DEATH IS FREEDOM
"I asked but freedom, and ye gave
Chains, and the freedom of the grave."--Snelling.
THERE are, in the district of Columbia, several slave prisons, or
"Negro pens," as they are termed. These prisons are mostly
occupied by persons to keep their slaves in, when collecting
their gangs together for the New Orleans market. Some of them
belong to the government, and one, in particular, is noted for
having been the place where a number of free coloured persons
have been incarcerated from time to time. In this district is
situated the capital of the United States. Any free coloured
persons visiting Washington, if not provided with papers
asserting and proving their right to be free, may be arrested and
placed in one of these dens. If they succeed in showing that they
are free, they are set at liberty, provided they are able to pay
the expenses of their arrest and imprisonment; if they cannot pay
these expenses, they are sold out. Through this unjust and
oppressive law, many persons born in the Free States have been
consigned to a life of slavery on the cotton, sugar, or rice
plantations of the Southern States. By order of her master,
Clotel was removed from Richmond and placed in one of these
prisons, to await the sailing of a vessel for New Orleans. The
prison in which she was put stands midway between the capitol at
Washington and the President's house. Here the fugitive saw
nothing but slaves brought in and taken out, to be placed in
ships and sent away to the same part of the country to
which she herself would soon be compelled to go. She had seen or
heard nothing of her daughter while in Richmond, and all hope of
seeing her now had fled. If she was carried back to New Orleans,
she could expect no mercy from her master.
At the dusk of the evening previous to the day when she was to be
sent off, as the old prison was being closed for the night, she
suddenly darted past her keeper, and ran for her life. It is not
a great distance from the prison to the Long Bridge, which passes
from the lower part of the city across the Potomac, to the
extensive forests and woodlands of the celebrated Arlington
Place, occupied by that distinguished relative and descendant of
the immortal Washington, Mr. George W. Custis. Thither the poor
fugitive directed her flight. So unexpected was her escape, that
she had quite a number of rods the start before the keeper had
secured the other prisoners, and rallied his assistants in
pursuit. It was at an hour when, and in a part of the city where,
horses could not be readily obtained for the chase; no
bloodhounds were at hand to run down the flying woman; and for
once it seemed as though there was to be a fair trial of speed and
endurance between the slave and the slave-catchers. The keeper
and his forces raised the hue and cry on her pathway close
behind; but so rapid was the flight along the wide avenue, that
the astonished citizens, as they poured forth from their
dwellings to learn the cause of alarm, were only able to
comprehend the nature of the case in time to fall in with the
motley mass in pursuit (as many a one did that night), to raise
an anxious prayer to heaven, as they refused to join in the
pursuit, that the panting fugitive might escape, and the
merciless soul dealer for once be disappointed of his prey. And
now with the speed of an arrow--having passed the
avenue--with the distance between her and her pursuers constantly
increasing, this poor hunted female gained the "Long Bridge," as
it is called, where interruption seemed improbable, and already
did her heart begin to beat high with the hope of success. She
had only to pass three-fourths of a mile across the bridge, and
she could bury herself in a vast forest, just at the time when
the curtain of night would close around her, and protect her from
the pursuit of her enemies.
But God by his Providence had otherwise determined. He had
determined that an appalling tragedy should be enacted that
night, within plain sight of the President's house and the
capitol of the Union, which should be an evidence wherever it
should be known, of the unconquerable love of liberty the heart
may inherit; as well as a fresh admonition to the slave dealer,
of the cruelty and enormity of his crimes. Just as the pursuers
crossed the high draw for the passage of sloops, soon after
entering upon the bridge, they beheld three men slowly
approaching from the Virginia side. They immediately called to
them to arrest the fugitive, whom they proclaimed a runaway
slave. True to their Virginian instincts as she came near, they
formed in line across the narrow bridge, and prepared to seize
her. Seeing escape impossible in that quarter, she stopped
suddenly, and turned upon her pursuers. On came the profane and
ribald crew, faster than ever, already exulting in her capture,
and threatening punishment for her flight. For a moment she
looked wildly and anxiously around to see if there was no hope of
escape. On either hand, far down below, rolled the deep foamy
waters of the Potomac, and before and behind the rapidly
approaching step and noisy voices of pursuers, showing
how vain would be any further effort for freedom. Her resolution
was taken. She clasped her hands convulsively, and raised them, as
she at the same time raised her eyes towards heaven, and begged
for that mercy and compassion there, which had been denied her on
earth; and then, with a single bound, she vaulted over the
railings of the bridge, and sunk for ever beneath the waves of
the river!
Thus died Clotel, the daughter of Thomas Jefferson, a president of
the United States; a man distinguished as the author of the
Declaration of American Independence, and one of the first
statesmen of that country.
Had Clotel escaped from oppression in any other land, in the
disguise in which she fled from the Mississippi to Richmond, and
reached the United States, no honour within the gift of the
American people would have been too good to have been heaped upon
the heroic woman. But she was a slave, and therefore out of the
pale of their sympathy. They have tears to shed over Greece and
Poland; they have an abundance of sympathy for "poor Ireland";
they can furnish a ship of war to convey the Hungarian refugees
from a Turkish prison to the "land of the free and home of the
brave." They boast that America is the "cradle of liberty"; if it
is, I fear they have rocked the child to death. The body of
Clotel was picked up from the bank of the river, where it had been
washed by the strong current, a hole dug in the sand, and there
deposited, without either inquest being held over it, or
religious service being performed. Such was the life and such the
death of a woman whose virtues and goodness of heart would have
done honour to one in a higher station of life, and who, if she
had been born in any other land but that of slavery, would have
been honoured and loved. A few days after the death of Clotel,
the following poem appeared in one of the newspapers:
"Now, rest for the wretched! the long day is past,
And night on yon prison descendeth at last.
Now lock up and bolt! Ha, jailor, look there!
Who flies like a wild bird escaped from the snare?
A woman, a slave-up, out in pursuit.
While linger some gleams of day!
Let thy call ring out!--now a rabble rout
Is at thy heels--speed away!
"A bold race for freedom!--On, fugitive, on!
Heaven help but the right, and thy freedom is won.
How eager she drinks the free air of the plains;
Every limb, every nerve, every fibre she strains;
From Columbia's glorious capitol,
Columbia's daughter flees
To the sanctuary God has given--
The sheltering forest trees.
"Now she treads the Long Bridge--joy lighteth her eye--
Beyond her the dense wood and darkening sky--
Wild hopes thrill her heart as she neareth the shore:
O, despair! there are men fast advancing before!
Shame, shame on their manhood! they hear, they heed
The cry, her flight to stay,
And like demon forms with their outstretched arms,
They wait to seize their prey!
"She pauses, she turns! Ah, will she flee back?
Like wolves, her pursuers howl loud on their track;
She lifteth to Heaven one look of despair--
Her anguish breaks forth in one hurried prayer
Hark! her jailor's yell! like a bloodhound's bay
On the low night wind it sweeps!
Now, death or the chain! to the stream she turns,
And she leaps! O God, she leaps!
"The dark and the cold, yet merciful wave,
Receives to its bosom the form of the slave:
She rises--earth's scenes on her dim vision gleam,
Yet she struggleth not with the strong rushing stream:
And low are the death-cries her woman's heart gives,
As she floats adown the river,
Faint and more faint grows the drowning voice,
And her cries have ceased for ever!
"Now back, jailor, back to thy dungeons, again,
To swing the red lash and rivet the chain!
The form thou would'st fetter--returned to its God;
The universe holdeth no realm of night
More drear than her slavery--
More merciless fiends than here stayed her flight--
Joy! the hunted slave is free!
"That bond-woman's corpse--let Potomac's proud wave
Go bear it along by our Washington's grave,
And heave it high up on that hallowed strand,
To tell of the freedom he won for our land.
A weak woman's corpse, by freemen chased down;
Hurrah for our country! hurrah!
To freedom she leaped, through drowning and death--
Hurrah for our country! hurrah!"