feelings, and opinions which I have formed respecting the character
and condition of the people of this land. I have refrained thus
purposely. I wish to speak advisedly, and, in order to do this, I
have waited till, I trust, experience has brought my opinion to
an intelligent maturity. I have been thus careful, not because I
think what I say will have much effect in shaping the opinions
of the world, but because what influence I may possess, whether
little or much, I wish to go in the right direction, and according
to truth. I hardly need say that in speaking of Ireland, I shall
be influenced by no prejudices in favor of America. I think my
circumstances all forbid that. I have no end to serve, no creed
to uphold, no government to defend; and as to nation, I belong
to none. I have no protection at home, or resting-place abroad.
The land of my birth welcomes me to her shores only as a slave,
and spurns with contempt the idea of treating me differently; so
that I am an outcast from the society of my childhood, and an
outlaw in the land of my birth. ‘I am a stranger with thee and a
sojourner, as all my fathers were.’ That men should be patriotic,
is to me perfectly natural; and as a philosophical fact, I am able
to give it an intellectual recognition. But no further can I go.
If ever I had any patriotism, or any capacity for the feeling,
it was whipped out of me long since by the lash of the American
soul-drivers. In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself
admiring her bright blue sky, her grand old woods, her fertile
fields, her beautiful rivers, her mighty lakes, and star-crowned
mountains. But my rapture is soon checked--my joy is soon turned
to mourning. When I remember that all is cursed with the infernal
spirit of slaveholding, robbery, and wrong; when I remember that
with the waters of her noblest rivers, the tears of my brethren
are borne to the ocean, disregarded and forgotten, and that her
most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged
sisters, I am filled with unutterable loathing, and led to reproach
myself that anything could fall from my lips in praise of such a
land. America will not allow her children to love her. She seems
bent on compelling those who would be her warmest friends, to be
her worst enemies. May God give her repentance before it is too
late, is the ardent prayer of my heart. I will continue to pray,
labor, and wait, believing that she cannot always be insensible
to the dictates of justice, or deaf to the voice of humanity. My
opportunities for learning the character and condition of the
people of this land have been very great. I have traveled from
the Hill of Howth to the Giant’s Causeway, and from the Giant’s
Causeway to Cape Clear. During these travels I have met with much
in the character and condition of the people to approve, and much
to condemn; much that has thrilled me with pleasure, and much that
has filled me with pain. I will not, in this letter, attempt to
give any description of those scenes which give me pain. This I
will do hereafter. I have enough, and more than your subscribers
will be disposed to read at one time, of the bright side of the
picture. I can truly say I have spent some of the happiest days of
my life since landing in this country. I seem to have undergone
a transformation. I live a new life. The warm and generous
coöperation extended to me by the friends of my despised race; the
prompt and liberal manner with which the press has rendered me its
aid; the glorious enthusiasm with which thousands have flocked
to hear the cruel wrongs of my down-trodden and long-enslaved
fellow-countrymen portrayed; the deep sympathy for the slave, and
the strong abhorrence of the slaveholder everywhere evinced; the
cordiality with which members and ministers of various religious
bodies, and of various shades of religious opinion have embraced me
and lent me their aid; the kind hospitality constantly proffered me
by persons of the highest rank in society; the spirit of freedom
that seems to animate all with whom I come in contact, and the
entire absence of everything that looks like prejudice against me,
on account of the color of my skin, contrasts so strongly with my
long and bitter experience in the United States, that I look with
wonder and amazement on the transition. In the southern part of
the United States, I was a slave--thought of and spoken of as
property; in the language of _law_, ‘held, taken, reputed, and
adjudged to be a chattel in the hands of my owners and possessors,
and their executors, administrators, and assigns, to all intents,
constructions, and purposes, whatsoever.’ (Brev. Digest., 224.)
In the Northern States, a fugitive slave, liable to be hunted at
any moment like a felon, and to be hurled into the terrible jaws
of slavery--doomed by an inveterate prejudice against color,
to insult and outrage on every hand (Massachusetts out of the
question)--denied the privileges and courtesies common to others
in the use of the most humble means of conveyance--shut out
from the cabins on steamboats, refused admission to respectable
hotels, caricatured, scorned, scoffed, mocked, and maltreated with
impunity by any one (no matter how black his heart), so he has a
white skin. But now behold the change! Eleven days and a half gone,
and I have crossed three thousand miles of perilous deep. Instead
of a democratic government, I am under a monarchial government.
Instead of the bright, blue sky of America, I am covered with the
soft, gray fog of the Emerald Isle. I breathe, and lo! the chattel
becomes a man! I gaze around in vain for one who will question
my equal humanity, claim me as a slave, or offer me an insult.
I employ a cab--I am seated beside white people--I reach the
hotel--I enter the same door--I am shown into the same parlor--
I dine at the same table--and no one is offended. No delicate
nose grows deformed in my presence. I find no difficulty here in
obtaining admission into any place of worship, instruction, or
amusement, on equal terms, with people as white as any I ever saw
in the United States. I meet nothing to remind me of my complexion.
I find myself regarded and treated at every turn with the kindness
and deference paid to white people. When I go to church I am met
by no upturned nose and scornful lip, to tell me--‘We don’t allow
niggers in here.’”
I remember about two years ago there was in Boston, near the southwest
corner of Boston Common, a menagerie. I had long desired to see
such a collection as I understood was being exhibited there. Never
having had an opportunity while a slave, I resolved to seize this,
and as I approached the entrance to gain admission, I was told by
the door-keeper, in a harsh and contemptuous tone, “_We don’t allow
niggers in here_.” I also remember attending a revival meeting in the
Rev. Henry Jackson’s meeting-house, at New Bedford, and going up the
broad aisle for a seat, I was met by a good deacon, who told me, in a
pious tone, “_We don’t allow niggers in here_.” Soon after my arrival
in New Bedford, from the South, I had a strong desire to attend the
lyceum, but was told, “_They don’t allow niggers there_.” While passing
from New York to Boston on the steamer Massachusetts, on the night of
the 9th of December, 1843, when chilled almost through with the cold,
I went into the cabin to get a little warm. I was soon touched upon
the shoulder, and told, “_We don’t allow niggers in here_.” A week or
two before leaving the United States, I had a meeting appointed at
Weymouth, the house of that glorious band of true abolitionists--the
Weston family and others. On attempting to take a seat in the omnibus
to that place, I was told by the driver (and I never shall forget his
fiendish hate), “I don’t allow niggers in here.” Thank heaven for
the respite I now enjoy! I had been in Dublin but a few days when a
gentleman of great respectability kindly offered to conduct me through
all the public buildings of that beautiful city, and soon afterward I
was invited by the lord mayor to dine with him. What a pity there was
not some democratic Christian at the door of his splendid mansion to
bark out at my approach, “They don’t allow niggers in here!” The truth
is, the people here know nothing of the republican negro-hate prevalent
in our glorious land. They measure and esteem men according to their
moral and intellectual worth, and not according to the color of their
skin. Whatever may be said of the aristocracies here, there is none
based on the color of a man’s skin. This species of aristocracy belongs
preëminently to “the land of the free, and the home of the brave.” I
have never found it abroad in any but Americans. It sticks to them
wherever they go. They find it almost as hard to get rid of as to get
rid of their skins.
The second day after my arrival in Liverpool, in company with my friend
Buffum, and several other friends, I went to Eaton Hall, the residence
of the Marquis of Westminster, one of the most splendid buildings in
England. On approaching the door, I found several of our American
passengers who came out with us in the Cambria, waiting for admission,
as but one party was allowed in the house at a time. We all had to wait
till the company within came out, and of all the faces expressive of
chagrin, those of the Americans were preëminent. They looked as sour as
vinegar, and as bitter as gall, when they found I was to be admitted
on equal terms with themselves. When the door was opened, I walked in
on a footing with my white fellow-citizens, and, from all I could see,
I had as much attention paid me by the servants who showed us through
the house, as any with a paler skin. As I walked through the building,
the statuary did not fall down, the pictures did not leap from their
places, the doors did not refuse to open, and the servants did not say,
“_We don’t allow niggers in here_.”
My time and labors while abroad were divided between England, Ireland,
Scotland, and Wales. Upon this experience alone I might fill a volume.
Amongst the few incidents which space will permit me to mention, and
one which attracted much attention and provoked much discussion in
America, was a brief statement made by me in the World’s Temperance
Convention, held in Covent Garden theater, London, August 7, 1846. The
United States was largely represented in this convention by eminent
divines, mostly doctors of divinity. They had come to England for the
double purpose of attending the World’s Evangelical Alliance, and the
World’s Temperance Convention. In the former these ministers were
endeavoring to procure endorsement for the Christian character of
slaveholders; and, naturally enough, they were adverse to the exposure
of slaveholding practices. It was not pleasant to them to see one of
the slaves running at large in England, and telling the other side
of the story. The Rev. Samuel Hanson Cox, D.D., of Brooklyn, N. Y.,
was especially disturbed at my presence and speech in the Temperance
Convention. I will give here, first, the reverend gentleman’s version
of the occasion in a letter from him as it appeared in the New York
_Evangelist_, the organ of his denomination. After a description of the
place (Covent Garden theater) and the speakers, he says:
“They all advocated the same cause, showed a glorious unity of
thought and feeling, and the effect was constantly raised--the
moral scene was superb and glorious--when Frederick Douglass, the
colored abolition agitator and ultraist, came to the platform,
and so spake, _à la mode_, as to ruin the influence almost of all
that preceded! He lugged in anti-slavery, or abolition, no doubt
prompted to it by some of the politic ones, who can use him to do
what they would not themselves adventure to do in person. He is
supposed to have been well paid for the abomination.
“What a perversion, an abuse, an iniquity against the law of
reciprocal righteousness, to call thousands together, and get
them, some certain ones, to seem conspicuous and devoted for one
sole and grand object, and then all at once, with obliquity, open
an avalanche on them for some imputed evil or monstrosity, for
which, whatever be the wound or injury inflicted, they were both
too fatigued and hurried with surprise, and too straightened for
time, to be properly prepared. I say it is a streak of meanness!
It is abominable! On this occasion Mr. Douglass allowed himself
to denounce America and all its temperance societies, together
as a grinding community of the enemies of his people; said evil,
with no alloy of good, concerning the whole of us; was perfectly
indiscriminate in his severities; talked of the American delegates,
and to them, as if he had been our school-master, and we his docile
and devoted pupils; and launched his revengeful missiles at our
country without one palliative, and as if not a Christian or a true
anti-slavery man lived in the whole of the United States. The fact
is, the man has been petted, and flattered, and used, and paid by
certain abolitionists, not unknown to us, of the _ne plus ultra_
stamp, till he forgets himself; and, though he may gratify his
own impulses, and those of old Adam in others, yet sure I am that
all this is just the way to ruin his own influence, to defeat his
own object, and to do mischief--not good--to the very cause he
professes to love. With the single exception of one cold-hearted
parricide, whose character I abhor, and whom I will not name, and
who has, I fear, no feeling of true patriotism or piety within
him, all the delegates from our country were together wounded and
indignant. No wonder at it. I write freely. It was not done in a
corner. It was inspired, I believe, from beneath, and not from
above. It was adapted to re-kindle on both sides of the Atlantic
the flames of national exasperation and war. And this is the game
which Mr. Frederick Douglass and his silly patrons are playing in
England and in Scotland, and wherever they can find ‘some mischief
still for idle hands to do.’ I came here his sympathizing friend;
I am such no more, as I know him. My own opinion is increasingly
that this spirit must be exorcised out of England and America
before any substantial good can be effected for the cause of the
slave. It is adapted only to make bad worse, and to inflame the
passions of indignant millions to an incurable resentment. None but
an ignoramus or a madman could think that this way was that of the
inspired apostles of the Son of God. It may gratify the feelings of
a self-deceived and malignant few, but it will do no good in any
direction--least of all to the poor slave! It is short-sighted,
impulsive, partisan, reckless, and tending only to sanguinary ends.
None of this with men of sense and principle.
“We all wanted to reply, but it was too late; the whole theater
seemed taken with the spirit of the Ephesian uproar; they were
furious and boisterous in the extreme, and Mr. Kirk could hardly
obtain a moment, though many were desirous in his behalf to say
a few words, as he did, very calm and properly, that the cause
of temperance was not at all responsible for slavery, and had no
connection with it.”
Now, to show the reader what ground there was for this tirade from the
pen of this eminent divine, and how easily Americans parted with their
candor and self-possession when slavery was mentioned adversely, I will
give here the head and front of my offence. Let it be borne in mind
that this was a _world’s_ convention of the friends of temperance. It
was not an American or a white man’s convention, but one composed of
men of all nations and races; and as such, the convention had the right
to know all about the temperance cause in every part of the world, and
especially to know what hindrances were interposed in any part of the
world, to its progress. I was perfectly in order in speaking precisely
as I did. I was neither an “intruder,” nor “out of order.” I had been
invited and advertised to speak by the same committee that invited
Doctors Beecher, Cox, Patton, Kirk, Marsh, and others, and my speech
was perfectly within the limits of good order, as the following report
will show:
_“Mr. Chairman--Ladies and Gentlemen_:--
“I am not a delegate to this convention. Those who would have been
most likely to elect me as a delegate, could not, because they are
to-night held in abject slavery in the United States. Sir, I regret
that I cannot fully unite with the American delegates in their
patriotic eulogies of America, and American temperance societies. I
cannot do so for this good reason: there are at this moment three
millions of the American population, by slavery and prejudice,
placed entirely beyond the pale of American temperance societies.
The three million slaves are completely excluded by slavery, and
four hundred thousand free colored people are almost as completely
excluded by an inveterate prejudice against them, on account of
their color. [Cries of shame! shame!]
“I do not say these things to wound the feelings of the American
delegates. I simply mention them in their presence and before this
audience, that, seeing how you regard this hatred and neglect of
the colored people, they may be inclined on their return home to
enlarge the field of their temperance operations, and embrace
within the scope of their influence, my long-neglected race. [Great
cheering, and some confusion on the platform.] Sir, to give you
some idea of the difficulties and obstacles in the way of the
temperance reformation of the colored population in the United
States, allow me to state a few facts.
“About the year 1840, a few intelligent, sober, and benevolent
colored gentlemen in Philadelphia, being acquainted with the
appalling ravages of intemperance among a numerous class of colored
people in that city, and, finding themselves neglected and excluded
from white societies, organized societies among themselves,
appointed committees, sent out agents, built temperance halls, and
were earnestly and successfully rescuing many from the fangs of
intemperance.
“The cause went nobly on till August 1, 1842, the day when
England gave liberty to eight hundred thousand souls in the West
Indies. The colored temperance societies selected this day to
march in procession through the city, in the hope that such a
demonstration would have the effect of bringing others into their
ranks. They formed their procession, unfurled their teetotal
banners, and proceeded to the accomplishment of their purpose. It
was a delightful sight. But, sir, they had not proceeded down two
streets before they were brutally assailed by a ruthless mob; their
banner was torn down, and trampled in the dust, their ranks broken
up, their persons beaten and pelted with stones and brickbats.
One of their churches was burned to the ground, and their best
temperance hall utterly demolished.” [“Shame! shame! shame!” from
the audience--great confusion, and cries of “Sit down” from the
American delegates on the platform.]
In the midst of this commotion, the chairman tapped me on the
shoulder, and whispering, informed me that the fifteen minutes
allotted to each speaker had expired; whereupon the vast audience
simultaneously shouted: “Don’t interrupt!” “don’t dictate!” “go on!”
“go on!” “Douglass!” “Douglass!” This continued several minutes, when
I proceeded as follows: “Kind friends, I beg to assure you that the
chairman has not in the slightest degree sought to alter any sentiment
which I am anxious to express on this occasion. He was simply reminding
me that the time allotted for me to speak had expired. I do not wish
to occupy one moment more than is allotted to other speakers. Thanking
you for your kind indulgence, I will take my seat.” Proceeding to do so
again, there were loud cries of “Go on!” “go on!” with which I complied
for a few moments, but without saying anything more that particularly
related to the colored people of America. I did not allow the letter of
Dr. Cox to go unanswered through the American journals, but promptly
exposed its unfairness. That letter is too long for insertion here.
A part of it was published in the _Evangelist_, and in many other
papers, both in this country and in England. Our eminent divine made no
rejoinder, and his silence was regarded at the time as an admission of
defeat.
Another interesting circumstance connected with my visit to England,
was the position of the Free Church of Scotland with the great Doctors
Chalmers, Cunningham, and Candlish at its head. That church had settled
for itself the question which was frequently asked by the opponents of
abolition at home--“_What have we to do with slavery?_” by accepting
contributions from slaveholders; _i. e._, receiving the price of blood
into its treasury, with which to build churches and pay ministers for
preaching the gospel; and worse than this, when honest John Murray
of Bowlein Bay, with William Smeal, Andrew Paton, Frederick Card, and
other sterling anti-slavery men in Glasgow, denounced the transaction
as disgraceful, and shocking to the religious sentiment of Scotland,
this church, through its leading divines, instead of repenting and
seeking to amend the mistake into which it had fallen, caused that
_mistake_ to become a flagrant sin by undertaking to defend, in the
name of God and the Bible, the principle not only of taking the money
of slave-dealers to build churches and thus extend the gospel, but
of holding fellowship with the traffickers in human flesh. This, the
reader will see, brought up the whole question of slavery, and opened
the way to its full discussion. I have never seen a people more deeply
moved than were the people of Scotland on this very question. Public
meeting succeeded public meeting, speech after speech, pamphlet after
pamphlet, editorial after editorial, sermon after sermon, lashed
the conscientious Scotch people into a perfect _furore_. “SEND BACK
THE MONEY!” was indignantly shouted from Greenock to Edinburgh, and
from Edinburgh to Aberdeen. George Thompson of London, Henry C.
Wright, J. N. Buffum and myself from America, were of course on the
anti-slavery side, and Chalmers, Cunningham, and Candlish on the other.
Dr. Cunningham was the most powerful debater on the slavery side of the
question, Mr. Thompson the ablest on the anti-slavery side. A scene
occurred between these two men, a parallel to which I think I have
never witnessed before or since. It was caused by a single exclamation
on the part of Mr. Thompson, and was on this wise:
The general assembly of the Free Church was in progress at Cannon
Mills, Edinburgh. The building would hold twenty-five hundred persons,
and on this occasion was densely packed, notice having been given that
Doctors Cunningham and Candlish would speak that day in defense of
the relations of the Free Church of Scotland to slavery in America.
Messrs. Thompson, Buffum, myself and a few other anti-slavery friends
attended, but sat at such distance and in such position as not to be
observed from the platform. The excitement was intense, having been
greatly increased by a series of meetings held by myself and friends,
in the most splendid hall in that most beautiful city, just previous
to this meeting of the general assembly. “SEND BACK THE MONEY!” in
large capitals stared from every street corner; “SEND BACK THE MONEY!”
adorned the broad flags of the pavement; “SEND BACK THE MONEY!” was
the chorus of the popular street-song; “SEND BACK THE MONEY!” was the
heading of leading editorials in the daily newspapers. This day, at
Cannon Mills, the great doctors of the church were to give an answer
to this loud and stern demand. Men of all parties and sects were most
eager to hear. Something great was expected. The occasion was great,
the men were great, and great speeches were expected from them.
In addition to the outward pressure there was wavering within. The
conscience of the church itself was not at ease. A dissatisfaction with
the position of the church touching slavery was sensibly manifest among
the members, and something must be done to counteract this untoward
influence. The great Dr. Chalmers was in feeble health at the time, so
his most potent eloquence could not now be summoned to Cannon Mills,
as formerly. He whose voice had been so powerful as to rend asunder
and dash down the granite walls of the Established Church of Scotland,
and to lead a host in solemn procession from it as from a doomed city,
was now old and enfeebled. Besides he had said his word on this very
question, and it had not silenced the clamor without nor stilled the
anxious heavings within. The occasion was momentous, and felt to be so.
The church was in a perilous condition. A change of some sort must take
place, or she must go to pieces. To stand where she did was impossible.
The whole weight of the matter fell on Cunningham and Candlish. No
shoulders in the church were broader than theirs; and I must say, badly
as I detested the principles laid down and defended by them, I was
compelled to acknowledge the vast mental endowments of the men.
Cunningham rose, and his rising was the signal for tumultuous applause.
It may be said that this was scarcely in keeping with the solemnity of
the occasion, but to me it served to increase its grandeur and gravity.
The applause, though tumultuous, was not joyous. It seemed to me, as it
thundered up from the vast audience, like the fall of an immense shaft,
flung from shoulders already galled by its crushing weight. It was like
saying “Doctor, we have borne this burden long enough, and willingly
fling it upon you. Since it was you who brought it upon us, take it now
and do what you will with it, for we are too weary to bear it.”
The Doctor proceeded with his speech--abounding in logic, learning,
and eloquence, and apparently bearing down all opposition; but at the
moment--the fatal moment--when he was just bringing all his arguments
to a point, and that point being that “neither Jesus Christ nor his
holy apostles regarded slaveholding as a sin,” George Thompson, in a
clear, sonorous, but rebuking voice, broke the deep stillness of the
audience, exclaiming “HEAR! HEAR! HEAR!” The effect of this simple
and common exclamation is almost incredible. It was as if a granite
wall had been suddenly flung up against the advancing current of a
mighty river. For a moment speaker and audience were brought to a
dead silence. Both the Doctor and his hearers seemed appalled by the
audacity, as well as the fitness of the rebuke. At length a shout went
up to the cry of “_Put him out!_” Happily no one attempted to execute
this cowardly order, and the discourse went on; but not as before.
The exclamation of Thompson must have re-echoed a thousand times in
his memory, for the Doctor, during the remainder of his speech, was
utterly unable to recover from the blow. The deed was done, however;
the pillars of the church--_the proud Free Church of Scotland_--were
committed, and the humility of repentance was absent. The Free Church
held on to the blood-stained money, and continued to justify itself in
its position.
One good result followed the conduct of the Free Church: it furnished
an occasion for making the people thoroughly acquainted with the
character of slavery and for arraying against it the moral and
religious sentiment of that country; therefore, while we did not
procure the sending back of the money, we were amply justified by the
good which really did result from our labors.
I must add one word in regard to the Evangelical Alliance. This was an
attempt to form a union of all Evangelical Christians throughout the
world, and which held its first session in London, in the year 1846,
at the time of the World’s Temperance Convention there. Some sixty or
seventy ministers from America attended this convention, the object of
some of them being to weave a world-wide garment with which to clothe
evangelical slaveholders; and in this they partially succeeded. But the
question of slavery was too large a question to be finally disposed of
by the Evangelical Alliance, and from its judgment we appealed to the
judgment of the people of Great Britain, with the happiest effect--
this effort of our countrymen to shield the character of slaveholders
serving to open a way to the British ear for anti-slavery discussion.
I may mention here an incident somewhat amusing and instructive, as
it serves to illustrate how easily Americans could set aside their
notoriously inveterate prejudice against color, when it stood in the
way of their wishes, or when in an atmosphere which made that prejudice
unpopular and unchristian.
At the entrance to the House of Commons I had one day been conversing
for a few moments with Lord Morpeth, and just as I was parting from him
I felt an emphatic push against my arm, and, looking around, I saw at
my elbow Rev. Dr. Kirk of Boston. “Introduce me to Lord Morpeth,” he
said. “Certainly,” said I, and introduced him; not without remembering,
however, that the amiable Doctor would scarcely have asked such a favor
of a colored man at home.
The object of my labors in Great Britain was the concentration of the
moral and religious sentiment of its people against American slavery.
To this end, I visited and lectured in nearly all the large towns and
cities in the United Kingdom, and enjoyed many favorable opportunities
for observation and information. I should like to write a book on
those countries, if for nothing else, to make grateful mention of the
many dear friends whose benevolent actions towards me are ineffaceably
stamped upon my memory, and warmly treasured in my heart. To these
friends, I owe my freedom in the United States.
Mrs. Ellen Richardson, an excellent member of the society of friends,
assisted by her sister-in-law Mrs. Henry Richardson,--a lady devoted
to every good word and work--the friend of the Indian and the African,
conceived the plan of raising a fund to effect my ransom from slavery.
They corresponded with Hon. Walter Forward of Pennsylvania, and through
him, ascertained that Captain Auld would take one hundred and fifty
pounds sterling for me; and this sum they promptly raised, and paid
for my liberation; placing the papers of my manumission into my hands,
before they would tolerate the idea of my return to this my native
land. To this commercial transaction, to this blood-money I owe my
immunity from the operation of the fugitive slave law of 1793, and also
from that of 1850. The whole affair speaks for itself and needs no
comment now that slavery has ceased to exist in this country, and is
not likely ever again to be revived.
Some of my uncompromising anti-slavery friends in this country failed
to see the wisdom of this commercial transaction, and were not pleased
that I consented to it, even by my silence. They thought it a violation
of anti-slavery principles, conceding the right of property in man, and
a wasteful expenditure of money. For myself, viewing it simply in the
light of a ransom, or as money extorted by a robber, and my liberty
of more value than one hundred and fifty pounds sterling, I could
not see either a violation of the laws of morality or of economy. It
is true I was not in the possession of my claimants, and could have
remained in England, for my friends would have generously assisted me
in establishing myself there. To this I could not consent. I felt it my
duty to labor and suffer with my oppressed people in my native land.
Considering all the circumstances, the fugitive bill included, I think
now as then, that the very best thing was done in letting Master Hugh
have the money, and thus leave me free to return to my appropriate
field of labor. Had I been a private person, with no relations or
duties other than those of a personal and family nature, I should not
have consented to the payment of so large a sum, for the privilege of
living securely under our glorious republican (?) form of government.
I could have lived elsewhere, or perhaps might have been unobserved
even here, but I had become somewhat notorious, and withal quite as
unpopular in some directions as notorious, and I was therefore much
exposed to arrest and capture.[A]
[A] The following is a copy of these curious papers, both of my
transfer from Thomas to Hugh Auld, and from Hugh to myself:
“Know all men, by these presents: That I, Thomas Auld
of Talbot county and state of Maryland, for and in
consideration of the sum of one hundred dollars, current
money, to me paid by Hugh Auld, of the city of Baltimore,
in the said state, at and before the sealing and delivery
of these presents, the receipt whereof, I the said Thomas
Auld, do hereby acknowledge, have granted, bargained, and
sold, and by these presents do grant, bargain, and sell
unto the said Hugh Auld, his executors, administrators,
and assigns, ONE NEGRO MAN, by the name of FREDERICK
BAILEY--or DOUGLASS as he calls himself--he is now about
twenty-eight years of age--to have and to hold the said
negro man for life. And I the said Thomas Auld, for myself,
my heirs, executors, and administrators, all and singular,
the said FREDERICK BAILY _alias_ DOUGLASS unto the said
Hugh Auld, his executors and administrators, and against
all and every other person or persons whatsoever, shall
and will warrant and forever defend by these presents. In
witness whereof, I set my hand and seal, this thirteenth
day of November, eighteen hundred and forty-six (1846.)
THOMAS AULD.
“Signed, sealed, and delivered, in presence of Wrightson Jones,
John C. Lear.”
The authenticity of this bill of sale is attested by N. Harrington,
a justice of the peace of the state of Maryland, and for the county
of Talbot, dated same day as above.
* * * * *
“To all whom it may concern: Be it known that I, Hugh Auld, of the
city of Baltimore, in Baltimore county in the state of Maryland,
for divers good causes and considerations, me thereunto moving,
have released from slavery, liberated, manumitted, and set free,
and by these presents do hereby release from slavery, liberate,
manumit, and set free, MY NEGRO MAN, named FREDERICK BAILY,
otherwise called DOUGLASS, being of the age of twenty-eight years,
or thereabouts, and able to work and gain a sufficient livelihood
and maintenance; and him the said negro man, named FREDERICK
DOUGLASS, I do declare to be henceforth free, manumitted, and
discharged from all manner of servitude to me, my executors and
administrators forever.
“In witness whereof, I the said Hugh Auld, have hereunto set my
hand and seal the fifth of December, in the year one thousand eight
hundred and forty-six.
HUGH AULD.
“Sealed and delivered in presence of T. Hanson Belt, James N. S. T.
Wright.”
Having remained abroad nearly two years, and being about to return to
America, not as I left it--a slave, but a freeman, prominent friends
of the cause of emancipation intimated their intention to make me a
testimonial both on grounds of personal regard to me, and also to the
cause to which they were so ardently devoted. How such a project would
have succeeded I do not know, but many reasons led me to prefer that
my friends should simply give me the means of obtaining a printing
press and materials, to enable me to start a paper, advocating the
interests of my enslaved and oppressed people. I told them that
perhaps the greatest hindrance to the adoption of abolition principles
by the people of the United States, was the low estimate everywhere
in that country placed upon the negro as a man: that because of his
assumed natural inferiority, people reconciled themselves to his
enslavement and oppression, as being inevitable if not desirable. The
grand thing to be done, therefore, was to change this estimation, by
disproving his inferiority and demonstrating his capacity for a more
exalted civilization than slavery and prejudice had assigned him. In
my judgment a tolerably well conducted press in the hands of persons
of the despised race, would by calling out and making them acquainted
with their own latent powers, by enkindling their hope of a future, and
developing their moral force, prove a most powerful means of removing
prejudice and awakening an interest in them. At that time there was
not a single newspaper regularly published by the colored people in
the country, though many attempts had been made to establish such,
and had from one cause or another failed. These views I laid before
my friends. The result was, that nearly two thousand five hundred
dollars were speedily raised towards my establishing such a paper as I
had indicated. For this prompt and generous assistance, rendered upon
my bare suggestion, without any personal effort on my part, I shall
never cease to feel deeply grateful, and the thought of fulfilling the
expectations of the dear friends who had given me this evidence of
their confidence, was an abiding inspiration for persevering exertion.
Proposing to leave England, and turning my face toward America in the
spring of 1847, I was painfully reminded of the kind of life which
awaited me on my arrival. For the first time in the many months spent
abroad, I was met with proscription on account of my color. While in
London I had purchased a ticket, and secured a berth, for returning
home in the Cambria--the steamer in which I had come from thence--
and paid therefor the round sum of forty pounds, nineteen shillings
sterling. This was first cabin fare; but on going on board I found
that the Liverpool agent had ordered my berth to be given to another,
and forbidden my entering the saloon. It was rather hard after having
enjoyed for so long a time equal social privileges, after dining with
persons of great literary, social, political, and religious eminence,
and never, during the whole time, having met with a single word, look,
or gesture, which gave me the slightest reason to think my color was an
offense to anybody--now to be cooped up in the stern of the Cambria,
and denied the right to enter the saloon, lest my presence should
disturb some democratic fellow-passenger. The reader can easily imagine
what must have been my feelings under such an indignity.
This contemptible conduct met with stern rebuke from the British press.
The London _Times_, and other leading journals throughout the United
Kingdom, held up the outrage to unmitigated condemnation. So good an
opportunity for calling out British sentiment on the subject had not
before occurred, and it was fully embraced. The result was that Mr.
Cunard came out in a letter expressive of his regret, and promising
that the like indignity should never occur again on his steamers, which
promise I believe has been faithfully kept.
CHAPTER VII.
TRIUMPHS AND TRIALS.
New Experiences--Painful Disagreement of Opinion with old Friends--
Final Decision to Publish my Paper in Rochester--Its Fortunes and
its Friends--Change in my own Views Regarding the Constitution of
the United States--Fidelity to Conviction--Loss of Old Friends--
Support of New Ones--Loss of House, etc., by Fire--Triumphs and
Trials--Underground Railroad--Incidents.
Prepared as I was to meet with many trials and perplexities on reaching
home, one of which I little dreamed was awaiting me. My plans for
future usefulness, as indicated in the last chapter, were all settled,
and in imagination I already saw myself wielding my pen as well as my
voice in the great work of renovating the public mind, and building up
a public sentiment, which should send slavery to the grave, and restore
to “liberty and the pursuit of happiness” the people with whom I had
suffered.
My friends in Boston had been informed of what I was intending,
and I expected to find them favorably disposed toward my cherished
enterprise. In this I was mistaken. They had many reasons against it.
First, no such paper was needed; secondly, it would interfere with
my usefulness as a lecturer; thirdly, I was better fitted to speak
than to write; fourthly, the paper could not succeed. This opposition
from a quarter so highly esteemed, and to which I had been accustomed
to look for advice and direction, caused me not only to hesitate,
but inclined me to abandon the undertaking. All previous attempts to
establish such a journal having failed, I feared lest I should but add
another to the list, and thus contribute another proof of the mental
deficiencies of my race. Very much that was said to me in respect to my
imperfect literary attainments, I felt to be most painfully true. The
unsuccessful projectors of all former attempts had been my superiors
in point of education, and if _they_ had failed how could I hope for
success? Yet I did hope for success, and persisted in the undertaking,
encouraged by my English friends to go forward.
I can easily pardon those who saw in my persistence an unwarrantable
ambition and presumption. I was but nine years from slavery. In many
phases of mental experience I was but nine years old. That one under
such circumstances should aspire to establish a printing press,
surrounded by an educated people, might well be considered unpractical
if not ambitious. My American friends looked at me with astonishment.
“A wood-sawyer” offering himself to the public as an editor! A slave,
brought up in the depths of ignorance, assuming to instruct the highly
civilized people of the north in the principles of liberty, justice,
and humanity! The thing looked absurd. Nevertheless I persevered. I
felt that the want of education, great as it was, could be overcome by
study, and that wisdom would come by experience; and further (which
was perhaps the most controlling consideration) I thought that an
intelligent public, knowing my early history, would easily pardon the
many deficiencies which I well knew that my paper must exhibit. The
most distressing part of it all was the offense which I saw I must give
my friends of the old Anti-Slavery organization, by what seemed to them
a reckless disregard of their opinion and advice. I am not sure that I
was not under the influence of something like a slavish adoration of
these good people, and I labored hard to convince them that my way of
thinking about the matter was the right one, but without success.
From motives of peace, instead of issuing my paper in Boston, among
New England friends, I went to Rochester, N. Y., among strangers,
where the local circulation of my paper--“THE NORTH STAR”--would not
interfere with that of the _Liberator_ or the _Anti-Slavery Standard_,
for I was then a faithful disciple of Wm. Lloyd Garrison, and fully
committed to his doctrine touching the pro-slavery character of the
Constitution of the United States, also the _non-voting principle_ of
which he was the known and distinguished advocate. With him, I held it
to be the first duty of the non-slaveholding States to dissolve the
union with the slaveholding States, and hence my cry, like his, was
“No union with slaveholders.” With these views I came into western New
York, and during the first four years of my labors here I advocated
them with pen and tongue, to the best of my ability. After a time, a
careful reconsideration of the subject convinced me that there was no
necessity for dissolving the “union between the northern and southern
States;” that to seek this dissolution was no part of my duty as an
abolitionist; that to abstain from voting was to refuse to exercise
a legitimate and powerful means for abolishing slavery; and that the
Constitution of the United States not only contained no guarantees in
favor of slavery, but on the contrary, was in its letter and spirit
an anti-slavery instrument, demanding the abolition of slavery as a
condition of its own existence, as the supreme law of the land.
This radical change in my opinions produced a corresponding change in
my action. To those with whom I had been in agreement and in sympathy,
I came to be in opposition. What they held to be a great and important
truth I now looked upon as a dangerous error. A very natural, but to me
a very painful thing, now happened. Those who could not see any honest
reasons for changing their views, as I had done, could not easily see
any such reasons for my change, and the common punishment of apostates
was mine.
My first opinions were naturally derived and honestly entertained.
Brought directly, when I escaped from slavery, into contact with
abolitionists who regarded the Constitution as a slaveholding
instrument, and finding their views supported by the united and entire
history of every department of the government, it is not strange
that I assumed the Constitution to be just what these friends made
it seem to be. I was bound not only by their superior knowledge to
take their opinions in respect to this subject, as the true ones, but
also because I had no means of showing their unsoundness. But for
the responsibility of conducting a public journal, and the necessity
imposed upon me of meeting opposite views from abolitionists outside
of New England, I should in all probability have remained firm in my
disunion views. My new circumstances compelled me to re-think the
whole subject, and study with some care not only the just and proper
rules of legal interpretation, but the origin, design, nature, rights,
powers, and duties of civil governments, and also the relations which
human beings sustain to it. By such a course of thought and reading I
was conducted to the conclusion that the Constitution of the United
States--inaugurated “to form a more perfect union, establish justice,
insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote
the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty”--could not
well have been designed at the same time to maintain and perpetuate
a system of rapine and murder like slavery, especially as not one
word can be found in the Constitution to authorize such a belief.
Then, again, if the declared purposes of an instrument are to govern
the meaning of all its parts and details, as they clearly should,
the Constitution of our country is our warrant for the abolition of
slavery in every State of the Union. It would require much time and
space to set forth the arguments which demonstrated to my mind the
unconstitutionality of slavery; but being convinced of the fact my
duty was plain upon this point in the farther conduct of my paper.
_The North Star_ was a large sheet, published weekly, at a cost of $80
per week, and an average circulation of 3,000 subscribers. There were
many times, when in my experience as editor and publisher, I was very
hard pressed for money, but by one means or another I succeeded so
well as to keep my pecuniary engagements, and to keep my anti-slavery
banner steadily flying during all the conflict from the autumn of 1847
till the union of the States was assured and emancipation was a fact
accomplished. I had friends abroad as well as at home who helped me
liberally. I can never be too grateful to Rev. Russell Laut Carpenter
and to Mrs. Carpenter, for the moral and material aid they tendered
me through all the vicissitudes of my paper enterprise. But to no
one person was I more indebted for substantial assistance than to
Mrs. Julia Griffiths Crofts. She came to my relief when my paper had
nearly absorbed all my means, and was heavily in debt, and when I had
mortgaged my house to raise money to meet current expenses; and by
her energetic and effective management, in a single year enabled me
to extend the circulation of my paper from 2,000 to 4,000 copies, pay
off the debts and lift the mortgage from my house. Her industry was
equal to her devotion. She seemed to rise with every emergency, and her
resources appeared inexhaustible. I shall never cease to remember with
sincere gratitude the assistance rendered me by this noble lady, and I
mention her here in the desire in some humble measure to “give honor
to whom honor is due.” During the first three or four years my paper
was published under the name of the _North Star_. It was subsequently
changed to _Frederick Douglass’ Paper_ in order to distinguish it from
the many papers with “Stars” in their titles. There were “North Stars,”
“Morning Stars,” “Evening Stars,” and I know not how many other stars
in the newspaper firmament, and some confusion arose naturally enough
in distinguishing between them; for this reason, and also because some
of these stars were older than my star I felt that mine, not theirs,
ought to be the one to “go out.”
Among my friends in this country, who helped me in my earlier efforts
to maintain my paper, I may proudly count such men as the late Hon.
Gerrit Smith, and Chief Justice Chase, Hon. Horace Mann, Hon. Joshua R.
Giddings, Hon. Charles Sumner, Hon. John G. Palfry, Hon. Wm. H. Seward,
Rev. Samuel J. May, and many others, who though of lesser note were
equally devoted to my cause. Among these latter ones were Isaac and Amy
Post, William and Mary Hallowell, Asa and Hulda Anthony, and indeed
all the committee of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society. They
held festivals and fairs to raise money, and assisted me in every other
possible way to keep my paper in circulation, while I was a non-voting
abolitionist, but withdrew from me when I became a voting abolitionist.
For a time the withdrawal of their coöperation embarrassed me very
much, but soon another class of friends were raised up for me, chief
amongst whom were the Porter family of Rochester. The late Samuel D.
Porter and his wife Susan F. Porter, and his sisters, Maria and Elmira
Porter, deserve grateful mention as among my steadfast friends, who did
much in the way of supplying pecuniary aid.
Of course there were moral forces operating against me in Rochester, as
well as material ones. There were those who regarded the publication of
a “Negro paper” in that beautiful city as a blemish and a misfortune.
The New York _Herald_, true to the spirit of the times, counselled
the people of the place to throw my printing press into Lake Ontario
and to banish me to Canada, and while they were not quite prepared
for this violence, it was plain that many of them did not well relish
my presence amongst them. This feeling, however, wore away gradually,
as the people knew more of me and my works. I lectured every Sunday
evening during an entire winter in the beautiful Corinthian Hall, then
owned by Wm. R. Reynolds, Esq., who though he was not an abolitionist,
was a lover of fair-play and was willing to allow me to be heard. If
in these lectures I did not make abolitionists I did succeed in making
tolerant the moral atmosphere in Rochester; so much so, indeed, that
I came to feel as much at home there as I had ever done in the most
friendly parts of New England. I had been at work there with my paper
but a few years before colored travelers told me that they felt the
influence of my labors when they came within fifty miles. I did not
rely alone upon what I could do by the paper, but would write all day,
then take a train to Victor, Farmington, Canandaigua, Geneva, Waterloo,
Batavia, or Buffalo, or elsewhere, and speak in the evening, returning
home afterwards or early in the morning, to be again at my desk writing
or mailing papers. There were times when I almost thought my Boston
friends were right in dissuading me from my newspaper project. But
looking back to those nights and days of toil and thought, compelled
often to do work for which I had no educational preparation, I have
come to think that, under the circumstances it was the best school
possible for me. It obliged me to think and read, it taught me to
express my thoughts clearly, and was perhaps better than any other
course I could have adopted. Besides it made it necessary for me to
lean upon myself, and not upon the heads of our Anti-Slavery church. To
be a principal, and not an agent. I had an audience to speak to every
week, and must say something worth their hearing, or cease to speak
altogether. There is nothing like the lash and sting of necessity to
make a man work, and my paper furnished this motive power. More than
one gentleman from the south, when stopping at Niagara, came to see me,
that they might know for themselves if I could indeed write, having
as they said believed it impossible that an uneducated fugitive slave
could write the articles attributed to me. I found it hard to get
credit in some quarters either for what I wrote or what I said. While
there was nothing very profound or learned in either, the low estimate
of Negro possibilities induced the belief that both my editorials
and my speeches were written by white persons. I doubt if this
scepticism does not still linger in the minds of some of my democratic
fellow-citizens.
The 2d of June, 1872, brought me a very grievous loss. My house in
Rochester was burnt to the ground, and among other things of value,
twelve volumes of my paper, covering the period from 1848 to 1860, were
devoured by the flames. I have never been able to replace them, and
the loss is immeasurable. Only a few weeks before, I had been invited
to send these bound volumes to the library of Harvard University where
they would have been preserved in a fire-proof building, and the result
of my procrastination attests the wisdom of more than one proverb.
Outside the years embraced in the late tremendous war, there has been
no period, more pregnant with great events, or better suited to call
out the best mental and moral energies of men, than that covered by
these lost volumes. If I have at any time said or written that which is
worth remembering or repeating, I must have said such things between
the years 1848 and 1860, and my paper was a chronicle of most of what
I said during that time. Within that space we had the great Free Soil
Convention at Buffalo, the Nomination of Martin Van Buren, the Fugitive
Slave Law, the 7th March Speech by Daniel Webster, the Dred Scott
decision, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas Nebraska
bill, the Border war in Kansas, the John Brown raid upon Harper’s
Ferry, and a part of the War against the Rebellion, with much else,
well calculated to fire the souls of men having one spark of Liberty
and Patriotism within them. I have only fragments now, of all the work
accomplished during these twelve years, and must cover this chasm, as
best I can from memory and the incidental items, which I am able to
glean from various sources. Two volumes of the _North Star_ have been
kindly supplied me, by my friend, Marshall Pierce of Saco, Me. He had
these carefully preserved and bound in one cover and sent to me in
Washington. He was one of the most systematically careful men of all my
anti-slavery friends, for I doubt if another entire volume of the paper
exists.
One important branch of my anti-slavery work in Rochester, in addition
to that of speaking and writing against slavery, must not be forgotten
or omitted. My position gave me the chance of hitting that old enemy
some telling blows, in another direction than these. I was on the
southern border of Lake Ontario, and the Queen’s Dominions were right
over the way--and my prominence as an abolitionist, and as the editor
of an anti-slavery paper, naturally made me the station master and
conductor of the underground railroad passing through this goodly city.
Secrecy and concealment were necessary conditions to the successful
operation of this railroad, and hence its prefix “underground.”
My agency was all the more exciting and interesting, because not
altogether free from danger. I could take no step in it without
exposing myself to fine and imprisonment, for these were the penalties
imposed by the fugitive slave law, for feeding, harboring, or otherwise
assisting a slave to escape from his master; but in face of this fact,
I can say, I never did more congenial, attractive, fascinating, and
satisfactory work. True as a means of destroying slavery, it was like
an attempt to bail out the ocean with a teaspoon, but the thought that
there was _one_ less slave, and one more freeman,--having myself been
a slave, and a fugitive slave--brought to my heart unspeakable joy.
On one occasion I had eleven fugitives at the same time under my roof,
and it was necessary for them to remain with me, until I could collect
sufficient money to get them on to Canada. It was the largest number
I ever had at any one time, and I had some difficulty in providing so
many with food and shelter, but as may well be imagined, they were not
very fastidious in either direction, and were well content with very
plain food, and a strip of carpet on the floor for a bed, or a place on
the straw in the barn loft.
The underground railroad had many branches; but that one with which
I was connected had its main stations in Baltimore, Wilmington,
Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, and St. Catharines
(Canada). It is not necessary to tell who were the principal agents in
Baltimore; Thomas Garrett was the agent in Wilmington; Melloe McKim,
William Still, Robert Purvis, Edward M. Davis, and others did the work
in Philadelphia; David Ruggles, Isaac T. Hopper, Napolian, and others,
in New York city; the Misses Mott and Stephen Myers, were forwarders
from Albany; Revs. Samuel J. May and J. W. Loguen, were the agents
in Syracuse; and J. P. Morris and myself received and dispatched
passengers from Rochester to Canada, where they were received by Rev.
Hiram Wilson. When a party arrived in Rochester, it was the business of
Mr. Morris and myself to raise funds with which to pay their passages
to St. Catharines, and it is due to truth to state, that we seldom
called in vain upon whig or democrat for help. Men were better than
their theology, and truer to humanity, than to their politics, or their
offices.
On one occasion while a slave master was in the office of a United
States commissioner, procuring the papers necessary for the arrest
and rendition of three young men who had escaped from Maryland, (one
of whom was under my roof at the time, another at Farmington, and the
other at work on the farm of Asa Anthony just a little outside the city
limits,) the law partner of the commissioner, then a distinguished
democrat, sought me out, and told me what was going on in his office,
and urged me by all means to get these young men out of the way of
their pursuers and claimants. Of course no time was to be lost. A swift
horseman was dispatched to Farmington, eighteen miles distant, another
to Asa Anthony’s farm about three miles, and another to my house on
the south side of the city, and before the papers could be served, all
three of the young men were on the free waves of Lake Ontario, bound to
Canada. In writing to their old master, they had dated their letter at
Rochester, though they had taken the precaution to send it to Canada to
be mailed, but this blunder in the date had betrayed their whereabouts,
so that the hunters were at once on their tracks.
So numerous were the fugitives passing through Rochester that I was
obliged at last to appeal to my British friends for the means of
sending them on their way, and when Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter and Mrs.
Croffts took the matter in hand, I had never any further trouble in
that respect. When slavery was abolished I wrote to Mrs. Carpenter,
congratulating her that she was relieved of the work of raising funds
for such purposes, and the characteristic reply of that lady was that
she had been very glad to do what she had done, and had no wish for
relief.
My pathway was not entirely free from thorns in Rochester, and the
wounds and pains inflicted by them were perhaps much less easily borne,
because of my exemption from such annoyances while in England. Men can
in time become accustomed to almost anything, even to being insulted
and ostracised, but such treatment comes hard at first, and when to
some extent unlooked for. The vulgar prejudice against color, so common
to Americans, met me in several disagreeable forms. A seminary for
young ladies and misses, under the auspices of Miss Tracy, was near my
house on Alexander street, and desirous of having my daughter educated
like the daughters of other men, I applied to Miss Tracy for her
admission to her school. All seemed fair, and the child was duly sent
to “Tracy Seminary,” and I went about my business happy in the thought
that she was in the way of a refined and Christian education. Several
weeks elapsed before I knew how completely I was mistaken. The little
girl came home to me one day and told me she was lonely in that school;
that she was in fact kept in solitary confinement; that she was not
allowed in the room with the other girls, nor to go into the yard when
they went out; that she was kept in a room by herself and not permitted
to be seen or heard by the others. No man with the feeling of a parent
could be less than moved by such a revelation, and I confess that I
was shocked, grieved, and indignant. I went at once to Miss Tracy to
ascertain if what I had heard was true, and was coolly told it was, and
the miserable plea was offered that it would have injured her school
if she had done otherwise. I told her she should have told me so at
the beginning, but I did not believe that any girl in the school would
be opposed to the presence of my daughter, and that I should be glad
to have the question submitted to them. She consented to this, and to
the credit of the young ladies, not one made objection. Not satisfied
with this verdict of the natural and uncorrupted sense of justice and
humanity of these young ladies, Miss Tracy insisted that the parents
must be consulted, and if one of them objected she should not admit
my child to the same apartment and privileges of the other pupils.
One parent only had the cruelty to object, and he was Mr. Horatio G.
Warner, a democratic editor, and upon his adverse conclusion, my
daughter was excluded from “Tracy Seminary.” Of course Miss Tracy was
a devout Christian lady after the fashion of the time and locality, in
good and regular standing in the church.
My troubles attending the education of my children were not to end
here. They were not allowed in the public school in the district in
which I lived, owned property, and paid taxes, but were compelled,
if they went to a public school, to go over to the other side of the
city, to an inferior colored school. I hardly need say that I was not
prepared to submit tamely to this proscription, any more than I had
been to submit to slavery, so I had them taught at home for a while,
by Miss Thayer. Meanwhile I went to the people with the question and
created considerable agitation. I sought and obtained a hearing before
the Board of Education, and after repeated efforts with voice and pen,
the doors of the public schools were opened and colored children were
permitted to attend them in common with others.
There were barriers erected against colored people in most other places
of instruction and amusements in the city, and until I went there
they were imposed without any apparent sense of injustice or wrong,
and submitted to in silence; but one by one they have gradually been
removed and colored people now enter freely all places of public resort
without hindrance or observation. This change has not been wholly
effected by me. From the first I was cheered on and supported in my
demands for equal rights by such respectable citizens as Isaac Post,
Wm. Hallowell, Samuel D. Porter, Wm. C. Bloss, Benj. Fish, Asa Anthony,
and many other good and true men of Rochester.
Notwithstanding what I have said of the adverse feeling exhibited
by some of its citizens at my selection of Rochester as the place
to establish my paper, and the trouble in educational matters just
referred to, that selection was in many respects very fortunate.
The city was, and still is, the center of a virtuous, intelligent,
enterprising, liberal, and growing population. The surrounding country
is remarkable for its fertility; and the city itself possesses one of
the finest water-powers in the world. It is on the line of the New York
Central railroad--a line that with its connections, spans the whole
country. Its people were industrious and in comfortable circumstances;
not so rich as to be indifferent to the claims of humanity, and not
so poor as to be unable to help any good cause which commanded the
approval of their judgment.
The ground had been measurably prepared for me by the labors of
others--notably by Hon. Myron Holley, whose monument of enduring
marble now stands in the beautiful cemetery at Mount Hope, upon an
eminence befitting his noble character. I know of no place in the
Union where I could have located at the time with less resistance,
or received a larger measure of sympathy and coöperation, and I now
look back to my life and labors there with unalloyed satisfaction, and
having spent a quarter of a century among its people, I shall always
feel more at home there than any where else in this country.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF JOHN BROWN.]
CHAPTER VIII.
JOHN BROWN AND MRS. STOWE.
My First Meeting with Capt. John Brown--The Free Soil Movement--
Colored Convention--Uncle Tom’s Cabin--Industrial School for
Colored People--Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe.
About the time I began my enterprise in Rochester I chanced to
spend a night and a day under the roof of a man whose character and
conversation, and whose objects and aims in life made a very deep
impression upon my mind and heart. His name had been mentioned to me by
several prominent colored men, among whom were the Rev. Henry Highland
Garnet and J. W. Loguen. In speaking of him their voices would drop to
a whisper, and what they said of him made me very eager to see and know
him. Fortunately I was invited to see him in his own house. At the time
to which I now refer this man was a respectable merchant in a populous
and thriving city, and our first place of meeting was at his store.
This was a substantial brick building, on a prominent, busy street. A
glance at the interior, as well as at the massive walls without, gave
me the impression that the owner must be a man of considerable wealth.
From this store I was conducted to his house, where I was kindly
received as an expected guest. My welcome was all I could have asked.
Every member of the family, young and old, seemed glad to see me, and I
was made much at home in a very little while. I was, however, a little
disappointed with the appearance of the house and with its location.
After seeing the fine store I was prepared to see a fine residence,
in an eligible locality, but this conclusion was completely dispelled
by actual observation. In fact, the house was neither commodious nor
elegant, nor its situation desirable. It was a small wooden building,
on a back street, in a neighborhood chiefly occupied by laboring men
and mechanics; respectable enough to be sure, but not quite the place,
I thought, where one would look for the residence of a flourishing and
successful merchant. Plain as was the outside of this man’s house,
the inside was plainer. Its furniture would have satisfied a Spartan.
It would take longer to tell what was not in this house than what was
in it. There was an air of plainness about it which almost suggested
destitution. My first meal passed under the misnomer of tea, though
there was nothing about it resembling the usual significance of that
term. It consisted of beef soup, cabbage, and potatoes; a meal such
as a man might relish after following the plow all day, or performing
a forced march of a dozen miles over a rough road in frosty weather.
Innocent of paint, veneering, varnish, or table-cloth, the table
announced itself unmistakably of pine and of the plainest workmanship.
There was no hired help visible. The mother, daughters, and sons did
the serving and did it well. They were evidently used to it, and had no
thought of any impropriety or degradation in being their own servants.
It is said that a house in some measure reflects the character of its
occupants; this one certainly did. In it there were no disguises, no
illusions, no make believes. Everything implied stern truth, solid
purpose, and rigid economy. I was not long in company with the master
of this house before I discovered that he was indeed the master of it,
and was likely to become mine too if I stayed long enough with him. He
fulfilled St. Paul’s idea of the head of the family. His wife believed
in him, and his children observed him with reverence. Whenever he spoke
his words commanded earnest attention. His arguments, which I ventured
at some points to oppose, seemed to convince all; his appeals touched
all, and his will impressed all. Certainly I never felt myself in the
presence of a stronger religious influence than while in this man’s
house.
In person he was lean, strong, and sinewy, of the best New England
mould, built for times of trouble, fitted to grapple with the flintiest
hardships. Clad in plain American woolen, shod in boots of cowhide
leather, and wearing a cravat of the same substantial material, under
six feet high, less than 150 pounds in weight, aged about fifty, he
presented a figure, straight and symmetrical as a mountain pine. His
bearing was singularly impressive. His head was not large, but compact
and high. His hair was coarse, strong, slightly gray and closely
trimmed, and grew low on his forehead. His face was smoothly shaved,
and revealed a strong square mouth, supported by a broad and prominent
chin. His eyes were bluish gray, and in conversation they were full of
light and fire. When on the street, he moved with a long, springing
race horse step, absorbed by his own reflections, neither seeking or
shunning observation. Such was the man, whose name I had heard in
whispers, such was the spirit of his house and family, such was the
house in which he lived, and such was Captain John Brown, whose name
has now passed into history, as one of the most marked characters, and
greatest heroes known to American fame.
After the strong meal already described, Captain Brown cautiously
approached the subject which he wished to bring to my attention; for
he seemed to apprehend opposition to his views. He denounced slavery
in look and language fierce and bitter, thought that slaveholders had
forfeited their right to live, that the slaves had the right to gain
their liberty in any way they could, did not believe that moral suasion
would ever liberate the slave, or that political action would abolish
the system. He said that he had long had a plan which could accomplish
this end, and he had invited me to his house to lay that plan before
me. He said he had been for some time looking for colored men to whom
he could safely reveal his secret, and at times he had almost despaired
of finding such men, but that now he was encouraged, for he saw heads
of such rising up in all directions. He had observed my course at
home and abroad, and he wanted my coöperation. His plan as it then
lay in his mind, had much to commend it. It did not, as some suppose,
contemplate a general rising among the slaves, and a general slaughter
of the slave masters. An insurrection he thought would only defeat the
object, but his plan did contemplate the creating of an armed force
which should act in the very heart of the south. He was not averse to
the shedding of blood, and thought the practice of carrying arms would
be a good one for the colored people to adopt, as it would give them
a sense of their manhood. No people he said could have self respect,
or be respected, who would not fight for their freedom. He called my
attention to a map of the United States, and pointed out to me the
far-reaching Alleghanies, which stretch away from the borders of New
York, into the Southern States. “These mountains,” he said, “are the
basis of my plan. God has given the strength of the hills to freedom,
they were placed here for the emancipation of the negro race; they are
full of natural forts, where one man for defense will be equal to a
hundred for attack; they are full also of good hiding places, where
large numbers of brave men could be concealed, and baffle and elude
pursuit for a long time. I know these mountains well, and could take a
body of men into them and keep them there despite of all the efforts
of Virginia to dislodge them. The true object to be sought is first of
all to destroy the money value of slave property; and that can only be
done by rendering such property insecure. My plan then is to take at
first about twenty-five picked men, and begin on a small scale; supply
them arms and ammunition, post them in squads of fives on a line of
twenty-five miles, the most persuasive and judicious of whom shall go
down to the fields from time to time, as opportunity offers, and induce
the slaves to join them, seeking and selecting the most restless and
daring.”
He saw that in this part of the work the utmost care must be used
to avoid treachery and disclosure. Only the most conscientious and
skillful should be sent on this perilous duty; with care and enterprise
he thought he could soon gather a force of one hundred hardy men, men
who would be content to lead the free and adventurous life to which he
proposed to train them, when these were properly drilled, and each man
had found the place for which he was best suited, they would begin work
in earnest; they would run off the slaves in large numbers, retain the
brave and strong ones in the mountains, and send the weak and timid to
the north by the underground railroad; his operations would be enlarged
with increasing numbers, and would not be confined to one locality.
When I asked him, how he would support these men? he said emphatically,
he would subsist them upon the enemy. Slavery was a state of war, and
the slave had a right to anything necessary to his freedom. But said
I, “suppose you succeed in running off a few slaves, and thus impress
the Virginia slaveholder with a sense of insecurity in their slaves,
the effect will be only to make them sell their slaves further south.”
“That,” said he, “will be first what I want to do; then I would follow
them up. If we could drive slavery out of _one county_, it would be a
great gain; it would weaken the system throughout the state.” “But they
would employ bloodhounds to hunt you out of the mountains.” “That they
might attempt,” said he, “but the chances are, we should whip them, and
when we should have whipt one squad, they would be careful how they
pursued.” “But you might be surrounded and cut off from your provisions
or means of subsistence.” He thought that could not be done so they
could not cut their way out, but even if the worst came, he could but
be killed, and he had no better use for his life than to lay it down
in the cause of the slave. When I suggested that we might convert the
slaveholders, he became much excited, and said that could never be,
“he knew their proud hearts and that they would never be induced to
give up their slaves, until they felt a big stick about their heads.”
He observed that I might have noticed the simple manner in which he
lived, adding that he had adopted this method in order to save money to
carry out his purposes. This was said in no boastful tone, for he felt
that he had delayed already too long and had no room to boast either
his zeal or his self denial. Had some men made such display of rigid
virtue, I should have rejected it, as affected, false and hypocritical,
but in John Brown, I felt it to be real as iron or granite. From
this night spent with John Brown in Springfield, Mass., 1847, while
I continued to write and speak against slavery, I became all the
same less hopeful of its peaceful abolition. My utterances became
more and more tinged by the color of this man’s strong impressions.
Speaking at an anti-slavery convention in Salem, Ohio, I expressed this
apprehension that slavery could only be destroyed by bloodshed, when I
was suddenly and sharply interrupted by my good old friend Sojourner
Truth with the question, “Frederick, is God dead?” “No.” I answered,
and “because God is not dead slavery can only end in blood.” My quaint
old sister was of the Garrison school of non-resistants, and was
shocked at my sanguinary doctrine, but she too became an advocate of
the sword, when the war for the maintenance of the Union was declared.
In 1848 it was my privilege to attend, and in some measure to
participate in the famous Free-Soil Convention held in Buffalo, New
York. It was a vast and variegated assemblage, composed of persons
from all sections of the North, and may be said to have formed a new
departure in the history of forces organized to resist the growing and
aggressive demands of slavery and the slave power. Until this Buffalo
convention anti-slavery agencies had been mainly directed to the work
of changing public sentiment by exposing through the press and on the
platform the nature of the slave system. Anti-slavery thus far had
only been sheet lightning; the Buffalo convention sought to make it a
thunderbolt. It is true the Liberty party, a political organization,
had been in existence since 1840, when it cast seven thousand votes
for James G. Birney, a former slaveholder, but who in obedience to an
enlightened conscience, had nobly emancipated his slaves, and was now
devoting his time and talents to the overthrow of slavery. It is true
that this little party of brave men had increased their numbers at
one time to sixty thousand voters. It, however, had now apparently
reached its culminating point, and was no longer able to attract to
itself and combine all the available elements at the North, capable of
being marshaled against the growing and aggressive measures and aims
of the slave power. There were many in the old Whig party known as
Conscience-Whigs, and in the Democratic party known as Barnburners and
Free Democrats, who were anti-slavery in sentiment and utterly opposed
to the extension of the slave system to territory hitherto uncursed
by its presence, but who nevertheless were not willing to join the
Liberty party. It was held to be deficient in numbers and wanting in
prestige. Its fate was the fate of all pioneers. The work it had been
required to perform had exposed it to assaults from all sides, and it
wore on its front the ugly marks of conflict. It was unpopular for its
very fidelity to the cause of liberty and justice. No wonder that some
of its members, such as Gerrit Smith, William Goodell, Beriah Green,
and Julius Lemoyne refused to quit the old for the new. They felt that
the Free-Soil party was a step backward, a lowering of the standard,
that the people should come to them, not they to the people. The party
which had been good enough for them ought to be good enough for all
others. Events, however, over-ruled this reasoning. The conviction
became general that the time had come for a new organization, which
should embrace all who were in any manner opposed to slavery and the
slave power, and this Buffalo Free-Soil convention was the result of
that conviction. It is easy to say that this or that measure would
have been wiser and better than the one adopted. But any measure is
vindicated by its necessity and its results. It was impossible for the
mountain to go to Mahomet, or for the Free-Soil element to go to the
old Liberty party, so the latter went to the former. “All is well that
ends well.” This Buffalo convention of free-soilers, however low was
their standard, did lay the foundation of a grand superstructure. It
was a powerful link in the chain of events by which the slave system
has been abolished, the slave emancipated, and the country saved from
dismemberment.
It is nothing against the actors in this new movement that they did
not see the end from the beginning; that they did not at first take
the high ground that further on in the conflict their successors felt
themselves called upon to take, or that their free-soil party, like the
old liberty party, was ultimately required to step aside and make room
for the great Republican party. In all this and more it illustrates the
experience of reform in all ages, and conforms to the laws of human
progress--Measures change, principles never.
I was not the only colored man well known to the country who was
present at this convention. Samuel Ringold Ward, Henry Highland Garnet,
Charles L. Remond, and Henry Bibb, were there and made speeches which
were received with surprise and gratification by the thousands there
assembled. As a colored man I felt greatly encouraged and strengthened
for my cause while listening to these men--in the presence of the
ablest men of the Caucasian race. Mr. Ward especially attracted
attention at that convention. As an orator and thinker he was vastly
superior, I thought, to any of us, and being perfectly black and of
unmixed African descent, the splendors of his intellect went directly
to the glory of his race. In depth of thought, fluency of speech,
readiness of wit, logical exactness, and general intelligence, Samuel
R. Ward has left no successor among the colored men amongst us, and
it was a sad day for our cause when he was laid low in the soil of a
foreign country.
After the Free Soil party, with “Free Soil,” “Free Labor,” “Free
States,” “Free Speech,” and “Free Men,” on its banner, had defeated the
almost permanently victorious Democratic party under the leadership
of so able and popular a standard-bearer as General Lewis Cass, Mr.
Calhoun and other southern statesmen were more than ever alarmed at
the rapid increase of anti-slavery feeling in the North, and devoted
their energies more and more to the work of devising means to stay the
torrents and tie up the storm. They were not ignorant of whereunto
this sentiment would grow if unsubjected and unextinguished. Hence
they became fierce and furious in debate, and more extravagant than
ever in their demands for additional safeguards for their system of
robbery and murder. Assuming that the Constitution guaranteed their
rights of property in their fellowmen, they held it to be in open
violation of the Constitution for any American citizen in any part
of the United States to speak, write, or act against this right. But
this shallow logic they plainly saw could do them no good unless they
could obtain further safeguards for slavery. In order to effect this,
the idea of so changing the Constitution was suggested, that there
should be two instead of one President of the United States--one from
the North and the other from the South--and that no measure should
become a law without the assent of both. But this device was so utterly
impracticable that it soon dropped out of sight, and it is mentioned
here only to show the desperation of slaveholders to prop up their
system of barbarism against which the sentiment of the North was being
directed with destructive skill and effect. They clamored for more
slave States, more power in the Senate and House of Representatives,
and insisted upon the suppression of free speech. At the end of two
years, in 1850, when Clay and Calhoun, two of the ablest leaders
the South ever had, were still in the Senate, we had an attempt at
a settlement of differences between the North and South which our
legislators meant to be final. What those measures were I need not here
enumerate except to say that chief among them was the Fugitive Slave
Bill, framed by James M. Mason of Virginia, and supported by Daniel
Webster of Massachusetts; a bill undoubtedly more designed to involve
the North in complicity with slavery and deaden its moral sentiment
than to procure the return of fugitives to their so-called owners.
For a time this design did not altogether fail. Letters, speeches,
and pamphlets literally rained down upon the people of the North,
reminding them of their constitutional duty to hunt down and return to
bondage runaway slaves. In this the preachers were not much behind the
press and the politicians, especially that class of preachers known
as Doctors of Divinity. A long list of these came forward with their
Bibles to show that neither Christ nor his holy apostles objected to
returning fugitives to slavery. Now that that evil day is past a sight
of those sermons would, I doubt not, bring the red blush of shame to
the cheeks of many.
Living as I then did in Rochester, on the border of Canada, I was
compelled to see the terribly distressing effects of this cruel
enactment. Fugitive slaves, who had lived for many years safely and
securely in Western New York and elsewhere, some of whom had by
industry and economy saved money and bought little homes for themselves
and their children, were suddenly alarmed and compelled to flee to
Canada for safety as from an enemy’s land--a doomed city--and take up
a dismal march to a new abode, empty-handed, among strangers. My old
friend Ward, of whom I have just now spoken, found it necessary to give
up the contest and flee to Canada, and thousands followed his example.
Bishop Daniel A. Payne, of the African Methodist Episcopal church,
came to me about this time to consult me as to whether it was best to
stand our ground or flee to Canada. When I told him I could not desert
my post until I saw I could not hold it, adding that I did not wish to
leave while Garnet and Ward remained, “Why,” said he, “Ward, Ward, he
is already gone. I saw him crossing from Detroit to Windsor.” I asked
him if he was going to stay, and he answered, “Yes; we are whipped, we
are whipped! and we might as well retreat in order.” This was indeed
a stunning blow. This man had power to do more to defeat this inhuman
enactment than any other colored man in the land, for no other could
bring such brain power to bear against it. I felt like a besieged city
at news that its defenders had fallen at its gates.
The hardships imposed by this atrocious and shameless law were
cruel and shocking, and yet only a few of all the fugitives of the
Northern States were returned to slavery under its infamously wicked
provisions. As a means of recapturing their runaway property in human
flesh the law was an utter failure. Its efficiency was destroyed by
its enormity. Its chief effect was to produce alarm and terror among
the class subject to its operation, and this it did most effectually
and distressingly. Even colored people who had been free all their
lives felt themselves very insecure in their freedom, for under this
law the oaths of any two villains were sufficient to consign a free
man to slavery for life. While the law was a terror to the free, it
was a still greater terror to the escaped bondman. To him there was
no peace. Asleep or awake, at work or at rest, in church or market,
he was liable to surprise and capture. By the law the judge got ten
dollars a head for all he could consign to slavery, and only five
dollars apiece for any which he might adjudge free. Although I was
now myself free, I was not without apprehension. My purchase was of
doubtful validity, having been bought when out of the possession of
my owner and when he must take what was given or take nothing. It was
a question whether my claimant could be estopped by such a sale from
asserting certain or supposable equitable rights in my body and soul.
From rumors that reached me my house was guarded by my friends several
nights, when kidnappers, had they come, would have got anything but a
cool reception, for there would have been “blows to take as well as
blows to give.” Happily this reign of terror did not continue long.
Despite the efforts of Daniel Webster and Millard Fillmore and our
Doctors of Divinity, the law fell rapidly into disrepute. The rescue of
Shadrack resulting in the death of one of the kidnappers, in Boston,
the cases of Simms and Anthony Burns, in the same place, created the
deepest feeling against the law and its upholders. But the thing which
more than all else destroyed the fugitive slave law was the resistance
made to it by the fugitives themselves. A decided check was given to
the execution of the law at Christiana, Penn., where three colored men,
being pursued by Mr. Gorsuch and his son, slew the father, wounded the
son, and drove away the officers, and made their escape to my house
in Rochester. The work of getting these men safely into Canada was a
delicate one. They were not only fugitives from slavery but charged
with murder, and officers were in pursuit of them. There was no time
for delay. I could not look upon them as murderers. To me, they were
heroic defenders of the just rights of man against manstealers and
murderers. So I fed them, and sheltered them in my house. Had they
been pursued then and there, my home would have been stained with
blood, for these men who had already tasted blood were well armed and
prepared to sell their lives at any expense to the lives and limbs of
their probable assailants. What they had already done at Christiana
and the cool determination which showed very plainly especially in
Parker, (for that was the name of the leader,) left no doubt on my mind
that their courage was genuine and that their deeds would equal their
words. The situation was critical and dangerous. The telegraph had
that day announced their deeds at Christiana, their escape, and that
the mountains of Pennsylvania were being searched for the murderers.
These men had reached me simultaneously with this news in the New York
papers. Immediately after the occurrence at Christiana, they, instead
of going into the mountains, were placed on a train which brought them
to Rochester. They were thus almost in advance of the lightning, and
much in advance of probable pursuit, unless the telegraph had raised
agents already here. The hours they spent at my house were therefore
hours of anxiety as well as activity. I dispatched my friend Miss Julia
Griffiths to the landing three miles away on the Genesee River to
ascertain if a steamer would leave that night for any port in Canada,
and remained at home myself to guard my tired, dust-covered, and
sleeping guests, for they had been harassed and traveling for two days
and nights, and needed rest. Happily for us the suspense was not long,
for it turned out, that that very night a steamer was to leave for
Toronto, Canada.
This fact, however, did not end my anxiety. There was danger that
between my house and the landing or at the landing itself we might meet
with trouble. Indeed the landing was the place where trouble was likely
to occur if at all. As patiently as I could, I waited for the shades
of night to come on, and then put the men in my “Democrat carriage,”
and started for the landing on the Genesee. It was an exciting ride,
and somewhat speedy withal. We reached the boat at least fifteen
minutes before the time of its departure, and that without remark or
molestation. But those fifteen minutes seemed much longer than usual.
I remained on board till the order to haul in the gang-way was given;
I shook hands with my friends, received from Parker the revolver that
fell from the hand of Gorsuch when he died, presented now as a token of
gratitude and a memento of the battle for Liberty at Christiana, and I
returned to my home with a sense of relief which I cannot stop here to
describe. This affair, at Christiana, and the Jerry Rescue at Syracuse,
inflicted fatal wounds on the fugitive slave bill. It became thereafter
almost a dead letter, for slaveholders found that not only did it fail
to put them in possession of their slaves, but that the attempt to
enforce it brought odium upon themselves and weakened the slave system.
In the midst of these fugitive slave troubles came the book known as
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a work of marvelous depth and power. Nothing could
have better suited the moral and humane requirements of the hour.
Its effect was amazing, instantaneous, and universal. No book on the
subject of slavery had so generally and favorably touched the American
heart. It combined all the power and pathos of preceding publications
of the kind, and was hailed by many as an inspired production. Mrs.
Stowe at once became an object of interest and admiration. She had made
fortune and fame at home, and had awakened a deep interest abroad.
Eminent persons in England roused to anti-slavery enthusiasm by her
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” invited her to visit that country, and promised
to give her a testimonial. Mrs. Stowe accepted the invitation and the
proffered testimonial. Before sailing for England, however, she invited
me from Rochester, N. Y., to spend a day at her house in Andover,
Mass. Delighted with an opportunity to become personally acquainted
with the gifted authoress, I lost no time in making my way to Andover.
I was received at her home with genuine cordiality. There was no
contradiction between the author and her book. Mrs. Stowe appeared in
conversation equally as well as she appeared in her writing. She made
to me a nice little speech in announcing her object in sending for
me. “I have invited you here,” she said, “because I wish to confer
with you as to what can be done for the free colored people of the
country. I am going to England and expect to have a considerable sum
of money placed in my hands, and I intend to use it in some way, for
the permanent improvement of the free colored people, and especially
for that class which has become free by their own exertions. In what
way I can do this most successfully is the subject I wish to talk with
you about. In any event I desire to have some monument rise after Uncle
Tom’s Cabin, which shall show that it produced more than a transient
influence.” She said several plans had been suggested, among others
an educational institution pure and simple, but that she thought
favorably of the establishment of an industrial school; and she desired
me to express my views as to what I thought would be the best plan
to help the free colored people. I was not slow to tell Mrs. Stowe
all I knew and had thought on the subject. As to a purely educational
institution, I agreed with her that it did not meet our necessities. I
argued against expending money in that way. I was also opposed to an
ordinary industrial school where pupils should merely earn the means of
obtaining an education in books. There were such schools, already. What
I thought of as best was rather a series of workshops, where colored
people could learn some of the handicrafts, learn to work in iron,
wood, and leather, and where a plain English education could also be
taught. I argued that the want of money was the root of all evil to
the colored people. They were shut out from all lucrative employments
and compelled to be merely barbers, waiters, coachmen and the like at
wages so low that they could lay up little or nothing. Their poverty
kept them ignorant and their ignorance kept them degraded. We needed
more to learn how to make a good living than to learn Latin and Greek.
After listening to me at considerable length, she was good enough to
tell me that she favored my views, and would devote the money she
expected to receive abroad to meeting the want I had described as the
most important; by establishing an institution in which colored youth
should learn trades as well as to read, write, and count. When about
to leave Andover, Mrs. Stowe asked me to put my views on the subject
in the form of a letter, so that she could take it to England with her
and show it to her friends there, that they might see to what their
contributions were to be devoted. I acceded to her request and wrote
her the following letter for the purpose named.
ROCHESTER, March 8, 1853.
MY DEAR MRS. STOWE:
You kindly informed me, when at your house a fortnight ago, that
you designed to do something which should permanently contribute
to the improvement and elevation of the free colored people in the
United States. You especially expressed an interest in such of
this class as had become free by their own exertions, and desired
most of all to be of service to them. In what manner, and by what
means you can assist this class most successfully, is the subject
upon which you have done me the honor to ask my opinion.... I
assert then that _poverty_, _ignorance_, and _degradation_ are the
combined evils; or in other words, these constitute the social
disease of the free colored people of the United States.
To deliver them from this triple malady, is to improve and elevate
them, by which I mean simply to put them on an equal footing with
their white fellow countrymen in the sacred right to “_Life_,
_Liberty_, and the pursuit of happiness.” I am for no fancied or
artificial elevation, but only ask fair play. How shall this be
obtained? I answer, first, not by establishing for our use high
schools and colleges. Such institutions are, in my judgment,
beyond our immediate occasions and are not adapted to our present
most pressing wants. High schools and colleges are excellent
institutions, and will in due season be greatly subservient to
our progress; but they are the result, as well as they are the
demand of a point of progress, which we as a people have not yet
attained. Accustomed as we have been, to the rougher and harder
modes of living, and of gaining a livelihood, we cannot, and we
ought not to hope that in a single leap from our low condition, we
can reach that of _Ministers_, _Lawyers_, _Doctors_, _Editors_,
_Merchants_, etc. These will doubtless be attained by us; but this
will only be, when we have patiently and laboriously, and I may
add successfully, mastered and passed through the intermediate
gradations of agriculture and the mechanic arts. Besides, there
are (and perhaps this is a better reason for my view of the case)
numerous institutions of learning in this country, already thrown
open to colored youth. To my thinking, there are quite as many
facilities now afforded to the colored people, as they can spare
the time, from the sterner duties of life, to avail themselves of.
In their present condition of poverty, they cannot spare their sons
and daughters two or three years at boarding-schools or colleges,
to say nothing of finding the means to sustain them while at such
institutions. I take it, therefore, that we are well provided
for in this respect; and that it may be fairly inferred from the
fact, that the facilities for our education, so far as schools and
colleges in the Free States are concerned, will increase quite
in proportion with our future wants. Colleges have been open to
colored youth in this country during the last dozen years. Yet few
comparatively, have acquired a classical education; and even this
few have found themselves educated far above a living condition,
there being no methods by which they could turn their learning to
account. Several of this latter class have entered the ministry;
but you need not be told that an educated people is needed to
sustain an educated ministry. There must be a certain amount of
cultivation among the people, to sustain such a ministry. At
present we have not that cultivation amongst us; and therefore, we
value in the preacher, strong lungs, rather than high learning.
I do not say, that educated ministers are not needed amongst us,
far from it! I wish there were more of them! but to increase their
number, is _not_ the largest benefit you can bestow upon us.
We have two or three colored lawyers in this country; and I
rejoice in the fact; for it affords very gratifying evidence of
our progress. Yet it must be confessed, that in point of success,
our lawyers are as great failures as our ministers. White people
will not employ them to the obvious embarrassment of their causes,
and the blacks, taking their _cue_ from the whites, have not
sufficient confidence in their abilities to employ them. Hence
educated colored men, among the colored people, are at a very great
discount. It would seem that education and emigration go together
with us, for as soon as a man rises amongst us, capable, by his
genius and learning, to do us great service, just so soon he finds
that he can serve himself better by going elsewhere. In proof of
this, I might instance the Russwurms, the Garnetts, the Wards, the
Crummells and others, all men of superior ability and attainments,
and capable of removing mountains of prejudice against their race,
by their simple presence in the country; but these gentlemen,
finding themselves embarrassed here by the peculiar disadvantages
to which I have referred, disadvantages in part growing out of
their education, being repelled by ignorance on the one hand, and
prejudice on the other, and having no taste to continue a contest
against such odds, they have sought more congenial climes, where
they can live more peaceable and quiet lives. I regret their
election, but I cannot blame them; for with an equal amount of
education and the hard lot which was theirs, I might follow their
example....
There is little reason to hope that any considerable number of the
free colored people will ever be induced to leave this country,
even if such a thing were desirable. The black man (_un_like the
Indian) loves civilization. He does not make very great progress
in civilization himself but he likes to be in the midst of it,
and prefers to share its most galling evils, to encountering
barbarism. Then the love of country, the dread of isolation, the
lack of adventurous spirit, and the thought of seeming to desert
their “brethren in bonds,” are a powerful check upon all schemes
of colonization, which look to the removal of the colored people,
without the slaves. The truth is, dear madam, we are _here_, and
here we are likely to remain. Individuals emigrate--nations
never. We have grown up with this republic, and I see nothing in
her character, or even in the character of the American people,
as yet which compels the belief that we must leave the United
States. If then, we are to remain here the question for the wise
and good is precisely that you have submitted to me--namely: What
can be done to improve the condition of the free people of color
in the United States? The plan which I humbly submit in answer
to this inquiry (and in the hope that it may find favor with
you, and with the many friends of humanity who honor, love, and
coöperate with you) is the establishment in Rochester, N. Y., or
in some other part of the United States equally favorable to such
an enterprise, of an INDUSTRIAL COLLEGE in which shall be taught
several important branches of the mechanic arts. This college to
be open to colored youth. I will pass over the details of such an
institution as I propose.... Never having had a day’s schooling
in all my life I may not be expected to map out the details of a
plan so comprehensive as that involved in the idea of a college. I
repeat, then, I leave the organization and administration to the
superior wisdom of yourself and the friends who second your noble
efforts. The argument in favor of an Industrial College (a college
to be conducted by the best men, and the best workmen which the
mechanic arts can afford; a college where colored youth can be
instructed to use their hands, as well as their heads; where they
can be put in possession of the means of getting a living whether
their lot in after life may be cast among civilized or uncivilized
men; whether they choose to stay here, or prefer to return to the
land of their fathers) is briefly this: Prejudice against the free
colored people in the United States has shown itself nowhere so
invincible as among mechanics. The farmer and the professional man
cherish no feeling so bitter as that cherished by these. The latter
would starve us out of the country entirely. At this moment I can
more easily get my son into a lawyer’s office to study law than
I can into a blacksmith’s shop to blow the bellows and to wield
the sledge-hammer. Denied the means of learning useful trades we
are pressed into the narrowest limits to obtain a livelihood. In
times past we have been the hewers of wood and drawers of water
for American society, and we once enjoyed a monopoly in menial
employments, but this is so no longer. Even these employments are
rapidly passing away out of our hands. The fact is (every day
begins with the lesson, and ends with the lesson) that colored
men must learn trades; must find new employments; new modes of
usefulness to society, or that they must decay under the pressing
wants to which their condition is rapidly bringing them.
We must become mechanics; we must build as well as live in houses;
we must make as well as use furniture; we must construct bridges as
well as pass over them, before we can properly live or be respected
by our fellow men. We need mechanics as well as ministers. We need
workers in iron, clay, and leather. We have orators, authors, and
other professional men, but these reach only a certain class, and
get respect for our race in certain select circles. To live here
as we ought we must fasten ourselves to our countrymen through
their every day cardinal wants. We must not only be able to _black_
boots, but to _make_ them. At present we are unknown in the
northern States as mechanics. We give no proof of genius or skill
at the county, State, or national fairs. We are unknown at any of
the great exhibitions of the industry of our fellow-citizens, and
being unknown we are unconsidered.
The fact that we make no show of our ability is held conclusive of
our inability to make any, hence all the indifference and contempt
with which incapacity is regarded fall upon us, and that too when
we have had no means of disproving the infamous opinion of our
natural inferiority. I have during the last dozen years denied
before the Americans that we are an inferior race; but this has
been done by arguments based upon admitted principles rather than
by the presentation of facts. Now firmly believing, as I do, that
there are skill, invention, power, industry, and real mechanical
genius, among the colored people, which will bear favorable
testimony for them, and which only need the means to develop them,
I am decidedly in favor of the establishment of such a college as
I have mentioned. The benefits of such an institution would not be
confined to the Northern States, nor to the free colored people.
They would extend over the whole Union. The slave not less than
the freeman would be benefited by such an institution. It must be
confessed that the most powerful argument now used by the southern
slaveholder, and the one most soothing to his conscience, is that
derived from the low condition of the free colored people of the
north. I have long felt that too little attention has been given by
our truest friends in this country to removing this stumbling block
out of the way of the slave’s liberation.
The most telling, the most killing refutation of slavery, is
the presentation of an industrious, enterprising, thrifty, and
intelligent free black population. Such a population I believe
would rise in the Northern States under the fostering care of such
a college as that supposed.
To show that we are capable of becoming mechanics I might adduce
any amount of testimony; but, dear madam, I need not ring the
changes on such a proposition. There is no question in the mind of
any unprejudiced person that the Negro is capable of making a good
mechanic. Indeed, even those who cherish the bitterest feelings
towards us have admitted that the apprehension that negroes might
be employed in their stead, dictated the policy of excluding them
from trades altogether. But I will not dwell upon this point as I
fear I have already trespassed too long upon your precious time,
and written more than I ought to expect you to read. Allow me to
say in conclusion, that I believe every intelligent colored man
in America will approve and rejoice at the establishment of some
such institution as that now suggested. There are many respectable
colored men, fathers of large families, having boys nearly grown
up, whose minds are tossed by day and by night with the anxious
inquiry, what shall I do with my boys? Such an institution would
meet the wants of such persons. Then, too, the establishment of
such an institution would be in character with the eminently
practical philanthropy of your trans-Atlantic friends. America
could scarcely object to it as an attempt to agitate the public
mind on the subject of slavery, or to _dissolve the Union_. It
could not be tortured into a cause for hard words by the American
people, but the noble and good of all classes would see in the
effort an excellent motive, a benevolent object, temperately,
wisely, and practically manifested.
Wishing you, dear madam, renewed health, a pleasant passage and
safe return to your native land,
I am most truly, your grateful friend,
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
_Mrs. H. B. Stowe._
I was not only requested to write the foregoing letter for the purpose
indicated, but I was also asked, with admirable foresight, to see and
ascertain, as far as possible, the views of the free colored people
themselves in respect to the proposed measure for their benefit. This
I was able to do in July, 1853, at the largest and most enlightened
colored convention that, up to that time, had ever assembled in this
country. This convention warmly approved the plan of a manual labor
school, as already described, and expressed high appreciation of the
wisdom and benevolence of Mrs. Stowe. This convention was held in
Rochester, N. Y., and will long be remembered there for the surprise
and gratification it caused our friends in that city. They were not
looking for such exhibition of enlightened zeal and ability as were
there displayed in speeches, addresses, and resolutions; and in the
conduct of the business for which it had assembled. Its proceedings
attracted wide-spread attention at home and abroad.
While Mrs. Stowe was abroad, she was attacked by the pro-slavery
press of our country so persistently and vigorously, for receiving
money for her own private use, that the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher felt
called upon to notice and reply to them in the columns of the New
York _Independent_, of which he was then the editor. He denied that
Mrs. Stowe was gathering British gold for herself, and referred her
assailants to me, if they would learn what she intended to do with the
money. In answer to her maligners, I denounced their accusations as
groundless, and assured the public through the columns of my paper,
that the testimonial then being raised in England by Mrs. Stowe, would
be sacredly devoted to the establishment of an industrial school for
colored youth. This announcement was circulated by other journals, and
the attacks ceased. Nobody could well object to such application of
money, received from any source, at home or abroad. After her return to
this country, I called again on Mrs. Stowe, and was much disappointed
to learn from her that she had reconsidered her plan for the industrial
school. I have never been able to see any force in the reasons for this
change. It is enough, however, to say that they were sufficient for
her, and that she no doubt acted conscientiously, though her change
of purpose was a great disappointment, and placed me in an awkward
position before the colored people of this country, as well as to
friends abroad, to whom I had given assurances that the money would be
appropriated in the manner I have described.
CHAPTER IX.
INCREASING DEMANDS OF THE SLAVE POWER.
Increased demands of slavery--War in Kansas--John Brown’s raid--
His capture and execution--My escape to England from United States
marshals.
Notwithstanding the natural tendency of the human mind to weary of an
old story, and to turn away from chronic abuses for which it sees no
remedy, the anti-slavery agitation for thirty long years--from 1830
to 1860--was sustained with ever increasing intensity and power.
This was not entirely due to the extraordinary zeal and ability of
the anti-slavery agitators themselves; for with all their admitted
ardor and eloquence, they could have done very little without the aid
rendered them, unwittingly, by the aggressive character of slavery
itself. It was in the nature of the system never to rest in obscurity,
although that condition was in a high degree essential to its security.
It was forever forcing itself into prominence. Unconscious, apparently,
of its own deformity, it omitted no occasion for inviting disgust by
seeking approval and admiration. It was noisiest when it should have
been most silent and unobtrusive. One of its defenders, when asked
what would satisfy him as a slaveholder, said “he never would be
satisfied until he could call the roll of his slaves in the shadow
of Bunker Hill monument.” Every effort made to put down agitation
only served to impart to it new strength and vigor. Of this class
was the “gag rule,” attempted and partially enforced in Congress--
the attempted suppression of the right of petition--the mobocratic
demonstrations against the exercise of free speech--the display of
pistols, bludgeons, and plantation manners in the Congress of the
nation--the demand, shamelessly made by our government upon England,
for the return of slaves who had won their liberty by their valor on
the high seas--the bill for the recapture of runaway slaves--the
annexation of Texas for the avowed purpose of increasing the number of
slave States, and thus increasing the power of slavery in the union--
the war with Mexico--the fillibustering expeditions against Cuba and
Central America--the cold-blooded decision of Chief Justice Taney in
the Dred Scott case, wherein he states, as it were, a historical fact,
that “negroes are deemed to have no rights which white men are bound to
respect”--the perfidious repeal of the Missouri compromise, when all
its advantages to the South had been gained and appropriated, and when
nothing had been gained by the North--the armed and bloody attempt to
force slavery upon the virgin soil of Kansas--the efforts of both of
the great political parties to drive from place and power every man
suspected of ideas and principles hostile to slavery--the rude attacks
made upon Giddings, Hale, Chase, Wilson, Wm. H. Seward, and Charles
Sumner--the effort to degrade these brave men, and drive them from
positions of prominence--the summary manner in which Virginia hanged
John Brown;--in a word, whatever was done or attempted, with a view to
the support and security of slavery, only served as fuel to the fire,
and heated the furnace of agitation to a higher degree than any before
attained. This was true up to the moment when the nation found it
necessary to gird on the sword for the salvation of the country and the
destruction of slavery.
At no time during all the ten years preceding the war, was the public
mind at rest. Mr. Clay’s compromise measures in 1850, whereby all the
troubles of the country about slavery were to be “in the deep bosom
of the ocean buried,” was hardly dry on the pages of the statute book
before the whole land was rocked with rumored agitation, and for one,
I did my best by pen and voice, and by ceaseless activity to keep it
alive and vigorous. Later on, in 1854, we had the Missouri compromise,
which removed the only grand legal barrier against the spread of
slavery over all the territory of the United States. From this time
there was no pause, no repose. Every body, however dull, could see that
this was a phase of the slavery question which was not to be slighted
or ignored. The people of the North had been accustomed to ask, in a
tone of cruel indifference, “What have we to do with slavery?” and
now no labored speech was required in answer. Slaveholding aggression
settled this question for us. The presence of slavery in a territory
would certainly exclude the sons and daughters of the free States more
effectually than statutes or yellow fever. Those who cared nothing
for the slave, and were willing to tolerate slavery inside the slave
States, were nevertheless not quite prepared to find themselves and
their children excluded from the common inheritance of the nation.
It is not surprising therefore, that the public mind of the North
was easily kept intensely alive on this subject, nor that in 1856 an
alarming expression of feeling on this point was seen in the large
vote given for John C. Fremont and William L. Dayton for President
and Vice-President of the United States. Until this last uprising
of the North against the slave power the anti-slavery movement was
largely retained in the hands of the original abolitionists, whose most
prominent leaders have already been mentioned elsewhere in this volume.
After 1856 a mightier arm and a more numerous host was raised against
it, the agitation becoming broader and deeper. The times at this point
illustrated the principle of tension and compression, action and
reaction. The more open, flagrant, and impudent the slave power, the
more firmly it was confronted by the rising anti-slavery spirit of the
North. No one act did more to rouse the north to a comprehension of the
infernal and barbarous spirit of slavery and its determination to “rule
or ruin,” than the cowardly and brutal assault made in the American
Senate upon Charles Sumner, by Preston S. Brooks, a member of Congress
from South Carolina. Shocking and scandalous as was this attack, the
spirit in which the deed was received and commended by the community,
was still more disgraceful. Southern ladies even applauded the armed
bully for his murderous assault upon an unarmed northern Senator,
because of words spoken in debate! This more than all else told the
thoughtful people of the North the kind of civilization to which they
were linked, and how plainly it foreshadowed a conflict on a larger
scale.
As a measure of agitation, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise
alluded to, was perhaps the most effective. It was that which brought
Abraham Lincoln into prominence, and into conflict with Stephen A.
Douglas (who was the author of that measure) and compelled the Western
States to take a deeper interest than they ever had done before in
the whole question. Pregnant words were now spoken on the side of
freedom, words which went straight to the heart of the nation. It was
Mr. Lincoln who told the American people at this crisis that the “Union
could not long endure half slave and half free; that they must be all
one or the other, and that the public mind could find no resting place
but in the belief in the ultimate extinction of slavery.” These were
not the words of an abolitionist--branded a fanatic, and carried
away by an enthusiastic devotion to the Negro--but the calm, cool,
deliberate utterance of a statesman, comprehensive enough to take in
the welfare of the whole country. No wonder that the friends of freedom
saw in this plain man of Illinois the proper standard-bearer of all the
moral and political forces which could be united and wielded against
the slave power. In a few simple words he had embodied the thought of
the loyal nation, and indicated the character fit to lead and guide the
country amid perils present and to come.
The South was not far behind the North in recognizing Abraham Lincoln
as the natural leader of the rising political sentiment of the country
against slavery, and it was equally quick in its efforts to counteract
and destroy his influence. Its papers teemed with the bitterest
invectives against the “backwoodsman of Illinois,” the “flat-boatman,”
the “rail-splitter,” the “third-rate lawyer,” and much else and worse.
Preceding the repeal of the Missouri Compromise I gave, at the
anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York, the
following picture of the state of the anti-slavery conflict as it then
existed: