Slaveholders pride themselves upon being honorable men; but if you were
to hear the enormous lies they tell their slaves, you would have small
respect for their veracity. I have spoken plain English. Pardon me. I
cannot use a milder term. When they visit the north, and return home,
they tell their slaves of the runaways they have seen, and describe
them to be in the most deplorable condition. A slaveholder once told
me that he had seen a runaway friend of mine in New York, and that she
besought him to take her back to her master, for she was literally
dying of starvation; that many days she had only one cold potato to
eat, and at other times could get nothing at all. He said he refused to
take her, because he knew her master would not thank him for bringing
such a miserable wretch to his house. He ended by saying to me, “This
is the punishment she brought on herself for running away from a kind
master.”
This whole story was false. I afterwards staid with that friend in
New York, and found her in comfortable circumstances. She had never
thought of such a thing as wishing to go back to slavery. Many of
the slaves believe such stories, and think it is not worth while to
exchange slavery for such a hard kind of freedom. It is difficult to
persuade such that freedom could make them useful men, and enable them
to protect their wives and children. If those heathen in our Christian
land had as much teaching as some Hindoos, they would think otherwise.
They would know that liberty is more valuable than life. They would
begin to understand their own capabilities, and exert themselves to
become men and women.
But while the Free States sustain a law which hurls fugitives back
into slavery, how can the slaves resolve to become men? There are
some who strive to protect wives and daughters from the insults of
their masters; but those who have such sentiments have had advantages
above the general mass of slaves. They have been partially civilized
and Christianized by favorable circumstances. Some are bold enough to
_utter_ such sentiments to their masters. O, that there were more of
them!
Some poor creatures have been so brutalized by the lash that they will
sneak out of the way to give their masters free access to their wives
and daughters. Do you think this proves the black man to belong to an
inferior order of beings? What would _you_ be, if you had been born
and brought up a slave, with generations of slaves for ancestors? I
admit that the black man _is_ inferior. But what is it that makes him
so? It is the ignorance in which white men compel him to live; it is
the torturing whip that lashes manhood out of him; it is the fierce
bloodhounds of the South, and the scarcely less cruel human bloodhounds
of the north, who enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. _They_ do the work.
Southern gentlemen indulge in the most contemptuous expressions about
the Yankees, while they, on their part, consent to do the vilest
work for them, such as the ferocious bloodhounds and the despised
negro-hunters are employed to do at home. When southerners go to the
north, they are proud to do them honor; but the northern man is not
welcome south of Mason and Dixon’s line, unless he suppresses every
thought and feeling at variance with their “peculiar institution.”
Nor is it enough to be silent. The masters are not pleased, unless
they obtain a greater degree of subservience than that; and they are
generally accommodated. Do they respect the northerner for this? I trow
not. Even the slaves despise “a northern man with southern principles;”
and that is the class they generally see. When northerners go to the
south to reside, they prove very apt scholars. They soon imbibe the
sentiments and disposition of their neighbors, and generally go beyond
their teachers. Of the two, they are proverbially the hardest masters.
They seem to satisfy their consciences with the doctrine that God
created the Africans to be slaves. What a libel upon the heavenly
Father, who “made of one blood all nations of men!” And then who _are_
Africans? Who can measure the amount of Anglo-Saxon blood coursing in
the veins of American slaves?
I have spoken of the pains slaveholders take to give their slaves a bad
opinion of the north; but, notwithstanding this, intelligent slaves are
aware that they have many friends in the Free States. Even the most
ignorant have some confused notions about it. They knew that I could
read; and I was often asked if I had seen any thing in the newspapers
about white folks over in the big north, who were trying to get their
freedom for them. Some believe that the abolitionists have already made
them free, and that it is established by law, but that their masters
prevent the law from going into effect. One woman begged me to get a
newspaper and read it over. She said her husband told her that the
black people had sent word to the queen of ’Merica that they were all
slaves; that she didn’t believe it, and went to Washington city to see
the president about it. They quarrelled; she drew her sword upon him,
and swore that he should help her to make them all free.
That poor, ignorant woman thought that America was governed by a
Queen, to whom the President was subordinate. I wish the President was
subordinate to Queen Justice.