Bab Bab 45 · Concluding Remarks

. Concluding Remarks

The writer has often been inquired of, by correspondents from different

parts of the country, whether this narrative is a true one; and to

these inquiries she will give one general answer.

The separate incidents that compose the narrative are, to a very great

extent, authentic, occurring, many of them, either under her own

observation, or that of her personal friends. She or her friends have

observed characters the counterpart of almost all that are here

introduced; and many of the sayings are word for word as heard herself,

or reported to her.

The personal appearance of Eliza, the character ascribed to her, are

sketches drawn from life. The incorruptible fidelity, piety and

honesty, of Uncle Tom, had more than one development, to her personal

knowledge. Some of the most deeply tragic and romantic, some of the

most terrible incidents, have also their parallels in reality. The

incident of the mother’s crossing the Ohio river on the ice is a

well-known fact. The story of “old Prue,” in the second volume, was an

incident that fell under the personal observation of a brother of the

writer, then collecting-clerk to a large mercantile house, in New

Orleans. From the same source was derived the character of the planter

Legree. Of him her brother thus wrote, speaking of visiting his

plantation, on a collecting tour; “He actually made me feel of his

fist, which was like a blacksmith’s hammer, or a nodule of iron,

telling me that it was ‘calloused with knocking down niggers.’ When I

left the plantation, I drew a long breath, and felt as if I had escaped

from an ogre’s den.”

That the tragical fate of Tom, also, has too many times had its

parallel, there are living witnesses, all over our land, to testify.

Let it be remembered that in all southern states it is a principle of

jurisprudence that no person of colored lineage can testify in a suit

against a white, and it will be easy to see that such a case may occur,

wherever there is a man whose passions outweigh his interests, and a

slave who has manhood or principle enough to resist his will. There is,

actually, nothing to protect the slave’s life, but the _character_ of

the master. Facts too shocking to be contemplated occasionally force

their way to the public ear, and the comment that one often hears made

on them is more shocking than the thing itself. It is said, “Very

likely such cases may now and then occur, but they are no sample of

general practice.” If the laws of New England were so arranged that a

master could _now and then_ torture an apprentice to death, would it be

received with equal composure? Would it be said, “These cases are rare,

and no samples of general practice”? This injustice is an _inherent_

one in the slave system,—it cannot exist without it.

The public and shameless sale of beautiful mulatto and quadroon girls

has acquired a notoriety, from the incidents following the capture of

the Pearl. We extract the following from the speech of Hon. Horace

Mann, one of the legal counsel for the defendants in that case. He

says: “In that company of seventy-six persons, who attempted, in 1848,

to escape from the District of Columbia in the schooner Pearl, and

whose officers I assisted in defending, there were several young and

healthy girls, who had those peculiar attractions of form and feature

which connoisseurs prize so highly. Elizabeth Russel was one of them.

She immediately fell into the slave-trader’s fangs, and was doomed for

the New Orleans market. The hearts of those that saw her were touched

with pity for her fate. They offered eighteen hundred dollars to redeem

her; and some there were who offered to give, that would not have much

left after the gift; but the fiend of a slave-trader was inexorable.

She was despatched to New Orleans; but, when about half way there, God

had mercy on her, and smote her with death. There were two girls named

Edmundson in the same company. When about to be sent to the same

market, an older sister went to the shambles, to plead with the wretch

who owned them, for the love of God, to spare his victims. He bantered

her, telling what fine dresses and fine furniture they would have.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that may do very well in this life, but what will

become of them in the next?’ They too were sent to New Orleans; but

were afterwards redeemed, at an enormous ransom, and brought back.” Is

it not plain, from this, that the histories of Emmeline and Cassy may

have many counterparts?

Justice, too, obliges the author to state that the fairness of mind and

generosity attributed to St. Clare are not without a parallel, as the

following anecdote will show. A few years since, a young southern

gentleman was in Cincinnati, with a favorite servant, who had been his

personal attendant from a boy. The young man took advantage of this

opportunity to secure his own freedom, and fled to the protection of a

Quaker, who was quite noted in affairs of this kind. The owner was

exceedingly indignant. He had always treated the slave with such

indulgence, and his confidence in his affection was such, that he

believed he must have been practised upon to induce him to revolt from

him. He visited the Quaker, in high anger; but, being possessed of

uncommon candor and fairness, was soon quieted by his arguments and

representations. It was a side of the subject which he never had

heard,—never had thought on; and he immediately told the Quaker that,

if his slave would, to his own face, say that it was his desire to be

free, he would liberate him. An interview was forthwith procured, and

Nathan was asked by his young master whether he had ever had any reason

to complain of his treatment, in any respect.

“No, Mas’r,” said Nathan; “you’ve always been good to me.”

“Well, then, why do you want to leave me?”

“Mas’r may die, and then who get me?—I’d rather be a free man.”

After some deliberation, the young master replied, “Nathan, in your

place, I think I should feel very much so, myself. You are free.”

He immediately made him out free papers; deposited a sum of money in

the hands of the Quaker, to be judiciously used in assisting him to

start in life, and left a very sensible and kind letter of advice to

the young man. That letter was for some time in the writer’s hands.

The author hopes she has done justice to that nobility, generosity, and

humanity, which in many cases characterize individuals at the South.

Such instances save us from utter despair of our kind. But, she asks

any person, who knows the world, are such characters _common_,

anywhere?

For many years of her life, the author avoided all reading upon or

allusion to the subject of slavery, considering it as too painful to be

inquired into, and one which advancing light and civilization would

certainly live down. But, since the legislative act of 1850, when she

heard, with perfect surprise and consternation, Christian and humane

people actually recommending the remanding escaped fugitives into

slavery, as a duty binding on good citizens,—when she heard, on all

hands, from kind, compassionate and estimable people, in the free

states of the North, deliberations and discussions as to what Christian

duty could be on this head,—she could only think, These men and

Christians cannot know what slavery is; if they did, such a question

could never be open for discussion. And from this arose a desire to

exhibit it in a _living dramatic reality_. She has endeavored to show

it fairly, in its best and its worst phases. In its _best_ aspect, she

has, perhaps, been successful; but, oh! who shall say what yet remains

untold in that valley and shadow of death, that lies the other side?

To you, generous, noble-minded men and women, of the South,—you, whose

virtue, and magnanimity and purity of character, are the greater for

the severer trial it has encountered,—to you is her appeal. Have you

not, in your own secret souls, in your own private conversings, felt

that there are woes and evils, in this accursed system, far beyond what

are here shadowed, or can be shadowed? Can it be otherwise? Is _man_

ever a creature to be trusted with wholly irresponsible power? And does

not the slave system, by denying the slave all legal right of

testimony, make every individual owner an irresponsible despot? Can

anybody fail to make the inference what the practical result will be?

If there is, as we admit, a public sentiment among you, men of honor,

justice and humanity, is there not also another kind of public

sentiment among the ruffian, the brutal and debased? And cannot the

ruffian, the brutal, the debased, by slave law, own just as many slaves

as the best and purest? Are the honorable, the just, the high-minded

and compassionate, the majority anywhere in this world?

The slave-trade is now, by American law, considered as piracy. But a

slave-trade, as systematic as ever was carried on on the coast of

Africa, is an inevitable attendant and result of American slavery. And

its heart-break and its horrors, can they be told?

The writer has given only a faint shadow, a dim picture, of the anguish

and despair that are, at this very moment, riving thousands of hearts,

shattering thousands of families, and driving a helpless and sensitive

race to frenzy and despair. There are those living who know the mothers

whom this accursed traffic has driven to the murder of their children;

and themselves seeking in death a shelter from woes more dreaded than

death. Nothing of tragedy can be written, can be spoken, can be

conceived, that equals the frightful reality of scenes daily and hourly

acting on our shores, beneath the shadow of American law, and the

shadow of the cross of Christ.

And now, men and women of America, is this a thing to be trifled with,

apologized for, and passed over in silence? Farmers of Massachusetts,

of New Hampshire, of Vermont, of Connecticut, who read this book by the

blaze of your winter-evening fire,—strong-hearted, generous sailors and

ship-owners of Maine,—is this a thing for you to countenance and

encourage? Brave and generous men of New York, farmers of rich and

joyous Ohio, and ye of the wide prairie states,—answer, is this a thing

for you to protect and countenance? And you, mothers of America,—you

who have learned, by the cradles of your own children, to love and feel

for all mankind,—by the sacred love you bear your child; by your joy in

his beautiful, spotless infancy; by the motherly pity and tenderness

with which you guide his growing years; by the anxieties of his

education; by the prayers you breathe for his soul’s eternal good;—I

beseech you, pity the mother who has all your affections, and not one

legal right to protect, guide, or educate, the child of her bosom! By

the sick hour of your child; by those dying eyes, which you can never

forget; by those last cries, that wrung your heart when you could

neither help nor save; by the desolation of that empty cradle, that

silent nursery,—I beseech you, pity those mothers that are constantly

made childless by the American slave-trade! And say, mothers of

America, is this a thing to be defended, sympathized with, passed over

in silence?

Do you say that the people of the free state have nothing to do with

it, and can do nothing? Would to God this were true! But it is not

true. The people of the free states have defended, encouraged, and

participated; and are more guilty for it, before God, than the South,

in that they have not the apology of education or custom.

If the mothers of the free states had all felt as they should, in times

past, the sons of the free states would not have been the holders, and,

proverbially, the hardest masters of slaves; the sons of the free

states would not have connived at the extension of slavery, in our

national body; the sons of the free states would not, as they do, trade

the souls and bodies of men as an equivalent to money, in their

mercantile dealings. There are multitudes of slaves temporarily owned,

and sold again, by merchants in northern cities; and shall the whole

guilt or obloquy of slavery fall only on the South?

Northern men, northern mothers, northern Christians, have something

more to do than denounce their brethren at the South; they have to look

to the evil among themselves.

But, what can any individual do? Of that, every individual can judge.

There is one thing that every individual can do,—they can see to it

that _they feel right_. An atmosphere of sympathetic influence

encircles every human being; and the man or woman who _feels_ strongly,

healthily and justly, on the great interests of humanity, is a constant

benefactor to the human race. See, then, to your sympathies in this

matter! Are they in harmony with the sympathies of Christ? or are they

swayed and perverted by the sophistries of worldly policy?

Christian men and women of the North! still further,—you have another

power; you can _pray!_ Do you believe in prayer? or has it become an

indistinct apostolic tradition? You pray for the heathen abroad; pray

also for the heathen at home. And pray for those distressed Christians

whose whole chance of religious improvement is an accident of trade and

sale; from whom any adherence to the morals of Christianity is, in many

cases, an impossibility, unless they have given them, from above, the

courage and grace of martyrdom.

But, still more. On the shores of our free states are emerging the

poor, shattered, broken remnants of families,—men and women, escaped,

by miraculous providences from the surges of slavery,—feeble in

knowledge, and, in many cases, infirm in moral constitution, from a

system which confounds and confuses every principle of Christianity and

morality. They come to seek a refuge among you; they come to seek

education, knowledge, Christianity.

What do you owe to these poor unfortunates, oh Christians? Does not

every American Christian owe to the African race some effort at

reparation for the wrongs that the American nation has brought upon

them? Shall the doors of churches and school-houses be shut upon them?

Shall states arise and shake them out? Shall the church of Christ hear

in silence the taunt that is thrown at them, and shrink away from the

helpless hand that they stretch out; and, by her silence, encourage the

cruelty that would chase them from our borders? If it must be so, it

will be a mournful spectacle. If it must be so, the country will have

reason to tremble, when it remembers that the fate of nations is in the

hands of One who is very pitiful, and of tender compassion.

Do you say, “We don’t want them here; let them go to Africa”?

That the providence of God has provided a refuge in Africa, is, indeed,

a great and noticeable fact; but that is no reason why the church of

Christ should throw off that responsibility to this outcast race which

her profession demands of her.

To fill up Liberia with an ignorant, inexperienced, half-barbarized

race, just escaped from the chains of slavery, would be only to

prolong, for ages, the period of struggle and conflict which attends

the inception of new enterprises. Let the church of the north receive

these poor sufferers in the spirit of Christ; receive them to the

educating advantages of Christian republican society and schools, until

they have attained to somewhat of a moral and intellectual maturity,

and then assist them in their passage to those shores, where they may

put in practice the lessons they have learned in America.

There is a body of men at the north, comparatively small, who have been

doing this; and, as the result, this country has already seen examples

of men, formerly slaves, who have rapidly acquired property,

reputation, and education. Talent has been developed, which,

considering the circumstances, is certainly remarkable; and, for moral

traits of honesty, kindness, tenderness of feeling,—for heroic efforts

and self-denials, endured for the ransom of brethren and friends yet in

slavery,—they have been remarkable to a degree that, considering the

influence under which they were born, is surprising.

The writer has lived, for many years, on the frontier-line of slave

states, and has had great opportunities of observation among those who

formerly were slaves. They have been in her family as servants; and, in

default of any other school to receive them, she has, in many cases,

had them instructed in a family school, with her own children. She has

also the testimony of missionaries, among the fugitives in Canada, in

coincidence with her own experience; and her deductions, with regard to

the capabilities of the race, are encouraging in the highest degree.

The first desire of the emancipated slave, generally, is for

_education_. There is nothing that they are not willing to give or do

to have their children instructed, and, so far as the writer has

observed herself, or taken the testimony of teachers among them, they

are remarkably intelligent and quick to learn. The results of schools,

founded for them by benevolent individuals in Cincinnati, fully

establish this.

The author gives the following statement of facts, on the authority of

Professor C. E. Stowe, then of Lane Seminary, Ohio, with regard to

emancipated slaves, now resident in Cincinnati; given to show the

capability of the race, even without any very particular assistance or

encouragement.

The initial letters alone are given. They are all residents of

Cincinnati.

“B——. Furniture maker; twenty years in the city; worth ten thousand

dollars, all his own earnings; a Baptist.

“C——. Full black; stolen from Africa; sold in New Orleans; been free

fifteen years; paid for himself six hundred dollars; a farmer; owns

several farms in Indiana; Presbyterian; probably worth fifteen or

twenty thousand dollars, all earned by himself.

“K——. Full black; dealer in real estate; worth thirty thousand dollars;

about forty years old; free six years; paid eighteen hundred dollars

for his family; member of the Baptist church; received a legacy from

his master, which he has taken good care of, and increased.

“G——. Full black; coal dealer; about thirty years old; worth eighteen

thousand dollars; paid for himself twice, being once defrauded to the

amount of sixteen hundred dollars; made all his money by his own

efforts—much of it while a slave, hiring his time of his master, and

doing business for himself; a fine, gentlemanly fellow.

“W——. Three-fourths black; barber and waiter; from Kentucky; nineteen

years free; paid for self and family over three thousand dollars;

deacon in the Baptist church.

“G. D——. Three-fourths black; white-washer; from Kentucky; nine years

free; paid fifteen hundred dollars for self and family; recently died,

aged sixty; worth six thousand dollars.”

Professor Stowe says, “With all these, except G——, I have been, for

some years, personally acquainted, and make my statements from my own

knowledge.”

The writer well remembers an aged colored woman, who was employed as a

washerwoman in her father’s family. The daughter of this woman married

a slave. She was a remarkably active and capable young woman, and, by

her industry and thrift, and the most persevering self-denial, raised

nine hundred dollars for her husband’s freedom, which she paid, as she

raised it, into the hands of his master. She yet wanted a hundred

dollars of the price, when he died. She never recovered any of the

money.

These are but few facts, among multitudes which might be adduced, to

show the self-denial, energy, patience, and honesty, which the slave

has exhibited in a state of freedom.

And let it be remembered that these individuals have thus bravely

succeeded in conquering for themselves comparative wealth and social

position, in the face of every disadvantage and discouragement. The

colored man, by the law of Ohio, cannot be a voter, and, till within a

few years, was even denied the right of testimony in legal suits with

the white. Nor are these instances confined to the State of Ohio. In

all states of the Union we see men, but yesterday burst from the

shackles of slavery, who, by a self-educating force, which cannot be

too much admired, have risen to highly respectable stations in society.

Pennington, among clergymen, Douglas and Ward, among editors, are well

known instances.

If this persecuted race, with every discouragement and disadvantage,

have done thus much, how much more they might do if the Christian

church would act towards them in the spirit of her Lord!

This is an age of the world when nations are trembling and convulsed. A

mighty influence is abroad, surging and heaving the world, as with an

earthquake. And is America safe? Every nation that carries in its bosom

great and unredressed injustice has in it the elements of this last

convulsion.

For what is this mighty influence thus rousing in all nations and

languages those groanings that cannot be uttered, for man’s freedom and

equality?

O, Church of Christ, read the signs of the times! Is not this power the

spirit of Him whose kingdom is yet to come, and whose will to be done

on earth as it is in heaven?

But who may abide the day of his appearing? “for that day shall burn as

an oven: and he shall appear as a swift witness against those that

oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, and

that _turn aside the stranger in his right_: and he shall break in

pieces the oppressor.”

Are not these dread words for a nation bearing in her bosom so mighty

an injustice? Christians! every time that you pray that the kingdom of

Christ may come, can you forget that prophecy associates, in dread

fellowship, the _day of vengeance_ with the year of his redeemed?

A day of grace is yet held out to us. Both North and South have been

guilty before God; and the _Christian church_ has a heavy account to

answer. Not by combining together, to protect injustice and cruelty,

and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be saved,—but by

repentance, justice and mercy; for, not surer is the eternal law by

which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law, by

which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of

Almighty God!