MORBID NORTHERN CONSCIENCE.
"Heaven pities ignorance:
She's still the first that has her pardon sign'd;
All sins else see their faults; she's, only, blind."
MIDDLETON: _No Help like a Woman's._
[Accompanying note, from A. BETTERDAY CUMMING to A. FREEMAN NORTH.
MY DEAR MR. NORTH,--
With many thanks for your kindness and frankness, and with my warmest
congratulations to Mrs. North for the pleasant effect which the Southern
lady's letter has had upon her, I send you another document, hoping that
she will read it to you. It will not be worth while for me to say
anything about this production. It purports to be from a young man in
one of our New England literary institutions, whose aunt, with her
husband, was residing at the South for the health of a niece, a sister
to this young man;--they being orphans. The letter is so entirely in the
same key with your feelings that you cannot fail to be interested.
Knowing that you love rare specimens in everything, I send you this as
"the only one of its kind," or as we say, "_sui generis_."--A.B.C.]
---- College, ---- -- ----.
MY DEAR AUNT,--
I have not heard from you but once since your arrival at the South. It
is because sister is more unwell? or because you are very busy with
your arrangements for the winter? or is it because, as I more than half
suspect, you are so much overcome by your first observation and
experience of slavery, that you have but little strength left to write
to me from that "---- post of observation, darker every hour"? Perhaps
you are mustering courage to tell me of the sights which you have seen,
the little while that you have been among the poor, enslaved children of
the sun in our Southern house of bondage. "Afraid to ask, yet much
concerned to know," I wait impatiently for a letter from you. I expect
to make great use of its details among my fellow-students, many of whom,
I mourn to say, have their hearts case-hardened against the story of
oppression. They will show an interest in everybody and everything
sooner than in the slave and his wrongs. They are not only callous on
that subject, but they laugh at your zeal and call it hard names.
No one can tell what I suffer in the cause of freedom, through my
well-meant endeavors to interest and instruct others on the subject
which absorbs my thoughts. I know that I shall have your sympathy; and
when I come to hear from you what your own eyes have seen, ere this, in
slavery, I shall esteem all my sufferings in the cause of the slave as
light as air.
I employ the intervals of study in walking among the beautiful scenery
of the village and its environs, if haply I may meet with some to whom I
may open my mind on this great theme. The last time that I went out for
this purpose, I met with a sad sight. A horse was running away with a
buggy, while between the body of the carriage and the wheel I saw
depending a foot, which I at once inferred was that of a lady. The horse
rushed by, and sure enough, a young lady had fallen on the floor of the
buggy, holding the reins, evidently entangled and embarrassed in her
posture, uttering the most heart-rending cries and shrieks, with
intermingled calls to the horse to stop.
I could not help looking at the horse, as he passed, with feelings of
strong displeasure. To think that anything having an ear to hear and a
sensibility to feel should be so heedless of the cries of distress,
roused up my soul to indignation. As I reflected, however, it occurred
to me that no doubt this horse had been subjected to unkind treatment
from his youth up. I began to blame his owners. Had the law of kindness
been observed in the early management of this horse, doubtless he would
have regarded the first appeal of this young lady to him. May we not
hope, dear Aunt, that a new era is dawning upon us with regard to the
universal triumph of love and kindness over oppression of every kind,
and that the brute creation will partake of its benign influences? The
tone and manner in which horses are spoken to often sends a chill to my
heart.
This reminds me, if you will excuse longer delay in my narrative, of
some unfavorable impressions which I received lately on my way to
Boston, with regard to the imperious manner in which a traveller is
assailed by advertisements on the fences, as you pass through the
environs of the city. Every few miles, as the cars passed along, I saw,
printed on the rough boards of a fence: "Visit" so and so; "Use" so and
so; "Try" so and so. I would not be willing to say how often my
attention was caught by those mandatory advertisements. At last I became
conscious of some feeling of resistance. Whether it was that I began to
breathe the air of Bunker Hill, and the atmosphere which nourishes our
most eminent friends of freedom, so many of whom, you know, live in
Boston and vicinity, I cannot tell; but I found myself saying, with
quite enough resentment and emphasis, "I will not 'use' so and so; I
will not 'try' so and so; especially, I will not 'visit' so and
so,--First, It will not be convenient. Secondly, I have no occasion to
do so. Thirdly, I do not know the way; but, Finally, I do not like to be
addressed in this manner, as an overseer of a Southern plantation
addresses a slave. I am not a slave. I am a Massachusetts freeman." This
way of speaking to people, dear Aunty, must be discountenanced. It will,
by and by, beget an aptitude for servile obedience; the eye and ear
becoming accustomed to the forms of domination, we shall have yokes and
chains upon us before we are aware. Some one says, "Let me write the
songs for a nation, and I care not who makes her laws." So say I, Let me
write imperative advertisements on fences and buildings, and all
resistance to Southern encroachments and usurpation will soon be in
vain.
But to resume my narrative. I began to look round, as soon as my
excitement about the runaway horse would allow, for some one to whom I
could open my overburdened mind on the subject of freedom. I espied a
man with an immense load of chairs, from a factory in our neighborhood,
as I supposed, on his way to Boston. Four horses drew the load, which I
saw was very heavy; not so heavy, I thought with myself, as that which
four millions of my fellow-men are this moment laboring with, over the
gloomy hills of darkness in our Southern States. I felt impelled to
address the driver on this great theme. So, before he had reached the
top of the hill, I called out,--
"Driver!"
Perhaps there was more suddenness and zeal in my call than was
judicious, but the driver immediately said "Whoa!" to his horses, and he
ran hither and thither for stones to block the wheels to keep his load
from running back, down hill.
I felt encouraged, by this, to think that he was of a kind and pliable
disposition; and seeing the wheels fortified, and the horses at rest, I
felt more disposed to hold conversation with the man. "Who knows," I
said to myself, "but that I may now make one new friend for the slave?"
"A warm day," said I.
"Yes, sir," said he, a little impatiently, I thought, The sun was very
hot, an August morning, no air stirring, well suited to make one think
of toil and woe under our Southern skies.
"Have you ever been at the South?" said I, wiping my forehead.
"No, sir," said he, picking out a knot in the snapper of his whip,
evidently to hide his embarrassment while waiting to know the drift of
my question. The sight of his whip kindled in my soul new zeal for the
poor slaves, knowing as I did how many of them were at that moment
skipping in their tortures and striving to flee from the piercing lash.
"Your toil in the hot sun with your load, my dear sir," said I, "is well
fitted to impress you with the thought of the miseries under which four
millions of your fellow-men are every day groaning in our Southern
country. I make no doubt that you are grateful for the blessings of
freedom which we enjoy here at the North. I wish to ask whether you are
doing anything against oppression; whether you belong to any Association
whose object is"--
"What on airth did you stop me for," said he, quite impatiently, and
yet with a lingering gleam of respect, and with some hesitancy at any
further rudeness of speech.
"My dear sir," said I, "four millions of Southern slaves are this very
hour groaning under sorrows which no tongue"--
"You"--(he hesitated a moment, and surveyed me from head to foot, and
then broke out,)--"putty-headed, white-birch-looking, nateral--stoppin'
a load right near the crown of a hill, no gully in the road, such a day
as this, and--'Ged ehp,'"--said he to his horses, as the stones under
the wheels that moment began to give way; and then he drew his lash
through one hand, with a most angry look. I really thought that I should
have to feel that lash. The thought instantly nerved me:--I'll bear it!
it's for the slave; let me remember them, I might have added, that are
whipped as whipped with them; but at that moment the horses had reached
the hill-top, and the driver was by their side.
He called back, as he passed round the rear of his load to the nigh side
of his team. I caught only a few of his last words;--"take your backbone
for a for'ard X." I snapped my thumb and finger at him, though not
lifting my arm from my side. The human spinal column, with its vertebræ,
for an axle-tree of a wagon! And yet, I immediately thought, the poor
negro's back is truly "the for'ard X" of the great wagon of our American
commerce. But I let him depart.
Salutary impressions, I cannot question, dear Aunty, were made upon his
mind. He had heard some things which would occupy his thoughts in his
solitary trudge on his way to Boston. That thought comforted me as I was
writhing a little on my way home, under his opprobrious epithets; for
you know that I was always sensitive when addressed with reproachful
words.
I could not help recalling and analyzing his scalding words of contempt.
