University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XIV
THE NEGRO ABOLITIONISTS

A Good many stones have been told about
John Randolph of Roanoke, and his peculiar
opinions in regard to slavery. One of
these concerns his reply to a man who asked him
who, in his opinion, was the greatest orator he
had ever heard. John Randolph was a great
orator himself, and he had known Patrick Henry,
but, in reply to this question, he said: "The greatest
orator I ever heard was a woman. She was a
slave. She was a mother, and her rostrum was
the auction block." With that he arose and
imitated the thrilling tones with which this slave
woman had appealed to the sympathy and to the
justice of the bystanders, concluding with an indignant
denunciation of them and of the traffic in
which they were engaged.

"There," said Mr. Randolph, in conclusion,
"was eloquence. I have heard no man speak like
that."

This story will serve to illustrate what was, from
the beginning, the strongest force in the abolition
of slavery in the South. I mean the appeal which

the slaves made, themselves, not merely in words
but in actions, to the sympathy of their masters.
It was the faithful servants of the Southern masters
who were the first Negro abolitionists.

This appeal which the Negro made for freedom
merely through his humanity made its deepest
impression, apparently, upon those people who
had come to this country to obtain liberty for themselves.
One of the very earliest of the anti-slavery
men in the country was Anthony Benezet, the son
of Huguenot parents who escaped from France
on account of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
He established and taught an evening school in
Philadelphia for the instruction of Negroes and,
as early as 1780, he made an effort to induce the
Legislature of Pennsylvania to begin the work of
emancipation. Anthony Benezet, after coming to
America, joined the order of Friends, or Quakers
as they were called. The people of this sect, who
were more persecuted than any of the other English
denominations that came to America to obtain
religious freedom, were the first to give and to
demand for the Negro emancipation.

Another thing that early aroused sympathy for
the Negro slave was the sufferings of Americans
who had been carried by the Barbary pirates into
slavery in Africa. This was particularly true
in Massachusetts and in New England, where a
large proportion of the people were engaged in

shipping, and consequently suffered more heavily
from these piratical attacks. Among other Americans
carried into African slavery was one of the
first graduates of Harvard University, and in 1793,
no less than one hundred and fifteen Americans
were held in slavery in Algiers. The fact of the
sufferings of the white slaves taken to Africa is
frequently mentioned by the early abolitionists in
Massachusetts as a reason for freeing the black
slaves in America. One of the earliest books
written in this country, which obtained any reputation
abroad, was the story of the "Algerine Captive,"
which describes the hardships of these white slaves
in Africa, and seeks to turn the sentiment aroused
by this foreign white slavery against the black
slavery at home.[1]

As a rule the Negro was not an anti-slavery
agitator. In the South the free Negroes were
frequently themselves slave-holders. Nevertheless,
free Negroes were known to be in sympathy with
the desire of the slaves to be free. That was one
reason why they were regarded by slave-holders

with so much distrust. In the North free Negroes
were very largely engaged in the work of the Underground
Railroad. In his history of that institution,
Professor Wilbur H. Siebert has preserved the names
of more than one hundred and forty coloured
people, who maintained Underground Railroad
stations in different parts of the United States. In
Massachusetts there were Henry Box Brown and
William Wells Brown, both of them fugitive slaves.
Henry Box Brown was so named from the manner
in which he escaped from slavery. William Wells
Brown was born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1816.
He was taken as a boy to St. Louis, Missouri, and
was employed by Elijah P. Love joy, the anti-slavery
agitator, who was at that time editor of the St.
Louis Times. It was here that be got his first
education. After a year in Mr. Lovejoy's printing-office,
young Brown was hired out to a captain of
one of the river steamboats. In 1834 he escaped
from the boat and came North. He obtained a
position as a steward on one of the steamers on
Lake Erie, where he was of great service to fugitive
slaves, making their way to Canada. It was said
that in a single year he gave free passage across
the lake to sixty-five fugitives.

A little later, when he was living in Buffalo, he
organised a "vigilance committee" to protect and
aid fugitive slaves. During all this time he employed
his evenings in study and, in 1843, he was engaged

as a lecturer by the Anti-slavery Society, continuing
in that position until 1849, when he went abroad.

Another agent of the Underground Railroad in
Massachusetts was Charles Lenox Remond, who
was born and brought up in Salem, Massachusetts,
and as a consequence had the advantage of excellent
school training. He became an anti-slavery
lecturer in 1838, and went to England in 1846,
as a delegate to the World's Anti-slavery Convention.
In New York the principal agents of
the Underground Railroad were Dr. James McCune
Smith, David Ruggles, Bishop J. W. Loguen,
the Rev. James W. C. Pennington, and Frederick
Douglass. David Ruggles was one of the very
early members of the Underground Railroad, and
is said to have been connected with the work almost
from the beginning. He edited for a number of
years a quarterly magazine called the Mirror of
Liberty and died in 1849.

Dr. James McCune Smith was born in New
York, but received his medical education in Scotland.
After his return to America he became an active
writer for the newspapers and magazines and
contributed a number of papers upon the history
and progress of the Negro race. James W. C.
Pennington was born a slave in 1809, on the plantation
of Colonel Gordon, in Maryland, where he
learned the trade of blacksmith. He joined the
Presbyterian Church, studied in Germany, where

he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from
the University of Heidelberg, and, upon his return
to America, became the pastor of the Shiloh Church
in New York City. He died in 1871.

In Pennsylvania, Robert Purvis, the only coloured
man to sign the Declarations of the First American
Anti-slavery Convention in Philadelphia in 1833,
was the most prominent anti-slavery man of the
coloured race. In 1850, he became chairman of
the General Vigilance Committee, of which William
Still was secretary.[2] During this time William
Whipper, who afterward took a prominent part
in the anti-slavery agitation, was a lumber merchant
in the little town of Columbia, in the county of
Lancaster, in the southeastern corner of Pennsylvania.
At this time, this county was one of the
principal avenues of escape for fugitive slaves and
the coloured lumber merchants, Smith and Whipper,

were known to be active agents of the Underground
Railroad. From 1847 to 1860, according to a
letter written to William Still, the author of the
Underground Railroad, Mr. Whipper expended
as much as a thousand dollars a year in assisting
fugitive slaves. After the passage of the Fugitive
Slave Law in 1850, the coloured population at
Columbia decreased from 943 to 487 by emigration
and in 1861, when the War broke out, Mr. Whipper
was preparing to go to Canada himself.

The number of coloured people engaged in the
Underground Railroad was, as I have already said,
much larger in Ohio than in any other of the
Northern states. At Oberlin, Portsmouth, and
Cincinnati, Ohio, and Detroit, Michigan, there were
a number of Negroes who worked with the white
abolitionists of these cities, in assisting fugitives
on their way to Canada. In the neighborhood
of Portsmouth, Ohio, slaves were assisted across
the river by a barber of the town of Jackson, whose
name was Poindexter. At Louisville, Kentucky, there
was a coloured man by the name of Wash Spradley,
who helped many slaves to escape into the free states
across the river. Professor Siebert gives the names
of more than one hundred coloured men who were
known to be actively engaged in assisting in the escape
of fugitive slaves in the State of Ohio. He says:

There were fewer stations of the Underground
Railroad maintained in Illinois by coloured people
than in most of the other Western states. Chicago,
however, was the centre of anti-slavery sentiment
and there early sprang up in that city a small colony
of free Negroes who sometimes assisted fugitive
slaves from Missouri to escape. Among the early
coloured settlers of Chicago was John G. Jones,
who for many years had a tailor shop on Dearborn
Street near Madison and was, at the time of his
death, in 1879, one of the wealthiest Negroes in
Illinois. A few years ago, when Mrs. Jones was
visiting her niece, who is the wife of Lloyd G.
Wheeler, formerly Business Agent of Tuskegee
Institute, I learned that her husband had been
for many years a friend of John Brown and
when, in the winter of 1858 and 1859, he made
his sensational "rescue" of the Missouri slaves,

Brown stopped at Mr. Jones's house on his way
to Canada.

In addition to those I have already mentioned
there is evidence that there was a pretty well-organised
body of coloured people engaged in the
Underground Railroad extending the whole length
of the Great Lakes from Detroit, Michigan, to
Buffalo, New York. This organisation was known
as the "Liberty League." John Brown was well
acquainted with the members of this organisation
and, when he held his famous "convention" at
Chatham, Canada, shortly before the raid on
Harper's Ferry, it was from the ranks of this organisation
that he drew, in all probability, the largest
number of his members. Among these were Dr.
afterward Major, Martin R. Delany. Dr. Delany,
who was chairman of the Chatham Convention,
was not merely a physician but a traveller, soldier,
lecturer, and editor. He was for a time editor
of the anti-slavery paper published at Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, called the Mystery. After the passage
of the Fugitive Slave Law he decided to go to
Canada. In association with Professor Campbell
he was a member of the Niger Valley Exploring
Expedition, and afterward lectured upon Africa in
various parts of England. During the Civil
War he served as a soldier and was a member
of General Saxton's staff while the latter was
in command at Port Royal, South Carolina. Dr.

