University of Virginia Library

VIII.
WHAT SLAVES ARE TAUGHT TO THINK OF
THE NORTH.

Slaveholders pride themselves upon being honorable
men; but if you were to hear the enormous lies
they tell their slaves, you would have small respect for
their veracity. I have spoken plain English. Pardon
me. I cannot use a milder term. When they visit
the north, and return home, they tell their slaves of
the runaways they have seen, and describe them to be
in the most deplorable condition. A slaveholder once
told me that he had seen a runaway friend of mine in
New York, and that she besought him to take her back
to her master, for she was literally dying of starvation;
that many days she had only one cold potato to
eat, and at other times could get nothing at all. He
said he refused to take her, because he knew her
master would not thank him for bringing such a miserable
wretch to his house. He ended by saying to
me, “This is the punishment she brought on herself
for running away from a kind master.”

This whole story was false. I afterwards staid with
that friend in New York, and found her in comfortable
circumstances. She had never thought of such
a thing as wishing to go back to slavery. Many of
the slaves believe such stories, and think it is not worth
while to exchange slavery for such a hard kind of freedom.
It is difficult to persuade such that freedom

could make them useful men, and enable them to protect
their wives and children. If those heathen in our
Christian land had as much teaching as some Hindoos,
they would think otherwise. They would know that
liberty is more valuable than life. They would begin
to understand their own capabilities, and exert themselves
to become men and women.

But while the Free States sustain a law which hurls
fugitives back into slavery, how can the slaves resolve
to become men? There are some who strive to protect
wives and daughters from the insults of their
masters; but those who have such sentiments have had
advantages above the general mass of slaves. They
have been partially civilized and Christianized by favorable
circumstances. Some are bold enough to utter
such sentiments to their masters. O, that there were
more of them!

Some poor creatures have been so brutalized by the
lash that they will sneak out of the way to give their
masters free access to their wives and daughters. Do
you think this proves the black man to belong to an
inferior order of beings? What would you be, if you
had been born and brought up a slave, with generations
of slaves for ancestors? I admit that the black
man is inferior. But what is it that makes him so?
It is the ignorance in which white men compel him to
live; it is the torturing whip that lashes manhood out
of him; it is the fierce bloodhounds of the South, and
the scarcely less cruel human bloodhounds of the
north, who enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. They do
the work.

Southern gentlemen indulge in the most contemptuous

expressions about the Yankees, while they, on
their part, consent to do the vilest work for them, such
as the ferocious bloodhounds and the despised negro-hunters
are employed to do at home. When southerners
go to the north, they are proud to do them
honor; but the northern man is not welcome south of
Mason and Dixon's line, unless he suppresses every
thought and feeling at variance with their “peculiar
institution.” Nor is it enough to be silent. The masters
are not pleased, unless they obtain a greater degree
of subservience than that; and they are generally
accomodated. Do they respect the northerner
for this? I trow not. Even the slaves despise “a
northern man with southern principles;” and that is
the class they generally see. When northerners go to
the south to reside, they prove very apt scholars.
They soon imbibe the sentiments and disposition of
their neighbors, and generally go beyond their teachers.
Of the two, they are proverbially the hardest masters.

They seem to satisfy their consciences with the doctrine
that God created the Africans to be slaves. What
a libel upon the heavenly Father, who “made of one
blood all nations of men!” And then who are Africans?
Who can measure the amount of Anglo-Saxon
blood coursing in the veins of American slaves?

I have spoken of the pains slaveholders take to give
their slaves a bad opinion of the north; but, notwithstanding
this, intelligent slaves are aware that they
have many friends in the Free States. Even the most
ignorant have some confused notions about it. They
knew that I could read; and I was often asked if I
had seen any thing in the newspapers about white folks

over in the big north, who were trying to get their
freedom for them. Some believe that the abolitionists
have already made them free, and that it is established
by law, but that their masters prevent the law from
going into effect. One woman begged me to get a
newspaper and read it over. She said her husband
told her that the black people had sent word to the
queen of 'Merica that they were all slaves; that she
didn't believe it, and went to Washington city to see
the president about it. They quarrelled; she drew
her sword upon him, and swore that he should help
her to make them all free.

That poor, ignorant woman thought that America
was governed by a Queen, to whom the President was
subordinate. I wish the President was subordinate to
Queen Justice.