Chapter XLII: Part 42

It was in 1836, in one of his vacations, that his mind was violently turned inwards to re-examine his status upon the Anti-slavery question. He happened to be visiting his old college-friend, Salmon P. Chase, at Cincinnati, and, fortunately for the spiritual life of both men, it was at the time of the terrible riots that broke up the press of John G. Birney. Both being known as already favoring the cause of the slave, they stood in much peril for several days; but when the dark time was passed, the clearness that defined their sentiments was seen to be worth all the personal danger that had bought it. Self-delusion on the subject was no longer possible. The deductions from the facts were as plain as the facts themselves. The two friends took counsel together, and adopted the policy from which thenceforward neither ever swerved. A great cloud was rolled from their eyes. In all this turmoil of riot, they saw on the one side, indeed, a love of man great in its devotion; but on the other, a moral deadness in the North so profound and determined that it threatened thus brutally any voice that would disturb it. Their duty, then, was evident: to fling all the forces of their lives, and by all social and political means, right against this inertness, and shatter it if they could. To Mr. Chase, the course of things gave the larger political work; to my father, the larger social. His diary records how amazed he was, when he returned to Philadelphia, at his former blindness, and how thankful to the spirit of love that had touched and cleansed his eyes that he might see God's image erect. He knew now that his lot had been cast in the very stronghold of apathy, the home of a lukewarm spirit, which, not containing anything positive to keep it close to the right, let its sullen negativeness gravitate towards the wrong. It will be difficult to make coming generations understand, not the flaming antagonism to humanity, but the more brutal avoidance of it that ruled the political tone in this latitude, from 1836 to 1861. I have thought of the word _bitterness_, as expressing it; but though that might convey somewhat of its recoil when disturbed, it pictures nothing of its inhuman solicitude against all disturbance. Conservatism, it was called; and certainly it did conserve the devil admirably. At the South, one race of men were so basely wielding a greater physical power over another race of men, as to crush from them the attributes of self-responsible creatures; Philadelphia, the city of the North nearest the wrong, made no plea for humanity's claims. It went on, this monstrous abrogation of everything that lends sanctity to man's relations on earth, till slaves were beasts, with instincts annihilated, and masters demons, with instincts reversed; Philadelphia made no plea for the violated rhythm of life on either side. Even the Church betrayed its mission, and practically aided in stamping out from millions the spirit that related them to the Divine; still Philadelphia made no plea for God's love in his humanity. Utterly insensible to the most piercing appeals that man can make to man, she loved her hardness, clung to it; and if, now and then, a voice from the North blew down, warningly as a trumpet, the great city turned sluggishly in her bed of spiritual and political torpor, and cried: Let be, let be! a little more slumber! a little more folding of the hands to my moral death-sleep!

This souring of faith, this half-paralysis of the heart's beating, this blurring of the intuitions that make manhood possible, were what my father found here in that year of our Lord's grace, 1836. It will be worth while to watch him move into the fight and bear his part in its thickest, just to learn how largely history lays her humanitarian advances on a few willing souls.

The means which lay readiest to his use for rousing the dormant spirit of the city was his social position. And yet how hard, one would think, it must have been to make this sacrifice. He came accredited by all the claims of finished culture, a man consecrated to the scholar's life.[A] Then, with the sensitiveness that springs from intellectual breeding, one will look to see him shrink from conflict with the callous condition of feeling around him. The glamour of book-lore will spread over it, and hide it from his sight. He has a noble enough mission, at all events: to raise the standard of educational culture in a city that hardly knows the meaning of the term; and if any glimpse should come to him of the lethargic inhumanity around him, he can afford to let it pass as a glimpse--his look being fixed on the sacred heights which the scholar's feet must tread.

[Footnote A: All that I here write of my father, I write equally of his co-laborer in the same sphere of work--Rev. W.H. Furness; and if it is true of others whom I did not know, then to their memory also I bear this record of the two whose labors and characters it has been the deepest privilege of my life to know so well.]

Ah, how his course, so different, proves to us that the true scholar is always a scholar of truth. No matter what element of the public sentiment he met--the listlessness of pampered wealth; the brutal prejudice of some voting savage; the refined sneer of lettered dilettanteism; the purposed aversion of trade or pulpit fearing disturbed markets or pews;--he beat lustily and incessantly at all the parts of the iron image of wrong sitting stolidly here with close-shut eyes. No matter when it was, on holiday or working-day or Sabbath; at home and abroad; in the parlor, the street, the counting-room; in his school and in the Church;--he bore down on this apathy and its brood of scorns like a west wind that sweeps through a city dying under weight of miasma. And the wind might as well cease blowing yet not cease to be wind, as my father's influence stop and himself live. It scattered the good seed everywhere. How often have I heard him say, "I know nothing of what the harvest will be; I am responsible only for the sowing." And bravely went the sowing on, with the broadcast largesse of love. There was no breeze of talk that did not carry the seeds;--to the wayside, for from those that even chance upon the truth the fowls of the air cannot take it all; to thin soil and among thorns, for no heart so feeble or choked that will not find in a single day's growth of truth germination for eternity; to stony places, for no cranny in the rocks that can hold a seed but can be a home for riving roots;--"And other fell on good ground and did bring forth fruit."

