Chapter X: Part 10

The apprehensions of his friends proved to be too well founded. The funds for the support of his professorship at Cambridge were withheld; and he was obliged to retire from a position which had been most agreeable to himself, for which he was admirably qualified, and in which he had been exceedingly useful. It was a severe trial to his feelings, and the loss of his salary subjected him to no little inconvenience. But liberty, the rights of man, and his sense of duty were more precious to him than physical comforts or even life.

In May, 1834, was held in Boston the first New England Antislavery Convention. It was a large gathering. Dr. Follen was one of the committee of arrangements, and evinced great interest in making the meeting effective.[L] He was also appointed Chairman of the “address” that was ordered “to the people of the United States,” and was the writer of it. His spirit breathes throughout it. It showed how wholly committed he was to the enterprise of the Abolitionists, how thoroughly he understood the principles on which we had from the first relied, and how unfeignedly he desired to make them acceptable to his fellow-citizens by the most lucid exposition of them, and the most earnest presentation of their importance.

In 1835 and 1836 I was the General Agent of the Society. This brought me into a much closer connection with him. It was during the most stormy period,--the time that tried men’s souls. I have given some account of it in previous articles, and have made some allusions to Dr. Follen’s fidelity and fearlessness. He never quailed. His countenance always wore its accustomed expression of calm determination. He aided us by his counsels, animated us by his resolute spirit, and strengthened us by the heart-refreshing tones of his voice. In this crisis it was, at our annual meeting in January, 1836, that he made his bravest speech. There was not a word, not a tone, not a look of compromise in it. He met our opponents at the very points where some of our friends thought us deserving of blame, and he manfully maintained every inch of our ground. That speech may be found in the Appendix to the Memoir of his life. It is not easy even for us to recall, and it is impossible to give to those who were not Abolitionists then, a clear idea of the state of the community at the time the above-named speech was made. The culmination of our trials was the sanction which the Governor of Massachusetts gave to the opinion of one of the judges, that we had committed acts that were punishable at common law. I have given some description of the scenes that were witnessed in the Hall of Representatives. Dr. Follen distinguished himself there. We can never cease to be grateful to him for his pertinacity in withstanding the aggressive overbearance of the Chairman of the joint-committee of the Senate and House appointed to consider our remonstrance against Governor Everett’s condemnation of us. I have sometimes thought it was the turning-point of our affairs in the old Commonwealth.

Soon afterwards Dr. Follen removed to New York and became pastor of the first Unitarian church. It was a situation so eligible, and in every respect so desirable to him, that many supposed he would suffer his Abolitionism to become latent, or at least would refrain from giving full and free expression to it in the pulpit. They knew not the man. He did there as he had done elsewhere. Modestly, mildly, yet distinctly, he avowed his antislavery sentiments, and endeavored to make his hearers perceive how imperative was the obligation pressing upon them as patriots, scarcely less than as Christians, to do all in their power to exterminate slavery from our country. He was chosen a member of the Executive Committee of the American Antislavery Society, and promptly accepted the appointment. The members of that Board testified that “his sound judgment, his discriminating intellect, his amenity of manners, and his uncommonly single-hearted integrity greatly endeared him to his associates.” Yet was the offence he gave by his antislavery preaching such that, after about two years, his services were dispensed with by the Unitarian church.

He returned to Massachusetts, and soon interested so highly the liberal Christians at East Lexington that he was invited to become their pastor. They set about in 1839 the building of a meeting-house, in accordance with his taste, and after a plan which I believe he furnished. The 15th day of January, 1840, was fixed upon as the day for the dedication, and Dr. Channing was engaged to preach on the occasion.

In December Dr. Follen went to New York and delivered a course of lectures. On the evening of the 13th of January he embarked on board the ill-omened steamer Lexington to return. She took fire in the night, and all the passengers and crew excepting three perished in the flames, or in their attempts to escape from them. Dr. Follen, alas! was not one of the three.

The grief and consternation caused by that awful catastrophe need not be described. Few if any persons in the community had so great cause for sorrow as the Abolitionists. One of the towers of our strength had fallen. The greatness of our loss was dwelt upon at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Society a few days afterward, and it was unanimously voted: “That an address on the life and character of Charles Follen, and in particular upon his early and eminent services to the cause of abolition, be delivered by such person and at such time and place as the Board of Managers shall appoint.” Their appointment fell upon me, and I was requested to give notice so soon as my eulogy should be written. I gave such a notice early in February, when I was informed by the managers that they had not yet been able to procure a suitable place, for such a service as they wished to have in connection with my discourse. They had applied for the use of every one of the Unitarian and for several of the Orthodox churches in Boston, and all had been refused them. It was said that Dr. Channing did obtain from the trustees of Federal Street Church consent that the eulogy on Dr. Follen, whom he esteemed so highly, might be pronounced from his pulpit. But another meeting of the trustees, or of the proprietors, was called, and that permission was revoked. More sad still the meeting-house at East Lexington, which had been built under his direction, which he was coming from New York to dedicate, and in which he was to have preached as the pastor of the church if his life had been spared,--even that meeting-house was refused for a eulogy and other appropriate exercises in commemoration of the early and eminent services of Dr. Follen to the cause of freedom and humanity in Europe, and more especially in our country. Such was the temper of that time, such the opposition of the people in and about the metropolis of New England to Mr. Garrison and his associates.

