NORTHERN COMMENTS ON SOUTHERN LIFE.
"As blind men use to bear their noses higher
Than those that have their eyes and sight entire."
HUDIBRAS.
"One woman reads another's character
Without the tedious trouble of decyphering."
BEN JONSON. _New Inn_.
So then, this is a Southern heart which prompts these loving, tender
strains. This lady is a slave-holder. It is a slave toward whom this
fellow-feeling, this gentleness of pity, these acts of loving-kindness,
these yearnings of compassion, these respectful words, and all this care
and assiduity, flow forth.
Is she not some singular exception among the people of her country; some
abnormal product, an accidental grace, a growth of luxuriant richness in
a deadly soil, or, at least, is she not like Jenny Lind among singers?
Surely we shall not look upon her like again. It would be difficult to
find even here at the North,--the humane North, nay, even among those
who have solemnly consecrated themselves as "the friends of the slave,"
and who "remember them that are in bonds as bound with them,"--a heart
more loving and good, affections more natural and pure. I am surprised.
This was a slave-babe. Its mother was this lady's slave. I am confused.
This contradicts my previous information; it sets at nought my ideas
upon a subject which I believed I thoroughly understood.
A little negro slave-babe, it seems, is dead, and its owner and mistress
is acting and speaking as Northerners do! Yes, as Northerners do even
when their own daughters' babes lie dead!
The letter must be a forgery. No; here it is before me, in the
handwriting of the lady, post-marked at the place of her residence. But
is it not, after all, a fiction? I can believe almost anything sooner
than that I am mistaken in the opinions and feelings which are
contradicted by this letter. In the spirit of Hume's argument against
the miracles of the Bible, I feel disposed, almost, to urge that it
would be a greater miracle that the course of nature at the South in a
slave-holder's heart should thus be set aside than that there should not
be, in some way, deception about this letter. But still, here is the
letter; and it is written to her father, whom she could not deceive,
whom she had no motive, no wish, to delude. Had it been written to a
Northerner, I could have surmised that she was attempting to make false
impressions about slavery, and its influence on the slave-holder. Why
should she tell her father this simple tale, unless real affection for
the babe and its mother were impelling her? This tries my faith. It is
like an undesigned coincidence in holy writ, which used so to stagger my
unbelief. Possibly, however,--for I must maintain my previous
convictions if I can,--possibly her father is such as our anti-slavery
lecturers and writers declare a slave-holder naturally to be, and his
daughter, herself a mother, is seeking to touch his heart and turn him
from his cruelties as a slave-holder by showing him, in this indirect,
beautiful manner, that slave-mothers have the feelings of human beings.
Perhaps I may therefore compromise this matter by allowing, on one hand,
that the daughter is all that she appears to be, and claiming, on the
other, that the father is all that a slave-holder ought to be to verify
our Northern theories. But she herself is a slave-holder, and therefore
by our theory she ought to be imbruted. I beg her pardon, and that of
her father; but they must consider how hard it is for us at the North to
conquer all our prejudices even under the influence of such a
demonstration as her letter. I ask one simple question: Is not this
slave-babe, (and her mother,) of "the down-trodden," and is not this
lady one of the down-treading? And yet she weeps,--not because, as I
would have supposed, she had lost one hundred and fifty dollars in the
child, but as though she loved it like the sick and dying child of a
fellow-creature, of a mother like herself. Now, who at the North ever
hears of such a thing in slavery? The old New York Tabernacle could have
said, It is not in me;--the modern Boston Music Hall says, It is not in
me. None of the antislavery papers, political or religious, say, We have
heard the fame thereof with our ears. Our Northern instructors on the
subject of slavery, the orators, the Uncle Tom's Cabins, "The Scholar an
Agitator," have never taught us to believe this. The South, we are
instructed to think, is a Golgotha, a valley of Hinnom; compacts with it
are covenants with hell. But here is one holy angel with its music; a
ministering spirit; but is she a Lot in Sodom? Abdiel in the revolted
principality? a desolate, mourning Rizpah on that rock which overlooks
four millions of slaves and their tortures?
In a less instructed state of mind on this subject, I should once have
said, on reading this letter,--This is slavery. Here is a view of life
at the South. As a traveller accidentally catches a sight of a family
around their table, and domestic life gleams upon him for a moment; as
the opening door of a church suffers a few notes of the psalm to reach
the ear of one at a distance, this letter, written evidently amidst
household duties and cares, discloses, in a touching manner, the
domestic relations of Southern families and their servants wherever
Christianity prevails. It is one strain of the ordinary music of life in
ten thousands of those households, falling accidentally upon our ears,
and giving us truthful, artless impressions, such as labored statements
and solemn depositions would not so well convey, and which theories,
counter-statements, arguments, and invectives never can refute. Our
senior pastor would say that the letter is like the Epistles of
John,--not a doctrinal exposition, but a breathing forth of the spirit
which the evangelical history had inspired. I have come to know more,
however, than I did when I could have had such amiable but unenlightened
feelings. I have read the "Key to Uncle Tom" and the "Barbarism of
Slavery."