Thus it was primarily to rouse those of his own class that he labored, to gall them into seeing (though they should turn again and rend him) that moral supineness is moral decay, that the soul shrivels into nothingness when wrong is acquiesced in, as surely as it is torn and scattered by the furies let loose within it, when wrong is done. But just there lay the difficulty and pain of his mission: that, from his acknowledged standing in the literary world, and as a leader in the interests of higher education, his path brought him into contact mainly with the cultured, and it was among these that the pro-slavery spirit ruled with its bitterest stringency. Not cultured: let us unsay the word; rather, with the gloss and hard polish which reading and wealth and the finer appointments of living can throw over spiritual arrest or decay. Culture is a holy word, and dare be used of intellectual advance only when the moral sympathies have kept equal step. It includes something beyond an amateur sentiment; in favor of what we favor. If it does not open the ear to every cry of humanity, struggling up or slipping back, it is no culture properly so called, but a sham, a mask of wax, a varnish with cruel glitter; and what a double wrath will be poured on him who cracks the wax and the varnish, not only because of the rude awakening, but because the crack shows the sham.

It is impossible for us now to realize what revenge this class dealt to my father for twenty-five years. Consider their power of revenge. They could not force a loss of property or of life, it is true; they made no open assault in the street; their 'delicacy' held itself above common vituperation. But they wielded a greater power than all these over a man whose every accomplishment made him their equal, and they used it without stint. They doomed him to the slow martyrdom of social scorn. They shut their doors against him. They elbowed him from every position to which he had a wish or a right, except public respect, and they could not elbow him from that unless they pushed his character from its poise. They cut him off from every friendly regard which would else have been devotedly his, on that level of educated life, and limited him to 'solitary confinement' within himself. They compelled him to walk as if under a ban or an anathema. Had he been a leper in Syrian deserts, or a disciple of Jesus among Pharisees, he could not have been more utterly banished from the region of homes and self-constituted piety. They showered ineffable contempt upon him in every way consistent with their littleness and--refinement. Slight, sneer, insult, all the myriad indignities that only 'good society' can devise, these were what my father received in return for his love and his work in love.

How little personal relation all this obloquy bore to him, let this stand as evidence: that he not only continued his work, but daily gave it more caustic energy and wider scope. As I have hinted, he did not, in political matters, give in his adherence to that class of abolitionists who, as he thought, threw away their best chances of success in refusing to work within constitutional provisions. He was prouder that this single community should call him "abolitionist," though it spat the word at him, than if the whole earth should hail him with the kingliest title; but he loved the name too well not to make it stand for some practical fact, some feasible and organized effort. He believed that our National Constitution did, indeed, hold many compromises with Slavery, but was framed, in the majority of its provisions and certainly in the totality of its spirit, in the interests of freedom; and that it only needed enforcement by the choice of the ballot-box to bring the South either to an amicable or a hostile settlement of the question. Which, he did not ask or care. The duty of the present could not be mis-read; it was written in _the vote_.

With these views, he gave much time and work to organizing in this State, "The National Liberty Party," in 1840, and to securing from Pennsylvania some of the seven thousand votes that were cast for John G. Birney in that year throughout the Union. By the time another election came, the party had swelled its numbers to seventy thousand. To contribute his share towards this success, tract after tract, address after address, were written and sent broadcast; meetings were convened, committees formed, resolutions framed, speeches made, petitions and remonstrances sent, public action fearlessly sifted and criticised; in short, because he held a steady faith in men's humane promptings when ultimately reached, he 'cried aloud' to them by every access, and 'spared not' to call them from their timidity and time-serving to manly utterance through the ballot-box.

Of such appeals, his address of the "Liberty Party of Pennsylvania, to the people of the State," issued in 1844, may stand as a sample. It is a vivid portrayal of the slave power's insidious encroachments, and of its monopolized guidance of the Government. It gathers up the national statistics into groups, shows how new meaning is reflected from them thus related, that all unite to illustrate the single fact of the South's steady increase of power, her tightening grasp about the throat of government, and her buffets of threat to the North when a weedling palm failed to palsy fast enough. It warns northern voters of the undertow that is drawing them, and adjures them, by every consideration of political common sense, not to cast their ballots for either of the pro-slavery candidates presented. The conclusion of this address is as follows:

OUR OBJECT.

