SEVEN MONTHS' RESIDENCE IN THE FAMILY OF J.K. A MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY OF
FRIENDS, IN CHESTER COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.--REMOVAL TO NEW YORK--BECOMES A
CONVERT TO RELIGION--BECOMES A TEACHER.
On leaving W.W., I wended my way in deep sorrow and melancholy, onward
towards Philadelphia, and after travelling two days and a night, I found
shelter and employ in the family of J.K., another member of the Society of
Friends, a farmer.
The religious atmosphere in this family was excellent. Mrs. K. gave me the
first copy of the Holy Scriptures I ever possessed, she also gave me much
excellent counsel. She was a preacher in the Society of Friends; this
occasioned her with her husband to be much of their time from home. This
left the charge of the farm upon me, and besides put it out of their power
to render me that aid in my studies which my former friend had. I,
however, kept myself closely concealed, by confining myself to the limits
of the farm, and using all my leisure time in study. This place was more
secluded, and I felt less of dread and fear of discovery than I had
before, and although seriously embarrassed for want of an instructor, I
realized some pleasure and profit in my studies. I often employed myself
in drawing rude maps of the solar system, and diagrams illustrating the
theory of solar eclipses. I felt also a fondness for reading the Bible,
and committing chapters, and verses of hymns to memory. Often on the
Sabbath when alone in the barn, I would break the monotony of the hours by
endeavouring to speak, as if I was addressing an audience. My mind was
constantly struggling for thoughts, and I was still more grieved and
alarmed at its barrenness; I found it gradually freed from the darkness
entailed by slavery, but I was deeply and anxiously concerned how I should
fill it with useful knowledge. I had a few books, and no tutor.
In this way I spent seven months with J.K., and should have continued
longer, agreeably to his urgent solicitation, but I felt that life was
fast wearing, and that as I was now free, I must adventure in search of
knowledge. On leaving J.K., he kindly gave me the following certificate,--
"East Nautmeal, Chester County, Pennsylvania, _Tenth Month 5th, 1828._
"I hereby certify, that the bearer, J.W.C. Pennington, has been in my
employ seven months, during most of which time I have been from home,
leaving my entire business in his trust, and that he has proved a highly
trustworthy and industrious young man. He leaves with the sincere regret
of myself and family; but as he feels it to be his duty to go where he
can obtain education, so as to fit him to be more useful, I cordially
commend him to the warm sympathy of the friends of humanity wherever a
wise providence may appoint him a home.
Signed,
"J.K."
Passing through Philadelphia, I went to New York, and in a short time
found employ on Long Island, near the city. At this time, the state of
things was extremely critical in New York. It was just two years after the
general emancipation in that state. In the city it was a daily occurrence
for slaveholders from the southern states to catch their slaves, and by
certificate from Recorder Riker take them back. I often felt serious
apprehensions of danger, and yet I felt also that I must begin the world
somewhere.
I was earning respectable wages, and by means of evening schools and
private tuition, was making encouraging progress in my studies.
Up to this time, it had never occurred to me that I was a slave in another
and a more serious sense. All my serious impressions of mind had been with
reference to the slavery from which I had escaped. Slavery had been my
theme of thought day and night.
In the spring of 1829, I found my mind unusually perplexed about the state
of the slave. I was enjoying rare privileges in attending a Sabbath
school; the great value of Christian knowledge began to be impressed upon
my mind to an extent I had not been conscious of before. I began to
contrast my condition with that of ten brothers and sisters I had left in
slavery, and the condition of children I saw sitting around me on the
Sabbath, with their pious teachers, with that of 700,000, now 800,440
slave children, who had no means of Christian instruction.
The theme was more powerful than any my mind had ever encountered before.
It entered into the deep chambers of my soul, and stirred the most
agitating emotions I had ever felt. The question was, what can I do for
that vast body of suffering brotherhood I have left behind. To add to the
weight and magnitude of the theme, I learnt for the first time, how many
slaves there were. The question completely staggered my mind; and finding
myself more and more borne down with it, until I was in an agony; I
thought I would make it a subject of prayer to God, although prayer had
not been my habit, having never attempted it but once.
I not only prayed, but also fasted. It was while engaged thus, that my
attention was seriously drawn to the fact that I was a lost sinner, and a
slave to Satan; and soon I saw that I must make another escape from
another tyrant. I did not by any means forget my fellow-bondmen, of whom I
had been sorrowing so deeply, and travailing in spirit so earnestly; but I
now saw that while man had been injuring me, I had been offending God; and
that unless I ceased to offend him, I could not expect to have his
sympathy in my wrongs; and moreover, that I could not be instrumental in
eliciting his powerful aid in behalf of those for whom I mourned so
deeply.
This may provoke a smile from some who profess to be the friends of the
slave, but who have a lower estimate of experimental Christianity than I
believe is due to it; but I am not the less confident that sincere prayer
to God, proceeding from a few hearts deeply imbued with experimental
Christianity about _that time_, has had much to do with subsequent happy
results. At that time the 800,000 bondmen in the British Isles had not
seen the beginning of the end of their sufferings--at that time, 20,000
who are now free in Canada, were in bonds--at that time, there was no
Vigilance Committee to aid the flying slave--at that time, the two
powerful Anti-Slavery Societies of America had no being.
I distinctly remember that I felt the need of enlisting the sympathy of
God, in behalf of my enslaved brethren; but when I attempted it day after
day, and night after night, I was made to feel, that whatever else I might
do, I was not qualified to do that, as I was myself alienated from him by
wicked works. In short, I felt that I needed the powerful aid of some in
my behalf with God, just as much as I did that of my dear friend in
Pennsylvania, when flying from man. "If one man sin against another, the
judge shall judge him, but if a man sin against God, who shall entreat for
him?"
Day after day, for about two weeks, I found myself more deeply convicted
of personal guilt before God. My heart, soul and body were in the greatest
distress; I thought of neither food, drink or rest, for days and nights
together. Burning with a recollection of the wrongs man had done
me--mourning for the injuries my brethren were still enduring, and deeply
convicted of the guilt of my own sins against God. One evening, in the
third week of the struggle, while alone in my chamber, and after solemn
reflection for several hours, I concluded that I could never be happy or
useful in that state of mind, and resolved that I would try to become
reconciled to God. I was then living in the family of an Elder of the
Presbyterian Church. I had not made known my feelings to any one, either
in the family or out of it; and I did not suppose that any one had
discovered my feelings. To my surprise, however, I found that the family
had not only been aware of my state for several days, but were deeply
anxious on my behalf. The following Sabbath, Dr. Cox was on a visit in
Brooklyn to preach, and was a guest in the family; hearing of my case, he
expressed a wish to converse with me, and without knowing the plan, I was
invited into a room and left alone with him. He entered skilfully and
kindly into my feelings, and after considerable conversation he invited me
to attend his service that afternoon. I did so, and was deeply interested.
Without detaining the reader with too many particulars, I will only state
that I heard the doctor once or twice after this, at his own place of
worship in New York City, and had several personal interviews with him, as
the result of which, I hope, I was brought to a saving acquaintance with
Him, of whom Moses in the Law and the Prophets did write; and soon
connected myself with the church under his pastoral care.
I now returned with all my renewed powers to the great theme--slavery. It
seemed now as I looked at it, to be more hideous than ever. I saw it now
as an evil under the moral government of God--as a sin not only against
man, but also against God. The great and engrossing thought with me was,
how shall I now employ my time and my talents so as to tell most
effectually upon this system of wrong! As I have stated, there was no
Anti-Slavery Society then--there was no Vigilance Committee. I had,
therefore, to select a course of action, without counsel or advice from
any one who professed to sympathize with the slave. Many, many lonely
hours of deep meditation have I passed during the years 1828 and 1829,
before the great anti-slavery movement. On the questions, What shall I do
for the slave? How shall I act so that he will reap the benefit of my time
and talents? At one time I had resolved to go to Africa, and to react from
there; but without bias or advice from any mortal, I soon gave up that, as
looking too much like feeding a hungry man with a long spoon.
At length, finding that the misery, ignorance, and wretchedness of the
free coloured people was by the whites tortured into an argument for
slavery; finding myself now among the free people of colour in New York,
where slavery was so recently abolished; and finding much to do for their
elevation, I resolved to give my strength in that direction. And well do I
remember the great movement which commenced among us about this time, for
the holding of General Conventions, to devise ways and means for their
elevation, which continued with happy influence up to 1834, when we gave
way to anti-slavery friends, who had then taken up the labouring oar. And
well do I remember that the first time I ever saw those tried friends,
Garrison, Jocelyn, and Tappan, was in one of those Conventions, where they
came to make our acquaintance, and to secure our confidence in some of
their preliminary labours.
My particular mode of labour was still a subject of deep reflection; and
from time to time I carried it to the Throne of Grace. Eventually my mind
fixed upon the ministry as the desire of my whole heart. I had mastered
the preliminary branches of English education, and was engaged in studying
logic, rhetoric, and the Greek Testament, without a master. While thus
struggling in my laudable work, an opening presented itself which was not
less surprising than gratifying. Walking on the street one day, I met a
friend, who said to me, "I have just had an application to supply a
teacher for a school, and I have recommended you." I said, "My dear
friend, I am obliged to you for the kindness; but I fear I cannot sustain
an examination for that station." "Oh," said he, "try." I said, "I will,"
and we separated. Two weeks afterwards, I met the trustees of the school,
was examined, accepted, and agreed with them for a salary of two hundred
dollars per annum; commenced my school, and succeeded. This was five
years, three months, and thirteen days after I came from the South.
As the events of my life since that have been of a public professional
nature, I will say no more about it. My object in writing this tract is
now completed. It has been to shew the reader the hand of God with a
slave; and to elicit your sympathy in behalf of the fugitive slave, by
shewing some of the untold dangers and hardships through which he has to
pass to gain liberty, and how much he needs friends on free soil; and that
men who have felt the yoke of slavery, even in its mildest form, cannot be
expected to speak of the system otherwise than in terms of the most
unqualified condemnation.
There is one sin that slavery committed against me, which I never can
forgive. It robbed me of my education; the injury is irreparable; I feel
the embarrassment more seriously now than I ever did before. It cost me
two years' hard labour, after I fled, to unshackle my mind; it was three
years before I had purged my language of slavery's idioms; it was four
years before I had thrown off the crouching aspect of slavery; and now the
evil that besets me is a great lack of that general information, the
foundation of which is most effectually laid in that part of life which I
served as a slave. When I consider how much now, more than ever, depends
upon sound and thorough education among coloured men, I am grievously
overwhelmed with a sense of my deficiency, and more especially as I can
never hope now to make it up. If I know my own heart, I have no ambition
but to serve the cause of suffering humanity; all that I have desired or
sought, has been to make me more efficient for good. So far I have some
consciousness that I have done my utmost; and should my future days be few
or many, I am reconciled to meet the last account, hoping to be acquitted
of any wilful neglect of duty; but I shall have to go to my last account
with this charge against the system of slavery, "_Vile monster! thou hast
hindered my usefulness, by robbing me of my early education._"
Oh! what might I have been now, but for this robbery perpetrated upon me
as soon as I saw the light. When the monster heard that a man child was
born, he laughed, and said, "It is mine." When I was laid in the cradle,
he came and looked on my face, and wrote down my name upon his barbarous
list of chattels personal, on the same list where he registered his
horses, hogs, cows, sheep, and even his _dogs!_ Gracious Heaven, is there
no repentance for the misguided men who do these things!
The only harm I wish to slaveholders is, that they may be speedily
delivered from the guilt of a sin, which, if not repented of, must bring
down the judgment of Almighty God upon their devoted heads. The least I
desire for the slave is, that he may be speedily released from the pain of
drinking a cup whose bitterness I have sufficiently tasted, to know that
it is insufferable.