The remarkable person who is the subject of the following sketch,
has been residing mostly ever since the close of the war in the
outskirts of the City of Auburn, during all which time I have been
well acquainted with her. She has all the characteristics of the
pure African race strongly marked upon her, though from which one
of the various tribes that once fed the Barracoons, on the Guinea
coast, she derived her indomitable courage and her passionate love
of freedom I know not; perhaps from the Fellatas, in whom those
traits were predominant.
Harriet lives upon a farm which the twelve hundred dollars given
her by Mrs. Bradford from the proceeds of the first edition of
this little book, enabled her to redeem from a mortgage held by
the late Secretary Seward.
Her household is very likely to consist of several old black
people, "bad with the rheumatize," some forlorn wandering woman,
and a couple of small images of God cut in ebony. How she manages
to feed and clothe herself and them, the Lord best knows. She has
too much pride and too much faith to beg. She takes thankfully,
but without any great effusiveness of gratitude, whatever God's
messengers bring her.
I have never heard that she absolutely lacked. There are some good
people in various parts of the country, into whose hearts God
sends the thought, from time to time, that Harriet may be at the
bottom of the flour sack, or of the potatoes, and the "help in
time of need" comes to her.
Harriet's simplicity and ignorance have, in some cases, been
imposed upon, very signally in one instance in Auburn, a few years
ago; but nobody who knows her has the slightest doubt of her
perfect integrity.
The following sketch taken by Mrs. Bradford, chiefly from
Harriet's own recollections, which are wonderfully distinct and
minute, but also from other corroborative sources, gives but a
very imperfect account of what this woman has been.
Her color, and the servile condition in which she was born and
reared, have doomed her to obscurity, but a more heroic soul did
not breathe in the bosom of Judith or of Jeanne D'Arc.
No fear of the lash, the blood-hound, or the fiery stake, could
divert her from her self-imposed task of leading as many as
possible of her people "from the land of Egypt, from the house of
bondage."
The book is good literature for the black race, or the white race,
and though no similar conditions may arise, to test the
possibilities that are in any of them, yet the example of this
poor slave woman may well stand out before them, and before all
people, black or white, to show what a lofty and martyr spirit may
accomplish, struggling against overwhelming obstacles.