"And now, fellow-citizens, you may ask, what is our object in
thus exhibiting to you the alarming influence of the slave
power? Do we wish to excite in your bosoms feelings of hatred
against citizens of a common country? Do we wish to array the
Free states against the Slave states in hostile strife? No,
fellow-citizens. But we wish to show you that, while the slave
states are inferior to us in free population, having not even
one half of ours; inferior in morals, being the region of bowie
knives and duels, of assassinations and lynch law; inferior in
mental attainments, having not one-fourth of the number that can
read and write; inferior in intelligence, having not one-fifth
of the number of literary and scientific periodicals; inferior
in the products of agriculture and manufactures, of mines, of
fisheries, and of the forest; inferior, in short, in everything
that constitutes the wealth, the honor, the dignity, the
stability, the happiness, the true greatness of a nation,--it is
wrong, it is unjust, it is absurd, that they should have an
influence in all the departments of government so entirely
disproportionate to our own. We would arouse you to your own
true interests. We would have you, like men, firmly resolved to
maintain your own rights. We would have you say to the
South,--if you choose to hug to your bosom that system which is
continually injuring and impoverishing you; that system which
reduces two millions and a half of native Americans in your
midst to the most abject condition of ignorance and vice,
withholding from them the very key of knowledge; that system
which is at war with every principle of justice, every feeling
of humanity; that system which makes man the property of man,
and perpetuates that relation from one generation to another;
that system which tramples, continually, upon a majority of the
commandments of the Decalogue; that system which could not live
a day if it did not give one party supreme control over the
persons, the health, the liberty, the happiness, the marriage
relations, the parental authority and filial obligations of the
other;--if you choose to cling to such a system, cling to it;
but you shall not cross our line; you shall not bring that foul
thing here. We know, and we here repeat it for the thousandth
time to meet, for the thousandth time, the calumnies of our
enemies, that while we may present to you every consideration of
duty, we have no right, as well as no power, to alter your State
laws. But remember, that slavery is the mere creature of local
or statute law, and cannot exist out of the region where such
law has force. 'It is so odious,' says Lord Mansfield, 'that
nothing can be suffered to support it but _positive_ law.'

"We would, therefore, say to you again, in the strength of that
Constitution under which we live, and which no where
countenances slavery, you shall not bring that foul thing here.
You shall not force the corrupted and corrupting blood of that
system into every vein and artery of our body politic. You shall
not have the controlling power in all the departments of our
government at home and abroad. You shall not so negotiate with
foreign powers, as to open markets for the products of slave
labor alone. You shall not so manage things at home, as every
few years to bring bankruptcy upon our country. You shall not,
in the apportionment of public moneys, have what you call your
'property' represented, and thus get that which, by no right,
belongs to you. You shall not have the power to bring your
slaves upon our free soil, and take them away at pleasure; nor
to reclaim them, when they, panting for liberty, have been able
to escape your grasp; for we would have it said of us, as the
eloquent Curran said of Britain, the moment the slave touches
our soil, 'The ground on which he stands is holy, and
consecrated to the Genius of UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION.'

"Thus, fellow-citizens, we come to _the great object of the
Liberty Party_: ABSOLUTE AND UNQUALIFIED DIVORCE OF THE GENERAL
GOVERNMENT FROM ALL CONNECTION WITH SLAVERY. We would employ
every _constitutional_ means to eradicate it from our entire
country, because it would be for the highest welfare of our
entire country. We would have liberty established in the
District, and in all the Territories. * * We would have
liberty of speech and of the press, which the Constitution
guarantees to us. We would have the right of petition most
sacredly regarded. We would secure to every man what the
Constitution secures, 'The right of trial by jury.' We would do
what we can for the encouragement and improvement of the colored
race, and restore to them that inestimable right of which they
have been so meanly, as well as unjustly, deprived, the RIGHT OF
SUFFRAGE. We would look to the best interests of the country,
and the _whole_ country, and not legislate for the good of an
Oligarchy, the most arrogant that ever lorded it over an
insulted people. We would have our commercial treaties with
foreign nations regard the interests of the Free states. We
would provide safe, adequate, and permanent markets for the
produce of free labor. And, when reproached with slavery, we
would be able to say to the world, with an open front and a
clear conscience, our General Government has nothing to do with
it, either to promote, to sustain, to defend, to sanction, or to
approve.

"Thus, fellow-citizens, you see our objects. You may now ask, by
what means we hope to attain them. We answer, by POLITICAL
ACTION. What is political action? It is _acting in a manner
appropriate to those objects which we wish to secure through the
agency of the different departments of Government_. * * The
only way in which we can act _constitutionally_, is to go to the
ballot-box, and there, silently and unostentatiously, deposit a
vote for such men as will do what they can to carry out those
principles which we have so much at heart.

* * * * *

"Come, then, men of Pennsylvania, come and join us in this good
work. Join us, to use such moral means as to correct public
sentiment throughout the region where slavery exists, and to
impress upon the people of the Free states a manly sense of
their own rights. Join us, to place "just men" in all our public
offices; men whose example a whole people may safely imitate.
Join us to free our General Government from the ignominious
reproach of slavery; to restore to our country those principles
which our fathers so labored to establish; and to hand these
principles down afresh to successive generations. It is the
cause of truth, of humanity, and of God, to which we invite your
aid. It is a cause of which you never need be ashamed. Living,
you may be thankful, and dying, you may be thankful, for having
labored in it. We have, as co-laborers with us, the noblest
allies that man can wish. Within, we have the deepest
convictions of conscience, the clearest deductions of reason;
and, all over the world, wherever man is found, the first, the
most ardent longings of the human soul. Without, we have the
happiness of nearly three millions of the human race; the honor,
as well as the best interests of our whole country; and the
universal consent of all good men whose moral vision is not
obscured by the mist of a low, misguided selfishness: while we
seem to hear, as it were, the voices of the great and the good,
the patriot and the philanthropist, of a past generation,
calling to us and cheering us on. But, above all these, and
beyond all these, we have with us the highest attributes of God,
Justice and Mercy. With such allies, and in such a cause, who
can doubt on which side the victory will ultimately rest.

