all histories of the State as one of its honours, though she was a
slave. Some anecdotes of her were related in a Lyceum lecture delivered
at Stockbridge in 1831. Others were told me by the Sedgwicks, who had
the honour of knowing her best, by means of rendering her the greatest
services. Mum Bett, whose real name was Elizabeth Freeman, was born, it
is supposed, about 1742. Her parents were native Africans, and she was a
slave for about thirty years. At an early age she was purchased, with
her sister, from the family into which she was born, in the State of
New-York, by Colonel Ashley, of Sheffield, Massachusetts. The lady of the
mansion, in a fit of passion, one day struck at Mum Bett's sister with a
heated kitchen shovel. Mum Bett interposed her arm and received the
blow, the scar of which she bore to the day of her death. "She resented
the insult and outrage as a white person would have done," leaving the
house, and refusing to return. Colonel Ashley appealed to the law for
the recovery of his slave. Mum Bett called on Mr. Sedgwick, and asked
him if she could not claim her liberty under the law. He inquired what
could put such an idea into her head. She replied that the "Bill o'
Rights" said that all were born free and equal, and that, as she was not
a dumb beast, she was certainly one of the nation. When afterward asked
how she learned the doctrine and facts on which she proceeded, she
replied, "By keepin' still and mindin' things." It was a favourite
doctrine of hers, that people might learn by keeping still and minding
things. But what did she mean, she was asked, by keeping still and
minding things? Why, for instance, when she was waiting at table, she
heard gentlemen talking over the Bill of Rights and the new constitution
of Massachusetts; and in all they said she never heard but that all
people were born free and equal, and she thought long about it, and
resolved she would try whether she did not come in among them.
Mr. Sedgwick undertook her cause, which was tried at Great Barrington.
Mum Bett obtained her freedom, and compensation for her services from
twenty-one years of age. "What shall I do with all this money of yours?"
said Mr. Sedgwick. "Fee the lawyers handsomely; pay 'em well," said she,
"and keep the rest till I want it." She was offered every inducement to
return to Colonel Ashley's, but she recoiled from all that reminded her
of slavery. She begged the Sedgwicks to take her into their family,
which they did; and with them she spent twenty years of great comfort.
Her example was followed by many slaves; and from the day of her
emancipation in 1772, more and more claimants were decreed free under
the Bill of Rights, till slavery was abolished in Massachusetts.
Her services to the Sedgwick family are gratefully remembered by them.
She is believed to have saved her master's life by following her own
judgment in his treatment when she was nursing him in a dangerous fever.
When her master was in Boston, and the rural districts were liable to
nightly visitations from marauders after Shay's war (as an insurrection
in Massachusetts was called), the village of Stockbridge, in the absence
of the gentlemen, depended on Mum Bett for its safety, so general was
the confidence in her wisdom and courage. The practice of the marauders
was to enter and plunder gentlemen's houses in the night, on pretence of
searching for ammunition and prisoners. Mum Bett declared that she could
have no cowards in the village; as many as were afraid had better go up
the hills to sleep. Several children and a few women went up the hills
in the evening to farmhouses which were safe from intrusion. All brought
their valuables of small bulk to Mum Bett for security. Everybody's
watches, gold chains, rings, and other trinkets were deposited in an
iron chest in the garret where Mum Bett slept.
The marauders arrived one night when Mrs. Sedgwick was very ill, and Mum
Bett was unwilling to admit them. She quietly told her mistress that her
pistols were loaded, and that a few shots from the windows would
probably send the wretches away, as they could not be sure but that
there were gentlemen in the house. Her mistress, however, positively
ordered her to let the people in without delay. Mum Bett obeyed the
order with much unwillingness. She appeared at the door with a large
kitchen shovel in one hand and a light in the other, and assured the
strangers that they would find nothing of what they asked for; neither
Judge Sedgwick, nor ammunition and prisoners. They chose to search the
house, however, as she had expected. Her great fear was that they would
drink themselves intoxicated in the cellar, and become unmanageable; and
she had prepared for this by putting rows of porter bottles in front of
the wine and spirits, having drawn the corks to let the porter get flat,
and put them in again. The intruders offered to take the light from her
hand, but she held it back, saying that no one should carry the light
but herself. Here was the way to the cellars, and there was the way to
the chambers: she would light the gentlemen wherever they chose to go,
but she would not let the house be set on fire over her sick mistress's
head. "The gentlemen" went down to the cellar first. One of the party
broke the neck of a bottle of porter, for which she rebuked him, saying,
that if they wished to drink, she would fetch the corkscrew, and draw
the cork, and they might drink like gentlemen; but that, if any one
broke the neck of another bottle, she would lay him low with her shovel.
The flat porter was not to the taste of the visiters, who made wry
faces, and said, if gentlemen liked such cursed bitter stuff, they might
keep it, and praised spirits in comparison; upon which Mum Bett coolly
observed that they were "sort o' gentlemen that lived here that did not
drink spirits."
At the foot of the cellar stairs stood a barrel of pickled pork, out of
which the intruders began helping themselves. In a tone of utter scorn
Mum Bett exclaimed, "Ammunition and prisoners, indeed! You come for
ammunition and prisoners, and take up with pickled pork!" They were
fairly ashamed, and threw back the pork into the barrel. They went
through all the chambers, poking with their bayonets under the beds,
lest Judge Sedgwick should be there. At last, to Mum Bett's sorrow, they
decided to search the garrets. In hers the iron chest came into view.
She hoped in vain that they would pass it over. One of the party
observed that it looked as if it held something. Mum Bett put down the
light, kneeled on the chest, and brandished her weapon, saying, "This is
my chist, and let any man touch it at his peril." The men considered the
matter not worth contesting, and went down stairs. They were actually
departing without having met with a single article of value enough to
carry away, when a young lady, a niece of Judge Sedgwick's, wishing to
be civil to the wretches, asked them, at the hall door, whether they
would like to see the stables. They were glad of the hint, and stole one
horse (if I remember right), and ruined another with hard riding. Mum
Bett's expression of wrath was, "If I had thought the pesky fools would
have done such a thing, I would have turned the horses loose over night
in the meadow; they would have come back at my call in the morning."
She was considered as connected with Judge Sedgwick's family after she
had left their house for a home of her own. By her great industry and
frugality she supported a large family of grandchildren and
great-grandchildren. There was nothing remarkable about her husband, and
her descendants do not appear to have inherited her genius. Mum Bett
lies in the Stockbridge graveyard, in the corner where the people of
colour _lie apart_. Her epitaph, written by a son of Judge Sedgwick, is
as follows:--
ELIZABETH FREEMAN,
Known by the name of
MUM BETT,
Died December 28, 1829. Her supposed age was 85 years.
She was born a slave, and remained a slave for nearly thirty years:
she could neither read nor write, yet in her own sphere she
had no superior nor equal: she neither wasted time nor
property: she never violated a trust, nor failed to
perform a duty. In every situation of domestic
trial, she was the most efficient helper
and the tenderest friend.
GOOD MOTHER FAREWELL.
As far as energy and talent are concerned, I should not hesitate to say
that in her own sphere Mum Bett "had no superior nor equal;" and the
same may be said about the quality of fidelity. I know of a slave in
Louisiana who picked up a parcel containing 10,000 dollars, and returned
it, with much trouble, to its owner. I know of a slave in South
Carolina, belonging to a physician, who drives his master's gig, and has
made a wonderful use of what he sees in the course of his morning's
duty. While waiting for his master at the doors of patients, this slave
occupied himself with copying in the sandy soil the letters he saw on
signs. When he believed he had caught the method, he begged a slate, or
paper and pencil, and brought home his copies, coaxing the boys of the
family to tell him the names of the letters. He then put them together,
and thus learned to read and write, without any further help whatever.
Having once discovered his own power of doing and learning, he went on
in the only direction which seemed open to him. He turned his attention
to mechanism, and makes miniature violins and pianos of surprising
completeness, but no use. Here he will most likely stop; for there is no
probability of his ever ceasing to be a slave, or having opportunity to
turn to practical account a degree of energy, patience, and skill which,
in happier circumstances, might have been the instruments of great
deeds.