Delany died January 24, 1885, at the age of
seventy.

Among the early Negro abolitionists were Richard
Allen and Absalom Jones, the founders of "The
Free African Society," of Philadelphia. This
society opened a communication with the Negroes
in Boston, Newport, Rhode Island and other
places and coöperated with the abolition societies
in 1790, in studying the conditions of the free
blacks. In 1799 and 1800, Absalom Jones led
the Negroes of Philadelphia to draw up a petition
to the Legislature, praying for the immediate
abolition of slavery, and to send another petition
to Congress against the Fugitive Slave Law, and
in favour of prospective emancipation for all
Negroes.

These two men, Richard Alien and Absalom
Jones, were, a little later, supported in their efforts
for abolition by James Forten, a sail-maker by
trade; a man of education, and of considerable
means. James Forten received his education in
the school of the Quaker abolitionist, Anthony
Benezet, and is described as "a gentleman by
nature, easy in manner and easy in intercourse."
In 1814, Mr. Forten, with the assistance of Jones
and Alien, assisted in raising 2,500 coloured volunteers
for the protection of the city of Philadelphia,
which was then threatened by the English warships.
A battalion was also formed for service in

the field, but, before it reached the front, the war
with Great Britain had come to an end.

In 1817, James Forten was chairman of the first
convention of free Negroes held in Philadelphia.
It is said that he drew up the first resolutions of
protest against the work of the Colonisation Society,
which declared "that we never will separate
ourselves voluntarily from the slave population in
this country. They are our brethren by the ties
of blood, of suffering and of wrong, and we feel
that there is more virtue in suffering privations with
them than in gaining fancied advantages for a
season." Mr. Forten was a firm friend and supporter
of William Lloyd Garrison, who refers to
him as "the greatly esteemed and venerated sail-maker
of Philadelphia." In the early days of
the anti-slavery agitation, when Garrison found so
little support for his paper that he believed he would
have to give it up, James Forten several times
came to his rescue, at one time sending him fifty-four
dollars for twenty-seven subscribers to the
Liberator, and at another time assuming a considerable
part of the indebtedness which that paper
had incurred.

James Forten was born in 1766, in Philadelphia;
he died in 1842. He was a friend of Whittier, the
Quaker poet, among whose uncollected poems
are some verses, written in 1833, but first published
in the New York Independent, November, 1906,

entitled, "To the Daughters of James Forten."
Two grandchildren of James Forten are now
living in Washington, D. C. One of these is the
wife of Dr. Charles B. Purvis, son of Robert Purvis,
and formerly surgeon-in-chief of the Freedman's
hospital; the other is Mrs. Charlotte Forten Grimke,
the wife of the well-known Presbyterian minister,
Rev. Francis J. Grimke.

One of the interesting results of the anti-slavery
agitation was the opening of Oberlin College to
Negroes. This grew out of the anti-slavery discussions
which took place among the students of
Lane Seminary, at Cincinnati, Ohio. Out of one
hundred or more students in attendance in 1833,
more than half were Southerners. In 1834, there
was a debate in the Chapel on the subject of
slavery which lasted for eighteen consecutive nights.
During that debate James Bradley, a former slave,
who had purchased his freedom, was allowed to
give his testimony. He made a speech lasting two
hours, speaking in favour of the abolition of slavery
and of the measures of the Colonisation Society.
Bradley was born in Africa, but stolen from that
country when he was a child. His master, who
lived in Arkansas, died when he was eighteen
years old. For some years afterward he acted
as manager of the plantation for his mistress,
and finally purchased his time by the year.
After five years he paid $655 for his freedom

and emigrated to free territory with $200 in his
possession.

As a result of that debate, two Southern students
became abolitionists, and afterward the students
generally began to start Sunday and day schools
for Negro children in Cincinnati. A report of
the debate, which was written by one of these
Southern students and published in pamphlet, says
of Bradley: "He is now a beloved and respected
member of this institution."

When in August, 1834, the trustees of the school
voted that thenceforth there should be no discussion
of slavery in any public room of the Seminary,
fifty-one of the students left the school in a body.
Just about this time, December, 1833, the Oberlin
Collegiate Institution had been established, and the
seceding students were invited to come there. The
result was that Oberlin was open to students,
"irrespective of colour." Since that time it is probable
that nearly as many coloured students have
been graduated from Oberlin as have been graduated
from all other colleges in the North put together,
outside of a few schools exclusively for Negroes. It
is interesting to note that this result was brought
about, to some extent, at least, by the eloquence of
an untutored Negro orator.

Negro anti-slavery agitators, largely because of
their lack of education, were almost always more
influential as speakers than they were as writers.

Nevertheless, the Negro people were not wholly
without anti-slavery writers during the period of the
struggle for freedom. The first Negro paper published
in the United States was an anti-slavery
sheet called Freedom's Journal." This was published
by John B. Russwurm, a graduate of Bowdoin
College. The circumstances under which it was
established were these: There was published in
New York City a paper which was violent in its attacks
upon coloured Americans. Some of the prominent
coloured men, among them the Rev. Samuel
Cornish, met at the home of Boston Crummell and
determined to establish a paper through which
they could answer these attacks. As a result of
this conference the Freedom's Journal was launched.
Among the contributors was David Walker, the
author of "Walker's Appeal," a little pamphlet
printed in 1829.[4] The "Appeal" was, so far as
I am able to learn, the first attack upon slavery
made by a Negro through the medium of the press.
Another contributor to this paper was Stephen
Smith, who, as a lumber merchant at Columbia,
Pennsylvania, amassed a considerable fortune, with
which he afterward endowed a home for aged and
infirm Negroes in Philadelphia, giving the institution
$50,000 during his lifetime and $50,000 more at
his death. This paper seems to have been favourable
to the work of the Colonisation Society. Its
first two numbers contain among other things an
article entitled, "The Memoirs of Paul Cuffe,"
who some years before had taken a ship-load of
free coloured people to Sierra Leone.

John Brown Russwurm was born in 1799 at
Port Antonio, Jamaica. He was taken to Quebec
by his father, who was a white man, and there put
to school. Shortly after, his father came to Maine
and married. After his father died, Mrs. Russwurm,
who had become deeply interested in her stepson,
gave him a college education. After leaving college,
he was for a time the teacher of the coloured public
school in Boston. In 1829, he went to Africa and
became superintendent of the public schools of
Liberia. At the same time he edited the Liberia
Herald. In 1836, he was appointed Governor of
Maryland, at Cape Palmas, and continued in that
position until his death in 1851.

Another paper of some influence, known as the
Coloured American, was started in 1837, by Philip
A. Bell. The editor of this paper, which was
published at 9 Spruce Street, New York City, was
Charles B. Ray. Between the date of the publication
of the Coloured American and Frederick Douglass's
North Star, which was started ten years later, in

1847, several other papers were launched by coloured
men. One of these was the National Watchman,
edited by William G. Alien. He was assisted for
a time by Henry Highland Garnet. Mr. Garnet
had a remarkable career. He was born in slavery
in Kent County, Maryland, December 23, 1815.
His grandfather had been an African chief but
was captured and sold to the slave-traders, and
afterward became the property of Colonel William
Spencer. His father escaped from slavery and
sought protection with Thomas Garrett a Quaker
and noted anti-slavery man. In 1825, he went to
New York, where Henry Highland Garnet, his son,
entered the African Free School on Mulberry Street.
Among the students at the African Free School
at this time were Charles L. Reason, afterward
head of the coloured high school in Philadelphia,
George T. Downing, at one time a noted caterer
in Washington, D. C., and Ira Aldridge, the coloured
actor.

Young Garnet subsequently attended the high
school established for coloured people on Canal
Street, and when this was closed he went to the famous
school at Canaan, New Hampshire, and finally
was graduated at the Oneida Institute at Whitesboro,
New York. In 1850 he visited Great Britain,
from there he went as a delegate to the Peace Conference,
at Frankfort-on-the-Main; was a missionary
for some time to Jamaica; chaplain of a

coloured regiment during the War; president of
Avery Institute at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; the
first coloured man to hold religious services in
Representatives' Chamber of Congress at Washington,
D. C. He finally died as Minister Resident in
Liberia, February 14, 1882.

