VISIT WASHINGTON.--AGE, 35.
When slavery thought to reap the fruits of the war into which she had
plunged the nation with Mexico, lo! there was a lion in her path, and
not a Bunyan lion either, for this kingly beast wore no collar, no chain
held him. The roused North had laid her great labor paw on the
California gold fields and stood showing her teeth while the serpent
with raised crest was coiled to strike, and the world waited and
wondered.
Henry Clay, the synonym for compromise, was still in the United States
Senate, and, with his cat-like tread, stepped in between the
belligerents with a cunning device--a device similar to that by which
the boys disposed of the knife they found jointly--one was to own, the
other to carry and use it. So by this plan the lion was to own
California, and the snake was to occupy it as a hunting-ground; nay, not
it alone, but every State and Territory in the Union must be given up to
its slimy purposes. In other words, California was to be admitted as a
free State, upon condition of the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill,
which authorized the slave-hunter to follow the fugitive into every
home, every spot of this broad land; to tear him from any altar, and
demand the services of every "good citizen" in his hellish work. Men by
thousands, once counted friends of freedom, bowed abjectly to this
infamous decision.
Daniel Webster, the leading Whig statesman, made a set speech in favor
of thus giving up the whole country to the dominion of the slave power.
It was another great bid for the next presidential nomination, which
must be controlled by the South. The danger was imminent, the crisis
alarming, and the excitement very great. I longed to be in Washington,
so I wrote to Horace Greeley, who answered that he would pay me five
dollars a column for letters. It was said that this was the first time a
woman had been engaged in that capacity.
I went to Washington in the early part of '50, going by canal to the
western foot of the Alleghenies, and then by rail to the foot of the
inclined plane, where our cars were wound up and let down by huge
windlasses. I was in a whirl of wonder and excitement by this, my first
acquaintance with the iron-horse, but had to stay all night in Baltimore
because the daily train for Washington had left before ours came.
I had letters to the proprietor of the Irving House, where I took board.
Had others to Col. Benton, Henry Clay, and other great men, but he who
most interested me was Dr. Gamaliel Bailey, editor of the _National
Era_. The great want of an anti-slavery paper at the capitol had been
supplied by five-dollar subscriptions to a publication fund, and Dr.
Bailey called from Cincinnati to take charge of it, and few men have
kept a charge with more care and skill. He and the _Era_ had just passed
the ordeal of a frightful mob, in which he was conciliatory, unyielding
and victorious; and he was just then gravely anxious about the great
crisis, but most of all anxious that the _Era_ should do yeoman service
to the cause which had called it into life. The _Era_ had a large
circulation, and high literary standing, but Dr. Bailey was troubled
about the difficulty or impossibility of procuring anti-slavery tales.
Mrs. Southworth was writing serials for it, and he had hoped that she, a
Southern woman with Northern principles, could weave into her stories
pictures of slavery which would call damaging attention to it, but in
this she had failed.
Anti-slavery tales, anti-slavery tales, was what the good Doctor wanted.
Temperance had its story writer in Arthur. If only abolition had a good
writer of fiction, one who could interest and educate the young. He knew
of but one pen able to write what he wanted, and alas, the finances of
the _Era_ could not command it. If only he could engage Mrs. Stowe. I
had not heard of her, and he explained that she was a daughter of Lyman
Beecher. I was surprised and exclaimed:
"A daughter of Lyman Beecher write abolition stories! Saul among the
prophets!"
I reminded the Doctor that President Beecher and Prof. Stowe had broken
up the theological department of Lane Seminary by suppressing the
anti-slavery agitation raised by Theodore Weld, a Kentucky student, and
threw their influence against disturbing the Congregational churches
with the new fanaticism; that Edward Beecher invented the "organic sin,"
devil, behind which churches and individuals took refuge when called
upon to "come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty." But Dr.
Bailey said he knew them personally, and that despite their public
record, they were at heart anti-slavery, and that prudence alone
dictated their course. Mrs. Stowe was a graphic story-teller, had been
in Kentucky, taken in the situation and could describe the peculiar
institution as no one else could. If he could only enlist her, the whole
family would most likely follow into the abolition ranks; but the bounty
money, alas, where could he raise it?
Where there is the will there is a way, and it was but a few months
after that conversation when Dr. Bailey forwarded one hundred dollars to
Mrs. Stowe as a retaining fee for her services in the cause of the
slave, and lo! the result, "Uncle Tom's Cabin." As it progressed he sent
her another, and then another hundred dollars. Was ever money so well
expended?
That grand old lion, Joshua R. Giddings, had also passed through the
mob, and as I went with him to be presented to President Taylor, a woman
in the crowd stepped back, drew away her skirts, and with a snarl
exclaimed,
"A pair of abolitionists!"
The whole air of Freedom's capital thrilled and palpitated with hatred
of her and her cause. On the question of the pending Fugitive Slave
Bill, the feeling was intense and bitterly partisan, although not a
party measure. Mr. Taylor, the Whig President, had pronounced the bill
an insult to the North, and stated his determination to veto it.
Fillmore, the Vice-President, was in favor of it. So, Freedom looked to
a man owning three hundred slaves, while slavery relied on "a Northern
man with Southern principles." President Taylor was hated by the South,
was denounced as a traitor to his section, while Southern men and women
fawned upon and flattered Fillmore. Webster, the great Whig statesman of
the North, had bowed the knee to Baal, while Col. Benton, of Missouri,
was on the side of Freedom.
The third, or anti-slavery party, represented by Chase and Hale in the
Senate, was beginning to make itself felt, and must be crushed and
stamped out at all hazards--the infant must be strangled in its cradle.
While abolition was scoffed at by hypocritical priests as opening a door
to amalgamation, here, in the nation's capital, lived some of our most
prominent statesmen in open concubinage with negresses, adding to their
income by the sale of their own children, while one could neither go out
nor stay in without meeting indisputable testimony of the truth of
Thomas Jefferson's statement: "The best blood of Virginia runs in the
veins of her slaves." But the case which interested me most was a family
of eight mulattoes, bearing the image and superscription of the great
New England statesman, who paid the rent and grocery bills of their
mother as regularly as he did those of his wife.
Pigs were the scavengers, mud and garbage the rule, while men literally
wallowed in the mire of licentiousness and strong drink. In Congress
they sat and loafed with the soles of their boots turned up for the
inspection of the ladies in the galleries. Their language and gestures
as they expectorated hither and thither were often as coarse as their
positions, while they ranted about the "laws and Constitution," and
cracked their slave-whips over the heads of the dough-faces sent from
the Northern States.
Washington was a great slave mart, and her slave-pen was one of the
most infamous in the whole land. One woman, who had escaped from it, was
pursued in her flight across the long bridge, and was gaining on the
four men who followed her, when they shouted to some on the Virginia
shore, who ran and intercepted her. Seeing her way blocked, and all hope
of escape gone, with one wild cry she clasped her hands above her head,
sprang into the Potomac, and was swept into that land beyond the River
Death, where alone was hope for the American slave. Another woman with
her two children was captured on the steps of the capitol building,
whither she had fled for protection, and this, too, while the stars and
stripes floated over it.
One of President Tyler's daughters ran away with the man she loved, in
order that they might be married, but for this they must reach foreign
soil. A young lady of the White House could not marry the man of her
choice in the United States. The lovers were captured, and she was
brought to His Excellency, her father, who sold her to a slave-trader.
From that Washington slave-pen she was taken to New Orleans by a man who
expected to get twenty-five hundred dollars for her on account of her
great beauty.
My letters to the New York _Tribune_, soon attracted so much attention
that is was unpleasant for me to live in a hotel, and I became the guest
of my friend Mrs. Emma D.E.N. Southworth. It was pleasant to look into
her great, dreamy grey eyes, with their heavy lashes, at the broad
forehead and the clustering brown curls, and have her sit and look into
the fire and talk as she wrote of the strange fancies which peopled her
busy brain.
Among the legislative absurdities which early attracted my attention was
that of bringing every claim against the government before Congress. If
a man thought government owed him ten dollars, the only way was to have
the bill pass both houses. In my _Tribune_ letters, I ventilated that
thoroughly, and suggested a court, in which Brother Jonathan could
appear by attorney. Mr. Greeley seconded the suggestion warmly, and
this, I think, was the origin of the Court of Claims.
There was yet one innovation I wanted to make, although my stay in
Washington would necessarily be short. No woman had ever had a place in
the Congressional reporter's gallery. This door I wanted to open to
them, called on Vice-President Fillmore and asked him to assign me a
seat in the Senate gallery. He was much surprised and tried to dissuade
me. The place would be very unpleasant for a lady, would attract
attention, I would not like it; but he gave me the seat. I occupied it
one day, greatly to the surprise of the Senators, the reporters, and
others on the floor and in the galleries; but felt that the novelty
would soon wear off, and that women would work there and win bread
without annoyance.
But the Senate had another sensation that day, for Foot, in a speech
alluded to "the gentleman from Missouri." Benton sprang to his feet, and
started toward him, but a dozen members rushed up to hold him, and he
roared:
"Stand off, gentlemen! Unhand me! Let me reach the scoundrel!" Everyone
stamped, and ran, and shouted "Order!" The speaker pounded with his
mallet, and Foot ran down the aisle to the chair, drawing out a great
horse-pistol and cocking it, cried:
"Let him come on, gentlemen! let him come on!" while he increased the
distance between them as fast as time and space would permit. After the
hubbub had subsided, Foot explained:
"Mr. Speaker, I saw the gentleman coming, and I advanced toward the
chair."
I have never seen a well-whipped rooster run from his foe, without
thinking of Foot's advance.