After a voyage of sixteen days, they arrived at Baltimore, fully expecting that their days of slavery were numbered. Here they were conducted back to the same old prison from which they had been taken a few weeks before, though they supposed it would be but for an hour or two. Presently Mr. Bigelow, of Washington, came for Richard. When the girls found that they were not to be set free too, their grief and disappointment were unspeakable. But they were separated,—Richard to go to his home, his wife and children, and they to remain in the slave-prison. Wearisome days and nights again rolled on. In the mornings they were obliged to march round the yard to the music of fiddles, banjoes, &c.; in the day-time they washed and ironed for the male slaves, slept some, and wept a great deal. After a few weeks their father came to visit them, accompanied by their sister.
His object was partly to ascertain what were the very lowest terms upon which their keeper would sell the girls, as he indulged a faint hope that in some way or other the money might be raised, if time enough were allowed. The trader declared he should soon send them to some other slave-market, but he would wait two weeks, and, if the friends could raise the money in that time, they might have them.
The night their father and sister spent in the prison with them, he lay in the room over their heads; and they could hear him groan all night, while their sister was weeping by their side. None of them closed their eyes in sleep.
In the morning came again the wearisome routine of the slave-prison. Old Paul walked quietly into the yard, and sat down to see the poor slaves marched around. He had never seen his daughters in such circumstances before, and his feelings quite overcame him. The yard was narrow, and the girls, as they walked by him, almost brushing him with their clothes, could just hear him groaning within himself, “O, my children, my children!”
After the breakfast, which none of them were able to eat, they parted with sad hearts, the father begging the keeper to send them to New Orleans, if the money could not be raised, as perhaps their brothers there might secure for them kind masters.
Two or three weeks afterwards Bruin & Hill visited the prison, dissolved partnership with the trader, settled accounts, and took the Edmondsons again in their own possession.
The girls were roused about eleven o’clock at night, after they had fallen asleep, and told to get up directly, and prepare for going home. They had learned that the word of a slave-holder is not to be trusted, and feared they were going to be sent to Richmond, Virginia, as there had been talk of it. They were soon on their way in the cars with Bruin, and arrived at Washington at a little past midnight.
Their hearts throbbed high when, after these long months of weary captivity, they found themselves once more in the city where were their brothers, sisters and parents. But they were permitted to see none of them, and were put into a carriage and driven immediately to the slave-prison at Alexandria, where, about two o’clock at night, they found themselves in the same forlorn old room in which they had begun their term of captivity!
This was the latter part of August. Again they were employed in washing, ironing and sewing by day, and always locked up by night. Sometimes they were allowed to sew in Bruin’s house, and even to eat there. After they had been in Alexandria two or three weeks, their eldest married sister, not having heard from them for some time, came to see Bruin, to learn, if possible, something of their fate; and her surprise and joy were great to see them once more, even there. After a few weeks their old father came again to see them. Hopeless as the idea of their emancipation seemed, he still clung to it. He had had some encouragement of assistance in Washington, and he purposed to go North to see if anything could be done there; and he was anxious to obtain from Bruin what were the very lowest possible terms for which he would sell the girls. Bruin drew up his terms in the following document, which we subjoin:
The bearer, Paul Edmondson, is the father of two girls, Mary Jane and Emily Catharine Edmondson. These girls have been purchased by us, and once sent to the south; and, upon the positive assurance that the money for them would be raised if they were brought back, they were returned. Nothing, it appears, has as yet been done in this respect by those who promised, and we are on the very eve of sending them south the second time; and we are candid in saying that, if they go again, we will not regard any promises made in relation to them. The father wishes to raise money to pay for them; and intends to appeal to the liberality of the humane and the good to aid him, and has requested us to state in writing the conditions upon which we will sell his daughters.
We expect to start our servants to the south in a few days; if the sum of twelve hundred ($1200) dollars be raised and paid to us in fifteen days, or we be assured of that sum, then we will retain them for twenty-five days more, to give an opportunity for the raising of the other thousand and fifty ($1050) dollars; otherwise we shall be compelled to send them along with our other servants.
Paul took his papers, and parted from his daughters sorrowfully. After this, the time to the girls dragged on in heavy suspense. Constantly they looked for letter or message, and prayed to God to raise them up a deliverer from some quarter. But day after day and week after week passed, and the dreaded time drew near. The preliminaries for fitting up the gang for South Carolina commenced. Gay calico was bought for them to make up into “show dresses,” in which they were to be exhibited on sale. They made them up with far sadder feelings than they would have sewed on their own shrouds. Hope had almost died out of their bosoms. A few days before the gang were to be sent off, their sister made them a sad farewell visit. They mingled their prayers and tears, and the girls made up little tokens of remembrance to send by her as parting gifts to their brothers and sisters and aged father and mother, and with a farewell sadder than that of a death-bed the sisters parted.
The evening before the coffle was to start drew on. Mary and Emily went to the house to bid Bruin’s family good-by. Bruin had a little daughter who had been a pet and favorite with the girls. She clung round them, cried, and begged them not to go. Emily told her that, if she wished to have them stay, she must go and ask her father. Away ran the little pleader, full of her errand; and was so very earnest in her importunities, that he, to pacify her, said he would consent to their remaining, if his partner, Captain Hill, would do so. At this time Bruin, hearing Mary crying aloud in the prison, went up to see her. With all the earnestness of despair, she made her last appeal to his feelings. She begged him to make the case his own, to think of his own dear little daughter,—what if she were exposed to be torn away from every friend on earth, and cut off from all hope of redemption, at the very moment, too, when deliverance was expected! Bruin was not absolutely a man of stone, and this agonizing appeal brought tears to his eyes. He gave some encouragement that, if Hill would consent, they need not be sent off with the gang. A sleepless night followed, spent in weeping, groaning and prayer. Morning at last dawned, and, according to orders received the day before, they prepared themselves to go, and even put on their bonnets and shawls, and stood ready for the word to be given. When the very last tear of hope was shed, and they were going out to join the gang, Bruin’s heart relented. He called them to him, and told them they might remain! O, how glad were their hearts made by this, as they might now hope on a little longer! Either the entreaties of little Martha or Mary’s plea with Bruin had prevailed.
Soon the gang was started on foot,—men, women and children, two and two, the men all handcuffed together, the right wrist of one to the left wrist of the other, and a chain passing through the middle from the handcuffs of one couple to those of the next. The women and children walked in the same manner throughout, handcuffed or chained. Drivers went before and at the side, to take up those who were sick or lame. They were obliged to set off singing! accompanied with fiddles and banjoes!—“For they that carried us away captive required of us a song, and they that wasted us required of us mirth.” And this is a scene of daily occurrence in a Christian country!—and Christian ministers say that the right to do these things is given by God himself!!
Meanwhile poor old Paul Edmondson went northward to supplicate aid. Any one who should have travelled in the cars at that time might have seen a venerable-looking black man, all whose air and attitude indicated a patient humility, and who seemed to carry a weight of overwhelming sorrow, like one who had long been acquainted with grief. That man was Paul Edmondson.
Alone, friendless, unknown, and, worst of all, black, he came into the great bustling city of New York, to see if there was any one there who could give him twenty-five hundred dollars to buy his daughters with. Can anybody realize what a poor man’s feelings are, who visits a great, bustling, rich city, alone and unknown, for such an object? The writer has now, in a letter from a slave father and husband who was visiting Portland on a similar errand, a touching expression of it:
I walked all day, till I was tired and discouraged. O! Mrs. S——, when I see so many people who seem to have so many more things than they want or know what to do with, and then think that I have worked hard, till I am past forty, all my life, and don’t own even my own wife and children, it makes me feel sick and discouraged!
So sick at heart and discouraged felt Paul Edmondson. He went to the Anti-Slavery Office, and made his case known. The sum was such a large one, and seemed to many so exorbitant, that, though they pitied the poor father, they were disheartened about raising it. They wrote to Washington to authenticate the particulars of the story, and wrote to Bruin and Hill to see if there could be any reduction of price. Meanwhile, the poor old man looked sadly from one adviser to another. He was recommended to go to the Rev. H. W. Beecher, and tell his story. He inquired his way to his door,—ascended the steps to ring the door-bell, but his heart failed him,—he sat down on the steps weeping!
There Mr. Beecher found him. He took him in, and inquired his story. There was to be a public meeting that night, to raise money. The hapless father begged him to go and plead for his children. He did go, and spoke as if he were pleading for his own father and sisters. Other clergymen followed in the same strain,—the meeting became enthusiastic, and the money was raised on the spot, and poor old Paul laid his head that night on a grateful pillow,—not to sleep, but to give thanks!