"May He who guides the destinies of nations, and without whose
aid 'they labor in vain that build,' so incline your hearts to
exert your whole influence to place in all our public offices
just and good men, that our country may be preserved, her best
interests advanced, and her institutions, free in reality as in
name, handed down to the latest posterity."

Is not the love of God and man ingrained in every line of this writing? Yet let us see how it was received by the most Christian (?) body in this city.

I need hardly say that my father's mind had been largely impressed, from earliest manhood, with the highest subject human thought can touch. His library records his wide religious reading; but he could not see an honest path towards the profession of any definite views till 1836. The change wrought in him then, can best be gathered from his own simple words (under date, 1842) written in a fly-leaf of "The Unitarian Miscellany:" "Though I humbly trust that God made my trials in 1836 the means of bringing me to true repentance, yet I have kept these books as monuments of what I once was, and to remind me how grateful I should be to Him for having snatched me as a 'brand from the burning,'" Such a faith as this, born of the spiritual travail of years, what a life it always has for the heart that forms it! It tells not of a persuasion, but of a conviction; a disproof of skepticism through the gathered forces of the soul; a struggle, through epochs of doubt and dismay, into an attitude of positive vital faith. Its process is the only one that gives real right to ultimate peace. In comparison with the method and measure of such a conviction, what matters its specific form? Self-truth is the point,--the fact for starting, the line for guiding; and as for result, this lonely and solemn rally on the deepest within us, as it is continuously unfolded, must lead to a glad and solemn union with the Highest without us. Who can know unfailing inward energy except through this new birth? It proved an ever-fresh spring of vigor to my father, and because of it he was chosen, in 1839, president of "The Philadelphia Bible Society." What changes were wrought in the policy of the Society, what numerous plans were devised and executed for multiplying its operations, how it was made a cordial alliance of all denominations, will presently appear. This is now to be said: that, after filling his office for five years, he found that his Anti-slavery testimony had engendered in the managers a bitterness that would seize the address of 1844 for pretext, and make retaliation in his sacrifice. Thankful, for the thousandth time, to be a sacrifice for the cause he loved, he sent in his resignation in a letter full of Christian kindness and sorrow. A short extract will show its tone:

"One whose great heart wishes the best for humanity calls to us
from the West: 'When your Society propose to put a Bible into
every family, and yet omit all reference to the slaves; and
when, giving an account of the destitution of the land, they
make no mention of two and a half millions of people perishing
in our midst without the Scriptures, can we help feeling that
something is dreadfully wrong?' This, brethren, is a most solemn
question. It is a question which I verily believe the American
Bible Society, so far as they may have yielded, directly or
indirectly, openly or silently, to a corrupt public sentiment on
this subject, will have to answer at the bar of Him who has
declared, that, 'If ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin,'
and that 'Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of
these, ye did it not to me.' The spirit of Christianity is a
spirit of universal love and philanthropy. She looks down with
pity, and, if she could, she would look with scorn upon all the
petty distinctions that exist among men. She casts her benignant
eye abroad over the earth, and, wherever she sees man, she sees
him _as man,_ as a being made in the image of God, whether an
Indian, an African, or a Caucasian sun may shine upon him. She
stoops from heaven to raise the fallen, to bind up the
broken-hearted, to release the oppressed, to give liberty to the
captive, and to break the fetters of those that are bound. She
is marching onward with accelerated step, and, wherever she
leaves the true impress of her heavenly influence, the moral
wilderness is changed into the garden of the Lord. May it never
be ours to do what may seem to be even the slightest obstacle to
her universal sway.

"But I have already written more than I intended. In bringing
this communication to a close, allow me to express to you
individually, and as a Board, my most sincere Christian
attachment. Whatever course any members may have taken in
relation to this matter, I must believe that they have acted
from what has seemed to them a sense of duty. Far be it from me
to impeach their motives. Time, the great test of truth, may
show them their course in a very different light from that in
which they now view it. I may, as a Christian, lament that their
views of duty are not more in unison with my own. I may, as a
man, feel heart-sickened at the diseased, the deplorably
diseased state of the public mind, in relation to two and a half
millions of my fellow-men in bondage. I may, as a citizen of a
Free state, blush at the humiliating fact, that not only the
tyranny, but the ubiquity of the slave power is everywhere so
manifest; that it has insinuated itself into our free domain to
such a degree that there seems to be as much mental Slavery in
the Free states, as there is personal in the Slave states. I may
feel all this, but I must not impeach the motives by which
others have been governed."

