We received a polite invitation from the trustees of the
State-street African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church to attend a
lecture in that edifice on Thursday evening. Being told that the
discourse would be delivered by a female colored lecturer from
Maryland, curiosity, as well as an interest to see how the
colored citizens were managing their own institutions, led us at
once to accept the invitation. We found a very spacious church,
gas-light, and the balustrades of the galleries copiously hung
with wreaths and festoons of flowers, and a large audience of
both sexes, which, both in appearance and behaviour, was
respectable and decorously observant of the proprieties of the
place. The services were opened, as usual, with prayer and a
hymn, the latter inspired by powerful lungs, and in which the
musical ear at once caught the negro talent for melody. The
lecturer was then introduced as Mrs. F.E.W. Harper, from
Maryland. Without a moment's hesitation she started off in the
flow of her discourse, which rolled smoothly and uninterruptedly
on for nearly two hours. It was very apparent that it was not a
cut and dried speech, for she was as fluent and as felicitous in
her allusions to circumstances immediately around her as she was
when she rose to a more exalted pitch of laudation of the
"Union," or of execration of the old slavery system. Her voice
was remarkable--as sweet as any woman's voice we ever heard, and
so clear and distinct as to pass every syllable to the most
distant ear in the house.
Without any effort at attentive listening we followed the
speaker to the end, not discerning a single grammatical
inaccuracy of speech, or the slightest violation of good taste
in manner or matter. At times the current of thoughts flowed in
eloquent and poetic expression, and often her quaint humor would
expose the ivory in half a thousand mouths. We confess that we
began to wonder, and we asked a fine-looking man before us,
"What is her color? Is she dark or light?" He answered, "She is
mulatto; what they call a red mulatto." The 'red' was new to us.
Our neighbor asked, "How do you like her?" We replied, "She is
giving your people the best kind and the very wisest of advice."
He rejoined, "I wish I had her education." To which we added,
"That's just what she tells you is your great duty and your
need, and if you are too old to get it yourselves, you must give
it to your children."
The speaker left the impression on our mind that she was not
only intelligent and educated, but--the great end of
education--she was enlightened. She comprehends perfectly the
situation of her people, to whose interests she seems ardently
devoted. The main theme of her discourse, the one string to the
harmony of which all the others were attuned, was the grand
opportunity that emancipation had afforded to the black race to
lift itself to the level of the duties and responsibilities
enjoined by it. "You have muscle power and brain power," she
said; "you must utilize them, or be content to remain forever
the inferior race. Get land, every one that can, and as fast as
you ean. A landless people must be dependent upon the landed
people. A few acres to till for food and a roof, however bumble,
over your head, are the castle of your independence, and when
you have it you are fortified to act and vote independently
whenever your interests are at stake." That part of her lecture
(and there was much of it) that dwelt on the moral duties and
domestic relations of the colored people was pitched on the
highest key of sound morality. She urged the cultivation of the
"home life," the sanctity of the marriage state (a happy
contrast to her strong-minded, free-love, white sisters of the
North), and the duties of mothers to their daughters. "Why,"
said she in a voice of much surprise, "I have actually heard
since I have been South that sometimes colored husbands
positively beat their wives! I do not mean to insinuate for a
moment that such things can possibly happen in Mobile. The very
appearance of this congregation forbids it; but I did hear of
one terrible husband defending himself for the unmanly practice
with 'Well, I have got to whip her or leave her.'"
There were parts of the lecturer's discourse that grated a
little on a white Southern ear, but it was lost and forgiven in
the genuine earnestness and profound good sense with which the
woman spoke to her kind in words of sound advice.
On the whole, we are very glad we accepted the Zion's
invitation. It gave us much food for new thought. It reminded
us, perhaps, of neglected duties to these people, and it
impressed strongly on our minds that these people are getting
along, getting onward, and progress was a star becoming familiar
to their gaze and their desires. Whatever the negroes have done
in the path of advancement, they have done largely without white
aid. But politics and white pride have kept the white people
aloof from offering that earnest and moral assistance which
would be so useful to a people just starting from infancy into a
life of self-dependence.
In writing from Columbiana and Demopolis, Alabama, about the first of
March, 1871, Mrs. Harper painted the state of affairs in her usually
graphic manner, and diligently was she endeavoring to inspire the people
with hope and encouragement.
"Oh, what a field there is here in this region! Let me give you
a short account of this week's work. Sunday I addressed a
Sunday-school in Taladega; on Monday afternoon a day-school. On
Monday I rode several miles to a meeting; addressed it, and came
back the same night. Got back about or after twelve o'clock. The
next day I had a meeting of women and addressed them, and then
lectured in the evening in the Court-House to both colored and
white. Last night I spoke again, about ten miles from where I am
now stopping, and returned the same night, and to-morrow evening
probably I shall speak again. I grow quite tired part of the
time. * * * And now let me give you an anecdote or two of
some of our new citizens. While in Taladega I was entertained
and well entertained, at the house of one of our new citizens.
He is living in the house of his former master. He is a
brick-maker by trade, and I rather think mason also. He was
worth to his owner, it was reckoned, fifteen hundred or about
that a year. He worked with him seven years; and in that seven
years he remembers receiving from him fifty cents. Now mark the
contrast! That man is now free, owns the home of his former
master, has I think more than sixty acres of land, and his
master is in the poor-house. I heard of another such case not
long since: A woman was cruelly treated once, or more than once.
She escaped and ran naked into town. The villain in whose clutch
she found herself was trying to drag her downward to his own low
level of impurity, and at last she fell. She was poorly fed, so
that she was tempted to sell her person. Even scraps thrown to
the dog she was hunger-bitten enough to aim for. Poor thing, was
there anything in the future for her? Had not hunger and cruelty
and prostitution done their work, and left her an entire wreck
for life? It seems not. Freedom came, and with it dawned a new
era upon that poor, overshadowed, and sin-darkened life. Freedom
brought opportunity for work and wages combined. She went to
work, and got ten dollars a month. She has contrived to get some
education, and has since been teaching school. While her former
mistress has been to her for help.
"Do not the mills of God grind exceedingly fine? And she has
helped that mistress, and so has the colored man given money,
from what I heard, to his former master. After all, friend, do
we not belong to one of the best branches of the human race? And
yet, how have our people been murdered in the South, and their
bones scattered at the grave's mouth! Oh, when will we have a
government strong enough to make human life safe? Only yesterday
I heard of a murder committed on a man for an old grudge of
several years' standing. I had visited the place, but had just
got away. Last summer a Mr. Luke was hung, and several other men
also, I heard."
While surrounded with this state of affairs, an appeal reached her
through the columns of the National Standard, setting forth a state of
very great suffering and want, especially on the part of the old, blind
and decrepit Freedmen of the District of Columbia. After expressing deep
pity for these unfortunates, she added: "Please send ten dollars to
Josephine Griffing for me for the suffering poor of the District of
Columbia. Just send it by mail, and charge to my account."
Many more letters written by Mrs. Harper are before us, containing
highly interesting information from Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida,
North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland, and
even poor little Delaware. Through all these States she has traveled and
labored extensively, as has been already stated; but our space in this
volume will admit of only one more letter:
"I have been traveling the best part of the day. * * * Can
you spare a little time from your book to just take a peep at
some of our Alabama people? If you would see some instances of
apparent poverty and ignorance that I have seen perhaps you
would not wonder very much at the conservative voting in the
State. A few days since I was about to pay a woman a dollar and
a quarter for some washing in ten cent (currency) notes, when
she informed me that she could not count it; she must trust to
my honesty--she could count forty cents. Since I left Eufaula I
have seen something of plantation life. The first plantation I
visited was about five or six miles from Eufaula, and I should
think that the improvement in some of the cabins was not very
much in advance of what it was in Slavery. The cabins are made
with doors, but not, to my recollection, a single window pane or
speck of plastering; and yet even in some of those lowly homes I
met with hospitality. A room to myself is a luxury that I do not
always enjoy. Still I live through it, and find life rather
interesting. The people have much to learn. The condition of the
women is not very enviable in some cases. They have had some of
them a terribly hard time in Slavery, and their subjection has
not ceased in freedom. * * * One man said of some women,
that a man must leave them or whip them. * * * Let me
introduce you to another scene: here is a gathering; a large
fire is burning out of doors, and here are one or two boys with
hats on. Here is a little girl with her bonnet on, and there a
little boy moves off and commences to climb a tree. Do you know
what the gathering means? It is a school, and the teacher, I
believe, is paid from the school fund. He says he is from New
Hampshire. That may be. But to look at him and to hear him
teach, you would perhaps think him not very lately from the
North; at least I do not think he is a model teacher. They have
a church; but somehow they have burnt a hole, I understand, in
the top, and so I lectured inside, and they gathered around the
fire outside. Here is another--what shall I call
it?--meeting-place. It is a brush arbor. And what pray is that?
Shall I call it an edifice or an improvised meeting-house? Well,
it is called a brush arbor. It is a kind of brush house with
seats, and a kind of covering made partly, I rather think, of
branches of trees, and an humble place for pulpit. I lectured in
a place where they seemed to have no other church; but I spoke
at a house. In Glenville, a little out-of-the-way place, I spent
part of a week. There they have two unfinished churches. One has
not a single pane of glass, and the same aperture that admits
the light also gives ingress to the air; and the other one, I
rather think, is less finished than that. I spoke in one, and
then the white people gave me a hall, and quite a number
attended.... I am now at Union Springs, where I shall probably
room with three women. But amid all this roughing it in the
bush, I find a field of work where kindness and hospitality have
thrown their sunshine around my way. And Oh what a field of work
is here! How much one needs the Spirit of our dear Master to
make one's life a living, loving force to help men to higher
planes of thought and action. I am giving all my lectures with
free admission; but still I get along, and the way has been
opening for me almost ever since I have been South. Oh, if some
more of our young women would only consecrate their lives to the
work of upbuilding the race! Oh, if I could only see our young
men and women aiming to build up a future for themselves which
would grandly contrast with the past--with its pain, ignorance
and low social condition."
It may be well to add that Mrs. Harper's letters from which we have
copied were simply private, never intended for publication; and while
they bear obvious marks of truthfulness, discrimination and
impartiality, it becomes us to say that a more strictly conscientious
woman we have never known.
Returning to Philadelphia after many months of hard labor in the South,
Mrs. Harper, instead of seeking needed rest and recreation, scarcely
allows a day to pass without seeking to aid in the reformation of the
outcast and degraded. The earnest advice which she gives on the subject
of temperance and moral reforms generally causes some to reflect, even
among adults, and induces a number of poor children to attend day and
Sabbath-schools. The condition of this class, she feels, appeals loudly
for a remedy to respectable and intelligent colored citizens; and whilst
not discouraged, she is often quite saddened at the supineness of the
better class. During the past summer when it was too warm to labor in
the South she spent several months in this field without a farthing's
reward. She assisted in organizing a Sabbath-school, and accepted the
office of Assistant Superintendent under the auspices of the Young Men's
Christian Association.
Mrs. Harper reads the best magazines and ablest weeklies, as well as
more elaborate works, not excepting such authors as De Tocqueville,
Mill, Ruskin, Buckle, Guizot, &c. In espousing the cause of the
oppressed as a poet and lecturer, had she neglected to fortify her mind
in the manner she did, she would have been weighed and found wanting
long since. Before friends and foes, the learned and the unlearned,
North and South, Mrs. Harper has pleaded the cause of her race in a
manner that has commanded the greatest respect; indeed, it is hardly too
much to say, that during seventeen years of public labor she has made
thousands of speeches without doing herself or people discredit in a
single instance, but has accomplished a great deal in the way of
removing prejudice. May we not hope that the rising generation at least
will take encouragement by her example and find an argument of rare
force in favor of mental and moral equality, and above all be awakened
to see how prejudices and difficulties may be surmounted by continual
struggles, intelligence and a virtuous character?
Fifty thousand copies at least of her four small books have been sold to
those who have listened to her eloquent lectures. One of those
productions entitled "Moses" has been used to entertain audiences with
evening readings in various parts of the country. With what effect may
be seen from the two brief notices as follows:
"Mrs. F.E.W. Harper delivered a poem upon 'Moses' in Wilbraham
to a large and delighted audience. She is a woman of high moral
tone, with superior native powers highly cultivated, and a
captivating eloquence that hold her audience in rapt attention
from the beginning to the close. She will delight any
intelligent audience, and those who wish first-class lecturers
cannot do better than to secure her services."--_Zion's Herald,
Boston._
"Mrs. Frances E.W. Harper read her poem of 'Moses' last evening
at Rev. Mr. Harrison's church to a good audience. It deals with
the story of the Hebrew Moses from his finding in the wicker
basket on the Nile to his death on Mount Nebo and his burial in
an unknown grave; following closely the Scripture account. It
contains about 700 lines, beginning with blank verse of the
common measure, and changing to other measures, but always
without rhyme; and is a pathetic and well-sustained piece. Mrs.
Harper recited it with good effect, and it was well received.
She is a lady of much talent, and always speaks well,
particularly when her subject relates to the condition of her
own people, in whose welfare, before and since the war, she has
taken the deepest interest. As a lecturer Mrs. Harper is more
effective than most of those who come before our lyceums; with a
natural eloquence that is very moving."--_Galesburgh Register,
Ill._
Grace Greenwood, in the Independent in noticing a Course of Lectures in
which Mrs. Harper spoke (in Philadelphia) pays this tribute to her:
"Next on the course was Mrs Harper, a colored woman; about as
colored as some of the Cuban belles I have met with at Saratoga.
She has a noble head, this bronze muse; a strong face, with a
shadowed glow upon it, indicative of thoughtful fervor, and of a
nature most femininely sensitive, but not in the least morbid.
Her form is delicate, her hands daintily small. She stands
quietly beside her desk, and speaks without notes, with gestures
few and fitting. Her manner is marked by dignity and composure.
She is never assuming, never theatrical. In the first part of
her lecture she was most impressive in her pleading for the race
with whom her lot is cast. There was something touching in her
attitude as their representative. The woe of two hundred years
sighed through her tones. Every glance of her sad eyes was a
mournful remonstrance against injustice and wrong. Feeling on
her soul, as she must have felt it, the chilling weight of
caste, she seemed to say:
'I lift my heavy heart up solemnly,
As once Eleotra her sepulchral urn.'
... As I listened to her, there swept over me, in a chill wave
of horror, the realization that this noble woman had she not
been rescued from her mother's condition, might have been sold
on the auction-block, to the highest bidder--her intellect,
fancy, eloquence, the flashing wit, that might make the delight
of a Parisian saloon, and her pure, Christian character all
thrown in--the recollection that women like her could be dragged
out of public conveyances in our own city, or frowned out of
fashionable churches by Anglo-Saxon saints."