Still, I am sorely puzzled. "Kate," she says, "wanted to have it go, it
had been sick so long; but I knew, when she said it, she did not know
what the parting would be."
"The parting!" Has she read our Northern abstracts and versions of the
Dred Scott Decision, and are there, in her view, any rights in a negro
which she is bound to respect? Has she not heard that the Supreme Court
of the United States has absolved her from all her feelings of humanity?
"The parting!" Where has she lived not to know how, according to our
lecturers, families are parted at the auction-block in the Southern
States without the least compunction? We are constantly told,--has she
not heard it?--that the slave at the South is a mere "chattel," and that
a slave-child is bought and sold as recklessly as a calf, and that a
parting between a slave-mother and her children, sold and separated for
life, is an occurrence as familiar as the separation of animals and
their young, and no more regarded by slave-holders than divorcements in
the barn-yard. This being so, it must follow that when a slave-babe
dies, the only sorrow in the hearts of the white owners is such as they
feel when a colt is kicked to death or a heifer is choked. This must be
so, if all is true which is meant to be conveyed when we are told so
often at the North that the slave is a mere "chattel." Therefore I am
puzzled by this lady's tears for the mother of this little black babe.
She says of the mother of that poor little negro infant slave, "I knew
she did not dream what the parting would be." I repeat it, my theory of
slavery, that which I hold in common with all enlightened friends of
freedom, requires that this lady should have a debased, imbruted nature,
for she owns human beings, has made property of God's image in man. And
now I feel creeping over me a dreadful temptation to think that one may
hold fellow-creatures in bondage and yet be really humane, gentle, and
as good as a Northerner! What fearful changes in politics would come
about should our people believe this! It cannot be that our great party
of Freedom can ever go to pieces and disappoint the hopes of the world;
yet this would be the case, if the feelings stirred by this letter
should gain a general acceptance. I cannot gainsay the facts. Here is
the letter. May it never see the light; people are much more influenced
by such things than by mere logic, and oh, what would befall the nation
should our Northern excitement against slavery cease, and should we
leave the whole subject to the South and to God! "What if people should
come to believe that the Southerners--fifteen or sixteen States of this
Union--are as humane, Christian, and conscientious as the North!
Who will resolve my painful doubts? I do crave to know what possible
motive this lady could have had in taking so much thought and care about
the last resting-place of this poor little black "chattel." You and your
husband, dear lady, seem to be as kind and painstaking as though you
knew that a fellow-creature of yours was returning, "ashes to ashes,
dust to dust."
One great Northern "friend of the slave" tells us that the slaves at the
South are degraded so to the level of brutes, that baptizing them and
admitting them to Christian ordinances is about the same as though he
should say to his dogs, "I baptize thee, Bose, in," etc. This, he tells
us, he repeated many times here, and in England.[1] Nothing but love of
truth and just hatred of "the sum of all villanies" could, of course,
have made him venture so near the verge of unpardonable blasphemy as to
speak thus. Yet your feelings and behavior toward this babe are in
direct conflict with his theory. Pray whom am I to believe?
[Footnote 1: See "Sigma's" communications to the _Boston Transcript_,
August, 1857.]
Perhaps now I have hit upon a solution. Some people, Walter Scott is an
instance, bury their favorite dogs with all the honors of a decorated
sepulture. Rather than believe that your slaves are commonly regarded by
you as your fellow-creatures, having rights which you love to consider,
or, that you do not mercilessly dispose of them to promote your selfish
interests, we, the Northern people, who have had the very best of
teachers on the subject of slavery, learnedly theoretical, reasoning
from the eternal principles of right, would incline to believe that your
interest in the burial of this little slave-babe was merely that which
your own child would feel on seeing her kitten carefully buried at the
foot of the apple-tree.
One thing, however, suggests a difficulty in feeling our way to this
conclusion. I mention it because of the perfect candor which guides the
sentiments and feelings of all Northern people in speaking of slavery
and slave-holders.
The difficulty is this: Who was "poor old Timmy"? Some old slave in your
father's family, I apprehend. You seem sad at finding that his grave is
not in the best place. "The water rises within three feet of the
surface;"--we infer, from the regret which you seem to feel at this,
that you have some care and pity for your old slaves, which extends even
to their graves. But we had well nigh borrowed strength to our
prejudices from this place of old Timmy's grave, and were saying with
ourselves, Thus the slave-holders bury their slaves where the water may
overflow them; but you seem to apologize to your father for Timmy's
having such a poor place for his remains by saying, "His own" (Timmy's)
"family selected his burying-place, and probably did not think of this."
Very kind in you, dear madam, to speak so. "The friends of the slave"
are greatly obliged to you for such consideration. You say, "His own
family selected his burying-place." Do slaves have such a liberty? Can
they go and come in their burying-grounds and choose places for the
graves of their kindred? This is being full as good to your servants, in
this particular, as we are at the North to our domestics. You thought
poor old Timmy's grave was not in a spot sufficiently choice for this
little babe's grave, and, it seems, you inclosed a spot, and inaugurated
it by the burial of this child, for the last resting-place of other
babes, the kindred of this child and of your other servants. This looks
as though there were some domestic permanence in some parts of the South
among the servants of a household; and as though the birth and death of
a child have some other associations with you than those which belong to
the breeding and sale of poultry. We are truly glad to think of all
this. It is exceedingly pleasant to have a good opinion of people, much
more so than to believe evil of them, and to accuse them wrongfully.
In speaking thus to you, I make myself think--and I hope I do not seem
self-complacent in saying it, for you must have learned from the tone of
my remarks, if from no other source, that self-complacency is not a
Northern characteristic, especially in our feelings toward the
South--but I make myself think, by this candid admission of what seems
good in you, of a venturesome remark by Paul the Apostle to your brother
slave-holder Philemon, in that epistle in which he sends back the slave
Onesimus,--a very trying epistle to us at the North, though on the
whole, many of us keep up our confidence in inspiration notwithstanding
this epistle, especially as it is explained to us by some at the North
who know most of Southern slavery, our inbred hatred of which, it is
insisted by some of our best scholars, should control even our
interpretation of the word of God. Paul speaks to this slave-holder,
Philemon, of "the acknowledging of every good thing which is in
you,"--which we think was exceedingly charitable, considering that it
was said to a holder of slaves; and perhaps quite too much so; for the
truth is not to be spoken at all times, and especially not of those who
hold their fellow-men in bondage. I am often constrained to think that
it was an inconsiderate, unwise thing in the Apostle to take this
favorable view of that slave-holder; he may, however, have written by
permission, not by commandment; that would save his inspiration from
reproach; for had he been inspired in writing this epistle, I ask
myself, Would he not have foreseen our great Northern conflict with the
mightiest injustice upon which the sun ever shone? and would he not have
foreseen how much aid and comfort that epistle would give the friends of
oppression on this continent? One first truth in the minds of the most
eminent "friends of freedom" is this: "Slavery is the sum of all
villanies." Other truths follow in their natural order; among them the
question of the inspiration of the Bible has a place; but slavery leads
some of them to think lightly, and to speak disparagingly, of the Bible,
because it comes in conflict with their theories regarding
slave-holding, which is certainly not always referred to in Scripture in
the tone which we prefer. There was the Apostle James, too, writing
about "works" in the same unguarded manner as Paul when speaking of
slaves and slave-holders. Pity that he could not have let "works" alone,
seeing it was so important for the other Apostles to establish the one
idea of justification by faith. He made great trouble for Luther and his
companions in their contest with Popery. Luther had to reject his
epistle; "_straminea epistola_" he called it,--an epistle of
straw,--weak, worthless; and he denied its inspiration, because it
conflicted with his doctrine of "faith alone." So much for trying to be
candid and just, and for presenting the other side of a subject, or of a
man, when the spirit of the age is averse to it, and candor is in
danger of being looked upon as a time-serving thing. Neither Paul nor
James, however, had felt the tonic, bracing effect of good anti-slavery
principles, or they would not have written, the one such a letter to a
slave-holder, and the other such a back-oar argument against "faith
alone." However, I am disposed to think well of Paul and James,
notwithstanding these the great errors of their lives. Indeed I can
almost forgive them, when I am reading other things which they said and
did. You will please acknowledge, therefore, my dear madam, that in
giving you credit for kind feelings toward a poor slave and its mother,
we are disposed to be just; yet I beg of you not to think that I abate
one jot or tittle of my belief that, in theory, slavery is "the sum of
all villanies," "an enormous wrong," "a stupendous injustice."
I have just been reading your letter once more, and the foolish tears
pester me so that I can scarce see out of my eyes. I find, dear madam,
that you have known a bitter sorrow which so many parents are carrying
with them to the grave. Your words make me think so of little graves
elsewhere, that I forget for the time that you are a slave-holder. Nor
can I hardly believe that your touching words are suggested by the death
of a slave's babe, when you speak of "the heavy earth piled on the
tender little breast." O my dear lady! has a slave's babe "a tender
little breast"? Then you really think so! And you a slave-holder!
"Border Ruffianism," perhaps, has not yet reached your heart; and yet I
suppose--forgive me if I do you wrong--that slave-holders' hearts
generally need only to be removed to the "borders," to manifest all
their native "ruffianism." Can you tell me whether there are any mothers
in Missouri (near Kansas) who feel toward their slaves who are mothers,
as you do? There are so many people from the North in Kansas (near
Missouri) who have gone thither to prevent you and your brethren and
sisters from owning a fellow-creature there, that I trust their
influence will in time extend through all Missouri, and that white
mothers in that State will everywhere have such humane feelings toward
the blacks as we and you possess.
All that I ask of you now, is, that you give Kate her liberty at once.
Oh, do not say, as I fancy you will, There is not a happier being than
Kate in all the land of freedom. "Fiat justitia," dear madam, "ruat
coelum." I cannot conceive how being "owned" is anything but a curse.
Really, we forget the miseries of the Five Points, and of the dens in
New York, Boston, Buffalo, and other places at the North, the hordes in
the city and State institutions in New York Harbor, Deer Island, Boston,
and all such things, in our extreme pity for poor slave-mothers, like
Kate, whose children, when they get to be about nine or ten years old,
are liable to be sold. Honest Mrs. Striker came to work in our family,
not long since, leaving her young child at home in the care of a young
woman who watched it for ten cents a day. I said to her, Dear Mrs.
Striker, are you not glad that you live in a free state, and not where,
when you return like a bird to its nest at night, you may find your
little one carried off, you know not where, by some man-stealer, you
know not whom?--We honor your kind feelings, madam, but you are not
aware, probably, what overflowing love and tender pity there is among us
Northerners, toward your slaves and their children. We are
disinterested, too; for we nearly forget our own black people here at
the North, and more especially in Canada, to care for you and your
people. And though hundreds of innocent young people are decoyed into
our Northern cities yearly from the country and are made the victims of
unhallowed passions, yet the thought that some of your young people on
those remote, solitary plantations, can be compelled by their masters to
do wrong on pain of being sold, fills us with such unaffected distress
that we think but little of voluntary or compulsory debauchery in our
own cities; but we think of dissolving the Union to rid ourselves of
seeming complicity with such wickedness as we see to be inherent in the
relation of master and slave. We at the North should all be wicked if we
had such opportunities; we know, therefore, that you must be. Because
you will not let us reprove you for it, we cut off our correspondence
with your Southern ecclesiastical bodies. But I began to speak of little
graves. You will see by my involuntary wandering from them how full our
hearts are of your colored people, and how self-forgetful we are in our
desires and efforts to do them good. And yet some of your Southern
people can find it in their hearts to set at nought these our most
sacred Northern antipathies and commiserations!
But I constantly hear some of your words in your letter striking their
gentle, sad chimes in my ears. "It is not the parting alone, but the
helplessness that looked to you for protection which you could not
give;" "the emptiness of the home to which you return when the child is
gone."
Now, for such words, I solemnly declare that, in my opinion, you, dear
madam, never had a helpless slave look to you for protection which you
could give and which you refused; you, surely, never made a slave's home
desolate by taking her child from her. No, such words as those which I
have just quoted from your letter, are a perfect assurance that neither
you nor your kindred, within your knowledge, are guilty of ruthless
violations of domestic ties among your colored people. Otherwise, you
could not write as you do about "desolate homes" and "the child gone."
While I read your letter and think of you, I am reminded of those words:
"Is not this he whom they seek to kill?" Why, if the insurgents' pikes
were aimed at you and your child, I would almost be willing to rush in
and receive them in my own body. Yet I would not be known at the North
to have spoken so strongly as this. O my dear madam, if there were only
fifty righteous people (counting you) in the South, people who knew what
"desolate homes" and "the child gone" mean, I should almost begin to
hope that our Southern Gomorrah might be spared.
But I fear that I am trespassing too far away from my sworn fealty to
Northern opinions and feelings. I begin to fear that I may be tempted to
be recreant to my inborn, inbred notions of liberty, while holding
converse with you, for there is something extremely seductive to a
Northerner in slavery; it is like the apple and the serpent to the
woman; so that whoever goes to the South, or has anything to do with
slave-holders, is apt to lose his integrity; there is a Circean
influence there for Northern people; thousands of once good,
anti-slavery men now lie dead and buried as to their reputations here at
the North, in consequence of having to do with the seductive
slave-power; they would fill Bonaventura Cemetery, in Savannah; the
Spanish moss, swaying on the limbs of its trees, would be, in number,
fit signals of their subjection to what you call right views on the
subject of slavery.
Though I fear almost to hold converse with you, yet, conscious of my
innate love of liberty, I venture to do so. Bunker Hill is within twenty
miles of my home. When I go to that sacred memorial of liberty, I strive
to fortify my soul afresh against the slave-power. After hearing
favorable things said, in Boston, about the South, I can go to Faneuil
Hall, and there, the doors being carefully shut, walk enthusiastically
about the room, almost shouting, "Sam. Adams!" "James Otis!"
"Seventy-Six!" "Shade of Warren!" "No chains on the Bay State!"
"Massachusetts in the van!" "Give me liberty or give me death!" I can
enjoy the privilege of looking frequently on certain majestic figures in
our American Apocalypse, under the present vial,--but I need not name
them. I meet in our book-stores with "Lays of Freedom," never sung by
such as you. I see in the shop-windows the inspiring faces, in
medallion, of those masterpieces of human nature, "the champions of
freedom," our chief abolitionists;--and shall I, can I, ever succumb to
the slave-power, even though it approach me through the holy,
all-subduing charms of woman's influence? No! dear madam, ten thousand
times, No! "Slave-power!" to borrow Milton's figure when speaking of
Ithuriel and Satan, the word is as the touch of fire to powder, to our
brave anti-slavery souls. You have, perhaps, seen a bull stopping in the
street, pawing the ground, throwing the dust over him and covering
himself with a cloud of it, his nose close to the earth, and a low,
bellowing sound issuing from his nostrils. Your heart has died within
you at the sight. You have been made to feel how slight a defence is
fan, or sunshade, against such an antagonist, though you should make
them to fly suddenly open in his face. No enemy of his was in sight, so
far as you could perceive; you wondered what had excited his belligerent
spirit; but he saw at a very great distance that which you could not
see; he heard a voice you could not hear, giving occasion to this show
of prowess. That fearful combatant on the highway, dear madam, is the
North, and you are the distant foe. You may affect to smile, perhaps, at
the valorous attitudes, the show of mettle in the bull, but you have no
idea, as I had the honor to say before, how sturdy is our hatred of the
slave-power and how ready we are to do battle with it. We paw in the
valley, and are not afraid.
Never think to delude us, my dear lady, with the thought that slavery in
our Territories means such ladies as you owning Kates and their little
babes, and having such hearts toward them as you seem to have; for that
would take away a large part of the evil in slavery. Nor must you expect
us, in thinking of slavery as extending into our Territories, to picture
to ourselves an accomplished gentleman and lady searching a cemetery for
a spot to be the grave of a little slave-babe, and behaving themselves
as though they had feelings toward it and its mother irrespective of the
market-price of slaves. "Border Ruffians" are the archetypes of our
ideas respecting all who wish to extend slavery into our Territories. On
the score of humanity, madam, we have no objection to you and your
husband taking Kate and living in Kansas; how perfectly harmless that
might seem to many! for, no doubt, you and Kate are perfectly happy as
mistress and servant; you would need domestics there, and how could they
and you be better pleased than if they and you were just as Kate and you
now are to each other? but, O dear madam, that would be slavery, and we
are under sworn obligations here at the North to oppose the owning of a
human being with indiscriminate hatred. Say not it seems hard that if
you wish to live in Kansas, for example, you cannot have liberty to go
there with Kate, who is as much attached to you, I make no doubt, as any
Northern or English servant is to a household. Perhaps it does seem
perfectly natural and harmless, and no doubt Kate's relation to you is
as gentle and pleasant, almost, as that of an adopted member of a
family, who is half attendant, and half companion; this we understand.
You see nothing terrible in such a relation. O dear madam, you have the
misfortune to have been born under the blinding, blighting influence of
slavery, and cannot see things in the true, just light in which they
appear to us, whose minds are unprejudiced and clear, and whose moral
sentiments on this great subject are more correct and elevated. What is
making all this trouble in our nation? I will answer you in the burning
words of a Northern clergyman in his speech at a meeting called to
sympathize with the family of John Brown, after his death by martyrdom:
"The Slave-Power itself, standing up there in all its deformity in the
sight of Northern consciences,--that is the cause, [applause] and there
the responsibility belongs."[2] Yes, you are sinning against the
Northern conscience! It is settled forever that you are evil-doers in
holding your present relation to the slave. We are bound to hem you in
as by fire, till, like a scorpion so fenced about, you die by your own
sting. We must proclaim liberty to your captives. Step but one foot with
Kate on free soil, and our watchmen of liberty, set to break every yoke
and help fugitives on their way from the house of bondage, will be
around you in troops, and shout in her ear those electrifying and
beatifying words, "You are a free woman!" There her chains will drop;
she will cease to be a slave, and become a human being.
[Footnote 2: _Boston Courier_, Nov. 26, 1859.]
Must I refer to your letter once more? I hope to destroy its spell over
me. But I wish at times that I had never seen that letter. "Tell Mammy
that it is a great disappointment to me that her name is not to have a
place in my household." Your little slave-babe, Kate's child, you named
Cygnet, because Mammy's name is Cygnet, and she and your mother grew up
together, and she has been your kind, faithful servant and friend, as
much friend as servant, during all your youth till you were married. And
you seek to perpetuate her name in your own household, and to have a
little Cygnet grow up with your own little Susan. "I was always pleased
with the idea that my Susan and little Cygnet should grow up together;
but it seems best that it should not be so, or it would not be denied."
All this is very sweet and beautiful; but now let me tell you, honestly,
what the spontaneous thought of a Northerner is while meditating on such
an apparently lovely picture. Here it is: Suppose that Susan and little
Cygnet, when both are three years old, are playing in your front-yard
some morning, and a cruel slave-trader should look over the fence, and
say to your husband, "Fine little thing there, sir; take a hunderd and a
ha'f for her?" I ask, Would not your husband (perhaps in need, just
then, of money to pay a note) lay down his newspaper, invite the fellow
in to drink, and go through the opening scene of "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"
coaxing up the fellow's price; and finally, would he not sell little
Cygnet while her mother was out of sight, push poor little Susan into a
room alone to cry her eyes out, and you and your husband pocket the
money? Many of us at the North, dear madam, if you will take my
unworthy self as a specimen, and I am a very moderate anti-slavery man
and no fanatic, are quite as ready to believe such things of you as the
contrary. We have read "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Nothing could exceed the disgust and ridicule which your letter would
meet with at the hands of some of our best anti-slavery men. I am
thinking of it, just now, as in the hands of Rev. Mr. Blank. The other
day I saw a cambric muslin handkerchief, richly embroidered, blow past
me out of a child's carriage. As I turned to get it, a dog seized it,
shook it, put both his paws on it, rent it, made rags of it, threw it
down, snatched it up, and seemed vexed that there was no more of it to
tear. So will our abolitionists serve your letter, should they ever see
it. And, my dear madam, though I disapprove their temper and language,
yet I must confess that I sympathize with them in their principles, the
only difference between them and me being that of social position and
manners. I must tell you that, after all, you are probably unaware of
the deception which you are practising on yourself, in supposing that
you are really as loving and gentle toward a slave-mother and her child
as some might infer. Let but a good sale tempt you! I wait to know
whether you would then write such a letter. We have a ready answer to
all the kind and good things which are said about you, in this, which
you will see and hear in all our speeches and essays, namely, "Slavery
is the sum of all villanies." That is to all our thoughts and reasonings
about slavery what the longitude of Greenwich is to navigation. All your
clergy, all your physicians, all your judges and lawyers, all your
fathers and mothers, your gentlemen and ladies, all your children, are
heaped together by us in one name, to us an awful name,--"Slave-power."
We think about you as we do of Egypt, with Israel in bondage.
And now that allusion furnishes me with an argument against your letter,
which I must, in conclusion, and sorely against many of my feelings, let
fall, like a stone, upon it, and crush it forever. Pharaoh's daughter
was touched with the cry of the little slave-babe, Moses; but what does
that prove? that Egyptian bondage was not "an enormous wrong," a
"stupendous injustice," "the sum of all villanies"? or that a Red Sea
was not already waiting to swallow up the slave-holders, horse and foot?
You may write a thousand such letters, all over the South; but though
they delude me for a while, it is only until the moisture which they
raise to my eyes from my heart, by the pathos in them, dries up, and
leaves my vision clear of all the blinding though beautiful mists of
that error which has diffused itself over one half of this goodly land,
and, I grieve to add, which has fallen upon many even here in New
England, recreant sons of liberty, traitors to the memories of Faneuil
Hall and Bunker Hill.
LETTER FROM MR. NORTH, INCLOSING THE FOREGOING. INFLUENCE OF THE LETTER
UPON HIS WIFE.
MY DEAR MR. A. BETTERDAY CUMMING:--
I have, as you see, complied with your request, and herewith I send you
my thoughts and feelings in view of the good Southern lady's letter. I
came near, once or twice, abandoning some of my long-cherished
principles, under the influence of the letter and of the reflections to
which it gave rise. But I have been enabled to retain my integrity. I am
sorry to say that the letter has made me some trouble through its effect
on my wife, to whom, incautiously, I read it. Very soon after I began to
read, I perceived that some natural drops were finding their way down
her tear-passage, leading her to a frequent use of the handkerchief. By
this means she interrupted me, I should say, six or eight times, during
the reading, and as soon as I had finished she rose and left the room.
I remained, and wrote a large part of the accompanying reflections, and,
near midnight, on repairing to my room, I found that Mrs. North was
asleep. She waked me in the morning by asking me if I was asleep. I told
her that I would gladly listen to what she had to say. She said, "Will
you not please, my dear, stop the ----, and the ----," (naming two
newspapers,) "and take others?"
"Why," said I, "what is the matter with them?"
She began to weep again. In a few moments she said, "I would give the
world if I could have a conversation with that Southern lady."
"I fear," said I, "that it would have a deleterious effect on your
attachment to the principles of liberty."
"Liberty!" said she. "Oh, how foolish I have been! I see now that there
is another side to that question."
"I hope, my dear," said I, "that you will say and do nothing to occasion
any reproach. Certainly, there are two sides to every question. If you
manifest any surprise at finding that there is another side to the
Liberty question, I fear that some will quote to you the fable of the
mouse who was born in a meal-chest."
"I never heard of it," said she.
"Why," said I, "the mouse one day stole up to the edge of the chest,
when the cover had been left open, and, looking round on the
barn-chamber, she said, 'Dear me, I had no idea that the world was half
so large.'"
"The cover has been down and the meal has been in my eyes long enough,"
said she. "I have been so much accustomed for a long time to read in our
papers about 'enormous wrong,' 'stupendous injustice,' 'the
slave-breeders,' 'sum of all villanies,' that, unconsciously, I have
come to think of the South, indiscriminately, as though they were Robin
Hood's men, or"--
"O my dear," said I, "you must have known that there are many good
people at the South, notwithstanding slavery."
"How can there be one good man or woman there," said she, "if all that
those newspapers say of slave-holding be true? Husband, depend upon it
we have been believing a great lie. Just think of that letter. What a
tale many of those words reveal. When the infants of our former servants
die, do our ladies write such letters about them? I should judge that
owning a fellow-creature softens and refines the heart, if this letter
is any sign, instead of making them all barbarians. All the newspapers
and novels in the world cannot do away the impressions which that
letter has made on my mind. I tell you, husband, having slaves is not
the unmitigated curse to owners nor to slaves that we have been taught
to believe."
"Perhaps," said I, interrupting her, "you would like to live at the
South, and own a few."
"I could not be hired by wealth," said she, "to have them for help, even
here. I never did like them; and when I think that there are good men
and women who do, and who are as kind to the poor creatures as this dear
lady, I think that we should give thanks to God."
"Oh, the Southern people are not all like this good lady, by any means,"
said I.
"'Peradventure,'" said she, "'there be fifty righteous.' There must be
tens of thousands. People like this lady are very apt to make good the
saying of the blackberry pickers when they see a blackberry, 'Where
there's one there's more.' The letter reads as though it were an
every-day thing, a matter of course, for this lady to be kind and loving
to the blacks; and for my part I bless any one who has anything to do
for her or for those like her. Our papers never tell us such stories as
this letter contains. No, they, do not love to hear them, I fear; but if
a slave is beaten or ill-treated, then the chimes begin, 'enormous
wrong,' 'stupendous injustice,' 'sum of all villanies.'"
"Why, my dear," said I, "you are getting to be pro-slavery very fast."
"Never," said she, "if you mean by that, as I suppose you do, approving
all that is involved in slavery and all that is committed under the
system."
"But," said I, "your present feeling toward this Southern lady may
insensibly lead you to believe that it is right to own a
fellow-creature. Does not Cowper say,--
"'I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep
And startle when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earned?'"
"How Kate must 'startle' and go into convulsions with terror every time
this mistress wakes!" she replied. "If Cowper had written in Alabama,
instead of describing a state of slavery such as existed in the British
possessions, and not, as in the South, mixed up with his every-day life;
if the first face with which he had become familiar as a babe had been a
black face, the face of his mother's 'slave' loving him, and nursing
him, and he, in turn, had tended his old 'Mammy' in her decrepitude, his
imagination would have contained some other pictures than those in the
lines which you quote. Had there been a Mrs. Cowper, I fancy she would
have been like this lady; and perhaps we should have seen Mr. Cowper
acting the kind part of this lady's husband toward a slave-mother and
her babe, his 'property,' so called. I lay awake here, last night, while
you were writing, and thought it all over. What were you writing about
so long? I wished that I had a pencil and paper near me. Those English
and French people who got rid of slavery as one gets rid of a bunion,
know nothing about slavery mingled with our very life-blood. How
self-righteous they are! Our people, too, are perpetually quoting what
Thomas Jefferson said about slavery in his day. Pray, has there been no
progress? Why are we not permitted to hear what Southern men, as good as
Jefferson, now say about modern slavery?"
"My dear," said I, "perhaps you are not fully qualified as yet to judge
of this great subject in all its relations. The greatest and wisest men
are divided in opinion about it."
"Great subject!" said she, "please let me interrupt you; there is but
one side to it, I should judge, from reading our papers. What do some of
the 'greatest and wisest men,' on the other side, have to say for
themselves? Are they all 'friends of oppression,' 'enemies of freedom,'
'minions of the slave-power,' 'dough-faces'? Husband, I am thoroughly
disgusted. I have been compelled to have uncharitable feelings toward
thousands of people like this Southern lady; I confess I have really
hated them, as I hate men-stealers and pirates. This letter has
convinced me of my sin. It is like the Gospel in its effect upon me."
"But, my dear," said I, "recollect that good people may be in great
error, and we read, 'Thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor, and not
suffer sin upon him.' Now, to hold a fellow-being in bondage,--how can
it be otherwise than 'stupendous injustice'?"
"I wonder," said she, "if Kate feels that she is in 'bondage' to this
lady. I wonder if she would not think it cruel, if her mistress should
set her free."
"But it is wrong," said I, "to hold property in a human being, whether
the bondman be in favor of it or not."
"'Property!'" said she. "I should like to be such 'property,' if I were
a black woman. If it were wrong in the abstract," said she, "it might
not be in practice."
"Oh," said I, "what a pro-slavery idea that is! where did you learn it?"
"I learned it," said she, "at our corn-husking, when the Squire read
extracts from John Quincy Adams's speech about China, in which he said
that if China would not open her trade to the world, it would be right
to make war upon her. Now war is wrong, but circumstances sometimes make
it right. So with holding certain men in slavery, under certain
circumstances. I cannot believe that it is right to go and enslave whom
we will; but the blacks being here, I can see that it may be the very
best thing for all concerned that they should be owned. This may be
God's way of having them governed and educated."
I found that I was getting deeper into the subject than I intended, and,
besides, it was time to rise. As I left the room, she said, "You _will_
change those papers, won't you? then we will have some more pleasant
talks about this subject." She called to me from the door, "Please don't
send back the lady's letter; I wish to copy it." This is my reason for
not sending the letter with my reply to it. You will certainly give me
credit for candor in telling you all that my wife said. However, it is
so easily answered that I need not fear to intrust you with it.
Yours, for the slave,
A. FREEMAN NORTH.
P.S. After all, I concluded to retain this, and wait till my wife had
made what use she desired of the letter, that I might be sure and return
it to you safely. In the mean time, I have changed the papers. How
irresistible a pleading woman is, especially a wife. Her very want of
logic makes her more so, when we are good-natured. She came upon me with
just such another supplication a few mornings since. As soon as she
awoke, she said, "Husband, do please have our parlor window-sashes let
down from the top." "For ventilation?" said I. "Yes," said she,
"partly;" but I saw that she smiled. "What has made you think of it so
suddenly?" said I. "Do you not want to catch some more canaries?" said
she. "I suspect," said I, "that you would like to have ours escape."
"Perhaps," said she, "that would be a relief to you from your present
embarrassment." Then I saw that all this was banter. She wished to teaze
me a little. The truth is, I have two fine singing canaries and a
mocking-bird. Some of my pro-slavery friends delight to pester me about
them. They say that they mean to issue a habeas corpus, and take them
before Justice Bird, (who, you know, queerly enough, happens to be
United States Commissioner,) and inquire if they be not restrained of
their freedom. I tell them that man has dominion over all the fowls of
the air. But they say, "Then might makes right! Is it not a fine thing
that such a lover of liberty and friend of freedom and enemy of
oppression should keep those little prisoners for his selfish
gratification. Come, be a practical emancipationist to the extent of
your ability; set the South an example; break every yoke." "They are
better off with me," said I; "the hawks or cats would catch them, or
they would die from exposure." "Expediency!" said one of them; "do
justice, if the heavens fall." "Fye at _justitia_!" said one, who
pretended to take my part. "_Ruat coelum_, Let them rush to heaven,"
replied the other. "Parse _coelum_, please, sir," said my boy in the
Academy. "Yes, past the ceiling," said the lawyer, pretending to
misunderstand him; "that's right, my son;"--and more wretched punning of
the same sort. Hence Mrs. North's pretended supplication about the
window-sashes. She has been in excellent spirits ever since I stopped
the papers. She says that she wonders at herself so calm and happy. I
heard her yesterday calling at the stairs to a little lisping English
waiting-maid, who cannot pronounce _s_: "Judith," said she, "did you not
hear the parlor-bell?" Judith walked up, and said, "Mitthith North,
lately you've rung tho eathy, that motht of the time I thought it mutht
be a acthident, and didn't come up at futht. I thpect the wireth ith got
ruthty." Mrs. North said nothing, but afterward, in relating the affair
to me, she said she truly believed that it was owing to my stopping the
papers. For she could remember how often she went to the bell-rope
saying to herself as she pulled it, "sum of all villanies!" then
"enormous wrong," with another pull, and then "stupendous injustice,"
with another. Several times she says Judith has rushed up to the parlor
with "Ma'am, whath the matter! the bell rung three timth right off." She
thinks that her nervous system will last longer without the papers than
with them. As she told me this, she was shutting down the lid of the
piano for the night. As it fell into its place, the strings set up a
beautiful murmur. "Oh, hear that!" said she; "how solemn it is!" "I
suppose," said I, "you would not have heard it, if those papers had been
in the house." I shall not tell you, a bachelor, what she said and did.
I trust that her views on the great subject of freedom will get adjusted
by and by; and I am debating with myself what papers to take, having
been obliged, for my own edification, to become a subscriber to the
reading-room. There, however, I meet with a good many pro-slavery
prints, and I am tempted to look into them; after which I frequently
feel as though I should pull a bell-rope three times. A.F.N.