kindly welcomed and entertained, during a part of two days, as sumptuously as
though the owner had been present. We understood that it was no uncommon
thing in South Carolina for travellers to be thus entertained by the servants in
the absence of the owners, on receiving letters from the same.
Instances of confidential and affectionate relationship between servants and
their masters and mistresses, such as are set forth in the following sketches, are
still to be found in all the slave-holding States. I mention one, which has come
under my own observation. The late Judge Upshur, of Virginia, had a faithful
house-servant (by his will now set free), with whom he used to correspond on
matters of business when he was absent on his circuit. I was dining at his
house, some years since, with a number of persons, himself being absent, when
the conversation turned on the the subject of the presidential election, then going
on through the United States, and about which there was an intense interest;
when his servant informed us that he had that day received a letter from his
master, then on the western shore, in which he stated that the friends of General
Harrison might be relieved from all uneasiness, as the returns already received
made his election quite certain.
Of course it is not to be supposed that we design to convey the impression
that such instances are numerous, the nature of the relationship forbidding it;
but we do mean emphatically to affirm that there is far more of kindly and
Christian intercourse than many at a distance are apt to believe. That there is
a great and sad want of Christian instruction, notwithstanding the more recent
efforts put forth to impart it, we most sorrowfully acknowledge.
Bishop Meade adds that these sketches are published with the
hope that they might have the effect of turning the attention of
ministers and heads of families more seriously to the duty of
caring for the souls of their servants.
With regard to the servant of Judge Upshur, spoken of in this
communication of Bishop Meade, his master has left, in his last
will, the following remarkable tribute to his worth and excellence
of character:--
I emancipate and set free my servant, David Rice, and direct my executors
to give him one hundred dollars. I recommend him in the strongest manner to
the respect, esteem, and confidence of any community in which he may happen
to live. He has been my slave for twenty-four years, during all which time
he has been trusted to every extent, and in every respect; my confidence in
him has been unbounded; his relation to myself and family has always been
such as to afford him daily opportunities to deceive and injure us; yet he has
never been detected in any serious fault, nor even in an unintentional breach of
decorum of his station. His intelligence is of a high order, his integrity
above all suspicion, and his sense of right and propriety correct, and even
refined. I feel that he is justly entitled to carry this certificate from me in
the new relations which he must now form; it is due to his long and most
faithful services, and to the sincere and steady friendship which I bear to him.
In the uninterrupted confidential intercourse of twenty-four years, I have never
given him, nor had occasion to give him, one unpleasant word. I know no
man who has fewer faults or more excellences than he.
In the free States there have been a few instances of such
extraordinary piety among negroes, that their biography and say-
ings have been collected in religious tracts, and published for
the instruction of the community.
One of these was, before his conversion, a convict in a State-
prison in New York, and there received what was, perhaps, the
first religious instruction that had ever been imparted to him.
He became so eminent an example of humility, faith, and, above
all, fervent love, that his presence in the neighbourhood was
esteemed a blessing to the church. A lady has described to the
writer the manner in which he would stand up and exhort in the
church-meetings for prayer, when, with streaming eyes and the
deepest abasement, humbly addressing them as his masters and
misses, he would nevertheless pour forth religious exhortations
which were edifying to the most cultivated and refined.
In the town of Brunswick, Maine, where the writer lived when
aged coloured woman, named Phebe, who was so eminent for her
piety and loveliness of character, that the writer has never heard
her name mentioned except with that degree of awe and respect
which one would imagine due to a saint. The small cottage
where she resided is still visited and looked upon as a sort of
shrine, as the spot where old Phebe lived and prayed. Her
prayers and pious exhortations were supposed to have been the
cause of the conversion of many young people in the place.
Notwithstanding that the unchristian feeling of caste prevails as
strongly in Maine as anywhere else in New England, and the
negro, commonly speaking, is an object of aversion and contempt,
yet, so great was the influence of her piety and loveliness of cha-
racter, that she was uniformly treated with the utmost respect
and attention by all classes of people. The most cultivated and
intelligent ladies of the place esteemed it a privilege to visit her
cottage; and when she was old and helpless, her wants were
most tenderly provided for. When the news of her death was
spread abroad in the place, it excited a general and very tender
sensation of regret. “We have lost Phebe's prayers,” was the
remark frequently made afterwards by members of the church,
as they met one another. At her funeral, the ex-governor of the
State and the professors of the college officiated as pall-bearers,
and a sermon was preached, in which the many excellences of
her Christian character were held up as an example to the com-
munity. A small religious tract, containing an account of her
life, was published by the American Tract Society, prepared by
a lady of Brunswick. The writer recollects that on reading the
tract, when she first went to Brunswick, a doubt arose in her
mind whether it was not somewhat exaggerated. Some time
afterwards she overheard some young persons conversing to-
gether about the tract, and saying that they did not think it
gave exactly the right idea of Phebe. “Why, is it too highly
coloured?” was the inquiry of the author. “Oh, no, no,
indeed!” was the earnest response; “it doesn't begin to give
an idea of how good she was.”
Such instances as these serve to illustrate the words of the
Apostle, “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to
confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of
the world to confound the things which are mighty.”
John Bunyan says, that although the valley of humiliation be
unattractive in the eyes of the men of this world, yet the very
sweetest flowers grow there. So it is with the condition of the
lowly and poor in this world. God has often, indeed always,
shown a particular regard for it, in selecting from that class the
recipients of his grace. It is to be remembered that Jesus
Christ, when he came to found the Christian dispensation, did
not choose his apostles from the chief priests and the scribes,
learned in the law and high in the church; nor did he choose them
from philosophers and poets, whose educated and comprehensive
minds might be supposed best able to appreciate his great
designs; but he chose twelve plain, poor fishermen, who were
ignorant, and felt that they were ignorant, and who, therefore,
were willing to give themselves up with all simplicity to his
guidance. What God asks of the soul more than anything else
is faith and simplicity, the affection and reliance of the little
child. Even these twelve fancied too much that they were wise,
and Jesus was obliged to set a little child in the midst of them,
as a more perfect teacher.
The negro race is confessedly more simple, docile, childlike,
and affectionate, than other races; and hence the divine graces of
love and faith, when in-breathed by the Holy Spirit, find in their
natural temperament a more congenial atmosphere.
A last instance parallel with that of Uncle Tom is to be found
in the published memoirs of the venerable Josiah Henson, now,
as we have said, a clergyman in Canada. He was “raised” in
the State of Maryland. His first recollections were of seeing
his father mutilated and covered with blood, suffering the penalty
of the law for the crime of raising his hand against a white man
--that white man being the overseer, who had attempted a bru-
tal assault upon his mother. This punishment made his father
surly and dangerous, and he was subsequently sold South, and
thus parted for ever from his wife and children. Henson grew
up in a state of heathenism, without any religious instruction,
till, in a camp-meeting, he first heard of Jesus Christ, and was
electrified by the great and thrilling news that He had tasted
death for every man, the bond as well as the free. This story
produced an immediate conversion, such as we read of in the
Acts of the Apostles, where the Ethiopian eunuch, from one
interview, hearing the story of the cross, at once believes and is
baptized. Henson forthwith not only became a Christian, but
began to declare the news to those about him; and, being a man
of great natural force of mind and strength of character, his
earnest endeavours to enlighten his fellow-heathen were so suc-
cessful, that he was gradually led to assume the station of a
negro preacher; and though he could not read a word of the
Bible or hymn-book, his labours in this line were much pros-
pered. He became immediately a very valuable slave to
his master, and was intrusted by the latter with the over-
sight of his whole estate, which he managed with great
judgment and prudence. His master appears to have been a
very ordinary man in every respect,--to have been entirely in-
capable of estimating him in any other light than as exceedingly
valuable property, and to have had no other feeling excited by
his extraordinary faithfulness than the desire to make the most
of him. When his affairs became embarrassed, he formed the
design of removing all his negroes into Kentucky, and intrusted
the operation entirely to his overseer. Henson was to take them
alone, without any other attendant, from Maryland to Kentucky,
a distance of some thousands of miles, giving only his promise
as a Christian that he would faithfully perform this undertaking.
On the way thither they passed through a portion of Ohio, and
there Henson was informed that he could now secure his own
freedom and that of all his fellows, and he was strongly urged to
do it. He was exceedingly tempted and tried, but his Christian
principle was invulnerable. No inducements could lead him to
feel that it was right for a Christian to violate a pledge solemnly
given, and his influence over the whole band was so great that
he took them all with him into Kentucky. Those causists among
us who lately seem to think and teach that it is right for us to
violate the plain commands of God, whenever some great national
good can be secured by it, would do well to contemplate the in-
flexible principle of this poor slave, who, without being able to
read a letter of the Bible, was yet enabled to perform this most
sublime act of self-renunciation in obedience to its commands.
Subsequently to this, his master, in a relenting moment, was
induced by a friend to sell him his freedom for four hundred
dollars; but, when the excitement of the importunity had passed
off, he regretted that he had suffered so valuable a piece of
property to leave his hands for so slight a remuneration. By
an unworthy artifice, therefore, he got possession of his servant's
free papers, and condemned him still to hopeless slavery. Subse-
quently, his affairs becoming still more involved, he sent his son
down the river with a flat boat loaded with cattle and produce
for the New Orleans market, directing him to take Henson along,
and sell him after they had sold the cattle and the boat. All
the depths of the negro's soul were torn up and thrown into
convulsion by this horrible piece of ingratitude, cruelty and in-
justice; and, while outwardly calm, he was struggling with most
bitter temptations from within, which, as he could not read the
Bible, he could repel only by a recollection of its sacred truths,
and by earnest prayer. As he neared the New Orleans market,
he says that these convulsions of soul increased, especially when
he met some of his old companions from Kentucky, whose des-
pairing countenances and emaciated forms told of hard work and
insufficient food, and confirmed all his worst fears of the lower
country. In the transports of his despair, the temptation was
more urgently presented to him to murder his young master and
the other hand on the flat boat in their sleep, to seize upon the
boat, and make his escape. He thus relates the scene where he
was almost brought to the perpetration of this deed:--
One dark, rainy night, within a few days of New Orleans, my hour seemed to
have come. I was alone on the deck; Mr. Amos and the hands were all asleep
below, and I crept down noiselessly, got hold of an axe, entered the cabin, and
looking by the aid of the dim light there for my victims, my eye fell upon Master
Amos, who was nearest to me; my hand slid along the axe-handle, I raised it to
strike the fatal blow, when suddenly the thought came to me, “What! commit
murder! and you a Christian?” I had not called it murder before. It was
self-defence--it was preventing others from murdering me--it was jus-
tifiable, it was even praiseworthy. But now, all at once, the truth burst
upon me that it was a crime. I was going to kill a young man, who had done
nothing to injure me, but obey commands which he could not resist; I was
about
to lose the fruit of all my efforts at self-improvement, the character I had acquired,
and the peace of mind which had never deserted me. All this came upon me
instantly, and with a distinctness which made me almost think I heard it whispered
in my ear; and I believe I even turned my head to listen. I shrunk back, laid
down the axe, crept up on deck again, and thanked God, as I have done every day
since, that I had not committed murder.
My feelings were still agitated, but they were changed. I was filled with shame
and remorse for the design I had entertained, and with the fear that my com-
panions would detect it in my face, or that a careless word would betray my guilty
thoughts. I remained on deck all night, instead of rousing one of the men to
relieve me; and nothing brought composure to my mind, but the solemn reso-
lution I then made to resign myself to the will of God, and take with thankful-
ness, if I could, but with submission, at all events, whatever he might decide
should be my lot. I reflected that if my life were reduced to a brief term, I
should have less to suffer, and that it was better to die with a Christian's hope,
and a quiet conscience, than to live with the incessant recollection of a crime
that would destroy the value of life, and under the weight of a secret that would
crush out the satisfaction that might be expected from freedom, and every other
blessing.
Subsequently to this, his young master was taken violently
down with the river fever, and became as helpless as a child.
He passionately entreated Henson not to desert him, but to
attend to the selling of the boat and produce, and put him on
board the steamboat, and not to leave him, dead or alive, till he
had carried him back to his father.
The young master was borne in the arms of his faithful ser-
vant to the steamboat, and there nursed by him with unremit-
ting attention during the journey up the river; nor did he leave
him till he had placed him in his father's arms.
Our love for human nature would lead us to add, with sorrow,
that all this disinterestedness and kindness was rewarded only
by empty praises, such as would be bestowed upon a very fine
dog; and Henson indignantly resolved no longer to submit to
the injustice. With a degree of prudence, courage, and address,