RETALIATION
"I had a dream, a happy dream;
I thought that I was free:
That in my own bright land again
A home there was for me."
WITH the deepest humiliation Horatio Green saw the daughter of
Clotel, his own child, brought into his dwelling as a servant.
His wife felt that she had been deceived, and determined to
punish her deceiver. At first Mary was put to work in the kitchen,
where she met with little or no sympathy from the other slaves,
owing to the fairness of her complexion. The child was white,
what should be done to make her look like other Negroes, was the
question Mrs. Green asked herself. At last she hit upon a plan:
there was a garden at the back of the house over which Mrs. Green
could look from her parlour window. Here the white slave-girl was
put to work, without either bonnet or handkerchief upon her head.
A hot sun poured its broiling rays on the naked face and neck of
the girl, until she sank down in the corner of the garden, and
was actually broiled to sleep. "Dat little nigger ain't working a
bit, missus," said Dinah to Mrs. Green, as she entered the
kitchen.
"She's lying in the sun, seasoning; she will work better by and
by," replied the mistress. "Dees white niggers always tink dey
sef good as white folks," continued the cook. "Yes, but we will
teach them better; won't we, Dinah?" "Yes, missus, I don't like
dees mularter niggers, no how: dey always want to set dey sef up
for something big." The cook was black, and was not without that
prejudice which is to be found among the Negroes, as well as
among the whites of the Southern States. The sun had the desired
effect, for in less than a fortnight Mary's fair complexion had
disappeared, and she was but little whiter than any other mulatto
children running about the yard. But the close resemblance
between the father and child annoyed the mistress more than the
mere whiteness of the child's complexion. Horatio made
proposition after proposition to have the girl sent away, for
every time he beheld her countenance it reminded him of the happy
days he had spent with Clotel. But his wife had commenced, and
determined to carry out her unfeeling and fiendish designs. This
child was not only white, but she was the granddaughter of Thomas
Jefferson, the man who, when speaking against slavery in the
legislature of Virginia, said,
"The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual
exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting
despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other.
With what execration should the statesman be loaded who,
permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of
the other, transforms those into despots and these into enemies,
destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the
other! For if the slave can have a country in this world, it must
be any other in preference to that in which he is born to live
and labour for another; in which he must lock up the faculties of
his nature, contribute as far as depends on his individual
endeavours to the evanishment of the human race, or entail his
own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding
from him. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure
when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the
minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?
that they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I
tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his
justice cannot sleep for ever; that, considering numbers, nature,
and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an
exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it may
become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no
attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.
"What an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil,
famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself, in vindication
of his own liberty, and the next moment be deaf to all those
motives, whose power supported him through his trial, and inflict
on his fellow-men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with
more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to
oppose! But we must wait with patience the workings of an
overruling Providence, and hope that that is preparing the
deliverance of these our suffering brethren. When the measure of
their tears shall be full--when their tears shall have involved
heaven itself in darkness--doubtless a God of justice will awaken
to their distress, and by diffusing light and liberality among
their oppressors, or at length by his exterminating thunder,
manifest his attention to things of this world, and that they are
not left to the guidance of blind fatality."
The same man, speaking of the probability that the slaves might
some day attempt to gain their liberties by a revolution, said,
"I tremble for my country, when I recollect that God is just, and
that His justice cannot sleep for ever. The Almighty has no
attribute that can take sides with us in such a struggle."
But, sad to say, Jefferson is not the only American statesman who
has spoken high-sounding words in favour of freedom, and then
left his own children to die slaves.