which I saw that his mind was full of something else, I obviated all
danger of his putting questions which I could not answer by asking him
whether he had relations in the city. This put an end to all reserve. He
mentioned his father, and the brother who had led him into crime, with a
forbearance and delicacy of forgiveness which were extremely touching.
He was not aware that I knew how different a tone might have been
excused, might have been almost justified. But he spoke most of his
wife. He told me that he had always been weak, too easily persuaded,
from being afraid of some people about him; and that his wife, who had a
nobler mind, always kept him up, yet managing to do it when they were
alone so as never to expose his weakness. He had unfortunately come to
Philadelphia two days before her, and in that interval he had been
threatened and persuaded into endeavouring to pass two counterfeit
five-franc pieces. This was all. But he himself did not extenuate his
offence or appear to think it a trifle. He observed, indeed, that at
that time he was not aware what sins against property were; he used to
think, that if some people had so much more than they wanted, there was
no great harm in those who have too little taking some from them. He had
had much time for thought since, and now saw so plainly how necessary it
was that men should be protected while living in society, that he
believed no compulsion could now make him break the laws in any such
way. But the mischief was done. He had made his wife wretched, and all
was over. I convinced him that it was not. His term was five years; and
when it was fulfilled he would still be a young man, and might cherish
his wife for a good many years. It was well that we thought so at the
time, for the hope gave him substantial comfort. He lifted up his head
from his loom, where it had sunk down in his bitter weeping, and began
to talk upon the subject I dreaded, pardon. I saw what kind of mind I
had to deal with, reasoning and reflective. I led him to consider, as he
had found out the purposes of law, the purposes of punishment; and, at
length, put the question to him whether he thought he ought to be
pardoned. Trembling from head to foot, and white as the wall, he bravely
answered "No." I asked him whether it would not be better to settle his
mind to his lot than to be trembling for four years at every footstep
that came near his cell, expecting deliverance, and expecting it in
vain. He did not answer. I told him that when he was heartsick with
expecting in vain, perhaps some hard thought of his wife--that she had
not done all she could--might rise up to trouble him. "Oh no, no,
never!" he cried. I had now obtained what I wanted for her.
I told him I should endeavour to see his wife. He desired me to tell her
that he was in health, and had brought himself to own to me what he had
done, and that he should be pretty comfortable but for thinking how he
had used her; but he would try to make up for it one day. He was quite
cheerful when I left him.
The wife called on me the next day. She said she could not stay long, as
she was about to set off, with her children, for a remote part of the
country. It was a dreadful thing to her to leave her husband's
neighbourhood; but she had been deprived of the means of support by her
work being taken from her, and no resource remained but going to her
father's house. She was surprised, and seemed almost sorry (no doubt
from a jealousy for his reputation), that her husband had acknowledged
his offence. She said he had not acknowledged it when he went in. I told
her every particular about his cell and employments, as well as his
looks and conversation, till, when I had done, she started up, saying
that she was forgetting her children, and her journey, and everything.
When we had parted she came back again from the door to ask "one thing
more;" whether I thought there would ever be anything in the world that
she could do for me. I thought it very possible in a world of change
like this, and promised to rely upon her if she could ever serve me or
mine.
She settled herself at her father's, and after a while drooped in
spirits, and was sure something would happen. When bad news came she
cried, "There! I knew it!" As the turnkey passed her husband's cell one
day he heard some noise and looked in. The young man was just falling
from his loom in a fit of apoplexy. There was no delay in doing all that
can be done in such cases; but in a few hours he died. There is no
reason to suppose that his imprisonment had anything to do with the
attack. It was probably a constitutional tendency, aggravated by anxiety
of mind.
The prison must be tried some years longer before a complete comparison
of it with others can be made; but it appears at present, that if there
be some few diseases which may possibly be aggravated by the silence and
thoughtfulness attendant on solitary confinement (which I do not know to
be the case), there are many more which disappear under the regularity
of temperature and of hours, and the good diet of the establishment.
There was certainly less sallowness and anxiety in the faces of the
inmates than struck me in the other prisons. One man amazed me by
calling the four years he had passed here the most comfortable he had
ever known; but when he told me the wretchedness of his previous life,
I fully believed him.
I found, on visiting the elder of the brothers, how complete is the
secrecy preserved in the prison. I had been repeatedly told that these
brothers came in together, and, therefore, had no hesitation in
mentioning the one to the other. I was thunderstruck with the vehemence
with which the elder turned upon me with the question, "Is _my_ brother
in this prison?" "I was told you came in together," replied I. "Then
they put him in just after me," cried he. "What did they find him guilty
of? What part of the prison is he in? What work does he do?" and a
number of other questions; none of which, of course, I would answer. I
was not very sorry that he was accidentally made acquainted with what he
had led his young brother into. I fear he could bear it only too well.
When I told the warden the mistake I had made, I found that the younger
brother came in three weeks after the elder.
The cases I became acquainted with were not all hopeful. Some of the
convicts were so stupid as not to be relied upon, more or less. Others
canted so detestably, and were (always in connexion with their cant) so
certain that they should never sin more, that I have every expectation
that they will find themselves in prison again some day. One fellow, a
sailor, notorious for having taken more lives than probably any man in
the United States, was quite confident that he should be perfectly
virtuous henceforth. He should never touch anything stronger than tea,
or lift his hand against money or life. I told him I thought he could
not be sure of all this till he was within sight of money and the smell
of strong liquors; and that he was more confident than I should like to
be. He shook his shock of red hair at me, and glared with his one
ferocious eye, as he said he knew all about it, as he had been the worst
of men, and Christ had had mercy on his poor soul. When I had got him
away from his cant, and upon subjects on which he could talk with some
simplicity, I found that even this man preferred this prison to others
that he had been in. It so happened that no conviction for murder had
ever been procurable against him; his imprisonments were all for theft.
His account of the old Walnut-street prison was dreadful. He there daily
heard stories of crimes, from four in the winter afternoons till
daylight. "Poor boasting! for the crimes they bragged of were never
done." I asked him how he got into that prison. "For a couple o'
larcenies, a grand and a little," said he, with the most business-like
nonchalance. He was waylaid by two old burglars on his coming out, and
on the spot agreed upon an enterprise for the next night. His mother
died in his arms; he went and committed the burglary, was caught, and
before midnight was in prison again. His accounts of his deeds were too
scientific for my understanding; but I made out enough to be ready when
he asked my advice what to do when he came out. I answered as if he were
in earnest, advising him to leave Philadelphia and all towns, and settle
in the woods, out of the way of grogshops, bad company, and other
people's property. But his keepers expect that he will end his days with
them, and this is the hope of that part of society which fears his
ferocity.
As the system of solitary imprisonment gains ground, I trust that the
practice of prison-visiting will gain ground too. It is most desirable
that it should not be left wholly in the hands of proselyting
religionists, but be shared by those who better understand human nature
and command a greater variety of influences. For the sake of religion
itself this is desirable, to rescue it from becoming a mere prison
solace; an excitement seized when no other can be had, and to be laid
aside when old pursuits offer themselves for resumption. Kind-hearted
persons will have an opportunity of doing extensive and unquestionable
good by keeping up the social affections of the prisoners, giving them
new ideas, making them cheerful, and investing with pleasant
associations whatever things are honest, pure, lovely, and of good
report.
In other prisons much might thus be done, though not, I think, with such
extraordinary effect as under the system of solitary confinement. I was
struck with something I saw at the Charlestown prison (Massachusetts).
Several convicts, black and white, who had behaved well, were practising
singing, which is allowed as an indulgence. It seemed strange to hear
"The heavens are telling" from such lips; but I listened to it with more
pleasure than in some far finer places. Any kind person who can
introduce a new innocent pursuit into a prison as a solace to its
inmates cannot fail to be doing an important good.
This reminds me that a service may be rendered, not so much to the
convicts as to society, by any persons who can supply the prisons where
stonecutting is going on with a good set of epitaphs. At Auburn they are
wanted, and much more at Nashville (Tennessee), where the stonecutting
department is superintended by an honest Englishman, whose stock of
epitaphs is small and of miserable quality. We half undertook to prepare
and collect some for him, but found it a less easy task than we had
supposed. We got out our pencils at three o'clock one summer morning,
when our stage had broken down on a bad Tennessee road; but one of our
party observing that this was the first time he had ever heard of making
epitaphs for amusement, there was an end of the attempt; and the
Nashville prison remains unsupplied, unless somebody else has done
better than we.
I suspect the fault lies in the supposition that epitaphs of general
application cannot be made at all. An epitaph should be the breathing of
emotion arising out of a particular case; and none made for
stonecutters' use can have much life or truth. Still, they may have
grammar and general propriety, so as to be an advantageous substitute
for some at present in use, if only persons can be found to compose them
on such considerations.
I saw at the Charlestown prison a sight more impressive to me than all
else that the walls contained; a man of might, but whose power has taken
a wrong direction; his hand being against every man, and every man's
against him. He is a prison-breaker so formidable as to be regarded and
treated as if he were of Satanic race, and not as made up of flesh and
blood, and emotions that may be roused, and affections subject to the
touch. He seems, indeed, to have become somewhat of the Satanic kind,
for he is now piqued to do all the harm he can. His pride is in for it;
his reputation stands upon it. I was shown an enormous block of stone
which he had displaced by the aid of a "gentleman" outside, who, for
fear of the prison-breaker's blabbing, committed suicide on his
recapture. The strong man was heavily fettered, confined in a different
cell every night, and conducted to it by a procession of turnkeys. As we
stood aside in the echoing passage to let the array go by, there was
something really grand in the air of the man who had virtually said to
himself, "Evil, be thou my good!" He stepped slowly, clanking his
chains, and looking us full in the face as he passed. He cannot but have
a calm sense of power when he nightly sees the irons, the bars and
locks, and the six fellow-men, all in requisition to keep him from
working his will. As we saw him slowly turn into his cell, and heard
lock after lock shot behind him, I could not help thinking that there
was much true monarchical feeling within those four narrow walls.
FIRST SIGHT OF SLAVERY.
"Ed io, ch'avea di riguardar desio
La condicion, che tal fortezza serra,
Com' i fu dentro, l'occhio intorno invio,
E veggio ad ogni man grande campagna
Piena ad duolo, e di tormento rio."
DANTE.
From the day of my entering the States till that of my leaving
Philadelphia I had seen society basking in one bright sunshine of
good-will. The sweet temper and kindly manners of the Americans are so
striking to foreigners, that it is some time before the dazzled stranger
perceives that, genuine as is all this good, evils as black as night
exist along with it. I had been received with such hearty hospitality
everywhere, and had lived among friends so conscientious in their regard
for human rights, that, though I had heard of abolition riots, and had
observed somewhat of the degradation of the blacks, my mind had not yet
been really troubled about the enmity of the races. The time of
awakening must come. It began just before I left Philadelphia.
I was calling on a lady whom I had heard speak with strong horror of the
abolitionists (with whom I had then no acquaintance), and she turned
round upon me with the question whether I would not prevent, if I could,
the marriage of a white person with a person of colour. I saw at once
the beginning of endless troubles in this inquiry, and was very sorry it
had been made; but my determination had been adopted long before, never
to evade the great question of colour; never to provoke it; but always
to meet it plainly in whatever form it should be presented. I replied
that I would never, under any circumstances, try to separate persons
who really loved, believing such to be truly those whom God had joined;
but I observed that the case she put was one not likely to happen, as I
believed the blacks were no more disposed to marry the whites than the
whites to marry the blacks. "You are an amalgamationist!" cried she. I
told her that the party term was new to me; but that she must give what
name she pleased to the principle I had declared in answer to her
question. This lady is an eminent religionist, and denunciations spread
rapidly from her. The day before I left Philadelphia my old shipmate,
the Prussian physician, arrived there, and lost no time in calling to
tell me, with much agitation, that I must not go a step farther south;
that he had heard on all hands, within two hours of his arrival, that I
was an amalgamationist, and that my having published a story against
slavery would be fatal to me in the slave states. I did not give much
credit to the latter part of this news, and saw plainly that all I had
to do was to go straight on. I really desired to see the working of the
slave system, and was glad that my having published against its
principles divested me altogether of the character of a spy, and gave me
an unquestioned liberty to publish the results of what I might observe.
In order to see things as they were, it was necessary that people's
minds should not be prepossessed by my friends as to my opinions and
conduct; and I therefore forbade my Philadelphia friends to publish in
the newspapers, as they wished, an antidote to the charges already
current against me.
The next day I first set foot in a slave state, arriving in the evening
at Baltimore. I dreaded inexpressibly the first sight of a slave, and
could not help speculating on the lot of every person of colour I saw
from the windows the first few days. The servants in the house where I
was were free blacks.
Before a week was over I perceived that all that is said in England of
the hatred of the whites to the blacks in America is short of the truth.
The slanders that I heard of the free blacks were too gross to injure my
estimation of any but those who spoke them. In Baltimore the bodies of
coloured people exclusively are taken for dissection, "because the
whites do not like it, and the coloured people cannot resist." It is
wonderful that the bodily structure can be (with the exception of the
colouring of the skin) thus assumed to be the pattern of that of the
whites; that the exquisite nervous system, the instrument of moral as
well as physicial pleasures and pains, can be nicely investigated, on
the ground of its being analogous with that of the whites; that not only
the mechanism, but the sensibilities of the degraded race should be
argued from to those of the exalted order, and that men come from such a
study with contempt for these brethren in their countenances, hatred in
their hearts, and insult on their tongues. These students are the men
who cannot say that the coloured people have not nerves that quiver
under moral injury, nor a brain that is on fire with insult, nor pulses
that throb under oppression. These are the men who should stay the hand
of the rash and ignorant possessors of power, who crush the being of
creatures, like themselves, "fearfully and wonderfully made." But to
speak the right word, to hold out the helping hand, these searchers into
man have not light nor strength.
It was in Baltimore that I heard Miss Edgeworth denounced as a woman of
no intelligence or delicacy, whose works could never be cared for again,
because, in Belinda, poor Juba was married, at length, to an English
farmer's daughter! The incident is so subordinate that I had entirely
forgotten it; but a clergyman's lady threw the volume to the opposite
corner of the floor when she came to the page. As I have said elsewhere,
Miss Edgeworth is worshipped throughout the United States; but it is in
spite of this terrible passage, this clause of a sentence in Belinda,
which nobody in America can tolerate, while no one elsewhere ever, I
should think, dreamed of finding fault with it.
A lady from New-England, staying in Baltimore, was one day talking over
slavery with me, her detestation of it being great, when I told her I
dreaded seeing a slave. "You have seen one," said she. "You were waited
on by a slave yesterday evening." She told me of a gentleman who let out
and lent out his slaves to wait at gentlemen's houses, and that the tall
handsome mulatto who handed the tea at a party the evening before was
one of these. I was glad it was over for once; but I never lost the
painful feeling caused to a stranger by intercourse with slaves. No
familiarity with them, no mirth and contentment on their part, ever
soothed the miserable restlessness caused by the presence of a
deeply-injured fellow-being. No wonder or ridicule on the spot avails
anything to the stranger. He suffers, and must suffer from this, deeply
and long, as surely as he is human and hates oppression.
The next slave that I saw, knowing that it was a slave, was at
Washington, where a little negro child took hold of my gown in the
passage of our boarding-house, and entered our drawing-room with me. She
shut the door softly, as asking leave to stay. I took up a newspaper.
She sat at my feet, and began amusing herself with my shoestrings.
Finding herself not discouraged, she presently begged play by peeping at
me above and on each side the newspaper. She was a brighteyed,
merry-hearted child; confiding, like other children, and dreading no
evil, but doomed, hopelessly doomed, to ignorance, privation, and moral
degradation. When I looked at her, and thought of the fearful
disobedience to the first of moral laws, the cowardly treachery, the
cruel abuse of power involved in thus dooming to blight a being so
helpless, so confiding, and so full of promise, a horror came over me
which sickened my very soul. To see slaves is not to be reconciled to
slavery.
At Baltimore and Washington again I was warned, in various stealthy
ways, of perils awaiting me in the South. I had no means of ascertaining
the justness of these warnings but by going on, and turning back for
such vague reasons was not to be thought of. So I determined to say no
word to my companions (who were in no danger), but to see the truth for
myself. The threats proved idle, as I suspected they would. Throughout
the South I met with very candid and kind treatment. I mention these
warnings partly because they are a fact connected with the state of the
country, and partly because it will afterward appear that the stranger's
real danger lies in the North and West, over which the South had, in my
case, greatly the advantage in liberality.
LIFE AT WASHINGTON.
"With studious thought observed the illustrious throng,
In Nature's order as they pass'd along;
Their names, their fates."
DRYDEN'S _Æneid_.
Washington is no place for persons of domestic tastes. Persons who love
dissipation, persons who love to watch the game of politics, and those
who make a study of strong minds under strong excitements, like a season
at Washington; but it is dreary to those whose pursuits and affections
are domestic. I spent five weeks there, and was heartily glad when they
were over. I felt the satisfaction all the time of doing something that
was highly useful; of getting knowledge that was necessary to me, and
could not be otherwise obtained; but the quiet delights of my
Philadelphia home (though there half our time was spent in visiting) had
spoiled me for such a life as every one leads at the metropolis. I have
always looked back upon the five weeks at Washington as one of the most
profitable, but by far the least agreeable, of my residences in the
United States.
Yet we were remarkably fortunate in our domestic arrangements there. We
joined a party of highly esteemed and kind friends: a member of the
House of Representatives from Massachusetts, his wife and sister-in-law,
and a senator from Maine. We (the above party) had a drawing-room to
ourselves and a separate table at Mrs. Peyton's boarding-house; so that
we formed a quiet family group enough, if only we had had any quiet in
which to enjoy the privilege.
We arrived at Washington on the 13th of January, 1835, the year of the
short session of Congress which closes on the 4th of March, so that we
continued to see the proceedings of Congress at its busiest and most
interesting time.
The approach to the city is striking to all strangers from its oddness.
I saw the dome of the Capitol from a considerable distance at the end of
a straight road; but, though I was prepared by the descriptions of
preceding travellers, I was taken by surprise on finding myself beneath
the splendid building, so sordid are the enclosures and houses on its
very verge. We wound round its base, and entered Pennsylvania Avenue,
the only one of the grand avenues intended to centre in the Capitol
which has been built up with any completeness. Our boarding-house was
admirably situated, being some little way down this avenue, a few
minutes' walk only from the Capitol, and a mile in a straight line from
the White House, the residences of the heads of departments and the
British legation.