Desiring to speak to women who have been the objects of so much wrong
and abuse under Slavery, and even since Emancipation, in a state of
ignorance, not accessible always to those who would or could urge the
proper kind of education respecting their morals and general
improvement, Mrs. Harper has made it her business not to overlook this
all important duty to her poor sisters.
The following extract taken from a letter dated "Greenville, Georgia,
March 29th," will show what she was doing in this direction:
"But really my hands are almost constantly full of work;
sometimes I speak twice a day. Part of my lectures are given
privately to women, and for them I never make any charge, or
take up any collection. But this part of the country reminds me
of heathen ground, and though my work may not be recognized as
part of it used to be in the North, yet never perhaps were my
services more needed; and according to their intelligence and
means perhaps never better appreciated than here among these
lowly people. I am now going to have a private meeting with the
women of this place if they will come out. I am going to talk
with them about their daughters, and about things connected with
the welfare of the race. Now is the time for our women to begin
to try to lift up their heads and plant the roots of progress
under the hearthstone. Last night I spoke in a school-house,
where there was not, to my knowledge, a single window glass;
to-day I write to you in a lowly cabin, where the windows in the
room are formed by two apertures in the wall. There is a
wide-spread and almost universal appearance of poverty in this
State where I have been, but thus far I have seen no, or
scarcely any, pauperism. I am not sure that I have seen any. The
climate is so fine, so little cold that poor people can live off
of less than they can in the North. Last night my table was
adorned with roses, although I did not get one cent for my
lecture." * * *
"The political heavens are getting somewhat overcast. Some of
this old rebel element, I think, are in favor of taking away the
colored man's vote, and if he loses it now it may be generations
before he gets it again. Well, after all perhaps the colored man
generally is not really developed enough to value his vote and
equality with other races, so he gets enough to eat and drink,
and be comfortable, perhaps the loss of his vote would not be a
serious grievance to many; but his children differently educated
and trained by circumstances might feel political inferiority
rather a bitter cup."
"After all whether they encourage or discourage me, I belong to
this race, and when it is down I belong to a down race; when it
is up I belong to a risen race."
She writes thus from Montgomery, December 29th, 1870:
"Did you ever read a little poem commencing, I think, with these
words:
A mother cried, Oh, give me joy,
For I have born a darling boy!
A darling boy! why the world is full
Of the men who play at push and pull.
Well, as full as the room was of beds and tenants, on the
morning of the twenty-second, there arose a wail upon the air,
and this mundane sphere had another inhabitant, and my room
another occupant. I left after that, and when I came back the
house was fuller than it was before, and my hostess gave me to
understand that she would rather I should be somewhere else, and
I left again. How did I fare? Well, I had been stopping with one
of our teachers and went back; but the room in which I stopped
was one of those southern shells through which both light and
cold enter at the same time; it had one window and perhaps more
than half or one half the panes gone. I don't know that I was
ever more conquered by the cold than I had been at that house,
and I have lived parts of winter after winter amid the snows of
New England; but if it was cold out of doors, there was warmth
and light within doors; but here, if you opened the door for
light, the cold would also enter, and so part of the time I sat
by the fire, and that and the crevices in the house supplied me
with light in one room, and we had the deficient window-sash, or
perhaps it never had had any lights in it. You could put your
finger through some of the apertures in the house; at least I
could mine, and the water froze down to the bottom of the
tumbler. From another such domicile may kind fate save me. And
then the man asked me four dollars and a half a week board.
One of the nights there was no fire in the stove, and the next
time we had fires, one stove might have been a second-hand
chamber stove. Now perhaps you think these people very poor, but
the man with whom I stopped has no family that I saw, but
himself and wife, and he would make two dollars and a half a
day, and she worked out and kept a boarder. And yet, except the
beds and bed clothing, I wouldn't have given fifteen dollars for
all their house furniture. I should think that this has been one
of the lowest down States in the South, as far as civilization
has been concerned. In the future, until these people are
educated, look out for Democratic victories, for here are two
materials with which Democracy can work, ignorance and poverty.
Men talk about missionary work among the heathen, but if any
lover of Christ wants a field for civilizing work, here is a
field. Part of the time I am preaching against men ill-treating
their wives. I have heard though, that often during the war men
hired out their wives and drew their pay."
* * * * *
"And then there is another trouble, some of our Northern men
have been down this way and by some means they have not made the
best impression on every mind here. One woman here has been
expressing her mind very freely to me about some of our
Northerners, and we are not all considered here as saints and
angels, and of course in their minds I get associated with some
or all the humbugs that have been before me. But I am not
discouraged, my race needs me, if I will only be faithful, and
in spite of suspicion and distrust, I will work on; the deeper
our degradation, the louder our call for redemption. If they
have little or no faith in goodness and earnestness, that is
only one reason why we should be more faithful and earnest, and
so I shall probably stay here in the South all winter. I am not
making much money, and perhaps will hardly clear expenses this
winter; but after all what matters it when I am in my grave
whether I have been rich or poor, loved or hated, despised or
respected, if Christ will only own me to His Father, and I be
permitted a place in one of the mansions of rest."
Col. J.W. Forney, editor of "The Press," published July 12, 1871, with
the brief editorial heading by his own hand, the document appended:
The following letter, written by Mrs. F.E.W. Harper, the
well-known colored orator, to a friend, Mr. Wm. Still, of
Philadelphia, will be read with surprise and pleasure by all
classes; especially supplemented as it is by an article from the
Mobile (Alabama) _Register,_ referring to one of her addresses
in that city. The _Register_ is the organ of the fire-eaters of
the South, conducted by John Forsyth, heretofore one of the most
intolerant of that school. Mrs. Harper describes the manner in
which the old plantation of Jefferson Davis in Mississippi was
cultivated by his brother's former slave, having been a guest in
the Davis mansion, now occupied by Mr. Montgomery, the aforesaid
slave. She also draws a graphic picture of her own marvellous
advancement from utter obscurity to the platform of a public
lecturer, honored by her own race and applauded by their
oppressors. While we regret, as she says, that her experience
and that of Mr. Montgomery is exceptional, it is easy to
anticipate the harvest of such a sowing. The same culture--the
same courage on the part of the men and women who undertake to
advocate Republican doctrines in the South--the same
perseverance and intelligence on the part of those who are
earning their bread by the cultivation of the soil, will be
crowned with the same success. Violence, bloodshed, and murder
cannot rule long in communities where these resistless elements
are allowed to work. No scene in the unparalleled tragedy of the
rebellion, or in the drama which succeeded that tragedy, can be
compared to the picture outlined by Mrs. Harper herself, and
filled in by the ready pen of the rebel editor of the Mobile
_Register_:
MOBILE, July 5, 1871.
MY DEAR FRIEND:--It is said that truth is stranger than
fiction; and if ten years since some one had entered my
humble log house and seen me kneading bread and making
butter, and said that in less than ten years you will be
in the lecture field, you will be a welcome guest under
the roof of the President of the Confederacy, though not
by special invitation from him, that you will see his
brother's former slave a man of business and influence,
that hundreds of colored men will congregate on the old
baronial possessions, that a school will spring up there
like a well in the desert dust, that this former slave
will be a magistrate upon that plantation, that labor
will be organized upon a new basis, and that under the
sole auspices and moulding hands of this man and his
sons will be developed a business whose transactions
will be numbered in hundreds of thousands of dollars,
would you not have smiled incredulously? And I have
lived to see the day when the plantation has passed into
new hands, and these hands once wore the fetters of
slavery. Mr. Montgomery, the present proprietor by
contract of between five and six thousand acres of land,
has one of the most interesting families that I have
ever seen in the South. They are building up a future
which if exceptional now I hope will become more general
hereafter. Every hand of his family is adding its quota
to the success of this experiment of a colored man both
trading and farming on an extensive scale. Last year his
wife took on her hands about 130 acres of land, and with
her force she raised about 107 bales of cotton. She has
a number of orphan children employed, and not only does
she supervise their labor, but she works herself. One
daughter, an intelligent young lady, is postmistress and
I believe assistant book-keeper. One son attends to the
planting interest, and another daughter attends to one
of the stores. The business of this firm of Montgomery &
Sons has amounted, I understand, to between three and
four hundred thousand dollars in a year. I stayed on the
place several days and was hospitably entertained and
kindly treated. When I come, if nothing prevents, I will
tell you more about them. Now for the next strange
truth. Enclosed I send you a notice from one of the
leading and representative papers of rebeldom. The
editor has been, or is considered, one of the
representative men of the South. I have given a lecture
since this notice, which brought out some of the most
noted rebels, among whom was Admiral Semmes. In my
speech I referred to the Alabama sweeping away our
commerce, and his son sat near him and seemed to receive
it with much good humor. I don't know what the papers
will say to-day; perhaps they will think that I dwelt
upon the past too much. Oh, if you had seen the rebs I
had out last night, perhaps you would have felt a little
nervous for me. However, I lived through it, and gave
them more gospel truth than perhaps some of them have
heard for some time.