Men of Cleveland, had a vulture
Sought a timid dove for prey,
Would you not, with human pity,
Drive the gory bird away?
Had you seen a feeble lambkin,
Shrinking from a wolf so bold,
Would ye not to shield the trembler,
In your arms have made its fold?
But when she, a hunted sister,
Stretched her hands that ye might save,
Colder far than Zembla's regions
Was the answer that ye gave.
On the Union's bloody altar,
Was your hapless victim laid;
Mercy, truth and justice shuddered,
But your hands would give no aid.
And ye sent her back to torture,
Robbed of freedom and of right.
Thrust the wretched, captive stranger.
Back to slavery's gloomy night.
Back where brutal men may trample,
On her honor and her fame;
And unto her lips so dusky,
Press the cup of woe and shame.
There is blood upon your city,
Dark and dismal is the stain;
And your hands would fail to cleanse it,
Though Lake Erie ye should drain.
There's a curse upon your Union,
Fearful sounds are in the air;
As if thunderbolts were framing,
Answers to the bondsman's prayer.
Ye may offer human victims,
Like the heathen priests of old;
And may barter manly honor
For the Union and for gold.
But ye can not stay the whirlwind,
When the storm begins to break;
And our God doth rise in judgment,
For the poor and needy's sake.
And, your sin-cursed, guilty Union,
Shall be shaken to its base,
Till ye learn that simple justice,
Is the right of every race.
Mrs. Harper took the deepest interest in the war, and looked with
extreme anxiety for the results; and she never lost an opportunity to
write, speak, or serve the cause in any way that she thought would best
promote the freedom of the slave. On the proclamation of General
Fremont, the passages from her pen are worthy to be long remembered:
"Well, what think you of the war? To me one of the most
interesting features is Fremont's Proclamation freeing the
slaves of the rebels. Is there no ray of hope in that? I should
not wonder if Edward M. Davis breathed that into his ear. His
proclamation looks like real earnestness; no mincing the matter
with the rebels. Death to the traitors and confiscation of their
slaves is no child's play. I hope that the boldness of his stand
will inspire others to look the real cause of the war in the
face and inspire the government with uncompromising earnestness
to remove the festering curse. And yet I am not uneasy about the
result of this war. We may look upon it as God's controversy
with the nation; His arising to plead by fire and blood the
cause of His poor and needy people. Some time since
Breckinridge, in writing to Sumner, asks, if I rightly remember,
What is the fate of a few negroes to me or mine? Bound up in one
great bundle of humanity our fates seem linked together, our
destiny entwined with theirs, and our rights are interwoven
together."
Finally when the long-looked-for Emancipation Proclamation came,
although Mrs. Harper was not at that time very well, she accepted an
invitation to address a public meeting in Columbus, Ohio, an allusion to
which we find in a letter dated at Grove City, O., which we copy with
the feeling that many who may read this volume will sympathize with
every word uttered relative to the Proclamation:
"I spoke in Columbus on the President's Proclamation.... But was
not such an event worthy the awakening of every power--the
congratulation of every faculty? What hath God wrought! We may
well exclaim how event after event has paved the way for
freedom. In the crucible of disaster and defeat God has stirred
the nation, and permitted no permanent victory to crown her
banners while she kept her hand upon the trembling slave and
held him back from freedom. And even now the scale may still
seem to oscillate between the contending parties, and some may
say, Why does not God give us full and quick victory? My friend,
do not despair if even deeper shadows gather around the fate of
the nation, that truth will not ultimately triumph, and the
right be established and vindicated; but the deadly gangrene has
taken such deep and almost fatal hold upon the nation that the
very centres of its life seem to be involved in its eradication.
Just look, after all the trials deep and fiery through which the
nation has waded, how mournfully suggestive was the response the
proclamation received from the democratic triumphs which
followed so close upon its footsteps. Well, thank God that the
President did not fail us, that the fierce rumbling of
democratic thunder did not shake from his hand the bolt he
leveled against slavery. Oh, it would have been so sad if, after
all the desolation and carnage that have dyed our plains with
blood and crimsoned our borders with warfare, the pale young
corpses trodden down by the hoofs of war, the dim eyes that have
looked their last upon the loved and lost, had the arm of
Executive power failed us in the nation's fearful crisis! For
how mournful it is when the unrighted wrongs and fearful agonies
of ages reach their culminating point, and events solemn,
terrible and sublime marshal themselves in dread array to mould
the destiny of nations, the hands appointed to hold the helm of
affairs, instead of grasping the mighty occasions and stamping
them with the great seals of duty and right, permit them to
float along the current of circumstances without comprehending
the hour of visitation or the momentous day of opportunity. Yes,
we may thank God that in the hour when the nation's life was
convulsed, and fearful gloom had shed its shadows over the land,
the President reached out his hand through the darkness to break
the chains on which the rust of centuries had gathered. Well,
did you ever expect to see this day? I know that all is not
accomplished; but we may rejoice in what has been already
wrought,--the wondrous change in so short a time. Just a little
while since the American flag to the flying bondman was an
ensign of bondage; now it has become a symbol of protection and
freedom. Once the slave was a despised and trampled on pariah;
now he has become a useful ally to the American government. From
the crimson sods of war springs the white flower of freedom, and
songs of deliverance mingle with the crash and roar of war. The
shadow of the American army becomes a covert for the slave, and
beneath the American Eagle he grasps the key of knowledge and is
lifted to a higher destiny."
This letter we had intended should complete the sketch of Mrs. Harper's
Anti-Slavery labors; but in turning to another epistle dated Boston,
April 19th, on the Assassination of the President, we feel that a part
of it is too interesting to omit:
"Sorrow treads on the footsteps of the nation's joy. A few days
since the telegraph thrilled and throbbed with a nation's joy.
To-day a nation sits down beneath the shadow of its mournful
grief. Oh, what a terrible lesson does this event read to us! A
few years since slavery tortured, burned, hung and outraged us,
and the nation passed by and said, they had nothing to do with
slavery where it was, slavery would have something to do with
them where they were. Oh, how fearfully the judgments of Ichabod
have pressed upon the nation's life! Well, it may be in the
providence of God this blow was needed to intensify the nation's
hatred of slavery, to show the utter fallacy of basing national
reconstruction upon the votes of returned rebels, and rejecting
loyal black men; making (after all the blood poured out like
water, and wealth scattered like chaff) a return to the old idea
that a white rebel is better or of more account in the body
politic than a loyal black man.... Moses, the meekest man on
earth, led the children of Israel over the Red Sea, but was not
permitted to see them settled in Canaan. Mr. Lincoln has led up
through another Red Sea to the table land of triumphant victory,
and God has seen fit to summon for the new era another man. It
is ours then to bow to the Chastener and let our honored and
loved chieftain go. Surely the everlasting arms that have hushed
him so strangely to sleep are able to guide the nation through
its untrod future; but in vain should be this fearful baptism of
blood if from the dark bosom of slavery springs such terrible
crimes. Let the whole nation resolve that the whole virus shall
be eliminated from its body; that in the future slavery shall
only be remembered as a thing of the past that shall never have
the faintest hope of a resurrection."
Up to this point, we have spoken of Mrs. Harper as a laborer, battling
for freedom under slavery and the war. She is equally earnest in
laboring for Equality before the law--education, and a higher manhood,
especially in the South, among the Freedmen.
For the best part of several years, since the war, she has traveled very
extensively through the Southern States, going on the plantations and
amongst the lowly, as well as to the cities and towns, addressing
schools, Churches, meetings in Court Houses, Legislative Halls, &c.,
and, sometimes, under the most trying and hazardous circumstances;
influenced in her labor of love, wholly by the noble impulses of her own
heart, working her way along unsustained by any Society. In this
mission, she has come in contact with all classes--the original
slaveholders and the Freedmen, before and since the Fifteenth Amendment
bill was enacted. Excepting two of the Southern States (Texas and
Arkansas), she has traveled largely over all the others, and in no
instance has she permitted herself, through fear, to disappoint an
audience, when engagements had been made for her to speak, although
frequently admonished that it would be dangerous to venture in so doing.
We first quote from a letter dated Darlington, S.C., May 13, 1867:
"You will see by this that I am in the sunny South.... I here
read and see human nature under new lights and phases. I meet
with a people eager to hear, ready to listen, as if they felt
that the slumber of the ages had been broken, and that they were
to sleep no more.... I am glad that the colored man gets his
freedom and suffrage together; that he is not forced to go
through the same condition of things here, that has inclined him
so much to apathy, isolation, and indifference, in the North.
