 | Incidents in the life of a slave girl |  |
XXVII.
NEW DESTINATION FOR THE CHILDREN.
Mrs. Flint proclaimed her intention of informing
Mrs. Sands who was the father of my children. She
likewise proposed to tell her what an artful devil I was;
that I had made a great deal of trouble in her family;
that when Mr. Sands was at the north, she didn't
doubt I had followed him in disguise, and persuaded
William to run away. She had some reason to entertain
such an idea; for I had written from the north,
from time to time, and I dated my letters from various
places. Many of them fell into Dr. Flint's hands, as I
expected they would; and he must have come to the
conclusion that I travelled about a good deal. He
kept a close watch over my children, thinking they
would eventually lead to my detection.
A new and unexpected trial was in store for me.
One day, when Mr. Sands and his wife were walking
in the street, they met Benny. The lady took a fancy
to him, and exclaimed, “What a pretty little negro!
Whom does he belong to?”
Benny did not hear the answer; but he came home
very indignant with the stranger lady, because she had
called him a negro. A few days afterwards, Mr. Sands
called on my grandmother, and told her he wanted her
to take the children to his house. He said he had
informed his wife of his relation to them, and told her
they were motherless; and she wanted to see them.
When he had gone, my grandmother came and asked
what I would do. The question seemed a mockery.
What could I do? They were Mr. Sands's slaves, and
their mother was a slave, whom he had represented to
be dead. Perhaps he thought I was. I was too much
pained and puzzled to come to any decision; and the
children were carried without my knowledge.
Mrs. Sands had a sister from Illinois staying with
her. This lady, who had no children of her own, was
so much pleased with Ellen, that she offered to adopt
her, and bring her up as she would a daughter. Mrs.
Sands wanted to take Benjamin. When grandmother
reported this to me, I was tried almost beyond endurance.
Was this all I was to gain by what I had suffered
for the sake of having my children free? True,
the prospect seemed fair; but I knew too well how
lightly slaveholders held such “parental relations.”
If pecuniary troubles should come, or if the new wife
required more money than could conveniently be
spared, my children might be thought of as a convenient
means of raising funds. I had no trust in
thee, O Slavery! Never should I know peace till my
children were emancipated with all due formalities of
law.
I was too proud to ask Mr. Sands to do any thing for
my own benefit; but I could bring myself to become a
supplicant for my children. I resolved to remind him
of the promise he had made me, and to throw myself
upon his honor for the performance of it. I persuaded
my grandmother to go to him, and tell him I was not
dead, and that I earnestly entreated him to keep the
promise he had made me; that I had heard of the
feel easy to accept them; that he had promised to
emancipate them, and it was time for him to redeem
his pledge. I knew there was some risk in thus betraying
that I was in the vicinity; but what will not a
mother do for her children? He received the message
with surprise, and said, “The children are free. I
have never intended to claim them as slaves. Linda
may decide their fate. In my opinion, they had better
be sent to the north. I don't think they are quite
safe here. Dr. Flint boasts that they are still in his
power. He says they were his daughter's property,
and as she was not of age when they were sold, the
contract is not legally binding.”
So, then, after all I had endured for their sakes, my
poor children were between two fires; between my old
master and their new master! And I was powerless.
There was no protecting arm of the law for me to invoke.
Mr. Sands proposed that Ellen should go, for
the present, to some of his relatives, who had removed
to Brooklyn, Long Island. It was promised that she
should be well taken care of, and sent to school. I
consented to it, as the best arrangement I could make
for her. My grandmother, of course, negotiated it all;
and Mrs. Sands knew of no other person in the transaction.
She proposed that they should take Ellen with
them to Washington, and keep her till they had a good
chance of sending her, with friends, to Brooklyn. She
had an infant daughter. I had had a glimpse of it, as
the nurse passed with it in her arms. It was not a
pleasant thought to me, that the bondwoman's child
should tend her free-born sister; but there was no alternative.
how it tried my heart to send her away, so young, alone,
among strangers! Without a mother's love to shelter
her from the storms of life; almost without memory
of a mother! I doubted whether she and Benny would
have for me the natural affection that children feel for
a parent. I thought to myself that I might perhaps
never see my daughter again, and I had a great desire
that she should look upon me, before she went, that
she might take my image with her in her memory. It
seemed to me cruel to have her brought to my dungeon.