The energies of slaves sometimes take a direction which their masters
contrive to render profitable, when they take to religion as a pursuit.
The universal, unquenchable reverence for religion in the human mind is
taken advantage of when the imagination of the slave has been turned
into the channel of superstition. It is a fact, that in the newspapers
of New-Orleans may be seen an advertisement now and then of a lot of
"pious negroes." Such "pious negroes" are convenient on a plantation
where the treatment is not particularly mild; as they consider
nonresistance a Christian duty, and are able to inspire a wonderful
degree of patience into their fellow-sufferers.
The vigour which negroes show when their destiny is fairly placed in
their own hands, is an answer to all arguments about their helplessness
drawn from their dulness in a state of bondage. A highly satisfactory
experiment upon the will, judgment, and talents of a large body of
slaves was made a few years ago by a relative of Chief-justice Marshall.
This gentleman and his family had attached their negroes to them by a
long course of judicious kindness. At length an estate at some distance
was left to the gentleman, and he saw, with much regret, that it was his
duty to leave the plantation on which he was living. He could not bear
the idea of turning over his people to the tender mercies or unproved
judgment of a stranger overseer. He called his negroes together, told
them the case, and asked whether they thought they could manage the
estate themselves. If they were willing to undertake the task, they must
choose an overseer from among themselves, provide comfortably for their
own wants, and remit him the surplus of the profits. The negroes were
full of grief at losing the family, but willing to try what they could
do. They had an election for overseer, and chose the man their master
would have pointed out; decidedly the strongest head on the estate. All
being arranged, the master left them, with a parting charge to keep
their festivals, and take their appointed holydays as if he were
present. After some time he rode over to see how all went on, choosing a
festival day, that he might meet them in their holyday gayety. He was
surprised, on approaching, to hear no merriment; and, on entering his
fields, he found his "force" all hard at work. As they flocked round
him, he inquired why they were not making holyday. They told him that
the crop would suffer in its present state by the loss of a day, and
that they had therefore put off their holyday, which, however, they
meant to take by-and-by. Not many days after an express arrived to
inform the proprietor that there was an insurrection on his estate. He
would not believe it; declared it impossible, as there was nobody to
rise against; but the messenger, who had been sent by the neighbouring
gentlemen, was so confident of the facts, that the master galloped, with
the utmost speed, to his plantation, arriving as night was coming on. As
he rode in a cry of joy arose from his negroes, who pressed round to
shake hands with him. They were in their holyday clothes, and had been
singing and dancing. They were only enjoying the deferred festival. The
neighbours, hearing the noise on a quiet working day, had jumped to the
conclusion that it was an insurrection.
There is no catastrophe yet to this story. When the proprietor related
it, he said that no trouble had arisen; and that for some seasons, ever
since this estate had been wholly in the hands of his negroes, it had
been more productive than it ever was while he managed it himself.
The finest harvest-field of romance perhaps in the world is the frontier
between the United States and Canada. The vowed student of human nature
could not do better than take up his abode there, and hear what
fugitives and their friends have to tell. There have been no exhibitions
of the forces of human character in any political revolution or
religious reformation more wonderful and more interesting than may
almost daily be seen there. The impression on even careless minds on the
spot is very strong. I remember observing to a friend in the ferryboat,
when we were crossing the Niagara from Lewistown to Queenstown, that it
seemed very absurd, on looking at the opposite banks of the river, to
think that, while the one belonged to the people who lived on it, the
other was called the property of a nation three thousand miles off, the
shores looking so much alike as they do. My friend replied with a smile,
"Runaway slaves see a great difference." "That they do!" cried the
ferryman, in a tone of the deepest earnestness. He said that the leap
ashore of an escaped slave is a sight unlike any other that can be
seen.
On other parts of the frontier I heard tales which I grieve that it is
not in my power to tell, so honourable are they to individuals of both
races, friends of the slaves. The time may come when no one will be
injured by their being made public. Meantime, I will give one which
happened many years ago, and which relates to a different part of the
country.
A., now an elderly man, was accustomed in his youth to go up and down
the Mississippi on trading expeditions; and both in these and in
subsequent wanderings of many years--to Hayti among other places--he has
had opportunity to study the character of the negro race; and he is
decidedly of opinion that there is in them only a superinduced
inferiority to the whites. In relating his experiences among the
coloured people, he told the following story:--
When he was a young man, he was going down the Mississippi in a boat
with a cargo of salt, when he stopped at a small place on the Kentucky
shore called Unity, opposite to a part of Arkansas. While he was there a
slavetrader came up with his company of upward of two hundred slaves,
whom he was conveying to the New-Orleans market. Among these A. remarked
a gigantic mulatto--handsome in countenance and proud in bearing--who
was nearly naked, and fettered. He had an iron band round his waist and
round each wrist, and these bands were connected by chains. The trader
observed to A. that this man was the most valuable slave he had ever had
on sale. I think he said that he would not take two thousand dollars for
him; he added that he was obliged to chain him, as he was bent on
getting away. When the trader's back was turned, the mulatto looked at
A. as if wishing to talk with him.
"Why are you chained in this way?" asked A.
"Because my master is afraid of losing me. He knows that I am the most
valuable slave he has, and that I mean to get away."
"Have you told him so?"
"Yes."
"And how do you mean to get away?"
"I don't know; but I mean it."
After a pause, he said in a low voice to A.,
"Could not you give me a file?"
"No," said A., decidedly. "Do you think I don't know the law? Do you
think I am going to help you away, and get punished for it? No; I can't
give you a file."
As A. went back to his boat he saw the slave looking wistfully after
him, and his heart smote him for what he had said. He bethought himself
that if he could manage to put an instrument of deliverance in the man's
way without touching it, he might keep within the letter of the law, and
he acted upon this notion. He looked about his boat, and found a strong
three-sided file, which he put between his coat and waistcoat, so that
it would be sure to drop out when the coat was unbuttoned. He sauntered
back on shore, and the mulatto, who watched all his movements, came up
to him, eagerly whispering,
"Have you got a file? Are you going to give me a file?"
"No," said A. "I told you that I knew better than to give you a file."
The slave's countenance fell.
"However," continued A., "I should not wonder if I can tell you where to
get one. If you look about by yonder woodpile, I think, perhaps, you may
find a file. No, not now. Go back to your company now, and don't look at
me; and, when I am gone on board my boat, you can wander off to the
woodpile."
A. unbuttoned his coat as he appeared to be picking up the scattered
wood round the pile, and presently returned to his boat, whence he saw
the mulatto presently walk to the woodpile, and stoop down just at the
right spot. A. watched all day and late into the night, but he saw and
heard nothing more.
In the morning the slavetrader came on board the boat, exclaiming
angrily that A. had a slave of his concealed there. A. desired him to
search the boat, which he did, looking behind every bag of salt. He was
confident that A. must have helped the man away; chained as he was, he
could not have got off without help. As for himself, he had rather have
lost thousands of dollars than this man; but he always knew it would be
so; the fellow always said he would get away.
Thus grumbling, the trader departed to make search in another direction.
In an hour he returned, saying that the slave must either be drowned or
have got over into Arkansas. His irons and a strong file were lying on a
point of land projecting into the river about a mile off, and the marks
were visible where the fugitive had taken the water. A. went, and long
did he stay, questioning and meditating; and during all the years that
have since elapsed, it has been his frequent daily and nightly
speculation whether the mulatto escaped or perished. Sometimes, when he
remembers the gigantic frame of the man, and the force of the impulse
which urged him, A. hopes that it may have been possible for him to
reach the opposite shore. At other times, when he thinks of the width of
the Mississippi at that part, and of the tremendous force of the
current, which would warrant the assertion that it is impossible for a
swimmer to cross, he believes himself convinced that the fugitive has
perished. Yet still the hope returns that the strong man may be living
in wild freedom in some place where the sense of safety and peace may
have taught him to forgive and pity his oppressors.
NEW-ORLEANS.
"Though everybody cried 'Shame!' and 'Shocking!' yet everybody
visited them."--MISS EDGEWORTH.
When arrived at the extreme southwest point of our journey, it was
amusing to refer to the warnings of our kind friends about its
inconveniences and dangers. We had brought away tokens of the
hospitality of Charleston in the shape of a large basket of provision
which had been prepared, on the supposition that we should find little
that we could eat on the road. There was wine, tea, and cocoa; cases of
French preserved meat, crackers (biscuits), and gingerbread. All these
good things, except the wine and crackers, we found it expedient to
leave behind, from place to place. There was no use in determining
beforehand to eat them at any particular meal; when it came to the
point, we always found hunger or disgust so much more bearable than the
shame of being ungracious to entertainers who were doing their best for
us, that we could never bring ourselves to produce our stores. We took
what was set before us, and found ourselves, at length, alive and well
at New-Orleans.
At Mobile I met some relatives, who kindly urged my taking possession of
their house at New-Orleans during my stay of ten days. I was thankful
for the arrangement, as the weather was becoming hot, and we could
secure more leisure and repose in a house of our own than in a
boarding-house or as the guests of a family. With the house we were, of
course, to have the services of my friend's slaves. He told me something
of their history. He had tried all ways to obtain good service, and
could not succeed. He had attempted wages, treating his people like free
servants, &c., and all in vain. His present plan was promising them
freedom and an establishment in a free state after a short term of years
in case of good desert. He offered to take care of the money they earned
during their leisure hours, and to pay them interest upon it, but they
preferred keeping it in their own hands. One of them sewed up 150
dollars in her bed; she fell ill, and the person who nursed her is
supposed to have got the money; for, when the poor slave recovered, her
earnings were gone.
We left Mobile for New-Orleans on the 24th of April. The portion of
forest which we crossed in going down from Mobile to the coast was the
most beautiful I had seen. There was fresh grass under foot, and the
woods were splendid with myrtles, magnolias, and many shrubs whose
blossoms were new to me and their names unknown. We had plenty of time
to look about us; for the hack which carried the four passengers whom
the stage would not contain broke down every half hour, and the stage
company had to stop till it could proceed. We had an excellent dinner in
the gallery of a loghouse in the midst of the forest, where we were
plentifully supplied with excellent claret. There had been showers all
day, with intervals of sunshine, but towards sunset the settled gloom of
the sky foreboded a night of storm. I was on the watch for the first
sight of the Gulf of Mexico. I traced the line where the forest retires
to give place to the marsh, and the whole scene assumes a sudden air of
desolation. At this moment the thunder burst, sheets of lightning glared
over the boiling sea, and the rain poured down in floods. Our umbrellas
were found to be broken, of course; and we had to run along the pier to
the steamboat in such a rain as I was never before exposed to; but it
was well worth while getting wet for such a first sight of the Gulf of
Mexico. It soon grew dark; and, before morning, we were in Lake
Pontchartrain, so that this stormy view of the gulf was the only one we
had.
We amused ourselves in the morning with tracing the dim shores of the
State of Mississippi to the north, and of Louisiana to the west. About
nine o'clock we arrived in sight of the long piers which stretch out
from the swamp into the lake, the mudcraft, the canoes, with blacks
fishing for crabs; the baths, and the large Washington hotel, with its
galleries and green blinds, built for coolness, where gentlemen from
New-Orleans go to eat fish and bathe. Next we saw the train of railroad
cars waiting for us; and, without the loss of a moment's time, we were
whirled away to the city, five miles in a quarter of an hour. I have
expressed elsewhere[16] my admiration of the swamp through which our
road lay; an admiration which faded as we traversed the lower faubourg,
and died away in the Champs Elysées. Before ten o'clock we were breaking
the seals of our English letters in the drawing-room of our temporary
home.
Footnote 16: "Society in America," vol. ii., p. 179.
When we had satisfied ourselves with home news, unpacked, dressed, and
lunched, we took our seats by the window in the intervals of visits from
callers. All was very new, very foreign in its aspect. Many of the
ladies in the streets wore caps or veils instead of bonnets; the negroes
who passed shouted their very peculiar kind of French; and everything
seemed to tell us that we had plunged into the dogdays. I never knew
before how impressions of heat can be conveyed through the eye. The
intensity of glare and shadow in the streets, and the many evidences
that the fear of heat is the prevailing idea of the place, affect the
imagination even more than the scorching power of the sun does the
bodily frame.