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 I am glad the time has come when the "lions |
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| write history." We have been left long enough to |
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| gather the character of slavery from the involuntary |
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| evidence of the masters. One might, indeed, rest |
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| sufficiently satisfied with what, it is evident, must |
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| be, in general, the results of such a relation, with- |
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| out seeking farther to find whether they have fol- |
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| lowed in every instance. Indeed, those who stare at |
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| the half-peck of corn a week, and love to count the |
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| lashes on the slave's back, are seldom the "stuff" out |
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| of which reformers and abolitionists are to be made. |
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| I remember that, in 1838, many were waiting for |
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| the results of the West India experiment, before |
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| they could come into our ranks. Those "results" have |
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| come long ago; but, alas! few of that number have |
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| come with them, as converts. A man must be dis- |
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| posed to judge of emancipation by other tests than |
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| whether it has increased the produce of sugar,—and |
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| to hate slavery for other reasons than because it |
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| starves men and whips women,—before he is ready |
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| to lay the first stone of his anti-slavery life. |
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| I was glad to learn, in your story, how early the |
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| most neglected of God's children waken to a sense |
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| of their rights, and of the injustice done them. Ex- |
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| perience is a keen teacher; and long before you had |
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| mastered your A B C, or knew where the "white |
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| sails" of the Chesapeake were bound, you began, I |
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| see, to gauge the wretchedness of the slave, not by |
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| his hunger and want, not by his lashes and toil, but |
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| by the cruel and blighting death which gathers over |
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| his soul. |
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| In connection with this, there is one circumstance |
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| which makes your recollections peculiarly valuable, |
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| and renders your early insight the more remarkable. |
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| You come from that part of the country where we |
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| are told slavery appears with its fairest features. Let |
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| us hear, then, what it is at its best estate—gaze on |
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| its bright side, if it has one; and then imagination |
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| may task her powers to add dark lines to the picture, |
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| as she travels southward to that (for the colored |
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| man) Valley of the Shadow of Death, where the |
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| Mississippi sweeps along. |
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| Again, we have known you long, and can put the |
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| most entire confidence in your truth, candor, and |
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| sincerity. Every one who has heard you speak has |
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| felt, and, I am confident, every one who reads your |
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| book will feel, persuaded that you give them a fair |
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| specimen of the whole truth. No one-sided portrait, |
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| —no wholesale complaints,—but strict justice done, |
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| whenever individual kindliness has neutralized, for |
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| a moment, the deadly system with which it was |
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| strangely allied. You have been with us, too, some |
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| years, and can fairly compare the twilight of rights, |
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| which your race enjoy at the North, with that "noon |
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| of night" under which they labor south of Mason |
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| and Dixon's line. Tell us whether, after all, the half- |
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| free colored man of Massachusetts is worse off than |
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| the pampered slave of the rice swamps! |
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| In reading your life, no one can say that we have |
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| unfairly picked out some rare specimens of cruelty. |
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| We know that the bitter drops, which even you have |
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| drained from the cup, are no incidental aggravations, |
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| no individual ills, but such as must mingle always |
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| and necessarily in the lot of every slave. They are the |
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| essential ingredients, not the occasional results, of |
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| the system. |
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| After all, I shall read your book with trembling |
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| for you. Some years ago, when you were beginning |
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| to tell me your real name and birthplace, you may |
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| remember I stopped you, and preferred to remain |
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| ignorant of all. With the exception of a vague de- |
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| scription, so I continued, till the other day, when |
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| you read me your memoirs. I hardly knew, at the |
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| time, whether to thank you or not for the sight of |
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| them, when I reflected that it was still dangerous, |
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| in Massachusetts, for honest men to tell their names! |
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| They say the fathers, in 1776, signed the Declaration |
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| of Independence with the halter about their necks. |
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| You, too, publish your declaration of freedom with |
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| danger compassing you around. In all the broad lands |
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| which the Constitution of the United States over- |
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| shadows, there is no single spot,—however narrow or |
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| desolate,—where a fugitive slave can plant himself |
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| and say, "I am safe." The whole armory of North- |
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| ern Law has no shield for you. I am free to say that, |
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| in your place, I should throw the MS. into the fire. |
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| You, perhaps, may tell your story in safety, en- |
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| deared as you are to so many warm hearts by rare |
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| gifts, and a still rarer devotion of them to the service |
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| of others. But it will be owing only to your labors, |
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| and the fearless efforts of those who, trampling the |
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| laws and Constitution of the country under their |
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| feet, are determined that they will "hide the out- |
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| cast," and that their hearths shall be, spite of the |
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| law, an asylum for the oppressed, if, some time or |
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| other, the humblest may stand in our streets, and |
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| bear witness in safety against the cruelties of which |
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| he has been the victim. |
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| Yet it is sad to think, that these very throbbing |
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| hearts which welcome your story, and form your best |
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| safeguard in telling it, are all beating contrary to the |
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| "statute in such case made and provided." Go on, |
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| my dear friend, till you, and those who, like you, |
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| have been saved, so as by fire, from the dark prison- |
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| house, shall stereotype these free, illegal pulses into |
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| statutes; and New England, cutting loose from a |
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| blood-stained Union, shall glory in being the house |
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| of refuge for the oppressed,—till we no longer merely |
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| "~hide~ the outcast," or make a merit of standing idly |
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| by while he is hunted in our midst; but, consecrat- |
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| ing anew the soil of the Pilgrims as an asylum for the |
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| oppressed, proclaim our WELCOME to the slave so |
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| loudly, that the tones shall reach every hut in the |
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| Carolinas, and make the broken-hearted bondman |
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| leap up at the thought of old Massachusetts. |
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|
