There is, perhaps, little need of detaining the kind reader, even for one moment, in this the vestibule of our Temple of Liberty, to state the motives and reasons for the publication of this collection of Anti-slavery testimonies.
The good cause to which the volume is devoted;—the influence which must ever be exerted by persons of exalted character, and high mental endowments;—the fact that society is slow to accept any cause that has not the baptism of the acknowledged noble and good;—the happiness arising from making any exertion to ameliorate the condition of the injured race amongst us, will, at once, suggest reasons and motives for sending forth this offering, which, while it shall prove acceptable as a Gift Book, may help to swell the tide of that sentiment that, by the Divine blessing, will sweep away from this otherwise happy land, the great sin of SLAVERY.
Should this publication be instrumental in casting one ray of hope on the heart of one poor slave, or should it draw the attention of one person, hitherto uninterested, to the deep wrongs of the bondman, or cause one sincere and earnest effort to promote emancipation, we believe that the kind contributors, who have generously responded to our call, not less than the members of our Society, will feel themselves gratified and compensated.
The proceeds of the sale of the “Autographs for Freedom,” will be devoted to the dissemination of light and truth on the subject of slavery throughout the country.
On behalf of “The Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society,”
JULIA GRIFFITHS, Secretary.
Rochester, 1852.
AUTOGRAPHS FOR FREEDOM.
Can nothing be done for Freedom? Yes, much can be done. Everything can be done. Slavery can be confined within its present bounds. It can be meliorated. It can be, and it must be abolished. The task is as simple as its performance would be beneficent and as its rewards would be glorious. It requires only that we follow this plain rule of conduct and course of activity, namely, to do, everywhere, and on every occasion what we can, and not to neglect nor refuse to do what we can at any time, because at that precise time and on that particular occasion we cannot do more. Circumstances define possibilities. When we have done our best to shape them and to make them propitious, we may rest satisfied that superior wisdom has, nevertheless, controlled them and us, and that it will be satisfied with us if we do all the good that shall then be found possible.
But we can, and we must begin deeper and lower than the composition and combination of factions. Wherein do the security and strength of slavery consist? You answer, in the constitution of the United States, and in the constitutions and laws of the slave-holding States. Not at all. It is in the erroneous sentiments of the American people. Constitutions and laws can no more rise above the virtue of the people than the limpid stream can climb above its native spring. Inculcate the love of freedom and the sacredness of the rights of man under the paternal roof. See to it, that they are taught in the schools and in the churches. Reform your own codes and expurgate the vestiges of slavery. Reform your own manners and customs and rise above the prejudices of caste. Receive the fugitive who lays his weary limbs at your door, and defend him as you would your household gods, for he, not they, has power to bring down blessings on your hearth. Correct your error that slavery has any constitutional guarantee that may not be released, and that ought not to be relinquished. Say to slavery, when it shows its bond and demands its pound of flesh, that if it draws one drop of blood its life shall pay the forfeit. Inculcate that the free States can exercise the rights of hospitality and humanity, that Congress knows no finality and can debate, that Congress can at least mediate with the slave-holding States, that at least future generations may be bought and given up to freedom. Do all this, and inculcate all this, in the spirit of moderation and benevolence, and not of retaliation and fanaticism, and you will ultimately bring the parties of this country into a common condemnation and even the slave-holding States themselves into a renunciation of slavery, which is not less necessary for them than for the common security and welfare. Whenever the public mind shall be prepared, and the public conscience shall demand the abolition of slavery the way to do it will open before us, and then mankind will be surprised at the ease with which the greatest of social and political evils can be removed.
William H. Seward.
He is not ashamed to call them brethren.
H. E. B. Stowe.
Andover, July 22, 1852.
London, July 8, 1852.
Madam:—
I should be very sorry indeed to refuse any request addressed to me from “the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Association.”
At the same time I really should feel at a loss what to send, but as I am on the point of sending off a letter to the authoress of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, I venture to submit a copy of it to those who I feel sure must be fond of such a countrywoman.
Your very faithful Servant,
Carlisle
London, July 8, 1852.
Madam:—
I have allowed some time to elapse before I thanked you for the great honor and kindness you did me in sending to me, from yourself, a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I thought it due to the subject of which I perceived that it treated, not to send a mere acknowledgment, as I confess from a motive of policy I am apt to do, upon the first arrival of the book. I therefore determined to read, before I wrote.
Having thus read, it is not in the stiff and conventional form of compliment, still less in the technical language of criticism, that I am about to speak of your work. I return my deep and solemn thanks to Almighty God, who has led and enabled you to write such a book.
I do feel, indeed, the most thorough assurance that in His good providence such a book cannot have been written in vain. I have long felt that slavery is by far the topping question of the world and age we live in, involving all that is most thrilling in heroism, and most touching in distress—in short, the real epic of the universe. The self-interest of the parties most nearly concerned on the one hand, the apathy and ignorance of unconcerned observers on the other, have left these august pretensions to drop very much out of sight, and hence my rejoicing that a writer has appeared who will be read, and must be felt, and that happen what may to the transactions of slavery, they will no longer be suppressed, “carent quia vate sacrâ.”
I trust that what I have just said was not required to show the entire sympathy I entertain with respect to the main truth and leading scope of your high argument, but we live in a world only too apt to regard the accessories and accidents of a subject above its real and vital essence; no one can know so well as you how much the external appearance of the negro detracts from the romance and sentimentality which undoubtedly might attach to his position and his wrongs, and on this account it does seem to me proportionately important that you should have brought to your portraiture great grace of style, great power of language, a play of humor which relieves and brightens even the dark depth of the back-ground which you were called upon to reveal, a force of pathos which, to give it the highest praise, does not lay behind even all the dread reality, and, above all, a variety, a discrimination, and a truth in the delineation of character, which even to my own scanty and limited experience of the society you describe accredits itself instantaneously and irresistibly. Seldom, indeed, could I more forcibly apply the line of a very favorite poet—
“And truths divine came mended from that tongue.”
I have been told that in an English periodical, the quality of genius has been denied to your book. The motives which must have guided its composition will probably have made you supremely indifferent to mere criticism, especially to any which argues so much obfuscation both of head and heart. Your work has genius of the highest order, and it is the lowest of its merits.
There is one point which, in face of all that your book has aimed at and achieved, I think of extremely slight importance, but which I will nevertheless just mention, if only to show that I have not been bribed into this fervor of admiration. I think, then, that whenever you speak of England and her institutions, it is in a tone which fails to do them fair justice. I do not know what distinct charges you think could be established against our aristocracy and capitalists, but you generally convey the impression that the same oppressions in degree, though not in kind, might be brought home to them which are now laid to the charge of Southern slave-holders. Exposed to the same ordeal, they might very probably not stand the test better. All I contend for is, that the circumstances in which they are placed, and the institutions by which they are surrounded, make the parallel wholly inapplicable. I cannot but suspect that your view has been in many respects derived from composers of fiction and others among ourselves who, writing with distinguished ability, have been more successful in delineating and dissecting the morbid features of our modern society, than in detecting the principle which is at fault, or suggesting the appropriate remedy. My own belief is, liable, if you please, to national bias, that our capitalists are very much the same sort of persons as your own in the Northern States, with the same mixtures and inequalities of motive and action. With respect to our aristocracy, I should really be tempted to say that, tried by their conduct on the question of Free Trade, they do not sustain an unfavorable comparison with your uppermost classes. Allow me to add, that when in one place you refer to those who have already emancipated their slaves, I think a case more directly in point than the proceedings of the Hungarian nobles might have been selected: such, at least, I feel sure would have been the case, if the passages in question had been written by one who certainly was keenly alive to the faults of England, but who did justice to her good qualities and deeds with a heartiness exceeding that of most of her own sons—your great and good Dr. Channing.
I need not repeat how irrelevant, after all, I feel what I have said upon this head to be to the main issues involved in your work; there is little doubt, too, that as a nation we have our special failings, and one of them probably is that we care too little about what other nations think of them.
Nor can I wish my countrymen ever to forget that their own past history should prevent them from being forward in casting accusations on their transatlantic brethren on the subject of slavery. With great ignorance of its actual miseries and horrors, there is also among us great ignorance of the fearful perplexities and difficulties with which its solution could not fail to be attended. I feel, however, that there is a considerable difference between reluctant acquiescence in what you inherit from the past, and voluntary fresh enlargements and reinforcements of the system. For instance, I should not say that the mode in which such an enactment as the Fugitive Slave Law has been considered in this country has at all erred upon the side of overmuch indignation.
I need not detain you longer: I began my letter with returning thanks to Almighty God for the appearance of your work, and I offer my humble and ardent prayer to the same Supreme Source that it may have a marked agency in hastening the great consummation, which I should feel it a practical atheism not to believe must be among the unfulfilled purposes of the Divine power and love.
I have the honor to be, Madam,
Your sincere admirer and well-wisher,
CARLISLE.
Mrs. Beecher Stowe.
“Slavery is merely an idea!” said Mr. S——; “the slaves are, in reality, better off than we are, if they had sense enough to know it. They are taken care of—(they must be, you know, because it is the master’s interest to keep them in good condition, and a man will always do what is for his interest). They get rid of all responsibility—which is what we are groaning under; and if they were only let alone, they would be happy enough—happier than their masters, I dare say.”
“You think it, then, anything but kindness to urge their emancipation?”
“To be sure I do! and I would have every one that teaches them to be discontented hung up without judge or jury.”
“You seem particularly interested for the slave—”
“Interested! I would have every one of them sent beyond the Rocky Mountains, if I could—or into ‘kingdom come,’ for that matter. They are the curse of the country; but as long as they are property, I would shoot any man that put bad ideas in their heads or that interfered with my management of them, as I would shoot a dog that killed my sheep.”
“But do they never get what you call ‘bad ideas’ from any but white people?”
“O, there is no knowing where they get them—but they are full of ’em. No matter how kind you are to them, they are never satisfied!”
“I can tell you where they get some of their ideas of slavery, if you will allow me.”
“Certainly—I am always glad of information.”
“Well—I will take up your time with nothing but actual facts, for the truth of which I will be answerable. In a Western tour, not many years since, I saw one day a young lady, fair as a lily, and with a sweet expression of countenance, walking in the street with a little black girl whom she held by the hand. The little girl was about six years old, neatly dressed and very clean; and on her neck she had a little gauze shawl that somebody had given her, the border of which was composed of the figure of the American Eagle many times repeated, each impression accompanied by the word ‘Liberty,’ woven into the fabric.
“This curious decoration, together with the wistful look of the child’s face, and the benevolent air of the young lady, with whom I was slightly acquainted, led me to ask some questions, which were answered with an air in which modesty and sensibility were blended. I learned that the young lady had undertaken the trying task of accompanying the little girl through the place—which was a considerable village—for the purpose of collecting the sum of fifty dollars, with which to purchase the freedom of the child.
“ ‘And how,’ said I, ‘did you become interested in the poor little thing?’
“ ‘She belongs to a member of my family,’ said Miss C——, with a blush; ‘to my aunt, Mrs. Jones.’
“ ‘And how did she find her way to the north?’
“ ‘Her mother, who is the servant of my aunt, got leave to bring Violet along with her, when her mistress came here for the summer.’
“ ‘But both mother and child are free by the mere circumstance of being brought here—’
“ ‘O, but Momma Charlotte promised her mistress that she would not leave her, nor let Violet do so, if she might bring the child with her, and beg money to buy her. She says she does not care for freedom for herself.’
“I could not do less than go with the good girl for awhile, to assist a little in her labor of love, which in the end, and with a good deal of difficulty, was finally accomplished. It was not until after this that I became acquainted with Momma Charlotte, the mother of Violet, and learned a few of the particulars of a story which had made her ‘not care for freedom.’
“Momma Charlotte was the mother of ten children—six daughters and four sons. Her husband had been a free black—a carpenter, able to keep a comfortable home for his family, hiring his wife of her master. At the time of the Southampton insurrection, this man was among the suspected, and, on suspicion, not proof, he was taken up—tried, after the fashion of that time, and hung, with several others—all between sunset and sunrise of a single day.
“ ‘He was innocent—he had had no hand in the matter, as God is my judge!’ said poor Momma Charlotte.
“This was but the beginning of troubles. A sense of insecurity made the sale of slaves more vigorous than ever. Charlotte’s children were sold, one by one—no two together—the boys for the sugar country—the girls for—‘the New Orleans market,’ whence they were dispersed, she never knew where.
“ ‘All gone!’ she said; ‘where I could never see ’em nor hear from ’em. I don’t even know where one of ’em is!’
“ ‘And Violet?’
“ ‘O yes—I mean all but Violet. She’s all I’ve got in the world, and I want to keep her. I begged Missus to let me keep jist one! and she said if I could get any body to buy her for me, I might have her—for you know I couldn’t own her myself, ’cause I’m a slave.’
“ ‘But you are no longer a slave, Momma Charlotte; your mistress by bringing you here voluntarily has freed you—’
“ ‘Yes—I know—but I promised, you see! And I don’t care to be free. I’m old, and my children’s gone, and my heart’s broke. I ha’n’t no more courage. If I can keep Violet, it’s all I expect. My mistress is good enough to me—I live pretty easy.’
“Such was Momma Charlotte’s philosophy, but her face told through what sufferings such philosophy had been acquired. A fixed grief sat on her brow; since the judicial murder of her husband she had never been known to laugh—hardly to smile. Her eyes were habitually cast on the ground, and her voice seemed always on the brink of tears. She was what you call ‘dissatisfied,’ I think, Mr. S——.”
“O, you have selected an extreme case! those things very seldom happen.” (Seldom!) “After all, you see the poor old thing knew what was right; she showed the right spirit—”
“Yes—she—but her owners?”
Here Mr. S—— was sure he saw a friend at a distance to whom it was necessary he should speak immediately; so he darted off, and I lost the benefit of his defence of the peculiarities of the peculiar institution.
Mrs. C. M. Kirkland
ON BEING ASKED FOR HIS AUTOGRAPH.
Horace Mann.
West Newton, Oct. 23, 1852.
In compliance with the request that I would send a few lines for insertion in “The Anti-Slavery Autograph,” I may say that I cannot express too strongly my conviction that, if there be truth in Revelation, it is the duty of every Christian to promote, by all legitimate means, not only the universal and total, but the immediate abolition of any system under which man can hold property in his fellow man. Perhaps few of those who take this view of the subject are sufficiently careful to avoid, as far as possible, any participation in, or encouragment of slavery, by refusing to use the produce of the unrequited toil of the slave. Yet until we do this, I think we have little right to expect the Divine blessing upon our efforts to promote the abolition of slavery and of the slave trade.
Joseph Sturge
An argument is derived from the Jewish Scriptures in favor of slave-holding, very plausible and weighty with that large class of persons so poorly gifted with hearts as to find it difficult to discriminate between the letter that killeth and the spirit that maketh alive. The Old Testament shows clearly enough, that slave-holding was tolerated among the Jews; and it being assumed that the system of Jewish society, or, at all events, that the Mosaic code was framed after a Divine model, it is alleged to be at least supererogatory, if not actually impious, to denounce as inconsistent with Christianity that which God permitted to his chosen and selected people. Are we to pretend to be better and wiser than Abraham and Moses, David and Solomon?
A recent application of this same argument can hardly fail to operate with many, as what the mathematicians call a reductio ad absurdum; a proof, that is, of the falsity of a proposition assumed, by exhibiting its operation in other cases.
The famous Mormon doctrine of the plurality of wives, now at length openly avowed by the heads and apostles of that new sect, is upheld and justified by this very same argument. It plainly appears from the Old Testament, that polygamy equally with slavery, was one of the social institutions of the Jews, recognized and sanctioned by their laws. And borrowing the tone, and indeed the very words of our pro-slavery theologians—“Do you pretend,” asks Orson Hyde, one of the Mormon apostles, addressing himself to those who question this new privilege of the saints—“Do you pretend to set yourselves above the teaching of God, and the example of his chosen people?”
Nor does the analogy between the two cases stop here. According to the pro-slavery biblical argument, slave-holding is only to be justified in Christian slave-holders, who, in holding slaves, have in view not only selfish benefit or advantage, but the good of the slaves, (who are not able to take care of themselves,) and the glory of God. According to the Mormon biblical argument, polygamy is to be allowed only to the saints; and that, not for any sensual gratification, but only for the benefit of the women, (who, according to the Mormon doctrine, cannot get to heaven without some holy husband to introduce them,) and for the raising up of a righteous seed to God’s glory.
Their favorite biblical argument, urged with such a tone of triumph and self-satisfaction in all the southern presbyteries and consociations, and in some northern ones, being thus newly applied by the Mormons, our pro-slavery friends are placed in a somewhat delicate dilemma. For they must either abandon as invalid their dogma of slave-holding derived from Jewish practices, or, if they still hold on to the argument, and maintain its force, they must prepare to extend the right hand of fellowship to Brigham Young and his five and forty wives. It is, indeed, very natural, in fact inevitable, that slavery and polygamy, avowed or disavowed, should go together; nor does any good reason appear why those who find justification for the one in the Jewish Scriptures should hesitate about accepting the other.
R. Hildreth
John G. Whittier
Amesbury, 10th MO. 16, 1852.
“I would rather be anything than a slave—except a slave-owner!” said a wise and good man. The slave-owner inflicts wrongs—the slave but suffers it. He has friends and champions by thousands. Some men live only to defend and save him. Many are willing to fight for him. Some even to die for him.
The most effective romance of our times has been written for slaves. The genius of more than one of our best poets has been consecrated to them. They divide the hearts and councils of our great nation. They are daily remembered in the prayers of the faithful. They are the most earnest topic of the christian world.
But the slave-owner! who weeps, who prays, who lives, who dies for him! True, he is of the boasted Saxon race, or descended from the brilliant Gaul, or gifted Celt. He is enriched by the transmitted civilization of all ages. He has been nurtured by christian institutions. To him have been opened the fountains of Divine truth. But from this elevation he is to be dragged down by the mill-stone of slavery.
If he be a rural landlord, he looks around upon his ancestral possessions, and sees the curse of slave-ownership upon them—he knows the time must come when “the field shall yield no meat, the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stall.” To him the onward tendencies of the age are reversed. His movement is steadily backward.
To the slave are held out the rewards of fortitude, of long suffering, of meekness, of patience in tribulation. What and where are the promises to the slave-owner?
Thousands among them are in a false position. They are the involuntary maintainers of wrong, and transmitters of evil. Hundreds among them have scrupulous consciences and tender feelings. They use power gently. They feed their servants bountifully. They nurse the sick kindly—and devote weary days to their instruction. But alas! they live under the laws of slave-owners. They are forbidden to teach the slave to read, write, or cipher, to give them the means of independent progress and increasing light. Their teaching is as bootless as the labor of Sysyphus! most wearisome and disheartening.
The great eras of domestic life, bright to the thoughtless slave, are dark with forecasting shadows to the slave-owner. The mother cannot forget her sorrows, because a man-child is born. If she dare contemplate his future, she sees that the activities of his nature must be repressed, his faculties but half developed, his passions stimulated by irresponsible power, inflamed by temptation, and solicited by convenient opportunity. She knows that his path in life must be more and more entangled as he goes onward—darker and darker with the ever-deepening misery of this cruel institution.
Is it a “merry marriage-bell” that rings in the ear of a slave-owning mother for the bridal of her daughter? Does not her soul recoil from the possible (probable?) evils before her child; to be placed, perchance, on an isolated plantation, environed by natural enemies; to see, it may be, the brothers and sisters of her own children follow their slave-mother to the field, or severed from her to be sold at the slave-market?
Compared with these miseries of the slave-owner, what are the toils and stripes of the slave? what his labor without stimulus or requital? what his degradation to a chattel? what the deprivation of security to the ties of kindred, and the annulling of that relation which is their source and chiefest blessing?
The slave looks forward with ever-growing hope to the struggle that must come. He joyfully “smells the battle afar off.” The slave-owner folds his arms, and shuts his eyes in paralyzing despair. He hears the fearful threatenings of the gathering storm. He knows it must come—to him fatally. It is only a question of time!
Who would not “rather be a slave than a slave-owner?”
C M Sedgwick
Cuddeldon Palace, July 7, 1852.
Madam:—
I readily comply with your desire. England taught her descendants in America to injure their African brethren. Every Englishman should aid the American to get rid of this cleaving wrong and deep injury to his race and nation.
I am ever yours,
Samuel Wilberforce
Wm Goodell
I do not answer this question. But the following facts are submitted as containing the materials for an answer.