inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wake-
fulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more for ever. It was heard in
every sound and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a
sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing
without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star,
it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.
I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead;
and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed
myself, or done something for which I should have been killed. While in this
state of mind I was eager to hear any one speak of slavery. I was a ready
listener. Every little while I could hear something about the abolitionists. It
was some time before I found what the word meant. It was always used in such
connexions as to make it an interesting word to me. If a slave ran away and
succeeded in getting clear, or if a slave killed his master, set fire to a barn, or did
anything very wrong in the mind of a slave-holder, it was spoken of as the fruit
of abolition. Hearing the word in this connexion very often, I set about learning
what it meant. The dictionary afforded me little or no help. I found it was
“the act of abolishing;” but then I did not know what was to be abolished.
Here I was perplexed. I did not care to ask anyone about its meaning, for I was
satisfied that it was something they wanted me to know very little about. After
a patient waiting, I got one of our city papers, containing an account of the
number of petitions from the North praying for the abolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia, and of the slave-trade between the States. From this time
I understood the words abolition and abolitionist, and always drew near when that
word was spoken, expecting to hear something of importance to myself and fellow-
slaves. The light broke in upon me by degrees. I went one day down on the
wharf of Mr. Waters, and seeing two Irishmen unloading a scow of stone, I went,
unasked, and helped them. When we had finished, one of them came to me and
asked me if I was a slave. I told him that I was. He asked, “Are ye a slave
for life?” I told him that I was. The good Irishman seemed to be deeply
affected by the statement. He said to the other that it was a pity so fine a little
fellow as myself should be a slave for life. He said it was a shame to hold me.
They both advised me to run away to the North; that I should find friends there,
and that I should be free. I pretended not to be interested in what they said,
and treated them as if I did not understand them; for I feared they might be
treacherous. White men have been known to encourage slaves to escape, and
then, to get the reward, catch them and return them to their masters. I was
afraid that these seemingly good men might use me so; but I nevertheless
remembered their advice, and from that time I resolved to run away. I looked
forward to a time at which it would be safe for me to escape. I was too young to
think of doing so immediately; besides, I wished to learn how to write, as I might
have occasion to write my own pass. I consoled myself with the hope that I
should one day find a good chance. Meanwhile I would learn to write.
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,
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 learn-
ing 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 neces-
&n
bsp; sity 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 con-
siderable 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 con-
sideration 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 in-
volved 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, ex-
claiming, “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 satisfac-
tion 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, how-
ever, 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 de-
ferred 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 con-
stantly 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 adver-
tisement 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, law-
yers, 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-vessles 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