I took a certain pleasure in doing so, because, as I saw and felt the
power of each in succession, I remembered what awful abuses flow from
the tongues of Southern masters and mistresses continually, as they goad
on their slaves to their work, or reproach them for not bringing in the
brick for which they had given them no straw. So it was comparatively a
light affliction for me to remember that I had been called by such hard
names. "Putty-headed!" said he. I infer, dear Aunty, that he must have
worked in the painter's department, and had been familiar with putty;
hence he drew the epithet, into whose signification I did not care to
inquire. "White-birch-looking!" I suppose he referred to the impression
of imbecility which we have in seeing a perfectly white tree in the
woods among the deep green of the sturdier trees. He may have referred
to the effect of sedentary habits on my complexion. However, I soon
forgot the particulars of his insulting address, retaining only the
impression that I had suffered, and that willingly, in the bleeding
cause of freedom.
It was a great relief to me that, just at that moment, a very fine dog
approached me and fawned upon me, then ran ahead, and seemed afraid that
I should send him back. After a while I tried to drive him away, but he
insisted on following me, and I have no doubt that I might have secured
him, had I wished to do so. I was not a little inclined, at one time, to
take him home with me, and to keep him as a companion in my walks. But
he had a collar with his own name, Bruno, upon it, and the name of his
owner. The question of right occurred to me. I debated it. Applying some
of the self-evident truths established by our own Independence, I almost
persuaded myself that I might rightfully take the dog. I reasoned thus:
1. All dogs are born free and equal. 2. They have an inalienable right
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 3. All governments
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. These
principles, breathed in, from childhood, with the atmosphere of our
glorious "Fourth," I did not hesitate to apply in the case of the dog. I
do not know what practical conclusion I might have arrived at, but
suddenly I lost sight of Bruno in consequence of a new adventure, in the
process of which he disappeared.
A matronly looking lady came suddenly out of a gate, with a cup in one
hand containing a teaspoon, and a brown earthen mug in the other hand.
She pushed the gate open before her, easily; but I saw that she was
embarrassed about shutting it. I stepped forward and assisted her.
"Some kind office for the sick, I dare say," said I.
"A woman in that plastered house is very sick," said she; "I have just
fixed some marsh-mallow for her, to see if it will ease her cough. Sorry
to trouble you, sir, but my cup was so full that I could not use my
hands."
"I suppose," said I, "madam, if you will allow me to detain you a
moment,"--
"I am afraid my drink in the cup will get cold, sir, but"--
"Only a moment, madam," said I; (for I did not feel at liberty to walk
with her;) "only a moment; I am led to think, by your kindness to this
poor woman, of the millions of bond-people in our Southern country who
never feel the hand of love ministering to their sick and dying"--
"O you ignorant thing!" said she, pouring the contents of the cup into
the mug, and then setting the cup on the mug, all without looking at me;
"where were you born and bred? You must be an abolitionist. Southern
ladies are the very best of nurses; and as to their slaves when they are
sick,--why their hearts are overflowing--why!" said she, "I could tell
you tales that would make you cry like a baby--the idea! millions of
slaves sick and neglected! Do you belong to ---- College?"
"Yes, madam," said I.
"Sophomore?" said she.
"Yes, madam." But it was a cutting question. She had an arch look as she
asked it.
"Well sir," said she, with a graceful air, in a half averted direction,
"you have some things to learn about your fellow-countrymen which are
not put down in your Moral Philosophies. Please do not betray your
ignorance on subjects about which you are evidently in midnight
darkness." She was some ways from me, but I heard her continue: "Was
there ever anything like this Northern ignorance and prejudice about the
Southern people!"
I had nothing to do but resume my lonely walk. My sense of desolateness
no tongue can tell. I whistled for Bruno, but in vain. She called me "an
ignorant thing," said I. Ignorant on the subject of slavery! How easy it
is to misjudge! Have I steadied free-soil papers all these years only to
be called "an ignorant thing!" I could graduate to-day from this
institution, though only in my second year, if the examination were
confined to the subject of slavery. I have thoroughly understood the
theory; I have learned by heart the codes of the iniquitous system. I
know it root and branch, from pith to bark. All the lecturers on the
subject have not labored in vain, nor spent their strength for nought,
with me. And now to be called "ignorant!" Just as though I could not
reason, that is, draw inferences from premises, make deductions from
facts. There is the great fact of slavery; it is "the sum of all
villanies;" men holding their fellow-men in bondage for the sake of
gain; the heart naturally covetous, oppressive, and cruel, where power
is unlimited. As though the law of kindness could, in such
circumstances, possibly prevail and mitigate the sorrows of the bondman!
