"Christianity is a system claiming God for its author, and the
welfare of man for its object. It is a system so uniform,
exalted and pure, that the loftiest intellects have acknowledged
its influence, and acquiesced in the justness of its claims.
Genius has bent from his erratic course to gather fire from her
altars, and pathos from the agony of Gethsemane and the
sufferings of Calvary. Philosophy and science have paused amid
their speculative researches and wondrous revelations to gain
wisdom from her teachings and knowledge from her precepts.
Poetry has culled her fairest flowers and wreathed her softest
to bind her Author's 'bleeding brow.' Music has strung her
sweetest lyres and breathed her noblest strains to celebrate his
fame; whilst Learning has bent from her lofty heights to bow at
the lowly cross. The constant friend of man, she has stood by
him in his hour of greatest need. She has cheered the prisoner
in his cell, and strengthened the martyr at the stake. She has
nerved the frail and shrinking heart of woman for high and holy
deeds. The worn and weary have rested their fainting heads upon
her bosom, and gathered strength from her words and courage from
her counsels. She has been the staff of decrepit age and the joy
of manhood in its strength. She has bent over the form of lovely
childhood, and suffered it to have a place in the Redeemer's
arms. She has stood by the bed of the dying, and unveiled the
glories of eternal life, gilding the darkness of the tomb with
the glory of the resurrection."
Her mind being of a strictly religious caste, the effusions from her pen
all savor of a highly moral and elevating tone.
About the year 1851 she left Baltimore to seek a home in a Free State,
and for a short time resided in Ohio, where she was engaged in teaching.
Contrary to her expectations, her adopted home and calling not proving
satisfactory, she left that State and came to Pennsylvania as a last
resort, and again engaged in teaching at Little York. Here she not only
had to encounter the trouble of dealing with unruly children, she was
sorely oppressed with the thought of the condition of her people in
Maryland. Not unfrequently she gave utterance to such expressions as the
following: "Not that we have not a right to breathe the air as freely as
anybody else here (in Baltimore), but we are treated worse than aliens
among a people whose language we speak, whose religion we profess, and
whose blood flows and mingles in our veins.... Homeless in the land of
our birth and worse off than strangers in the home of our nativity."
During her stay in York she had frequent opportunities of seeing
passengers on the Underground Rail Road. In one of her letters she thus
alluded to a traveler: "I saw a passenger _per_ the Underground Rail
Road yesterday; did he arrive safely? Notwithstanding that abomination
of the nineteenth century--the Fugitive Slave Law--men still determine
to be free. Notwithstanding all the darkness in which they keep the
slaves, it seems that somehow light is dawning upon their minds....
These poor fugitives are a property that can walk. Just to think that
from the rainbow-crowned Niagara to the swollen waters of the Mexican
Gulf, from the restless murmur of the Atlantic to the ceaseless roar of
the Pacific, the poor, half-starved, flying fugitive has no
resting-place for the sole of his foot!"
Whilst hesitating whether or not it would be best to continue teaching,
she wrote to a friend for advice as follows: "What would you do if you
were in my place? Would you give up and go back and work at your trade
(dress-making)? There are no people that need all the benefits resulting
from a well-directed education more than we do. The condition of our
people, the wants of our children, and the welfare of our race demand
the aid of every helping hand, the God-speed of every Christian heart.
It is a work of time, a labor of patience, to become an effective school
teacher; and it should be a work of love in which they who engage should
not abate heart or hope until it is done. And after all, it is one of
woman's most sacred rights to have the privilege of forming the symmetry
and rightly adjusting the mental balance of an immortal mind." "I have
written a lecture on education, and I am also writing a small book."
Thus, whilst filling her vocation as a teacher in Little York, was she
deeply engrossed in thought as to how she could best promote the welfare
of her race. But as she was devoted to the work in hand, she soon found
that fifty-three untrained little urchins overtaxed her naturally
delicate physical powers; it also happened just about this time that she
was further moved to enter the Anti-Slavery field as a lecturer
substantially by the following circumstance: About the year 1853,
Maryland, her native State, had enacted a law forbidding free people of
color from the North from coming into the State on pain of being
imprisoned and sold into slavery. A free man, who had unwittingly
violated this infamous statute, had recently been sold to Georgia, and
had escaped thence by secreting himself behind the wheel-house of a boat
bound northward; but before he reached the desired haven, he was
discovered and remanded to slavery. It was reported that he died soon
after from the effects of exposure and suffering. In a letter to a
friend referring to this outrage, Mrs. Harper thus wrote: "Upon that
grave I pledged myself to the Anti-Slavery cause."
Having thus decided, she wrote in a subsequent letter, "It may be that
God himself has written upon both my heart and brain a commission to use
time, talent and energy in the cause of freedom." In this abiding faith
she came to Philadelphia, hoping that the way would open for usefulness,
and to publish her little book (above referred to). She visited the
Anti-Slavery Office and read Anti-Slavery documents with great avidity;
in the mean time making her home at the station of the Underground Rail
Road, where she frequently saw passengers and heard their melting tales
of suffering and wrong, which intensely increased her sympathy in their
behalf. Although anxious to enter the Anti-Slavery field as a worker,
her modesty prevented her from pressing her claims; consequently as she
was but little known, being a young and homeless maiden (an exile by
law), no especial encouragement was tendered her by Anti-Slavery friends
in Philadelphia.
During her stay in Philadelphia she published some verses entitled,
"Eliza Harris crossing the River on the Ice." It was deemed best to
delay the issuing of the book.
After spending some weeks in Philadelphia, she concluded to visit
Boston. Here she was treated with the kindness characteristic of the
friends in the Anti-Slavery Office whom she visited, but only made a
brief stay, after which she proceeded to New Bedford, the "hot-bed of
the fugitives" in Massachusetts, where by invitation she addressed a
public meeting on the subject of Education and the Elevation of the
Colored Race.
The occasion and result of the commencement of her public career was
thus given by her own pen in a letter dated August, 1854:
"Well, I am out lecturing. I have lectured every night this
week; besides addressed a Sunday-school, and I shall speak, if
nothing prevent, to-night. My lectures have met with success.
Last night I lectured in a white church in Providence. Mr.
Gardener was present, and made the estimate of about six hundred
persons. Never, perhaps, was a speaker, old or young, favored
with a more attentive audience.... My voice is not wanting in
strength, as I am aware of, to reach pretty well over the house.
The church was the Roger Williams; the pastor, a Mr. Furnell,
who appeared to be a kind and Christian man.... My maiden
lecture was Monday night in New Bedford on the Elevation and
Education of our People. Perhaps as intellectual a place as any
I was ever at of its size."
Having thus won her way to a favorable position as a lecturer, the
following month she was engaged by the State Anti-Slavery Society of
Maine, with what success appears from one of her letters bearing
date--Buckstown Centre, Sept. 28, 1854:
"The agent of the State Anti-Slavery Society of Maine travels
with me, and she is a pleasant, dear, sweet lady. I do like her
so. We travel together, eat together, and sleep together. (She
is a white woman.) In fact I have not been in one colored
person's house since I left Massachusetts; but I have a pleasant
time. My life reminds me of a beautiful dream. What a difference
between this and York!... I have met with some of the kindest
treatment up here that I have ever received.... I have lectured
three times this week. After I went from Limerick, I went to
Springvale; there I spoke on Sunday night at an Anti-Slavery
meeting. Some of the people are Anti-Slavery, Anti-rum and
Anti-Catholic; and if you could see our Maine ladies,--some of
them among the noblest types of womanhood you have ever seen!
They are for putting men of Anti-Slavery principles in office,
... to cleanse the corrupt fountains of our government by
sending men to Congress who will plead for our down-trodden and
oppressed brethren, our crushed and helpless sisters, whose
tears and blood bedew our soil, whose chains are clanking 'neath
our proudest banners, whose cries and groans amid our loudest
paeans rise."
Everywhere in this latitude doors opened before her, and her gifts were
universally recognized as a valuable acquisition to the cause. In the
letter above referred to she said: "I spoke in Boston on Monday
night.... Well, I am but one, but can do something, and, God helping me,
I will try. Mr. Brister from Lowell addressed the meeting; also Rev.
---- Howe. We had a good demonstration."
Having read the narrative of Solomon Northrup (12 years a slave), she
was led to embrace the Free Labor doctrine most thoroughly; and in a
letter dated at Temple, Maine, Oct. 20, 1854, after expressing the
interest she took in the annual meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society of
that state, she remarked:
"I spoke on Free Produce, and now by the way I believe in that
kind of Abolition. Oh, it does seem to strike at one of the
principal roots of the matter. I have commenced since I read
Solomon Northrup. Oh, if Mrs. Stowe has clothed American slavery
in the graceful garb of fiction, Solomon Northrup comes up from
the dark habitation of Southern cruelty where slavery fattens
and feasts on human blood with such mournful revelations that
one might almost wish for the sake of humanity that the tales of
horror which he reveals were not so. Oh, how can we pamper our
appetites upon luxuries drawn from reluctant fingers? Oh, could
slavery exist long if it did not sit on a commercial throne? I
have read somewhere, if I remember aright, of a Hindoo being
loth to cut a tree because being a believer in the
transmigration of souls, he thought the soul of his father had
passed into it ... Oh, friend, beneath the most delicate
preparations of the cane can you not see the stinging lash and
clotted whip? I have reason to be thankful that I am able to
give a little more for a Free Labor dress, if it is coarser. I
can thank God that upon its warp and woof I see no stain of
blood and tears; that to procure a little finer muslin for my
limbs no crushed and broken heart went out in sighs, and that
from the field where it was raised went up no wild and startling
cry unto the throne of God to witness there in language deep and
strong, that in demanding that cotton I was nerving oppression's
hand for deeds of guilt and crime. If the liberation of the
slave demanded it, I could consent to part with a portion of the
blood from my own veins if that would do him any good."
After having thus alluded to free labor, she gave a short journal of the
different places where she had recently lectured from the 5th of
September to the 20th of October, which we mention here simply to show
the perseverance which characterized her as an advocate of her enslaved
race, and at the same time show how doors everywhere opened to her:
Portland, Monmouth Centre, North Berwick, Limerick (two meetings),
Springvale, Portsmouth, Elliott, Waterborough (spoke four times), Lyman,
Saccarappo, Moderation, Steep Falls (twice), North Buxton, Goram,
Gardner, Litchfield, twice, Monmouth Ridge twice, Monmouth Centre three
times, Litchfield second time, West Waterville twice, Livermore Temple.
Her ability and labors were everywhere appreciated, and her meetings
largely attended. In a subsequent letter referring to the manner that
she was received, she wrote, "A short while ago when I was down this way
I took breakfast with the then Governor of Maine."
For a year and a half she continued in the Eastern States, speaking in
most or all of them with marked success; the papers meting out to her
full commendation for her efforts. The following extract clipped from
the Portland Daily Press, respecting a lecture that she was invited to
deliver after the war by the Mayor (Mr. Washburne) and others, is a fair
sample of notices from this source:
"She spoke for nearly an hour and a half, her subject being 'The
Mission of the War, and the Demands of the Colored Race in the
Work of Reconstruction;' and we have seldom seen an audience
more attentive, better pleased, or more enthusiastic. Mrs.
Harper has a splendid articulation, uses chaste, pure language,
has a pleasant voice, and allows no one to tire of hearing her.
We shall attempt no abstract of her address; none that we could
make would do her justice. It was one of which any lecturer
might feel proud, and her reception by a Portland audience was
all that could be desired. We have seen no praises of her that
were overdrawn. We have heard Miss Dickinson, and do not
hesitate to award the palm to her darker colored sister."
In 1856, desiring to see the fugitives in Canada, she visited the Upper
Province, and in a letter dated at Niagara Falls, Sept. 12th, she
unfolded her mind in the following language:
"Well, I have gazed for the first time upon Free Land, and,
would you believe it, tears sprang to my eyes, and I wept. Oh,
it was a glorious sight to gaze for the first time on a land
where a poor slave flying from our glorious land of liberty
would in a moment find his fetters broken, his shackles loosed,
and whatever he was in the land of Washington, beneath the
shadow of Bunker Hill Monument or even Plymouth Rock, here he
becomes a man and a brother. I have gazed on Harper's Ferry, or
rather the rock at the Ferry; I have seen it towering up in
simple grandeur, with the gentle Potomac gliding peacefully at
its feet, and felt that that was God's masonry, and my soul had
expanded in gazing on its sublimity. I have seen the ocean
singing its wild chorus of sounding waves, and ecstacy has
thrilled upon the living chords of my heart. I have since then
seen the rainbow-crowned Niagara chanting the choral hymn of
Omnipotence, girdled with grandeur, and robed with glory; but
none of these things have melted me as the first sight of Free
Land. Towering mountains lifting their hoary summits to catch
the first faint flush of day when the sunbeams kiss the shadows
from morning's drowsy face may expand and exalt your soul. The
first view of the ocean may fill you with strange delight.
Niagara--the great, the glorious Niagara--may hush your spirit
with its ceaseless thunder; it may charm you with its robe of
crested spray and rainbow crown; but the land of Freedom was a
lesson of deeper significance than foaming waves or towering
mounts."
While in Toronto she lectured, and was listened to with great interest;
but she made only a brief visit, thence returning to Philadelphia, her
adopted home.
With her newly acquired reputation as a lecturer, from 1856 to 1859 she
continued her labors in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, &c. In
the meantime she often came in contact with Underground Rail Road
passengers, especially in Philadelphia. None sympathized with them more
sincerely or showed a greater willingness to render them material aid.
She contributed apparently with the same liberality as though they were
her own near kin. Even when at a distance, so deep was her interest in
the success of the Road, she frequently made it her business to forward
donations, and carefully inquire into the state of the treasury. The
Chairman of the Committee might publish a volume of interesting letters
from her pen relating to the Underground Rail Road and kindred topics;
but a few extracts must suffice. We here copy from a letter dated at
Rushsylvania, Ohio, Dec. 15th: "I send you to-day two dollars for the
Underground Rail Road. It is only a part of what I subscribed at your
meeting. May God speed the flight of the slave as he speeds through our
Republic to gain his liberty in a monarchical land. I am still in the
lecturing field, though not very strong physically.... Send me word what
I can do for the fugitive."
From Tiffin, Ohio, March 31st, touching the news of a rescue in
Philadelphia, she thus wrote:
"I see by the Cincinnati papers that you have had an attempted
rescue and a failure. That is sad! Can you not give me the
particulars? and if there is anything that I can do for them in
money or words, call upon me. This is a common cause; and if
there is any burden to be borne in the
Anti-Slavery-cause--anything to be done to weaken our hateful
chains or assert our manhood and womanhood, I have a right to do
my share of the work. The humblest and feeblest of us can do
something; and though I may be deficient in many of the
conventionalisms of city life, and be considered as a person of
good impulses, but unfinished, yet if there is common rough work
to be done, call on me."
Mrs. Harper was not content to make speeches and receive plaudits, but
was ever willing to do the rough work and to give material aid wherever
needed.
From another letter dated Lewis Centre, Ohio, we copy the following
characteristic extract:
"Yesterday I sent you thirty dollars. Take five of it for the
rescuers (who were in prison), and the rest pay away on the
books. My offering is not large; but if you need more, send me
word. Also how comes on the Underground Rail Road? Do you need
anything for that? You have probably heard of the shameful
outrage of a colored man or boy named Wagner, who was kidnapped
in Ohio and carried across the river and sold for a slave....
Ohio has become a kind of a negro hunting ground, a new Congo's
coast and Guinea's shore. A man was kidnapped almost under the
shadow of our capital. Oh, was it not dreadful?... Oh, may the
living God prepare me for an earnest and faithful advocacy of
the cause of justice and right!"
In those days the blows struck by the hero, John Brown, were agitating
the nation. Scarcely was it possible for a living soul to be more deeply
affected than this female advocate. Nor did her sympathies end in mere
words. She tendered material aid as well as heartfelt commiseration.
To John Brown's wife[A] she sent through the writer the following
letter:
[Footnote A: Mrs. Harper passed two weeks with Mrs. Brown at the house
of the writer while she was awaiting the execution of her husband, and
sympathized with her most deeply.]