Meanwhile the girls had been dragging on anxious days in the slave-prison. They were employed in sewing for Bruin’s family, staying sometimes in the prison and sometimes in the house.
It is to be stated here that Mr. Bruin is a man of very different character from many in his trade. He is such a man as never would have been found in the profession of a slave-trader, had not the most respectable and religious part of the community defended the right to buy and sell, as being conferred by God himself. It is a fact, with regard to this man, that he was one of the earliest subscribers to the National Era, in the District of Columbia; and, when a certain individual there brought himself into great peril by assisting fugitive slaves, and there was no one found to go bail for him, Mr. Bruin came forward and performed this kindness.
While we abhor the horrible system and the horrible trade with our whole soul, there is no harm, we suppose, in wishing that such a man had a better occupation. Yet we cannot forbear reminding all such that, when we come to give our account at the judgment-seat of Christ, every man must speak for himself alone; and that Christ will not accept as an apology for sin the word of all the ministers and all the synods in the country. He has given fair warning, “Beware of false prophets;” and if people will not beware of them, their blood is upon their own heads.
The girls, while under Mr. Bruin’s care, were treated with as much kindness and consideration as could possibly consist with the design of selling them. There is no doubt that Bruin was personally friendly to them, and really wished most earnestly that they might be ransomed; but then he did not see how he was to lose two thousand five hundred dollars. He had just the same difficulty on this subject that some New York members of churches have had, when they have had slaves brought into their hands as security for Southern debts. He was sorry for them, and wished them well, and hoped Providence would provide for them when they were sold, but still he could not afford to lose his money; and while such men remain elders and communicants in churches in New York, we must not be surprised that there remain slave-traders in Alexandria.
It is one great art of the enemy of souls to lead men to compound for their participation in one branch of sin by their righteous horror of another. The slave-trader has been the general scape-goat on whom all parties have vented their indignation, while buying of him and selling to him.
There is an awful warning given in the fiftieth Psalm to those who in word have professed religion and in deed consented to iniquity, where from the judgment-seat Christ is represented as thus addressing them: “What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldst take my covenant into thy mouth, seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee? When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.”
One thing is certain, that all who do these things, openly or secretly, must, at last, make up their account with a Judge who is no respecter of persons, and who will just as soon condemn an elder in the church for slave-trading as a professed trader; nay, He may make it more tolerable for the Sodom and Gomorrah of the trade than for them,—for it may be, if the trader had the means of grace that they have had, that he would have repented long ago.
But to return to our history.—The girls were sitting sewing near the open window of their cage, when Emily said to Mary, “There, Mary, is that white man we have seen from the North.” They both looked, and in a moment more saw their own dear father. They sprang and ran through the house and the office, and into the street, shouting as they ran, followed by Bruin, who said he thought the girls were crazy. In a moment they were in their father’s arms, but observed that he trembled exceedingly, and that his voice was unsteady. They eagerly inquired if the money was raised for their ransom. Afraid of exciting their hopes too soon, before their free papers were signed, he said he would talk with them soon, and went into the office with Mr. Bruin and Mr. Chaplin. Mr. Bruin professed himself sincerely glad, as undoubtedly he was, that they had brought the money; but seemed much hurt by the manner in which he had been spoken of by the Rev. H. W. Beecher at the liberation meeting in New York, thinking it hard that no difference should be made between him and other traders, when he had shown himself so much more considerate and humane than the great body of them. He, however, counted over the money and signed the papers with great good will, taking out a five-dollar gold piece for each of the girls, as a parting present.
The affair took longer than they supposed, and the time seemed an age to the poor girls, who were anxiously walking up and down outside the room, in ignorance of their fate. Could their father have brought the money? Why did he tremble so? Could he have failed of the money, at last? Or could it be that their dear mother was dead, for they had heard that she was very ill!
At length a messenger came shouting to them, “You are free, you are free!” Emily thinks she sprang nearly to the ceiling overhead. They jumped, clapped their hands, laughed and shouted aloud. Soon their father came to them, embraced them tenderly and attempted to quiet them, and told them to prepare them to go and see their mother. This they did they know not how, but with considerable help from the family, who all seemed to rejoice in their joy. Their father procured a carriage to take them to the wharf, and, with joy overflowing all bounds, they bade a most affectionate farewell to each member of the family, not even omitting Bruin himself. The “good that there is in human nature” for once had the upper hand, and all were moved to tears of sympathetic joy. Their father, with subdued tenderness, made great efforts to soothe their tumultuous feelings, and at length partially succeeded. When they arrived at Washington, a carriage was ready to take them to their sister’s house. People of every rank and description came running together to get a sight of them. Their brothers caught them up in their arms, and ran about with them, almost frantic with joy. Their aged and venerated mother, raised up from a sick bed by the stimulus of the glad news, was there, weeping and giving thanks to God. Refreshments were prepared in their sister’s house for all who called, and amid greetings and rejoicings, tears and gladness, prayers and thanksgivings, but without sleep, the night passed away, and the morning of November 4, 1848, dawned upon them free and happy.
This last spring, during the month of May, as the writer has already intimated, the aged mother of the Edmondson family came on to New York, and the reason of her coming may be thus briefly explained. She had still one other daughter, the guide and support of her feeble age, or, as she calls her in her own expressive language, “the last drop of blood in her heart.” She had also a son, twenty-one years of age, still a slave on a neighboring plantation. The infirm woman in whose name the estate was held was supposed to be drawing near to death, and the poor parents were distressed with the fear that, in case of this event, their two remaining children would be sold for the purpose of dividing the estate, and thus thrown into the dreaded southern market. No one can realize what a constant horror the slave-prisons and the slave-traders are to all the unfortunate families in the vicinity. Everything for which other parents look on their children with pleasure and pride is to these poor souls a source of anxiety and dismay, because it renders the child so much more a merchantable article.
It is no wonder, therefore, that the light in Paul and Milly’s cottage was overshadowed by this terrible idea.
The guardians of these children had given their father a written promise to sell them to him for a certain sum, and by hard begging he had acquired a hundred dollars towards the twelve hundred which were necessary. But he was now confined to his bed with sickness. After pouring out earnest prayers to the Helper of the helpless, Milly says, one day she said to Paul, “I tell ye, Paul, I’m going up to New York myself, to see if I can’t get that money.”
“Paul says to me, ‘Why, Milly dear, how can you? Ye an’t fit to be off the bed, and ye’s never in the cars in your life.’
“‘Never you fear, Paul,’ says I; ‘I shall go trusting in the Lord; and the Lord, He’ll take me, and He’ll bring me,—that I know.’
“So I went to the cars and got a white man to put me aboard; and, sure enough, there I found two Bethel ministers; and one set one side o’ me, and one set the other, all the way; and they got me my tickets, and looked after my things, and did every thing for me. There didn’t anything happen to me all the way. Sometimes, when I went to set down in the sitting-rooms, people looked at me and moved off so scornful! Well, I thought, I wish the Lord would give you a better mind.”
Emily and Mary, who had been at school in New York State, came to the city to meet their mother, and they brought her directly to the Rev. Henry W. Beecher’s house, where the writer then was.
The writer remembers now the scene when she first met this mother and daughters. It must be recollected that they had not seen each other before for four years. One was sitting each side the mother, holding her hand; and the air of pride and filial affection with which they presented her was touching to behold. After being presented to the writer, she again sat down between them, took a hand of each, and looked very earnestly first on one and then on the other; and then, looking up, said, with a smile, “O, these children,—how they do lie round our hearts!”
She then explained to the writer all her sorrows and anxieties for the younger children. “Now, madam,” she says, “that man that keeps the great trading-house at Alexandria, that man,” she said, with a strong, indignant expression, “has sent to know if there’s any more of my children to be sold. That man said he wanted to see me! Yes, ma’am, he said he’d give twenty dollars to see me. I wouldn’t see him, if he’d give me a hundred! He sent for me to come and see him, when he had my daughters in his prison. I wouldn’t go to see him,—I didn’t want to see them there!”
The two daughters, Emily and Mary, here became very much excited, and broke out in some very natural but bitter language against all slave-holders. “Hush, children! you must forgive your enemies,” she said. “But they’re so wicked!” said the girls. “Ah, children, you must hate the sin, but love the sinner.” “Well,” said one of the girls, “mother, if I was taken again and made a slave of, I’d kill myself.” “I trust not, child,—that would be wicked.” “But, mother, I should; I know I never could bear it.” “Bear it, my child?” she answered, “it’s they that bears the sorrow here is they that has the glories there.”
There was a deep, indescribable pathos of voice and manner as she said these words,—a solemnity and force, and yet a sweetness, that can never be forgotten.
This poor slave-mother, whose whole life had been one long outrage on her holiest feelings,—who had been kept from the power to read God’s Word, whose whole pilgrimage had been made one day of sorrow by the injustice of a Christian nation,—she had yet learned to solve the highest problem of Christian ethics, and to do what so few reformers can do,—hate the sin, but love the sinner!
A great deal of interest was excited among the ladies in Brooklyn by this history. Several large meetings were held in different parlors, in which the old mother related her history with great simplicity and pathos, and a subscription for the redemption of the remaining two of her family was soon on foot. It may be interesting to know that the subscription list was headed by the lovely and benevolent Jenny Lind Goldschmidt.
Some of the ladies who listened to this touching story were so much interested in Mrs. Edmondson personally, they wished to have her daguerreotype taken; both that they might be strengthened and refreshed by the sight of her placid countenance, and that they might see the beauty of true goodness beaming there.
She accordingly went to the rooms with them, with all the simplicity of a little child. “O,” said she, to one of the ladies, “you can’t think how happy it’s made me to get here, where everybody is so kind to me! Why, last night, when I went home, I was so happy I couldn’t sleep. I had to go and tell my Saviour, over and over again, how happy I was.”
A lady spoke to her about reading something. “Law bless you, honey! I can’t read a letter.”
“Then,” said another lady, “how have you learned so much of God, and heavenly things?”
“Well, ‘pears like a gift from above.”
“Can you have the Bible read to you?”
“Why, yes; Paul, he reads a little, but then he has so much work all day, and when he gets home at night he’s so tired! and his eyes is bad. But then the Sperit teaches us.”
“Do you go much to meeting?”
“Not much now, we live so far. In winter I can’t never. But, O! what meetings I have had, alone in the corner,—my Saviour and only me!” The smile with which these words were spoken was a thing to be remembered. A little girl, daughter of one of the ladies, made some rather severe remarks about somebody in the daguerreotype rooms, and her mother checked her.
The old lady looked up, with her placid smile. “That puts me in mind,” she said, “of what I heard a preacher say once. ‘My friends,’ says he, ‘if you know of anything that will make a brother’s heart glad, run quick and tell it; but if it is something that will only cause a sigh, ‘bottle it up, bottle it up!’ O, I often tell my children, ‘Bottle it up, bottle it up!’”
When the writer came to part with the old lady, she said to her: “Well, good-by, my dear friend; remember and pray for me.”
“Pray for you!” she said, earnestly. “Indeed I shall,—I can’t help it.” She then, raising her finger, said, in an emphatic tone, peculiar to the old of her race, “Tell you what! we never gets no good bread ourselves till we begins to ask for our brethren.”
The writer takes this opportunity to inform all those friends, in different parts of the country, who generously contributed for the redemption of these children, that they are at last free!
The following extract from the letter of a lady in Washington may be interesting to them:
I have seen the Edmondson parents,—Paul and his wife Milly. I have seen the free Edmondsons,—mother, son, and daughter,—the very day after the great era of free life commenced, while yet the inspiration was on them, while the mother’s face was all light and love, the father’s eyes moistened and glistening with tears, the son calm in conscious manhood and responsibility, the daughter (not more than fifteen years old, I think) smiling a delightful appreciation of joy in the present and hope in the future, thus suddenly and completely unfolded.
Thus have we finished the account of one of the families who were taken on board the Pearl. We have another history to give, to which we cannot promise so fortunate a termination.
CHAPTER VII.
Among those unfortunates guilty of loving freedom too well, was a beautiful young quadroon girl, named Emily Russell, whose mother is now living in New York. The writer has seen and conversed with her. She is a pious woman, highly esteemed and respected, a member of a Christian church.
By the avails of her own industry she purchased her freedom, and also redeemed from bondage some of her children. Emily was a resident of Washington, D. C., a place which belongs not to any state, but to the United States; and there, under the laws of the United States, she was held as a slave. She was of a gentle disposition and amiable manners; she had been early touched with a sense of religious things, and was on the very point of uniting herself with a Christian church; but her heart yearned after her widowed mother and after freedom, and so, on the fatal night when all the other poor victims sought the Pearl, the child Emily went also among them.
How they were taken has already been told. The sin of the poor girl was inexpiable. Because she longed for her mother’s arms and for liberty, she could not be forgiven. Nothing would do for such a sin, but to throw her into the hands of the trader. She also was thrown into Bruin & Hill’s jail, in Alexandria. Her poor mother in New York received the following letter from her. Read it, Christian mother, and think what if your daughter had written it to you!
To Mrs. Nancy Cartwright, New York.
My Dear Mother: I take this opportunity of writing you a few lines, to inform you that I am in Bruin’s Jail, and Aunt Sally and all of her children, and Aunt Hagar and all her children, and grandmother is almost crazy. My dear mother, will you please to come on as soon as you can? I expect to go away very shortly. O, mother! my dear mother! come now and see your distressed and heart-broken daughter once more. Mother! my dear mother! do not forsake me, for I feel desolate! Please to come now.
P. S.—If you do not come as far as Alexandria, come to Washington, and do what you can.
That letter, blotted and tear-soiled, was brought by this poor washerwoman to some Christian friends in New York, and shown to them. “What do you suppose they will ask for her?” was her question. All that she had,—her little house, her little furniture, her small earnings,—all these poor Nancy was willing to throw in; but all these were but as a drop to the bucket.
The first thing to be done, then, was to ascertain what Emily could be redeemed for; and, as it may be an interesting item of American trade, we give the reply of the traders in full:
Dear Sir: When I received your letter I had not bought the negroes you spoke of, but since that time I have bought them. All I have to say about the matter is, that we paid very high for the negroes, and cannot afford to sell the girl Emily for less than EIGHTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS. This may seem a high price to you, but, cotton being very high, consequently slaves are high. We have two or three offers for Emily from gentlemen from the south. She is said to be the finest-looking woman in this country. As for Hagar and her seven children, we will take two thousand five hundred dollars for them. Sally and her four children. We will take for them two thousand eight hundred dollars. You may seem a little surprised at the difference in prices, but the difference in the negroes makes the difference in price. We expect to start south with the negroes on the 8th February, and if you intend to do anything, you had better do it soon.
This letter came to New York before the case of the Edmondsons had called the attention of the community to this subject. The enormous price asked entirely discouraged effort, and before anything of importance was done they heard that the coffle had departed, with Emily in it.
Hear, O heavens! and give ear, O earth! Let it be known, in all the countries of the earth, that the market-price of a beautiful Christian girl in America is from EIGHTEEN HUNDRED to TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS; and yet, judicatories in the church of Christ have said, in solemn conclave, that American slavery as it is is no evil![22]
From the table of the sacrament and from the sanctuary of the church of Christ this girl was torn away, because her beauty was a salable article in the slave-market in New Orleans!
Perhaps some Northern apologist for slavery will say she was kindly treated here—not handcuffed by the wrist to a chain, and forced to walk, as articles less choice are; that a wagon was provided, and that she rode; and that food abundant was given her to eat, and that her clothing was warm and comfortable, and therefore no harm was done. We have heard it told us, again and again, that there is no harm in slavery, if one is only warm enough, and full-fed, and comfortable. It is true that the slave-woman has no protection from the foulest dishonor and the utmost insult that can be offered to womanhood,—none whatever in law or gospel; but, so long as she has enough to eat and wear, our Christian fathers and mothers tell us it is not so bad!
Poor Emily could not think so. There was no eye to pity, and none to help. The food of her accursed lot did not nourish her; the warmest clothing could not keep the chill of slavery from her heart. In the middle of the overland passage, sick, weary, heart-broken, the child laid her down and died. By that lonely pillow there was no mother. But there was one Friend, who loveth at all times, who is closer than a brother. Could our eyes be touched by the seal of faith, where others see only the lonely wilderness and the dying girl, we, perhaps, should see one clothed in celestial beauty, waiting for that short agony to be over, that He might redeem her from all iniquity, and present her faultless before the presence of his Grace with exceeding joy!
Even the hard-hearted trader was touched with her sad fate, and we are credibly informed that he said he was sorry he had taken her.
Bruin & Hill wrote to New York that the girl Emily was dead. A friend of the family went with the letter, to break the news to her mother. Since she had given up all hope of redeeming her daughter from the dreadful doom to which she had been sold, the helpless mother had drooped like a stricken woman. She no longer lifted up her head, or seemed to take any interest in life.
When the friend called on her, she asked, eagerly,
“Have you heard anything from my daughter?”
“Yes. I have,” was the reply, “a letter from Bruin & Hill.”
“And what is the news?”
He thought best to give a direct answer,—“Emily is dead.”
The poor mother clasped her hands, and, looking upwards, said, “The Lord be thanked! He has heard my prayers at last!”
And, now, will it be said this is an exceptional case—it happens one time in a thousand? Though we know that this is the foulest of falsehoods, and that the case is only a specimen of what is acting every day in the American slave-trade, yet, for argument’s sake, let us, for once, admit it to be true. If only once in this nation, under the protection of our law, a Christian girl had been torn from the altar and the communion-table, and sold to foulest shame and dishonor, would that have been a light sin? Does not Christ say, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me”? O, words of woe for thee, America!—words of woe for thee, church of Christ! Hast thou trod them under foot and trampled them in the dust so long that Christ has forgotten them? In the day of judgment every one of these words shall rise up, living and burning, as accusing angels to witness against thee. Art thou, O church of Christ! praying daily, “Thy kingdom come”? Darest thou pray, “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly”? O, what if He should come? What if the Lord, whom ye seek, should suddenly come into his temple? If his soul was stirred within him when he found within his temple of old those that changed money, and sold sheep and oxen and doves, what will he say now, when he finds them selling body, blood and bones, of his own people? And is the Christian church, which justifies this enormous system,—which has used the awful name of her Redeemer to sanction the buying, selling and trading in the souls of men,—is this church the bride of Christ? Is she one with Christ, even as Christ is one with the Father? O, bitter mockery! Does this church believe that every Christian’s body is a temple of the Holy Ghost? Or does she think those solemn words were idle breath, when, a thousand times, every day and week, in the midst of her, is this temple set up and sold at auction, to be bought by any godless, blasphemous man, who has money to pay for it!
As to poor Daniel Bell and his family, whose contested claim to freedom was the beginning of the whole trouble, a few members of it were redeemed, and the rest were plunged into the abyss of slavery. It would seem as if this event, like the sinking of a ship, drew into its maëlstrom the fate of every unfortunate being who was in its vicinity. A poor, honest, hard-working slave-man, of the name of Thomas Ducket, had a wife who was on board the Pearl. Tom was supposed to know the men who countenanced the enterprise, and his master, therefore, determined to sell him. He brought him to Washington for the purpose. Some in Washington doubted his legal right to bring a slave from Maryland for the purpose of selling him, and commenced legal proceedings to test the matter. While they were pending, the counsel for the master told the men who brought action against his client that Tom was anxious to be sold; that he preferred being sold to the man who had purchased his wife and children, rather than to have his liberty. It was well known, that Tom did not wish to be separated from his family, and the friends here, confiding in the representations made to them, consented to withdraw the proceedings.
Some time after this, they received letters from poor Tom Ducket, dated ninety miles above New Orleans, complaining sadly of his condition, and making piteous appeals to hear from them respecting his wife and children. Upon inquiry, nothing could be learned respecting them. They had been sold and gone,—sold and gone,—no one knew whither; and as a punishment to Tom for his contumacy in refusing to give the name of the man who had projected the expedition of the Pearl, he was denied the privilege of going off the place, and was not allowed to talk with the other servants, his master fearing a conspiracy. In one of his letters he says, “I have seen more trouble here in one day than I have in all my life.” In another, “I would be glad to hear from her [his wife], but I should be more glad to hear of her death than for her to come here.”
In his distress, Tom wrote a letter to Mr. Bigelow, of Washington. People who are not in the habit of getting such documents have no idea of them. We give a facsimile of Tom’s letter, with all its poor spelling, all its ignorance, helplessness, and misery.
Mr. Bigelow. Dear Sir:—I write to let you know how I am getting along. Hard times here. I have not had one hour to go outside the place since I have been on it. I put my trust in the Lord to help me. I long to hear from you all I written to hear from you all. Mr. Bigelow, I hope you will not forget me. You know it was not my fault that I am here. I hope you will name me to Mr. Geden, Mr. Chaplin, Mr. Bailey, to help me out of it. I believe that if they would make the least move to it that it could be done. I long to hear from my family how they are getting along. You will please to write to me just to let me know how they are getting along. You can write to me.
You can direct your letters to Thomas Ducket, in care of Mr. Samuel T. Harrison, Louisiana, near Bayou Goula. For God’s sake let me hear from you all. My wife and children are not out of my mind day nor night.]
22. The words of the Georgia Annual Conference: Resolved, “That slavery, as it exists in the United States, is not a moral evil.”
CHAPTER VIII.
KIDNAPPING.
The principle which declares that one human being may lawfully hold another as property leads directly to the trade in human beings; and that trade has, among its other horrible results, the temptation to the crime of kidnapping.
The trader is generally a man of coarse nature and low associations, hard-hearted, and reckless of right or honor. He who is not so is an exception, rather than a specimen. If he has anything good about him when he begins the business, it may well be seen that he is in a fair way to lose it.
Around the trader are continually passing and repassing men and women who would be worth to him thousands of dollars in the way of trade,—who belong to a class whose rights nobody respects, and who, if reduced to slavery, could not easily make their word good against him. The probability is that hundreds of free men and women and children are all the time being precipitated into slavery in this way.
The recent case of Northrop, tried in Washington, D. C., throws light on this fearful subject. The following account is abridged from the New York Times:
Solomon Northrop is a free colored citizen of the United States; he was born in Essex county, New York, about the year 1808; became early a resident of Washington county, and married there in 1829. His father and mother resided in the county of Washington about fifty years, till their decease, and were both free. With his wife and children he resided at Saratoga Springs in the winter of 1841, and while there was employed by two gentlemen to drive a team South, at the rate of a dollar a day. In fulfilment of his employment, he proceeded to New York, and, having taken out free papers, to show that he was a citizen, he went on to Washington city, where he arrived the second day of April, the same year, and put up at Gadsby’s Hotel. Soon after he arrived he felt unwell, and went to bed.
While suffering with severe pain, some persons came in, and, seeing the condition he was in, proposed to give him some medicine, and did so. This is the last thing of which he had any recollection, until he found himself chained to the floor of Williams’ slave-pen in this city, and handcuffed. In the course of a few hours, James H. Burch, a slave-dealer, came in, and the colored man asked him to take the irons off from him, and wanted to know why they were put on. Burch told him it was none of his business. The colored man said he was free, and told where he was born. Burch called in a man by the name of Ebenezer Rodbury, and they two stripped the man and laid him across a bench, Rodbury holding him down by his wrists. Burch whipped him with a paddle until he broke that, and then with a cat-o’-nine-tails, giving him a hundred lashes; and he swore he would kill him if he ever stated to any one that he was a free man. From that time forward the man says he did not communicate the fact from fear, either that he was a free man, or what his name was, until the last summer. He was kept in the slave-pen about ten days, when he, with others, was taken out of the pen in the night by Burch, handcuffed and shackled, and taken down the river by a steamboat, and then to Richmond, where he, with forty-eight others, was put on board the brig Orleans. There Burch left them. Tho brig sailed for New Orleans, and on arriving there, before she was fastened to the wharf, Theophilus Freeman, another slave-dealer, belonging in the city of New Orleans, and who in 1833 had been a partner with Burch in the slavetrade, came to the wharf, and received the slaves as they were landed, under his direction. This man was immediately taken by Freeman and shut up in his pen in that city, he was taken sick with the small-pox immediately after getting there, and was sent to a hospital, where he lay two or three weeks. When he had sufficiently recovered to leave the hospital, Freeman declined to sell him to any person in that vicinity, and sold him to a Mr. Ford, who resided in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, where he was taken and lived more than a year, and worked as a carpenter, working with Ford at that business.
Ford became involved, and had to sell him. A. Mr. Tibaut became the purchaser. He, in a short time, sold him to Edwin Eppes, in Bayou Beouf, about one hundred and thirty miles from the mouth of Red river, where Eppes has retained him on a cotton plantation since the year 1843.
To go back a step in the narrative, the man wrote a letter, in June, 1841, to Henry B. Northrop, of the State of New York, dated and postmarked at New Orleans, stating that he had been kidnapped and was on board a vessel, but was unable to state what his destination was; but requesting Mr. N. to aid him in recovering his freedom, if possible. Mr. N. was unable to do anything in his behalf, in consequence of not knowing where he had gone, and not being able to find any trace of him. His place of residence remained unknown until the month of September last, when the following letter was received by his friends: