You say again you have never seen a slave, however careless and merryhearted,
who had not this sore place, and that did not shrink or get angry if a finger was
laid on it. I see that you have been a close observer of negro nature.
So far as I understand your idea, I think you are perfectly correct in the
impression you have received, as explained in your note.
O Mrs. Stowe, slavery is an awful system! It takes man as God made him;
it demolishes him, and then mis-creates him, or perhaps I should say mal-creates
him!
Wishing you good health and good success in your arduous work,
I am yours, respectfully,
J. W. C. Pennington.
Mrs. H. B. Stowe.
People of intelligence, who have had the care of slaves, have
often made this remark to the writer: “They are a singular,
whimsical people; you can do a great deal more with them by
humouring some of their prejudices than by bestowing on them
the most substantial favours.” On inquiring what these pre-
judices were, the reply would be, “They like to have their
weddings elegantly celebrated, and to have a good deal of notice
taken of their funerals, and to give and go to parties dressed
and appearing like white people; and they will often put up
with material inconveniences, and suffer themselves to be
worked very hard, if they are humoured in these respects.”
Can anyone think of this without compassion? Poor souls!
willing to bear with so much for simply this slight acknowledg-
ment of their common humanity. To honour their weddings
and funerals is, in some sort, acknowledging that they are
human, and therefore they prize it. Hence we see the reason
of the passionate attachment which often exists in a faithful
slave to a good master; it is, in fact, a transfer of his identity
to his master. A stern law, and an unchristian public senti-
ment, has taken away his birthright of humanity, erased his
name from the catalogue of men, and made him an anomalous
creature--neither man nor brute. When a kind master recog-
nises his humanity, and treats him as a humble companion and
a friend, there is no end to the devotion and gratitude which he
thus excites. He is to the slave a deliverer and a saviour from
the curse which lies on his hapless race. Deprived of all legal
rights and privileges, all opportunity or hope of personal
advancement or honour, he transfers, as it were, his whole
existence into his master's, and appropriates his rights, his
position, his honour, as his own; and thus enjoys a kind of
reflected sense of what it might be to be a man himself.
Hence it is that the appeal to the more generous part of the
negro character is seldom made in vain.
An acquaintance of the writer was married to a gentleman in
Louisiana, who was the proprietor of some eight hundred slaves.
He, of course, had a large train of servants in his domestic
establishment. When about to enter upon her duties, she was
warned that the servants were all so thievish that she would be
under the necessity, in common with all other housekeepers, of
keeping everything under lock and key. She, however, an-
nounced her intention of training her servants in such a manner
as to make this unnecessary. Her ideas were ridiculed as
chimerical, but she resolved to carry them into practice. The
course she pursued was as follows:--She called all the family
servants together; told them that it would be a great burden
and restraint upon her to be obliged to keep everything locked
from them; that she had heard that they were not at all to be
trusted, but that she could not help hoping that they were much
better than they had been represented. She told them that she
should provide abundantly for all their wants, and then that she
should leave her stores unlocked, and trust to their honour.
The idea that they were supposed capable of having any
honour struck a new chord at once in every heart. The servants
appeared most grateful for the trust, and there was much public
spirit excited, the older and graver ones exerting themselves to
watch over the children, that nothing might be done to destroy
this new-found treasure of honour.
At last, however, the lady discovered that some depredations
had been made on her cake by some of the juvenile part of the
establishment; she, therefore, convened all the servants, and
stated the fact to them. She remarked that it was not on account
of the value of the cake that she felt annoyed, but that they
must be sensible that it would not be pleasant for her to have it
indiscriminately fingered and handled, and that, therefore, she
should set some cake out upon a table, or some convenient place,
and beg that all those who were disposed to take it would go
there and help themselves, and allow the rest to remain undis-
turbed in the closet. She states that the cake stood upon the
table and dried, without a morsel of it being touched, and that
she never afterwards had any trouble in this respect.
A little time after, a new carriage was bought, and one night
the leather boot of it was found to be missing. Before her
husband had time to take any steps on the subject, the servants
of the family had called a convention among themselves, and
instituted an inquiry into the offence. The boot was found and
promptly restored, though they would not reveal to their master
and mistress the name of the offender.
One other anecdote which this lady related illustrates that
peculiar devotion of a slave to a good master, to which allusion
has been made. Her husband met with his death by a sudden
and melancholy accident. He had a personal attendant and
confidential servant who had grown up with him from childhood.