You, perhaps, wonder why I have been so slow in writing to you,
but if you knew how busy I am, just working up to or past the
limit of my strength. Traveling, conversing, addressing day and
Sunday-schools (picking up scraps of information, takes up a
large portion of my time), besides what I give to reading. For
my audiences I have both white and colored. On the cars, some
find out that I am a lecturer, and then, again, I am drawn into
conversation. 'What are you lecturing about?' the question comes
up, and if I say, among other topics politics, then I may look
for an onset. There is a sensitiveness on this subject, a dread,
it may be, that some one will 'put the devil in the nigger's
head,' or exert some influence inimical to them; still, I get
along somewhat pleasantly. Last week I had a small congregation
of listeners in the cars, where I sat. I got in conversation
with a former slave dealer, and we had rather an exciting time.
I was traveling alone, but it is not worth while to show any
signs of fear. * * *Last Saturday I spoke in Sumter; a number
of white persons were present, and I had been invited to speak
there by the Mayor and editor of the paper. There had been some
violence in the district, and some of my friends did not wish me
to go, but I had promised, and, of course, I went. * * * *
I am in Darlington, and spoke yesterday, but my congregation was
so large, that I stood near the door of the church, so that I
might be heard both inside and out, for a large portion, perhaps
nearly half my congregation were on the outside; and this, in
Darlington, where, about two years ago, a girl was hung for
making a childish and indiscreet speech. Victory was perched on
our banners. Our army had been through, and this poor, ill-fated
girl, almost a child in years, about seventeen years of age,
rejoiced over the event, and said that she was going to marry a
Yankee and set up housekeeping. She was reported as having made
an incendiary speech and arrested, cruelly scourged, and then
brutally hung. Poor child! she had been a faithful servant--her
master tried to save her, but the tide of fury swept away his
efforts. * * * Oh, friend, perhaps, sometimes your heart
would ache, if you were only here and heard of the wrongs and
abuses to which these people have been subjected. * * *
Things, I believe, are a little more hopeful; at least, I
believe, some of the colored people are getting better
contracts, and, I understand, that there's less murdering. While
I am writing, a colored man stands here, with a tale of
wrong--he has worked a whole year, year before last, and now he
has been put off with fifteen bushels of corn and his food;
yesterday he went to see about getting his money, and the person
to whom he went, threatened to kick him off, and accused him of
stealing. I don't know how the colored man will vote, but
perhaps many of them will be intimidated at the polls."
From a letter dated Cheraw, June 17th, 1867, the following remarks are
taken:
"Well, Carolina is an interesting place. There is not a state in
the Union I prefer to Carolina. Kinder, more hospitable,
warmer-hearted people perhaps you will not find anywhere. I have
been to Georgia; but Carolina is my preference. * * The South
is to be a great theatre for the colored man's development and
progress. There is brain-power here. If any doubt it, let him
come into our schools, or even converse with some of our
Freedmen either in their homes or by the way-side."
A few days later she gave an account of a visit she had just made in
Florence, where our poor soldiers had been prisoners; saw some of the
huts where they were exposed to rain and heat and cold with only the
temporary shelter they made for themselves, which was a sad sight. Then
she visited the grave-yards of some thousands of Union soldiers. Here in
"eastern South Carolina" she was in "one of the worst parts of the
State" in the days of Slavery; but under the new order of things,
instead of the lash, she saw school books, and over the ruins of
slavery, education and free speech springing up, at which she was moved
to exclaim, "Thank God for the wonderful change! I have lectured several
nights this week, and the weather is quite warm; but I do like South
Carolina. No state in the Union as far as colored people are concerned,
do I like better--the land of warm welcomes and friendly hearts. God
bless her and give her great peace!"
At a later period she visited Charleston and Columbia, and was well
received in both places. She spoke a number of times in the different
Freedmen schools and the colored churches in Charleston, once in the
Legislative Hall, and also in one of the colored churches in Columbia.
She received special encouragement and kindness from Hon. H. Cadoza,
Secretary of State, and his family, and regarded him as a wise and
upright leader of his race in that state.
The following are some stirring lines which she wrote upon the Fifteenth
Amendment: