Victory for the Africans
“Well, the case was so one-sided that there was no doubt. Many of the slaves were unable to speak English, and it was overwhelmingly shown that they were imported Africans, that the decision of the court was in their favor. The Spanish Minister carried the case to the Supreme Court, and after another year’s delay it came up once more. Again the prisoners won by a unanimous decision of this high tribunal. It was about this time that my admiration for this man Sinque’s courage led me to send Nathaniel Jocelyn down to New Haven to secure this painting.
“While the case was pending before the Supreme Court ex-President John Quincy Adams, who, although not an Abolitionist, saw the injustice of Spain’s demand, volunteered his services to defend these poor Africans. When the decision against Spain was announced the blacks were set free and brought East, where they were cared for by the Abolitionists. I had twenty-two at my house at one time. The men were afterwards sent back to their own country. The three women remained here and they were sent to Oberlin6 to receive a collegiate education. One of them, named Morgrew, afterwards turned out to be a scholarly, intelligent woman and did excellent work among her people as a missionary. Sinque returned on the vessel with his comrades but did not go back to Africa. He left the ship at Sierra Leone and engaged in the business of selling tobacco. I never heard of him afterwards and don’t know whether he is dead or alive.
Inspired by Sinque’s Example
“Now comes the strange part of the story. I was at that time in charge of the work of assisting fugitive slaves to escape. Among the slaves who came into my keeping in this way was a man named Madison Washington. We sent him to Canada, but, to my astonishment, on the day that I received this painting Washington returned and came to my house and asked me to help him secure the release of his wife, who he had left in slavery two years previous. He had opened correspondence with a young white man in the South,7 whom he trusted implicitly and who had promised to bring his wife from the plantation during the Christmas holidays and deliver her to Washington at a certain spot where they were to meet.
“I showed Washington this painting and he asked me who it represented. I told him the story of Sinque, and he became intensely interested. He drank in every word and greatly admired the hero’s courage and intelligence. Well, Washington went South to get his wife, and never came back. How he was betrayed or who it was that betrayed him I never knew until some years later, when I learned that he was captured while escaping with his wife, and put on board a vessel bound from Virginia to New Orleans.
Lord Palmerston’s Brave Words
“During the voyage Madison Washington, inspired by the example of Sinque, secured his release, killed the captain, freed the other slaves, numbering about two hundred, and compelled the mate to navigate the vessel into English waters. He landed them at Nassau, English province. At the insistence of the South, this Government demanded from Great Britain the immediate return of these slaves as murderers and as property. The authorities of Nassau refused to send them back, but detained them by putting them in prison, and referred the matter to the home government.
“Lord Palmerston was then Prime Minister of England,8 and he settled the question then and forever by replying that ‘England knows of no act, even to the taking of life, that can be construed as a crime, when committed in pursuit of the natural and inalienable right of freedom.’ The United States recognized the justice of this decision, and never pushed its claim.9
“And all this grew out of the inspiration caused by Madison Washington’s sight of this little picture.
Exhibited at the Academy
“But that is not all that this painting has accomplished. One more little story and I am done. I had the picture engraved by John Sartain, who had just originated the mezzotint engraving process. Mr. Sartain was much interested in the painting, and he asked that it be sent to the Academy of Fine Arts,10 of which he and the painter, Mr. Jocelyn, were members.
“The picture was sent, and within the next twenty-four hours I received a letter from Mr. Nagle, of the managers, stating that pictures of that character could not be placed on the walls of the Academy. This offended Mr. Sartain, Mr. Jocelyn and other members who sympathized with them, and they seceded from the Academy. A bitter fight followed between the managers and seceders, which finally resulted in victory for the latter. They returned to the Academy, when the managers finally yielded and placed the picture on the walls of that institution. Their principal objection to the painting was that its subject was a hero, and they considered that a black man had no right to be a hero.
“Such is the history of the painting of ‘Sinque the Hero of the Amistad,’” concluded Mr. Purvis. “It only cost me two hundred and sixty odd dollars, but I would not part with it now for that many thousands. In fact, it is priceless.”
1. The London-born artist John Sartain (1808–1897) immigrated to the United States in 1830. He was known for pioneering the development of high-quality engravings called mezzotints.
2. In 1817, England and Spain signed a treaty abolishing the slave trade north of the Equator and establishing protocols for searching ships for slaves. The treaty called for the end of the slave trade by June 1820.
3. Located off the northwestern coast of Africa.
4. Western part of Africa now known as Sierra Leone.
5. Martin Van Buren (1782–1862), eighth president of the United States (1837–41).
6. Oberlin College, in Oberlin, Ohio, was a center of abolitionist activity.
7. Historians have been unable to identify this person or to determine whether such a person existed.
8. Palmerston (1784–1865) served as England’s prime minister from 1859 to 1865. In 1839 he was foreign secretary.
9. In fact, the owners of the Creole, with the support of the U.S. government, continued to push their claims, and in 1853 an Anglo-American claims commission decided on behalf of the claimants (the owners of slaves on the Creole). In 1855 they were awarded $110,330.
10. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is located in Philadelphia.
PAULINE E. HOPKINS
“A Dash for Liberty”
Born in Portland, Maine, and raised in Boston, the African American novelist and editor Pauline E. Hopkins (1859–1930) is best known for her four novels published at the turn of the twentieth century: Contending Forces (1900), Hagar’s Daughter (1901), Winona (1902), and Of One Blood (1902). All except Contending Forces were serialized in the Colored American Magazine, where she worked as literary editor. In 1901 she began publishing in the magazine a series of sketches that she called “Heroes and Heroines in Black.” Her fictionalized account of the Creole rebellion, “A Dash for Liberty,” appeared in the August 1901 issue of the Colored American Magazine, the source of the text below. At the time of its publication, Hopkins gave the story a subtitle, “Founded on an article written by Col. T. W. Higginson, for the Atlantic Monthly, June 1861,” but the noted editor of the Atlantic Monthly never wrote on Madison Washington. His June 1861 essay was on the black conspirator Denmark Vesey, who allegedly plotted to burn Charleston, South Carolina, to the ground in an effort to liberate the city’s black slaves. Perhaps the essay inspired Hopkins to consider Madison Washington in the tradition of Vesey, as William Wells Brown did at the end of his chapter on the Creole rebellion in The Negro in the American Rebellion. Hopkins admired Douglass and Brown, but it is unclear whether she had read Douglass’s The Heroic Slave (she seems more familiar with Brown’s accounts in The Black Man and The Negro in the American Rebellion). More than other authors writing on the Creole, she presents Washington’s wife as actively engaged in the rebellion. Hopkins lost her job at the Colored American Magazine in 1904 when Booker T. Washington gained control of the magazine and fired those challenging his accommodationist approach to race relations. Hopkins continued to work in journalism, and in subsequent years cofounded her own publishing house and magazine, both of which were short-lived, while working as a stenog
rapher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
So, Madison, you are bound to try it?”
“Yes, sir,” was the respectful reply.
There was silence between the two men for a space, and Mr. Dickson drove his horse to the end of the furrow he was making and returned slowly to the starting point, and the sombre figure awaiting him.
“Do I not pay you enough, and treat you well?” asked the farmer as he halted.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then why not stay here and let well enough alone?”
“Liberty is worth nothing to me while my wife is a slave.”
“We will manage to get her to you in a year or two.”
The man smiled and sadly shook his head. “A year or two would mean forever, situated as we are, Mr. Dickson. It is hard for you to understand; you white men are all alike where you are called upon to judge a Negro’s heart,” he continued bitterly. “Imagine yourself in my place; how would you feel? The relentless heel of oppression in the States will have ground my rights as a husband into the dust, and have driven Susan to despair in that time. A white man may take up arms to defend a bit of property; but a black man has no right to his wife, his liberty or his life against his master! This makes me low-spirited, Mr. Dickson, and I have determined to return to Virginia for my wife. My feelings are centred in the idea of liberty,” and as he spoke he stretched his arms toward the deep blue of the Canadian sky in a magnificent gesture. Then with a deep-drawn breath that inflated his mighty chest, he repeated the word: “Liberty! I think of it by day and dream of it by night; and I shall only taste it in all its sweetness when Susan shares it with me.”
Madison was an unmixed African, of grand physique, and one of the handsomest of his race. His dignified, calm and unaffected bearing marked him as a leader among his fellows. His features bore the stamp of genius. His firm step and piercing eye attracted the attention of all who met him. He had arrived in Canada along with many other fugitives during the year 1840, and being a strong, able-bodied man, and a willing worker, had sought and obtained employment on Mr. Dickson’s farm.
After Madison’s words, Mr. Dickson stood for some time in meditative silence.
“Madison,” he said at length, “there’s desperate blood in your veins, and if you get back there and are captured, you’ll do desperate deeds.”
“Well, put yourself in my place: I shall be there single-handed. I have a wife whom I love, and whom I will protect. I hate slavery, I hate the laws that make my country a nursery for it. Must I be denied the right of aggressive defense against those who would overpower and crush me by superior force?”
“I understand you fully, Madison; it is not your defense but your rashness that I fear. Promise me that you will be discreet, and not begin an attack.” Madison hesitated. Such a promise seemed to him like surrendering a part of those individual rights for which he panted. Mr. Dickson waited. Presently the Negro said significantly: “I promise not to be indiscreet.”
There were tears in the eyes of the kind-hearted farmer as he pressed Madison’s hand.
“God speed and keep you and the wife you love; may she prove worthy.”
In a few days, Madison received the wages due him, and armed with tiny saws and files to cut a way to liberty, if captured, turned his face toward the South.
It was late in the fall of 1840 when Madison found himself again at home in the fair Virginia State. The land was blossoming into ripe maturity, and the smiling fields lay waiting for the harvester.
The fugitive, unable to travel in the open day, had hidden himself for three weeks in the shadow of the friendly forest near his old home, filled with hope and fear, unable to obtain any information about the wife he hoped to rescue from slavery. After weary days and nights, he had reached the most perilous part of his mission. Tonight there would be no moon and the clouds threatened a storm; to his listening ears the rising wind bore the sound of laughter and singing. He drew back into the deepest shadow. The words came distinctly to his ears as the singers neared his hiding place.
“All dem purty gals will be dar,
Shuck dat corn before you eat.
Dey will fix it fer us rare,
Shuck dat corn before you eat.
I know dat supper will be big,
Shuck dat corn before you eat.
I think I smell a fine roast pig,
Shuck dat corn before you eat.
Stuff dat coon an’ bake him down,
I spec some niggers dar from town.
Shuck dat corn before you eat.
Please cook dat turkey nice an’ brown.
By de side of dat turkey I’ll be foun,’
Shuck dat corn before you eat.”1
“Don’t talk about dat turkey; he’ll be gone before we git dar.”
“He’s talkin,’ ain’t he?”
“Las’ time I shucked corn, turkey was de toughes’ meat I eat fer many a day; you’s got to have teef sharp lak a saw to eat it.”
“S’pose you ain’t got no teef, den what you gwine ter do?”
“Why ef you ain’t got no teef you muss gum it!”
“Ha, ha, ha!”
Madison glided in and out among the trees, listening until he was sure that it was a gang going to a corn-shucking, and he resolved to join it, and get, if possible some news of Susan. He came out upon the highway, and as the company reached his hiding place, he fell into the ranks and joined in the singing. The darkness hid his identity from the company while he learned from their conversation the important events of the day.
On they marched by the light of weird, flaring pine knots, singing their merry cadences, in which the noble minor strains habitual to Negro music, sounded the depths of sadness, glancing off in majestic harmony, that touched the very gates of paradise in suppliant prayer.
It was close to midnight; the stars had disappeared and a steady rain was falling when, by a circuitous route, Madison reached the mansion where he had learned that his wife was still living. There were lights in the windows. Mirth at the great house kept company with mirth at the quarters.
The fugitive stole noiselessly under the fragrant magnolia trees and paused, asking himself what he should do next. As he stood there he heard the hoof-beats of the mounted patrol, far in the distance, die into silence. Cautiously he drew near the house and crept around to the rear of the building directly beneath the window of his wife’s sleeping closet. He swung himself up and tried it; it yielded to his touch. Softly he raised the sash, and softly he crept into the room. His foot struck against an object and swept it to the floor. It fell with a loud crash. In an instant the door opened. There was a rush of feet, and Madison stood at bay. The house was aroused; lights were brought.
“I knowed ‘twas him!” cried the overseer in triumph. “I heern him a-gettin’ in the window, but I kept dark till he knocked my gun down; then I grabbed him! I knowed this room’d trap him ef we was patient about it.”
Madison shook his captor off and backed against the wall. His grasp tightened on the club in his hand; his nerves were like steel, his eyes flashed fire.
“Don’t kill him,” shouted Judge Johnson, as the overseer’s pistol gleamed in the light. “Five hundred dollars for him alive!”
With a crash, Madison’s club descended on the head of the nearest man; again, and yet again, he whirled it around, doing frightful execution each time it fell. Three of the men who had responded to the overseer’s cry for help were on the ground, and he himself was sore from many wounds before, weakened by loss of blood, Madison finally succumbed.
The brig “Creole” lay at the Richmond dock taking on her cargo of tobacco, hemp, flax and slaves. The sky was cloudless, and the blue waters rippled but slightly under the faint breeze. There was on board the confusion incident to departure. In the hold and on deck men were hurrying to and fro, busy and excited, making the final preparations for the voyage. The slaves came aboard in two gangs: first the men, chained like cattle, were marched to their qu
arters in the hold; then came the women to whom more freedom was allowed.
In spite of the blue sky and the bright sunlight that silvered the water the scene was indescribably depressing and sad. The procession of gloomy-faced men and weeping women seemed to be descending into a living grave.
The captain and the first mate were standing together at the head of the gangway as the women stepped aboard. Most were very plain and bore the marks of servitude, a few were neat and attractive in appearances; but one was a woman whose great beauty immediately attracted attention; she was an octoroon.2 It was a tradition that her grandfather had served in the Revolutionary War, as well as in both Houses of Congress. That was nothing, however, at a time when the blood of the proudest F. F. V.’s3 was freely mingled with that of the African slaves on their plantations. Who wonders that Virginia has produced great men of color from among the exbondmen, or, that illustrious black men proudly point to Virginia as a birthplace? Posterity rises to the plane that their ancestors bequeath, and the most refined, the wealthiest and the most intellectual whites of that proud State have not hesitated to amalgamate with the Negro.
“What a beauty!” exclaimed the captain as the line of women paused a moment opposite him.
“Yes,” said the overseer in charge of the gang. “She’s as fine a piece of flesh as I have had in trade for many a day.”
“What’s the price?” demanded the captain.
“Oh, way up. Two or three thousand. She’s a lady’s maid, well-educated, and can sing and dance. We’ll get it in New Orleans. Like to buy?”