The direct influence of slavery is to debase, to make barbarous, to
petrify; I know as well as though I saw it that the South must be full
of neglected, perishing objects, cast out to perish in their sicknesses.
You doubtless are acquainted, dear Aunty, with the great change in the
mode of reasoning introduced by Lord Bacon. We reason now from facts to
conclusion; this is called the inductive method, to collect facts, then
draw inferences. The facts which I have collected on the subject of
slavery, in my reading and hearing, lead me to a perfect theory on the
subject, and my confidence in that theory is all which it could be if,
like you, I were now seeing it verified with my own eyes.
I reason on this subject of slavery, just as our philosophers reason
about the moon. You have learned, dear Aunt, ere this, that there is no
water in the moon. Certain things are observed by our telescopes, in the
moon, from which we are sure that there is no water there. Now there are
certain given facts in slavery. Slavery is Barbarism. It consists in
holding men to compulsory servitude. The human heart is avaricious; it
gets all it can, and keeps all it gets. Give it complete power over a
human being, and there are no limits to its cupidity and wrong-doing,
but the finite nature of the thing itself. Hence, does it not follow
that there can be no disinterestedness, no tender mercies in slavery?
Yes, dear Aunt, as we are perfectly sure that there can be no water in
the moon, so are we sure, by the same unerring rule of reasoning
according to the inductive philosophy, that there is not one drop of
water in slavery for the parched lips of a dying slave. I stated this to
a member of our Junior Class who is a wonderful metaphysician. He was
kind enough to say that he could discover no flaw in the logic. Your
letter, which, I trust, is now on its way to me, I know will fully
confirm my theory and conclusion.
This lady had probably been reading some miserable cant about Southern
humanity, for there are people everywhere who take the wrong side of
every subject, from sheer obstinacy. What can disprove the laws of human
nature? They require that things should be at the South as our theories
lay them down.
In our Institution I mourn to say there is much opposition to the
principles of freedom. Not only so, but the students, many of them, mock
at us who stand up against oppression.
You may not be aware, dear Aunty, that I have a habit, in walking, of
keeping my hands firmly clenched, and my thumbs laid flat and pressed
down over the knuckles of my forefingers. This, I am aware, gives the
thumbs a flattened look. One of our principal pro-slavery students
delights to laugh at me to my face. Perhaps I am wrong in connecting
everything with this all-absorbing theme, but, truly, my thoughts all
run in that direction. Mother and you were accustomed to send me on
errands when I was little, and you placed your money in my right hand
and mother hers in my left, because, on my return to our house, your
room was on the right hand of the entry. So I used to go along, holding
your respective moneys in my palms, with my thumbs stopping the
apertures. And now I am persecuted for the fidelity which led me to
acquire a habit that cleaves to me to this day. But little did I dream,
dear Aunty, when I padded along like a straight footed animal in the
water, instead of having the free use of my open palms to aid me in
walking, that I was acquiring a habit to be to me an inlet of torture in
behalf of our manacled four millions, whose hands feel the galling bonds
of slavery. I take it joyfully, because it is all for the slave.
The day that I came home from my two interviews and efforts just
related, a pro-slavery student, a Senior, invited me into his room. He
is exceedingly kind and generous, though, I am sorry to say it, a friend
of oppression. He gave me a splendid apple, the first which I had seen
for the season. He dusted my coat with his feather-duster, and he even
dusted my boots. He asked me how far I had been walking. I told him all
which I had said and done, thinking that it would profitably remind him
of the great subject. He roared with laughter. "Three cheers for
Gustavus;" "isn't that rich;"--waving, all the while, the
feather-duster, and breaking out with fresh peals, as I related one
thing after another. The noise which he made brought in several of the
students from neighboring rooms, and he related my stories to them as
they stood with their thumbs and fingers holding open their text-books
at the places where they were studying. They were a curious looking set,
in their dressing-gowns, slippers, and smoking-caps; and the most of
them, unfortunately, happened to be pro-slavery, and advocates of
oppression; by which I mean, not in favor of my mode of viewing and
treating the subject of slavery. One of them was so amused and excited
that he lost all self-control. He threw down his book, caught me with
his two hands about the waist, and tickled me so that I fell upon the
floor. Then they raised a shout. We have cool nights here, sometimes, in
the warmest weather, and we keep, on the foot-boards of our beds, cotton
comforters, called _delusions_, because they are so downy and light. Two
of the students took the Senior's comforter and laid it on me; then four
of them sat down, one on each corner, to keep me underneath. I have told
you that it was a sultry August day. I thought that I should smother. I
told them so, as well as my choked voice would allow; but one of them
said, in a soft, meek tone, as I writhed in distress, "Hush, Gustavus,
lie still; you are certainly laboring under a delusion." This was all
the more painful from its being so cruelly true, in a literal sense,
while I knew that they had reference to my views with regard to freedom,
in the word "delusion." What sustained me in those moments, dear Aunty?
It was not that I had myself stood by when this trick was played on
Freshmen, and encouraged it by my actions; no, a higher and holier power
than conscience of wrong-doing wrought upon me in those moments. Oh, I
thought, the very cotton which fills this comforter, was cultivated by
the hand of a slave. And shall I complain at being nearly smothered by
it, when I remember what an incubus slavery is to the poor creature who
gathered this cotton, and what an incubus it is to our unhappy land? I
was delivered at last from my load, because my tormentors were tired of
their sport. Would that there were some prospect that they who load
cruel burdens on the slave were increasingly tired of their work!
They would not, however, let me rise. So, thought I, when we have taken
the burden of slavery off from the poor negro, unholy prejudice against
color keeps him from rising to a level with the rest of the community. I
begged that I might get up. They told me that my morning exertions
required longer rest. I told them that I must get my Greek. Whereupon
one of them stood over me, with his arms raised in a deploring attitude,
and said,--
"Sternitur infelix!--
--Et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos."
This, dear Aunty, is the lamentation of a Latin poet over a Greek
soldier lying prostrate on the battle-field, far from home;--"and dying
he remembers his sweet Greece." So they made game of me with the help of
the Classics, giving poignancy to their jokes by polishing the tips with
classical allusions. While I was under the "delusion," they sung
snatches of Bruce's Address to his army; and when they came to the words
"Who so base as be a slave?--
Let him turn and flee,"
one of them ran a cane under the delusion and punched me with it,
keeping stroke to the music. This was little short of profaneness. They
asked me if the chair-maker's harnesses were probably made by free or
slave labor, alluding, unfeelingly, to a mistake which I made in a
recitation one day, when two of those very students had kept me talking
about slavery up to the very moment when the recitation-bell rang, so
that I had not looked at my lesson. There are men in my class, and
these were some of them, who, I am told, are plotting to prevent my
having the first appointment, to which they know that my marks at
recitation entitle me. But may I never be so prejudiced against those
who differ from me on the subject of slavery as to deny them credit for
things which they have fairly earned. I leave this to the avowed enemies
of human rights. For the cause of the slave, I must gain the first
appointment.
I alluded, just now, to my feelings at witnessing tricks played on the
Freshmen. Had the Sophomores asked my advice before they played those
tricks, I should have dissuaded them; but when they played them, with
such courage and enterprise, I stood before them with admiration. But
while I was under that quilt, I found that I did not admire the
Sophomores at all, any more than I did the Seniors who then had me in
their power.
The enemies of freedom, in College, had a great triumph the other
evening. One of them, in one of the Literary Societies, read an Original
Poem, the title of which was, "The Fly-time of Freedom." He spoke of
"our glorious summer of Liberty" being infested and pestered with noisy,
provoking things, which he characterized under the names of dor-bugs,
millers, and all those creatures which fly into the room when the lamp
is lighted; the swarms of black gnats which are about your head in the
woods; horse-flies which stick, and leave blood running; and
devil's-darning-needles. One brave man here, a great "friend of
freedom," who, they falsely say, loves to be persecuted, and longs for
martyrdom, and interprets everything that way, he described as a miller,
who seems to court death in the flame. I think he aimed at me in
speaking of soft, harmless bugs which creep over your newspaper or book.
Many faces were turned to me as he repeated these lines. I am sorry to
say the piece was much applauded. It has put back the cause of
emancipation in College, I fear, a term.
