A man and his wife and their children were brought from Africa to
America, and were sold as slaves. One little girl and her mother kept
together, but the others were so far separated that they never met
again. The little girl's name was Isabella; but when she grew to be a
woman and became a Christian, she adopted the name of Sojourner Truth.
She told a lady, "I can remember, when I was a little thing, how my ole
mammy would sit out of doors in the evenin', an' look up at the stars
an' groan. She'd groan, an' groan, and says I to her:
"'Mammy, what makes you groan so?'
"An' she'd say, 'Matter enough, chile! I'm groaning to think of my poor
children; they don't know where I be, and I don't know where they be;
they looks up at the stars, an' I looks up at the stars, but I can't
tell where they be.'
"'Now,' she said, 'chile, when you be grown up, you may be sold away
from your mother an' all your ole friends, an' have great troubles come
on ye; an' when you has these troubles come on ye, ye jes go to God,
an' He'll help ye.'"
Isabella was sold to a hard master and mistress. She thought she had
got into trouble, and she wanted to find God; she prayed that He would
make her master and mistress better, and as He did not do so, she
concluded they were too bad to be made better, and that she might leave
them. So she rose at three o'clock one morning, and travelled till late
at night, when she came to a house and went in, "And," she said, "they
were Quakers, an' real kind they was to me. They jes took me in, an'
did for me as kind as ef I had been one of 'em, an' I stayed an' lived
with 'em two or three years. An' now, jes look here; instead o' keeping
my promise an' being good, as I told the Lord I would, jest as soon
as everything got agoing easy, I forgot all about God, an' I gin up
praying."
Sojourner did not long continue in this dark state, but she found
the Lord Jesus, and she said, "I shouted and cried, Praise, praise,
praise to the Lord; an' I began to feel such a love in my soul as I
never felt before,--love to all creatures. An' then all of a sudden it
stopped; an' I said, 'There are the white folks, that have abused you,
an' beat you, an' abused your people,--think o' them!' An' then there
came another rush o' love through my soul, an' I cried out loud, 'Lord,
Lord, I can love even the white folks. Jesus loved me! I knowed it, I
felt it.'"
When slavery was abolished in the State of New York, Sojourner went
back to her old mistress and demanded her son; he had been sent to
Alabama. After some trouble and expense her son was brought back to
her, though her mistress said to her:
"What a fuss you make about a little nigger! got more of 'em now than
you know what to do with."
"Sojourner," said a gentleman, "you seem to be very sure about heaven."
"Well, I be;" she answered triumphantly.
"What makes you so sure there is any heaven?"
"Well, because I got such a hankering arter it in here," she said,
giving a thump on her breast with her usual energy.
"Sojourner, did you always go by this name?"
"No, 'deed! My name was Isabella. No, 'deed! but when I left the house
of bondage, I left everything behind. I want goin' to keep nothin' of
Egypt about me, and so I went to the Lord and asked him to give me a
new name. And the Lord gave me Sojourner, because I was to travel up
an' down the land, showing the people their sins, an' being a sign
unto them. Afterwards I told the Lord I wanted another name, 'cause
everybody else had two names; and the Lord gave me _Truth_, cause I was
to declare the truth to the people."
Wendell Phillips relates a scene of which he was witness before the
abolition of slavery in the United States. It was in a crowded public
meeting in Faneuil Hall, Boston, where Frederick Douglas was one of the
chief speakers. Douglas had been describing the wrongs of the colored
race, and as he proceeded he grew more and more excited, and finally
ended by saying that they had no hope of justice from the whites, no
possible hope except in their own right arms. It must come to blood;
they must fight for themselves, or it would never be done.
Sojourner was sitting, tall and dark, on the very front seat facing
the platform; and in the hush of feeling after Frederick sat down, she
spoke out in her deep peculiar voice, heard all over the house:
"Frederick, _is God dead_?"
The effect was perfectly electrical, and thrilled through the whole
house, changing as by a flash, the whole feeling of the audience. Not
another word she said or needed to say, it was enough.
The following is from a letter from a lady who visited Freedman's
Village, near Washington, where Sojourner Truth was residing in a
little frame building with the American flag over the door.
"We found Sojourner Truth, tall, dark, very homely, but with an
expression of determination and good sense by no means common. She
apologized for her hoarseness, as she had a meeting last evening. We
asked what she had been doing there. 'Fighting the devil,' she said.
What particular devil? 'An unfaithful man who has undertaken work for
which he is not competent. My people,' she added, 'have fallen very
low, and no one need take hold to help raise them up as a matter of
business, it must be done from love.' She greatly complained of some
one who had an office in relation to the Freedmen, and said he ought to
be removed. She was asked why she did not go to the President with her
story of the wrongdoing. She said, 'Don't you see the President has
a big job on hand? Any little matter Sojourner can do for herself she
aint going to bother him with.'"