be a slave. If I am shot, I shall only lose a life
which is a burden and a curse. If I get clear, (as something tells me I
shall,) liberty, the inalienable birth-right of every man, precious and
priceless, will be mine. My resolution is fixed. _I shall be free._”
At these words the traveller raised his head cautiously and
noiselessly, and caught, from his hiding-place, a full view of the
unsuspecting speaker. Madison (for that was the name of our hero) was
standing erect, a smile of satisfaction rippled upon his expressive
countenance, like that which plays upon the face of one who has but
just solved a difficult problem, or vanquished a malignant foe; for
at that moment he was free, at least in spirit. The future gleamed
brightly before him, and his fetters lay broken at his feet. His air
was triumphant.
Madison was of manly form. Tall, symmetrical, round, and strong. In
his movements he seemed to combine, with the strength of the lion,
a lion’s elasticity. His torn sleeves disclosed arms like polished
iron. His face was “black, but comely.” His eye, lit with emotion,
kept guard under a brow as dark and as glossy as the raven’s wing. His
whole appearance betokened Herculean strength; yet there was nothing
savage or forbidding in his aspect. A child might play in his arms, or
dance on his shoulders. A giant’s strength, but not a giant’s heart
was in him. His broad mouth and nose spoke only of good mature and
kindness. But his voice, that unfailing index of the soul, though full
and melodious, had that in it which could terrify as well as charm. He
was just the man you would choose when hardships were to be endured, or
danger to be encountered,--intelligent and brave. He had the head to
conceive, and the hand to execute. In a word, he was one to be sought
as a friend, but to be dreaded as an enemy.
As our traveller gazed upon him, he almost trembled at the thought of
his dangerous intrusion. Still he could not quit the place. He had long
desired to sound the mysterious depths of the thoughts and feelings
of a slave. He was not, therefore, disposed to allow so providential
an opportunity to pass unimproved. He resolved to hear more; so he
listened again for those mellow and mournful accents which, he says,
made such an impression upon him as can never be erased. He did not
have to wait long. There came another gush from the same full fountain;
now bitter, and now sweet. Scathing denunciations of the cruelty and
injustice of slavery; heart-touching narrations of his own personal
suffering, intermingled with prayers to the God of the oppressed for
help and deliverance, were followed by presentations of the dangers
and difficulties of escape, and formed the burden of his eloquent
utterances; but his high resolution clung to him,--for he ended each
speech by an emphatic declaration of his purpose to be free. It seemed
that the very repetition of this, imparted a glow to his countenance.
The hope of freedom seemed to sweeten, for a season, the bitter cup
of slavery, and to make it, for a time, tolerable; for when in the
very whirlwind of anguish,--when his heart’s cord seemed screwed up
to snapping tension, hope sprung up and soothed his troubled spirit.
Fitfully he would exclaim, “How can I leave her? Poor thing! what can
she do when I am gone? Oh! oh! ’tis impossible that I can leave poor
Susan!”
A brief pause intervened. Our traveller raised his head, and saw again
the sorrow-smitten slave. His eye was fixed upon the ground. The strong
man staggered under a heavy load. Recovering himself, he argued thus
aloud: “All is uncertain here. To-morrow’s sun may not rise before
I am sold, and separated from her I love. What, then, could I do
for her? I should be in more hopeless slavery, and she no nearer to
liberty,--whereas if I were free,--my arms my own,--I might devise the
means to rescue her.”
This said, Madison cast around a searching glance, as if the thought of
being overheard had flashed across his mind. He said no more, but, with
measured steps, walked away, and was lost to the eye of our traveller
amidst the wildering woods.
Long after Madison had left the ground, Mr. Listwell (our traveller)
remained in motionless silence, meditating on the extraordinary
revelations to which he had listened. He seemed fastened to the spot,
and stood half hoping, half fearing the return of the sable preacher to
his solitary temple. The speech of Madison rung through the chambers
of his soul, and vibrated through his entire frame. “Here is indeed
a man,” thought he, “of rare endowments,--a child of God,--guilty
of no crime but the color of his skin,--hiding away from the face of
humanity, and pouring out his thoughts and feelings, his hopes and
resolutions to the lonely woods; to him those distant church bells
have no grateful music. He shuns the church, the altar, and the great
congregation of christian worshippers, and wanders away to the gloomy
forest, to utter in the vacant air complaints and griefs, which the
religion of his times and his country can neither console nor relieve.
Goaded almost to madness by the sense of the injustice done him, he
resorts hither to give vent to his pent up feelings, and to debate
with himself the feasibility of plans, plans of his own invention, for
his own deliverance. From this hour I am an abolitionist. I have seen
enough and heard enough, and I shall go to my home in Ohio resolved
to atone for my past indifference to this ill-starred race, by making
such exertions as I shall be able to do, for the speedy emancipation of
every slave in the land.”
PART II.
“The gaudy, blabbling and remorseful day
Is crept into the bosom of the sea;
And now loud-howling wolves arouse the jades
That drag the tragic melancholy night;
Who with their drowsy, slow, and flagging wings
Clip dead men’s graves, and from their misty jaws
Breathe foul contagions, darkness in the air.”
_Shakspeare._
Five years after the foregoing singular occurrence, in the winter of
1840, Mr. and Mrs. Listwell sat together by the fireside of their own
happy home, in the State of Ohio. The children were all gone to bed.
A single lamp burnt brightly on the centre-table. All was still and
comfortable within; but the night was cold and dark; a heavy wind
sighed and moaned sorrowfully around the house and barn, occasionally
bringing against the clattering windows a stray leaf from the large
oak trees that embowered their dwelling. It was a night for strange
noises and for strange fancies. A whole wilderness of thought might
pass through one’s mind during such an evening. The smouldering embers,
partaking of the spirit of the restless night, became fruitful of
varied and fantastic pictures, and revived many bygone scenes and old
impressions. The happy pair seemed to sit in silent fascination, gazing
on the fire. Suddenly this _reverie_ was interrupted by a heavy growl.
Ordinarily such an occurrence would have scarcely provoked a single
word, or excited the least apprehension. But there are certain seasons
when the slightest sound sends a jar through all the subtle chambers of
the mind; and such a season was this. The happy pair started up, as if
some sudden danger had come upon them. The growl was from their trusty
watch-dog.
“What can it mean? certainly no one can be out on such a night as
this,” said Mrs. Listwell.
“The wind has deceived the dog, my dear; he has mistaken the noise of
falling branches, brought down by the wind, for that of the footsteps
of persons coming to the house. I have several times to-night thought
that I heard the sound of footsteps. I am sure, however, that it was
but the wind. Friends would not be likely to come out at such an hour,
or such a night; and thieves are too lazy and self-indulgent to expose
themselves to this biting frost; but should there be any one about, our
brave old Monte, who is on the look-out, will not be slow in sounding
the alarm.”
Saying this they quietly left the window, whither they had gone to
learn the cause of the menacing growl, and re-seated themselves by the
fire, as if reluctant to leave the slowly expiring embers, although
the hour was late. A few minutes only intervened after resuming their
seats, when again their sober meditations were disturbed. Their
faithful dog now growled and barked furiously, as if assailed by an
advancing foe. Simultaneously the good couple arose, and stood in
mute expectation. The contest without seemed fierce and violent. It
was, however, soon over,--the barking ceased, for, with true canine
instinct, Monte quickly discovered that a friend, not an enemy of the
family, was coming to the house, and instead of rushing to repel the
supposed intruder, he was now at the door, whimpering and dancing for
the admission of himself and his newly made friend.
Mr. Listwell knew by this movement that all was well; he advanced
and opened the door, and saw by the light that streamed out into the
darkness, a tall man advancing slowly towards the house, with a stick
in one hand, and a small bundle in the other. “It is a traveller,”
thought he, “who has missed his way, and is coming to inquire the
road. I am glad we did not go to bed earlier,--I have felt all the
evening as if somebody would be here to-night.”
The man had now halted a short distance from the door, and looked
prepared alike for flight or battle. “Come in, sir, don’t be alarmed,
you have probably lost your way.”
Slightly hesitating, the traveller walked in; not, however, without
regarding his host with a scrutinizing glance. “No, sir,” said he, “I
have come to ask you a greater favor.”
Instantly Mr. Listwell exclaimed, (as the recollection of the Virginia
forest scene flashed upon him,) “Oh, sir, I know not your name, but
I have seen your face, and heard your voice before. I am glad to see
you. _I know all._ You are flying for your liberty,--be seated,--be
seated,--banish all fear. You are safe under my roof.”
This recognition, so unexpected, rather disconcerted and disquieted
the noble fugitive. The timidity and suspicion of persons escaping
from slavery are easily awakened, and often what is intended to dispel
the one, and to allay the other, has precisely the opposite effect. It
was so in this case. Quickly observing the unhappy impression made by
his words and action, Mr. Listwell assumed a more quiet and inquiring
aspect, and finally succeeded in removing the apprehensions which his
very natural and generous salutation had aroused.
Thus assured, the stranger said, “Sir, you have rightly guessed, I
am, indeed, a fugitive from slavery. My name is Madison,--Madison
Washington my mother used to call me. I am on my way to Canada, where
I learn that persons of my color are protected in all the rights of
men; and my object in calling upon you was, to beg the privilege of
resting my weary limbs for the night in your barn. It was my purpose
to have continued my journey till morning; but the piercing cold, and
the frowning darkness compelled me to seek shelter; and, seeing a light
through the lattice of your window, I was encouraged to come here to
beg the privilege named. You will do me a great favor by affording me
shelter for the night.”
“A resting-place, indeed, sir, you shall have; not, however, in my
barn, but in the best room of my house. Consider yourself, if you
please, under the roof of a friend; for such I am to you, and to all
your deeply injured race.”
While this introductory conversation was going on, the kind lady had
revived the fire, and was diligently preparing supper; for she, not
less than her husband, felt for the sorrows of the oppressed and hunted
ones of earth, and was always glad of an opportunity to do them a
service. A bountiful repast was quickly prepared, and the hungry and
toil-worn bondman was cordially invited to partake thereof. Gratefully
he acknowledged the favor of his benevolent benefactress; but appeared
scarcely to understand what such hospitality could mean. It was the
first time in his life that he had met so humane and friendly a
greeting at the hands of persons whose color was unlike his own; yet
it was impossible for him to doubt the charitableness of his new
friends, or the genuineness of the welcome so freely given; and he
therefore, with many thanks, took his seat at the table with Mr. and
Mrs. Listwell, who, desirous to make him feel at home, took a cup of
tea themselves, while urging upon Madison the best that the house could
afford.
Supper over, all doubts and apprehensions banished, the three drew
around the blazing fire, and a conversation commenced which lasted till
long after midnight.
“Now,” said Madison to Mr. Listwell, “I was a little surprised and
alarmed when I came in, by what you said; do tell me, sir, _why_ you
thought you had seen my face before, and by what you knew me to be a
fugitive from slavery; for I am sure that I never was before in this
neighborhood, and I certainly sought to conceal what I supposed to be
the manner of a fugitive slave.”
Mr. Listwell at once frankly disclosed the secret; describing the place
where he first saw him; rehearsing the language which he (Madison) had
used; referring to the effect which his manner and speech had made upon
him; declaring the resolution he there formed to be an abolitionist;
telling how often he had spoken of the circumstance, and the deep
concern he had ever since felt to know what had become of him; and
whether he had carried out the purpose to make his escape, as in the
woods he declared he would do.
“Ever since that morning,” said Mr. Listwell, “you have seldom been
absent from my mind, and though now I did not dare to hope that I
should ever see you again, I have often wished that such might be my
fortune; for, from that hour, your face seemed to be daguerreotyped on
my memory.”
Madison looked quite astonished, and felt amazed at the narration to
which he had listened. After recovering himself he said, “I well
remember that morning, and the bitter anguish that wrung my heart;
I will state the occasion of it. I had, on the previous Saturday,
suffered a cruel lashing; had been tied up to the limb of a tree,
with my feet chained together, and a heavy iron bar placed between my
ankles. Thus suspended, I received on my naked back forty stripes, and
was kept in this distressing position three or four hours, and was then
let down, only to have my torture increased; for my bleeding back,
gashed by the cow-skin, was washed by the overseer with old brine,
partly to augment my suffering, and partly, as he said, to prevent
inflammation. My crime was that I had stayed longer at the mill,
the day previous, than it was thought I ought to have done, which,
I assured my master and the overseer, was no fault of mine; but no
excuses were allowed. ‘Hold your tongue, you impudent rascal,’ met my
every explanation. Slave-holders are so imperious when their passions
are excited, as to construe every word of the slave into insolence. I
could do nothing but submit to the agonizing infliction. Smarting still
from the wounds, as well as from the consciousness of being whipt for
no cause, I took advantage of the absence of my master, who had gone to
church, to spend the time in the woods, and brood over my wretched lot.
Oh, sir, I remember it well,--and can never forget it.”
“But this was five years ago; where have you been since?”
“I will try to tell you,” said Madison. “Just four weeks after that
Sabbath morning, I gathered up the few rags of clothing I had, and
started, as I supposed, for the North and for freedom. I must not stop
to describe my feelings on taking this step. It seemed like taking a
leap into the dark. The thought of leaving my poor wife and two little
children caused me indescribable anguish; but consoling myself with the
reflection that once free, I could, possibly, devise ways and means
to gain their freedom also, I nerved myself up to make the attempt. I
started, but ill-luck attended me; for after being out a whole week,
strange to say, I still found myself on my master’s grounds; the third
night after being out, a season of clouds and rain set in, wholly
preventing me from seeing the North Star, which I had trusted as my
guide, not dreaming that clouds might intervene between us.
“This circumstance was fatal to my project, for in losing my star, I
lost my way; so when I supposed I was far towards the North, and had
almost gained my freedom, I discovered myself at the very point from
which I had started. It was a severe trial, for I arrived at home in
great destitution; my feet were sore, and in travelling in the dark,
I had dashed my foot against a stump, and started a nail, and lamed
myself. I was wet and cold; one week had exhausted all my stores; and
when I landed on my master’s plantation, with all my work to do over
again,--hungry, tired, lame, and bewildered,--I almost cursed the day
that I was born. In this extremity I approached the quarters. I did
so stealthily, although in my desperation I hardly cared whether I
was discovered or not. Peeping through the rents of the quarters, I
saw my fellow-slaves seated by a warm fire, merrily passing away the
time, as though their hearts knew no sorrow. Although I envied their
seeming contentment, all wretched as I was, I despised the cowardly
acquiescence in their own degradation which it implied, and felt a
kind of pride and glory in my own desperate lot. I dared not enter the
quarters,--for where there is seeming contentment with slavery, there
is certain treachery to freedom. I proceeded towards the great house,
in the hope of catching a glimpse of my poor wife, whom I knew might
be trusted with my secrets even on the scaffold. Just as I reached
the fence which divided the field from the garden, I saw a woman in
the yard, who in the darkness I took to be my wife; but a nearer
approach told me it was not she. I was about to speak; had I done so,
I would not have been here this night; for an alarm would have been
sounded, and the hunters been put on my track. Here were hunger, cold,
thirst, disappointment, and chagrin, confronted only by the dim hope
of liberty. I tremble to think of that dreadful hour. To face the
deadly cannon’s mouth in warm blood unterrified, is, I think, a small
achievement, compared with a conflict like this with gaunt starvation.
The gnawings of hunger conquers by degrees, till all that a man has he
would give in exchange for a single crust of bread. Thank God, I was
not quite reduced to this extremity.
“Happily for me, before the fatal moment of utter despair, my good wife
made her appearance in the yard. It was she; I knew her step. All was
well now. I was, however, afraid to speak, lest I should frighten her.
Yet speak I did; and, to my great joy, my voice was known. Our meeting
can be more easily imagined than described. For a time hunger, thirst,
weariness, and lameness were forgotten. But it was soon necessary for
her to return to the house. She being a house-servant, her absence from
the kitchen, if discovered, might have excited suspicion. Our parting
was like tearing the flesh from my bones; yet it was the part of wisdom
for her to go. She left me with the purpose of meeting me at midnight
in the very forest where you last saw me. She knew the place well,
as one of my melancholy resorts, and could easily find it, though the
night was dark.
“I hastened away, therefore, and concealed myself, to await the arrival
of my good angel. As I lay there among the leaves, I was strongly
tempted to return again to the house of my master and give myself up;
but remembering my solemn pledge on that memorable Sunday morning, I
was able to linger out the two long hours between ten and midnight. I
may well call them long hours. I have endured much hardship; I have
encountered many perils; but the anxiety of those two hours, was the
bitterest I ever experienced. True to her word, my wife came laden with
provisions, and we sat down on the side of a log, at that dark and
lonesome hour of the night. I cannot say we talked; our feelings were
too great for that; yet we came to an understanding that I should make
the woods my home, for if I gave myself up, I should be whipped and
sold away; and if I started for the North, I should leave a wife doubly
dear to me. We mutually determined, therefore, that I should remain in
the vicinity. In the dismal swamps I lived, sir, five long years,--a
cave for my home during the day. I wandered about at night with the
wolf and the bear,--sustained by the promise that my good Susan would
meet me in the pine woods at least once a week. This promise was
redeemed, I assure you, to the letter, greatly to my relief. I had
partly become contented with my mode of life, and had made up my mind
to spend my days there; but the wilderness that sheltered me thus long
took fire, and refused longer to be my hiding-place.
“I will not harrow up your feelings by portraying the terrific scene
of this awful conflagration. There is nothing to which I can liken
it. It was horribly and indescribably grand. The whole world seemed
on fire, and it appeared to me that the day of judgment had come;
that the burning bowels of the earth had burst forth, and that the
end of all things was at hand. Bears and wolves, scorched from their
mysterious hiding-places in the earth, and all the wild inhabitants of
the untrodden forest, filled with a common dismay, ran forth, yelling,
howling, bewildered amidst the smoke and flame. The very heavens seemed
to rain down fire through the towering trees; it was by the merest
chance that I escaped the devouring element. Running before it, and
stopping occasionally to take breath, I looked back to behold its
frightful ravages, and to drink in its savage magnificence. It was
awful, thrilling, solemn, beyond compare. When aided by the fitful
wind, the merciless tempest of fire swept on, sparkling, creaking,
cracking, curling, roaring, out-doing in its dreadful splendor a
thousand thunderstorms at once. From tree to tree it leaped, swallowing
them up in its lurid, baleful glare; and leaving them leafless,
limbless, charred, and lifeless behind. The scene was overwhelming,
stunning,--nothing was spared,--cattle, tame and wild, herds of swine
and of deer, wild beasts of every name and kind,--huge night-birds,
bats, and owls, that had retired to their homes in lofty tree-tops
to rest, perished in that fiery storm. The long-winged buzzard and
croaking raven mingled their dismal cries with those of the countless
myriads of small birds that rose up to the skies, and were lost to
the sight in clouds of smoke and flame. Oh, I shudder when I think
of it! Many a poor wandering fugitive, who, like myself, had sought
among wild beasts the mercy denied by our fellow men, saw, in helpless
consternation, his dwelling-place and city of refuge reduced to ashes
forever. It was this grand conflagration that drove me hither; I ran
alike from fire and from slavery.”
After a slight pause, (for both speaker and hearers were deeply moved
by the above recital,) Mr. Listwell, addressing Madison, said, “If it
does not weary you too much, do tell us something of your journeyings
since this disastrous burning,--we are deeply interested in everything
which can throw light on the hardships of persons escaping from
slavery; we could hear you talk all night; are there no incidents that
you could relate of your travels hither? or are they such that you do
not like to mention them.”
“For the most part, sir, my course has been uninterrupted; and,
considering the circumstances, at times even pleasant. I have suffered
little for want of food; but I need not tell you how I got it. Your
moral code may differ from mine, as your customs and usages are
different. The fact is, sir, during my flight, I felt myself robbed
by society of all my just rights; that I was in an enemy’s land, who
sought both my life and my liberty. They had transformed me into a
brute; made merchandise of my body, and, for all the purposes of my
flight, turned day into night,--and guided by my own necessities, and
in contempt of their conventionalities, I did not scruple to take bread
where I could get it.”
“And just there you were right,” said Mr. Listwell; “I once had doubts
on this point myself, but a conversation with Gerrit Smith, (a man, by
the way, that I wish you could see, for he is a devoted friend of your
race, and I know he would receive you gladly,) put an end to all my
doubts on this point. But do not let me interrupt you.”
“I had but one narrow escape during my whole journey,” said Madison.
“Do let us hear of it,” said Mr. Listwell.
“Two weeks ago,” continued Madison, “after travelling all night, I was
overtaken by daybreak, in what seemed to me an almost interminable
wood. I deemed it unsafe to go farther, and, as usual, I looked around
for a suitable tree in which to spend the day. I liked one with a
bushy top, and found one just to my mind. Up I climbed, and hiding
myself as well as I could, I, with this strap, (pulling one out of
his old coat-pocket,) lashed myself to a bough, and flattered myself
that I should get a _good night’s_ sleep that day; but in this I was
soon disappointed. I had scarcely got fastened to my natural hammock,
when I heard the voices of a number of persons, apparently approaching
the part of the woods where I was. Upon my word, sir, I dreaded more
these human voices than I should have done those of wild beasts. I was
at a loss to know what to do. If I descended, I should probably be
discovered by the men; and if they had dogs I should, doubtless, be
‘_treed_.’ It was an anxious moment, but hardships and dangers have
been the accompaniments of my life; and have, perhaps, imparted to me
a certain hardness of character, which, to some extent, adapts me to
them. In my present predicament, I decided to hold my place in the
tree-top, and abide the consequences. But here I must disappoint you;
for the men, who were all colored, halted at least a hundred yards from
me, and began with their axes, in right good earnest, to attack the
trees. The sound of their laughing axes was like the report of as many
well-charged pistols. By and by there came down at least a dozen trees
with a terrible crash. They leaped upon the fallen trees with an air of
victory. I could see no dog with them, and felt myself comparatively
safe, though I could not forget the possibility that some freak or
fancy might bring the axe a little nearer my dwelling than comported
with my safety.
“There was no sleep for me that day, and I wished for night. You may
imagine that the thought of having the tree attacked under me was far
from agreeable, and that it very easily kept me on the look-out. The
day was not without diversion. The men at work seemed to be a gay set;
and they would often make the woods resound with that uncontrolled
laughter for which we, as a race, are remarkable. I held my place in
the tree till sunset,--saw the men put on their jackets to be off.
I observed that all left the ground except one, whom I saw sitting
on the side of a stump, with his head bowed, and his eyes apparently
fixed on the ground. I became interested in him. After sitting in the
position to which I have alluded ten or fifteen minutes, he left the
stump, walked directly towards the tree in which I was secreted, and
halted almost under the same. He stood for a moment and looked around,
deliberately and reverently took off his hat, by which I saw that he
was a man in the evening of life, slightly bald and quite gray. After
laying down his hat carefully, he knelt and prayed aloud, and such
a prayer, the most fervent, earnest, and solemn, to which I think
I ever listened. After reverently addressing the Almighty, as the
all-wise, all-good, and the common Father of all mankind, he besought
God for grace, for strength, to bear up under, and to endure, as a
good soldier, all the hardships and trials which beset the journey of
life, and to enable him to live in a manner which accorded with the
gospel of Christ. His soul now broke out in humble supplication for
deliverance from bondage. ‘O thou,’ said he, ‘that hearest the raven’s
cry, take pity on poor me! O deliver me! O deliver me! in mercy, O God,
deliver me from the chains and manifold hardships of slavery! With
thee, O Father, all things are possible. Thou canst stand and measure
the earth. Thou hast beheld and drove asunder the nations,--all power
is in thy hand,--thou didst say of old, “I have seen the affliction
of my people, and am come to deliver them,”--Oh look down upon our
afflictions, and have mercy upon us.’ But I cannot repeat his prayer,
nor can I give you an idea of its deep pathos. I had given but little
attention to religion, and had but little faith in it; yet, as the old
man prayed, I felt almost like coming down and kneel by his side, and
mingle my broken complaint with his.
“He had already gained my confidence; as how could it be otherwise? I
knew enough of religion to know that the man who prays in secret is far
more likely to be sincere than he who loves to pray standing in the
street, or in the great congregation. When he arose from his knees,
like another Zacheus, I came down from the tree. He seemed a little
alarmed at first, but I told him my story, and the good man embraced me
in his arms, and assured me of his sympathy.
“I was now about out of provisions, and thought I might safely ask
him to help me replenish my store. He said he had no money; but if he
had, he would freely give it me. I told him I had _one dollar_; it was
all the money I had in the world. I gave it to him, and asked him to
purchase some crackers and cheese, and to kindly bring me the balance;
that I would remain in or near that place, and would come to him on his
return, if he would whistle. He was gone only about an hour. Meanwhile,
from some cause or other, I know not what, (but as you shall see very
wisely,) I changed my place. On his return I started to meet him; but
it seemed as if the shadow of approaching danger fell upon my spirit,
and checked my progress. In a very few minutes, closely on the heels of
the old man, I distinctly saw _fourteen men_, with something like guns
in their hands.”
“Oh! the old wretch!” exclaimed Mrs. Listwell, “he had betrayed you,
had he?”
“I think not,” said Madison, “I cannot believe that the old man was
to blame. He probably went into a store, asked for the articles for
which I sent, and presented the bill I gave him; and it is so unusual
for slaves in the country to have money, that fact, doubtless, excited
suspicion, and gave rise to inquiry. I can easily believe that the
truthfulness of the old man’s character compelled him to disclose
the facts; and thus were these blood-thirsty men put on my track. Of
course I did not present myself; but hugged my hiding-place securely.
If discovered and attacked, I resolved to sell my life as dearly as
possible.
“After searching about the woods silently for a time, the whole company
gathered around the old man; one charged him with lying, and called
him an old villain; said he was a thief; charged him with stealing
money; said if he did not instantly tell where he got it, they would
take the shirt from his old back, and give him thirty-nine lashes.
“‘I did _not_ steal the money,’ said the old man, ‘it was given me, as
I told you at the store; and if the man who gave it me is not here, it
is not my fault.’
“‘Hush! you lying old rascal; we’ll make you smart for it. You shall
not leave this spot until you have told where you got that money.’
“They now took hold of him, and began to strip him; while others went
to get sticks with which to beat him. I felt, at the moment, like
rushing out in the midst of them; but considering that the old man
would be whipped the more for having aided a fugitive slave, and that,
perhaps, in the _melée_ he might be killed outright, I disobeyed this
impulse. They tied him to a tree, and began to whip him. My own flesh
crept at every blow, and I seem to hear the old man’s piteous cries
even now. They laid thirty-nine lashes on his bare back, and were going
to repeat that number, when one of the company besought his comrades
to desist. ‘You’ll kill the d--d old scoundrel! You’ve already whipt a
dollar’s worth out of him, even if he stole it!’ ‘O yes,’ said another,
‘let him down. He’ll never tell us another lie, I’ll warrant ye!’ With
this, one of the company untied the old man, and bid him go about his
business.
The old man left, but the company remained as much as an hour, scouring
the woods. Round and round they went, turning up the underbrush, and
peering about like so many bloodhounds. Two or three times they came
within six feet of where I lay. I tell you I held my stick with a
firmer grasp than I did in coming up to your house to-night. I expected
to level one of them at least. Fortunately, however, I eluded their
pursuit, and they left me alone in the woods.
“My last dollar was now gone, and you may well suppose I felt the loss
of it; but the thought of being once again free to pursue my journey,
prevented that depression which a sense of destitution causes; so
swinging my little bundle on my back, I caught a glimpse of the _Great
Bear_ (which ever points the way to my beloved star,) and I started
again on my journey. What I lost in money I made up at a hen-roost that
same night, upon which I fortunately came.”
“But you didn’t eat your food raw? How did you cook it?” said Mrs.
Listwell.
“O no, Madam,” said Madison, turning to his little bundle;--“I had the
means of cooking.” Here he took out of his bundle an old-fashioned
tinder-box, and taking up a piece of a file, which he brought with
him, he struck it with a heavy flint, and brought out at least a dozen
sparks at once. “I have had this old box,” said he, “more than five
years. It is the _only_ property saved from the fire in the dismal
swamp. It has done me good service. It has given me the means of
broiling many a chicken!”
It seemed quite a relief to Mrs. Listwell to know that Madison had, at
least, lived upon cooked food. Women have a perfect horror of eating
uncooked food.
By this time thoughts of what was best to be done about getting Madison
to Canada, began to trouble Mr. Listwell; for the laws of Ohio were
very stringent against any one who should aid, or who were found aiding
a slave to escape through that State. A citizen, for the simple act
of taking a fugitive slave in his carriage, had just been stripped of
all his property, and thrown penniless upon the world. Notwithstanding
this, Mr. Listwell was determined to see Madison safely on his way to
Canada. “Give yourself no uneasiness,” said he to Madison, “for if it
cost my farm, I shall see you safely out of the States, and on your way
to a land of liberty. Thank God that there is _such_ a land so near us!
You will spend to-morrow with us, and to-morrow night I will take you
in my carriage to the Lake. Once upon that, and you are safe.”
“Thank you! thank you,” said the fugitive; “I will commit myself to
your care.”
For the _first_ time during _five_ years, Madison enjoyed the luxury of
resting his limbs on a comfortable bed, and inside a human habitation.
Looking at the white sheets, he said to Mr. Listwell, “What, sir! you
don’t mean that I shall sleep in that bed?”
“Oh yes, oh yes.”
After Mr. Listwell left the room, Madison said he really hesitated
whether or not he should lie on the floor; for that was _far_ more
comfortable and inviting than any bed to which he had been used.
* * * * *
We pass over the thoughts and feelings, the hopes and fears, the plans
and purposes, that revolved in the mind of Madison during the day
that he was secreted at the house of Mr. Listwell. The reader will be
content to know that nothing occurred to endanger his liberty, or to
excite alarm. Many were the little attentions bestowed upon him in his
quiet retreat and hiding-place. In the evening, Mr. Listwell, after
treating Madison to a new suit of winter clothes, and replenishing
his exhausted purse with five dollars, all in silver, brought out his
two-horse wagon, well provided with buffaloes, and silently started
off with him to Cleveland. They arrived there without interruption, a
few minutes before sunrise the next morning. Fortunately the steamer
Admiral lay at the wharf, and was to start for Canada at nine o’clock.
Here the last anticipated danger was surmounted. It was feared that
just at this point the hunters of men might be on the look-out, and,
possibly, pounce upon their victim. Mr. Listwell saw the captain of the
boat; cautiously sounded him on the matter of carrying liberty-loving
passengers, before he introduced his precious charge. This done,
Madison was conducted on board. With usual generosity this true
subject of the emancipating queen welcomed Madison, and assured him
that he should be safely landed in Canada, free of charge. Madison now
felt himself no more a piece of merchandise, but a passenger, and, like
any other passenger, going about his business, carrying with him what
belonged to him, and nothing which rightfully belonged to anybody else.
Wrapped in his new winter suit, snug and comfortable, a pocket full of
silver, safe from his pursuers, embarked for a free country, Madison
gave every sign of sincere gratitude, and bade his kind benefactor
farewell, with such a grip of the hand as bespoke a heart full of
honest manliness, and a soul that knew how to appreciate kindness.
It need scarcely be said that Mr. Listwell was deeply moved by the
gratitude and friendship he had excited in a nature so noble as that of
the fugitive. He went to his home that day with a joy and gratification
which knew no bounds. He had done something “to deliver the spoiled out
of the hands of the spoiler,” he had given bread to the hungry, and
clothes to the naked; he had befriended a man to whom the laws of his
country forbade all friendship,--and in proportion to the odds against
his righteous deed, was the delightful satisfaction that gladdened his
heart. On reaching home, he exclaimed, “_He is safe,--he is safe,--he
is safe_,”--and the cup of his joy was shared by his excellent lady.
The following letter was received from Madison a few days after.
“WINDSOR, CANADA WEST, DEC. 16, 1840.
My dear Friend,--for such you truly are:--
Madison is out of the woods at last; I nestle in the mane of the
British lion, protected by his mighty paw from the talons and the
beak of the American eagle. I AM FREE, and breathe an atmosphere
too pure for _slaves_, slave-hunters, or slave-holders. My heart is
full. As many thanks to you, sir, and to your kind lady, as there
are pebbles on the shores of Lake Erie; and may the blessing of God
rest upon you both. You will never be forgotten by your profoundly
grateful friend,
MADISON WASHINGTON.”
PART III.
----His head was with his heart,
And that was far away!
_Childe Harold._
Just upon the edge of the great road from Petersburg, Virginia, to
Richmond, and only about fifteen miles from the latter place, there
stands a somewhat ancient and famous public tavern, quite notorious
in its better days, as being the grand resort for most of the leading
gamblers, horse-racers, cock-fighters, and slave-traders from all the
country round about. This old rookery, the nucleus of all sorts of
birds, mostly those of ill omen, has, like everything else peculiar
to Virginia, lost much of its ancient consequence and splendor; yet
it keeps up some appearance of gaiety and high life, and is still
frequented, even by respectable travellers, who are unacquainted with
its past history and present condition. Its fine old portico looks well
at a distance, and gives the building an air of grandeur. A nearer
view, however, does little to sustain this pretension. The house is
large, and its style imposing, but time and dissipation, unfailing in
their results, have made ineffaceable marks upon it, and it must, in
the common course of events, soon be numbered with the things that
were. The gloomy mantle of ruin is, already, outspread to envelop it,
and its remains, even but now remind one of a human skull, after the
flesh has mingled with the earth. Old hats and rags fill the places
in the upper windows once occupied by large panes of glass, and the
moulding boards along the roofing have dropped off from their places,
leaving holes and crevices in the rented wall for bats and swallows
to build their nests in. The platform of the portico, which fronts
the highway is a rickety affair, its planks are loose, and in some
places entirely gone, leaving effective man-traps in their stead for
nocturnal ramblers. The wooden pillars, which once supported it, but
which now hang as encumbrances, are all rotten, and tremble with the
touch. A part of the stable, a fine old structure in its day, which
has given comfortable shelter to hundreds of the noblest steeds of
“the Old Dominion” at once, was blown down many years ago, and never
has been, and probably never will be, rebuilt. The doors of the barn
are in wretched condition; they will shut with a little human strength
to help their worn out hinges, but not otherwise. The side of the
great building seen from the road is much discolored in sundry places
by slops poured from the upper windows, rendering it unsightly and
offensive in other respects. Three or four great dogs, looking as
dull and gloomy as the mansion itself, lie stretched out along the
door-sills under the portico; and double the number of loafers, some
of them completely rum-ripe, and others ripening, dispose themselves
like so many sentinels about the front of the house. These latter
understand the science of scraping acquaintance to perfection. They
know every-body, and almost every-body knows them. Of course, as their
title implies, they have no regular employment. They are (to use an
expressive phrase) _hangers on_, or still better, they are what sailors
would denominate _holders-on to the slack, in every-body’s mess, and
in nobody’s watch_. They are, however, as good as the newspaper for
the events of the day, and they sell their knowledge almost as cheap.
Money they seldom have; yet they always have capital the most reliable.
They make their way with a succeeding traveller by intelligence gained
from a preceding one. All the great names of Virginia they know by
heart, and have seen their owners often. The history of the house is
folded in their lips, and they rattle off stories in connection with
it, equal to the guides at Dryburgh Abbey. He must be a shrewd man, and
well skilled in the art of evasion, who gets out of the hands of these
fellows without being at the expense of a treat.
It was at this old tavern, while on a second visit to the State of
Virginia in 1841, that Mr. Listwell, unacquainted with the fame of the
place, turned aside, about sunset, to pass the night. Riding up to the
house, he had scarcely dismounted, when one of the half dozen bar-room
fraternity met and addressed him in a manner exceedingly bland and
accommodating.
“Fine evening, sir.”
“Very fine,” said Mr. Listwell. “This is a tavern, I believe?”
“O yes, sir, yes; although you may think it looks a little the worse
for wear, it was once as good a house as any in Virginy. I make no
doubt if ye spend the night here, you’ll think it a good house yet; for
there aint a more accommodating man in the country than you’ll find the
landlord.”
_Listwell._ “The most I want is a good bed for myself, and a full
manger for my horse. If I get these, I shall be quite satisfied.”
_Loafer._ “Well, I alloys like to hear a gentleman talk for his horse;
and just becase the horse can’t talk for itself. A man that don’t care
about his beast, and don’t look arter it when he’s travelling, aint
much in my eye anyhow. Now, sir, I likes a horse, and I’ll guarantee
your horse will be taken good care on here. That old stable, for all
you see it looks so shabby now, once sheltered the great _Eclipse_,
when he run here agin _Batchelor_ and _Jumping Jemmy_. Them was fast
horses, but he beat ’em both.”
_Listwell._ “Indeed.”
_Loafer._ “Well, I rather reckon you’ve travelled a right smart
distance to-day, from the look of your horse?”
_Listwell._ “Forty miles only.”
_Loafer._ “Well! I’ll be darned if that aint a pretty good _only_.
Mister, that beast of yours is a singed cat, I warrant you. I never
see’d a creature like that that wasn’t good on the road. You’ve come
about forty miles, then?”
_Listwell._ “Yes, yes, and a pretty good pace at that.”
_Loafer._ “You’re somewhat in a hurry, then, I make no doubt? I reckon
I could guess if I would, what you’re going to Richmond for? It
wouldn’t be much of a guess either; for it’s rumored hereabouts, that
there’s to be the greatest sale of niggers at Richmond to-morrow that
has taken place there in a long time; and I’ll be bound you’re a going
there to have a hand in it.”
_Listwell._ “Why, you must think, then, that there’s money to be made
at that business?”
_Loafer._ “Well, ’pon my honor, sir, I never made any that way myself;
but it stands to reason that it’s a money making business; for almost
all other business in Virginia is dropped to engage in this. One thing
is sartain, I never see’d a nigger-buyer yet that hadn’t a plenty of
money, and he wasn’t as free with it as water. I has known one on ’em
to treat as high as twenty times in a night; and, ginerally speaking,
they’s men of edication, and knows all about the government. The fact
is, sir, I alloys like to hear ’em talk, bekase I alloys can learn
something from them.”
_Listwell._ “What may I call your name, sir?”
_Loafer._ “Well, now, they calls me Wilkes. I’m known all around by the
gentlemen that comes here. They all knows old Wilkes.”
_Listwell._ “Well, Wilkes, you seem to be acquainted here, and I see
you have a strong liking for a horse. Be so good as to speak a kind
word for mine to the hostler to-night, and you’ll not lose anything by
it.”
_Loafer._ “Well, sir, I see you don’t say much, but you’ve got an
insight into things. It’s alloys wise to get the good will of them
that’s acquainted about a tavern; for a man don’t know when he goes
into a house what may happen, or how much he may need a friend.” Here
the loafer gave Mr. Listwell a significant grin, which expressed a sort
of triumphant pleasure at having, as he supposed, by his tact succeeded
in placing so fine appearing a gentleman under obligations to him.
The pleasure, however, was mutual; for there was something so
insinuating in the glance of this loquacious customer, that Mr.
Listwell was very glad to get quit of him, and to do so more
successfully, he ordered his supper to be brought to him in his private
room, private to the eye, but not to the ear. This room was directly
over the bar, and the plastering being off, nothing but pine boards
and naked laths separated him from the disagreeable company below,--he
could easily hear what was said in the bar-room, and was rather glad
of the advantage it afforded, for, as you shall see, it furnished him
important hints as to the manner and deportment he should assume during
his stay at that tavern.
Mr. Listwell says he had got into his room but a few moments, when he
heard the officious Wilkes below, in a tone of disappointment, exclaim,
“Whar’s that gentleman?” Wilkes was evidently expecting to meet with
his friend at the bar-room, on his return, and had no doubt of his
doing the handsome thing. “He has gone to his room,” answered the
landlord, “and has ordered his supper to be brought to him.”
Here some one shouted out, “Who is he, Wilkes? Where’s he going?”
“Well, now, I’ll be hanged if I know; but I’m willing to make any man
a bet of this old hat agin a five dollar bill, that that gent is as
full of money as a dog is of fleas. He’s going down to Richmond to buy
niggers, I make no doubt. He’s no fool, I warrant ye.”
“Well, he acts d--d strange,” said another, “anyhow. I likes to see a
man, when he comes up to a tavern, to come straight into the bar-room,
and show that he’s a man among men. Nobody was going to bite him.”
“Now, I don’t blame him a bit for not coming in here. That man knows
his business, and means to take care on his money,” answered Wilkes.
“Wilkes, you’re a fool. You only say that, becase you hope to get a few
coppers out on him.”
“You only measure my corn by your half-bushel, I won’t say that you’re
only mad becase I got the chance of speaking to him first.”
“O Wilkes! you’re known here. You’ll praise up any body that will give
you a copper; besides, ’tis my opinion that that fellow who took his
long slab-sides up stairs, for all the world just like a half-scared
woman, afraid to look honest men in the face, is a _Northerner_, and as
mean as dishwater.”
“Now what will you bet of that,” said Wilkes.
The speaker said, “I make no bets with you, ’kase you can get that
fellow up stairs there to say anything.”
“Well,” said Wilkes, “I am willing to bet any man in the company that
_that_ gentleman is a _nigger_-buyer. He didn’t tell me so right down,
but I reckon I knows enough about men to give a pretty clean guess as
to what they are arter.”
The dispute as to _who_ Mr. Listwell was, what his business, where he
was going, etc., was kept up with much animation for some time, and
more than once threatened a serious disturbance of the peace. Wilkes
had his friends as well as his opponents. After this sharp debate, the
company amused themselves by drinking whiskey, and telling stories.
The latter consisting of quarrels, fights, _rencontres_, and duels,
in which distinguished persons of that neighborhood, and frequenters
of that house, had been actors. Some of these stories were frightful
enough, and were told, too, with a relish which bespoke the pleasure
of the parties with the horrid scenes they portrayed. It would not
be proper here to give the reader any idea of the vulgarity and dark
profanity which rolled, as “a sweet morsel,” under these corrupt
tongues. A more brutal set of creatures, perhaps, never congregated.
Disgusted, and a little alarmed withal, Mr. Listwell, who was not
accustomed to such entertainment, at length retired, but not to sleep.
He was _too_ much wrought upon by what he had heard to rest quietly,
and what snatches of sleep he got, were interrupted by dreams which
were anything than pleasant. At eleven o’clock, there seemed to be
several hundreds of persons crowding into the house. A loud and
confused clamour, cursing and cracking of whips, and the noise of
chains startled him from his bed; for a moment he would have given
the half of his farm in Ohio to have been at home. This uproar was
kept up with undulating course, till near morning. There was loud
laughing,--loud singing,--loud cursing,--and yet there seemed to be
weeping and mourning in the midst of all. Mr. Listwell said he had
heard enough during the forepart of the night to convince him that a
buyer of men and women stood the best chance of being respected. And
he, therefore, thought it best to say nothing which might undo the
favorable opinion that had been formed of him in the bar-room by at
least one of the fraternity that swarmed about it. While he would not
avow himself a purchaser of slaves, he deemed it not prudent to disavow
it. He felt that he might, properly, refuse to cast such a pearl before
parties which, to him, were worse than swine. To reveal himself, and to
impart a knowledge of his real character and sentiments would, to say
the least, be imparting intelligence with the certainty of seeing it
and himself both abused. Mr. Listwell confesses, that this reasoning
did not altogether satisfy his conscience, for, hating slavery as he
did, and regarding it to be the immediate duty of every man to cry out
against it, “without compromise and without concealment,” it was hard
for him to admit to himself the possibility of circumstances wherein a
man might, properly, hold his tongue on the subject. Having as little
of the spirit of a martyr as Erasmus, he concluded, like the latter,
that it was wiser to trust the mercy of God for his soul, than the
humanity of slave-traders for his body. Bodily fear, not conscientious
scruples, prevailed.
In this spirit he rose early in the morning, manifesting no surprise
at what he had heard during the night. His quondam friend was soon
at his elbow, boring him with all sorts of questions. All, however,
directed to find out his character, business, residence, purposes,
and destination. With the most perfect appearance of good nature and
carelessness, Mr. Listwell evaded these meddlesome inquiries, and
turned conversation to general topics, leaving himself and all that
specially pertained to him, out of discussion. Disengaging himself
from their troublesome companionship, he made his way towards an old
bowling-alley, which was connected with the house, and which, like all
the rest, was in very bad repair.
On reaching the alley Mr. Listwell saw, for the first time in his life,
a slave-gang on their way to market. A sad sight truly. Here were one
hundred and thirty human beings,--children of a common Creator--guilty
of no crime--men and women, with hearts, minds, and deathless spirits,
chained and fettered, and bound for the market, in a christian
country,--in a country boasting of its liberty, independence, and high
civilization! Humanity converted into merchandise, and linked in iron
bands, with no regard to decency or humanity! All sizes, ages, and
sexes, mothers, fathers, daughters, brothers, sisters,--all huddled
together, on their way to market to be sold and separated from home,
and from each other _forever_. And all to fill the pockets of men
too lazy to work for an honest living, and who gain their fortune by
plundering the helpless, and trafficking in the souls and sinews of
men. As he gazed upon this revolting and heart-rending scene, our
informant said he almost doubted the existence of a God of justice!
And he stood wondering that the earth did not open and swallow up such
wickedness.
In the midst of these reflections, and while running his eye up and
down the fettered ranks, he met the glance of one whose face he thought
he had seen before. To be resolved, he moved towards the spot. It was
MADISON WASHINGTON! Here was a scene for the pencil! Had Mr. Listwell
been confronted by one risen from the dead, he could not have been
more appalled. He was completely stunned. A thunderbolt could not have
struck him more dumb. He stood, for a few moments, as motionless as one
petrified; collecting himself, he at length exclaimed, “_Madison! is
that you?_”
The noble fugitive, but little less astonished than himself, answered
cheerily, “O yes, sir, they’ve got me again.”
Thoughtless of consequences for the moment, Mr. Listwell ran up to his
old friend, placing his hands upon his shoulders, and looked him in the
face! Speechless they stood gazing at each other as if to be doubly
resolved that there was no mistake about the matter, till Madison
motioned his friend away, intimating a fear lest the keepers should
find him there, and suspect him of tampering with the slaves.
“They will soon be out to look after us. You can come when they go to
breakfast, and I will tell you all.”
Pleased with this arrangement, Mr. Listwell passed out of the alley;
but only just in time to save himself, for, while near the door, he
observed three men making their way to the alley. The thought occurred
to him to await their arrival, as the best means of diverting the ever
ready suspicions of the guilty.
While the scene between Mr. Listwell and his friend Madison was going
on, the other slaves stood as mute spectators,--at a loss to know what
all this could mean. As he left, he heard the man chained to Madison
ask, “Who is that gentleman?”
“He is a friend of mine. I cannot tell you now. Suffice it to say he is
a friend. You shall hear more of him before long, but mark me! whatever
shall pass between that gentleman and me, in your hearing, I pray you
will say nothing about it. We are all chained here together,--ours is a
common lot; and that gentleman is not less _your_ friend than _mine_.”
At these words, all mysterious as they were, the unhappy company gave
signs of satisfaction and hope. It seems that Madison, by that mesmeric
power which is the invariable accompaniment of genius, had already won
the confidence of the gang, and was a sort of general-in-chief among
them.
By this time the keepers arrived. A horrid trio, well fitted for
their demoniacal work. Their uncombed hair came down over foreheads
“_villainously low_,” and with eyes, mouths, and noses to match.
“Hallo! hallo!” they growled out as they entered. “Are you all there!”
“All here,” said Madison.
“Well, well, that’s right! your journey will soon be over. You’ll be in
Richmond by eleven to-day, and then you’ll have an easy time on it.”
“I say, gal, what in the devil are you crying about?” said one of them.
“I’ll give you something to cry about, if you don’t mind.” This was
said to a girl, apparently not more than twelve years old, who had been
weeping bitterly. She had, probably, left behind her a loving mother,
affectionate sisters, brothers, and friends, and her tears were but the
natural expression of her sorrow, and the only solace. But the dealers
in human flesh have _no_ respect for such sorrow. They look upon it as
a protest against their cruel injustice, and they are prompt to punish
it.
This is a puzzle not easily solved. _How_ came he here? what can I do
for him? may I not even now be in some way compromised in this affair?
were thoughts that troubled Mr. Listwell, and made him eager for the
promised opportunity of speaking to Madison.
The bell now sounded for breakfast, and keepers and drivers, with
pistols and bowie-knives gleaming from their belts, hurried in, as if
to get the best places. Taking the chance now afforded, Mr. Listwell
hastened back to the bowling-alley. Reaching Madison, he said, “Now
_do_ tell me all about the matter. Do you know me?”
“Oh, yes,” said Madison, “I know you well, and shall never forget you
nor that cold and dreary night you gave me shelter. I must be short,”
he continued, “for they’ll soon be out again. This, then, is the
story in brief. On reaching Canada, and getting over the excitement
of making my escape, sir, my thoughts turned to my poor wife, who had
well deserved my love by her virtuous fidelity and undying affection
for me. I could not bear the thought of leaving her in the cruel jaws
of slavery, without making an effort to rescue her. First, I tried to
get money to buy her; but oh! the process was _too slow_. I despaired
of accomplishing it. She was in all my thoughts by day, and my dreams
by night. At times I could almost hear her voice, saying, ‘O Madison!
Madison! will you then leave me here? can you leave me here to die? No!
no! you will come! you will come!’ I was wretched. I lost my appetite.
I could neither work, eat, nor sleep, till I resolved to hazard my
own liberty, to gain that of my wife! But I must be short. Six weeks
ago I reached my old master’s place. I laid about the neighborhood
nearly a week, watching my chance, and, finally, I ventured upon the
desperate attempt to reach my poor wife’s room by means of a ladder.
I reached the window, but the noise in raising it frightened my wife,
and she screamed and fainted. I took her in my arms, and was descending
the ladder, when the dogs began to bark furiously, and before I could
get to the woods the white folks were roused. The cool night air soon
restored my wife, and she readily recognized me. We made the best of
our way to the woods, but it was now _too_ late,--the dogs were after
us as though they would have torn us to pieces. It was all over with
me now! My old master and his two sons ran out with loaded rifles, and
before we were out of gunshot, our ears were assailed with ‘_Stop!
stop! or be shot down_.’ Nevertheless we ran on. Seeing that we gave no
heed to their calls, they fired, and my poor wife fell by my side dead,
while I received but a slight flesh wound. I now became desperate, and
stood my ground, and awaited their attack over her dead body. They
rushed upon me, with their rifles in hand. I parried their blows, and
fought them ’till I was knocked down and overpowered.”
“Oh! it was madness to have returned,” said Mr. Listwell.
“Sir, I could not be free with the galling thought that my poor wife
was still a slave. With her in slavery, my body, not my spirit, was
free. I was taken to the house,--chained to a ring-bolt,--my wounds
dressed. I was kept there three days. All the slaves, for miles around,
were brought to see me. Many slave-holders came with their slaves,
using me as proof of the completeness of their power, and of the
impossibility of slaves getting away. I was taunted, jeered at, and
berated by them, in a manner that pierced me to the soul. Thank God, I
was able to smother my rage, and to bear it all with seeming composure.
After my wounds were nearly healed, I was taken to a tree and stripped,
and I received sixty lashes on my naked back. A few days after, I was
sold to a slave-trader, and placed in this gang for the New Orleans
market.”
“Do you think your master would sell you to me?”
“O no, sir! I was sold on condition of my being taken South. Their
motive is revenge.”
“Then, then,” said Mr. Listwell, “I fear I can do nothing for you. Put
your trust in God, and bear your sad lot with the manly fortitude which
becomes a man. I shall see you at Richmond, but don’t recognize me.”
Saying this, Mr. Listwell handed Madison ten dollars; said a few words
to the other slaves; received their hearty “God bless you,” and made
his way to the house.
Fearful of exciting suspicion by too long delay, our friend went to the
breakfast table, with the air of one who half reproved the greediness
of those who rushed in at the sound of the bell. A cup of coffee was
all that he could manage. His feelings were too bitter and excited, and
his heart was too full with the fate of poor Madison (whom he loved
as well as admired) to relish his breakfast; and although he sat long
after the company had left the table, he really did little more than
change the position of his knife and fork. The strangeness of meeting
again one whom he had met on two several occasions before, under
extraordinary circumstances, was well calculated to suggest the idea
that a supernatural power, a wakeful providence, or an inexorable fate,
had linked their destiny together; and that no efforts of his could
disentangle him from the mysterious web of circumstances which enfolded
him.
On leaving the table, Mr. Listwell nerved himself up and walked firmly
into the bar-room. He was at once greeted again by that talkative
chatter-box, Mr. Wilkes.
“Them’s a likely set of niggers in the alley there,” said Wilkes.
“Yes, they’re fine looking fellows, one of them I should like to
purchase, and for him I would be willing to give a handsome sum.”
Turning to one of his comrades, and with a grin of victory, Wilkes
said, “Aha, Bill, did you hear that? I told you I know’d that gentleman
wanted to buy niggers, and would bid as high as any purchaser in the
market.”
“Come, come,” said Listwell, “don’t be too loud in your praise, you are
old enough to know that prices rise when purchasers are plenty.”
“That’s a fact,” said Wilkes, “I see you knows the ropes--and there’s
not a man in old Virginy whom I’d rather help to make a good bargain
than you, sir.”
Mr. Listwell here threw a dollar at Wilkes, (which the latter caught
with a dexterous hand,) saying, “Take that for your kind good will.”
Wilkes held up the dollar to his right eye, with a grin of victory,
and turned to the morose grumbler in the corner who had questioned the
liberality of a man of whom he knew nothing.
Mr. Listwell now stood as well with the company as any other occupant
of the bar-room.
We pass over the hurry and bustle, the brutal vociferations of the
slave-drivers in getting their unhappy gang in motion for Richmond;
and we need not narrate every application of the lash to those who
faltered in the journey. Mr. Listwell followed the train at a long
distance, with a sad heart; and on reaching Richmond, left his horse at
a hotel, and made his way to the wharf in the direction of which he saw
the slave-coffle driven. He was just in time to see the whole company
embark for New Orleans. The thought struck him that, while mixing with
the multitude, he might do his friend Madison one last service, and
he stept into a hardware store and purchased three strong _files_.
These he took with him, and standing near the small boat, which lay in
waiting to bear the company by parcels to the side of the brig that lay
in the stream, he managed, as Madison passed him, to slip the files
into his pocket, and at once darted back among the crowd.
All the company now on board, the imperious voice of the captain
sounded, and instantly a dozen hardy seamen were in the rigging,
hurrying aloft to unfurl the broad canvas of our Baltimore built
American Slaver. The sailors hung about the ropes, like so many
black cats, now in the round-tops, now in the cross-trees, now on the
yard-arms; all was bluster and activity. Soon the broad fore topsail,
the royal and top gallant sail were spread to the breeze. Round went
the heavy windlass, clank, clank went the fall-bit,--the anchors
weighed,--jibs, mainsails, and topsails hauled to the wind, and the
long, low, black slaver, with her cargo of human flesh, careened and
moved forward to the sea.
Mr. Listwell stood on the shore, and watched the slaver till the last
speck of her upper sails faded from sight, and announced the limit of
human vision. “Farewell! farewell! brave and true man! God grant that
brighter skies may smile upon your future than have yet looked down
upon your thorny pathway.”
Saying this to himself, our friend lost no time in completing his
business, and in making his way homewards, gladly shaking off from his
feet the dust of Old Virginia.
PART IV.
Oh, where’s the slave so lowly
Condemn’d to chains unholy,
Who could he burst
His bonds at first
Would pine beneath them slowly?
_Moore._
----Know ye not
Who would be free, _themselves_ must strike the blow.
_Childe Harold._
What a world of inconsistency, as well as of wickedness, is suggested
by the smooth and gliding phrase, AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE; and how strange
and perverse is that moral sentiment which loathes, execrates, and
brands as piracy and as deserving of death the carrying away into
captivity men, women, and children from the _African coast_; but which
is neither shocked nor disturbed by a similar traffic, carried on
with the same motives and purposes, and characterized by even _more_
odious peculiarities on the coast of our MODEL REPUBLIC. We execrate
and hang the wretch guilty of this crime on the coast of Guinea, while
we respect and applaud the guilty participators in this murderous
business on the enlightened shores of the Chesapeake. The inconsistency
is so flagrant and glaring, that it would seem to cast a doubt on the
doctrine of the innate moral sense of mankind.
Just two months after the sailing of the Virginia slave brig, which the
reader has seen move off to sea so proudly with her human cargo for the
New Orleans market, there chanced to meet, in the Marine Coffee-house
at Richmond, a company of _ocean birds_, when the following
conversation, which throws some light on the subsequent history, not
only of Madison Washington, but of the hundred and thirty human beings
with whom we last saw him chained.
“I say, shipmate, you had rather rough weather on your late passage
to Orleans?” said Jack Williams, a regular old salt, tauntingly, to a
trim, compact, manly looking person, who proved to be the first mate of
the slave brig in question.
“Foul play, as well as foul weather,” replied the firmly knit
personage, evidently but little inclined to enter upon a subject which
terminated so ingloriously to the captain and officers of the American
slaver.
“Well, betwixt you and me,” said Williams, “that whole affair on board
of the Creole was miserably and disgracefully managed. Those black
rascals got the upper hand of ye altogether; and, in my opinion, the
whole disaster was the result of ignorance of the real character of
_darkies_ in general. With half a dozen _resolute_ white men, (I say it
not boastingly,) I could have had the rascals in irons in ten minutes,
not because I’m so strong, but I know how to manage ’em. With my back
against the _caboose_, I could, myself, have flogged a dozen of them;
and had I been on board, by every monster of the deep, every black
devil of ’em all would have had his neck stretched from the yard-arm.
Ye made a mistake in yer manner of fighting ’em. All that is needed in
dealing with a set of rebellious _darkies_, is to show that yer not
afraid of ’em. For my own part, I would not honor a dozen niggers by
pointing a gun at one on ’em,--a good stout whip, or a stiff rope’s
end, is better than all the guns at Old Point to quell a _nigger_
insurrection. Why, sir, to take a gun to a _nigger_ is the best way
you can select to tell him you are afraid of him, and the best way of
inviting his attack.”
This speech made quite a sensation among the company, and a part of
them indicated solicitude for the answer which might be made to it.
Our first mate replied, “Mr. Williams, all that you’ve now said
sounds very well _here_ on shore, where, perhaps, you have studied
negro character. I do not profess to understand the subject as well
as yourself; but it strikes me, you apply the same rule in dissimilar
cases. It is quite easy to talk of flogging niggers here on land, where
you have the sympathy of the community, and the whole physical force
of the government, State and national, at your command; and where, if
a negro shall lift his hand against a white man, the whole community,
with one accord, are ready to unite in shooting him down. I say, in
such circumstances, it’s easy to talk of flogging negroes and of negro
cowardice; but, sir, I deny that the negro is, naturally, a coward,
or that your theory of managing slaves will stand the test of _salt_
water. It may do very well for an overseer, a contemptible hireling, to
take advantage of fears already in existence, and which his presence
has no power to inspire; to swagger about whip in hand, and discourse
on the timidity and cowardice of negroes; for they have a smooth sea
and a fair wind. It is one thing to manage a company of slaves on a
Virginia plantation, and quite another thing to quell an insurrection
on the lonely billows of the Atlantic, where every breeze speaks of
courage and liberty. For the negro to act cowardly on shore, may be to
act wisely; and I’ve some doubts whether _you_, Mr. Williams, would
find it very convenient were you a slave in Algiers, to raise your hand
against the bayonets of a whole government.”
“By George, shipmate,” said Williams, “you’re coming rather _too_
near. Either I’ve fallen very low in your estimation, or your notions
of negro courage have got up a button-hole too high. Now I more than
ever wish I’d been on board of that luckless craft. I’d have given ye
practical evidence of the truth of my theory. I don’t doubt there’s
some difference in being at sea. But a nigger’s a nigger, on sea or
land; and is a coward, find him where you will; a drop of blood from
one on ’em will skeer a hundred. A knock on the nose, or a kick on
the shin, will tame the wildest ‘_darkey_’ you can fetch me. I say
again, and will stand by it, I could, with half a dozen good men, put
the whole nineteen on ’em in irons, and have carried them safe to New
Orleans too. Mind, I don’t blame you, but I do say, and every gentleman
here will bear me out in it, that the fault was somewhere, or them
niggers would never have got off as they have done. For my part I feel
ashamed to have the idea go abroad, that a ship load of slaves can’t
be safely taken from Richmond to New Orleans. I should like, merely to
redeem the character of Virginia sailors, to take charge of a ship load
on ’em to-morrow.”
Williams went on in this strain, occasionally casting an imploring
glance at the company for applause for his wit, and sympathy for his
contempt of negro courage. He had, evidently, however, waked up the
wrong passenger; for besides being in the right, his opponent carried
that in his eye which marked him a man not to be trifled with.
“Well, sir,” said the sturdy mate, “you can select your own method
for distinguishing yourself;--the path of ambition in this direction
is quite open to you in Virginia, and I’ve no doubt that you will be
highly appreciated and compensated for all your valiant achievements in
that line; but for myself, while I do not profess to be a giant, I have
resolved never to set my foot on the deck of a slave ship, either as
officer, or common sailor again; I have got enough of it.”
“Indeed! indeed!” exclaimed Williams, derisively.
“Yes, _indeed_,” echoed the mate; “but don’t misunderstand me. It is
not the high value that I set upon my life that makes me say what I
have said; yet I’m resolved never to endanger my life again in a cause
which my conscience does not approve. I dare say _here_ what many men
_feel_, but _dare not speak_, that this whole slave-trading business is
a disgrace and scandal to Old Virginia.”
“Hold! hold on! shipmate,” said Williams, “I hardly thought you’d have
shown your colors so soon,--I’ll be hanged if you’re not as good an
abolitionist as Garrison himself.”
The mate now rose from his chair, manifesting some excitement. “What do
you mean, sir,” said he, in a commanding tone. “_That man does not live
who shall offer me an insult with impunity._”
The effect of these words was marked; and the company clustered around.
Williams, in an apologetic tone, said, “Shipmate! keep your temper. I
mean’t no insult. We all know that Tom Grant is no coward, and what I
said about your being an abolitionist was simply this: you _might_ have
put down them black mutineers and murderers, but your conscience held
you back.”
“In that, too,” said Grant, “you were mistaken. I did all that any man
with equal strength and presence of mind could have done. The fact is,
Mr. Williams, you underrate the courage as well as the skill of these
negroes, and further, you do not seem to have been correctly informed
about the case in hand at all.”
“All I know about it is,” said Williams, “that on the ninth day after
you left Richmond, a dozen or two of the niggers ye had on board, came
on deck and took the ship from you;--had her steered into a British
port, where, by the by, every woolly head of them went ashore and was
free. Now I take this to be a discreditable piece of business, and one
demanding explanation.”
“There are a great many discreditable things in the world,” said Grant.
“For a ship to go down under a calm sky is, upon the first flush of
it, disgraceful either to sailors or caulkers. But when we learn, that
by some mysterious disturbance in nature, the waters parted beneath,
and swallowed the ship up, we lose our indignation and disgust in
lamentation of the disaster, and in awe of the Power which controls the
elements.”
“Very true, very true,” said Williams, “I should be very glad to
have an explanation which would relieve the affair of its present
discreditable features. I have desired to see you ever since you got
home, and to learn from you a full statement of the facts in the case.
To me the whole thing seems unaccountable. I cannot see how a dozen or
two of ignorant negroes, not one of whom had ever been to sea before,
and all of them were closely ironed between decks, should be able to
get their fetters off, rush out of the hatchway in open daylight, kill
two white men, the one the captain and the other their master, and then
carry the ship into a British port, where every ‘_darkey_’ of them
was set free. There must have been great carelessness, or cowardice
somewhere!”
The company which had listened in silence during most of this
discussion, now became much excited. One said, I agree with Williams;
and several said the thing looks black enough. After the temporary
tumultous exclamations had subsided,--
“I see,” said Grant, “how you regard this case, and how difficult it
will be for me to render our ship’s company blameless in your eyes.
Nevertheless, I will state the fact precisely as they came under my
own observation. Mr. Williams speaks of ‘ignorant negroes,’ and, as a
general rule, they are ignorant; but had he been on board the _Creole_
as I was, he would have seen cause to admit that there are exceptions
to this general rule. The leader of the mutiny in question was just as
shrewd a fellow as ever I met in my life, and was as well fitted to
lead in a dangerous enterprise as any one white man in ten thousand.
The name of this man, strange to say, (ominous of greatness,) was
MADISON WASHINGTON. In the short time he had been on board, he had
secured the confidence of every officer. The negroes fairly worshipped
him. His manner and bearing were such, that no one could suspect him
of a murderous purpose. The only feeling with which we regarded him
was, that he was a powerful, good-disposed negro. He seldom spake to
any one, and when he did speak, it was with the utmost propriety. His
words were well chosen, and his pronunciation equal to that of any
schoolmaster. It was a mystery to us _where_ he got his knowledge of
language; but as little was said to him, none of us knew the extent of
his intelligence and ability till it was too late. It seems he brought
three files with him on board, and must have gone to work upon his
fetters the first night out; and he must have worked well at that;
for on the day of the rising, he got the irons _off eighteen_ besides
himself.
“The attack began just about twilight in the evening. Apprehending a
squall, I had commanded the second mate to order all hands on deck,
to take in sail. A few minutes before this I had seen Madison’s head
above the hatchway, looking out upon the white-capped waves at the
leeward. I think I never saw him look more good-natured. I stood
just about midship, on the larboard side. The captain was pacing the
quarter-deck on the starboard side, in company with Mr. Jameson, the
owner of most of the slaves on board. Both were armed. I had just told
the men to lay aloft, and was looking to see my orders obeyed, when
I heard the discharge of a pistol on the starboard side; and turning
suddenly around, the very deck seemed covered with fiends from the
pit. The nineteen negroes were all on deck, with their broken fetters
in their hands, rushing in all directions. I put my hand quickly in
my pocket to draw out my jack-knife; but before I could draw it, I was
knocked senseless to the deck. When I came to myself, (which I did in
a few minutes, I suppose, for it was yet quite light,) there was not
a white man on deck. The sailors were all aloft in the rigging, and
dared not come down. Captain Clarke and Mr. Jameson lay stretched on
the quarter-deck,--both dying,--while Madison himself stood at the helm
unhurt.
“I was completely weakened by the loss of blood, and had not recovered
from the stunning blow which felled me to the deck; but it was a little
too much for me, even in my prostrate condition, to see our good brig
commanded by a _black murderer_. So I called out to the men to come
down and take the ship, or die in the attempt. Suiting the action to
the word, I started aft. You murderous villain, said I, to the imp at
the helm, and rushed upon him to deal him a blow, when he pushed me
back with his strong, black arm, as though I had been a boy of twelve.
I looked around for the men. They were still in the rigging. Not one
had come down. I started towards Madison again. The rascal now told me
to stand back. ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘your life is in my hands. I could have
killed you a dozen times over during this last half hour, and could
kill you now. You call me a _black murderer_. I am not a murderer.
God is my witness that LIBERTY, not _malice_, is the motive for this
night’s work. I have done no more to those dead men yonder, than they
would have done to me in like circumstances. We have struck for our
freedom, and if a true man’s heart be in you, you will honor us for the
deed. We have done that which you applaud your fathers for doing, and
if we are murderers, _so were they_.’
“I felt little disposition to reply to this impudent speech. By heaven,
it disarmed me. The fellow loomed up before me. I forgot his blackness
in the dignity of his manner, and the eloquence of his speech. It
seemed as if the souls of both the great dead (whose names he bore) had
entered him. To the sailors in the rigging he said: ‘Men! the battle is
over,--your captain is dead. I have complete command of this vessel.
All resistance to my authority will be in vain. My men have won their
liberty, with no other weapons but their own BROKEN FETTERS. We are
nineteen in number. We do not thirst for your blood, we demand only our
rightful freedom. Do not flatter yourselves that I am ignorant of chart
or compass. I know both. We are now only about sixty miles from Nassau.
Come down, and do your duty. Land us in Nassau, and not a hair of your
heads shall be hurt.’
“I shouted, _Stay where you are, men_,--when a sturdy black fellow ran
at me with a handspike, and would have split my head open, but for the
interference of Madison, who darted between me and the blow. ‘I know
what you are up to,’ said the latter to me. ‘You want to navigate this
brig into a slave port, where you would have us all hanged; but you’ll
miss it; before this brig shall touch a slave-cursed shore while I am
on board, I will myself put a match to the magazine, and blow her,
and be blown with her, into a thousand fragments. Now I have saved
your life twice within these last twenty minutes,--for, when you lay
helpless on deck, my men were about to kill you. I held them in check.
And if you now (seeing I am your friend and not your enemy) persist in
your resistance to my authority, I give you fair warning, YOU SHALL
DIE.’
“Saying this to me, he cast a glance into the rigging where the
terror-stricken sailors were clinging, like so many frightened monkeys,
and commanded them to come down, in a tone from which there was no
appeal; for four men stood by with muskets in hand, ready at the word
of command to shoot them down.
“I now became satisfied that resistance was out of the question;
that my best policy was to put the brig into Nassau, and secure the
assistance of the American consul at that port. I felt sure that the
authorities would enable us to secure the murderers, and bring them to
trial.
“By this time the apprehended squall had burst upon us. The wind howled
furiously,--the ocean was white with foam, which, on account of the
darkness, we could see only by the quick flashes of lightning that
darted occasionally from the angry sky. All was alarm and confusion.
Hideous cries came up from the slave women. Above the roaring billows
a succession of heavy thunder rolled along, swelling the terrific din.
Owing to the great darkness, and a sudden shift of the wind, we found
ourselves in the trough of the sea. When shipping a heavy sea over the
starboard bow, the bodies of the captain and Mr. Jameson were washed
overboard. For awhile we had dearer interests to look after than slave
property. A more savage thunder-gust never swept the ocean. Our brig
rolled and creaked as if every bolt would be started, and every thread
of oakum would be pressed out of the seams. To the pumps! to the pumps!
I cried, but not a sailor would quit his grasp. Fortunately this squall
soon passed over, or we must have been food for sharks.
“During all the storm, Madison stood firmly at the helm,--his keen
eye fixed upon the binnacle. He was not indifferent to the dreadful
hurricane; yet he met it with the equanimity of an old sailor. He was
silent but not agitated. The first words he uttered after the storm
had slightly subsided, were characteristic of the man. ‘Mr. mate, you
cannot write the bloody laws of slavery on those restless billows. The
ocean, if not the land, is free.’ I confess, gentlemen, I felt myself
in the presence of a superior man; one who, had he been a white man, I
would have followed willingly and gladly in any honorable enterprise.
Our difference of color was the only ground for difference of action.
It was not that his principles were wrong in the abstract; for they are
the principles of 1776. But I could not bring myself to recognize their
application to one whom I deemed my inferior.
“But to my story. What happened now is soon told. Two hours after
the frightful tempest had spent itself, we were plump at the wharf
in Nassau. I sent two of our men immediately to our consul with a
statement of facts, requesting his interference in our behalf. What
he did, or whither he did anything, I don’t know; but, by order of
the authorities, a company of _black_ soldiers came on board, for the
purpose, as they said, of protecting the property. These impudent
rascals, when I called on them to assist me in keeping the slaves on
board, sheltered themselves adroitly under their instructions only
to protect property,--and said they did not recognize _persons_ as
_property_. I told them that by the laws of Virginia and the laws of
the United States, the slaves on board were as much property as the
barrels of flour in the hold. At this the stupid blockheads showed
their _ivory_, rolled up their white eyes in horror, as if the idea
of putting men on a footing with merchandise were revolting to their
humanity. When these instructions were understood among the negroes, it
was impossible for us to keep them on board. They deliberately gathered
up their baggage before our eyes, and, against our remonstrances,
poured through the gangway,--formed themselves into a procession on the
wharf,--bid farewell to all on board, and, uttering the wildest shouts
of exultation, they marched, amidst the deafening cheers of a multitude
of sympathizing spectators, under the triumphant leadership of their
heroic chief and deliverer, MADISON WASHINGTON.”
Frederick Douglass.
A PLEA FOR FREE SPEECH.
Give me leave to speak my mind.
_As You Like It._
The clamorous demand which certain patriotic gentlemen are just now
making for perfect silence on the slavery question, strikes a quiet
looker-on as something very odd. It might pass for a dull sort of
joke, were it not that the means taken to enforce it, by vexatious
prosecutions, political and social proscriptions, and newspaper
assaults on private reputation, are beginning, in certain quarters, to
assume a decidedly tragic aspect, and forcing upon all anti-slavery men
the alternative of peremptorily refusing compliance, or standing meanly
by to see others crushed for advocating _their_ opinions.
The question has been extensively, and I think very naturally raised,
why these anti-agitation gentlemen do not keep silent themselves. For,
strange as it may seem, this perilous topic is the very one which most
of all appears to occupy their thoughts too, and is ever uppermost
when they undertake to speak of the affairs of the country. They are
in the predicament of the poor man in the Eastern fable, who, being
forbidden on pain of the genie’s wrath to utter a certain cabalistic
syllable, found, to his horror, that he could never after open his lips
without their beginning perversely to frame the tabooed articulation.
But not, as in his case, does fear chain up their organs. They speak it
boldly out, proclaim it “the corner-stone” of their political creed,
and do their best in every way, by speeches and articles, Union-safety
pamphlets and National Convention platforms, to “keep it before the
people.” And the object always is, to keep the people quiet! Surely,
if the Union is _not_ strong enough to bear agitations, the special
friends of the Union have chosen a singular way to save it.
I would by no means infer, that they are _altogether_ insecure in
their professions of anxiety. The truth appears to be, however, that
in so far as these professions are not a sheer pretence, got up by
political men for political effect, our estimable fellow citizens have,
all unwittingly, been obeying a higher law than that which they would
impose on their neighbors,--a law, written in the very nature of the
free soul. On this, the subject of the age, they must think, and cannot
refrain from uttering their thoughts. “They believe, and _therefore_
have they spoken.” And it is a sufficient reply to their unanswerable
demand for silence on the other side. “We _also_ believe, and therefore
speak.” Pray, why not?
A certain ardent conservative friend of mine, to whom I once proposed
this inquiry, made a short answer to it after this fashion:--“The
abolitionists are all fools and fanatics. Whenever the idea of
anti-slavery gets hold of a man, he takes leave of his common sense,
and is thenceforth as one possessed. I would put a padlock on every
such crazy fellow’s mouth.” My friend’s rule, it will be seen, is a
very broad one; stopping the mouths of all who speak foolishly. Who
will undertake to see it fairly applied? or who could feel quite free
from nervousness in view of its possible operation? Under an infallible
administration, I apprehend, many--some, perhaps, even of the most
strenuous advocates of the law--might find themselves uncomfortably
implicated, who at present hardly suspect the danger. “By’rlakin, a
parlous fear! my masters, you ought to consider with yourselves!”
I am constrained to confess, that in the very midst of my friend’s
aforesaid patriotic diatribe against folly and fanaticism, and his plea
for a summary fool-act, I could not keep out of my mind some wicked
recollections of Horace’s lines:
_Communi sensu plane caret_, inquimus. Eheu!
Quam temere in _nosmet_ legem sancimus iniquam!
It must in all candor be confessed, that there is something in the
subject of slavery which, when fairly looked at and realized, is a
little trying to one’s sanity. Even such intellects as John Wesley’s
and Thomas Jefferson’s, seem to stagger a little under a view of the
appalling sum of iniquity and wretchedness which the word represents,
and vent their excitement in terms not particularly measured. What
wonder, then, if men of simpler minds should now and then be thrown
quite off the balance, and think and say some things that are really
unwise. I think, indeed, it will have to be confessed, that we have
had fools and fanatics on both sides of the slavery question; and it
is altogether among the probabilities, that such will continue to be
the case hereafter. Still, until we have some infallible criterion to
distinguish actual folly from that which foolish people merely think
such, I fancy we must forego the convenience of my friend’s summary
process, and, giving leave to every man to speak his mind, leave it
to Time--great sifter of men and opinions--to separate between the
precious and the vile.
It may be the kindness bred of a fellow feeling, but I must confess
to a warm side towards my brethren of the motley tribe. While on the
one hand I firmly hold with Elihu--who seems to have represented young
Uz among the friends of Job--that “great men are not always wise.” I
rejoice on the other hand in the concession of Polonius,--chief old
Fogy of the court of Denmark,--that there is “a happiness which madness
often hits on, that reason and sanity could not so prosperously be
delivered of.” Folly and craziness, quotha! Did it, then, never occur
to you, O Worldly Wiseman, that even your wisdom might be bettered by a
dash of that which you thus contemptuously brand? Or does the apostle
seem to you as one that driveleth, when he says, “If any man among you
seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be
wise?”
I have often admired the sagacity of our mediaeval forefathers, in
the treatment of their (so called) fools. They gave them a _special
license_ of the tongue; for they justly estimated the advantages which
the truly wise know how to draw from the untrammelled utterances of any
honest mind, especially of minds which, refusing to run tamely in the
oiled grooves of prescriptive and fashionable orthodoxy, are the more
likely, now and then, (were it only by accident,) to hit upon truths
of which others miss. Hence they maintained an “Independent Order” of
the motley, whose only business it was freely to think and freely speak
their minds. “I must have liberty withal,” says Jaques, aspiring to
this dignity.
--“as free a charter as the wind,
To blow on whom I please: for _so fools have_.”
And he adds, in a strain of admonition which certain contemporaneous
events might almost lead one to consider prophetic,
----“they that are most galled with my folly,
They most must laugh. And why, sir, must they so?
The _why_ is plain as way to parish church.
He that a fool doth very wisely hit,
Doth very foolishly, although he smart,
Not to seem senseless of the bob. If not,
The wise man’s folly is anatomised
Even by the squandering glances of the fool.
* * What then? Let me see wherein
My speech hath wronged him. If it do him right,
Then he hath wronged himself; if he be free,
Why then, my taxing like a wild goose flies,
Unclaimed of any man.”
Now if there be “fools of the nineteenth century,” as I devoutly hope
there be,--men possessed with the belief of a Higher Law, Inalienable
Rights, Supremacy of Conscience, and such like obsolete phantoms, and
passing strange judgments on the deeds of men and nations in the light
thereof,--I beg to put in a similar plea for them. _Give them leave
to speak their minds._ Now and then, it may be worth the pondering,
and, heeded betimes, may peradventure save from calamity and ruin. If
not, an attempt to _enforce_ silence on fools--and is it not much the
same with freemen?--is likely to produce, not silence at all, but a
greater outcry. And as for our great men and wise men, when hit, let
them conceal the smart, and profit by the lesson. But, for their own
greatness’ sake, and the honor of their wisdom, whither hit or not, let
them never fall into a passion at the freedom of men’s speech, and cry,
_This must be put down_. For it will not down at their bidding.
But the subject refuses to be treated lightly. The vast interests at
stake on both sides, and the immediate urgency of the crisis, compel
the mind to sobriety and solicitude in the contemplation of it. No
truly wise man will look upon the anti-slavery doctrine as mere folly,
or on the promulgation of it as idle breath. It is the measureless
power of that sentiment--and all its power lies in its truth--that
wakens this alarm; and it is the consciousness of holding such a weapon
in their hands, that makes the anti-slavery masses at the North pause,
lest in attempting to use it for good, they should, unwittingly, do
harm. For such a sentiment, who can fail to feel respect? Who would
not despise himself if his own bosom were destitute of it? But, by as
much as I respect it in others, and would cherish it in myself, by
so much will I resent all playing upon it by political men for party
or personal ends, and fear lest it betray me into pusillanimity and
inertness where the times demand action for humanity and God. It _is_ a
serious question for all honest anti-slavery men throughout the land,
in what way they can most wisely and hopefully quit them of their
responsibility in relation to this thing. Their action as citizens
should, unquestionably, be restricted by the just limits of their civil
responsibility; as men by those of their moral responsibility. Even
within those limits, they should act with a wise moderation, and in a
generous spirit of candor and kindness. But one thing is abundantly
certain, that by ignoring the responsibility, they do not get rid of
it; by turning their backs on the obligation, they will not get it
discharged. Still the terrible _fact_ remains. _Still, the tears and
blood of the enslaved are daily dropping on our country’s soil._ Throw
over it what veil of extenuation and excuse you may, the essential
crime and shame remains. Believe as kindly as you can of the treatment
which the slaves receive of humane and christian masters; it is only
on condition that they first surrender their every _right_ as men. Let
them dare demur to that, and their tears and blood must answer it. That
is the terrible fact; and _our country_ is the abettor, the protector,
and the agent of the iniquity. Must we be indifferent? _May_ we be
indifferent? It is a question of tremendous import to every freeman in
the land, who honestly believes that the rights he claims as a man are
common to the race.
We used to be told, and are sometimes still, that this is a matter
which belongs to our Southern brethren exclusively, and that when we of
the free States interfere with it, we meddle with that which is “none
of our business.” And there was a time, when this might be urged with a
show of consistency. It was when slavery claimed only to be a creature
of State legislation, and asked only of the national government and the
free States to be let alone. Even then, it had no right of exemption
from the rational scrutiny to which all human institutions are
amenable, nor from the rebuke and denouncement which all men may, in
Heaven’s name, utter against all iniquity done in the face of Heaven.
But the _special_ right of republican citizens to demand the correction
of wrongs done by _their own_ government, attached in the matter of
slavery only to the citizens of the slave States.
But a wonderful change has been passing before our eyes. The attitude
of slavery is entirely altered. It now claims to be nationalized. It
demands a distinct recognition and active protection from the general
government, and indirect, but most effectual support from every
State in the Union, and from every citizen thereof! The government
has acknowledged the validity of the claim; and our great political
leaders--some on whom we have been wont to rely as stalwart champions
of freedom--have turned short round in their tracks, and require us to
believe that we are _under constitutional obligations_ to help maintain
the accursed thing,--yea, through all future time, to do its most
menial work! Nor is the doctrine to be left in the dubious region of
speculation. It is already “a fixed fact,” terribly embodied in a penal
law. It enters the home of every Northern freeman, and announces in
thunder-tones this ancestral obligation, which had so strangely faded
from the recollections of men. It tolerates no dulness of apprehension,
no hesitancy of belief. It bids us all, on pain of imprisonments and
fines, to conquer our prejudices, to swallow our scruples, to be still
with our nonsensical humanities, and, “as good citizens,” to start out
at the whistle of a United States’ constable, to chase down miserable
negroes fleeing from the hell of bondage!
Slavery, then, has become _our_ business at last; and, as such, does
it not behoove us to attend to it? I think, in the language of honest
Dogberry, that “that is proved already, and will go near to be thought
so shortly.” The thing lies in a nutshell. Millard Fillmore is not
our master, but our servant. It is not his to prescribe duties, but
ours; and his, to perform them. What he does, in his own person and
by his subordinate executive officers, he does for us, and on our
responsibility. What he does or they do, in other words, we do; and we
must abide the reckoning. In this responsibility, the humblest citizen
bears his share, and cannot shirk it if he would. When, then, I see the
ministers of my country’s law consigning men with flesh and blood like
my own, with homes and business, with wives and children,
As dear to them, as are the ruddy drops
That visit their sad hearts,
men unaccused of crime, and eating the daily bread of honest
labor--consigning them, I say, and their posterity to hopeless
vassalage, and degrading chattelhood, by a process, too, which tramples
under foot the most ancient and sacred guarantees of my own and my
neighbors’ rights. When I see this great nation lay its terrible
grasp upon the throat of a feeble, unoffending man, and thrust him
back to worse than a felon’s fate for doing that which no casuistry
can torture into a crime, I am compelled to feel that _it is myself_
engaged in this atrocious business; and no one but myself can rid me
of the responsibility. I can no longer be silent; I dare no longer be
silent; I will no longer be silent. I will remonstrate and cry, shame!
I will refuse to obey the law; I will demand to be released, and to
have my country released, from its odious requirements. I will vote,
and influence voters, and use every prerogative of freedom, to throw at
least from off my conscience a burden that it cannot bear. And who that
is worthy to be free himself, will blame me? To speak is no longer a
mere right; it has become a religious duty.
Let no man tell me, that this law is a mere dead letter. The old
Fugitive Law had, indeed, become so; and so would any other be likely
to become, which, while grasping after the slave, should pay a decent
respect to the rights of the free. But slavery cannot subsist on any
such condition; and this law was framed to supply the deficiencies
of the old law, and _to accomplish the thing_. It is based on the
assumption that the government of the United States is bound to effect
the rendition of fugitives, if possible at all, _at whatever cost_.
And, if this law is insufficient, the assumption is equally good for
still more stringent measures. But I repeat it, let no man tell me
it is _now_ a nullity. Have we not seen it executed in our streets,
and at our very doors? I chanced to be in the city of New York at
the time when, I think, its first victim, Henry Long, was torn from
his family, and from a reputable and profitable business, and sent
back,--limbs, and brain, and throbbing, loving heart,--the husband,
father, friend, the peaceful and industrious member of society,--all,
to be the _property_ of a fellow-mortal in a hostile land. Could I
look upon this crimeless man, thus in the grasp of the officers of my
country’s laws, my own representatives, and hurried unresisting to
that dreadful doom; and ever be able to believe the law innocuous, and
myself guiltless while I acquiesced in silence? The rabble followed
him along the streets, shouting in exultation at the negro’s fate.
_Them_ I must acknowledge as my fellows and brethren, but _him_--on
him I must put my heel, with theirs, to crush him out of manhood! And
the morrow’s papers, edited by professed Christians, heralded the
occurrence, with not even a decent pretence of pity and regret, but
as a triumph of LAW, (O sacred name profaned!) in which all good men
should rejoice. That day I felt a stiffing sensation settling down upon
me, of which my previous experience had afforded no precedent, and
with an oppressive weight which no language can describe. _I felt that
I no longer breathed the air of liberty_; that slavery was spreading
her Upas branches athwart _my_ sky also. The convenient apology that
the sin was not mine, but another’s, no longer stood me in stead; and
I have wondered ever since to hear any honest Northern man employ it.
There are Northern men, from whom nothing could surprise me.
And what have we since witnessed? The inferior officers of the law
prowling throughout the North for victims on whom to enforce it. Their
superiors, even to the highest, laboring by speeches and proclamations
and journeyings to and fro in the land (is it too much to say?) to
_dragoon_ the people into its support. The national treasury thrown
wide open to meet its “extraordinary expenses.” Fanueil Hall hung
in chains, to ensure its execution. Presidential candidates vieing
with each other in expressions of attachment and fidelity to it. Able
men, in church and State, spotted for proscription for no other sin
than hating that law, and daring to declare that hatred. And to crown
the whole, the wisdom of the nation, in Baltimore Conventions once
and again assembled, pronouncing the new doctrines of constitutional
responsibility, with the law that embodies it, not only a certainty,
but (hear it, O heavens!) a _finality_! A new word in the political
vocabulary, and verily a new thing in the earth! “Finality,” in
the legislation of freemen! A finality, that forever precludes
reconsideration, amendment, or repeal! When such things are said, and
gravely said, by men professing to be American statesmen, I can almost
imagine the fathers of my country turning painfully in their graves.
And can it be possible, that in the same breath with which men assume
to roll political responsibilities on freemen, they dare require
perpetual silence and unconsidering submission thereto? Then, what is
it to be free?
But let no one dream that these formidable pronouncements have any
enduring force. It is natural, that Southern statesmen should seek,
by every possible expedient, to keep out the flood of discussion
from a system which can so illy bear it. And it is not strange, that
Northern politicians should, for temporary purposes, assist them in
the effort. This is for a day; but the great tide of human thought
flows on forever, and there is no spot from which it will be shut
out. I remember when the right of petition was denied by our Southern
brethren, in respect to this subject; and they found compliant tools
enough from the North to work with for a season. But was the right
of petition sacrificed? Of course not. And is the right of free
discussion, the right to make and (if we please) unmake our laws,
less precious? This subject _will_ be agitated. This law will be
reconsidered; and, if it is not repealed, it will be for the same
reasons that ensures the continuance of other laws, namely, because it
is able to sustain severe and ever recurring scrutiny.
But what is to become of the Union meanwhile? One thing is very
certain. If it deliberately place itself in competition with those
“blessings of liberty,” which it was created to “secure,” it _ought_ to
fall. Shall the end be sacrificed to preserve the means, to which the
end alone gives value? And what are we to think of the statesmanship of
those, who, to effect that preservation, would force such an issue on a
people nursed at the breasts of freedom? I would rather die than live a
traitor to my country; but let me die _ten thousand_ deaths before I
prove treacherous to freedom and to God. “If this be treason, make the
most of it.”
But it is worse than idle to talk so. There is no such issue before
the nation. We are not compelled to choose between disunion and
slavery; a slavery, too, that would not only hold the black man in its
remorseless gripe, but put its fetters on the conscience of the white
man, and its gag into his mouth. Our Southern brethren themselves,
even to save their cherished institution, would not dare, would not
desire to press such an alternative. Were it so, who would not be
ready to surrender the Union as valueless to him, and to part company
with Southrons as men unworthy to be free? But it is not so. There
are Hotspurs, doubtless, enough of them at the South; and Jehus, too
many, at the North. And there are cunning politicians to stand between
the two sections, and play upon the prejudices of both, and into each
other’s hands, for selfish ends. But the great heart of the nation,
North and South, on the whole and according to the measure of its
understanding, beats true alike to freedom and the constitution,--true
to that immortal sentiment which, as long as this nation endures,
shall encircle its author’s name with a halo, in whose splendor some
later words that have fallen from his lips will be happily lost and
forgotten: “Liberty _and_ Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.”
Whatever differences there may be as to the nature, conditions, and
obligations of freedom, or as to the intent and meaning of the
constitution, no party among the people will refuse to submit them
to the ordeal of discussion, and the arbitrament of the appointed
tribunals.
While this is so, let him be deemed the traitor, who stands up before
the world, and belies his country by declaring it to be otherwise.
And let every man prepare to enter into those discussions which no
human power can now stave off, in a spirit of intelligent candor and
kindness, but, at the same time, of inflexible fidelity to God and man.
J. H. Raymond
PLACIDO.
The true wealth and glory of a nation consist not in its gold dust, nor
in its commerce, nor in the grandeur of its palaces, nor yet in the
magnificence of its cities,--but in the intellectual and moral energy
of its people. Egypt is more glorious because of her carrying into
Greece the blessings of civilization, than because of her pyramids,
however wondrous, her lakes and labyrinths, however stupendous, or her
Thebes, though every square marked a palace, or every alley a dome.
Who hears of the moneyed men of Athens, of Rome? And who does _not_
hear of Socrates, of Plato, of Demosthenes, of Virgil, of Cicero? Are
you in converse with him of the “Sea-girt Isle,” and would touch the
chord that vibrates most readily in his heart?--then talk to him of
Shakspeare, of Milton, of Cowper, of Bacon, of Newton; of Burns, of
Scott. To the intelligent son of the “Emerald Isle,” talk of Curran, of
Emmett, of O’Connell.
Great men are a nation’s vitality. Nations pass away,--great men,
never. Great men are not unfrequently buried in dungeons or in
obscurity; but they work out great thoughts for all time, nevertheless.
Did not Bunyan work out a great thought all-vital and vitalizing, when
he lay twelve years in Bedford jail, weaving his tagged lace, and
writing his Pilgrim’s Progress? The greatest man in all America is now
in obscurity. It is he who is “_the Lord of his own soul_,” on whose
brow wisdom has marked her supremacy, and who, in his sphere, moves
“Stilly as a star, on his eternal way.”
A great writer hath said, “Nature is stingy of her great men.” I do
not believe it. God doeth all his work fitly and well; how, therefore,
could he give us great men, not plentifully, but stingily? The truth
is, there are great men, and they are plentiful,--plentiful for the
times, I mean,--but we do not see them, because we will not come into
the sun-light of truth and rectitude where, and where only, dwelleth
greatness.
Placido was a great man. He was a great poet besides. He was a patriot,
also,--how could he be otherwise? Are not all poets patriots?
“Adios Mundo,” cried he, as with tear-bedimmed eyes he looked up into
the blue heavens above him, and upon the green earth beneath him; and
upon the portals of the universe read wisdom, majesty, and power. Was
there no poetry in this outburst of a full heart, and in this looking
upward to heaven? “Adios Mundo,” cried he, as now beholding, for the
last time, the home of his love,--he bared his bosom to the death-shot
of the soldiers.
Great was Placido in life,--he was greater still in death. His was the
faith which fastens itself upon the EVERLASTING I AM.
Call you that greatness which Pizarro achieved when, seizing a sword
and drawing a line upon the sand from east to west, he himself facing
south, he said to his band of pirates:--“_Friends, comrades, on that
side are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion,
and death; on this side, ease and pleasure. There lies Peru with its
richness; here Panama with its poverty. Choose, each man what best
becomes a brave Castillian. For my part I go to the south_;”--suiting
the action to the word? So do I,--but look ye, this is merely the
greatness of overwhelming energy and concentrated purpose, not
illuminated by a single ray of light from the Divine. See here, how
Placido dwarfeth Pizarro when he thus prayeth,
“God of unbounded love, and power eternal!
To Thee I turn in darkness and despair;
Stretch forth Thine arm, and from the brow infernal
Of calumny the veil of justice tear!
* * * * *
O, King of kings!--my father’s God!--who only
Art strong to save, by whom is all controlled,--
Who giv’st the sea its waves, the dark and lonely
Abyss of heaven its light, the North its cold,
The air its currents, the warm sun its beams,
Life to the flowers, and motion to the streams:
All things obey Thee; dying or reviving
As thou commandest; all, apart from Thee,
From Thee alone their life and power deriving,
Sink and are lost in vast eternity!
* * * * *
O, merciful God! I cannot shun Thy presence,
For through its veil of flesh, Thy piercing eye
Looketh upon my spirit’s unsoiled essence,
As through the pure transparence of the sky;
Let not the oppressor clap his bloody hands,
As o’er my prostrate innocence he stands.
* * * * *
But if, alas, it seemeth good to Thee
That I should perish as the guilty dies,
Still, fully in me, Thy will be done, O God!”
Placido had a symmetrically developed character. All great men have
this. His intellectual and moral nature blended harmoniously as
“Kindred elements into one.”
An ancient philosopher hath said that the passions and the soul
are placed in the same body, so that the passions might have ready
opportunity to persuade the soul to become subservient to their
purpose. A terrible conflict. And yet through it Placido passed
triumphantly.
Placido was born a slave on the island of Cuba, on the plantation of
Don Terribio De Castro. The year of his birth I am unable to give,
but it must have been somewhere between the years 1790 and 1800. He
was of African origin. But little is known of his earliest days save
that he was of gentle demeanor, and wore an aspect which, though
mild, indicated the working of great thoughts within. He was allowed
some little advantage of education in his youth, and he evinced great
poetic genius. The prayer just quoted was composed by him while he lay
in prison, and repeated on his way from his dungeon to his place of
execution.
The Heraldo, a leading journal of Havana, thus spoke of him after his
arrest:--
“Placido is a celebrated poet,--a man of great genius, but too wild and
ambitious. His object was to subdue Cuba, and make himself the chief.”
The following lines, also, were found inscribed upon the walls of his
dungeon. They were written on the day previous to his execution.
“O Liberty! I wait for thee,
To break this chain, and dungeon bar;
I hear thy voice calling me,
Deep in the frozen North, afar,
With voice like God’s, and vision like a star.
Long cradled in the mountain wind,
Thy mates, the eagle and the storm:
Arise; and from thy brow unbind
The wreath that gives its starry form,
And smite the strength, that would thy strength deform.
Yet Liberty! thy dawning light,
Obscured by dungeon bars, shall cast
A splendor on the breaking night,
And tyrants, flying thick and fast,
Shall tremble at thy gaze, and stand aghast.”
In poetic feeling, patriotic spirit, living faith, and, withal in
literary beauty, these lines are not surpassed; and they cannot fail to
rank Placido not only with the great-hearted, but with the gifted men
of the earth. A tribute to his genius is recorded in the fact, that he
was ransomed from slavery by the contributions of slave-holders of Cuba.
Placido was executed on the 7th of July, 1844. On the first fire of the
soldiers, no ball entered his heart. He looked up, but with no spirit
of revenge, no aspect of defiance,--only sat upon his countenance the
desire to pass at once into the region where no death is.
“Pity me,” said he, “and fire here,”--putting his hand upon his heart.
Two balls then entered his body, and Placido fell.
As Wordsworth said of Toussaint, so may it be said of Placido,--
“Thou hast left behind thee
Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies.
There’s not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies,
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.”
The charge against Placido was, that he was at the head of a conspiracy
to overthrow slavery in his native island. Blessings on thee, Placido!
Nor didst thou fail of thy mission. Did the martyrs, stake-bound, fail
of theirs? As the Lord liveth, Cuba shall yet be free.
That Placido was at the head of this conspiracy there is not a doubt;
but what his plans in detail were, I know not; the means of acquiring
them are not within my reach. Nevertheless, from the treatment
throughout of the Cuban authorities towards Placido, we may safely
conclude that Placido’s plan in detail evinced no lack of ability
to originate and execute, nor of that sagacity which should mark a
revolutionary leader. Placido hated slavery with a hatred intensified
by the remembrance of wrongs which a loving and loved mother had borne.
The iron, too, had entered into his own soul; and he had been a daily
witness of scenes such as torment itself could scarcely equal, nor the
pit itself outdo. Call you this extravagance? You will not,--should you
but study a single chapter in the history of Cuban slavery.
Do you honor Kossuth?--then forget not him who is worthy to stand side
by side with Hungary’s illustrious son.
What may be the destiny of Cuba in the future near at hand, I will not
venture to predict. What may be her _ultimate_ destiny is written in
the fact that,--“God hath no attribute which, in a contest between the
oppressed and the oppressor, can take sides with the latter.”
This sketch, though hastily written, and meagre in detail as it must
necessarily be, will show, at least, by the quotations of poetry
introduced, that God hath not given to one race alone, all intellectual
and moral greatness.
William G. Allen
FOOTNOTES:
[A] A son of that distinguished friend of humanity WILLIAM WILBERFORCE.
[B] “Take counsel, execute judgment; make thy shadow as the night
in the midst of the noonday; hide the outcasts; bewray not him that
wandereth. Let my outcasts dwell with thee, Moab; be thou a covert to
them, from the face of the spoiler.” Isaiah 16: 3, 4.
[C] “Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it
not to me.”--_Jesus Christ._ Matt. 25: 45.
[D] “Is it not that thou deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou
bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the
naked that thou cover him? and that thou hide not thyself from thine
own flesh?” “If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the
putting forth of the finger, and speaking of vanity,” etc. Isa. 58: 6-9.
[E] “Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should
do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the
prophets.”--_Jesus Christ._ Matt. 7: 12.
[F] “Thou shalt not deliver unto his master, the servant which is
escaped from his master unto thee. He shall dwell with thee; even among
you in that place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates, where it
liketh him best; thou shalt not oppress him.” Deut. 23: 15, 16.
[G] “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Lev. 19: 18. Matt. 19:
19.
[H] “Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness; the people in whose
heart is my law: fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid
of their revilings. For the moth shall eat them up like a garment,
and the worm shall eat them like wool; but my righteousness shall be
forever, and my salvation from generation to generation.” Isaiah 51: 7,
8.
[I] “Ye that love the Lord, hate evil.” Ps. 97: 10. “The fear of the
Lord is to hate evil.” Prov. 8: 13.
[J] “Who art thou, that thou shouldst be afraid of a man? * * * And
forgettest the Lord thy Maker, * * * and hast feared continually every
day, because of the fury of the oppressor, as if he were ready to
destroy? And where is the fury of the oppressor?” Isaiah 51: 12, 13, 14.
[K] “We ought to obey God rather than men.” Acts 5: 29.
[L] “The captive exile hasteth that he may be loosed,” etc. Isaiah 51:
15.
[M] Haynau.
[N] Editor of the Glasgow Courier. Poor Motherwell! I have it from a
mutual friend that he sympathized _with_ the cause of Freedom, while
paid to write against it.
[O] Daniel Webster’s oration, at the laying the corner-stone of Bunker
Hill Monument, 17 June 1825.
[P] Daniel Webster’s speech in the Senate of the U. S. 7 March 1850.
[Q] Daniel Webster’s speech at the Capron Springs, Virginia, 1851.
[R] It is vain to say that rich governments cannot, and do not, offer
effective temptations to clever and eloquent men, whose religious views
differ from the national form, to induce them to adopt the latter.
[S] Congress, the legislative department, and, of course, the judicial,
its interpreter, were intended to be founded on such undoubted
principles of liberty, that it would be difficult for them to use their
everywhere acknowledged rights, and perform their everywhere expected
duties, without first putting aside the strongest impediment to their
exercise, slavery. In our judgment this has been done. There is no
truth in public law more certain than that protection and allegiance
are reciprocal. They must exist together or not at all. The power of
the United States is adequate for the protection of all within her
limits, and from all within them she expects allegiance. If she is
informed in any way to be relied on, that any person is restrained
of his rights under the constitution of the United States, it is her
duty to see him set at liberty, if he be confined, and see that he is
redressed. It is in vain for Congress to excuse itself from acting,
by saying that it is a _State_ concern. Can a citizen of the _United
States_, if he be a citizen, be tortured or tormented by a _State_,
when there is no pretence that he has violated the law of either?
The constitution of the United States authorizes no man to hold
another as a slave. The United States has no power to hold a slave.
It matters not that it was _intended_ to allow some to hold others as
their slaves. A very vile person may _intend_ to lock up in prison
an innocent and just one, but through mistake he leaves the door
unlocked; does this, in the eyes of any reasonable men, prevent his
making his escape through the door? We are certain not. The only proper
inquiry here is, which is supreme, the government of the Union, or
the government of a particular State of it. It is not necessary to
answer this. If the first deal with no one as a slave, the subordinate
cannot by law. Persons may be held as slaves by fraud, by cunning, by
taking advantage of the ignorance in which we hold them, by force, or a
successful combination of force, but not by LAW.
[T] “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 purest white, so
delightful to the eye 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 lofty 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 then, 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 are 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 bands 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 hottest 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. * * * Only think of
it; one hundred miles straight north, and I am free! Try it? Yes! God
helping me, I will. It cannot be that I shall live and die a slave.
* * *”--_Autobiography of Douglass_, pp. 64, 65.
[U] “There was no getting rid of it [the thought of his condition]. It
was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or
inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal
wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It
was heard in every sound, and seen in everything. It was ever present
to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing
without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing
without feeling it. It looked from every star; it smiled in every calm,
breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.”--_Autobiography_,
pp. 40, 41.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Superscripted characters are preceded by a carat character: Rob^t.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Archaic or alternate spellings which may have been in use at the time
of publication have been retained.
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