This servant was so overwhelmed with grief as to be almost
stupified. On the day of the funeral a brother of his deceased
master inquired of him if he had performed a certain commission
for his mistress. The servant said that he had forgotten it.
Not perceiving his feelings at the moment, the gentleman replied,
“I am surprised that you should neglect any command of your
mistress, when she is in such affliction.”
This remark was the last drop in the full cup. The poor
fellow fell to the ground entirely insensible, and the family were
obliged to spend nearly two hours employing various means to
restore his vitality. The physician accounted for his situation
by saying that there had been such a rush of all the blood in
the body towards the heart, that there was actual danger of a
rupture of that organ--a literal death by a broken heart.
Some thoughts may be suggested by Miss Ophelia's con-
scientious but unsuccessful efforts in the education of Topsy.
Society has yet need of a great deal of enlightening as to the
means of restoring the vicious and degraded to virtue.
It has been erroneously supposed that with brutal and de-
graded natures only coarse and brutal measures could avail;
/> and yet it has been found, by those who have most experience,
that their success with this class of society has been just in
proportion to the delicacy and kindliness with which they have
treated them.
Lord Shaftesbury, who has won so honourable a fame by his
benevolent interest in the efforts made for the degraded lower
classes of his own land, says, in a recent letter to the author:--
You are right about Topsy; our ragged schools will afford you many instances
of poor children, hardened by kicks, insults and neglect, moved to tears and
docility by the first word of kindness. It opens new feelings, developes, as it were
a new nature, and brings the wretched outcast into the family of man.
Recent efforts which have been made among unfortunate
females in some of the worst districts of New York show the
same thing. What is it that rankles deepest in the breast of
fallen woman, that makes her so hopeless and irreclaimable?
It is that burning consciousness of degradation which stings
worse than cold or hunger, and makes her shrink from the face
of the missionary and the philanthropist. They who have
visited these haunts of despair and wretchedness have learned
that they must touch gently the shattered harp of the human
soul, if they would string it again to divine music; that they
must encourage self-respect, and hope, and sense of character,
or the bonds of death can never be broken.
Let us examine the gospel of Christ, and see on what prin-
ciples its appeals are constructed. Of what nature are those
motives which have melted our hearts and renewed our wills?
Are they not appeals to the most generous and noble instincts
of our nature? Are we not told of One fairer than the sons of
men--One reigning in immortal glory, who loved us so that he
could bear pain, and want, and shame, and death itself, for our
sake?
When Christ speaks to the soul, does he crush one of its
nobler faculties? Does he taunt us with our degradation, our
selfishness, our narrowness of view, and feebleness of intellect,
compared with his own? Is it not true that he not only
saves us from our sins, but saves us in a way most considerate,
most tender, most regardful of our feelings and sufferings?
Does not the Bible tell us that, in order to fulfil his office of
Redeemer the more perfectly, he took upon him the condition of
humanity, and endured the pains, and wants, and temptations
of a mortal existence, that he might be to us a sympathising,
appreciating friend, “touched with the feelings of our infirmi-
ties,” and cheering us gently on in the hard path of returning
virtue?
Oh, when shall we, who have received so much of Jesus Christ,
learn to repay it in acts of kindness to our poor brethren?
When shall we be Christ-like, and not man-like, in our efforts to
reclaim the fallen and wandering?
CHAPTER XIII.
THE QUAKERS.
The writer's sketch of the character of this people has been
drawn from personal observation. There are several settlements
of these people in Ohio; and the manner of living, the tone of
sentiment, and the habits of life, as represented in her book, are
not at all exaggerated.
These settlements have always been refuges for the oppressed
and outlawed slave. The character of Rachel Halliday was a
real one, but she has passed away to her reward. Simeon
Halliday, calmly risking fine and imprisonment for his love to
God and man, has had in this country many counterparts among
the sect.
The writer had in mind, at the time of writing, the scenes in
the trial of John Garret, of Wilmington, Delaware, for the crime
of hiring a hack to convey a mother and four children from
Newcastle jail to Wilmington, a distance of five miles.
The writer has received the facts in this case, in a letter from
John Garret himself, from which some extracts will be made.
Wilmington, Delaware,, 1st month 18th, 1853.
My Dear Friend, Harriet Beecher Stowe,--I have this day received a
request from Charles K. Whipple, of Boston, to furnish thee with a statement,
authentic and circumstantial, of the trouble and losses which have been brought
upon myself and others of my friends from the aid we had rendered to fugitive
slaves, in order, if thought of sufficient importance, to be published in a work thee
is now preparing for the press.
I will now endeavour to give thee a statement of what John Hunn and myself
suffered by aiding a family of slaves, a few years since. I will give the facts as
they occurred, and thee may condense and publish so much as thee may think
useful in thy work, and no more.
In the 12th month, year 1846, a family, consisting of Samuel Hawkins, a free-
man, his wife Emeline, and six children, who were afterwards proved slaves, stopped
at the house of a friend named John Hunn, near Middletown, in this State, in the
evening about sunset, to procure food and lodging for the night. They were seen
by some of Hunn's pro-slavery neighbours, who soon came with a constable, and
had them taken before a magistrate. Hunn had left the slaves in his kitchen when
he went to the village of Middletown, half a mile distant. When the officer came
with a warrant for them, he met Hunn at the kitchen-door, and asked for the
blacks. Hunn, with truth, said he did not know where they were. Hunn's wife,
thinking they would be safer, had sent them up stairs during his absence, where
they were found. Hunn made no resistance, and they were taken before the
magistrate, and from his office direct to Newcastle jail, where they arrived about
one o'clock on 7th day morning.
The sheriff and his daughter, being kind, humane people, inquired of Hawkins
and wife the facts of their case; and his daughter wrote to a lady here, to request
me to go to Newcastle and inquire into the case, as her father and self really
believed they were most of them, if not all, entitled to their freedom. Next morn-
ing I went to Newcastle; had the family of coloured people brought into the
parlour, and the sheriff and myself came to the conclusion that the parents
and four youngest children were by law entitled to their freedom. I prevailed
on the sheriff to show me the commitment of the magistrate, which I found was
defective, and not in due form according to law. I procured a copy, and handed it
to a lawyer. He pronounced the commitment irregular, and agreed to go next
morning to Newcastle, and have the whole family taken before Judge Booth, Chief
Justice of the State, by habeas corpus, when the following admission was made by
Samuel Hawkins and wife: they admitted that the two eldest boys were held by
one Charles Glaudin, of Queen Anne County, Maryland, as slaves; that after the
birth of these two children, Elizabeth Turner, also of Queen Anne, the mistress of
their mother, had set her free, and permitted her to go and live with her husband,
near twenty miles from her residence, after which the four youngest children were
born; that her mistress during all that time, eleven or twelve years, had
never
contributed one dollar to their support, or come to see them. After examining
the commitment in their case, and consulting with my attorney, the judge set the
whole family at liberty. The day was wet and cold; one of the children, three
years old, was a cripple from white swelling, and could not walk a step; another,
eleven months old, at the breast; and the parents being desirous of getting to
Wilmington, five miles distant, I asked the judge if there would be any risk or
impropriety in my hiring a conveyance for the mother and four young children
to Wilmington. His reply, in the presence of the sheriff and my attorney, was,
there would not be any. I then requested the sheriff to procure a hack to take
them over to Wilmington.
The whole family escaped. John Hunn and John Garret were
brought up to trial for having practically fulfilled those words of
Christ, which read, “I was a stranger and ye took me in, I was
sick and in prison and ye came unto me.” For John Hunn's
part of this crime he was fined two thousand five hundred dollars,
and John Garret was fined five thousand four hundred. Three
thousand five hundred of this was the fine for hiring a hack for
them, and one thousand nine hundred was assessed on him as
the value of the slaves! Our European friends will infer from
this that it costs something to obey Christ in America, as well
as in Europe.
After John Garret's trial was over, and this heavy judgment
had been given against him, he calmly rose in the court-room,
and requested leave to address a few words to the court and
audience.
Leave being granted, he spoke as follows:--
I have a few words which I wish to address to the court, jury, and prosecutors,
in the several suits that have been brought against me during the sittings of this
court, in order to determine the amount of penalty I must pay for doing what my
feelings prompted me to do as a lawful and meritorious act; a simple act of
humanity and justice, as I believed, to eight of that oppressed race, the people of
colour, whom I found in the Newcastle jail, in the 12th month, 1845. I will now
endeavour to state the facts of those cases, for your consideration and reflection
after you return home to your families and friends. You will then have time to
ponder on what has transpired here since the sitting of this court, and I believe
The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin Page 17