In consequence of this treatment by the churches, and as a protest against it, the Board of Managers determined to defer the delivery of the eulogy, until the meeting-house of some religious body in Boston should be granted for that purpose. No door was unbarred to us for more than two months. In April one of our fellow-laborers, Hon. Amasa Walker, having become one of the proprietors of Marlborough Chapel, succeeded in getting permission for the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, and other friends of Dr. Follen, to meet in that central and very ample room on the evening of the 17th of April, there to express in prayer, in eulogy, and hymns our gratitude to the Father of spirits for the gift of such a brother, so able, so devoted, so self-sacrificing; to attempt some delineation of his admirable character, some acknowledgment of his inestimable services, and thus make manifest our deep sense of bereavement and loss occasioned by his sudden and as we supposed dreadful death.

It so happened that the 17th of April, 1840, was Good Friday,--a most appropriate day on which to mourn the death and commemorate the glorious life of one who had been so true a disciple of Him, who was crucified on Calvary for his fidelity to God and to the redemption of man.

The assemblage was large, estimated by some at two thousand. A prayer was offered by Rev. Henry Ware, Jr.,--such a prayer as we expected would rise from the large, liberal, loving, devout heart of that excellent man. A most appropriate hymn, written by himself, was then read by Rev. John Pierpont. After my discourse was delivered another touching hymn from the pen, or rather the heart, of Mrs. Maria W. Chapman was read by Rev. Dr. Channing, and sung very impressively by the congregation, after which the services were closed by a benediction from Rev. J. V. Himes, a zealous antislavery brother of the Christian denomination.

JOHN G. WHITTIER AND THE ANTISLAVERY POETS.

All great reformations have had their bards. The Hebrew prophets were poets. They clothed their terrible denunciations of national iniquities and their confident predictions of the ultimate triumph of truth and righteousness in imagery so vivid that it will never fade. Mr. Garrison was bathed in their spirit when a child by his pious mother. He is a poet and an ardent lover of poetry. The columns of _The Liberator_, from the beginning, were every week enriched by gems in verse, not unfrequently the product of his own rapt soul. No sentiment inspires men to such exalted strains as the love of liberty. Many of the early Abolitionists uttered themselves in fervid lines of poetry,--Mrs. M. W. Chapman, Mrs. E. L. Follen, Miss E. M. Chandler, Miss A. G. Chapman, Misses C. and A. E. Weston, Mrs. L. M. Child, Mrs. Maria Lowell, Miss Mary Ann Collier, and others, male and female. In 1836--the time that tried men’s souls--Mrs. Chapman gathered into a volume the effusions of the above-named, together with those of kindred spirits in other lands and other times. The volume was entitled, “Songs of the Free and Hymns of Christian Freedom.” Many of these songs and hymns will live so long as oppression of every kind is abhorred, and men aspire after true liberty. This book was a powerful weapon in our moral welfare. My memory glows with the recollections of the fervor, and often obvious effect, with which we used to sing in true accord the 13th hymn, by _Miss E. M. Chandler_:--

“Think of our country’s glory
All dimmed with Afric’s tears!
Her broad flag stained and gory
With the hoarded guilt of years!”

Or the 15th, by _Mr. Garrison_:--

“The hour of freedom! come it must.
O, hasten it in mercy, Heaven!
When all who grovel in the dust
Shall stand erect, their fetters riven.”

Or the 7th, by _Mrs. Follen_:--

“‘What mean ye, that ye bruise and bind
My people,’ saith the Lord;
‘And starve your craving brother’s mind,
That asks to hear my word?’”

Or the 102d, by _Mrs. Chapman_:--

“Hark! hark! to the trumpet call,--
‘Arise in the name of God most high!’
On ready hearts the deep notes fall,
And firm and full is the strong reply:
‘The hour is at hand to do and dare!
Bound with the bondmen now are we!
We may not utter the patriot’s prayer,
Or bend in the house of God the knee!’”

Or that stirring song, by _Mr. Garrison_:--

“I am an Abolitionist;
I glory in the name.”