After Frederick Douglass entered the anti-slavery
field most of the efforts of the coloured people to
secure their freedom centered about him. He was
an orator of unusual gifts and devoted himself
with such singleness of purpose to the task of
securing freedom and recognition for his people
that he soon became the recognised leader of the
coloured people.

Among those who were associated with Frederick
Douglass at this time were Samuel R. Ward, H. Ford
Douglass, John M. Langston, William Howard Day,
and Mifflin W. Gibbs. William C. Nell, the author
of a book on "The Coloured Patriots of the Revolution,"
assisted him for some time in the publication
of the North Star. Mr. Nell was a friend
of Garrison and other anti-slavery men, and when
he died in Boston, May 25, 1874, William Lloyd
Garrison was one of the speakers at his funeral.

Contemporaneous with Frederick Douglass's
paper, The North Star, which was published at
Rochester, was the Ram's Horn, published by W.
A. Hodges at 141 Fulton Street, New York City,
and The Alienated American, published by William

Howard Day, at Cleveland, Ohio. A little later,
in 1855, The Mirror of the Times, published by
Mifflin W. Gibbs, was started at San Francisco,
California.

The anti-slavery people to whom I have thus
far referred were for the most part fugitive slaves
or coloured men who were under the influence of
the Northern abolitionists. But there were other
Negroes in the Southern states who, by their lives
and actions, exercised a very positive influence
upon anti-slavery sentiment in the South. In a
"History of the Anti-slavery Leaders of North
Carolina," Professor John Spencer Bassett, of
Trinity College, has given a sketch of one of these
men, Lunsford Lane, whom he reckons among the
four prominent abolitionists of North Carolina.

Lunsford Lane was a slave of Mr. Sherwood Haywood,
a prominent citizen of Raleigh, North Carolina.
His parents, of pure African descent, were
employed as house-servants in the city of Raleigh.
In this way, Lunsford had an opportunity to hear
the speeches of many prominent men of the day,
among others John C. Calhoun. He waited on
Lafayette, when he passed through Raleigh in 1824,
and was greatly impressed by what he heard this
great man say in regard to his hope of ultimate
freedom for the slave. Once he heard a Presbyterian
minister, Dr. McPheeters, say: "It is
impossible to enslave an intelligent people." The

words made a great impression upon him. As a
matter of fact, he had early learned to read and
write, for at that time this privilege was not yet
denied slaves in North Carolina.

It was a custom among the coloured boys of the
town, to assemble every Sunday afternoon at a
mineral spring in the outskirts of Raleigh in order
to discuss, in imitation of the white people, the
public questions of the day. At these meetings
the slaves, who had had the advantages of hearing
these questions discussed, would repeat with great
exactness the speeches that they had heard during
the week. Frequently the white people attended
these meetings and a master who owned a particularly
bright slave would take great pride in any
exhibition of unusual intelligence his slave showed
at these meetings, and would encourage him to
improve still further. After the Northampton
Insurrection, when it was believed that these
meetings had the effect of turning the minds of
slaves toward freedom, they were very strictly
prohibited. Lunsford Lane grew up, however,
where he had the benefit of these opportunities.

Lane early began to save with the purpose of
purchasing his freedom, the money which was given
him from time to time. He was given considerable
liberty by his master and was able to employ his
leisure time in occupations that increased the sum
of his savings. Young Lane's father had, in some

way or other, come into possession of a secret
method of making a superior kind of smoking
tobacco, and, as he grew older, father and son now
began to manufacture this kind of tobacco on
their own account. In order to have opportunity
to carry on this trade Lane hired his time, paying
for it from $100 to $120 a year. The demand for
his tobacco grew rapidly; he enlarged his plant
and made arrangements by which he was able to sell
the product in the neighbouring towns of Fayetteville,
Salisbury, and Chapel Hill. At the end of
eight years he had saved a thousand dollars. With
this sum he went to Mr. Benjamin R. Smith, who
was the owner of his wife, and, putting his money
in his hands, engaged him to negotiate with his
mistress for his freedom.

As soon as he had secured his freedom, Lane
was able to extend his business. He added to the
manufacture of tobacco the making of pipes. He
also opened a wood-yard and bought horses and
wagons for use in connection with it. In 1839, he
bought a house and lot, for which he paid $500.
As soon as he had secured his own freedom he made
it the one object of his life to buy his wife, and
children, of whom there were now six. Mr. Smith
offered to sell them for $3,000, but as his wife and
her children had been purchased eight years earlier
for $560 it seemed that $3,000, an advance of
$2,340, was too much to pay. Mr. Smith, after

some negotiation, reduced the price to $2,500 and
Lunsford Lane gave five notes for $500 each and
received in return the latter's obligation to sign a
bill of sale for the whole family when the notes
were paid.

"His achievement," says Professor Bassett, "had
been wonderful, and is an indication of what a
policy of gradual emancipation might have done
in developing his race, could circumstances have
been so shaped that it might have been entered
upon. He had paid $1,000 for his freedom, he had
paid $1,000 in yearly wages while he was hiring
his time; had supported himself and helped support
his family in the meantime; and paid $500 for his
home, and had a good business in his own name."[5]

Although he dressed poorly, fared as simply
as if he were a slave, and had been careful, as he
said, to seem, if possible, to be less intelligent than
he actually was, his prosperity had already begun
to attract the notice of a certain class of whites
and, as several other Negroes in Raleigh were
beginning to make progress in the same way, some
of the white people thought it was likely to have
a bad effect on the slaves. For that reason they
determined to run him out of the community.

The circumstances under which he had obtained
his freedom enabled them to do this without much

difficulty. Since, under the laws of North Carolina,
he was not able to buy his own freedom, he had
gone to New York State to have the articles of
emancipation executed. As he had, however,
returned to North Carolina, he came under the
provisions of the law which forbade free Negroes
from other states from coming into North Carolina
to live. Free Negroes who violated this act and
did not remove out of the state within twenty days
after notice had been served on them, were liable
to a fine of $500, in default of which they could
be sold for ten years. About the first of November,
1840, Lane received notification from two justices
of the peace that, unless he left the state within the
twenty days prescribed by the law, he would be
prosecuted under the statute.

At this time Lane was a private messenger and
janitor in the office of the Governor of the state. He
at once appealed to Mr. C. C. Battle, private secretary
to Governor Dudley, who took up the matter
with the prosecuting attorney and secured from
him a promise that the prosecution would be suspended
until January 1. The purpose of this
delay was to get a private law through the Legislature
allowing him to remain in the state until he had
finished paying for his family. Other free Negroes
in the town who were buying their families had
received similar notices and they, too, petitioned
the Legislature. The petitions were referred to a

committee which brought in a favourable report.
The bill dragged along, Lane and the other free
Negroes following its course, as well as they were
able, from information they were able to obtain
outside the building, since at the time no Negro
was allowed to enter the Chamber of either of the
Houses when in session. Finally, a member came
out and said: "Well, Lunsford, the Negro bill is
killed."

This announcement was a great blow to Lane
and his companions, but they bowed to the inevitable
and made no open complaint against the decision.
Nothing was now left for Lane and his companions
but to emigrate to the North, leaving their families
behind them. Lane had already paid Mr. Smith
$620 on his indebtedness, of which amount $250 was
in payment for one child, whom he took North
with him and left with friends. Mr. Smith now
agreed to accept the house and lot in Raleigh for
$500, provided the balance of $1,380 should be
paid in cash. These arrangements having been
completed, he started for the North.

Lane had made some friends in New York during
his previous visit there to secure his own freedom.
These friends now assisted him to raise the necessary
money to secure the freedom of the remaining
members of his family. Most of this money he
secured by going about the country as a lecturer,
telling in simple and straightforward fashion the

circumstances under which he had been compelled
to leave his home. Early in 1842 he wrote to his
friend, Mr. Smith, in Raleigh asking him to obtain
from the Government a written permission to return
and get his family. The Governor replied that he
had no authority to grant such a privilege but thought
it would be perfectly safe for him to come to Raleigh,
provided he stayed no longer than twenty days.
So it was that on Saturday, April 23, 1842, the
ex-slave was again in the city of his birth. He
remained with his family during Sunday morning
and on Monday morning went to the store of Mr.
Smith to have a settlement. Before he could transact
his business, however, he was arrested and taken
before the Mayor on a charge of "delivering abolition
lectures in Massachusetts."

In reply to this charge Lunsford Lane made a
statement before the Mayor's court which, because
it was the only abolition speech, so far as I know,
ever made by a coloured man before a Southern
audience, I am disposed to quote at some length.