There were twenty-one managers present at the reading of this letter, and, at its conclusion, a noble friend of the slave moved that the resignation be not accepted; the motion was lost by a vote of fourteen against seven. It was then moved that it be accepted 'with regret:' this was carried by the same vote! But 'with regret' was not an empty form for easing this action to its recipient; how much it meant is seen in the resolution that was added by unanimous acceptance: "_Resolved_,--That this Board are mainly indebted to Professor C.D. Cleveland for the prominent and influential position it has attained in the regards of this Christian community, and that they bear an earnest testimony to the sound judgment and unwearied zeal which have ever characterized the discharge of his duties in his responsible office." Let this tribute, coming from the bitterest personal opposition that ever man encountered, measure the work that extorted it. Looking at it, it will be difficult for the reader to believe that a sacrifice was made of the man to whom it refers by a representative Christian body, and merely to sate for a time the inhuman slave-greed; yet it is only one fact out of many that might be adduced, and I have brought it forward because it is, in my father's words, "a fair exponent of the position of the Christian Church at that time upon the subject of Slavery." Henceforward, he ceased not to rain blows, not only at his own (the Presbyterian) denomination, but at all the organized expressions of Christian purpose,--the Sunday-School Union, the Tract Society, etc.

While working thus by voice and pen, he was incessantly busy in personal rescue of the slave. Especially was this the case when it became the duty of every lover of his kind to defy the Fugitive Slave Law. How eagerly he then sprang to aid the escape of those against whom a law of the land impotently tried to bar the law of our common humanity! During the years that followed the passage of this infamous bill, the position he had attained here was of particular service. Recognized as one, who, being a sort of standing sacrifice, might as well continue to battle in the front; trusted implicitly even by his bitterest foes; with such a broad philanthropy to back his appeals; pushing straight into every breach where work was needed; blind to everything but his one light of moral instinct;--he became an organ for the charities of those whose softer natures longingly whispered the cry, but could not do the cut and thrust work, of deliverance. Dr. Furness held the same position, and others who, like him, refused to be enrolled in the 'Underground Committee,' or in any definite Anti-Slavery organization. These men knew that they were of greater service to the cause by being its body-guard, by standing between it and the public, by making the appeals and taking the blows, and by affording access, pecuniary and other, of each to each.

Thus the times moved on--growing hotter, more difficult and dangerous, but always working these two results: redoubling the labors of this noble band, and shaking the city from lethargy into ferment. Men were compelled to take sides, and but one result could follow, (the result which always follows when human nature is stung and quickened to find its highest instincts,) the Party of Right steadily moved to triumph.

* * * * *

For a lesson to us in courage, it is worth while to ask, how these Apostles of Freedom stood the terrible strain put upon them for so many years. I can answer for the two of whom I write, and do not doubt that the answer is true of the rest: This self-forgetfulness was made easy by a love that filled and overfilled all their moral energies--the simple love of man, as God's highest creation, and of his natural rights, as God's best gift. Their work was not a mere result of will, not an outcome of faculty, not an unsupported impulse of heart. It was character living itself out, an utterance of its entire unity, something drawn from the solemn depths of those life-convictions which all the personal and impersonal powers of a man, aglow and welded, unite in producing. Hence, their work was not apart from them, even so far as to be called ahead of them; nor parallel with them; it was _one_ with them by a necessary spiritual inclusion. Will and Duty ceased to be separate powers; they were transfused through the whole breadth of their human sympathies, adding to their warmth a fixity of purpose that bore them without a falter, through thirty years of such bitter obloquy, as, in these latter days, only the early Anti-Slavery disciples have had to endure. These men never said, in reference to the Anti-slavery cause, _I ought_ or _I will_, because they never needed to say them. The sun shines without them, and life expands without them; and here were souls as unconsciously beneficent as the one, as spontaneous in growth and shaping as the other. Theirs was not a force that moved mechanically in right lines, with limited objects before it. It did, indeed, sweep with arrowy swiftness of assail on every point that offered; but when I remember that it more often pleaded than stormed, that it penetrated into every secret recess that mercy casually opened, and gently stirred into fuller life those roots of human feeling that can be numbed by apathy but not killed even by hate, I know that it was persuasive, diffusive, inbreathing force, an influence vital in others because an effluence vitalized from themselves.

So they stood, self-consecrated, enveloped by the love of God, permeated by the love of man,--twin Perfect Loves that cast out all dream of fear. And so they walked, calm as if a thousand stabs of personal insult never brought them one of personal pain, passing through all as if nothing but the serenest skies were above them. And, as I have said, right there is one explanation of the anomaly; there _were_ the serenest skies above them--heaven's love perpetually shining. Why should it not shine? all the powers of the men were dedicated to rescuing the image of God on this earth,--not man as he suffered physically, but the moral instinct threatened with annihilation. It was sacred to them, this soul so sacred to redeeming love, but too brutalized to find its way to it. Nor merely the slave. Their love embraced, with yet more pitying fervor, the master compelling his spiritual nature into death, and the northern apologist letting his die; and this overmastering love of saving spiritual integrity, was one power that made them and heart-ease hold unfailing friends through the obloquy of those days; the other must be found in the fact mentioned,--that neither resolve nor impulse was their spur, but personal character moving from its depths.

From such a motive-power as this can come no parade of results. The nature that works, proceeds from the necessary laws and forces of its being, and is as simple and unconscious as any other natural law or force. Hence there are no startling epochs to record in my father's history, no supreme efforts; in filling the measure of daily opportunity lay his chief work. I cannot measure it by our ten fingers' counting. I can only show a life unfolding, and, by the essential laws of its growth, embracing the noblest cause of its time. But if action means vivifying public sentiment decaying under insidious poison; if it includes the doing of this amid a storm of odium that would quickly have shattered any soul irresolute for an instant; if it means incessant toil quietly performed, vast sums collected and disbursed, time sacrificed, strength spent; if it means holding up a great iniquity to loathing by a powerful pen, and nailing moral cowardice where-ever it showed; if it be risking livelihood by introducing the cause of the slave into every literary work, and by mingling the school-culture of fifty future mothers, year by year, with hatred of the sin; if it means one's life in one's hand, friendships yielded, society defied, and position in it cheerfully renounced; above all, if action means a wealth of goodness overliving all scorns, compelling respect from a community rebuked, fellowship from a Church charged with ungodliness, and acknowledgment of unstained repute from a public eager to blacken with scandal; if to do thus, and bear thus, and live thus, is action, then my father did act to the full purpose of life in the struggle that freed the slave.

S.M.C.

WILLIAM WHIPPER.

The locality of Columbia, where Mr. Whipper resided for many years, was, as is well-known, a place of much note as a station on the Underground Rail Road. The firm of Smith and Whipper (lumber merchants), was likewise well-known throughout a wide range of country. Who, indeed, amongst those familiar with the history of public matters connected with the colored people of this country, has not heard of William Whipper? For the last thirty years, as an able business man, it has been very generally admitted, that he hardly had a superior.

Although an unassuming man, deeply engrossed with business--Anti-slavery papers, conventions, and public movements having for their aim the elevation of the colored man, have always commanded Mr. Whipper's interest and patronage. In the more important conventions which have been held amongst the colored people for the last thirty years, perhaps no other colored man has been so often called on to draft resolutions and prepare addresses, as the modest and earnest William Whipper. He has worked effectively in a quiet way, although not as a public speaker. He is self-made, and well read on the subject of the reforms of the day. Having been highly successful in his business, he is now at the age of seventy, in possession of a handsome fortune; the reward of long years of assiduous labor. He is also cashier of the Freedman's Bank, in Philadelphia. For the last few years he has resided at New Brunswick, New Jersey, although his property and business confine him mainly to his native State, Pennsylvania.

Owing to a late affliction in his family, compelling him to devote the most of his time thereto, it has been impossible to obtain from him the material for completing such a sketch as was desired. Prior to this affliction, in answer to our request, he furnished some reminiscences of his labors as conductor of the Underground Rail Road, and at the same time, promised other facts relative to his life, but for the reason assigned, they were not worked up, which is to be regretted.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J., December 4, 1871.

MR. WILLIAM STILL, DEAR SIR:--I sincerely regret the absence of
statistics that would enable me to furnish you with many events,
that would assist you in describing the operations of the
Underground Rail Road. I never kept any record of those persons
passing through my hands, nor did I ever anticipate that the
history of that perilous period would ever be written. I can
only refer to the part I took in it from memory, and if I could
delineate the actual facts as they occurred they would savor so
much of egotism that I should feel ashamed to make them public.
I willingly refer to a few incidents which you may select and
use as you may think proper.

You are perfectly cognizant of the fact, that after the decision
in York, Pa., of the celebrated Prigg case, Pennsylvania was
regarded as free territory, which Canada afterwards proved to
be, and that the Susquehanna river was the recognized northern
boundary of the slave-holding empire. The borough of Columbia,
situated on its eastern bank, in the county of Lancaster, was
the great depot where the fugitives from Virginia and Maryland
first landed. The long bridge connecting Wrightsville with
Columbia, was the only safe outlet by which they could
successfully escape their pursuers. When they had crossed this
bridge they could look back over its broad silvery stream on its
western shore, and say to the slave power: "Thus far shalt thou
come, and no farther." Previous to that period, the line of
fugitive travel was from Baltimore, by the way of Havre de Grace
to Philadelphia; but the difficulty of a safe passage across the
river, at that place caused the route to be changed to York,
Pa., a distance of fifty-eight miles, the fare being forty
dollars, and thence to Columbia, in the dead hour of the night.
My house was at the end of the bridge, and as I kept the
station, I was frequently called up in the night to take charge
of the passengers.

On their arrival they were generally hungry and penniless. I
have received hundreds in this condition; fed and sheltered from
one to seventeen at a time in a single night. At this point the
road forked; some I sent west by boats, to Pittsburgh, and
others to you in our cars to Philadelphia, and the incidents of
their trials form a portion of the history you have compiled. In
a period of three years from 1847 to 1850, I passed hundreds to
the land of freedom, while others, induced by high wages, and
the feeling that they were safe in Columbia, worked in the
lumber and coal yards of that place. I always persuaded them to
go to Canada, as I had no faith in their being able to elude the
grasp of the slave-hunters. Indeed, the merchants had the
confidence of their security and desired them to remain; several
of my friends told me that I was injuring the trade of the place
by persuading the laborers to leave. Indeed, many of the
fugitives themselves looked upon me with jealousy, and expressed
their indignation at my efforts to have them removed from peace
and plenty to a land that was cold and barren, to starve to
death.

It was a period of great prosperity in our borough, and
everything passed on favorably and successfully until the
passage of the fugitive slave bill in 1850. At first the law was
derided and condemned by our liberty-loving citizens, and the
fugitives did not fear its operations because they asserted that
they could protect themselves. This fatal dream was of short
duration. A prominent man, by the name of Baker, was arrested
and taken to Philadelphia, and given up by the commissioner, and
afterwards purchased by our citizens; another, by the name of
Smith, was shot dead in one of our lumber yards, because he
refused to surrender, and his pursuer permitted to escape
without arrest or trial. This produced not only a shock, but a
crisis in the affairs of our little borough. It made the
stoutest hearts quail before the unjust sovereignty of the law.
The white citizens fearing the danger of a successful resistance
to the majesty of the law, began to talk of the insecurity of
these exiles. The fugitives themselves, whose faith and hope had
been buoyed up by the promises held up to them of protection,
began to be apprehensive of danger, and talked of leaving, while
others, more bold, were ready to set the dangers that surrounded
them at defiance, and if necessary, die in the defence of their
freedom and the homes they had acquired.

At this juncture private meetings were held by the colored
people, and the discussions and resolves bore a peculiar
resemblance in sentiment and expression to the patriotic
outbursts of the American revolution.

Some were in favor, if again attacked, of killing and slaying
all within their reach; of setting their own houses on fire, and
then going and burning the town. It was the old spirit which
animated the Russians at Moscow, and the blacks of Hayti. At
this point my self-interest mingled with my sense of humanity,
and I felt that I occupied a more responsible position than I
shall ever attain to again. I, therefore, determined to make the
most of it. I exhorted them to peace and patience under their
present difficulties, and for their own sakes as well as the
innocent sufferers, besought them to leave as early as they
could. If I had advocated a different course I could have caused
the burning of the town. The result of our meeting produced a
calm, that lasted only for a few days, when it was announced,
one evening, that the claimants of a Methodist preacher, by the
name of Dorsey, were in the borough, and that it was expected
that they would attempt to take him that night.

It was about nine o'clock in the evening when I went to his
house, but was refused admittance, until those inside
ascertained who I was. There were several men in the house all
armed with deadly weapons, awaiting the approach of the
intruders. Had they come the whole party would have been
massacred. I advised Dorsey to leave, but he very pointedly
refused, saying he had been taken up once before alive, but
never would be again. The men told him to stand his ground, and
they would stand by him and defend him, they had lived together,
and would die together. I told them that they knew the strength
of the pro-slavery feeling that surrounded them, and that they
would be overpowered, and perhaps many lives lost, which might
be saved by his changing his place of residence. He said, he had
no money, and would rather die with his family, than be killed
on the road. I said, how much money do you want to start with,
and we will send you more if you need it. Here is one hundred
dollars in gold. "That is not enough." "Will two hundred dollars
do?" "Yes." I shall bring it to you to-morrow. I got the money
the next morning, and when I came with it, he said, he could not
leave unless his family was taken care of. I told him I would
furnish his family with provisions for the next six months. Then
he said he had two small houses, worth four hundred and
seventy-five dollars. My reply was that I will sell them for
you, and give the money to your family. He then gave me a power
of attorney to do so, and attended to all his affairs. He left
the next day, being the Sabbath, and has never returned since,
although he has lived in the City of Boston ever since, except
about six months in Canada.

I wish to notice this case a little further, as the only one out
of many to which I will refer. About the year 1831 or 1832, Mr.
Joseph Purvis, a younger brother of Robert Purvis, about
nineteen or twenty years of age, was visiting Mr. Stephen Smith,
of Columbia, and while there the claimants of Dorsey came and
secured him, and had proceeded about two miles with him on the
way to Lancaster. Young Purvis heard of it, and his natural and
instinctive love of freedom fired up his warm southern blood at
the very recital. He was one of nature's noblemen. Fierce,
fiery, and impulsive, he was as quick to decide as to perform.
He demanded an immediate rescue. Though he was advised of the
danger of such an attempt, his spirit and determination made him
invincible. He proceeded to a place where some colored men were
working. With a firm and determined look, and a herculean shout,
he called out to them, "To arms, to arms! boys, we must rescue
this man; I shall lead if you will follow." "We will," was the
immediate response. And they went and overtook them, and
dispersed his claimants. They brought Dorsey back in triumph to
Columbia.

He then gave Dorsey his pistol, with the injunction that he
should use it and die in defence of his liberty rather than
again be taken into bondage. He promised he would. I found him
with this pistol on his table, the night I called on him, and I
have every reason to believe that the promise gave to Mr. Purvis
was one of the chief causes of his obstinacy. The lesson he had
taught him had not only become incorporated in his nature, but
had become a part of his religion.

The history of this brave and noble effort of young Purvis, in
rescuing a fellow-being from the jaws of Slavery has been handed
down, in Columbia, to a generation that was born since that
event has transpired. He always exhibited the same devotion and
manly daring in the cause of the flying bondman that inspired
his youthful ardor in behalf of freedom. The youngest of a
family distinguished for their devotion to freedom, he was
without superiors in the trying hour of battle. Like John Brown,
he often discarded theories, but was eminently practical. He has
passed to another sphere. Peace to his ashes! I honor his name
as a hero, and friend of man. I loved him for the noble
characteristics of his nature, and above all for his noble
daring in defense of the right. As a friend I admired him, and
owe his memory this tribute to departed worth.

At this point a conscientious regard for truth dictates that I
should state that my disposition to make a sacrifice for the
removal of Dorsey and some other leading spirits was aided by my
own desire for _self-preservation._

I knew that it had been asserted, far down in the slave region,
that Smith & Whipper, the negro lumber merchants, were engaged
in secreting fugitive slaves. And on two occasions attempts had
been made to set fire to their yard for the purpose of punishing
them for such illegal acts. And I felt that if a collision took
place, we should not only be made to suffer the penalty, but the
most valuable property in the village be destroyed, besides a
prodigal waste of human life be the consequence. In such an
event I felt that I should not only lose all I had ever earned,
but peril the hopes and property of others, so that I would have
freely given one thousand dollars to have been insured against
the consequences of such a riot. I then borrowed fourteen
hundred dollars on my own individual account, and assisted many
others to go to a land where the virgin soil was not polluted by
the foot-prints of a slave.

The colored population of the Borough of Columbia, in 1850, was
nine hundred and forty-three, about one-fifth the whole
population, and in five years they were reduced to four hundred
and eighty-seven by emigration to Canada.

In the summer of 1853, I visited Canada for the purpose of
ascertaining the actual condition of many of those I had
assisted in reaching a land of freedom; and I was much gratified
to find them contented, prosperous, and happy. I was induced by
the prospects of the new emigrants to purchase lands on the
Sydenham River, with the intention of making it my future home.

In the spring of 1861, when I was preparing to leave, the war
broke out, and with its progress I began to realize the prospect
of a new civilization, and, therefore, concluded to remain and
share the fortunes of my hitherto ill-fated country.

I will say in conclusion that it would have been fortunate for
us if Columbia, being a port of entry for flying fugitives, had
been also the seat of great capitalists and freedom-loving
inhabitants; but such was not the case. There was but little
Anti-slavery sentiment among the whites, yet there were many
strong and valiant friends among them who contributed freely;
the colored population were too poor to render much aid, except
in feeding and secreting strangers. I was doing a prosperous
business at that time and felt it my duty to contribute
liberally out of my earnings. Much as I loved Anti-slavery
meetings I did not feel that I could afford to attend them, as
my immediate duty was to the flying fugitive.

Now, my friend, I have extended this letter far beyond the
limits intended, not with the expectation that it will be
published, but for your own private use to select any matter
that you might desire to use in your history. I have to regret
that I am compelled to refer so often to my own exertions.

I know that I speak within bounds when I say that directly and
indirectly from 1847 to 1860, I have contributed from my
earnings one thousand dollars annually, and for the five years
during the war a like amount to put down the rebellion.

Now the slaves are emancipated, and we are all enfranchised,
after struggling for existence, freedom and manhood--I feel
thankful for having had the glorious privilege of laboring with
others for the redemption of my race from oppression and
thraldom; and I would prefer to-day to be penniless in the
streets, rather than to have withheld a single hour's labor or a
dollar from the sacred cause of liberty, justice, and humanity.

I remain yours in the sacred cause of liberty and equality,

WM. WHIPPER.

ISAAC T. HOPPER.

The distinctive characteristics of this individual were so admirably portrayed in the newspapers and other periodicals published at the time of his death, that we shall make free use of them without hesitation. He was distinguished from his early life by his devotion to the relief of the oppressed colored race. He was an active member of the old Pennsylvania Abolition Society, and labored zealously with Dr. Benjamin Rush, Dr. Rogers, Dr. Wistar, and other distinguished philanthropists of the time. No man at that day, not even eminent judges and advocates, was better acquainted with the intricacies of law questions connected with slavery. His accurate legal knowledge, his natural acuteness, his ready tact in avoiding dangerous corners and slipping through unseen loop-holes, often gave him the victory in cases that seemed hopeless to other minds. In many of these cases, physical courage was needed as much as moral firmness; and he possessed these qualities in a very unusual degree.