It was sorrow enough for her young heart to
know that her mother was a victim of slavery, without
seeing the wretched hiding-place to which it had driven
her. I begged permission to pass the last night in one
of the open chambers, with my little girl. They
thought I was crazy to think of trusting such a young
child with my perilous secret. I told them I had
watched her character, and I felt sure she would not
betray me; that I was determined to have an interview,
and if they would not facilitate it, I would take
my own way to obtain it. They remonstrated against
the rashness of such a proceeding; but finding they
could not change my purpose, they yielded. I slipped
through the trap-door into the storeroom, and my uncle
kept watch at the gate, while I passed into the piazza
and went up stairs, to the room I used to occupy. It
was more than five years since I had seen it; and how
the memories crowded on me! There I had taken
shelter when my mistress drove me from her house;
there came my old tyrant, to mock, insult, and curse
me; there my children were first laid in my arms;
and sadder love; there I had knelt to God, in anguish
of heart, to forgive the wrong I had done. How vividly
it all came back! And after this long, gloomy
interval, I stood there such a wreck!
In the midst of these meditations, I heard footsteps
on the stairs. The door opened, and my uncle Phillip
came in, leading Ellen by the hand. I put my arms
round her, and said, “Ellen, my dear child, I am your
mother.” She drew back a little, and looked at me;
then, with sweet confidence, she laid her cheek against
mine, and I folded her to the heart that had been so
long desolated. She was the first to speak. Raising
her head, she said, inquiringly, “You really are my
mother?” I told her I really was; that during all
the long time she had not seen me, I had loved her
most tenderly; and that now she was going away, I
wanted to see her and talk with her, that she might
remember me. With a sob in her voice, she said,
“I'm glad you've come to see me; but why didn't you
ever come before? Benny and I have wanted so much
to see you! He remembers you, and sometimes he
tells me about you. Why didn't you come home when
Dr. Flint went to bring you?”
I answered, “I couldn't come before, dear. But
now that I am with you, tell me whether you like to
go away.” “I don't know,” said she, crying. “Grandmother
says I ought not to cry; that I am going to a
good place, where I can learn to read and write, and
that by and by I can write her a letter. But I shan't
have Benny, or grandmother, or uncle Phillip, or any
body to love me. Can't you go with me? O, do go,
dear mother!”
I told her I couldn't go now; but sometime I would
come to her, and then she and Benny and I would live
together, and have happy times. She wanted to run
and bring Benny to see me now. I told her he was
going to the north, before long, with uncle Phillip,
and then I would come to see him before he went
away. I asked if she would like to have me stay all
night and sleep with her. “O, yes,” she replied.
Then, turning to her uncle, she said, pleadingly, “May
I stay? Please, uncle! She is my own mother.”
He laid his hand on her head, and said, solemnly,
“Ellen, this is the secret you have promised grandmother
never to tell. If you ever speak of it to any
body, they will never let you see your grandmother
again, and your mother can never come to Brooklyn.”
“Uncle,” she replied, “I will never tell.” He told
her she might stay with me; and when he had gone, I
took her in my arms and told her I was a slave, and
that was the reason she must never say she had seen
me. I exhorted her to be a good child, to try to please
the people where she was going, and that God would
raise her up friends. I told her to say her prayers,
and remember always to pray for her poor mother, and
that God would permit us to meet again. She wept,
and I did not check her tears. Perhaps she would
never again have a chance to pour her tears into a
mother's bosom. All night she nestled in my arms,
and I had no inclination to slumber. The moments
were too precious to lose any of them. Once, when I
thought she was asleep, I kissed her forehead softly,
and she said, “I am not asleep, dear mother.”
Before dawn they came to take me back to my den.
my child. The moonlight shone on her face, and I
bent over her, as I had done years before, that wretched
night when I ran away. I hugged her close to my
throbbing heart; and tears, too sad for such young
eyes to shed, flowed down her cheeks, as she gave her
last kiss, and whispered in my ear, “Mother, I will
never tell.” And she never did.
When I got back to my den, I threw myself on the
bed and wept there alone in the darkness. It seemed
as if my heart would burst. When the time for Ellen's
departure drew nigh, I could hear neighbors and
friends saying to her, “Good by, Ellen. I hope your
poor mother will find you out. Won't you be glad to
see her!” She replied, “Yes, ma'am;” and they
little dreamed of the weighty secret that weighed down
her young heart. She was an affectionate child, but
naturally very reserved, except with those she loved,
and I felt secure that my secret would be safe with her.
I heard the gate close after her, with such feelings as
only a slave mother can experience. During the day
my meditations were very sad. Sometimes I feared I
had been very selfish not to give up all claim to her,
and let her go to Illinois, to be adopted by Mrs. Sands's
sister. It was my experience of slavery that decided
me against it. I feared that circumstances might arise
that would cause her to be sent back. I felt confident
that I should go to New York myself; and then I
should be able to watch over her, and in some degree
protect her.
Dr. Flint's family knew nothing of the proposed
arrangement till after Ellen was gone, and the news
Sands's sister to inquire into the matter. She expressed
her opinion very freely as to the respect Mr.
Sands showed for his wife, and for his own character,
in acknowledging those “young niggers.” And as for
sending Ellen away, she pronounced it to be just as
much stealing as it would be for him to come and take
a piece of furniture out of her parlor. She said her
daughter was not of age to sign the bill of sale, and
the children were her property; and when she became
of age, or was married, she could take them, wherever
she could lay hands on them.
Miss Emily Flint, the little girl to whom I had been
bequeathed, was now in her sixteenth year. Her
mother considered it all right and honorable for her,
or her future husband, to steal my children; but she
did not understand how any body could hold up their
heads in respectable society, after they had purchased
their own children, as Mr. Sands had done. Dr. Flint
said very little. Perhaps he thought that Benny would
be less likely to be sent away if he kept quiet. One
of my letters, that fell into his hands, was dated from
Canada; and he seldom spoke of me now. This state
of things enabled me to slip down into the storeroom
more frequently, where I could stand upright, and
move my limbs more freely.
Days, weeks, and months passed, and there came no
news of Ellen. I sent a letter to Brooklyn, written in
my grandmother's name, to inquire whether she had
arrived there. Answer was returned that she had not.
I wrote to her in Washington; but no notice was taken
of it. There was one person there, who ought to have
friends at home; but the links of such relations as he
had formed with me, are easily broken and cast away
as rubbish. Yet how protectingly and persuasively
he once talked to the poor, helpless slave girl! And
how entirely I trusted him! But now suspicions darkened
my mind. Was my child dead, or had they deceived
me, and sold her?
If the secret memoirs of many members of Congress
should be published, curious details would be unfolded.
I once saw a letter from a member of Congress to a
slave, who was the mother of six of his children. He
wrote to request that she would send her children away
from the great house before his return, as he expected
to be accompanied by friends. The woman could not
read, and was obliged to employ another to read the
letter. The existence of the colored children did not
trouble this gentleman, it was only the fear that
friends might recognize in their features a resemblance
to him.
At the end of six months, a letter came to my grandmother,
from Brooklyn. It was written by a young
lady in the family, and announced that Ellen had just
arrived. It contained the following message from her:
“I do try to do just as you told me to, and I pray for
you every night and morning.” I understood that
these words were meant for me; and they were a
balsam to my heart. The writer closed her letter by
saying, “Ellen is a nice little girl, and we shall like to
have her with us. My cousin, Mr. Sands, has given
her to me, to be my little waiting maid. I shall send
her to school, and I hope some day she will write to
Had my child's father merely placed her there till she
was old enough to support herself? Or had he given
her to his cousin, as a piece of property? If the last
idea was correct, his cousin might return to the south
at any time, and hold Ellen as a slave. I tried to put
away from me the painful thought that such a foul
wrong could have been done to us. I said to myself,
“Surely there must be some justice in man;” then I
remembered, with a sigh, how slavery perverted all
the natural feelings of the human heart. It gave me
a pang to look on my light-hearted boy. He believed
himself free; and to have him brought under the yoke
of slavery, would be more than I could bear. How I
longed to have him safely out of the reach of its power!
| Incidents in the life of a slave girl | |