THREE months had elapsed, from the time the fugitive commenced work for
Mr. Streeter, when that gentleman returned from his Southern research,
and informed Jerome that Parson Wilson had sold Clotelle, and that she
had been sent to the New Orleans slave-market.
This intelligence fell with crushing weight upon the heart of Jerome,
and he now felt that the last chain which bound him to his native land
was severed. He therefore determined to leave America forever. His
nearest and dearest friends had often been flogged in his very presence,
and he had seen his mother sold to the negro-trader. An only sister
had been torn from him by the soul-driver; he had himself been sold
and resold, and been compelled to submit to the most degrading and
humiliating insults; and now that the woman upon whom his heart doted,
and without whom life was a burden, had been taken away forever, he felt
it a duty to hate all mankind.
If there is one thing more than another calculated to make one hate and
detest American slavery, it is to witness the meetings between fugitives
and their friends in Canada. Jerome had beheld some of these scenes. The
wife who, after years of separation, had escaped from her prison-house
and followed her husband had told her story to him. He had seen the
newly-arrived wife rush into the arms of the husband, whose dark face
she had not looked upon for long, weary years. Some told of how a sister
had been ill-used by the overseer; others of a husband's being whipped
to death for having attempted to protect his wife. He had sat in the
little log-hut, by the fireside, and heard tales that caused his heart
to bleed; and his bosom swelled with just indignation when he though
that there was no remedy for such atrocious acts. It was with such
feelings that he informed his employer that he should leave him at the
expiration of a month.
In vain did Mr. Streeter try to persuade Jerome to remain with him; and
late in the month of February, the latter found himself on board a small
vessel loaded with pine-lumber, descending the St. Lawrence, bound for
Liverpool. The bark, though an old one, was, nevertheless, considered
seaworthy, and the fugitive was working his way out. As the vessel left
the river and gained the open sea, the black man appeared to rejoice at
the prospect of leaving a country in which his right to manhood had been
denied him, and his happiness destroyed.
The wind was proudly swelling the white sails, and the little craft
plunging into the foaming waves, with the land fast receding in the
distance, when Jerome mounted a pile of lumber to take a last farewell
of his native land. With tears glistening in his eyes, and with
quivering lips, he turned his gaze toward the shores that were fast
fading in the dim distance, and said,--
“Though forced from my native land by the tyrants of the South, I hope I
shall some day be able to return. With all her faults, I love my country
still.”