God will bring you into judgment for this.
If that gentleman has read the work, as perhaps he has before
now, he has probably recognised his own words. One affecting
incident in the narrative, as it really occurred, ought to be
mentioned. The wife was passionately bemoaning her hus-
band's fate, as about to be for ever separated from all that he
held dear, to be sold to the hard usage of a Southern plantation.
The husband, in reply, used that very simple but sublime ex-
pression which the writer has placed in the mouth of Uncle
Tom, in similar circumstances:--“There'll be the same God
there that there is here.”
One other incident mentioned in Uncle Tom's Cabin may,
perhaps, be as well verified in this place as in any other.
The case of old Prue was related by a brother and sister of
the writer as follows:--She was the woman who supplied
rusks and other articles of the kind at the house where they
boarded. Her manners, appearance, and character were just
as described. One day another servant came in her place,
bringing the rusks. The sister of the writer inquired what
had become of Prue. She seemed reluctant to answer for
some time, but at last said that they had taken her into the
cellar and beaten her, and that the flies had got at her and
she was dead!
It is well known that there are no cellars, properly so called,
in New Orleans, the nature of the ground being such as to
forbid digging. The slave who used the word had probably
been imported from some State where cellars were in use, and
applied the term to the place which was used for the ordinary
purposes of a cellar. A cook who lived in the writer's family,
having lived most of her life on a plantation, always applied
the descriptive terms of the plantation to the very limited
enclosures and retinue of a very plain house and yard.
This same lady, while living in the same place, used fre-
quently to have her compassion excited by hearing the wailings
of a sickly baby in a house adjoining their own, as also the
objurgations and tyrannical abuse of a ferocious virago upon
its mother. She once got an opportunity to speak to its
mother, who appeared heart-broken and dejected, and inquired
what was the matter with her child. Her answer was, that she
had had a fever, and that her milk was all dried away; and that
her mistress was set against her child, and would not buy milk
for it. She had tried to feed it on her own coarse food, but it
pined and cried continually; and in witness of this she brought
the baby to her. It was emaciated to a skeleton. The lady
took the little thing to a friend of hers in the house who had
been recently confined, and who was suffering from a re-
dundancy of milk, and begged her to nurse it. The miserable
sight of the little, famished, wasted thing affected the mother
so as to overcome all other considerations, and she placed it to
her breast, when it revived, and took food with an eagerness
which showed how much it had suffered. But the child was so
reduced that this proved only a transient alleviation. It was
after this almost impossible to get sight of the woman, and the
violent temper of her mistress was such as to make it difficult
to interfere in the case. The lady secretly afforded what aid she
could, though, as she confessed, with a sort of misgiving that it
was a cruelty to try to hold back the poor little sufferer from
the refuge of the grave; and it was a relief to her when at last
its wailings ceased, and it went where the weary are at rest.
This is one of those cases which go to show that the interest of
the owner will not always insure kind treatment of the slave.
There is one other incident, which the writer interwove into
the history of the mulatto woman who was bought by Legree
for his plantation. The reader will remember that, in telling her
story to Emmeline, she says:--
“My mas'r was Mr. Ellis--lived in Levee-street. P'raps you've seen the
house.”
“Was he good to you?” said Emmeline.
“Mostly, till he tuk sick. He's lain sick, off and on, more than six months,
and been orful oneasy. 'Pears like he warn't willin' to have nobody rest, day nor
night; and got so cur'ous, there couldn't nobody suit him. 'Pears like he just
grew crosser every day; kep me up nights till I got fairly beat out, and couldn't
keep awake no longer; and 'cause I got to sleep one night, Lors! he talk so orful
to me, and he tell me he'd sell me to just the hardest master he could find; and
he'd promised me my freedom, too, when he died!”
An incident of this sort came under the author's observation
in the following manner. A quadroon slave family, liberated by
the will of the master, settled on Walnut Hills, near her resi-
dence, and their children were received into her family school,
taught in her house. In this family was a little quadroon boy,
four or five years of age, with a sad, dejected appearance, who
excited their interest.
The history of this child, as narrated by his friends, was simply
this: his mother had been the indefatigable nurse of her master,
during a lingering and painful sickness which at last terminated
his life. She had borne all the fatigue of the nursing both by
night and by day, sustained in it by his promise that she should
be rewarded for it by her liberty, at his death. Overcome by
exhaustion and fatigue, she one night fell asleep, and he was
unable to rouse her. The next day, after violently upbraiding
her, he altered the directions of his will, and sold her to a man
who was noted in all the region round as a cruel master, which
sale, immediately on his death, which was shortly after, took
effect. The only mitigation of her sentence was that her child
was not to be taken with her into this dreaded lot, but was given
to this quadroon family to be brought into a free State.
The writer very well remembers hearing this story narrated
among a group of liberated negroes, and their comments on it.
A peculiar form of grave and solemn irony often characterises
the communications of this class of people. It is a habit en-
gendered in slavery to comment upon proceedings of this kind in
language apparently respectful to the perpetrators, and which is
felt to be irony only by a certain peculiarity of manner, difficult
to describe. After the relation of this story, when the writer
expressed her indignation in no measured terms, one of the
oldest of the sable circle remarked, gravely--
“The man was a mighty great Christian, anyhow.”
The writer warmly expressed her dissent from this view, when
another of the same circle added--
“Went to glory, anyhow.”
And another continued--
“Had the greatest kind of a time when he was a-dyin'; said
he was goin' straight into heaven.”
And when the writer remarked that many people thought so
who never got there, a singular smile of grim approval p
assed
round the circle, but no further comments were made. This
incident has often recurred to the writer's mind, as showing the
danger to the welfare of the master's soul from the possession of
absolute power. A man of justice and humanity when in health,
is often tempted to become unjust, exacting, and exorbitant in
sickness. If, in these circumstances, he is surrounded by in-
feriors, from whom law and public opinion have taken away the
rights of common humanity, how is he tempted to the exercise of
the most despotic passions, and, like this unfortunate man, to
leave the world with the weight of these awful words upon his
head: “If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your
Father forgive your trespasses.”
CHAPTER XII.
TOPSY.
Topsy stands as the representative of a large class of the chil-
dren who are growing up under the institution of slavery--quick,
active, subtle and ingenious, apparently utterly devoid of prin-
ciple and conscience, keenly penetrating, by an instinct which
exists in the childish mind, the degradation of their condition,
and the utter hopelessness of rising above it; feeling the black
skin on them, like the mark of Cain, to be a sign of reprobation
and infamy, and urged on by a kind of secret desperation to
make their “calling and election” in sin “sure.”
Christian people have often been perfectly astonished and dis-
couraged, as Miss Ophelia was, in the attempt to bring up such
children decently and Christianly, under a state of things which
takes away every stimulant which God meant should operate
healthfully on the human mind.
We are not now speaking of the Southern States merely, but of
the New England States; for, startling as it may appear, slavery
is not yet wholly abolished in the free States of the North. The
most unchristian part of it, that which gives to it all the bitterness
and all the sting, is yet, in a great measure, unrepealed; it is the
practical denial to the negro of the rights of human brotherhood.
In consequence of this, Topsy is a character which may be found
at the North as well as at the South.
In conducting the education of negro, mulatto, and quadroon
children, the writer has often observed this fact--that, for a
certain time, and up to a certain age, they kept equal pace with,
and were often superior to, the white children with whom they
were associated; but that there came a time when they became
indifferent to learning, and made no further progress. This was
invariably at the age when they were old enough to reflect upon
life, and to perceive that society had no place to offer them for
which anything more would be requisite than the rudest and most
elementary knowledge.
Let us consider how it is with our own children; how few
of them would ever acquire an education from the mere love of
learning.
In the process necessary to acquire a handsome style of hand-
writing, to master the intricacies of any language, or to conquer
the difficulties of mathematical study, how often does the perse-
verance of the child flag, and need to be stimulated by his
parents and teachers by such considerations as these: “It will
be necessary for you, in such or such a position in life, to possess
this or that acquirement or accomplishment. How could you
ever become a merchant without understanding accounts? How
could you enter the learned professions without understanding
languages? If you are ignorant and uninformed, you cannot
take rank as a gentleman in society.”
Does not everyone know that, without the stimulus which
teachers and parents thus continually present, multitudes of
children would never gain a tolerable education? And is it not
the absence of all such stimulus which has prevented the negro
child from an equal advance?
It is often objected to the negro race that they are frivolous
and vain, passionately fond of show, and are interested only in
trifles. And who is to blame for all this? Take away all high
aims, all noble ambition, from any class, and what is left for
them to be interested in but trifles?
The present Attorney-General of Liberia, Mr. Lewis, is a
man who commands the highest respect for talent and ability in
his position; yet, while he was in America, it is said that, like
many other young coloured men, he was distinguished only for
foppery and frivolity. What made the change in Lewis after he
went to Liberia? Who does not see the answer? Does any-
one wish to know what is inscribed on the seal which keeps the
great stone over the sepulchre of African mind? It is this--
which was so truly said by poor Topsy--“Nothing but a
nigger!”
It is this, burnt into the soul by the branding-iron of cruel
and unchristian scorn, that is a sorer and deeper wound than all
the physical evils of slavery together.
There never was a slave who did not feel it. Deep, deep
down in the dark still waters of his soul is the conviction,
heavier, bitterer than all others, that he is not regarded as a man.
On this point may be introduced the testimony of one who has
known the wormwood and the gall of slavery by bitter expe-
rience. The following letter has been received from Dr. Pen-
nington, in relation to some inquiries of the author:--
New York, 50, Laurens-street, November 30, 1852.
Esteemed Madam,--I have duly received your kind letter in answer to mine
of the 15th instant, in which you state that you “have an intense curiosity to
know how far you have rightly divined the heart of the slave.” You give me
your idea in these words: “There lies buried down in the heart of the most
seemingly careless and stupid slave a bleeding spot that bleeds and aches, though
he could scarcely tell why; and that this sore spot is the degradation of his
position.”
After escaping from the plantation of Dr. Tilghman, in Washington County,
Md., where I was held as a slave, and worked as a blacksmith, I came to the State
of Pennsylvania, and, after experiencing there some of the vicissitudes referred to
in my little published narrative, I came into New York State, bringing in my
mind a certain indescribable feeling of wretchedness. They used to say of me at
Dr. Tilghman's, “That blacksmith Jemmy is a 'cute fellow; still water runs
deep.” But I confess that “blacksmith Jemmy” was not 'cute enough to under-
stand the cause of his own wretchedness. The current of the still water may have
run deep, but it did not reach down to that awful bed of lava.
At times I thought it occasioned by the lurking fear of betrayal. There was no
Vigilance Committee at the time--there were but anti-slavery men. I came
North with my counsels in my own cautious breast. I married a wife, and did
not tell her I was a fugitive. None of my friends knew it. I knew not the
means of safety, and hence I was constantly in fear of meeting with some one
who would betray me.
It wa
s fully two years before I could hold up my head; but still that feeling
was in my mind. In 1846, after opening my bosom as a fugitive to John Hooker,
Esq., I felt this much relief--“Thank God, there is one brother man in hard old
Connecticut that knows my troubles.”
Soon after this, when I sailed to the island of Jamaica, and on landing there
saw coloured men in all the stations of civil, social, commercial life, where I had
seen white men in this country, that feeling of wretchedness experienced a sen-
sible relief, as if some feverish sore had been just reached by just the right kind
of balm. There was before my eye evidence that a coloured man is more than
“a nigger.” I went into the House of Assembly at Spanishtown, where fifteen
out of forty-five members were coloured men. I went into the courts, where I
saw in the jury-box coloured and white men together, coloured and white lawyers
at the bar. I went into the Common Council of Kingston; there I found men of
different colours. So in all the counting-rooms, &c. &c.
But still there was this drawback. Somebody says, “This is nothing but a
nigger island.” Now, then, my old trouble came back again, “a nigger among
niggers is but a nigger still.”
In 1849, when I undertook my second visit to Great Britain, I resolved to pro-
long and extend my travel and intercourse with the best class of men, with a view
to see if I could banish that troublesome old ghost entirely out of my mind. In
England, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany, Belgium, and Prussia, my whole
power has been concentrated on this object: “I'll be a man, and I'll kill off this
enemy which has haunted me these twenty years and more.” I believe I have
succeeded in some good degree; at least, I have now no more trouble on the score
of equal manhood with the whites. My European tour was certainly useful,
because there the trial was fair and honourable. I had nothing to complain of.
I got what was due to man, and I was expected to do what was due from man to
man. I sought not to be treated as a pet. I put myself into the harness, and
wrought manfully in the first pulpits, and the platforms in peace congresses, con-
ventions, anniversaries, commencements, &c.; and in these exercises that rusty old
iron came out of my soul, and went “clean away.”
You say again you have never seen a slave, however careless and merryhearted,