The singing of such hymns and songs as these was like the bugle’s blast to an army ready for battle. No one seemed unmoved. If there were any faint hearts amongst us, they were hidden by the flush of excitement and sympathy.

In 1838 or 1839 Mrs. Chapman, assisted by her sisters, the Misses Weston, and Mrs. Child, commenced the publication of _The Liberty Bell_. A volume with this title was issued annually by them for ten or twelve years, especially for sale at the yearly antislavery fair. These volumes were full of poetry in prose and verse. The editors levied contributions upon the true-hearted of other countries besides our own, and enriched their pages with articles from the pens of all the above-named, and from Whittier, Pierpont, Lowell, Longfellow, Phillips, Quincy, Clarke, Sewall, Adams, Channing, Bradburn, Pillsbury, Rogers, Wright, Parker, Stowe, Emerson, Furness, Higginson, Sargent, Jackson, Stone, Whipple, our own countrymen and women; and Bowring, Martineau, Thompson, Browning, Combe, Sturge, Webb, Lady Byron, and others, of England; and Arago, Michelet, Monod, Beaumont, Souvestre, Paschoud, and others, of France. It would not be easy to find elsewhere so full a treasury of mental and moral jewels.

The names of most of our illustrious American poets appear in The _Liberty Bell_ more or less frequently. To all of them we were and are much indebted. James Russell Lowell was never, I believe, a member of the Antislavery Society. He was seldom seen at our meetings. But his muse rendered us essential services. His poems--“The Present Crisis,” “On the Capture of Fugitive Slaves near Washington,” “On the Death of Charles T. Torrey,” “To John G. Palfrey,” and especially his “Lines to William L. Garrison,” and his “Stanzas sung at the Antislavery Picnic in Dedham, August 1, 1843”--committed him fully to the cause of freedom,--the cause of our enslaved countrymen.

Rev. John Pierpont gave us his hand at an earlier day. He took upon himself “our reproach” in 1836, when we most needed help. I have already made grateful mention of his “Word from a Petitioner,” sent to me by the hand of the heroic Francis Jackson in the midst of the convention of the constituents of Hon. J. Q. Adams, called at Quincy to assure their brave, invincible representative of their deep, admiring sense of obligation to him for his persistent and almost single-handed defence of the sacred right of petition on the floor of Congress.

Mr. Pierpont’s next was a _tocsin_ in deed as well as in name. He was impelled to strike his lyre by the alarm he justly felt at the tidings from Alton of the destruction of Mr. Lovejoy’s antislavery printing-office, and the murder of the devoted proprietor. His indignation was roused yet more by the burning of “Pennsylvania Hall” in Philadelphia, and the shameful fact that at the same time, 1838, no church or decent hall could be obtained in Boston for “love or money,” in which to hold an antislavery meeting; but we were compelled to resort to an inconvenient and insufficient room over the stable of Marlborough Hotel.

His next powerful effusion was _The Gag_, a caustic and scathing satire upon the Hon. C. G. Atherton, of New Hampshire, for his base attempt in the House of Representatives at Washington to put an entire stop to any discussion of the subject of slavery.

His next piece was _The Chain_, a most touching comparison of the wrongs and sufferings of the slaves with other evils that injured men have been made to endure.

Then followed _The Fugitive Slave’s Apostrophe to the North Star_, which showed how deeply he sympathized with the many hundreds of our countrymen who, to escape from slavery, had toiled through dismal swamps, thick-set canebrakes, deep rivers, tangled forests, alone, by night, hungry, almost naked and penniless, guided only by the steady light of the polar star, which some kind friend had taught them to distinguish, and had assured them would be an unerring leader to a land of liberty. They who have heard the narratives of such as have so escaped need not be told that Mr. Pierpont must have had the tale poured through his ear into his generous heart.[M]

But of all our American poets, John G. Whittier has from first to last done most for the abolition of slavery. All my antislavery brethren, I doubt not, will unite with me to crown him our laureate. From 1832 to the close of our dreadful war in 1865 his harp of liberty was never hung up. Not an important occasion escaped him. Every significant incident drew from his heart some pertinent and often very impressive or rousing verses. His name appears in the first volume of _The Liberator_, with high commendations of his poetry and his character. As early as 1831 he was attracted to Mr. Garrison by sympathy with his avowed purpose to abolish slavery. Their acquaintance soon ripened into a heartfelt friendship, as he declared in the following lines, written in 1833:--

“Champion of those who groan beneath
Oppression’s iron hand:
In view of penury, hate, and death,
I see thee fearless stand.
Still bearing up thy lofty brow,
In the steadfast strength of truth,
In manhood sealing well the vow
And promise of thy youth.

* * * * *

“I love thee with a brother’s love;
I feel my pulses thrill,
To mark thy spirit soar above
The cloud of human ill.
My heart hath leaped to answer thine,
And echo back thy words,
As leaps the warrior’s at the shine
And flash of kindred swords!

* * * * *

“Go on--the dagger’s point may glare
Amid thy pathway’s gloom,--
The fate which sternly threatens there
Is glorious martyrdom!
Then onward with a martyr’s zeal;
And wait thy sure reward,
When man to man no more shall kneel,
And God alone be Lord!”

Mr. Whittier proved the sincerity of these professions. He joined the first antislavery society and became an active official. Notwithstanding his dislike of public speaking, he sometimes lectured at that early day, when so few were found willing to avow and advocate the right of the enslaved to immediate liberation from bondage without the condition of removal to Liberia. Mr. Whittier attended the convention at Philadelphia in December, 1833, that formed the American Antislavery Society. He was one of the secretaries of that body, and a member, with Mr. Garrison, of the committee appointed to prepare the “Declaration of our Sentiments and Purposes.” Although, as I have elsewhere stated, Mr. Garrison wrote almost every sentence of that admirable document just as it now stands, yet I well remember the intense interest with which Mr. Whittier scrutinized it, and how heartily he indorsed it.

In 1834, by his invitation I visited Haverhill, where he then resided. I was his guest, and lectured under his auspices in explanation and defence of our abolition doctrines and plans. Again the next year, after the mob spirit had broken out, I went to Haverhill by his invitation, and he shared with me in the perils which I have described on a former page.

In January, 1836, Mr. Whittier attended the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society, and boarded the while in the house where I was living. He heard Dr. Follen’s great speech on that occasion, and came home so much affected by it that, either that night or the next morning, he wrote those “Stanzas for the Times,” which are among the best of his productions:--

“Is this the land our fathers loved,
The freedom which they toiled to win?
Is this the soil whereon they moved?
Are these the graves they slumber in?
Are _we_ the sons by whom are borne
The mantles which the dead have worn?

“And shall we crouch above these graves
With craven soul and fettered lip?
Yoke in with marked and branded slaves,
And tremble at the driver’s whip?
Bend to the earth our pliant knees,
And speak but as our masters please?

* * * * *

“Shall tongues be mute when deeds are wrought
Which well might shame extremest hell?
Shall freemen lock the indignant thought?
Shall Pity’s bosom cease to swell?
Shall Honor bleed? Shall Truth succumb?
Shall pen and press and soul be dumb?

“No;--by each spot of haunted ground,
Where Freedom weeps her children’s fall,--
By Plymouth’s rock and Bunker’s mound,--
By Griswold’s stained and shattered wall,--
By Warren’s ghost,--by Langdon’s shade,--
By all the memories of our dead!

* * * * *

“By all above, around, below,
Be our indignant answer,--NO!”

I can hardly refrain from giving my readers the whole of these stanzas. But I hope they all are, or will at once make themselves, familiar with them. As I read them now, they revive in my bosom not the memory only, but the glow they kindled there when I first pored over them. Then his lines entitled “Massachusetts to Virginia,” and those he wrote on the adoption of Pinckney’s Resolution, and the passage of Calhoun’s Bill, excluding antislavery newspapers and pamphlets and letters from the United States Mail,--indeed, all his antislavery poetry helped mightily to keep us alive to our high duties, and fired us with holy resolution. Let our laureate’s verses still be said and sung throughout the land, for if the portents of the day be true, our conflict with the enemies of liberty, the oppressors of humanity, is not yet ended.

PREJUDICE AGAINST COLOR.

If the enslaved millions of our countrymen had been white, the task of emancipating them would have been a light one. But as only colored persons were to be seen in that condition, and they were ignorant and degraded, and as all of that complexion, with rare exceptions, even in the free States, were poor, uneducated, and held in servile relations, or engaged in only menial employments, it had come to be taken for granted that they were fitted only for such things. It was confidently assumed that they belonged to an _inferior race_ of beings, somewhere between monkey and man; that they were made by the Creator for our service, to be hewers of wood and drawers of water; and pious ministers, and some who were reputed to be wise in the sacred Scriptures, gave their sanction to the arrogant assumption by proving (to those who were anxious to believe) that negroes were descendants from the impious son of Noah, whom that patriarch cursed, and in his wrath decreed that his posterity should be the lowest of servants.

Our opponents gave no heed to the glaring facts, that the colored people were not permitted to rise from their low estate, were _held down_ by our laws, customs, and contemptuous treatment. Not only were they prevented from engaging in any of the lucrative occupations, but they were denied the privileges of education, and hardly admitted to the houses dedicated to the worship of the impartial Father of all men.

I have given in early numbers of this series a full account of the fight we had in defence of the Canterbury School in Connecticut. More than a year before that, a number of well-qualified young men having been refused admission into Yale College and the Wesleyan Seminary at Middletown, _because of their complexion_, the Rev. Simeon S. Jocelyn, one of the best of men, generously assisted by Arthur Tappan and his brother Lewis Tappan, and others, endeavored to establish in New Haven an institution for the collegiate education of colored young men. The benevolent project was so violently opposed by “the most respectable citizens” of the place, Hon. Judge Daggett among them, that it was abandoned. A year or two afterwards the trustees of “Noyes Academy,” in Plymouth, New Hampshire, after due consideration, consented to allow colored pupils to be admitted into the academy. The respectable people of the town were so incensed, enraged by this encroachment upon the prerogative of white children, that, readily helped by the rougher but not baser sort of folks, they razed the building in which the school was kept from its foundation and carted it off into a meadow or swamp. In none of our cities, that I was acquainted with before the antislavery reform commenced, were colored children admitted into the “common schools” with white children. Hon. Horace Mann and his fellow-laborers in the cause of humanity, as well as education, put this injustice to shame in Massachusetts, if not elsewhere, and the doors of all public schools were opened to the young, without regard to complexion.

But this was not the utmost of the contempt with which colored people were treated. They were not permitted to ride in any public conveyances, stage-coaches, omnibuses, or railroad-cars, nor to take passage on any steamboats or sail-packets, excepting in the steerage or on deck. Many instances of extreme suffering, as well as great inconvenience and expense, to which worthy, excellent colored persons were subjected came to the knowledge of Abolitionists, and were pressed upon the public consideration, until the crying iniquity was abated.

And still there was a deeper depth to the wrong we did to these innocent victims of prejudice. In all our churches they were set apart from the white brethren, often in pews or pens, built high up against the ceiling in the corners back of the congregation, so that the favored ones who came to worship the “_impartial_ Father” of all men might not be offended at the sight of those to whom in his _inscrutable_ wisdom he had given a dark complexion.

There was quite an excitement caused in the Federal Street Church in 1822 or 1823, because one of the very wealthy merchants of Boston introduced into his pew in the broad aisle, one Sunday, a black gentleman. To be sure he was richly dressed, and had a handsome person, but he was black,--very black.

“That Sunday’s sermon all was lost,
The very text forgot by most.”

The refined and sensitive were much disturbed, offended, felt that their sacred rights had been invaded. They upbraided their neighbor for having so egregiously violated the propriety of the sacred place, and given their feelings such a shock. “Why,” said the merchant, “what else could I do? That man, though black, is, as you must have seen, a gentleman. He is well educated, of polished manners. He comes from a foreign country a visitor to our city. He has long been a business correspondent of mine.” “Then he is very rich.” “Why, bless you, he is worth a million. How could I send such a gentleman up into the negro pew?”

In 1835, if I remember correctly, a wealthy and pious colored man bought a pew on the floor of Park Street Church. It caused great disturbance. Some of his neighbors nailed up the door of his pew; and so many of “the aggrieved brethren” threatened to leave the society, if they could not be relieved of such an offence, that the trustees were obliged to eject the colored purchaser. Another of the churches[N] of Boston, admonished by the above-mentioned occurrence, inserted in their _pew-deeds_ a clause, providing that they should “_be held by none but respectable white persons_.”

Belonging to the society to which I ministered in Connecticut was a very worthy colored family. They were condemned to sit only in the negro pew, which was as far back from the rest of the congregation as it could be placed. Being blessed with a numerous family, as the children grew up they were uncomfortably crowded in that pew. Our church occupied the old meeting-house, which was somewhat larger than we needed, so that the congregation were easily accommodated on the lower floor. Only the choir sat in the gallery, except on extraordinary occasions. I therefore invited my colored parishioners to occupy one of the large, front pews in the side-gallery. They hesitated some time, lest their doing so should give offence. But I insisted that none would have any right to be offended, and at length persuaded them to do as I requested. But one man, a political partisan of the leader of Miss Crandall’s persecutors, was or pretended to be much offended. He said with great warmth, “How came that nigger family to come down into that front pew?” “Because,” I replied, “it was unoccupied; they were uncomfortably crowded in the pew assigned them, and I requested them to remove.” “Well,” said he, “there are many in the society besides myself who will not consent to their sitting there.” “Why?” I asked. “They are always well dressed, well behaved, and good-looking withal.” “But,” said he, “they are niggers, and niggers should be kept to their place.” I argued the matter with him till I saw he could not be moved, and he repeated the declaration that they should be driven back. I then said, with great earnestness: “Mr. A. B., if you do anything or say anything to hurt the feelings of that worthy family, and induce them to return to the pew which you know is not large enough for them, so sure as your name is A. B. and my name is S. J. M., the first time you afterwards appear in the congregation, I will state the facts of the case exactly as they are, and administer to you as severe a reproof as I may be able to frame in words.” This had the desired effect. My colored friends retained their new seat.

To counteract as much as possible the effect of this cruel prejudice, of which I have given a few specimens, we Abolitionists gathered up and gave to the public the numerous evidences that were easily obtained of the intellectual and moral equality of the colored with the white races of mankind. Mrs. Child, in her admirable “Appeal,” devoted two excellent chapters to this purpose. The Hon. Alexander H. Everett also, in 1835, delivered in Boston a lecture on “African Mind,” in which he showed, on the authority of the fathers of history, that the colored races of men were the leaders in civilization. He said: “While Greece and Rome were yet barbarous, we find the ‘_light of learning and improvement_ emanating from them,’ the inhabitants of the degraded and accursed continent of Africa,--out of the very midst of this woolly-haired, flat-nosed, thick-lipped, coal-black race which some persons are tempted to station at a pretty low intermediate point between men and monkeys.” Again he said: “The high estimation in which the Africans were held for wisdom and virtue is strikingly shown by the mythological fable, current among the ancient Greeks, and repeatedly alluded to by Homer, which represented the Gods as going annually in a body to make a long visit to the Ethiopians.” Referring my readers to Mrs. Child’s chapters, and Mr. Everett’s oration on this subject, I will give a few of my own recollections of facts going to establish the natural equality of our colored brethren.

Since the admission of their children to the public schools, a fair proportion of them have shown themselves to be fully equal to white children in their aptness to learn. And surely no one who is acquainted with them will presume to speak of the inferiority of such men as Frederick Douglass, Henry H. Garnett, Samuel R. Ward, Charles L. Remond, William Wells Brown, J. W. Loguen, and many more men and women who have been our faithful and able fellow-laborers in the antislavery cause.[O]

But I have, recorded in my memory, many touching evidences of the _moral_ equality, if not superiority, of the colored race. Let me premise these recollections by stating the general fact that, notwithstanding the serious disadvantages to which our prejudices have subjected them, the colored population of our country have nowhere imposed upon the public their proportion of paupers or of criminals. In this respect they are excelled only by the Quakers and the Jews.

I shall always remember with great pleasure once meeting the Rev. Dr. Tuckerman in Tremont Street, in 1835. He hurried towards me, his countenance beaming with a delight which only such a benevolent heart as his could give to the human countenance, saying: “O Brother May, I have a precious fact for you Abolitionists. Never in all my intercourse with the poor, or indeed with any class of my fellow-beings, have I met with a brighter instance of true, self-sacrificing Christian benevolence than lately in the case of a poor _colored_ woman. Two colored women, not related, have been living for several years on the same floor in a tenement-house, each having only a common room and a small bedroom. Each of them was getting a living for herself and a young child by washing and day-labor. They had managed to subsist, earning about enough to meet current expenses. Several months ago one of them was taken very sick with inflammatory rheumatism. All was done for her relief that medical skill could do, but without avail. She grew worse rather than better, until she became utterly helpless. The overseers of the poor made the customary provision for her, and benevolent individuals helped her privately. But it came to be a case for an infirmary. The overseers and others thought best to remove her to the almshouse. When this decision was made known to her she became much distressed. The thought of going to the poorhouse--of becoming a public pauper--was dreadful to her. We tried to reconcile her to what seemed to us the best provision that could be made for her, not only by assuring her that she would be kindly cared for, but by reminding her that she had been brought to her condition, as we believed, by no fault of her own, and by such considerations as our blessed religion suggests. But she could not be comforted. We left her, trusting that private reflection would in a few days bring her to acquiesce in what seemed to be inevitable. In due time I called again to learn if she was prepared for her removal to the almshouse. I found her not in her own but in her generous-hearted neighbor’s room. Thither had been removed all her little furniture. So deep was that neighbor’s sympathy with her feeling of shame and humiliation at becoming a public pauper,--an inmate of the almshouse,--that she had determined to take upon herself the care and support of this sick, infirm, helpless woman, and had subjected herself to all the inconvenience of an over-crowded room, as well as the great additional labor and care which she had thus assumed.”

Whatever Dr. Tuckerman thought, or we may think, of the unreasonableness of the poor helpless invalid’s dread of the almshouse, or of the _imprudence_ of her poor friend in undertaking to support and nurse her, we cannot help admiring, as he did, that ardor of benevolence which impelled to such a labor of loving-kindness, and pronounce it a very rare instance of self-sacrificing charity. Let it redound as it should to the credit of that portion of the human race which our nation has so wickedly dared to despise and oppress.

I have several more precious recollections of elevated moral sentiment and principle evinced by black men and women whom I have known. Two of these I will give.

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 enamored 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 usually worn by slave-women. We hastened over to the hotel, and soon entered into conversation with the slaveholder. He was polite, but somewhat nonchalant and defiant of our sympathy with his victim. He readily acknowledged, as slaveholders 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 unable 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 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 slaveholder, 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 heroic 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-chattel of a Mississippi slaveholder, 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.”

In this connection I must be allowed to narrate an incident (though not an antislavery one), because it may interest my readers generally, and, should it come to the notice of any of my English friends, may lead to the return of a valuable manuscript which I wish very much to recover.

I had been for several years in possession of a letter of seven pages in the handwriting of General Washington, given me by a lady who obtained it in Richmond, Va. It was a letter addressed to Mr. Custis in 1794, while Washington was detained in Philadelphia in attendance upon his duties as President. He had left Mr. Custis in charge of his estates at Mount Vernon. The letter was one of particular instructions as to the management of “the people” and the disposition of the crops. It showed how exact were the business habits of that great man, and his anxiety that his slaves should be properly cared for.

Mr. Abdy read it and reread it with the deepest interest, and seemed to me to covet the possession of it. Just as he was about to take his departure I longed to give him something that he would value as a memento of his visit to me. There was nothing I could think of at the moment but the letter, so I put it into his hand, saying, “Keep it as my parting token of regard for you.” “What!” said he, seizing it with surprise as well as delight, “will you give me this invaluable relic?” “Yes,” I replied; “there are a great many of General Washington’s letters in our country, but not many in England. Take it, and show your countrymen that he was a man of method as well as of might.”

Some time after he had gone, and the fervor of feeling which impelled me to the gift had subsided, I began to regret that I had parted with the letter. There were in it, incidentally given, some traits of the character of Washington that might not be found elsewhere. It came to me that such a letter should not have been held or disposed of as my private property. It belonged rather to the nation.

A few years afterwards Mr. Abdy died. I learned from an English paper the fact of his demise and the name of the executor of his estate. To that gentleman I wrote, described the letter of Washington, the circumstances under which I had given it to Mr. Abdy, and requested that, as he had departed this life, the letter might be returned to me, with my reasons for wishing to possess it again. In due time I received a very courteous reply from that gentleman, assuring me that he sympathized with my feelings, and appreciated the propriety of my reclaiming the letter. But he added that he had searched for it in vain among Mr. Abdy’s papers, and presumed he had deposited it in the library of some literary or historical institution, but had left no intimation as to the disposal of it.

When in England, in 1859, I inquired for it of the librarian of the British Museum, and of Dr. William’s Library in Red-cross Street, but without success. If these lines should meet the eye of any friend in England who may know, or be able to find, where the valuable autograph is, I shall be very grateful for the information.[P]

A NEGRO’S LOVE OF LIBERTY.

A year or two after my removal to Syracuse a colored man accosted me in the street, and asked for a private interview with me on a matter of great importance. I had repeatedly met him about the city, and supposed from his appearance that he was a smart, enterprising, free negro.

At the time appointed he came to my house, and after looking carefully about to be sure we were alone, he informed me that he was a fugitive from slavery; that he had resided in our city several years, but nobody here except his wife knew whence he came, and he was very desirous that his secret should be kept.

“I have come,” he continued, “to ask your assistance to enable me to get my mother out of slavery. I have been industrious, have lived economically, and have saved three hundred dollars. With this I hope to purchase my mother, and bring her here to finish her days with me.” “You say,” I replied, “that you are a fugitive slave; from what place in the South did you escape?” “From W----, in Virginia,” he answered. I opened my atlas, and found a town so named in that State. “What towns are there adjoining or near W----?” I asked. He named several, enough to satisfy me that he was acquainted with that part of Virginia. “Well,” said I, “how did you get here?” “By the light of the north-star,” was his prompt reply. “How did you know anything about the north-star, and that it would guide you to freedom?” I doubtingly inquired. “I have _heard_ of a great many Southern slaves who have made their way into the free States and to Canada by the light of that star, but I have never before seen one who had done so. I am very desirous to hear particularly about your escape.” “Well, sir,” said he, “a good man in W----, a member of the Society of Friends, knowing how much I longed to be free, pointed out to me the north-star, and showed me how I might always find it. And he assured me, if I would travel towards it, that I should at length reach a part of the country where slavery was not allowed. I need not tell you, sir, how impatient I became to set off. After a while my master left home to be absent several days, and the next Saturday night I started with a bundle on my back, containing a part of the very few clothes I had, and all the food I could get with my mother’s help, and a little money in my pocket--not three dollars--that I had been gathering for a long time. The first and the second nights were pleasant, the stars shone bright, and there was no moon, so I travelled from the moment it was dark enough to venture out until the light of day began to appear. Then I found some place to hide, and there I lay all day until darkness came again. Thus I travelled night after night, always looking towards the north-star. Sometimes I lost sight of it in the woods through which I was obliged to pass, and oh! how glad I was to see it again. Sometimes I had to go a great ways round to avoid houses and grounds that were guarded by dogs, or that I feared it would not be safe for me to cross, but still I kept looking for the star, and turned and travelled towards it when I could. At other times (thank God, not often) the nights were so cloudy I could not see, and so was obliged to stay where I had been through the previous days. O sir, how long those nights did seem!

“When the food I had brought away in my bundle was all eaten up, I was forced to call at some houses and beg for something to relieve my hunger. I was generally treated kindly, for, as I learnt, I had gotten out of Virginia and Maryland. Still, I did not dare to stop so soon, but kept on until I reached this place, where I saw many colored people, evidently as free as the white folks. So I thought it would be safe to look about for employment here and a home. Here I have been living seven or eight years; have married a wife, and we have two children. As I told you at first, I have saved money enough, I believe, to buy my mother, and I want you, sir, to help me get her here.”

It cannot be necessary for me to assure my readers that I was deeply interested in this narrative, which I have repeated so often that I have kept its essential parts fresh in my memory. But, wishing to test its truth still further, I asked him what towns he had passed through in coming from W---- to Syracuse. “O,” said he, “as I travelled at night and avoided people all I could, and asked few questions of those I did meet, I learned the names of only a few places through which I came. I remember M---- and D---- and B----,” and so on, giving the names of six or eight towns in all. “Ah,” said I, “how did you get to B----, if you travelled only towards the north-star?”

“O,” he replied, “I got scared there. I thought the slave-catchers were after me. I ran for luck. I travelled two nights in the road that was easiest for me, without caring for anything but to escape. Then, supposing I had got away from those who were after me, I took to the north-star again, and that brought me here.”

The few towns which he named as having passed through after his last starting-point, I found on the map lying almost directly in the line running thence due north to this city.

Being thus assured of the correctness of his story, I began to question the expediency of his attempting to bring his mother away from her old home, even if I should be able to get possession of her for him. “She must be an aged woman by this time,” said I. “You look as if you were forty years old; she probably is sixty, perhaps nearly or quite seventy.”

“It may be so,” he replied; “but she used to be mighty smart and healthy, and may live a good many years yet, and I want to do what I can for my mother. I am her only child I believe, and I know she would be mighty glad to see me again before she dies.”

“Very true,” I rejoined; “but you have been so long separated she must have got used to living without you. Like other old slave-women in our Southern States (_mammies_ or _aunties_, as they are called), I presume she is pretty kindly treated, and such a change as you propose at her time of life might make her much less comfortable than she would be to continue to the last in her accustomed place and condition.”

“O sir!” he said, with great earnestness, “she is a slave. Every one in slavery longs to be free. I am sure she would rather suffer a great deal as a free woman than to live any longer, however comfortably, as a slave.”

“Yes,” I replied, with all apparent want of sympathy, “but it will cost you all the money you have saved, and I fear much more, to buy her and get her brought on to you here, so that you may then be too poor to make her comfortable. But your three hundred dollars will enable you to increase in many ways the comfort of your wife and children. That sum will go far towards the purchase of a nice little home for them. Now, do you not owe them quite as much as you do your mother?” “My wife,” he exclaimed, “is just as anxious as I am to get mother out of slavery. She is willing to work as hard as I will to make mother comfortable after we get her here. I am sure we shall not let mother suffer for anything she may need in her old age. Do, sir, help us get her here, and you shall see what we will do for her.” Repressing my feelings as much as possible, I said once more: “But, my good fellow, your mother is so old she can live but a little while after you have spent your all and more to get her here. Very likely the excitement and the fatigue of the journey and the change of the climate will kill her very soon.” With the deepest emotion and in a most subdued manner, he replied, “No matter if it does,--buy her, bring her here, and _let her die free_.” This was irresistible. I seized his hand. “Sanford, you must not think me as unsympathizing and cold as I have appeared. I have been trying you, proving you. I am satisfied that you know the value of liberty, that you hold it above all price. Be assured I will do all in my power to help you to accomplish your generous, your pious purpose. Nothing will give me more heartfelt satisfaction than to be instrumental in procuring the release of your mother and presenting her to you a free woman.”