Lunsford Lane's report of the proceedings was
as follows:

After Lane had made this statement Mr. Loring,
the Mayor, held a whispered consultation with
some of the leading men of the city who were present,
and then remarked that he saw nothing criminal in
what had been done. He called upon any one present
to make a statement, but no one had anything to
say, and Lunsford Lane was therefore discharged.

As Lane was leaving the Mayor's office, however,
he was warned that a crowd was waiting outside
the building for him and that he had better go
directly to the train. He made arrangements
with the Mayor to take his money and settle with
Mr. Smith and send on the liberated wife and
children to Philadelphia. After this was done
he started for the train and succeeded in reaching
the station as the train was about to leave. The
crowd had, however, followed him and refused to
allow the train to depart until they had him in
their hands. The Mayor was present and appealed
in vain to the mob to allow Lane to go. Members
of the crowd demanded the Negro's trunk to be
searched for abolition literature. While their
attention was directed to this task the fugitive was
hurried to the jail for protection.

"Looking out from my prison window," said
Lane in his account of the affair, "I could see my
trunk in the hands of officers Scott and Johnston,
and others who were taking it to the city hall for
examination. I learned afterward that they broke
open my trunk and as the lid flew up, the mob
cried out, 'A paper, a paper!' A number seized it
at once and set up a yell of wild delight. Among
the crowd was a young man of profligate character,
a son of one of the most respectable families in the
place. When the paper was discovered, he glanced
upward toward my prison window and by signs
and words expressed his satisfaction.

"The paper proved to be entirely inoffensive, and
as nothing further was found in the carpet bag
which they searched, the crowd was quiet for a
time."

At night, acting upon the advice of his friends,
Lane was released from the prison and started for
the home of Mr. William Boylan, who was so highly
esteemed in Raleigh at that time that it was believed
his house would be a safe asylum for the fugitive.
It was nine o'clock at night when he left the jail.
He had only gone a few yards, however, when he
was seized and drawn away to "an old pine field,"
where a gallows stood. At first he thought they
intended to hang him, but finally a bucket of tar
and a feather pillow were brought, and then he
understood that they intended nothing worse than

a coat of tar and feathers. After he had been daubed
with tar, and the feathers had been poured over
him, his watch and clothes were handed him and
he was allowed to go home. Some of the crowd,
however, continued to follow him and, as they
laughingly watched him remove the tar and feathers,
said he might now remain in town as long as he
chose.

By this time his friends had become alarmed
and appealed to the Governor for protection. He
had gone to the home of his friend, Mr. Smith, to
pass the night and a detail of soldiers was furnished
by the Governor as his guard there. In the morning
he settled his business matters and made ready to
start with his family for Philadelphia. He went
to say farewell to his former mistress, who was
then a very old lady. In describing the scene at
the home of his former mistress, Lane says:

The story of the treatment which Lane had
received had caused the greatest excitement in the
city and many of the best citizens in the town now
came to his assistance. They gave him food enough
to last on his journey; sent a carriage to take him
and his family to the station and arranged with the
conductor to stop on the edge of the town to take
him on, his family having previously been placed
on the train at the station. This was accomplished
in safety and the whole party started North. A
member of the previous day's mob who happened
to be on the train made an effort to excite bystanders
at the stations at which they stopped to board the
train and to drag out the escaping abolitionist, but
was unsuccessful.

Lunsford Lane went to live first in Boston,
Massachusetts, and after then in Oberlin, Ohio.
Two of his children having died there, however,
he returned to Boston. He was employed for a
time as a lecturer by the Anti-slavery Society but
he seems to have had none of the vehemence of
the average abolitionist and was never entirely
contented with his life in the Northern country.
During the War he acted as a hospital nurse, and
when the question arose as to what would become

of the freedman, he made several public addresses,
in which he showed great practical sense and
understanding. He emphasised particularly the
need of better education and better agriculture
in the South. Among other things he said:

Lunsford Lane remained, to the end, a true son
of the South. In spite of the fact that he had been
driven out of his native land, he seems to have cherished
no bitterness against the people of his native
state and city. If he had some enemies there, he
had had many friends, the memory of whose kindness
he never forgot. Perhaps I can not do better,
in concluding what I have to say about this man,
than to quote the words of Professor Bassett in
regard to him: