The Underground Railroad by William Still (best fiction books of all time txt) 📖

in thought as to how she could best promote the welfare of her race. But as she was devoted to the work in hand, she soon found that fifty-three untrained little urchins overtaxed her naturally delicate physical powers; it also happened just about this time that she was further moved to enter the Anti-Slavery field as a lecturer substantially by the following circumstance: About the year 1853, Maryland, her native State, had enacted a law forbidding free people of color from the North from coming into the State on pain of being imprisoned and sold into slavery. A free man, who had unwittingly violated this infamous statute, had recently been sold to Georgia, and had escaped thence by secreting himself behind the wheel-house of a boat bound northward; but before he reached the desired haven, he was discovered and remanded to slavery. It was reported that he died soon after from the effects of exposure and suffering. In a letter to a friend referring to this outrage, Mrs. Harper thus wrote: "Upon that grave I pledged myself to the Anti-Slavery cause."

Having thus decided, she wrote in a subsequent letter, "It may be that God himself has written upon both my heart and brain a commission to use time, talent and energy in the cause of freedom." In this abiding faith she came to Philadelphia, hoping that the way would open for usefulness, and to publish her little book (above referred to). She visited the Anti-Slavery Office and read Anti-Slavery documents with great avidity; in the mean time making her home at the station of the Underground Rail Road, where she frequently saw passengers and heard their melting tales of suffering and wrong, which intensely increased her sympathy in their behalf. Although anxious to enter the Anti-Slavery field as a worker, her modesty prevented her from pressing her claims; consequently as she was but little known, being a young and homeless maiden (an exile by law), no especial encouragement was tendered her by Anti-Slavery friends in Philadelphia.

During her stay in Philadelphia she published some verses entitled, "Eliza Harris crossing the River on the Ice." It was deemed best to delay the issuing of the book.

After spending some weeks in Philadelphia, she concluded to visit Boston. Here she was treated with the kindness characteristic of the friends in the Anti-Slavery Office whom she visited, but only made a brief stay, after which she proceeded to New Bedford, the "hot-bed of the fugitives" in Massachusetts, where by invitation she addressed a public meeting on the subject of Education and the Elevation of the Colored Race.

The occasion and result of the commencement of her public career was thus given by her own pen in a letter dated August, 1854:

"Well, I am out lecturing. I have lectured every night this week; besides addressed a Sunday-school, and I shall speak, if nothing prevent, to-night. My lectures have met with success. Last night I lectured in a white church in Providence. Mr. Gardener was present, and made the estimate of about six hundred persons. Never, perhaps, was a speaker, old or young, favored with a more attentive audience.... My voice is not wanting in strength, as I am aware of, to reach pretty well over the house. The church was the Roger Williams; the pastor, a Mr. Furnell, who appeared to be a kind and Christian man.... My maiden lecture was Monday night in New Bedford on the Elevation and Education of our People. Perhaps as intellectual a place as any I was ever at of its size."

Having thus won her way to a favorable position as a lecturer, the following month she was engaged by the State Anti-Slavery Society of Maine, with what success appears from one of her letters bearing date—Buckstown Centre, Sept. 28, 1854:

"The agent of the State Anti-Slavery Society of Maine travels with me, and she is a pleasant, dear, sweet lady. I do like her so. We travel together, eat together, and sleep together. (She is a white woman.) In fact I have not been in one colored person's house since I left Massachusetts; but I have a pleasant time. My life reminds me of a beautiful dream. What a difference between this and York!... I have met with some of the kindest treatment up here that I have ever received.... I have lectured three times this week. After I went from Limerick, I went to Springvale; there I spoke on Sunday night at an Anti-Slavery meeting. Some of the people are Anti-Slavery, Anti-rum and Anti-Catholic; and if you could see our Maine ladies,—some of them among the noblest types of womanhood you have ever seen! They are for putting men of Anti-Slavery principles in office, ... to cleanse the corrupt fountains of our government by sending men to Congress who will plead for our down-trodden and oppressed brethren, our crushed and helpless sisters, whose tears and blood bedew our soil, whose chains are clanking 'neath our proudest banners, whose cries and groans amid our loudest paeans rise."

Everywhere in this latitude doors opened before her, and her gifts were universally recognized as a valuable acquisition to the cause. In the letter above referred to she said: "I spoke in Boston on Monday night.... Well, I am but one, but can do something, and, God helping me, I will try. Mr. Brister from Lowell addressed the meeting; also Rev. —— Howe. We had a good demonstration."

Having read the narrative of Solomon Northrup (12 years a slave), she was led to embrace the Free Labor doctrine most thoroughly; and in a letter dated at Temple, Maine, Oct. 20, 1854, after expressing the interest she took in the annual meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society of that state, she remarked:

"I spoke on Free Produce, and now by the way I believe in that kind of Abolition. Oh, it does seem to strike at one of the principal roots of the matter. I have commenced since I read Solomon Northrup. Oh, if Mrs. Stowe has clothed American slavery in the graceful garb of fiction, Solomon Northrup comes up from the dark habitation of Southern cruelty where slavery fattens and feasts on human blood with such mournful revelations that one might almost wish for the sake of humanity that the tales of horror which he reveals were not so. Oh, how can we pamper our appetites upon luxuries drawn from reluctant fingers? Oh, could slavery exist long if it did not sit on a commercial throne? I have read somewhere, if I remember aright, of a Hindoo being loth to cut a tree because being a believer in the transmigration of souls, he thought the soul of his father had passed into it ... Oh, friend, beneath the most delicate preparations of the cane can you not see the stinging lash and clotted whip? I have reason to be thankful that I am able to give a little more for a Free Labor dress, if it is coarser. I can thank God that upon its warp and woof I see no stain of blood and tears; that to procure a little finer muslin for my limbs no crushed and broken heart went out in sighs, and that from the field where it was raised went up no wild and startling cry unto the throne of God to witness there in language deep and strong, that in demanding that cotton I was nerving oppression's hand for deeds of guilt and crime. If the liberation of the slave demanded it, I could consent to part with a portion of the blood from my own veins if that would do him any good."

After having thus alluded to free labor, she gave a short journal of the different places where she had recently lectured from the 5th of September to the 20th of October, which we mention here simply to show the perseverance which characterized her as an advocate of her enslaved race, and at the same time show how doors everywhere opened to her: Portland, Monmouth Centre, North Berwick, Limerick (two meetings), Springvale, Portsmouth, Elliott, Waterborough (spoke four times), Lyman, Saccarappo, Moderation, Steep Falls (twice), North Buxton, Goram, Gardner, Litchfield, twice, Monmouth Ridge twice, Monmouth Centre three times, Litchfield second time, West Waterville twice, Livermore Temple. Her ability and labors were everywhere appreciated, and her meetings largely attended. In a subsequent letter referring to the manner that she was received, she wrote, "A short while ago when I was down this way I took breakfast with the then Governor of Maine."

For a year and a half she continued in the Eastern States, speaking in most or all of them with marked success; the papers meting out to her full commendation for her efforts. The following extract clipped from the Portland Daily Press, respecting a lecture that she was invited to deliver after the war by the Mayor (Mr. Washburne) and others, is a fair sample of notices from this source:

"She spoke for nearly an hour and a half, her subject being 'The Mission of the War, and the Demands of the Colored Race in the Work of Reconstruction;' and we have seldom seen an audience more attentive, better pleased, or more enthusiastic. Mrs. Harper has a splendid articulation, uses chaste, pure language, has a pleasant voice, and allows no one to tire of hearing her. We shall attempt no abstract of her address; none that we could make would do her justice. It was one of which any lecturer might feel proud, and her reception by a Portland audience was all that could be desired. We have seen no praises of her that were overdrawn. We have heard Miss Dickinson, and do not hesitate to award the palm to her darker colored sister."

In 1856, desiring to see the fugitives in Canada, she visited the Upper Province, and in a letter dated at Niagara Falls, Sept. 12th, she unfolded her mind in the following language:

"Well, I have gazed for the first time upon Free Land, and, would you believe it, tears sprang to my eyes, and I wept. Oh, it was a glorious sight to gaze for the first time on a land where a poor slave flying from our glorious land of liberty would in a moment find his fetters broken, his shackles loosed, and whatever he was in the land of Washington, beneath the shadow of Bunker Hill Monument or even Plymouth Rock, here he becomes a man and a brother. I have gazed on Harper's Ferry, or rather the rock at the Ferry; I have seen it towering up in simple grandeur, with the gentle Potomac gliding peacefully at its feet, and felt that that was God's masonry, and my soul had expanded in gazing on its sublimity. I have seen the ocean singing its wild chorus of sounding waves, and ecstacy has thrilled upon the living chords of my heart. I have since then seen the rainbow-crowned Niagara chanting the choral hymn of Omnipotence, girdled with grandeur, and robed with glory; but none of these things have melted me as the first sight of Free Land. Towering mountains lifting their hoary summits to catch the first faint flush of day when the sunbeams kiss the shadows from morning's drowsy face may expand and exalt your soul. The first view of the ocean may fill you with strange delight. Niagara—the great, the glorious Niagara—may hush your spirit with its ceaseless thunder; it may charm you with its robe of crested spray and rainbow crown; but the land of Freedom was a lesson of deeper significance than foaming waves or towering mounts."

While in Toronto she lectured, and was listened to with great interest; but she made only a brief visit, thence returning to Philadelphia, her adopted home.

With her newly acquired reputation as a lecturer, from 1856 to 1859 she continued her labors in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, &c. In the meantime she