A year or two after my removal to Syracuse a colored man accosted me in
the street, and asked for a private interview with me on a matter of
great importance. I had repeatedly met him about the city, and supposed
from his appearance that he was a smart, enterprising, free negro.
At the time appointed he came to my house, and after looking carefully
about to be sure we were alone, he informed me that he was a fugitive
from slavery; that he had resided in our city several years, but nobody
here except his wife knew whence he came, and he was very desirous that
his secret should be kept.
“I have come,” he continued, “to ask your assistance to enable me to
get my mother out of slavery. I have been industrious, have lived
economically, and have saved three hundred dollars. With this I hope
to purchase my mother, and bring her here to finish her days with
me.” “You say,” I replied, “that you are a fugitive slave; from what
place in the South did you escape?” “From W----, in Virginia,” he
answered. I opened my atlas, and found a town so named in that State.
“What towns are there adjoining or near W----?” I asked. He named
several, enough to satisfy me that he was acquainted with that part of
Virginia. “Well,” said I, “how did you get here?” “By the light of the
north-star,” was his prompt reply. “How did you know anything about
the north-star, and that it would guide you to freedom?” I doubtingly
inquired. “I have _heard_ of a great many Southern slaves who have made
their way into the free States and to Canada by the light of that star,
but I have never before seen one who had done so. I am very desirous
to hear particularly about your escape.” “Well, sir,” said he, “a good
man in W----, a member of the Society of Friends, knowing how much I
longed to be free, pointed out to me the north-star, and showed me how
I might always find it. And he assured me, if I would travel towards
it, that I should at length reach a part of the country where slavery
was not allowed. I need not tell you, sir, how impatient I became
to set off. After a while my master left home to be absent several
days, and the next Saturday night I started with a bundle on my back,
containing a part of the very few clothes I had, and all the food I
could get with my mother’s help, and a little money in my pocket--not
three dollars--that I had been gathering for a long time. The first and
the second nights were pleasant, the stars shone bright, and there was
no moon, so I travelled from the moment it was dark enough to venture
out until the light of day began to appear. Then I found some place
to hide, and there I lay all day until darkness came again. Thus I
travelled night after night, always looking towards the north-star.
Sometimes I lost sight of it in the woods through which I was obliged
to pass, and oh! how glad I was to see it again. Sometimes I had to go
a great ways round to avoid houses and grounds that were guarded by
dogs, or that I feared it would not be safe for me to cross, but still
I kept looking for the star, and turned and travelled towards it when I
could. At other times (thank God, not often) the nights were so cloudy
I could not see, and so was obliged to stay where I had been through
the previous days. O sir, how long those nights did seem!
“When the food I had brought away in my bundle was all eaten up, I
was forced to call at some houses and beg for something to relieve
my hunger. I was generally treated kindly, for, as I learnt, I had
gotten out of Virginia and Maryland. Still, I did not dare to stop so
soon, but kept on until I reached this place, where I saw many colored
people, evidently as free as the white folks. So I thought it would be
safe to look about for employment here and a home. Here I have been
living seven or eight years; have married a wife, and we have two
children. As I told you at first, I have saved money enough, I believe,
to buy my mother, and I want you, sir, to help me get her here.”
It cannot be necessary for me to assure my readers that I was deeply
interested in this narrative, which I have repeated so often that I
have kept its essential parts fresh in my memory. But, wishing to test
its truth still further, I asked him what towns he had passed through
in coming from W---- to Syracuse. “O,” said he, “as I travelled at
night and avoided people all I could, and asked few questions of those
I did meet, I learned the names of only a few places through which I
came. I remember M---- and D---- and B----,” and so on, giving the
names of six or eight towns in all. “Ah,” said I, “how did you get to
B----, if you travelled only towards the north-star?”
“O,” he replied, “I got scared there. I thought the slave-catchers
were after me. I ran for luck. I travelled two nights in the road that
was easiest for me, without caring for anything but to escape. Then,
supposing I had got away from those who were after me, I took to the
north-star again, and that brought me here.”
The few towns which he named as having passed through after his last
starting-point, I found on the map lying almost directly in the line
running thence due north to this city.
Being thus assured of the correctness of his story, I began to question
the expediency of his attempting to bring his mother away from her
old home, even if I should be able to get possession of her for him.
“She must be an aged woman by this time,” said I. “You look as if you
were forty years old; she probably is sixty, perhaps nearly or quite
seventy.”
“It may be so,” he replied; “but she used to be mighty smart and
healthy, and may live a good many years yet, and I want to do what I
can for my mother. I am her only child I believe, and I know she would
be mighty glad to see me again before she dies.”
“Very true,” I rejoined; “but you have been so long separated she must
have got used to living without you. Like other old slave-women in our
Southern States (_mammies_ or _aunties_, as they are called), I presume
she is pretty kindly treated, and such a change as you propose at her
time of life might make her much less comfortable than she would be to
continue to the last in her accustomed place and condition.”
“O sir!” he said, with great earnestness, “she is a slave. Every one
in slavery longs to be free. I am sure she would rather suffer a great
deal as a free woman than to live any longer, however comfortably, as a
slave.”
“Yes,” I replied, with all apparent want of sympathy, “but it will cost
you all the money you have saved, and I fear much more, to buy her and
get her brought on to you here, so that you may then be too poor to
make her comfortable. But your three hundred dollars will enable you to
increase in many ways the comfort of your wife and children. That sum
will go far towards the purchase of a nice little home for them. Now,
do you not owe them quite as much as you do your mother?” “My wife,” he
exclaimed, “is just as anxious as I am to get mother out of slavery.
She is willing to work as hard as I will to make mother comfortable
after we get her here. I am sure we shall not let mother suffer for
anything she may need in her old age. Do, sir, help us get her here,
and you shall see what we will do for her.” Repressing my feelings as
much as possible, I said once more: “But, my good fellow, your mother
is so old she can live but a little while after you have spent your all
and more to get her here. Very likely the excitement and the fatigue
of the journey and the change of the climate will kill her very soon.”
With the deepest emotion and in a most subdued manner, he replied, “No
matter if it does,--buy her, bring her here, and _let her die free_.”
This was irresistible. I seized his hand. “Sanford, you must not think
me as unsympathizing and cold as I have appeared. I have been trying
you, proving you. I am satisfied that you know the value of liberty,
that you hold it above all price. Be assured I will do all in my power
to help you to accomplish your generous, your pious purpose. Nothing
will give me more heartfelt satisfaction than to be instrumental in
procuring the release of your mother and presenting her to you a free
woman.”
The sequel to my story is sad, but most instructive. It will show
how demoralizing, dehumanizing it has been and must be to hold human
beings, fellow-men, as property, chattels; that, as Cowper wrote long
ago, “it were better to be a slave and wear the chains, than to fasten
them on another.”
How to compass the purpose which had thus been so forcibly fixed in
my heart required some device. It would not have done for Sanford
himself to have gone for his mother. That would have been like going
into the den of an angry tiger. No sin that a slave could commit was so
unpardonable then, in the estimation of a slaveholder, as running away.
I did not, until five years afterwards, become acquainted with that
remarkable woman, _Harriet Tubman_, or I might have engaged her
services in the assurance that she would have brought off the old
woman without _paying_ for what belonged to her by an inalienable
right,--_her liberty_.
I therefore soon determined to intrust the undertaking to John Needles,
of Baltimore, a most excellent man and member of the Society of
Friends. Accordingly, I wrote to him, giving all the particulars of
the case,--the name of the town in Virginia where the slave-woman was
supposed to be still living, usually called Aunt Bess or Old Bess, and
the name of the planter who held her as his chattel. I promised to send
him the three hundred dollars which Sanford had put at my disposal, and
more, if more would be needed, so soon as he should inform me that he
had gotten or could get possession of the woman.
After six or eight weeks I received a letter, informing me that he
had secured the ready assistance of a very suitable man,--a Quaker,
residing in the town of W----, not far from the plantation on which was
still living the mother of Sanford, an old woman in pretty good health.
But alas! his endeavor to purchase her had been utterly unavailing. He
had approached the business as warily as he knew how to. Yet almost
instantly the truth had been seen by the jealous eyes of the planter,
through the disguise the Quaker had attempted to throw around it. “You
don’t want that old black wench for yourself,” said the master. “She
would be of no use to you. You want to get her for Sanford. And, damn
him, he can’t have her, unless he comes for her himself. And then, I
reckon, I shall let Old Bess have him, and not let him have her. He
may stay here where he belongs, the damned runaway!” No entreaty or
argument the Quaker used seemed to move the master. Even the offer
of two hundred dollars and two hundred and fifty dollars--much more
than the market value of the old woman--was spurned. It was better to
him than money to punish the runaway slave through his disappointed
affections, now that he could not do it by lacerating his back or
putting him in irons.
I need not attempt to describe the sorrow and vexation of the son thus
wantonly denied the satisfaction of contributing to the comfort of his
mother through the few last days of her life, in which her services
could have been of little or no worth to the tyrant. Nor need I measure
for my readers the vast _moral superiority_ of the poor black man, who
had been the slave, to the rich white man, who had been the master.