Chapter V: Part 5

_Mr. F._ What do you say to Webster's great speech on the compromise measure?

_Mrs. G._ (_Pleasantly._) Is not the moral view of a question, about as far as a woman's instinct ought to go?

_Mr. F._ Oh, no; go on, your strictures are quite amusing.

_Mrs. G._ Well, then, since _we_ have taken the position of a reviewer, _we_ must confess that the last effort of the great Daniel appears to us to be _on an Act of Congress_.

_Mr. D._ And _at_ the Presidential chair.

_Mrs. G._ (_Continuing._) It did not touch the merits of slavery at all. Webster knew the feelings of the constituents too well to attempt such a task. He therefore skilfully diverted their attention from his real issue, to the glorious Union, and its danger from agitators, and he thus carried with him the sympathies of many honest haters of oppression.

_Mr. F._ Well, sister, I do not know but you will prove that there is not an advocate for slavery on the face of the earth.

_Mrs. G._ Only such advocates as there is for robbery and war. Those who find it for their interest to practice these crimes condemn them in the abstract, or at most only apologize for them, as necessary and expedient, under peculiar circumstances.

_Frank._ (_Laughing._) Why, mother, I shall certainly subscribe for your "North American Review," particularly if you fill the literary department as ably as you have the moral and political, to test which, let me propound a question? If the reward of the good be the charm of fiction, how do you account for the pleasure derived from tragedy, where the good are overwhelmed with the evil?

_Mrs. G._ (_Smiling._) With great diffidence we reply to the query of our learned friend. The force of tragedy consists in its depicting evil so ruinous as to involve even the innocent in the catastrophe; the pleasure is derived, we think, from the _failure_ of the mischievous design, and the merited retribution which falls upon the head of the plotters. In Romeo, "a scourge is laid upon the hate of the Montagues and Capulets, by which all are punished;" Hamlet's wicked uncle is justly served, drinking the poison tempered by himself; and Iago pulls down ruin upon himself no less than upon Cassio.

_Frank._ (_Bowing playfully_.) Your review meets my entire approbation, inasmuch as it confirms my doctrine, that theatres always give their verdict in favor of virtue.

_Mr. D._ "Casting out devils through Beelzebub."

_Mrs. G._ The artistic effect of every work of the imagination is wrought upon what critics call the "sympathetic emotion of virtue," and the decisions of this faculty, so far as we understand them, always correspond with what Christians believe concerning the "final restitution of all things."

_Frank._ The theatre, then, ought to promote good morals--why does it not?

_Mr. D._

"And many worthy men
Maintained it might be turned to good account,
And so perhaps it might, but never was."

_Mrs. G._ The "sympathetic emotion of virtue," not having an object, never rises to passion, and therefore never produces action. Philosophers tell us that a thought of virtue passing often through the mind, without being wrought out into a fact, weakens the moral sense; thus people may read the best of books, and witness the finest exhibitions of moral beauty, and constantly retrograde in virtue. The dissolute characters of players, who continually utter the loftiest sentiments, and practice the lowest vices, are accounted for on this principle; and we ought to judge the theatre as we do slavery, by its demoralizing effect upon those engaged in it.

_Mr. F._ Do you mean to say, Rebecca, that slaveholding has the same effect upon me that stage-playing has upon the actor?

_Mrs. G._ Well, brother, I put it to thy own conscience. Does thee not, daily, in dealing with thy slaves, stifle thy emotions of piety, generosity, and love, and is it not easier to do this now than it was twenty years ago, when, with a heart full of tenderness and truth, thee left us for thy southern home?

_Mr. F._ (_Rising and pacing the room with great agitation_.) Now, sister, you are going to introduce another absurdity! Do I practice the principles learned in the nursery? No, I do not! Do I believe "honesty is the best policy" and its kindred humbugs? Of course I don't! Show me the man who does? Do I follow the precepts of the sermon on the Mount? Not I! The man who should undertake to do so would make himself a perfect laughing-stock. I should like to see one of your northern hypocrites attempt it. Ha! ha! ha! "Lay not up treasure upon earth," and "take no thought for the morrow;" why, what else do people take thought for, either North or South? It is not what they shall eat, drink, or wear to-day, that worries them, but how they shall lay up something for themselves or their children hereafter. You silly women are always talking about righteousness, as if you really thought it could enter in human plans, but we men of the world, who have to wring the precious dollar from the hard hand of labor, know better! I tell you, Rebecca, I don't believe there is a business-man in your pious Quaker city even, who would dare acquaint his wife and daughters with all his little arrangements for amassing wealth. Ha! ha! ha! How the pretty things would stare at the tricks of the trade, and simper: "Is that right?" As though anybody thought business principles were gospel principles! As though they expected a man was going to love his neighbor as himself, when he was making a bargain with him! It provokes me to see you make yourself so ridiculous! You ought to know that every man _acts_ on the principle, that "Wealth is the chief good;" and you ought to know, too, that there the slaveholders have the advantage of you entirely. They do right to work, and grind it out of the slaves on a large scale, and call Abraham and Moses to witness the patriarchal method, while your northern mercenaries scheme and speculate how they can turn a penny out of ignorance and poverty, and have not even the apology of a precedent for their meanness. Why, one of our generous southern planters is as far above one of your stingy shave-three-cents-on-a-yard-tradesmen, as Robin Hood is above a miserable tea-spoon burglar. The south sails under false colors, does it? What flag do your platform men give to the wind, I should like to know? What do they care for the Fugitive Slave Law? Half of them would help a runaway to Canada with as good a will as they'd eat their dinner. (_Coming close and sitting down, so as to look fixedly in her face_.) I'll tell you what, sister, the chivalry of the south responds to you northern Christians who prate so loud of brotherhood and charity, in the words of young Cancer to his mother--"_Libenter tuis præceptis obsequar, si te prius idem facientem videro_."

_Mrs. G._ (_very gently_.) These strictures, brother, are too keenly just. They remind me of Kossuth's assertion, that there is not yet a Christian nation on the earth, nor yet a Christian church, that dare venture entirely upon the principles of the Gospel. Still, the aberration of reformers proves no more in favor of slavery, than the vices and miseries of civilized life prove that barbarism is the natural and happy state of the human race; nay, these very aberrations prove that a centripetal power counteracts the opposing force, and holds them within the genial influence of the sun of truth.

The law of spiritual gravitation is little understood. But thousands of philosophers are closely observing the phenomena, and carefully comparing them with the data given in the Sermon on the Mount; and it is not too much to hope that this generation will give to the world a Newton, whose moral mathematics shall demonstrate that the _law_ of _love_ is the true theory of individual and national prosperity.

_Mr. F._ Well, sister, I wish you much joy of your millennial state; but before the Sermon on the Mount becomes the code of nations, I guess you will find--

_Mr. D._ (_interrupting_.) "A little more grape, Captain Bragg!"

_Frank._ I tell you, uncle, "there's a good time coming." Mother is a prophet. I have watched her words all my life, and I never knew them fall to the ground.

_Mrs. G._ Observe, my friends, that the Sermon on the Mount puts blessing before requirement. If you accept these beatitudes as the gift of your Divine Master, you will find that obedience to the precepts which follow, is not the unwilling service of a bondsman, but the free and natural action of an unfranchised spirit.

CLOVER STREET SEM., November 10th, 1853.

A Time of Justice will Come

We are conscious of the odium that rests upon us. We feel that we are wronged; but we are not impatient for the righting of our wrongs. We bide our time. The men that shall come after us, will do us justice. The present generation of America cannot "judge righteous judgment," in the case of the uncompromising friends of freedom, religion, and law. They are so debauched and blinded by slavery, and by the perverse and low ideas of freedom, religion, and law, which it engenders, that they "call evil good, and good evil; put darkness for light, and light for darkness; put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter." They have been living out the lie of slavery so long, and have been, thereby, deadening their consciences so long, as to be now well nigh incapable of perceiving the wide and everlasting distinctions between truth and falsehood.

GERRITT SMITH.

Hope and Confidence.

O! What a strange thing is the human heart!
With its youth, and its joy and fear!
It doats upon creatures that day-dreams impart,--
Full sorely it grieves when their beauties depart,
And weeps bitter tears over their bier.

The veriest gleamings that dart into birth,
Reveal to its being of light:
The dimliest shadows that flit upon earth,
Allure it, with promise of pleasure and mirth
In a country, where never is night.

It leaves the sure things of its own real home,
To pursue the mere phantoms of thought!
Well knowing, that certain, there soon must come,
An end to the visions, that so gladsome,
It bewilder'd, has eagerly sought.

It fleeth the wholesome prose of life,
With its riches all sure and told:
And scorning the beauties, that calmly in strife
Truth fashions, it longs for the things all rife
With glitter, and color, and gold.

It buildeth its home 'neath an ever calm sky,
Near streams wherein crown-jewels sleep,--
And there it reposeth: while soothingly nigh,
Some loved one, perchance, doth most wooingly sigh,
As the zephyrs all full-laden creep.

Thus it musingly wasteth its strength, in dreams
Of bliss, that can never prove true:
And ever it revels amid what seems,
A paradise smiling with Hope's warm beams,
And flowers all spangled with dew.

But, even as flowers are broken and fade,
And yield up their perfumes--their souls,--
So vanish the colors of which dreams are made,--
So perish the structures on which Hope is staid,
And the treasures to which the heart holds.

In vain does it follow the wandering forms
That promise, yet always recede:--
Too briefly the sunshine is darken'd by storms:
Hope minstrels it onward, yet never informs
Of the dangers unseen, that impede.

The Heart trusts the outward: "Of man 'tis the whole."
Thus Confidence clings to decay!
It feels the sweet homage that riches control,--
And laughs in contempt at the wealth of the soul:
And behold! now, friends wait for their prey.

It trusteth in glory, and beauty, and youth,--
In love-vows that ne'er are to die:
But soon the Death-king, in whose heart is no ruth,
Enfolds it,--and mounting aloft, of Truth
Thus sings, as turns glassy the eye.

"There's nothing so lovely and bright below,
As the shapes of the purified mind!
Nought surer to which the weak heart can grow,
On which it can rest, as it onward doth go,
Than that Truth which its own tendrils bind.

"Yes! Truth opes within a pure sun-tide of bliss,
And shows in its ever calm flood,
A transcript of regions, where no darkness is,
Where HOPE its conceptions may realize,
And CONFIDENCE sleep in 'The Good.'"

A Letter that Speaks for Itself.

To T---- M----.

Disinterested benevolence, my dear sir, has nothing at all to do with abolitionism. Nay, I doubt very much if there is such a thing as disinterested benevolence; but be this as it may, there is no occasion for it in the anti-slavery ranks.

It is selfishness,--sheer selfishness, that has thus far carried on the war with slavery and wrong in all times; and selfishness must break the chains of the American slave.

Self-love has fixed the chain around the arm of every leader and every soldier in the American anti-slavery army. Where would William Lloyd Garrison have been to-day, if any combination of circumstances could have shut in his soul's deep hatred of oppression, and prevented its finding utterance in burning words? He would have been dead and rotten. It is necessary to his own existence that he should work,--work for the slave; and in his work he gratifies all the strongest instincts of his nature, more completely than even the grossest sensualist can gratify _his_, by unlimited indulgence.

Gerritt Smith, too. Suppose he was compelled to hoard his princely fortune, or spend it as most others do! O dear! what a dyspeptic we should have in six months; and all the hydropathic institutes in the country could never keep him alive five years.

John P. Hale would soon be done with his rotund person and jovial face, if he could no longer send the sharp arrows of his wit and sarcasm into the consciences of his human-whipping neighbors.

It is a necessity of all great nations to hate meanness, and nothing under God's heaven ever was so mean as American slavery. Think of it. _Men_ who swagger around with pistols and bowie-knifes to avenge their insulted honor, if any one should question it,--imagine one turning up his sleeves to horsewhip an old woman for burning his steak, or pocketing her wages, earned at the wash-tub!

No one with a soul above that of a pig-louse, could help loathing the system, the instant he saw it in its native meanness. Then, in order to keep his own self-respect,--to gratify the love of the good and true in his own soul, he _must_ express that loathing.

No disinterestedness about doing right, for nobody can be so much interested in the act as the doer of it.

Wrong-doing is the only possible self-abnegation, of which the whole range of thought admits.

All the humiliation and agony of the Saviour himself, were necessary to himself. Nothing less could have expressed the infinite love of the Divine nature; and in working out a most perfect righteousness for those he loved, he also wrought out a most perfect happiness for himself.

The eternal law of God links the happiness of all the creatures made in His image in an electric chain, united in the Divine love; and He, who has "a fellow-feeling for our infirmities," has given us a fellow-feeling with the sufferings of each other. So that no soul in which the Divine image is not totally obscured, can know of the misery of another, without a sympathetic throb of sorrow.

The true heart in Maine _cannot_ know that the slave-mother in Georgia is weeping for her children, torn from her arms by avarice, without feeling her anguish palpitating in its inmost core.

It is the pulsations of the sympathetic heart which stretches out the hand to interfere between her and her aggressor; and abolitionists are just seeking a soft pillow that they may "sleep o' nights."

It is selfishness, I tell you, all selfishness! The great whale when she gives up her own large life to protect her young one, and the little wren when she carries all the nice tit bits to her babies, are as true to themselves as the old pig when she shoulders all her little family out of the trough.

The whale enjoys death, and the wren her little fellows' supper, with a better zest than an old grunter does her corn, and Wm. Gildersten in spending money and laboring to prevent any more scenes of brutal violence in his State, by punishing the one past, gratifies his own loves and longings quite as much as Judge Grier in grunting out his wrath against all lovers of liberty.

The one would enjoy being hanged for the cause of God and Humanity, more than the other would the luxury of hanging him, even if he could have _all_ the pleasure to himself,--be not only judge and persecutor, as he prefers, but marshal, jailor, and hangman to boot.

More than this, every creature, so far as other creatures are concerned, has a right to be happy in his own way. Nero had as much right to wish for power to cut off all the heads in Italy at one blow, as an innocent pig to wish for capacity to eat all the corn in the world. Mankind has no right to punish either for the desire or its manifestation. They should only make fences to prevent the accomplishment of the wish.

Americans have no right to punish Judge Grier for wishing to persecute everybody who attempts to enforce State laws against murderous assaults by _his_ officers. They should content themselves with fencing his Honor in, or, if necessary, putting a ring in his nose. He has as much right to be Judge Grier as George Washington had to be George Washington, and is no more selfish in following the instincts of his nature, than Washington was in following his.

Without any great respect,
I am your friend,

On Freedom.

Once I wished I might rehearse
Freedom's pæan in my verse,
That the slave who caught the strain
Should throb until he snapt his chain.
But the Spirit said, "Not so;
Speak it not, or speak it low;
Name not lightly to be said,
Gift too precious to be prayed,
Passion not to be exprest
But by heaving of the breast;
Yet,--would'st thou the mountain find
Where this deity is shrined,
Who gives the seas and sunset-skies
Their unspent beauty of surprise,
And, when it lists him, waken can
Brute and savage into man;
Or, if in thy heart he shine,
Blends the starry fates with thine,
Draws angels nigh to dwell with thee,
And makes thy thoughts archangels be;
Freedom's secret would'st thou know?--
Right thou feelest rashly do.

Mary Smith,

AN ANTI-SLAVERY REMINISCENCE.

Some years ago a free colored woman, who was born in New England, and had gone to the south to attend upon some family, was shipwrecked, as she was returning northwards, on the coast of North Carolina. She, however, as well as some of the crew of the vessel, was saved. The half-civilized people of that region rendered some assistance to the shipwrecked party; but Mary Smith was detained by one of the natives as a slave.

The poor woman succeeded in getting a letter written to some person in Boston, in which the particulars of her story were narrated. Either this letter, or one afterwards written, contained references to people in Boston who were acquainted with her.

It was not very easy, even with these references, to get sufficient evidence to prove the freedom and identity of an obscure person, who had been away from Boston for some years. A strong interest, however, was felt in the case wherever it became known. And Rev. Samuel Snowden, well-remembered by the name of Father Snowden, with his usual indomitable energy and perseverance in aiding persons of his own color in distress, succeeded in finding people in Boston who were well acquainted with Mary Smith, and recollected her having left that place to go to the south. Pursuing his inquiries with great diligence, he ascertained the place of her birth, which was somewhere in New Hampshire. I forget the name of the town.

Affidavits were now procured, which established the place of Mary Smith's birth, her residence in Boston, and the time of her departure for the south, and other circumstances to corroborate her story.

Edward Everett, who was at this time Governor of Massachusetts, at the request of Mary Smith's friends, forwarded the documents they had obtained, accompanied with an urgent letter from himself, demanding her release from captivity, on the ground of her being a free citizen of Massachusetts.

The Governor of North Carolina replied very courteously to Governor Everett. He admitted the right of the woman to her freedom, and acknowledged that no person in North Carolina could lawfully detain her as a slave. But, at the same time he said, that as Governor, he had no power to interfere with the person who held her in custody. The decision on her right to freedom, depended on another department of the government. He promised, however, to write to the man who held her, and solicit her release.

The remonstrances of the Governor of North Carolina proved successful. Mary Smith soon arrived in Boston. And some of her old acquaintances who had given the evidence which led to her release, hastened to meet her and congratulate her on her escape from bondage. At the meeting they looked on her for some moments with astonishment, for they could trace in her features no resemblance to their former companion. A speedy explanation took place, from which it appeared that all the documents sent to North Carolina related to one Mary Smith; but the woman whose liberty they procured, was another Mary Smith.

Governor Everett had a hearty laugh when Father Snowden told him the happy result of his letter to the Governor of North Carolina.

The moral of this story is, that a plain, common name, is sometimes more useful to its owner, than a more brilliant one.

NOTE.--I have endeavored to give the facts of Mary Smith's
story with exact accuracy, writing from memory only, without
the aid of anything written. It is possible I may be
mistaken in some immaterial circumstance.

Freedom--Liberty.

Freedom and Liberty are synonymes. Freedom is an essence; Liberty, an accident. Freedom is born with a man; Liberty may be conferred on him. Freedom is progressive; Liberty is circumscribed. Freedom is the gift of God; Liberty, the creature of society. Liberty may be taken away from a man; but, on whatsoever soul Freedom may alight, the course of that soul is thenceforth onward and upward; society, customs, laws, armies, are but as wythes in its giant grasp, if they oppose, instruments to work its will, if they assent. Human kind welcome the birth of a free soul with reverence and shoutings, rejoicing in the advent of a fresh off-shoot of the Divine Whole, of which this is but a part.

NEW-YORK, Nov. 22d, 1853.

An Aspiration.

You want my autograph. Permit me, then, to sign myself the friend of every effort for human emancipation in our own country, and throughout the world. God speed the day when all chains shall fall from the limbs and from the soul, and universal liberty co-exist with universal righteousness and universal peace. In this work I am

Yours truly,

NEW YORK, Nov. 22d.

The Dying Soliloquy of the Victim of the Wilkesbarre Tragedy.

He was approached from behind by Deputy Marshal Wyncoop and his assistants, knocked down with a mace and partially shackled. The fugitive, who had unsuspectingly waited upon them during their breakfast at the Phenix Hotel, was a tall, noble-looking, remarkably intelligent, and a nearly white mulatto; after a desperate effort and severe struggle, he shook off his _five_ assailants, and with the loss of everything but a remnant of his shirt, rushed from the house and plunged into the water, exclaiming: "I will drown rather than be taken alive." He was pursued and fired upon several times, the last ball taking effect in his head, his face being instantly covered with blood. He sprang up and shrieked in great agony, and no doubt would have sunk at once, but for the buoyancy of the water. Seeing his condition, the slave-catchers retreated, coolly remarking that "dead niggers were not worth taking South."

Than be a slave,
Dread death I'll brave,
And hail the moment near,
When the soul mid pain,
Shall burst the chain
That long has bound it here.

Earth's thrilling pulse,
Man's stern repulse,
This weary heart no longer feels;
Its beating hushed
Its vain hopes crushed,
It craves that life which death reveals.

That moment great
My soul would wait,
In awe and peace sublime;
Nor bitter tears,
Nor slave-born fears,
As I pass from earth to time.

The angry past,
Like phantoms vast,
Glides by like the rushing wave;
So soon shall I,
Forgotten lie,
In the depths of my briny grave.

The time shall be,
"When no more sea"
Shall hide its treasures lone;
Then my soul shall rise,
Clothed for the skies,
To find its blissful home.

Foul deeds laid wrong
The whip and thong,
Have scored my manhood's heart,
But ne'er again
Shall fiends constrain
My body to the slave's vile mart.

The 'whelming wave,
This corpse shall lave;
Let the winds still pipe aloud,
Let the waters lash,
The white foam dash,
O'er mangled brow and bloody shroud.

Roll on, thou free,
Unfettered sea,
Thy restless moan, my dirge,
My cradle deep
In my last lone sleep,
Is the scoop of thy hollow surge.

Would I might live,
_One_ glance to give,
To those whose hearts would bless,
Each word of love,
All price above,
As mine to theirs I press.

The wish is vain;
My frenzied brain,
Is dark'ning even now;
Above, above,
Is Heaven's love,
And mercy's wide arched bow.

Glad free-born soul
With grateful hold,
Now grasp the gift from Heav'n--
Thy freedom won,
New life begun,
Forgive, thou'rt there forgiv'n.

Let all be Free.

Unbounded in thy expanse--far reaching
From shore to shore--ever beautiful
Are thy crystal waters--O sea.
Beautiful--when thy waves, the white pebbles lave,
When the weary sea-birds sleep, upon the bosom of the deep.
But when thy storm-pressed billows burst,
The grasp which man would "lay upon thy mane,"
Then do I most love thee, sea,
Thou emblem of the _Free_.

When above me beam the stars,
How beautiful in their infinitude of light,
O'er the blue heavens spread, like gems
Upon the brow of youth!
Far, far away, beyond the paths of day,
More glorious yet, as suns which never set,
In darkness never! but shining forever!
You are more loved by me--
Ye emblems of the _Free_.

All earth of the beautiful is full.
Beautiful the streams which leave the rural vales,
Fringed with scarlet berries and leafy green!
O world of colors infinite, and lines of ever-varying grace,
How by sea and shore art thou ever beautiful!
But the torrent rushing by, and the eagle in the sky,
The Alpine heights of snow where man does never go,
More lovely are to me,
For they are _Free_.

Beautiful is man, and yet more beautiful
Woman: coupled by bare circumstance
Of place or gold, still beautiful.
But this must fade!
Only the soul, grows never old:
They most agree, who most are free:
Liberty is the food of love!
The heavens, the earth, man's heart, and sea,
Forever cry, _let all be Free_!

KENTUCKY, 1853.

_To the Editor of the "Autographs for Freedom."_

DEAR MADAM,--

If the enclosed paragraph from a speech of mine delivered in
May last, at the anniversary meeting of the American and
Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, shall be deemed suited to the
pages of the forthcoming annual, please accept it as my
contribution.

With great respect,

ROCHESTER, November, 1853.

Extract.

No colored man, with any nervous sensibility, can stand before an American audience without an intense and painful sense of the disadvantages imposed by his color. He feels little borne up by that brotherly sympathy and generous enthusiasm, which give wings to the eloquence, and strength to the hearts of other men, who advocate other and more popular causes. The ground which a colored man occupies in this country is, every inch of it, sternly disputed. Sir, were I a white man, speaking for the right of white men, I should in this country have a smooth sea and a fair wind. It is, perhaps, creditable to the American people (and I am not the man to detract from their credit) that they listen eagerly to the report of wrongs endured by distant nations. The Hungarian, the Italian, the Irishman, the Jew and the Gentile, all find in this goodly land a home; and when any of them, or all of them, desire to speak, they find willing ears, warm hearts, and open hands. For these people, the Americans have principles of justice, maxims of mercy, sentiments of religion, and feelings of brotherhood in abundance. But for _my_ poor people, (alas, how poor!)--enslaved, scourged, blasted, overwhelmed, and ruined, it would appear that America had neither justice, mercy, nor religion. She has no scales in which to weigh our wrongs, and no standard by which to measure our rights. Just here lies the grand difficulty of the colored man's cause. It is found in the fact, that we may not avail ourselves of the just force of admitted American principles. If I do not misinterpret the feelings and philosophy of my white fellow-countrymen generally, they wish us to understand distinctly and fully that they have no other use for us whatever, than to coin dollars out of our blood.

Our position here is anomalous, unequal, and extraordinary. It is a position to which the most courageous of our race cannot look without deep concern. Sir, we are a hopeful people, and in this we are fortunate; but for this trait of our character, we should have, long before this seemingly unpropitious hour, sunk down under a sense of utter despair.

Look at it, sir. Here, upon the soil of our birth, in a country which has known us for two centuries, among a people who did not wait for us to seek them, but who sought us, found us, and brought us to their own chosen land,--a people for whom we have performed the humblest services, and whose greatest comforts and luxuries have been won from the soil by our sable and sinewy arms,--I say, sir, among such a people, and with such obvious recommendations to favor, we are far less esteemed than the veriest stranger and sojourner.

Aliens are we in our native land. The fundamental principles of the republic, to which the humblest white man, whether born here or elsewhere, may appeal with confidence in the hope of awakening a favorable response, are held to be inapplicable to us. The glorious doctrines of your revolutionary fathers, and the more glorious teachings of the Son of God, are construed and applied against us. We are literally scourged beyond the beneficent range of both authorities,--human and divine. We plead for our rights, in the name of the immortal declaration of independence, and of the written constitution of government, and we are answered with imprecations and curses. In the sacred name of Jesus we beg for mercy, and the slave-whip, red with blood, cracks over us in mockery. We invoke the aid of the ministers of Him who came "to preach deliverance to the captive," and to set at liberty them that are bound, and from the loftiest summits of this ministry comes the inhuman and blasphemous response, saying: if one prayer would move the Almighty arm in mercy to break your galling chains, that prayer would be withheld. We cry for help to humanity--a common humanity, and here too we are repulsed. American humanity hates us, scorns us, disowns and denies, in a thousand ways, our very personality. The outspread wing of American Christianity, apparently broad enough to give shelter to a perishing world, refuses to cover us. To us, its bones are brass, and its feathers iron. In running thither for shelter and succor, we have only fled from the hungry bloodhound to the devouring wolf,--from a corrupt and selfish world to a hollow and hypocritical church.

Extract from an unpublished Poem on Freedom.

Oh, Freedom! when thy morning march began,
Coëval with the birth and breath of man;
Who that could view thee in that Asian clime,
God-born, soul-nursed, the infant heir of time--
Who that could see thee in that Asian court,
Flit with the sparrow, with the lion sport,
Talk with the murmur of the babbling rill
And sing thy summer song upon the hill--
Who that could know thee as thou wast inwrought
The all in all of nature's primal thought,
And see thee given by Omniscient mind,
A native boon to lord, and brute, and wind,
Could e'er have dreamed with fate's prophetic sleep,
The darker lines thy horoscope would keep,
Or trembling read, thro' tones with horror thrilled,
The damned deeds thy future name would gild?

Lo! The swart chief of Afric's vergeless plains,
Poor Heaven-wept child of nature's joys and pains,
Mounts his fleet steed with wind-directed course,
Nor checks again his free unbridled horse,
But lordless, wanders where his will inclines
From Tuats heats to Zegzeg's stunted pines!
View him, ye craven few, ye living-dead!
Wrecks of a being whence the soul has fled!
Ye Goths and Vandals of his plundered coast!
Ye _Christian_ Bondous, who of feeling boast,[7]
Who quickly kindling to historic fire
Contemn a Marius' or a Scylla's ire,[8]
Or kindly lulled to sympathetic glow,
Lament the martyrs of some far-off woe,
And tender grown, with sorrow hugely great
Weep o'er an Agis' or Jugurtha's fate![9]
View him, ye hollow heartlings as he stalks
The dauntless monarch of his native walks
Breathes the warm odor which the girgir bears,[10]
Shouts the fierce music of his savage airs,
Or madly brave in hottest chase pursues
The tawny monster of the desert dews;
Eager, erect, persistent as the storm,
Soul in his mien, God's image in his form!
Yes, view him thus, from Kaffir to Soudan,
And tell me, worldlings, is the black a man?

See, the full sun emerging from the deep,
Climbs with red eye, the light-illumined steep,
And brightly beautiful continuous smiles
A fecund blessing on those Indian Isles!
Like eastern woods which sweeten as they burn,
So, the parched earths to odorous flowrets turn,
And feathered fayes their murmurous wings expand,
Waked by the magic of his conjuror's wand,
Flash their red plumes, and vocalize each dell
Where browse the fecho and the dun-gazelle,[11]
While half forgetful of her changing sphere,
The loathful summer lingers year by year.
Here, in the light of God's supernal eye--
His realms unbounded, and his woes a sigh--
The dusky son of evening placed whilcome
Found with the Gnu an ever-vernal home,
And wiser than Athenas' wisest schools,[12]
Nor led by zealots, nor scholastic rules,
Gazed at the stars that stud yon tender blue,
And hoped, and deemed the cheat of death untrue;
Yet, supple sophist to a plastic mind,[13]
Saw gods in woods, and spirits in the wind,
Heard in the tones that stirred the waves within,
The mingled voice of Hadna and Odin,
Doomed the fleeced tenant of the wild to bleed
A guileless votive to his harmless creed,
Then gladly grateful at each rite fulfilled,
Sought the cool shadow where the spring distilled,
And lightly lab'rous thro' the torpid day,
Whiled in sweet peace the sultry eve away.

Or if perchance to nature darkly true,
He strikes the war-path thro' the midnight dew,
Steals in the covert on the sleeping foe,
And wreaks the horrors of a barbarous woe;
Yet, yet returning to the home-girt spot--
The vengeful causes and the deed forgot--[14]
Where greenest boughs o'er sloping banks impend,
And gurgling waves to bosky dells descend;
Intent the long expectant brood to sea,
He halts beneath the broad acacia tree;
And warmly pressed by wonder-gloating eyes,
Displays the vantage of each savage prize;
Stills with glad pride and plundered gems, uncouth,
The ardent longings of his daughter's youth;

Bids the dark spouse the tropic meal prepare,
Mid laughing echoes from the bird-voiced air;
Passes before him in a fond review
The merry numbers of his crisp-haired crew;[15]
Recounts the dangers of the last night's strife,
Joys with their joy, and lives their inner life;
And then when slow the lengthened day expires,
Mid twilight balms and star-enkindled fires,
With _all_ the father sees each form retire,
A ruthless heathen, but a loving sire.[16]

Innocuously thus, thro' long, long years
Untaught by learning, yet unknown to fears,
The swarthy Afric whiled the jocund hours,
A petted child of nature's rosiest bowers,
Till lured by wealth the hardy Portuguese,[17]
Seeks the green waters of his Eastern seas,
And venturous nations more excursive grown,
Scan his glad coast from radiant zone to zone,
Then Fortune's minion in a foreign clime,
Cursed by his own and damned to later time,
Of incest born and by the chances thrown
A tainted alien on a ravished throne,
Gapes the foul flatteries of a fawning train,
And fatuous mock'ries, which themselves disdain,
A fancied monarch, but the witless sport
Of adulation, and a practiced court,
Vaunts to his broad realms and Timour-like proclaims
Illusive titles of barbaric names,
Cheats his own nature, and now generous grown,[18]
Dispenses souls and empires not his own,
Draws the deep purple round his royal seat,
Lifts his low crest, affects the God complete,
By giving with light breath, oh, shame to tell!
These heirs of Heav'n unto the fate of hell.
Sped by the mandate of his recreant train,
Lo! commerce, broad winged seraph of the main!
Shook her white plumage and coqueting, won
Propitious favors from the southern sun,
Till manly hearts and keel-impelling gales,
Furled on the coast her half-reluctant sails.

Abashed, amazed, with fear-dilated eye
The marvelling tribes these new-born wonders spy;
See from the shore, bright glittering in the sun,
The moving freightage of each galleon;
Wait till the measured strokes of oars bring near
These way-lost wanderers of another sphere,
Then timorously glad, yet awe-struck still,
Lead from the sunshine to the breezy hill;
With courteous grace a resting place assign
'Neath rustling leaves and grape-empurpled vine,
And led by craft in artless pride make known
The lustrous lurements of their gorgeous zone,
As in the field some skilful ranger sets
The fraudful cordage of his specious nets,
Places some fragrant viand in the snare,
And captive takes the unsuspicious hare;
So the bold strangers with superior will
Lay their base plans with disingenuous skill,
Ope their stored treasures and with art display
Their worthless figments to the air of day,
Roll their large lids, and with grave gestures laud
Each tinsel trinket and each painted gaud;
With mystic signs of strange import apply
Some gew-gaw bauble to the gloating eye;
Touch with nice skill, yet craft-dissembled smile,
Gems from the mine and spices from the Isle,
Affect no care, yet hope a thrifty sale--
The wealth of Empires in th' opposing scale--
While he, the poor victim of their selfish creed,
Prescient of evil art foredoomed to bleed,
Pleased yet alarmed, desiring but deterred,
Flutters still nearer like a snake-charmed bird;
Alas, too often taken with a toy--
Too soon to weep a kindred fate with Troy!

Evils received, like twilight stars dilate,
The less the light, the larger grows their state;
Thus the first error in that savage air,
Spreads as a flame, and leaves a ruin there.
Too dearly generous and too warmly true,[19]
The simple black wears out the fatal clew,--
From barter flies to trade; from trade to wants;
From wants to interests and derided haunts;
Thence, rolls from off the once-sequestered shore,
The turgid tide of havoc and of war;
No warning ringing from the red adunes,
No prophets rising, and no Laocoons,
Remotest tribes the baleful influence own;
Feel to extremes, and at their centres groan.
Now laughs the stranger at their anguished throes,[20]
Feeds on their ills, and battens on their woes;
Glads his freed conscience at each pillaged mine,
And finds forgiveness at a Christian shrine;
By specious creeds and sophists darkly taught,[21]
To semble virtue and dissemble thought,
With Saviour-seeming smile, adds fuel to the flame,--
Ulysses' craft, without Ulysses' aim,--
And sadly faithful to his dark designs,
Fiction improves; heroic rage refines;
For lo! Achilles, victor of the train!
Draws Hector lifeless, round the Ilian plain;
But ah! these later Greeks more cruel strive,
And bind their victim to the load alive!

Oh, beats there, Heaven, beneath thy gorgeous blue,
One heart so basely to itself untrue,
So dead of pulse, and so insensate grown,
It feels not such a cause dear as its own?
Dwells there a being 'neath thine eye, oh, God!
A fellow-worm from out the self-same clod,
Whose fevered blood does not impatient boil,
Fierce as a tiger's in the hunter's toil,
To see degenerate men and States prolong,
So foul a deed--so thrice accursed a wrong?
Tell me, ye loud-voiced winds that ceaseless roll,
Eternal miracles from pole to pole,
Breathes there on earth so vile and mean a thing
That crushed, it will not turn again and sting?
And say! ye tyrants in your boasted halls,
Read ye no warnings on your darkened walls?
Hear ye no seeming mutterings of the cloud
Break from the millions which your steps have bowed?
Think ye, ye hold in your ignoble thrall,
Mind, soul, thought, taste, hope, feeling, valor, all?
No; these unfettered scorn your nerveless hand,
Sport at their will, and scoff at your command,
Range through arcades of shadow-brooding palms,
Snuff their free airs and breathe their floating balms,
Or bolder still, on fancy's fiery wing--[22]
Caught from their letters at the noon-day spring--
With star-eyed science, and her seraph train
Read the bright secrets of yon azure plain;
Hear Loxian murmurs in Rhodolphe's caves[23]
Meet with sweet answers from the nymph-voiced waves;
Sit with the pilot at Phoenicia's helm,
And mark the boundries of the Lybian realm;
See swarthy Memnon in the grave debate,
Dispute with gods, and rule a conqu'ring state,
And warmly and kindling dare--yes, _dare_ to hope,
A second Empire on the future's scope!

And thou, my country, latest born of time!
Dearest of all, of all the most sublime!
How long shall patriots own, with blush of shame,
So foul a blot upon so fair a name?
How long thy sons with filial hearts deplore,
A Python evil on thy Cyprean shore?
What! and wilt thou, the moral Hercules
Whose youth eclipsed the dream of Pericles,
Whose trunceant bands heroically caught,
The Spartan phalanx with the Attic thought,
The wizard throne of age-nursed error hurled,
Defied a tyrant and transfixed a world!
Wilt _thou_ see Afric like old Priam sue,
The bones of children as in nature due,
And foully craven, ingrate-like forget,
Thy life, thy learning's her dishonored debt?
Say; wilt not _thou_, whose time-ennobling sons--
Thy Jay's, thy Franklin's and thy Washington's,
Caught the bright cestus from fair freedom's God,
And bound it as a girdle to thy sod;
Ah! wilt not thou with generous mind confess
The might of woe, the strength of helplessness?
High-Heaven's almoner to a world oppressed,
Who in the march of nations led the rest![24]
Will there no Gracchus in _thy_ Senate stand
And speak the words that millions should command?
No Clysthementhe 'neath thy broad arched dome,
Predict the fortunes with the crimes of Rome?
Shall time yet partial in his cycling course,
Bring thee no Fox, no Pitt, no Wilberforce?
Still must thou live and corybantic die,
A traceless meteor in a clouding sky;
Thy name a cheat; thyself, a world-wide lie?
No; there will come, prophetic hearts may trust,
Some embryo angel of superior dust,
With brow of cloud and tongue of livid flame--
Another Moses, but in time and name--
Whose Heaven-appealing voice shall bid thee pass--
On either hand a wall of living glass;--
Ope for the Lybian with convulsive shock
His more than Horeb's adamantine rock,
And gazing from some second Pisgah, see
Thy idol broken and thy people free.

RICHMOND, Dec. 1st, 1853.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] "Ye Christian _Bondous_ who of feeling boast!"

Unable in the whole range of my vernacular, to find an epithet sufficiently expressive to enunciate the aggravated contempt which all feel for that pseudonymous class of philanthropists, who flauntingly parade a pompous sympathy with popular and distant distresses, but studiously cultivate a coarse ignorance of, and hauteur to, the Greeks, which "are at the door," I have had recource to the Metonymy, _Bondou_, as rendered mournfully significant through the melancholy fate of the illustrious Houghton.--Vide _Report African Discovery Society_.

[8] "Contemn a Marius' or a Scylla's ire."

Napoleon in his protest to Lord Bathurst, provoked by the petty tyranny of Sir Hudson Lowe, said of the "Proscriptions," and (by negative inference) in extenuation of them, that they "_were made with the blood yet fresh upon the sword_." A sentence, which, falling from the lips of one of the most imperturbably cool and calculating of mankind, under circumstances superinducing peculiar reflection on every word uttered, cannot but come with the force of a whole volume of excoriative evidence against the demoralization of war, even upon the most abstracted and elevated natures.--Vide _Letters of Montholon and Las Cases_.

[9] "Weep o'er an Agis' or Jugurtha's fate."

Agis, King of Lacedemon and colleague of Leonidas, was a youth of singular purity and promise. Aiming to correct the abuses which had crept into the Spartan polity, he introduced regenerative laws. Among others, one for the equalization of property, and as an example of disinterested liberality, shared his estate with the community. Unappreciated by the degenerated Senate however, he was deposed, and, with his whole family, strangled by order of the ingrate State.--_Edin. Encyc._

It is said that when Jugurtha was led before the ear of the conquerer, he lost his senses. After the triumph he was thrown into prison, where, whilst they were in haste to strip him, some tore his robes off his back, and others, catching eagerly at his pendants, pulled off the tips of his ears with them. When he was thrust down naked into the dungeon, all wild and confused, he said, with a frantic smile, "Heavens! how cold is this bath of yours!" There struggling for six days with starvation, and to the last hour laboring for the preservation of his life, he came to his end.--_Plut. Cai. Mar._

[10] "Breathes the warm odor which the _girgir_ bears,"

The girgir, or the _geshe el aube_, a species of flowering grass. Piercing, fragrant, and grateful in its odor, it operates not unlike a mild stimulant, when respired for any length of time, and is found chiefly near the borders of small streams and in the vicinage of the Tassada.--_Lyn. Gui. and Soud._

[11] "Where browse the _fecho_ and the dun-gazelle."

Among the wild animals are prodigious numbers of the vari-colored species of the gazelle, the bohur sassa, fecho, and madoqua. They are extremely numerous in the provinces depopulated _by war and slavery_, enjoying the wild oats of the deserted hamlets without fear of molestation from a returning population.--_Notes on Central Africa._

[12] "And wiser than Athenas' wisest schools,
Nor led by zealots, nor scholastic rules,
Gazed at the stars which stud yon tender blue,
And hoped and deemed the cheat of death untrue."

Though Socrates and Plato, particularly the former, are generally admitted by writers of authority, among whom, indeed, are Polycarpe, Chrysotom, and Eusebius, to have in a manner _suspected_ rather than believed, the immortality of the soul; yet we have no evidence of their ever having, by the finest process of ratiocination, so thoroughly convinced themselves as to introduce it generally as a tenable thesis on the portico. A beautiful thread of implicit belief and fervent hope, of after life, assimilating to the hunting-ground of our own American Indians, and though sensuous still, a step far in advance of the black void of ancient philosophy, has always run through the higher mythologies of the Negro. So notorious, indeed, was the fact among early Christians, that that ubiquitous riddle, "Prestor John," was, by believers, regarded as having a _locale_ in Central Africa; while Henry of Portugal actually despatched two ambassadors, Corvilla and Payvan, to a rumored Christian court, south of the Sahara.--_Edin. Encyc. Early Chris. His. Port._

[13] "Yet supple sophist to a plastic mind,
Sees gods in woods, and spirits in the wind."

The imagination of the African, like his musical genius, which extracts surprising harmony from the rudest of sources, the clapping of hands, the clanking of chains, the resonance of lasso wood, and perforated shells, seems to invest everything with a resident spirit of peculiar power. Accordingly, his mythologies are most numerous and poetical--his entire catalogue of superior gods alone, embracing a more extended length than the Assyro-Babylon Alphabet, with its three hundred letters.

[14] "The vengeful causes and the deed forgot."

All travellers agree in the facile ductility and inertia-like amiability of the native African character.--BREWSTER _on Africa._

[15] "The merry numbers of his crisp-haired crew."

The negro race is, perhaps, the most prolific of all the human species. Their infancy and youth are singularly happy. The parents are passionately fond of their children.--GOLDBURY'S _Travels._

"Strike me," said my attendant, "but do not curse my mother." The same sentiment I found universally to prevail.

Some of the first lessons in which the Mandings women instruct their children is the _practice of truth_. It was the only consolation for a negro mother, whose son had been murdered by the Moors, that "_the boy had never told a lie_."--PARK'S _Travels._

[16] "With all the father sees each form retire,
A ruthless heathen, but a loving sire."

"Or led the combat, bold without a plan,
An artless savage, but a fearless man."
CAMPBELL.

[17] "Till lured by wealth the hardy Portuguese,
Sought the green waters of his Eastern seas,
And venturous nations more excursive grown,
Pierced his glad coast from radiant zone to zone."

Vasquez de Gama, a Portuguese nobleman, was the first to discover a maritime passage to the Indies; unless, perhaps, we credit the improbable achievement of the Phoenicians, related by Herodotus as occurring, 604 B.C.

De Gama doubled the cape in 1498, explored the eastern shores as far as Melinda, in Zanguebar, and sailing thence arrived at Calcutta in May. This expedition, second to none in its results, save that of Columbus six years before, drew the attention of all Europe. Whole nations became actuated by the same enthusiasm, and private companies of merchants sent out whole fleets on voyages of discovery, scouring the entire coast from Cape Verd to Gaudfui, and discovering the Mascharenhas and most of the islands of the Ethiopean Archipelago.

[18] "Cheats his own nature and now generous grown,
Dispenses realms and empires not his own."

Charles V. granted a patent _to one of his Flemish favorites_, containing an exclusive right to import four thousand negroes!--_Hist. Slavery_.

The crime of having _first_ recommended the importation of African slaves into America, _is due to the Flemish nobility_, who obtained a monopoly of four thousand negroes, which they sold to some Genoese merchants for 25,000 ducats.--_Life of Cardinal Ximenes_.

They (the Genoese) were the first to bring into a regular form, that commerce for slaves, between Africa and America, which has since grown to such an amazing extent.--_Robertson._

[19] "Too warmly generous and dearly true,
The simple black," &c.

It will remain an indelible reproach on the name of Europeans, that for more than three centuries their intercourse with the Africans has only tended to destroy their happiness and debase their character.--_Edin. Ency._

[20] "Now laughs the stranger at their anguished throes."

The arts of the slave-merchant have inflamed the hostility of their various tribes, and heightened their ferocity by sedulously increasing their wars.--_Ibid._

[21] "By specious creeds and sophists darkly taught."

Hamlet's advice to his offending mother;--

"Assume a virtue, tho' you have it not."

Adding hypocrisy to avowed unworthiness, was the acknowledged injunction of the church, wherever and whenever she participated in secular affairs, with a view of emolument. For a peculiar illustration of this favorite doctrine, see Clement VI.'s edict, when, in virtue of the right arrogated by the holy see _to dispose of all countries belonging to the heathen_, he erected (1344) the Canaries into a kingdom, and disposed of them to Lewis de la Corda, a prince of Castile.

[22] "Or bolder still on fancy's fiery wing."

That I do not exaggerate the _belle lettres_ and classical accomplishments of at least two of the "chattels" of the "peculiar institution," in the lines following the above, see "Poems written by Rosa and Maria," _property_ of South Carolina, and published in 1834.

[23] "Hear _Loxian_ murmurs in Rhodolphe's caves."

Loxian is a name frequently given to Apollo by Greek writers and is met with, more than once, in the "Choephoræ of Eschylus."--_Campbell._

Euripides mentions it three times, and Sophocles twice, its euphony recommends it more than any other name of the fair-haired god.

[24] "And in the march of nations led the _van_."
_Campbell_

Letter

BROOKLYN, December 6th, 1853.

Dear Sir,--

Your note of November 29th, requesting a line from me for the Autographs for Freedom, is received.