CHAPTER XXV. _Various Incidents_

NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE—UNEXPECTED OPPOSITION—THE OBJECTIONS TO IT—THEIR

PLAUSIBILITY ADMITTED—MOTIVES FOR COMING TO ROCHESTER—DISCIPLE OF MR.

GARRISON—CHANGE OF OPINION—CAUSES LEADING TO IT—THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE

CHANGE—PREJUDICE AGAINST COLOR—AMUSING CONDESCENSION—“JIM CROW

CARS”—COLLISIONS WITH CONDUCTORS AND BRAKEMEN—TRAINS ORDERED NOT TO

STOP AT LYNN—AMUSING DOMESTIC SCENE—SEPARATE TABLES FOR MASTER AND

MAN—PREJUDICE UNNATURAL—ILLUSTRATIONS—IN HIGH COMPANY—ELEVATION OF THE

FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR—PLEDGE FOR THE FUTURE.

I have now given the reader an imperfect sketch of nine years’

experience in freedom—three years as a common laborer on the wharves of

New Bedford, four years as a lecturer in New England, and two years of

semi-exile in Great Britain and Ireland. A single ray of light remains

to be flung upon my life during the last eight years, and my story will

be done.

A trial awaited me on my return from England to the United States, for

which I was but very imperfectly prepared. My plans for my then future

usefulness as an anti-slavery advocate were all settled. My friends in

England had resolved to raise a given sum to purchase for me a press

and printing materials; and 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, at least, send slavery and

oppression to the grave, and restore to “liberty and the pursuit of

happiness” the people with whom I had suffered, both as a slave and as

a freeman. Intimation had reached my friends in Boston of what I

intended to do, before my arrival, and I was prepared to find them

favorably disposed toward my much cherished enterprise. In this I was

mistaken. I found them very earnestly opposed to the idea of my

starting a paper, and for several reasons. First, the paper was not

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 enterprise. All previous attempts to establish such a journal

having failed, I felt that probably I should but add another to the

list of failures, and thus contribute another proof of the mental and

moral deficiencies of my race. Very much that was said to me in respect

to my imperfect literary acquirements, I felt to be most painfully

true. The unsuccessful projectors of all the previous colored

newspapers were my superiors in point of education, and if they failed,

how could I hope for success? Yet I did hope for success, and persisted

in the undertaking. Some of my English friends greatly encouraged me to

go forward, and I shall never cease to be grateful for their words of

cheer and generous deeds.

I can easily pardon those who have denounced me as ambitious and

presumptuous, in view of my persistence in this enterprise. I was but

nine years from slavery. In point of mental experience, I was but nine

years old. That one, in such circumstances, should aspire to establish

a printing press, among an educated people, might well be considered,

if not ambitious, quite silly. 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 very 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 knowledge 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 a large share of the deficiencies which I

was sure that my paper would exhibit. The most distressing thing,

however, was the offense which I was about to give my Boston friends,

by what seemed to them a reckless disregard of their sage advice. I am

not sure that I was not under the influence of something like a slavish

adoration of my Boston friends, and I labored hard to convince them of

the wisdom of my undertaking, but without success. Indeed, I never

expect to succeed, although time has answered all their original

objections. The paper has been successful. It is a large sheet, costing

eighty dollars per week—has three thousand subscribers—has been

published regularly nearly eight years—and bids fair to stand eight

years longer. At any rate, the eight years to come are as full of

promise as were the eight that are past.

It is not to be concealed, however, that the maintenance of such a

journal, under the circumstances, has been a work of much difficulty;

and could all the perplexity, anxiety, and trouble attending it, have

been clearly foreseen, I might have shrunk from the undertaking. As it

is, I rejoice in having engaged in the enterprise, and count it joy to

have been able to suffer, in many ways, for its success, and for the

success of the cause to which it has been faithfully devoted. I look

upon the time, money, and labor bestowed upon it, as being amply

rewarded, in the development of my own mental and moral energies, and

in the corresponding development of my deeply injured and oppressed

people.

From motives of peace, instead of issuing my paper in Boston, among my

New England friends, I came to Rochester, western New York, among

strangers, where the circulation of my paper could not interfere with

the local circulation of the _Liberator_ and the _Standard;_ for at

that time I was, on the anti-slavery question, a faithful disciple of

William Lloyd Garrison, and fully committed to his doctrine touching

the pro-slavery character of the constitution of the United States, and

the _non-voting principle_, of which he is the known and distinguished

advocate. With Mr. Garrison, 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 labor here, I advocated them with pen and tongue,

according to the best of my ability.

About four years ago, upon a reconsideration of the whole subject, I

became convinced 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, it is, 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.

Here was a radical change in my opinions, and in the action logically

resulting from that change. To those with whom I had been in agreement

and in sympathy, I was now in opposition. What they held to be a great

and important truth, I now looked upon as a dangerous error. A very

painful, and yet a very natural, 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.

The opinions first entertained were naturally derived and honestly

entertained, and I trust that my present opinions have the same claims

to respect. Brought directly, when I escaped from slavery, into contact

with a class of abolitionists regarding 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 their

interpretation made it. I was bound, not only by their superior

knowledge, to take their opinions as the true ones, in respect to the

subject, 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

in this state, I should in all probability have remained as firm in my

disunion views as any other disciple of William Lloyd Garrison.

My new circumstances compelled me to re-think the whole subject, and to

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 government, 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 tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote

the general welfare, and secure the blessing 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 in

the American Union. I mean, however, not to argue, but simply to state

my views. It would require very many pages of a volume like this, to

set forth the arguments demonstrating the unconstitutionality and the

complete illegality of slavery in our land; and as my experience, and

not my arguments, is within the scope and contemplation of this volume,

I omit the latter and proceed with the former.

I will now ask the kind reader to go back a little in my story, while I

bring up a thread left behind for convenience sake, but which, small as

it is, cannot be properly omitted altogether; and that thread is

American prejudice against color, and its varied illustrations in my

own experience.

When I first went among the abolitionists of New England, and began to

travel, I found this prejudice very strong and very annoying. The

abolitionists themselves were not entirely free from it, and I could

see that they were nobly struggling against it. In their eagerness,

sometimes, to show their contempt for the feeling, they proved that

they had not entirely recovered from it; often illustrating the saying,

in their conduct, that a man may “stand up so straight as to lean

backward.” When it was said to me, “Mr. Douglass, I will walk to

meeting with you; I am not afraid of a black man,” I could not help

thinking—seeing nothing very frightful in my appearance—“And why should

you be?” The children at the north had all been educated to believe

that if they were bad, the old _black_ man—not the old _devil_—would

get them; and it was evidence of some courage, for any so educated to

get the better of their fears.

The custom of providing separate cars for the accommodation of colored

travelers, was established on nearly all the railroads of New England,

a dozen years ago. Regarding this custom as fostering the spirit of

caste, I made it a rule to seat myself in the cars for the

accommodation of passengers generally. Thus seated, I was sure to be

called upon to betake myself to the “_Jim Crow car_.” Refusing to obey,

I was often dragged out of my seat, beaten, and severely bruised, by

conductors and brakemen. Attempting to start from Lynn, one day, for

Newburyport, on the Eastern railroad, I went, as my custom was, into

one of the best railroad carriages on the road. The seats were very

luxuriant and beautiful. I was soon waited upon by the conductor, and

ordered out; whereupon I demanded the reason for my invidious removal.

After a good deal of parleying, I was told that it was because I was

black. This I denied, and appealed to the company to sustain my denial;

but they were evidently unwilling to commit themselves, on a point so

delicate, and requiring such nice powers of discrimination, for they

remained as dumb as death. I was soon waited on by half a dozen fellows

of the baser sort (just such as would volunteer to take a bull-dog out

of a meeting-house in time of public worship), and told that I must

move out of that seat, and if I did not, they would drag me out. I

refused to move, and they clutched me, head, neck, and shoulders. But,

in anticipation of the stretching to which I was about to be subjected,

I had interwoven myself among the seats. In dragging me out, on this

occasion, it must have cost the company twenty-five or thirty dollars,

for I tore up seats and all. So great was the excitement in Lynn, on

the subject, that the superintendent, Mr. Stephen A. Chase, ordered the

trains to run through Lynn without stopping, while I remained in that

town; and this ridiculous farce was enacted. For several days the

trains went dashing through Lynn without stopping. At the same time

that they excluded a free colored man from their cars, this same

company allowed slaves, in company with their masters and mistresses,

to ride unmolested.

After many battles with the railroad conductors, and being roughly

handled in not a few instances, proscription was at last abandoned; and

the “Jim Crow car”—set up for the degradation of colored people—is

nowhere found in New England. This result was not brought about without

the intervention of the people, and the threatened enactment of a law

compelling railroad companies to respect the rights of travelers. Hon.

Charles Francis Adams performed signal service in the Massachusetts

legislature, in bringing this reformation; and to him the colored

citizens of that state are deeply indebted.

Although often annoyed, and sometimes outraged, by this prejudice

against color, I am indebted to it for many passages of quiet

amusement. A half-cured subject of it is sometimes driven into awkward

straits, especially if he happens to get a genuine specimen of the race

into his house.

In the summer of 1843, I was traveling and lecturing, in company with

William A. White, Esq., through the state of Indiana. Anti-slavery

friends were not very abundant in Indiana, at that time, and beds were

not more plentiful than friends. We often slept out, in preference to

sleeping in the houses, at some points. At the close of one of our

meetings, we were invited home with a kindly-disposed old farmer, who,

in the generous enthusiasm of the moment, seemed to have forgotten that

he had but one spare bed, and that his guests were an ill-matched pair.

All went on pretty well, till near bed time, when signs of uneasiness

began to show themselves, among the unsophisticated sons and daughters.

White is remarkably fine looking, and very evidently a born gentleman;

the idea of putting us in the same bed was hardly to be tolerated; and

yet, there we were, and but the one bed for us, and that, by the way,

was in the same room occupied by the other members of the family.

White, as well as I, perceived the difficulty, for yonder slept the old

folks, there the sons, and a little farther along slept the daughters;

and but one other bed remained. Who should have this bed, was the

puzzling question. There was some whispering between the old folks,

some confused looks among the young, as the time for going to bed

approached. After witnessing the confusion as long as I liked, I

relieved the kindly-disposed family by playfully saying, “Friend White,

having got entirely rid of my prejudice against color, I think, as a

proof of it, I must allow you to sleep with me to-night.” White kept up

the joke, by seeming to esteem himself the favored party, and thus the

difficulty was removed. If we went to a hotel, and called for dinner,

the landlord was sure to set one table for White and another for me,

always taking him to be master, and me the servant. Large eyes were

generally made when the order was given to remove the dishes from my

table to that of White’s. In those days, it was thought strange that a

white man and a colored man could dine peaceably at the same table, and

in some parts the strangeness of such a sight has not entirely

subsided.

Some people will have it that there is a natural, an inherent, and an

invincible repugnance in the breast of the white race toward

dark-colored people; and some very intelligent colored men think that

their proscription is owing solely to the color which nature has given

them. They hold that they are rated according to their color, and that

it is impossible for white people ever to look upon dark races of men,

or men belonging to the African race, with other than feelings of

aversion. My experience, both serious and mirthful, combats this

conclusion. Leaving out of sight, for a moment, grave facts, to this

point, I will state one or two, which illustrate a very interesting

feature of American character as well as American prejudice. Riding

from Boston to Albany, a few years ago, I found myself in a large car,

well filled with passengers. The seat next to me was about the only

vacant one. At every stopping place we took in new passengers, all of

whom, on reaching the seat next to me, cast a disdainful glance upon

it, and passed to another car, leaving me in the full enjoyment of a

hole form. For a time, I did not know but that my riding there was

prejudicial to the interest of the railroad company. A circumstance

occurred, however, which gave me an elevated position at once. Among

the passengers on this train was Gov. George N. Briggs. I was not

acquainted with him, and had no idea that I was known to him, however,

I was, for upon observing me, the governor left his place, and making

his way toward me, respectfully asked the privilege of a seat by my

side; and upon introducing himself, we entered into a conversation very

pleasant and instructive to me. The despised seat now became honored.

His excellency had removed all the prejudice against sitting by the

side of a Negro; and upon his leaving it, as he did, on reaching

Pittsfield, there were at least one dozen applicants for the place. The

governor had, without changing my skin a single shade, made the place

respectable which before was despicable.

A similar incident happened to me once on the Boston and New Bedford

railroad, and the leading party to it has since been governor of the

state of Massachusetts. I allude to Col. John Henry Clifford. Lest the

reader may fancy I am aiming to elevate myself, by claiming too much

intimacy with great men, I must state that my only acquaintance with

Col. Clifford was formed while I was _his hired servant_, during the

first winter of my escape from slavery. I owe it him to say, that in

that relation I found him always kind and gentlemanly. But to the

incident. I entered a car at Boston, for New Bedford, which, with the

exception of a single seat was full, and found I must occupy this, or

stand up, during the journey. Having no mind to do this, I stepped up

to the man having the next seat, and who had a few parcels on the seat,

and gently asked leave to take a seat by his side. My fellow-passenger

gave me a look made up of reproach and indignation, and asked me why I

should come to that particular seat. I assured him, in the gentlest

manner, that of all others this was the seat for me. Finding that I was

actually about to sit down, he sang out, “O! stop, stop! and let me get

out!” Suiting the action to the word, up the agitated man got, and

sauntered to the other end of the car, and was compelled to stand for

most of the way thereafter. Halfway to New Bedford, or more, Col.

Clifford, recognizing me, left his seat, and not having seen me before

since I had ceased to wait on him (in everything except hard arguments

against his pro-slavery position), apparently forgetful of his rank,

manifested, in greeting me, something of the feeling of an old friend.

This demonstration was not lost on the gentleman whose dignity I had,

an hour before, most seriously offended. Col. Clifford was known to be

about the most aristocratic gentleman in Bristol county; and it was

evidently thought that I must be somebody, else I should not have been

thus noticed, by a person so distinguished. Sure enough, after Col.

Clifford left me, I found myself surrounded with friends; and among the

number, my offended friend stood nearest, and with an apology for his

rudeness, which I could not resist, although it was one of the lamest

ever offered. With such facts as these before me—and I have many of

them—I am inclined to think that pride and fashion have much to do with

the treatment commonly extended to colored people in the United States.

I once heard a very plain man say (and he was cross-eyed, and awkwardly

flung together in other respects) that he should be a handsome man when

public opinion shall be changed.

Since I have been editing and publishing a journal devoted to the cause

of liberty and progress, I have had my mind more directed to the

condition and circumstances of the free colored people than when I was

the agent of an abolition society. The result has been a corresponding

change in the disposition of my time and labors. I have felt it to be a

part of my mission—under a gracious Providence to impress my sable

brothers in this country with the conviction that, notwithstanding the

ten thousand discouragements and the powerful hinderances, which beset

their existence in this country—notwithstanding the blood-written

history of Africa, and her children, from whom we have descended, or

the clouds and darkness (whose stillness and gloom are made only more

awful by wrathful thunder and lightning) now overshadowing

them—progress is yet possible, and bright skies shall yet shine upon

their pathway; and that “Ethiopia shall yet reach forth her hand unto

God.”

Believing that one of the best means of emancipating the slaves of the

south is to improve and elevate the character of the free colored

people of the north I shall labor in the future, as I have labored in

the past, to promote the moral, social, religious, and intellectual

elevation of the free colored people; never forgetting my own humble

orgin(sic), nor refusing, while Heaven lends me ability, to use my

voice, my pen, or my vote, to advocate the great and primary work of

the universal and unconditional emancipation of my entire race.

RECEPTION SPEECH 10. At Finsbury Chapel, Moorfields, England, May 12,

1846

Mr. Douglass rose amid loud cheers, and said: I feel exceedingly glad

of the opportunity now afforded me of presenting the claims of my

brethren in bonds in the United States, to so many in London and from

various parts of Britain, who have assembled here on the present

occasion. I have nothing to commend me to your consideration in the way

of learning, nothing in the way of education, to entitle me to your

attention; and you are aware that slavery is a very bad school for

rearing teachers of morality and religion. Twenty-one years of my life

have been spent in slavery—personal slavery—surrounded by degrading

influences, such as can exist nowhere beyond the pale of slavery; and

it will not be strange, if under such circumstances, I should betray,

in what I have to say to you, a deficiency of that refinement which is

seldom or ever found, except among persons that have experienced

superior advantages to those which I have enjoyed. But I will take it

for granted that you know something about the degrading influences of

slavery, and that you will not expect great things from me this

evening, but simply such facts as I may be able to advance immediately

in connection with my own experience of slavery.

Now, what is this system of slavery? This is the subject of my lecture

this evening—what is the character of this institution? I am about to

answer the inquiry, what is American slavery? I do this the more

readily, since I have found persons in this country who have identified

the term slavery with that which I think it is not, and in some

instances, I have feared, in so doing, have rather (unwittingly, I

know) detracted much from the horror with which the term slavery is

contemplated. It is common in this country to distinguish every bad

thing by the name of slavery. Intemperance is slavery; to be deprived

of the right to vote is slavery, says one; to have to work hard is

slavery, says another; and I do not know but that if we should let them

go on, they would say that to eat when we are hungry, to walk when we

desire to have exercise, or to minister to our necessities, or have

necessities at all, is slavery. I do not wish for a moment to detract

from the horror with which the evil of intemperance is contemplated—not

at all; nor do I wish to throw the slightest obstruction in the way of

any political freedom that any class of persons in this country may

desire to obtain. But I am here to say that I think the term slavery is

sometimes abused by identifying it with that which it is not. Slavery

in the United States is the granting of that power by which one man

exercises and enforces a right of property in the body and soul of

another. The condition of a slave is simply that of the brute beast. He

is a piece of property—a marketable commodity, in the language of the

law, to be bought or sold at the will and caprice of the master who

claims him to be his property; he is spoken of, thought of, and treated

as property. His own good, his conscience, his intellect, his

affections, are all set aside by the master. The will and the wishes of

the master are the law of the slave. He is as much a piece of property

as a horse. If he is fed, he is fed because he is property. If he is

clothed, it is with a view to the increase of his value as property.

Whatever of comfort is necessary to him for his body or soul that is

inconsistent with his being property, is carefully wrested from him,

not only by public opinion, but by the law of the country. He is

carefully deprived of everything that tends in the slightest degree to

detract from his value as property. He is deprived of education. God

has given him an intellect; the slaveholder declares it shall not be

cultivated. If his moral perception leads him in a course contrary to

his value as property, the slaveholder declares he shall not exercise

it. The marriage institution cannot exist among slaves, and one-sixth

of the population of democratic America is denied its privileges by the

law of the land. What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its

liberty, boasting of its humanity, boasting of its Christianity,

boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its

own borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of

marriage?—what must be the condition of that people? I need not lift up

the veil by giving you any experience of my own. Every one that can put

two ideas together, must see the most fearful results from such a state

of things as I have just mentioned. If any of these three millions find

for themselves companions, and prove themselves honest, upright,

virtuous persons to each other, yet in these cases—few as I am bound to

confess they are—the virtuous live in constant apprehension of being

torn asunder by the merciless men-stealers that claim them as their

property. This is American slavery; no marriage—no education—the light

of the gospel shut out from the dark mind of the bondman—and he

forbidden by law to learn to read. If a mother shall teach her children

to read, the law in Louisiana proclaims that she may be hanged by the

neck. If the father attempt to give his son a knowledge of letters, he

may be punished by the whip in one instance, and in another be killed,

at the discretion of the court. Three millions of people shut out from

the light of knowledge! It is easy for you to conceive the evil that

must result from such a state of things.

I now come to the physical evils of slavery. I do not wish to dwell at

length upon these, but it seems right to speak of them, not so much to

influence your minds on this question, as to let the slaveholders of

America know that the curtain which conceals their crimes is being

lifted abroad; that we are opening the dark cell, and leading the

people into the horrible recesses of what they are pleased to call

their domestic institution. We want them to know that a knowledge of

their whippings, their scourgings, their brandings, their chainings, is

not confined to their plantations, but that some Negro of theirs has

broken loose from his chains—has burst through the dark incrustation of

slavery, and is now exposing their deeds of deep damnation to the gaze

of the christian people of England.

The slaveholders resort to all kinds of cruelty. If I were disposed, I

have matter enough to interest you on this question for five or six

evenings, but I will not dwell at length upon these cruelties. Suffice

it to say, that all of the peculiar modes of torture that were resorted

to in the West India islands, are resorted to, I believe, even more

frequently, in the United States of America. Starvation, the bloody

whip, the chain, the gag, the thumb-screw, cat-hauling, the

cat-o’-nine-tails, the dungeon, the blood-hound, are all in requisition

to keep the slave in his condition as a slave in the United States. If

any one has a doubt upon this point, I would ask him to read the

chapter on slavery in Dickens’s _Notes on America_. If any man has a

doubt upon it, I have here the “testimony of a thousand witnesses,”

which I can give at any length, all going to prove the truth of my

statement. The blood-hound is regularly trained in the United States,

and advertisements are to be found in the southern papers of the Union,

from persons advertising themselves as blood-hound trainers, and

offering to hunt down slaves at fifteen dollars a piece, recommending

their hounds as the fleetest in the neighborhood, never known to fail.

Advertisements are from time to time inserted, stating that slaves have

escaped with iron collars about their necks, with bands of iron about

their feet, marked with the lash, branded with red-hot irons, the

initials of their master’s name burned into their flesh; and the

masters advertise the fact of their being thus branded with their own

signature, thereby proving to the world, that, however damning it may

appear to non-slavers, such practices are not regarded discreditable

among the slaveholders themselves. Why, I believe if a man should brand

his horse in this country—burn the initials of his name into any of his

cattle, and publish the ferocious deed here—that the united execrations

of Christians in Britain would descend upon him. Yet in the United

States, human beings are thus branded. As Whittier says—

... Our countrymen in chains,

The whip on woman’s shrinking flesh,

Our soil yet reddening with the stains

Caught from her scourgings warm and fresh.

The slave-dealer boldly publishes his infamous acts to the world. Of

all things that have been said of slavery to which exception has been

taken by slaveholders, this, the charge of cruelty, stands foremost,

and yet there is no charge capable of clearer demonstration, than that

of the most barbarous inhumanity on the part of the slaveholders toward

their slaves. And all this is necessary; it is necessary to resort to

these cruelties, in order to _make the slave a slave_, and to _keep him

a slave_. Why, my experience all goes to prove the truth of what you

will call a marvelous proposition, that the better you treat a slave,

the more you destroy his value _as a slave_, and enhance the

probability of his eluding the grasp of the slaveholder; the more

kindly you treat him, the more wretched you make him, while you keep

him in the condition of a slave. My experience, I say, confirms the

truth of this proposition. When I was treated exceedingly ill; when my

back was being scourged daily; when I was whipped within an inch of my

life—_life_ was all I cared for. “Spare my life,” was my continual

prayer. When I was looking for the blow about to be inflicted upon my

head, I was not thinking of my liberty; it was my life. But, as soon as

the blow was not to be feared, then came the longing for liberty. If a

slave has a bad master, his ambition is to get a better; when he gets a

better, he aspires to have the best; and when he gets the best, he

aspires to be his own master. But the slave must be brutalized to keep

him as a slave. The slaveholder feels this necessity. I admit this

necessity. If it be right to hold slaves at all, it is right to hold

them in the only way in which they can be held; and this can be done

only by shutting out the light of education from their minds, and

brutalizing their persons. The whip, the chain, the gag, the

thumb-screw, the blood-hound, the stocks, and all the other bloody

paraphernalia of the slave system, are indispensably necessary to the

relation of master and slave. The slave must be subjected to these, or

he ceases to be a slave. Let him know that the whip is burned; that the

fetters have been turned to some useful and profitable employment; that

the chain is no longer for his limbs; that the blood-hound is no longer

to be put upon his track; that his master’s authority over him is no

longer to be enforced by taking his life—and immediately he walks out

from the house of bondage and asserts his freedom as a man. The

slaveholder finds it necessary to have these implements to keep the

slave in bondage; finds it necessary to be able to say, “Unless you do

so and so; unless you do as I bid you—I will take away your life!”

Some of the most awful scenes of cruelty are constantly taking place in

the middle states of the Union. We have in those states what are called

the slave-breeding states. Allow me to speak plainly. Although it is

harrowing to your feelings, it is necessary that the facts of the case

should be stated. We have in the United States slave-breeding states.

The very state from which the minister from our court to yours comes,

is one of these states—Maryland, where men, women, and children are

reared for the market, just as horses, sheep, and swine are raised for

the market. Slave-rearing is there looked upon as a legitimate trade;

the law sanctions it, public opinion upholds it, the church does not

condemn it. It goes on in all its bloody horrors, sustained by the

auctioneer’s block. If you would see the cruelties of this system, hear

the following narrative. Not long since the following scene occurred. A

slave-woman and a slaveman had united themselves as man and wife in the

absence of any law to protect them as man and wife. They had lived

together by the permission, not by right, of their master, and they had

reared a family. The master found it expedient, and for his interest,

to sell them. He did not ask them their wishes in regard to the matter

at all; they were not consulted. The man and woman were brought to the

auctioneer’s block, under the sound of the hammer. The cry was raised,

“Here goes; who bids cash?” Think of it—a man and wife to be sold! The

woman was placed on the auctioneer’s block; her limbs, as is customary,

were brutally exposed to the purchasers, who examined her with all the

freedom with which they would examine a horse. There stood the husband,

powerless; no right to his wife; the master’s right preeminent. She was

sold. He was next brought to the auctioneer’s block. His eyes followed

his wife in the distance; and he looked beseechingly, imploringly, to

the man that had bought his wife, to buy him also. But he was at length

bid off to another person. He was about to be separated forever from

her he loved. No word of his, no work of his, could save him from this

separation. He asked permission of his new master to go and take the

hand of his wife at parting. It was denied him. In the agony of his

soul he rushed from the man who had just bought him, that he might take

a farewell of his wife; but his way was obstructed, he was struck over

the head with a loaded whip, and was held for a moment; but his agony

was too great. When he was let go, he fell a corpse at the feet of his

master. His heart was broken. Such scenes are the everyday fruits of

American slavery. Some two years since, the Hon. Seth. M. Gates, an

anti-slavery gentleman of the state of New York, a representative in

the congress of the United States, told me he saw with his own eyes the

following circumstances. In the national District of Columbia, over

which the star-spangled emblem is constantly waving, where orators are

ever holding forth on the subject of American liberty, American

democracy, American republicanism, there are two slave prisons. When

going across a bridge, leading to one of these prisons, he saw a young

woman run out, bare-footed and bare-headed, and with very little

clothing on. She was running with all speed to the bridge he was

approaching. His eye was fixed upon her, and he stopped to see what was

the matter. He had not paused long before he saw three men run out

after her. He now knew what the nature of the case was; a slave

escaping from her chains—a young woman, a sister—escaping from the

bondage in which she had been held. She made her way to the bridge, but

had not reached, ere from the Virginia side there came two

slaveholders. As soon as they saw them, her pursuers called out, “Stop

her!” True to their Virginian instincts, they came to the rescue of

their brother kidnappers, across the bridge. The poor girl now saw that

there was no chance for her. It was a trying time. She knew if she went

back, she must be a slave forever—she must be dragged down to the

scenes of pollution which the slaveholders continually provide for most

of the poor, sinking, wretched young women, whom they call their

property. She formed her resolution; and just as those who were about

to take her, were going to put hands upon her, to drag her back, she

leaped over the balustrades of the bridge, and down she went to rise no

more. She chose death, rather than to go back into the hands of those

christian slaveholders from whom she had escaped.

Can it be possible that such things as these exist in the United

States? Are not these the exceptions? Are any such scenes as this

general? Are not such deeds condemned by the law and denounced by

public opinion? Let me read to you a few of the laws of the

slaveholding states of America. I think no better exposure of slavery

can be made than is made by the laws of the states in which slavery

exists. I prefer reading the laws to making any statement in

confirmation of what I have said myself; for the slaveholders cannot

object to this testimony, since it is the calm, the cool, the

deliberate enactment of their wisest heads, of their most

clear-sighted, their own constituted representatives. “If more than

seven slaves together are found in any road without a white person,

twenty lashes a piece; for visiting a plantation without a written

pass, ten lashes; for letting loose a boat from where it is made fast,

thirty-nine lashes for the first offense; and for the second, shall

have cut off from his head one ear; for keeping or carrying a club,

thirty-nine lashes; for having any article for sale, without a ticket

from his master, ten lashes; for traveling in any other than the most

usual and accustomed road, when going alone to any place, forty lashes;

for traveling in the night without a pass, forty lashes.” I am afraid

you do not understand the awful character of these lashes. You must

bring it before your mind. A human being in a perfect state of nudity,

tied hand and foot to a stake, and a strong man standing behind with a

heavy whip, knotted at the end, each blow cutting into the flesh, and

leaving the warm blood dripping to the feet; and for these trifles.

“For being found in another person’s negro-quarters, forty lashes; for

hunting with dogs in the woods, thirty lashes; for being on horseback

without the written permission of his master, twenty-five lashes; for

riding or going abroad in the night, or riding horses in the day time,

without leave, a slave may be whipped, cropped, or branded in the cheek

with the letter R. or otherwise punished, such punishment not extending

to life, or so as to render him unfit for labor.” The laws referred to,

may be found by consulting _Brevard’s Digest; Haywood’s Manual;

Virginia Revised Code; Prince’s Digest; Missouri Laws; Mississippi

Revised Code_. A man, for going to visit his brethren, without the

permission of his master—and in many instances he may not have that

permission; his master, from caprice or other reasons, may not be

willing to allow it—may be caught on his way, dragged to a post, the

branding-iron heated, and the name of his master or the letter R

branded into his cheek or on his forehead. They treat slaves thus, on

the principle that they must punish for light offenses, in order to

prevent the commission of larger ones. I wish you to mark that in the

single state of Virginia there are seventy-one crimes for which a

colored man may be executed; while there are only three of these

crimes, which, when committed by a white man, will subject him to that

punishment. There are many of these crimes which if the white man did

not commit, he would be regarded as a scoundrel and a coward. In the

state of Maryland, there is a law to this effect: that if a slave shall

strike his master, he may be hanged, his head severed from his body,

his body quartered, and his head and quarters set up in the most

prominent places in the neighborhood. If a colored woman, in the

defense of her own virtue, in defense of her own person, should shield

herself from the brutal attacks of her tyrannical master, or make the

slightest resistance, she may be killed on the spot. No law whatever

will bring the guilty man to justice for the crime.

But you will ask me, can these things be possible in a land professing

Christianity? Yes, they are so; and this is not the worst. No; a darker

feature is yet to be presented than the mere existence of these facts.

I have to inform you that the religion of the southern states, at this

time, is the great supporter, the great sanctioner of the bloody

atrocities to which I have referred. While America is printing tracts

and bibles; sending missionaries abroad to convert the heathen;

expending her money in various ways for the promotion of the gospel in

foreign lands—the slave not only lies forgotten, uncared for, but is

trampled under foot by the very churches of the land. What have we in

America? Why, we have slavery made part of the religion of the land.

Yes, the pulpit there stands up as the great defender of this cursed

_institution_, as it is called. Ministers of religion come forward and

torture the hallowed pages of inspired wisdom to sanction the bloody

deed. They stand forth as the foremost, the strongest defenders of this

“institution.” As a proof of this, I need not do more than state the

general fact, that slavery has existed under the droppings of the

sanctuary of the south for the last two hundred years, and there has

not been any war between the _religion_ and the _slavery_ of the south.

Whips, chains, gags, and thumb-screws have all lain under the droppings

of the sanctuary, and instead of rusting from off the limbs of the

bondman, those droppings have served to preserve them in all their

strength. Instead of preaching the gospel against this tyranny, rebuke,

and wrong, ministers of religion have sought, by all and every means,

to throw in the back-ground whatever in the bible could be construed

into opposition to slavery, and to bring forward that which they could

torture into its support. This I conceive to be the darkest feature of

slavery, and the most difficult to attack, because it is identified

with religion, and exposes those who denounce it to the charge of

infidelity. Yes, those with whom I have been laboring, namely, the old

organization anti-slavery society of America, have been again and again

stigmatized as infidels, and for what reason? Why, solely in

consequence of the faithfulness of their attacks upon the slaveholding

religion of the southern states, and the northern religion that

sympathizes with it. I have found it difficult to speak on this matter

without persons coming forward and saying, “Douglass, are you not

afraid of injuring the cause of Christ? You do not desire to do so, we

know; but are you not undermining religion?” This has been said to me

again and again, even since I came to this country, but I cannot be

induced to leave off these exposures. I love the religion of our

blessed Savior. I love that religion that comes from above, in the

“wisdom of God,” which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy

to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and

without hypocrisy. I love that religion that sends its votaries to bind

up the wounds of him that has fallen among thieves. I love that

religion that makes it the duty of its disciples to visit the father

less and the widow in their affliction. I love that religion that is

based upon the glorious principle, of love to God and love to man;

which makes its followers do unto others as they themselves would be

done by. If you demand liberty to yourself, it says, grant it to your

neighbors. If you claim a right to think for yourself, it says, allow

your neighbors the same right. If you claim to act for yourself, it

says, allow your neighbors the same right. It is because I love this

religion that I hate the slaveholding, the woman-whipping, the

mind-darkening, the soul-destroying religion that exists in the

southern states of America. It is because I regard the one as good, and

pure, and holy, that I cannot but regard the other as bad, corrupt, and

wicked. Loving the one I must hate the other; holding to the one I must

reject the other.

I may be asked, why I am so anxious to bring this subject before the

British public—why I do not confine my efforts to the United States? My

answer is, first, that slavery is the common enemy of mankind, and all

mankind should be made acquainted with its abominable character. My

next answer is, that the slave is a man, and, as such, is entitled to

your sympathy as a brother. All the feelings, all the susceptibilities,

all the capacities, which you have, he has. He is a part of the human

family. He has been the prey—the common prey—of Christendom for the

last three hundred years, and it is but right, it is but just, it is

but proper, that his wrongs should be known throughout the world. I

have another reason for bringing this matter before the British public,

and it is this: slavery is a system of wrong, so blinding to all

around, so hardening to the heart, so corrupting to the morals, so

deleterious to religion, so sapping to all the principles of justice in

its immediate vicinity, that the community surrounding it lack the

moral stamina necessary to its removal. It is a system of such gigantic

evil, so strong, so overwhelming in its power, that no one nation is

equal to its removal. It requires the humanity of Christianity, the

morality of the world to remove it. Hence, I call upon the people of

Britain to look at this matter, and to exert the influence I am about

to show they possess, for the removal of slavery from America. I can

appeal to them, as strongly by their regard for the slaveholder as for

the slave, to labor in this cause. I am here, because you have an

influence on America that no other nation can have. You have been drawn

together by the power of steam to a marvelous extent; the distance

between London and Boston is now reduced to some twelve or fourteen

days, so that the denunciations against slavery, uttered in London this

week, may be heard in a fortnight in the streets of Boston, and

reverberating amidst the hills of Massachusetts. There is nothing said

here against slavery that will not be recorded in the United States. I

am here, also, because the slaveholders do not want me to be here; they

would rather that I were not here. I have adopted a maxim laid down by

Napoleon, never to occupy ground which the enemy would like me to

occupy. The slaveholders would much rather have me, if I will denounce

slavery, denounce it in the northern states, where their friends and

supporters are, who will stand by and mob me for denouncing it. They

feel something as the man felt, when he uttered his prayer, in which he

made out a most horrible case for himself, and one of his neighbors

touched him and said, “My friend, I always had the opinion of you that

you have now expressed for yourself—that you are a very great sinner.”

Coming from himself, it was all very well, but coming from a stranger

it was rather cutting. The slaveholders felt that when slavery was

denounced among themselves, it was not so bad; but let one of the

slaves get loose, let him summon the people of Britain, and make known

to them the conduct of the slaveholders toward their slaves, and it

cuts them to the quick, and produces a sensation such as would be

produced by nothing else. The power I exert now is something like the

power that is exerted by the man at the end of the lever; my influence

now is just in proportion to the distance that I am from the United

States. My exposure of slavery abroad will tell more upon the hearts

and consciences of slaveholders, than if I was attacking them in

America; for almost every paper that I now receive from the United

States, comes teeming with statements about this fugitive Negro,

calling him a “glib-tongued scoundrel,” and saying that he is running

out against the institutions and people of America. I deny the charge

that I am saying a word against the institutions of America, or the

people, as such. What I have to say is against slavery and

slaveholders. I feel at liberty to speak on this subject. I have on my

back the marks of the lash; I have four sisters and one brother now

under the galling chain. I feel it my duty to cry aloud and spare not.

I am not averse to having the good opinion of my fellow creatures. I am

not averse to being kindly regarded by all men; but I am bound, even at

the hazard of making a large class of religionists in this country hate

me, oppose me, and malign me as they have done—I am bound by the

prayers, and tears, and entreaties of three millions of kneeling

bondsmen, to have no compromise with men who are in any shape or form

connected with the slaveholders of America. I expose slavery in this

country, because to expose it is to kill it. Slavery is one of those

monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death. Expose

slavery, and it dies. Light is to slavery what the heat of the sun is

to the root of a tree; it must die under it. All the slaveholder asks

of me is silence. He does not ask me to go abroad and preach _in favor_

of slavery; he does not ask any one to do that. He would not say that

slavery is a good thing, but the best under the circumstances. The

slaveholders want total darkness on the subject. They want the hatchway

shut down, that the monster may crawl in his den of darkness, crushing

human hopes and happiness, destroying the bondman at will, and having

no one to reprove or rebuke him. Slavery shrinks from the light; it

hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest its deeds should be

reproved. To tear off the mask from this abominable system, to expose

it to the light of heaven, aye, to the heat of the sun, that it may

burn and wither it out of existence, is my object in coming to this

country. I want the slaveholder surrounded, as by a wall of

anti-slavery fire, so that he may see the condemnation of himself and

his system glaring down in letters of light. I want him to feel that he

has no sympathy in England, Scotland, or Ireland; that he has none in

Canada, none in Mexico, none among the poor wild Indians; that the

voice of the civilized, aye, and savage world is against him. I would

have condemnation blaze down upon him in every direction, till, stunned

and overwhelmed with shame and confusion, he is compelled to let go the

grasp he holds upon the persons of his victims, and restore them to

their long-lost rights.

Dr. Campbell’s Reply

From Rev. Dr. Campbell’s brilliant reply we extract the following:

FREDERICK DOUGLASS, “the beast of burden,” the portion of “goods and

chattels,” the representative of three millions of men, has been raised

up! Shall I say the _man?_ If there is a man on earth, he is a man. My

blood boiled within me when I heard his address tonight, and thought

that he had left behind him three millions of such men.

We must see more of this man; we must have more of this man. One would

have taken a voyage round the globe some forty years back—especially

since the introduction of steam—to have heard such an exposure of

slavery from the lips of a slave. It will be an era in the individual

history of the present assembly. Our children—our boys and girls—I have

tonight seen the delightful sympathy of their hearts evinced by their

heaving breasts, while their eyes sparkled with wonder and admiration,

that this black man—this slave—had so much logic, so much wit, so much

fancy, so much eloquence. He was something more than a man, according

to their little notions. Then, I say, we must hear him again. We have

got a purpose to accomplish. He has appealed to the pulpit of England.

The English pulpit is with him. He has appealed to the press of

England; the press of England is conducted by English hearts, and that

press will do him justice. About ten days hence, and his second master,

who may well prize “such a piece of goods,” will have the pleasure of

reading his burning words, and his first master will bless himself that

he has got quit of him. We have to create public opinion, or rather,

not to create it, for it is created already; but we have to foster it;

and when tonight I heard those magnificent words—the words of Curran,

by which my heart, from boyhood, has ofttimes been deeply moved—I

rejoice to think that they embody an instinct of an Englishman’s

nature. I heard, with inexpressible delight, how they told on this

mighty mass of the citizens of the metropolis.

Britain has now no slaves; we can therefore talk to the other nations

now, as we could not have talked a dozen years ago. I want the whole of

the London ministry to meet Douglass. For as his appeal is to England,

and throughout England, I should rejoice in the idea of churchmen and

dissenters merging all sectional distinctions in this cause. Let us

have a public breakfast. Let the ministers meet him; let them hear him;

let them grasp his hand; and let him enlist their sympathies on behalf

of the slave. Let him inspire them with abhorrence of the

man-stealer—the slaveholder. No slaveholding American shall ever my

cross my door. No slaveholding or slavery-supporting minister shall

ever pollute my pulpit. While I have a tongue to speak, or a hand to

write, I will, to the utmost of my power, oppose these slaveholding

men. We must have Douglass amongst us to aid in fostering public

opinion.

The great conflict with slavery must now take place in America; and

while they are adding other slave states to the Union, our business is

to step forward and help the abolitionists there. It is a pleasing

circumstance that such a body of men has risen in America, and whilst

we hurl our thunders against her slavers, let us make a distinction

between those who advocate slavery and those who oppose it. George

Thompson has been there. This man, Frederick Douglass, has been there,

and has been compelled to flee. I wish, when he first set foot on our

shores, he had made a solemn vow, and said, “Now that I am free, and in

the sanctuary of freedom, I will never return till I have seen the

emancipation of my country completed.” He wants to surround these men,

the slaveholders, as by a wall of fire; and he himself may do much

toward kindling it. Let him travel over the island—east, west, north,

and south—everywhere diffusing knowledge and awakening principle, till

the whole nation become a body of petitioners to America. He will, he

must, do it. He must for a season make England his home. He must send

for his wife. He must send for his children. I want to see the sons and

daughters of such a sire. We, too, must do something for him and them

worthy of the English name. I do not like the idea of a man of such

mental dimensions, such moral courage, and all but incomparable talent,

having his own small wants, and the wants of a distant wife and

children, supplied by the poor profits of his publication, the sketch

of his life. Let the pamphlet be bought by tens of thousands. But we

will do something more for him, shall we not?

It only remains that we pass a resolution of thanks to Frederick

Douglass, the slave that was, the man that is! He that was covered with

chains, and that is now being covered with glory, and whom we will send

back a gentleman.

LETTER TO HIS OLD MASTER. 11. To My Old Master, Thomas Auld

SIR—The long and intimate, though by no means friendly, relation which

unhappily subsisted between you and myself, leads me to hope that you

will easily account for the great liberty which I now take in

addressing you in this open and public manner. The same fact may remove

any disagreeable surprise which you may experience on again finding

your name coupled with mine, in any other way than in an advertisement,

accurately describing my person, and offering a large sum for my

arrest. In thus dragging you again before the public, I am aware that I

shall subject myself to no inconsiderable amount of censure. I shall

probably be charged with an unwarrantable, if not a wanton and reckless

disregard of the rights and properties of private life. There are those

north as well as south who entertain a much higher respect for rights

which are merely conventional, than they do for rights which are

personal and essential. Not a few there are in our country, who, while

they have no scruples against robbing the laborer of the hard earned

results of his patient industry, will be shocked by the extremely

indelicate manner of bringing your name before the public. Believing

this to be the case, and wishing to meet every reasonable or plausible

objection to my conduct, I will frankly state the ground upon which I

justfy(sic) myself in this instance, as well as on former occasions

when I have thought proper to mention your name in public. All will

agree that a man guilty of theft, robbery, or murder, has forfeited the

right to concealment and private life; that the community have a right

to subject such persons to the most complete exposure. However much

they may desire retirement, and aim to conceal themselves and their

movements from the popular gaze, the public have a right to ferret them

out, and bring their conduct before the proper tribunals of the country

for investigation. Sir, you will undoubtedly make the proper

application of these generally admitted principles, and will easily see

the light in which you are regarded by me; I will not therefore

manifest ill temper, by calling you hard names. I know you to be a man

of some intelligence, and can readily determine the precise estimate

which I entertain of your character. I may therefore indulge in

language which may seem to others indirect and ambiguous, and yet be

quite well understood by yourself.

I have selected this day on which to address you, because it is the

anniversary of my emancipation; and knowing no better way, I am led to

this as the best mode of celebrating that truly important events. Just

ten years ago this beautiful September morning, yon bright sun beheld

me a slave—a poor degraded chattel—trembling at the sound of your

voice, lamenting that I was a man, and wishing myself a brute. The

hopes which I had treasured up for weeks of a safe and successful

escape from your grasp, were powerfully confronted at this last hour by

dark clouds of doubt and fear, making my person shake and my bosom to

heave with the heavy contest between hope and fear. I have no words to

describe to you the deep agony of soul which I experienced on that

never-to-be-forgotten morning—for I left by daylight. I was making a

leap in the dark. The probabilities, so far as I could by reason

determine them, were stoutly against the undertaking. The preliminaries

and precautions I had adopted previously, all worked badly. I was like

one going to war without weapons—ten chances of defeat to one of

victory. One in whom I had confided, and one who had promised me

assistance, appalled by fear at the trial hour, deserted me, thus

leaving the responsibility of success or failure solely with myself.

You, sir, can never know my feelings. As I look back to them, I can

scarcely realize that I have passed through a scene so trying. Trying,

however, as they were, and gloomy as was the prospect, thanks be to the

Most High, who is ever the God of the oppressed, at the moment which

was to determine my whole earthly career, His grace was sufficient; my

mind was made up. I embraced the golden opportunity, took the morning

tide at the flood, and a free man, young, active, and strong, is the

result.

I have often thought I should like to explain to you the grounds upon

which I have justified myself in running away from you. I am almost

ashamed to do so now, for by this time you may have discovered them

yourself. I will, however, glance at them. When yet but a child about

six years old, I imbibed the determination to run away. The very first

mental effort that I now remember on my part, was an attempt to solve

the mystery—why am I a slave? and with this question my youthful mind

was troubled for many days, pressing upon me more heavily at times than

others. When I saw the slave-driver whip a slave-woman, cut the blood

out of her neck, and heard her piteous cries, I went away into the

corner of the fence, wept and pondered over the mystery. I had, through

some medium, I know not what, got some idea of God, the Creator of all

mankind, the black and the white, and that he had made the blacks to

serve the whites as slaves. How he could do this and be _good_, I could

not tell. I was not satisfied with this theory, which made God

responsible for slavery, for it pained me greatly, and I have wept over

it long and often. At one time, your first wife, Mrs. Lucretia, heard

me sighing and saw me shedding tears, and asked of me the matter, but I

was afraid to tell her. I was puzzled with this question, till one

night while sitting in the kitchen, I heard some of the old slaves

talking of their parents having been stolen from Africa by white men,

and were sold here as slaves. The whole mystery was solved at once.

Very soon after this, my Aunt Jinny and Uncle Noah ran away, and the

great noise made about it by your father-in-law, made me for the first

time acquainted with the fact, that there were free states as well as

slave states. From that time, I resolved that I would some day run

away. The morality of the act I dispose of as follows: I am myself; you

are yourself; we are two distinct persons, equal persons. What you are,

I am. You are a man, and so am I. God created both, and made us

separate beings. I am not by nature bond to you, or you to me. Nature

does not make your existence depend upon me, or mine to depend upon

yours. I cannot walk upon your legs, or you upon mine. I cannot breathe

for you, or you for me; I must breathe for myself, and you for

yourself. We are distinct persons, and are each equally provided with

faculties necessary to our individual existence. In leaving you, I took

nothing but what belonged to me, and in no way lessened your means for

obtaining an _honest_ living. Your faculties remained yours, and mine

became useful to their rightful owner. I therefore see no wrong in any

part of the transaction. It is true, I went off secretly; but that was

more your fault than mine. Had I let you into the secret, you would

have defeated the enterprise entirely; but for this, I should have been

really glad to have made you acquainted with my intentions to leave.

You may perhaps want to know how I like my present condition. I am free

to say, I greatly prefer it to that which I occupied in Maryland. I am,

however, by no means prejudiced against the state as such. Its

geography, climate, fertility, and products, are such as to make it a

very desirable abode for any man; and but for the existence of slavery

there, it is not impossible that I might again take up my abode in that

state. It is not that I love Maryland less, but freedom more. You will

be surprised to learn that people at the north labor under the strange

delusion that if the slaves were emancipated at the south, they would

flock to the north. So far from this being the case, in that event, you

would see many old and familiar faces back again to the south. The fact

is, there are few here who would not return to the south in the event

of emancipation. We want to live in the land of our birth, and to lay

our bones by the side of our fathers; and nothing short of an intense

love of personal freedom keeps us from the south. For the sake of this,

most of us would live on a crust of bread and a cup of cold water.

Since I left you, I have had a rich experience. I have occupied

stations which I never dreamed of when a slave. Three out of the ten

years since I left you, I spent as a common laborer on the wharves of

New Bedford, Massachusetts. It was there I earned my first free dollar.

It was mine. I could spend it as I pleased. I could buy hams or herring

with it, without asking any odds of anybody. That was a precious dollar

to me. You remember when I used to make seven, or eight, or even nine

dollars a week in Baltimore, you would take every cent of it from me

every Saturday night, saying that I belonged to you, and my earnings

also. I never liked this conduct on your part—to say the best, I

thought it a little mean. I would not have served you so. But let that

pass. I was a little awkward about counting money in New England

fashion when I first landed in New Bedford. I came near betraying

myself several times. I caught myself saying phip, for fourpence; and

at one time a man actually charged me with being a runaway, whereupon I

was silly enough to become one by running away from him, for I was

greatly afraid he might adopt measures to get me again into slavery, a

condition I then dreaded more than death.

I soon learned, however, to count money, as well as to make it, and got

on swimmingly. I married soon after leaving you; in fact, I was engaged

to be married before I left you; and instead of finding my companion a

burden, she was truly a helpmate. She went to live at service, and I to

work on the wharf, and though we toiled hard the first winter, we never

lived more happily. After remaining in New Bedford for three years, I

met with William Lloyd Garrison, a person of whom you have _possibly_

heard, as he is pretty generally known among slaveholders. He put it

into my head that I might make myself serviceable to the cause of the

slave, by devoting a portion of my time to telling my own sorrows, and

those of other slaves, which had come under my observation. This was

the commencement of a higher state of existence than any to which I had

ever aspired. I was thrown into society the most pure, enlightened, and

benevolent, that the country affords. Among these I have never

forgotten you, but have invariably made you the topic of

conversation—thus giving you all the notoriety I could do. I need not

tell you that the opinion formed of you in these circles is far from

being favorable. They have little respect for your honesty, and less

for your religion.

But I was going on to relate to you something of my interesting

experience. I had not long enjoyed the excellent society to which I

have referred, before the light of its excellence exerted a beneficial

influence on my mind and heart. Much of my early dislike of white

persons was removed, and their manners, habits, and customs, so

entirely unlike what I had been used to in the kitchen-quarters on the

plantations of the south, fairly charmed me, and gave me a strong

disrelish for the coarse and degrading customs of my former condition.

I therefore made an effort so to improve my mind and deportment, as to

be somewhat fitted to the station to which I seemed almost

providentially called. The transition from degradation to

respectability was indeed great, and to get from one to the other

without carrying some marks of one’s former condition, is truly a

difficult matter. I would not have you think that I am now entirely

clear of all plantation peculiarities, but my friends here, while they

entertain the strongest dislike to them, regard me with that charity to

which my past life somewhat entitles me, so that my condition in this

respect is exceedingly pleasant. So far as my domestic affairs are

concerned, I can boast of as comfortable a dwelling as your own. I have

an industrious and neat companion, and four dear children—the oldest a

girl of nine years, and three fine boys, the oldest eight, the next

six, and the youngest four years old. The three oldest are now going

regularly to school—two can read and write, and the other can spell,

with tolerable correctness, words of two syllables. Dear fellows! they

are all in comfortable beds, and are sound asleep, perfectly secure

under my own roof. There are no slaveholders here to rend my heart by

snatching them from my arms, or blast a mother’s dearest hopes by

tearing them from her bosom. These dear children are ours—not to work

up into rice, sugar, and tobacco, but to watch over, regard, and

protect, and to rear them up in the nurture and admonition of the

gospel—to train them up in the paths of wisdom and virtue, and, as far

as we can, to make them useful to the world and to themselves. Oh! sir,

a slaveholder never appears to me so completely an agent of hell, as

when I think of and look upon my dear children. It is then that my

feelings rise above my control. I meant to have said more with respect

to my own prosperity and happiness, but thoughts and feelings which

this recital has quickened, unfit me to proceed further in that

direction. The grim horrors of slavery rise in all their ghastly terror

before me; the wails of millions pierce my heart and chill my blood. I

remember the chain, the gag, the bloody whip; the death-like gloom

overshadowing the broken spirit of the fettered bondman; the appalling

liability of his being torn away from wife and children, and sold like

a beast in the market. Say not that this is a picture of fancy. You

well know that I wear stripes on my back, inflicted by your direction;

and that you, while we were brothers in the same church, caused this

right hand, with which I am now penning this letter, to be closely tied

to my left, and my person dragged, at the pistol’s mouth, fifteen

miles, from the Bay Side to Easton, to be sold like a beast in the

market, for the alleged crime of intending to escape from your

possession. All this, and more, you remember, and know to be perfectly

true, not only of yourself, but of nearly all of the slaveholders

around you.

At this moment, you are probably the guilty holder of at least three of

my own dear sisters, and my only brother, in bondage. These you regard

as your property. They are recorded on your ledger, or perhaps have

been sold to human flesh-mongers, with a view to filling our own

ever-hungry purse. Sir, I desire to know how and where these dear

sisters are. Have you sold them? or are they still in your possession?

What has become of them? are they living or dead? And my dear old

grandmother, whom you turned out like an old horse to die in the

woods—is she still alive? Write and let me know all about them. If my

grandmother be still alive, she is of no service to you, for by this

time she must be nearly eighty years old—too old to be cared for by one

to whom she has ceased to be of service; send her to me at Rochester,

or bring her to Philadelphia, and it shall be the crowning happiness of

my life to take care of her in her old age. Oh! she was to me a mother

and a father, so far as hard toil for my comfort could make her such.

Send me my grandmother! that I may watch over and take care of her in

her old age. And my sisters—let me know all about them. I would write

to them, and learn all I want to know of them, without disturbing you

in any way, but that, through your unrighteous conduct, they have been

entirely deprived of the power to read and write. You have kept them in

utter ignorance, and have therefore robbed them of the sweet enjoyments

of writing or receiving letters from absent friends and relatives. Your

wickedness and cruelty, committed in this respect on your

fellow-creatures, are greater than all the stripes you have laid upon

my back or theirs. It is an outrage upon the soul, a war upon the

immortal spirit, and one for which you must give account at the bar of

our common Father and Creator.

The responsibility which you have assumed in this regard is truly

awful, and how you could stagger under it these many years is

marvelous. Your mind must have become darkened, your heart hardened,

your conscience seared and petrified, or you would have long since

thrown off the accursed load, and sought relief at the hands of a

sin-forgiving God. How, let me ask, would you look upon me, were I,

some dark night, in company with a band of hardened villains, to enter

the precincts of your elegant dwelling, and seize the person of your

own lovely daughter, Amanda, and carry her off from your family,

friends, and all the loved ones of her youth—make her my slave—compel

her to work, and I take her wages—place her name on my ledger as

property—disregard her personal rights—fetter the powers of her

immortal soul by denying her the right and privilege of learning to

read and write—feed her coarsely—clothe her scantily, and whip her on

the naked back occasionally; more, and still more horrible, leave her

unprotected—a degraded victim to the brutal lust of fiendish overseers,

who would pollute, blight, and blast her fair soul—rob her of all

dignity—destroy her virtue, and annihilate in her person all the graces

that adorn the character of virtuous womanhood? I ask, how would you

regard me, if such were my conduct? Oh! the vocabulary of the damned

would not afford a word sufficiently infernal to express your idea of

my God-provoking wickedness. Yet, sir, your treatment of my beloved

sisters is in all essential points precisely like the case I have now

supposed. Damning as would be such a deed on my part, it would be no

more so than that which you have committed against me and my sisters.

I will now bring this letter to a close; you shall hear from me again

unless you let me hear from you. I intend to make use of you as a

weapon with which to assail the system of slavery—as a means of

concentrating public attention on the system, and deepening the horror

of trafficking in the souls and bodies of men. I shall make use of you

as a means of exposing the character of the American church and

clergy—and as a means of bringing this guilty nation, with yourself, to

repentance. In doing this, I entertain no malice toward you personally.

There is no roof under which you would be more safe than mine, and

there is nothing in my house which you might need for your comfort,

which I would not readily grant. Indeed, I should esteem it a privilege

to set you an example as to how mankind ought to treat each other.

I am your fellow-man, but not your slave.

THE NATURE OF SLAVERY. Extract from a Lecture on Slavery, at Rochester,

December 1, 1850

More than twenty years of my life were consumed in a state of slavery.

My childhood was environed by the baneful peculiarities of the slave

system. I grew up to manhood in the presence of this hydra headed

monster—not as a master—not as an idle spectator—not as the guest of

the slaveholder—but as A SLAVE, eating the bread and drinking the cup

of slavery with the most degraded of my brother-bondmen, and sharing

with them all the painful conditions of their wretched lot. In

consideration of these facts, I feel that I have a right to speak, and

to speak _strongly_. Yet, my friends, I feel bound to speak truly.

Goading as have been the cruelties to which I have been

subjected—bitter as have been the trials through which I have

passed—exasperating as have been, and still are, the indignities

offered to my manhood—I find in them no excuse for the slightest

departure from truth in dealing with any branch of this subject.

First of all, I will state, as well as I can, the legal and social

relation of master and slave. A master is one—to speak in the

vocabulary of the southern states—who claims and exercises a right of

property in the person of a fellow-man. This he does with the force of

the law and the sanction of southern religion. The law gives the master

absolute power over the slave. He may work him, flog him, hire him out,

sell him, and, in certain contingencies, _kill_ him, with perfect

impunity. The slave is a human being, divested of all rights—reduced to

the level of a brute—a mere “chattel” in the eye of the law—placed

beyond the circle of human brotherhood—cut off from his kind—his name,

which the “recording angel” may have enrolled in heaven, among the

blest, is impiously inserted in a _master’s ledger_, with horses,

sheep, and swine. In law, the slave has no wife, no children, no

country, and no home. He can own nothing, possess nothing, acquire

nothing, but what must belong to another. To eat the fruit of his own

toil, to clothe his person with the work of his own hands, is

considered stealing. He toils that another may reap the fruit; he is

industrious that another may live in idleness; he eats unbolted meal

that another may eat the bread of fine flour; he labors in chains at

home, under a burning sun and biting lash, that another may ride in

ease and splendor abroad; he lives in ignorance that another may be

educated; he is abused that another may be exalted; he rests his

toil-worn limbs on the cold, damp ground that another may repose on the

softest pillow; he is clad in coarse and tattered raiment that another

may be arrayed in purple and fine linen; he is sheltered only by the

wretched hovel that a master may dwell in a magnificent mansion; and to

this condition he is bound down as by an arm of iron.

From this monstrous relation there springs an unceasing stream of most

revolting cruelties. The very accompaniments of the slave system stamp

it as the offspring of hell itself. To ensure good behavior, the

slaveholder relies on the whip; to induce proper humility, he relies on

the whip; to rebuke what he is pleased to term insolence, he relies on

the whip; to supply the place of wages as an incentive to toil, he

relies on the whip; to bind down the spirit of the slave, to imbrute

and destroy his manhood, he relies on the whip, the chain, the gag, the

thumb-screw, the pillory, the bowie knife the pistol, and the

blood-hound. These are the necessary and unvarying accompaniments of

the system. Wherever slavery is found, these horrid instruments are

also found. Whether on the coast of Africa, among the savage tribes, or

in South Carolina, among the refined and civilized, slavery is the

same, and its accompaniments one and the same. It makes no difference

whether the slaveholder worships the God of the Christians, or is a

follower of Mahomet, he is the minister of the same cruelty, and the

author of the same misery. _Slavery_ is always _slavery;_ always the

same foul, haggard, and damning scourge, whether found in the eastern

or in the western hemisphere.

There is a still deeper shade to be given to this picture. The physical

cruelties are indeed sufficiently harassing and revolting; but they are

as a few grains of sand on the sea shore, or a few drops of water in

the great ocean, compared with the stupendous wrongs which it inflicts

upon the mental, moral, and religious nature of its hapless victims. It

is only when we contemplate the slave as a moral and intellectual

being, that we can adequately comprehend the unparalleled enormity of

slavery, and the intense criminality of the slaveholder. I have said

that the slave was a man. “What a piece of work is man! How noble in

reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving how express and

admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a God!

The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!”

The slave is a man, “the image of God,” but “a little lower than the

angels;” possessing a soul, eternal and indestructible; capable of

endless happiness, or immeasurable woe; a creature of hopes and fears,

of affections and passions, of joys and sorrows, and he is endowed with

those mysterious powers by which man soars above the things of time and

sense, and grasps, with undying tenacity, the elevating and sublimely

glorious idea of a God. It is _such_ a being that is smitten and

blasted. The first work of slavery is to mar and deface those

characteristics of its victims which distinguish _men_ from _things_,

and _persons_ from _property_. Its first aim is to destroy all sense of

high moral and religious responsibility. It reduces man to a mere

machine. It cuts him off from his Maker, it hides from him the laws of

God, and leaves him to grope his way from time to eternity in the dark,

under the arbitrary and despotic control of a frail, depraved, and

sinful fellow-man. As the serpent-charmer of India is compelled to

extract the deadly teeth of his venomous prey before he is able to

handle him with impunity, so the slaveholder must strike down the

conscience of the slave before he can obtain the entire mastery over

his victim.

It is, then, the first business of the enslaver of men to blunt,

deaden, and destroy the central principle of human responsibility.

Conscience is, to the individual soul, and to society, what the law of

gravitation is to the universe. It holds society together; it is the

basis of all trust and confidence; it is the pillar of all moral

rectitude. Without it, suspicion would take the place of trust; vice

would be more than a match for virtue; men would prey upon each other,

like the wild beasts of the desert; and earth would become a _hell_.

Nor is slavery more adverse to the conscience than it is to the mind.

This is shown by the fact, that in every state of the American Union,

where slavery exists, except the state of Kentucky, there are laws

absolutely prohibitory of education among the slaves. The crime of

teaching a slave to read is punishable with severe fines and

imprisonment, and, in some instances, with _death itself_.

Nor are the laws respecting this matter a dead letter. Cases may occur

in which they are disregarded, and a few instances may be found where

slaves may have learned to read; but such are isolated cases, and only

prove the rule. The great mass of slaveholders look upon education

among the slaves as utterly subversive of the slave system. I well

remember when my mistress first announced to my master that she had

discovered that I could read. His face colored at once with surprise

and chagrin. He said that “I was ruined, and my value as a slave

destroyed; that a slave should know nothing but to obey his master;

that to give a negro an inch would lead him to take an ell; that having

learned how to read, I would soon want to know how to write; and that

by-and-by I would be running away.” I think my audience will bear

witness to the correctness of this philosophy, and to the literal

fulfillment of this prophecy.