flowers, and entertained with lively talk about the small affairs of gay
society, which to little minds are great. To me every laugh had lost its
gayety, every courtesy had lost its grace, all intercourse had lost its
innocence. It was a relief to think of Grimké in his grave, escaped from
the hell in which we were pent. If there be a scene which might stagger
the faith of the spirit of Christianity itself; if there be an
experience which might overthrow its serenity, it is the transition from
the slavemarket to the abodes of the slavemasters, bright with sunshine,
and gay with flowers, with courtesies, and mirth.
If the moral gloom which oppresses the spirit of the stranger were felt
by the residents, of course this condition of society would not endure
another day. Much trouble is experienced, and there are many sighs over
the system; but the anxiety is not to any great number what it was to
the sisters of Grimké; such a poisoner of life as to induce them to
sacrifice property, home, friends, and repose, in order to obtain ease
of mind for themselves, and to do something towards destroying the curse
by which their native region is blighted. Every day shows how many
mansions there are in this hell; how variously the universally allowed
evil visits minds of different strength and discernment. All suffer,
from the frivolous and sophisticated child to the far-seeing and
disciplined saint. The difficulty is to have patience with the
diversity, and to wait, as God waits, till the moral gloom strikes upon
every heart, and causes every eye to turn for light where some already
see it. At the same hour when the customary sins of the slavemarket were
being perpetrated, hundreds of the little people of Charleston were
preparing for their childish pleasures--their merry dancing-schools,
their juvenile fancy balls--ordering their little slaves about, and
allowing themselves to be fanned by black attendants while reposing in
preparation for the fatigues of the evening; ministers of the Gospel
were agreeing to deprive persons of colour of all religious education;
a distant Lynch mob was outraging the person of a free and innocent
citizen; elegant ladies were administering hospitality, and exchanging
gossip and sentiment; and Angelina Grimké was penning the letter which
contains the following passages, a private letter to a friend who was
shortly to undergo the strengthening process of being mobbed:--
"I can hardly express to thee the deep and solemn interest with which I
have viewed the violent proceedings of the last few weeks. Although I
expected opposition, yet I was not prepared for it so soon; it took me
by surprise, and I greatly feared abolitionists would be driven back in
the first onset, and thrown into confusion. So fearful was I, that,
though I clung with unflinching firmness to our principles, yet I was
afraid of even opening one of thy papers, lest I should see some
indications of compromise, some surrender, some palliation. Under these
feelings I was urged to read thy appeal to the citizens of Boston.
Judge, then, what were my feelings on finding that my fears were utterly
groundless, and that thou stoodst firm in the midst of the storm,
determined to suffer and to die rather than yield one inch.
"Religious persecution always begins with mobs. It is always
unprecedented in the age or country in which it commences, and,
therefore, there are no laws by which reformers can be punished;
consequently, a lawless band of unprincipled men determine to take the
matter into their own hands, and act out in mobs what they know are the
principles of a large majority of those who are too high in church and
state to condescend to mingle with them, though they secretly approve
and rejoice over their violent measures. The first Christian martyr was
stoned by a lawless mob; and if we look at the rise of various sects,
Methodists, Friends, &c., we shall find that mobs began the persecution
against them, and that it was not until after the people had spoken out
their wishes that laws were framed to fine, imprison, or destroy them.
Let us, then, be prepared for the enactment of laws, even in our free
states, against abolitionists. And how ardently has the prayer been
breathed, that God would prepare us for all that he is preparing for us!
"My mind has been especially turned towards those who are standing in
the forefront of the battle, and the prayer has gone up for their
preservation; not the preservation of their lives, but the preservation
of their minds in humility and patience, faith, hope, and _charity_. If
persecution is the means which God has ordained for the accomplishment
of this great end, emancipation, then, in dependance upon him for
strength to bear it, I feel as if I could say, 'Let it come;' for it is
my deep, solemn, deliberate conviction, that this is a cause worth dying
for.
"At one time I thought this system would be overthrown in blood, with
the confused noise of the warrior; but a hope gleams across my mind that
our blood will be spilt instead of the slaveholders'; our lives will be
taken, and theirs spared. I say 'a hope,' for, of all things, I desire
to be spared the anguish of seeing our beloved country desolated with
the horrors of a servile war."
The writer of this letter was born into the system, under the same
circumstances with the ladies who repeatedly asked me if I did not find
that the slaves were very happy. So widely different are the influences
of the same circumstances upon different minds!
Our evening engagements were as strangely contrasted as those of the
morning. We were at parties where we heard loud talk of justice and
oppression; appeals to the eternal principles of the one, when the
tariff was the subject, and expressions of the most passionate
detestation of the other, which might, but for the presence of black
faces in the rooms, lead a stranger to suppose that he was in the very
sanctuary of human rights. We were at a young heiress's first ball,
where every guest was presented with a bouquet on entering; where the
young ladies waltzed, and the young gentlemen gave a loose to their
spirits, and all who were present had kindly greetings for the stranger.
Nothing could be gayer than the external aspect of these entertainments;
but it is impossible for the stranger to avoid being struck with the
anxiety which shows itself through it all. I think I never was in
society in any of the Southern cities without being asked what I would
do if I had a legacy of slaves, or told, in vindictiveness or sorrow,
that the prosperity of the North was obtained at the expense of the
South. I was never in Southern society without perceiving that its
characteristic is a want of repose. It is restlessly gay or restlessly
sorrowful. It is angry or exulting; it is hopeful or apprehensive. It is
never content; never in such a state of calm satisfaction as to forget
itself. This peculiarity poisons the satisfaction of the stranger in
the midst of the free and joyous hospitality to which he would otherwise
surrender himself with inconsiderate delight. While everything is done
that can be conceived of to make you happy, there is a weight pulling at
your heartstrings, because you see that other hearts are heavy, and the
nobler the heavier. While the host's little child comes to you at first
sight, and holds up her mouth for a kiss, and offers to tell you a
story, and pours out all her mirth and all her generosity upon you, the
child's father tells you that there is a dark prospect before these
young creatures, and Heaven knows what lot is in store for them. Your
vigilance is kept active by continual suggestions that society is
composed of two classes, which entertain a mortal dread of each other.
If ever you forget this for an hour, it is recalled by the sight of a
soldier at the corner of a street, of a decaying mansion or deserted
estate, or of some anti-republican arrangement for social or domestic
defence. You reproach yourself because you are anxious and cannot be
deceived; and feel as if it were ingratitude to your entertainers not to
think them the secure and happy people which, in alternation with their
complaints of all the external world, they assure you they are.
Our evenings were diversified with attendance upon phrenological
lectures--which, however, soon ceases to be a variety, from the absolute
sameness of all courses of lectures on that subject--with readings at
home, and with a visit to a scene which I was strongly urged not to
omit, the Saturday night's market held by the slaves.
I should have been sorry to miss this spectacle. The slaves enjoy the
amusement and profit yielded by this market. They sit in rows, by
lamplight, some with heaps of fruit and vegetables before them, or
surrounded by articles of their own manufacture: boxes, bedsteads,
baskets, and other handiworks, very cheap, and of good workmanship. The
bananas, pines, imported apples, and oranges, which are seen in great
abundance, are usually the property of the master; while the
manufactured articles, made at spare hours, are nominally the slave's
own. Some are allowed to make use of their leisure in preparing for the
market, on condition of bringing their masters six dollars each per
week, retaining whatever surplus they may gain. I could not learn the
consequence of failing to bring in the six dollars per week. They enjoy
the fun and bustle of the market, and look with complacency on any white
customers who will attend it. Their activity and merriment at market
were pointed out to me as an assurance of their satisfaction with their
condition, their conviction that their present position is the one they
were made for, and in which their true happiness is to be found.
At the very same moment I was shown the ruins of the church of St.
Philip, destroyed by fire, as they frowned in the rear of the lamplight;
and I was informed that the church had once before been on fire, but had
been saved by the exertions of a slave, who "had his liberty given him
for a reward."
"A reward!" said I. "What! when the slaves are convinced that their true
happiness lies in slavery?"
The conversation had come to an awkward pass. A lady advanced to the
rescue, saying that some few, too many, were haunted by a pernicious
fancy, put into their heads by others, about liberty; a mere fancy,
which, however, made them like the idea of freedom.
"So the benefactor of the city was rewarded by being indulged, to his
own hurt, in a pernicious fancy?"
"Why ... yes."
My impressions of Charleston may easily be gathered from what I have
said. It seems to me a place of great activity, without much
intellectual result; of great gayety, without much ease and pleasure. I
am confident that, whatever might be the reason, the general mind was
full of mystery and anxiety at the time of my visit; and that some
hearts were glowing with ambitious hopes, and others sinking in fears,
more or less clearly defined, of the political crisis which seems to be
now at hand. These are the influences which are educating the youth of
Charleston, more powerfully than all schools and colleges, and all
books; inducing a reliance on physical rather than moral force, and
strengthening attachment to feudal notions of honour and of every kind
of good; notions which have no affinity with true republican morals. The
prospects of the citizens are "dark every way," as some declared; for
the rising generation must either ascend, through a severe discipline
and prodigious sacrifices, to a conformity with republican principles,
or descend into a condition of solitary feudalism, neither sanctioned by
the example nor cheered by the sympathy of the world; but, on the
contrary, regarded with that compassion which is precisely the last
species of regard which the feudal spirit is able to endure.
We left Charleston in company with Mr. Calhoun and his family. The great
nullifier told me many and long stories of his early days. Not being
aware of my strong impressions respecting his present views and
purposes, he could have no idea of the intense interest with which I
listened to his accounts of the first kindling of his burning mind. He
was five years old, standing between his father's knees, when his first
political emotions stirred within him, awakened by his parent's talk of
the colony and of free times just after the Revolution. If some good
angel had at that moment whispered the parent, inspiring him to direct
that young ambition to the ultimate grandeur of meek service, to animate
that high spirit to a moral conflict with all human wrongs, we might
already have owed to a mind so energetic the redemption of the negro
race from the affliction, and of the republic from the disgrace of
slavery, instead of mourning over the dedication of such powers to the
propagation and exasperation of the curse. I feared how it would be;
what part he would take in the present struggle between the two
principles of greatness, physical force with territorial conquest, and
moral power shown in self-conquest. I feared that Mr. Calhoun would
organize and head the feudal party, as he has done; but I never had any
fears that that party would prevail. When we parted at Branchville he
little knew--he might have been offended if he had known--with what
affectionate solicitude those whom he left behind looked on into his
perilous political path. I am glad we could not foresee how soon our
fears would be justified. Mr. Calhoun is at present insisting that the
pirate colony of Texas shall be admitted into the honourable American
Union; that a new impulse shall thereby be given to the slavetrade, and
a new extension to slavery; and that his country shall thereby surrender
her moral supremacy among the nations for a gross and antiquated feudal
ambition. He vows, taking the whole Union to witness, that these things
shall be. The words have publicly passed his pen and his lips, "Texas
shall be annexed to the United States." His best friends must hope that
the whole world will say, "It shall not."
RESTLESS SLAVES.
"O! das Leben, Vater,
Hat Reize, die wir nie gekannt. Wir haben
Des schönen Lebens öde Kütse nur
Wie ein umirrend Räubervolk befahren.
Was in den innern Thälern Köstliches
Das land verbirgt, O! davon--davon ist
Auf unsrer wilden Fahrt uns nichts erschienen."
SCHILLER.
"We ask
But to put forth our strength, our human strength,
All starting fairly, all equipped alike,
Gifted alike, and eagle-eyed, true-hearted."
PARACELSUS.
The traveller in America hears on every hand of the fondness of slaves
for slavery. If he points to the little picture of a runaway prefixed to
advertisements of fugitives, and repeated down whole columns of the
first newspaper that comes to hand, he is met with anecdotes of slaves
who have been offered their freedom, and prefer remaining in bondage.
Both aspects of the question are true, and yet more may be said on both
sides. The traveller finds, as he proceeds, that suicides are very
frequent among slaves; and that there is a race of Africans who will not
endure bondage at all, and who, when smuggled from Africa into
Louisiana, are avoided in the market by purchasers, though they have
great bodily strength and comeliness. When one of this race is
accidentally purchased and taken home, he is generally missed before
twenty-four hours are over, and found hanging behind a door or drowned
in the nearest pond. The Cuba slaveholders have volumes of stories to
tell of this race, proving their incapacity for slavery. On the other
hand, the traveller may meet with a few negroes who have returned into
slaveland from a state of freedom, and besought their masters to take
them back.
These seeming contradictions admit of an easy explanation. Slaves are
more or less degraded by slavery in proportion to their original
strength of character or educational discipline of mind. The most
degraded are satisfied, the least degraded are dissatisfied with
slavery. The lowest order prefer release from duties and cares to the
enjoyment of rights and the possession of themselves; and the highest
order have a directly opposite taste. The mistake lies in not perceiving
that slavery is emphatically condemned by the conduct of both.
The stories on the one side of the question are all alike. The master
offers freedom--of course, to the worst of his slaves--to those who are
more plague than profit. Perhaps he sends the fellow he wants to get rid
of on some errand into a free state, hoping that he will not return. The
man comes back; and, if questioned as to why he did not stay where he
might have been free, he replies that he knows better than to work hard
for a precarious living when he can be fed by his master without anxiety
of his own as long as he lives. As for those who return after having
been free, they are usually the weak-minded, who have been persuaded
into remaining in a free state, where they have been carried in
attendance on their masters' families, and who want courage to sustain
their unprotected freedom. I do not remember ever hearing of the return
of a slave who, having long nourished the idea and purpose of liberty,
had absconded with danger and difficulty. The prosecution of such a
purpose argues a strength of mind worthy of freedom.
The stories on this side of the question are as various as the
characters and fortunes of the heroes of them. Many facts of this nature
became known to me during my travels, most of which cannot be published,
for fear of involving in difficulty either the escaped heroes or those
who assisted them in regaining their liberty. But a few may be safely
related, which will show, as well as any greater number, the kind of
restlessness which is the torment of the lives of "persons held to
labour," the constitutional description of the slave-class of the
constituents of government.
Slavery is nowhere more hopeless and helpless than in Alabama. The
richness of the soil and the paucity of inhabitants make the labourer a
most valuable possession; while his distance from any free state--the
extent of country overspread with enemies which the fugitive has to
traverse--makes the attempt to escape desperate. All coloured persons
travelling in the slave states without a pass--a certificate of freedom
or of leave--are liable to be arrested and advertised, and, if unclaimed
at the end of a certain time, sold in the market. Yet slaves do
continue to escape from the farthest corners of Alabama or Mississippi.
Two slaves in Alabama, who had from their early manhood cherished the
idea of freedom, planned their escape in concert, and laboured for many
years at their scheme. They were allowed the profits of their labour at
over-hours; and, by strenuous toil and self-denial, saved and hid a
large sum of money. Last year they found they had enough, and that the
time was come for the execution of their purpose. They engaged the
services of "a mean white;" one of the extremely degraded class who are
driven by loss of character to labour in the slave states, where, labour
by whites being disgraceful, they are looked down upon by the slaves no
less than the slaves are by the superior whites. These two slaves hired
a "mean white man" to personate a gentleman; bought him a suit of good
clothes, a portmanteau, a carriage and horses, and proper costume for
themselves. One night the three set off in style, as master, coachman,
and footman, and travelled rapidly through the whole country, without
the slightest hinderance, to Buffalo. There the slaves sold their
carriage, horses, and finery, paid off their white man, and escaped into
Canada, where they now are in safety.
They found in Canada a society of their own colour prepared to welcome
and aid them. In Upper Canada there are upward of ten thousand people of
colour, chiefly fugitive slaves, who prosper in the country which they
have chosen for a refuge. Scarcely an instance is known of any of them
having received alms, and they are as respectable for their intelligence
as for their morals. One peculiarity in them is the extravagance of
their loyalty. They exert themselves vehemently in defence of all the
acts of the executive, whatever they may be. The reason for this is
obvious: they exceedingly dread the barest mention of the annexation of
Canada to the United States.
It is astonishing that, in the face of facts of daily occurrence like
that of the escape of these men, it can be pleaded in behalf of slavery
that negroes cannot take care of themselves, and that they prefer being
held as property. A lady of New-York favoured me with some of her
recollections of slavery in that state. She told me of a favourite
servant who had been her father's property for five-and-twenty years. I
believe the woman was the family nurse. She was treated with all
possible indulgence, and was the object of the attachment of the whole
household. The woman was never happy. During all these dreary years she
was haunted with the longing for freedom, and at last fell ill,
apparently from anxiety of mind. From her sickbed she implored her
master so movingly to make her free, and her medical attendant was so
convinced that her life depended on her request being granted, that her
master made the desired promise, but very unwillingly, as he thought
freedom would be more of a care than a blessing to her. She immediately
recovered, and in spite of all entreaty, pecuniary inducement, and
appeals to her gratitude, left the family. She shed many tears, mourned
over parting with the children, and thanked the family for all the
favour with which she had been treated, but declared that she could not
remain. Everything savoured too strongly of the bondage she had been
unable to endure. She took a service not far off, deposited her earnings
with her old master, and frequently visited the family, but, to the
last, shrank from all mention of returning to them.
While I was in the United States, a New-York friend of mine was counsel
for a native African who sued his mistress for his earnings of many
years. This man had been landed in the South after the year 1808, the
date fixed by the Constitution for the cessation of the importation of
negroes. He was purchased by a lady to whom he proved very profitable,
his services being of a superior kind. She let him out, and he paid over
to her all the money he earned. After many years she visited New-York,
bringing this man with her, not anticipating that, in that free city, he
would gain new lights as to his relation to her. He refused to return,
and brought his mistress into court to answer his demand for the
repayment of all the money he had earned abroad, with interest, and
compensation for his services at home during his illegal bondage. As a
knowledge of the law was necessarily supposed on both sides, the counsel
for the slave made compulsion his plea. This was not allowed. The
slave's maintenance was decided to be a sufficient compensation for his
services at home, and he was decreed to receive only the earnings of his
hired labour, without interest. His counsel had, however, the pleasure
of seeing him, in the strength of his manhood, free, and in possession
of a large sum of money to begin life with on his own account.