University of Virginia Library

45. CHAPTER XLV.
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 parallel 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, without a possibility
of being brought to justice, 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 states 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!