The idea as to how I might learn to write was suggested to me by being in Durgin and Bailey’s ship-yard, and frequently seeing the ship-carpenters, after hewing and getting a piece of timber ready for use, write on the timber the name of that part of the ship for which it was intended. When a piece of timber was intended for the larboard-side it would be marked thus—”L.” When a piece for the starboard-side it would be marked thus—”S.” A piece for the larboard-side forward would be marked thus—”L. F.” When a piece was for starboard-side forward it would be marked thus—”S. F.” For larboard-aft it would be marked thus—”L. A.” For starboard-aft it would be marked thus—”S. A.” I soon learned the names of these letters, and for what they were intended when placed upon a piece of timber in the ship-yard. I immediately commenced copying them, and in a short time was able to make the four letters named. After that, when I met with any boy who I knew could write, I would tell him I could write as well as he. The next word would be, “I don’t believe you. Let me see you try it.” I would then make the letters which I had been so fortunate as to learn, and ask him to beat that. In this way I got a good many lessons in writing, which it was quite possible I should never have gotten in any other way. During this time my copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and pavement; my pen and ink was a lump of chalk. With this I learned mainly how to write. I then commenced and continued copying the Italics in Webster’s Spelling-Book, until I could make them all without looking on the book. By this time my little master Thomas had gone to school and learned how to write, and had written over a number of copy-books. These had been brought home, and shown to some of our neighbours, and then laid aside. My mistress used to go to class-meeting at the Wilk-street meeting-house every Monday afternoon, and leave me to take care of the house. When left thus I used to spend the time in writing in the spaces left in Master Thomas’s copying-book, copying what he had written. I continued to do this until I could write a hand very similar to that of Master Thomas. Thus, after a long, tedious effort for years, I finally succeeded in learning how to write.
These few quoted incidents will show that the case of George Harris is by no means so uncommon as might be supposed.
Let the reader peruse the account which George Harris gives of the sale of his mother and her children, and then read the following account given by the venerable Josiah Henson, now pastor of the missionary settlement at Dawn, in Canada.
After the death of his master, he says, the slaves of the plantation were all put up at auction, and sold to the highest bidder.
My brothers and sisters were bid off one by one, while my mother, holding my hand, looked on in an agony of grief, the cause of which I but ill understood at first, but which dawned on my mind with dreadful clearness as the sale proceeded. My mother was then separated from me and put up in her turn. She was bought by a man named Isaac R., residing in Montgomery County [Maryland], and then I was offered to the assembled purchasers. My mother, half distracted with the parting for ever from all her children, pushed through the crowd, while the bidding for me was going on, to the spot where R. was standing. She fell at his feet, and clung to his knees, entreating him, in tones that a mother only could command, to buy her baby as well as herself, and spare to her one of her little ones at least. Will it, can it be believed, that this man, thus appealed to, was capable, not merely of turning a deaf ear to her supplication, but of disengaging himself from her with such violent blows and kicks as to reduce her to the necessity of creeping out of his reach, and mingling the groan of bodily suffering with the sob of a breaking heart?
Now all these incidents that have been given are real incidents of slavery, related by those who know slavery by the best of all tests — experience; and they are given by men who have earned a good character in freedom, which makes their word as good as the word of any man living.
The case of Lewis Clark might be called a harder one than common. The case of Douglass is probably a very fair average specimen.
The writer had conversed, in her time, with a very considerable number of liberated slaves, many of whom stated that their own individual lot had been comparatively a mild one; but she never talked with one who did not let fall, first or last, some incident which he had observed, some scene which he had witnessed, which went to show some most horrible abuse of the system; and what was most affecting about it, the narrator often evidently considered it so much a matter of course as to mention it incidentally, without any particular emotion.
It is supposed by many that the great outcry among those who are opposed to slavery comes from a morbid reading of unauthenticated accounts got up in abolition papers, &c. This idea is a very mistaken one. The accounts which tell against the slave-system are derived from the continual living testimony of the poor slave himself; often from that of the fugitives from slavery who are continually passing through our Northern cities.
As a specimen of some of the incidents, thus developed, is given the following fact of recent occurrence, related to the author by a lady in Boston. This lady, who was much in the habit of visiting the poor, was sent for, a month or two since, to see a mulatto woman, who had just arrived at a coloured boarding-house near by, and who appeared to be in much dejection of mind. A little conversation showed her to be a fugitive. Her history was as follows: She, with her brother, were, as is often the case, both the children and slaves of their master. At his death, they were left to his legitimate daughter as her servants, and treated with as much consideration as very common kind of people might be expected to show those who were entirely and in every respect at their disposal.
The wife of her brother ran away to Canada; and as there was some talk of selling her and her child, in consequence of some embarrassment in the family affairs, her brother, a fine-spirited young man, determined to effect her escape, also, to a land of liberty. He concealed her for some time in the back part of an obscure dwelling in the city, till he could find an opportunity to send her off. While she was in this retreat, he was indefatigable in his attentions to her, frequently bringing her fruit and flowers, and doing everything he could to beguile the weariness of her imprisonment.
At length, the steward of a vessel, whom he had obliged, offered to conceal him on board the ship, and give him a chance to escape. The noble-hearted fellow, though tempted by an offer which would enable him immediately to join his wife, to whom he was tenderly attached, preferred to give this offer to his sister, and during the absence of the captain of the vessel she and her child were brought on board and secreted.
The captain, when he returned and discovered what had been done, was very angry, as the thing, if detected, would have involved him in very serious difficulties. He declared at first, that he would send the woman up into town to jail; but, by her entreaties and those of the steward, was induced to wait till evening, and send word to her brother to come and take her back. After dark the brother came on board, and, instead of taking his sister away, began to appeal to the humanity of the captain in the most moving terms. He told his sister’s history and his own, and pleaded eloquently his desire for her liberty. The captain had determined to be obdurate, but, alas! he was only a man. Perhaps he had himself a wife and child — perhaps he felt that, were he in the young man’s case, he would do just so for his sister. Be it as it may, he was at last overcome. He said to the young man, “I must send you away from my ship; I’ll put off a boat and see you get into it, and you must row off, and never let me see your faces again; and if, after all, you should come back and get on board, it will be your fault and not mine.”
So, in the rain and darkness, the young man and his sister and child were lowered over the side of the vessel, and rowed away. After a while the ship weighed anchor, but before she reached Boston it was discovered that the woman and child were on board.
The lady to whom this story was related, was requested to write a letter, in certain terms, to a person in the city whence the fugitive had come, to let the brother know of her safe arrival.
The fugitive was furnished with work, by which she could support herself and child, and the lady carefully attended to her wants for a few weeks.
One morning she came in, with a good deal of agitation, exclaiming, “O ma’am, he’s come! George is come!” And in a few minutes the young man was introduced.
The lady who gave this relation belongs to the first circles of Boston society; she says that she never was more impressed by the personal manners of any gentleman than by those of this fugitive brother. So much did he have the air of a perfect, finished gentleman, that she felt she could not question him with regard to his escape with the familiarity with which persons of his condition are commonly approached; and it was not till he requested her to write a letter for him, because he could not write himself, that she could realize that this fine specimen of manhood had been all his life a slave.
The remainder of the history is no less romantic. The lady had a friend in Montreal, whither George’s wife had gone; and, after furnishing money to pay their expenses, she presented them with a letter to this gentleman, requesting the latter to assist the young man in finding his wife. When they landed at Montreal, George stepped on shore and presented this letter to the first man he met, asking him if he knew to whom it was directed. The gentleman proved to be the very person to whom the letter was addressed. He knew George’s wife, brought him to her without delay, so that, by return mail, the lady had the satisfaction of learning the happy termination of the adventure.
This is but a specimen of histories which are continually transpiring; so that those who speak of slavery can say, “We speak that which we do know, and testify that we have seen.”
But we shall be told the slaves are all a lying race, and that these are lies which they tell us. There are some things, however, about these slaves, which cannot lie. Those deep lines of patient sorrow upon the face; that attitude of crouching and humble subjection; that sad, habitual expression of hope deferred in the eye, would tell their story if the slave never spoke.
It is not long since the writer has seen faces such as might haunt one’s dreams for weeks.
Suppose a poor, worn-out mother, sickly, feeble, and old — her hands worn to the bone with hard, unpaid toil, whose nine children have been sold to the slave trader, and whose tenth soon is to be sold, unless by her labour as a washerwoman she can raise nine hundred dollars! Such are the kind of cases constantly coming to one’s knowledge, such are the witnesses which will not let us sleep.
Doubt has been expressed whether such a thing as an advertisement for a man “dead or alive,” like the advertisement for George Harris, was ever published in the Southern States. The scene of the story in which that occurs is supposed to be laid a few years back, at the time when the black laws of Ohio were passed. That at this time such advertisements were common in the newspapers, there is abundant evidence. That they are less common now, is a matter of hope and gratulation.
In the year 1839, Mr. Theodore D. Weld made a systematic attempt to collect and arrange the statistics of slavery. A mass of facts and statistics was gathered, which was authenticated with the most unquestionable accuracy. Some of the “one thousand” witnesses, whom he brings upon the stand, were ministers, lawyers, merchants, and men of various other callings, who were either natives of the slave States, or had been residents there for many years of their life. Many of these were slaveholders. Others of the witnesses were, or had been, slave-drivers, or officers of coasting-vessels engaged in the slave-trade.
Another part of his evidence was gathered from public speeches in Congress, in the State legislatures, and elsewhere. But the majority of it was taken from recent newspapers.
The papers from which these facts were copied were preserved and put on file in a public place, where they remained for some years for the information of the curious. After Mr. Weld’s book was completed, a copy of it was sent, through the mail, to every editor from whose paper such advertisements had been taken, and to every individual of whom any facts had been narrated, with the passage concerning them marked.
It is quite possible that this may have had some influence in rendering such advertisements less common. Men of sense often go on doing a thing which is very absurd, or even inhuman, simply because it has always been done before them, and they follow general custom, without much reflection. When their attention, however, is called to it by a stranger who sees the thing from another point of view, they become immediately sensible of the impropriety of the practice, and discontinue it. The reader will, however, be pained to notice, when he comes to the legal part of the book, that, even in some of the largest cities of our slave States, this barbarity had not been entirely discontinued in the year 1850.
The list of advertisements in Mr. Weld’s book is here inserted, not to weary the reader with its painful details, but that, by running his eye over the dates of the papers quoted, and the places of their publication, he may form a fair estimate of the extent to which this atrocity was publicly practised.
The Wilmington (North Carolina) Advertiser, of July 13, 1838, contains the following advertisement:
“100 dollars will be paid to any person who may apprehend, and safely confine in any jail in this State, a certain negro man, named ALFRED. And the same reward will be paid if satisfactory evidence is given of his having been KILLED. He has one or more scars on one of his hands, caused by his having been shot.
“THE CITIZENS OF ONSLOW.
“Richlands, Onslow Co. May 16, 1838.”
In the same column with the above, and directly under it, is the following.
“RAN AWAY, my negro man RICHARD. A reward of 25 dollars will be paid for his apprehension, DEAD or ALIVE. Satisfactory proof will only be required of his being KILLED. He has with him, in all probability, his wife ELIZA, who ran away from Col. Thompson, now a resident of Alabama, about the time he commenced his journey to that State.
“DURANT H. RHODES.”
In the Macon (Georgia) Telegraph, May 28, is the following.
“About the first of March last the negro man RANSON left me without the least provocation whatever; I will give a reward of twenty dollars for said negro if taken, DEAD OR ALIVE; and if killed in any attempt, an advance of five dollars will be paid.
“BRYANT JOHNSON.
“Crawford Co., Georgia.”
See the Newbern (North Carolina) Spectator, Jan. 5, 1838, for the following.
“RAN AWAY from the subscriber, a negro man, named SAMPSON. Fifty dollars reward will be given for the delivery of him to me, or his confinement in any jail, so that I get him; and should he resist in being taken, so that violence is necessary to arrest him, I will not hold any person liable to damages should the slave be killed.
“ENOCH FOY,
“Jones Co., N. C.”
From the Charleston (South Carolina) Courier, Feb. 20, 1836.
“300 DOLLARS REWARD. Ran away from the subscriber, in November last, his two negro men, named BILLY and POMPEY.
“Billy is 25 years old, and is known as the patroon of my boat for many years. In all probability he may resist; in that event, 50 dollars will be paid for his HEAD.”
CHAPTER V.
ELIZA.
THE writer stated in her book that Eliza was a portrait drawn from life. The incident which brought the original to her notice may be simply narrated.
While the writer was travelling in Kentucky, many years ago, she attended church in a small country town. While there, her attention was called to a beautiful quadroon girl, who sat in one of the slips of the church, and appeared to have charge of some young children. The description of Eliza may suffice for a description of her. When the author returned from the church, she inquired about the girl, and was told that she was as good and amiable as she was beautiful; that she was a pious girl, and a member of the Church; and, finally, that she was owned by Mr. So-and-so. The idea that this girl was a slave struck a chill to her heart, and she said earnestly, “Oh, I hope they treat her kindly.”
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 662
