Post Office address: care of William Still, 107 Fifth St.,
Philadelphia, Penn.
May God, our own God, sustain you in the hour of trial. If there
is one thing on earth I can do for you or yours, let me be
apprized. I am at your service.
Not forgetting Brown's comrades, who were then lying in prison under
sentence of death, true to the best impulses of her generous heart, she
thus wrote relative to these ill-fated prisoners, from Montpelier, Dec.
12th:
"I thank you for complying with my request. (She had previously
ordered a box of things to be forwarded to them.) And also that
you wrote to them. You see Brown towered up so bravely that
these doomed and fated men may have been almost overlooked, and
just think that I am able to send one ray through the night
around them. And as their letters came too late to answer in
time, I am better satisfied that you wrote. I hope the things
will reach them. Poor doomed and fated men! Why did you not send
them more things? Please send me the bill of expense.... Send me
word what I can do for the fugitives. Do you need any money? Do
I not owe you on the old bill (pledge)? Look carefully and see
if I have paid all. Along with this letter I send you one for
Mr. Stephens (one of Brown's men), and would ask you to send him
a box of nice things every week till he dies or is acquitted. I
understand the balls have not been extracted from him. Has not
this suffering been overshadowed by the glory that gathered
around the brave old man?... Spare no expense to make the last
hours of his (Stephens') life as bright as possible with
sympathy.... Now, my friend, fulfil this to the letter. Oh, is
it not a privilege, if you are sisterless and lonely, to be a
sister to the human race, and to place your heart where it may
throb close to down-trodden humanity?"
On another occasion in writing from the lecturing field hundreds of
miles away from Philadelphia, the sympathy she felt for the fugitives
found expression in the following language:
"How fared the girl who came robed in male attire? Do write me
every time you write how many come to your house; and, my dear
friend, if you have that much in hand of mine from my books,
will you please pay the Vigilance Committee two or three dollars
for me to help carry on the glorious enterprise. Now, please do
not write back that you are not going to do any such thing. Let
me explain a few matters to you. In the first place, I am able
to give something. In the second place, I am willing to do
so.... Oh, life is fading away, and we have but an hour of time!
Should we not, therefore, endeavor to let its history gladden
the earth? The nearer we ally ourselves to the wants and woes of
humanity in the spirit of Christ, the closer we get to the great
heart of God; the nearer we stand by the beating of the pulse of
universal love."
Doubtless it has not often been found necessary for persons desirous of
contributing to benevolent causes to first have to remove anticipated
objections. Nevertheless in some cases it would seem necessary to
admonish her not to be quite so liberal; to husband with a little more
care her hard-earned income for a "rainy day," as her health was not
strong.
"My health," she wrote at that time, "is not very strong, and I may have
to give up before long. I may have to yield on account of my voice,
which I think, has become somewhat affected. I might be so glad if it
was only so that I could go home among my own kindred and people, but
slavery comes up like a dark shadow between me and the home of my
childhood. Well, perhaps it is my lot to die from home and be buried
among strangers; and yet I do not regret that I have espoused this
cause; perhaps I have been of some service to the cause of human rights,
and I hope the consciousness that I have not lived in vain, will be a
halo of peace around my dying bed; a heavenly sunshine lighting up the
dark valley and shadow of death."
Notwithstanding this yearning for home, she was far from desiring at her
death, a burial in a Slave State, as the following clearly expressed
views show:
"I have lived in the midst of oppression and wrong, and I am
saddened by every captured fugitive in the North; a blow has
been struck at my freedom, in every hunted and down-trodden
slave in the South; North and South have both been guilty, and
they that sin must suffer."
Also, in harmony with the above sentiments, came a number of verses
appropriate to her desires in this respect, one of which we here give as
a sample:
"Make me a grave where'er you will,
In a lowly plain, or a lofty hill,
Make it among earth's humblest graves,
But not in a land where men are slaves."
In the State of Maine the papers brought to her notice the capture of
Margaret Garner, and the tragic and bloody deed connected therewith. And
she writes:
"Rome had her altars where the trembling criminal, and the worn
and weary slave might fly for an asylum--Judea her cities of
refuge; but Ohio, with her Bibles and churches, her baptisms and
prayers, had not one temple so dedicated to human rights, one
altar so consecrated to human liberty, that trampled upon and
down-trodden innocence knew that it could find protection for a
night, or shelter for a day."
In the fall of 1860, in the city of Cincinnati, Mrs. Harper was married
to Fenton Harper, a widower, and resident of Ohio. It seemed obvious
that this change would necessarily take her from the sphere of her
former usefulness. The means she had saved from the sale of her books
and from her lectures, she invested in a small farm near Columbus, and
in a short time after her marriage she entered upon house-keeping.
Notwithstanding her family cares, consequent upon married life, she only
ceased from her literary and anti-slavery labors, when compelled to do
so by other duties.
On the 23d of May, 1864, death deprived her of her husband.
Whilst she could not give so much attention to writing as she could have
desired in her household days, she, nevertheless, did then produce some
of her best productions. Take the following for a sample, on the return
from Cleveland, Ohio, of a poor, ill-fated slave-girl, (under the
Fugitive Slave Law):