The following introduction to another piece was written, and was read,
at the same meeting, by a member of my own class. I fear that there is a
sly hit intended by the writer, which I do not discern, at somebody, or
something, related to freedom. This I suspected from the applause it
excited on the part of those who I know are the most deadly foes we have
to free institutions. I obtained a copy of this introduction. It will
serve, at least, to show you, dear Aunty, what a variety of topics we
have to excite our minds here in College. You can exercise your
discretion about letting uncle read it, as it is on a subject of some
delicacy. The writer says,--
"I am collecting facts from our daily papers illustrating the Barbarism
of Matrimony. My list of wives poisoned, beaten, maimed for life by
their husbands, and of divorces, cruel desertions, the effects on wives
of intemperance in husbands, is truly fearful. I make no question that
there are some happy marriages. But a relation which affords such
peculiar opportunities for cruelty to women, must sooner or later
disappear. No doubt the time will come when marriage will be deemed a
relic of barbarism, and a bridal veil be exhibited as one of the mock
decorations of the unhappy victims. Human nature in man is not good
enough to be trusted with such a responsibility as the happiness of
woman. Let Bachelors of Arts, on our parchments, suggest to us our duty
to aid, through our example, as well as by words, in breaking this
dreadful yoke, bidding those innocent young women who are now, perhaps,
fearfully looking at us as their future oppressors, to be forever free.
In the language of young Hamlet: 'I say, we will have no more
marriages.'"
* * * * *
Just before dark one evening, I was sitting in my room, meditating on
the great theme which absorbs my thoughts. My eye was caught by the
bright bolt of my door-lock, the part of the bolt between the lock and
the catch showing, beyond question, that the door was fastened. Some one
on the outside had turned a key upon me.
I had the self-possession to be quiet, for my mind had been calmed by
reflecting, in that twilight hour, that now one more day of toil for the
poor slaves was over.
But as I looked at the bolt, my attention was diverted by something near
the top of the door, moving with a strange motion. It was black; it
opened and shut. I drew toward it. I found that it was the leg of a
turkey, the largest that I ever saw. It was held or fastened in the
ventilator over the door, while some one on the outside was evidently
pulling the tendons of the claw, making it open and shut.
There it performed its tragi-comic gibes for several minutes.
I resumed my seat, unterrified, of course, and proceeded to turn the
spectre to good account. I addressed it, in a moderate tone; though I
think that I used some gesticulation. Said I: Personation of the
Slave-power! predatory, grasping, black! thinkest thou a panting
fugitive lies hid under my "delusion?" or wouldst thou seize a freeman?
The Ægis of Massachusetts is over me. Gape! Yawn! Thou art powerless;
but thy impudence is sublime.--Ten or fifteen voices then solemnly
chanted these words:--
"Emblem of Slavery
Clutching the Free!
We've digested the turkey
That gobbled oil thee.
Sure as THANKSGIVING hastened,
Cock-turkey! thy hour,
Thanksgivings shall blazon
Thy downfall, Slave-power!
"The Slave-power has talons,
Like Nebuchadnezzar;
Slaves are the Lord's flagons
Our modern Belshazzar
From the Temple of Nature
Has stolen away.
'Mean!' 'Mean!' be writ o'er him!
Wrath! canst thou de"--
Here screams of laughter, and a scampering in the entry, and the
turkey's leg tumbling into my room, ended the trick and their
cantillation. I was wishing to hear, in the next stanza, the idea that
as the tendons of the claw were worked by a foreign power, so slavery at
the South owes its activity to Northern influence. Perhaps it is due to
myself to say that the word scampering, a few lines above, has no
revengeful reference, in its first syllable, to the author of the trick.
The cause of humanity, I find, has a tendency to make one cautious and
charitable in his use of words.
They have anti-slavery meetings in the village, now and then, which I
attend. All the talent of the place, and the truly good, are there. One
evening, when the excitement rose high, a tall, awkward young man
mounted the stage, and said that he wanted to offer one resolution as a
cap-sheaf. You will infer, dear Aunty, that he was an agriculturist. He
lifted his paper high up in one hand, while his other hand was extended
in the other direction, and so was his foot under that hand. He looked
like Boötes, on the map of the heavens, which we used to take with us,
you know, in studying the comet. "Read it!" "Read it!" said the meeting.
"I will," said he, flinging himself almost round once, in his
excitement, reminding me of a war-dance, and then taking his sublime
attitude again; when he read,--
"Resolved, Mr. Cheerman, fact is, that Abolition is everything, and
nuthin' else is nuthin'."
Some of the younger portion of the audience wished to raise a laugh, but
the reddening, angry faces of the prominent friends of the slave were
turned upon them instantly, and overawed them.
All were silent for a moment, when the Chairman rose to speak. He was a
short man, with reddish hair, and his teeth were almost constantly
visible, his lips not seeming to be an adequate covering for them. He
had, moreover, a habit of snuffing up with his nose,--in doing which his
upper lip, what there was of it, played its part, and made him show his
teeth by frequent spasms. Being a little bow-legged, he made an awkward
effort in coming to the front of the stage; but we all love him, because
he is such a vigorous friend of freedom, looking as though he would
willingly be executioner of all the oppressors in the land. He said that
he "utterly concurred" with the mover in the spirit of his resolution;
it was not, to be sure, in the usual form of resolutions, but that could
easily be fixed; and he would suggest that it be referred to the
Standing Committee of the Freedom League. "I agree to that," said the
pro-slavery Senior who gave me that entertainment in his room, (but who,
by the way, being a friend of oppression, had no right to speak in a
meeting in behalf of freedom;) "I agree to that," said he, "Mr.
Chairman, and I move that the School-master be added to the Committee."
What a cruel laugh went through the meeting! while the most
distinguished friends of the slave had hard work to control their faces.
I could not help going to the mover of the resolution after the meeting;
and, laying two fingers of my right hand on his arm, I said, "Don't be
put down; he tried to reproach you for not being college-bred; he had
better get the slaves well educated before he laughs at a Massachusetts
freeman for not being a scholar."--He tossed his black fur-skin cap
half-way to his head, and he wheeled round as he caught it, saying,
"Don't care, liberty's better'n larnin', 'nuff sight."--"Both are good,"
said I, "my friend, and we must give them both to the slave."--"Give 'em
the larnin' after y'u've sot 'em free!" said he; "I'll fight for 'em;
don't want to hear nuthin' 'bout nuthin' else but liberty to them that's
bound." He stooped and pulled a long whip and a tin pail from under the
seat of the pew where he had been sitting, making considerable noise, so
that the people, as they passed out, turned, and the sight of him and
his accoutrements made great sport for some whose opinions and feelings
were the least to be regarded. I saw in him, dear Aunty, a fair specimen
of native, inbred love of liberty and hatred of oppression,
unsophisticated, to be relied on in our great contest with the
slave-power. I have been told, since the meeting, that his Christian
name is Isaiah.
The meeting that evening appointed me a delegate to an Anti-slavery
Convention which is to be held before long. I am expected to represent
the College on the great arena of freedom. They have done me too much
honor. Since my appointment, the students have sent me, anonymously,
through the post-office, resolutions to be presented by me at the
Convention. I have copied them into a book as they came in, and I will
transcribe them for you and send them herewith. The spirit of liberty
is, on the whole, certainly rising among the students. As the blood of
the martyrs is the seed of the Church, I cannot but hope that my trials
in the cause of freedom have wrought good in the Institution. Some who
send in these resolutions privately, are, no doubt, secret friends,
needing a little more courage to face the pro-slavery feeling and
sentiment which are all about them. Some one who read these resolutions
suggested the idea of their being a burlesque. I repudiated the idea at
once. They will commend themselves to you, dear Aunty, I am sure, as
honest and truthful.
The President called me to his room yesterday, and asked me about the
treatment which I received from those Seniors. While I was telling him
of it, I noticed that he kept his handkerchief close to his face almost
all the time. I thought at first that his nose bled, or that he had a
toothache; but I afterward believed that he was weeping at the story of
my wrongs. A Southerner, in the Junior Class, said he had no doubt that
the President was laughing heartily all the time. None but a minion of
the slave-power could have suggested this idea. The President felt so
much that he merely told me to return to my room.
But I perceive, by the students with letters and papers in their hands,
that the mail is in. I will add a postscript, if I find a letter from
you; and I will send on the resolutions at once. Write soon, dear Aunty,
to your loving nephew, and to
Yours for the slave,
Gustavus.