UNCLE TOM'S CABIN by Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Slave Warehouse
A slave warehouse! Perhaps some of my readers conjure up horrible
visions of such a place. They fancy some foul, obscure den, some
horrible _Tartarus "informis, ingens, cui lumen ademptum."_
But no, innocent friend; in these days men have learned the art of
sinning expertly and genteelly, so as not to shock the eyes and
senses of respectable society. Human property is high in the
market; and is, therefore, well fed, well cleaned, tended, and
looked after, that it may come to sale sleek, and strong, and
shining. A slave-warehouse in New Orleans is a house externally
not much unlike many others, kept with neatness; and where every
day you may see arranged, under a sort of shed along the outside,
rows of men and women, who stand there as a sign of the property
sold within.
Then you shall be courteously entreated to call and examine,
and shall find an abundance of husbands, wives, brothers, sisters,
fathers, mothers, and young children, to be "sold separately, or
in lots to suit the convenience of the purchaser;" and that soul
immortal, once bought with blood and anguish by the Son of God,
when the earth shook, and the rocks rent, and the graves were
opened, can be sold, leased, mortgaged, exchanged for groceries or
dry goods, to suit the phases of trade, or the fancy of the purchaser.
It was a day or two after the conversation between Marie and Miss
Ophelia, that Tom, Adolph, and about half a dozen others of the
St. Clare estate, were turned over to the loving kindness of Mr.
Skeggs, the keeper of a depot on ---- street, to await the auction,
next day.
Tom had with him quite a sizable trunk full of clothing, as
had most others of them. They were ushered, for the night, into
a long room, where many other men, of all ages, sizes, and shades
of complexion, were assembled, and from which roars of laughter
and unthinking merriment were proceeding.
"Ah, ha! that's right. Go it, boys,--go it!" said Mr. Skeggs,
the keeper. "My people are always so merry! Sambo, I see!"
he said, speaking approvingly to a burly negro who was performing
tricks of low buffoonery, which occasioned the shouts which Tom
had heard.
As might be imagined, Tom was in no humor to join these
proceedings; and, therefore, setting his trunk as far as possible
from the noisy group, he sat down on it, and leaned his face
against the wall.
The dealers in the human article make scrupulous and systematic
efforts to promote noisy mirth among them, as a means of
drowning reflection, and rendering them insensible to their
condition. The whole object of the training to which the negro is
put, from the time he is sold in the northern market till he arrives
south, is systematically directed towards making him callous,
unthinking, and brutal. The slave-dealer collects his gang in
Virginia or Kentucky, and drives them to some convenient, healthy
place,--often a watering place,--to be fattened. Here they are
fed full daily; and, because some incline to pine, a fiddle is kept
commonly going among them, and they are made to dance daily; and
he who refuses to be merry--in whose soul thoughts of wife, or
child, or home, are too strong for him to be gay--is marked as
sullen and dangerous, and subjected to all the evils which the ill
will of an utterly irresponsible and hardened man can inflict
upon him. Briskness, alertness, and cheerfulness of appearance,
especially before observers, are constantly enforced upon them,
both by the hope of thereby getting a good master, and the fear of
all that the driver may bring upon them if they prove unsalable.
"What dat ar nigger doin here?" said Sambo, coming up to Tom,
after Mr. Skeggs had left the room. Sambo was a full black,
of great size, very lively, voluble, and full of trick and grimace.
"What you doin here?" said Sambo, coming up to Tom, and
poking him facetiously in the side. "Meditatin', eh?"
"I am to be sold at the auction, tomorrow!" said Tom, quietly.
"Sold at auction,--haw! haw! boys, an't this yer fun? I wish't
I was gwine that ar way!--tell ye, wouldn't I make em laugh?
But how is it,--dis yer whole lot gwine tomorrow?" said Sambo,
laying his hand freely on Adolph's shoulder.
"Please to let me alone!" said Adolph, fiercely, straightening
himself up, with extreme disgust.
"Law, now, boys! dis yer's one o' yer white niggers,--kind
o' cream color, ye know, scented!" said he, coming up to Adolph
and snuffing. "O Lor! he'd do for a tobaccer-shop; they could keep
him to scent snuff! Lor, he'd keep a whole shope agwine,--he would!"
"I say, keep off, can't you?" said Adolph, enraged.
"Lor, now, how touchy we is,--we white niggers! Look at
us now!" and Sambo gave a ludicrous imitation of Adolph's manner;
"here's de airs and graces. We's been in a good family, I specs."
"Yes," said Adolph; "I had a master that could have bought
you all for old truck!"
"Laws, now, only think," said Sambo, "the gentlemens that
we is!"
"I belonged to the St. Clare family," said Adolph, proudly.
"Lor, you did! Be hanged if they ar'n't lucky to get shet of ye.
Spects they's gwine to trade ye off with a lot o' cracked
tea-pots and sich like!" said Sambo, with a provoking grin.
Adolph, enraged at this taunt, flew furiously at his adversary,
swearing and striking on every side of him. The rest laughed
and shouted, and the uproar brought the keeper to the door.
"What now, boys? Order,--order!" he said, coming in and
flourishing a large whip.
All fled in different directions, except Sambo, who,
presuming on the favor which the keeper had to him as a licensed
wag, stood his ground, ducking his head with a facetious grin,
whenever the master made a dive at him.
"Lor, Mas'r, 'tan't us,--we 's reglar stiddy,--it's these
yer new hands; they 's real aggravatin',--kinder pickin' at us,
all time!"
The keeper, at this, turned upon Tom and Adolph, and
distributing a few kicks and cuffs without much inquiry, and
leaving general orders for all to be good boys and go to sleep,
left the apartment.
While this scene was going on in the men's sleeping-room,
the reader may be curious to take a peep at the corresponding
apartment allotted to the women. Stretched out in various attitudes
over the floor, he may see numberless sleeping forms of every shade
of complexion, from the purest ebony to white, and of all years,
from childhood to old age, lying now asleep. Here is a fine bright
girl, of ten years, whose mother was sold out yesterday, and who
tonight cried herself to sleep when nobody was looking at her.
Here, a worn old negress, whose thin arms and callous fingers tell
of hard toil, waiting to be sold tomorrow, as a cast-off article,
for what can be got for her; and some forty or fifty others, with
heads variously enveloped in blankets or articles of clothing, lie
stretched around them. But, in a corner, sitting apart from the
rest, are two females of a more interesting appearance than common.
One of these is a respectably-dressed mulatto woman between forty
and fifty, with soft eyes and a gentle and pleasing physiognomy.
She has on her head a high-raised turban, made of a gay red Madras
handkerchief, of the first quality, her dress is neatly fitted,
and of good material, showing that she has been provided for with
a careful hand. By her side, and nestling closely to her, is a
young girl of fifteen,--her daughter. She is a quadroon, as may
be seen from her fairer complexion, though her likeness to her
mother is quite discernible. She has the same soft, dark eye, with
longer lashes, and her curling hair is of a luxuriant brown. She
also is dressed with great neatness, and her white, delicate hands
betray very little acquaintance with servile toil. These two are
to be sold tomorrow, in the same lot with the St. Clare servants;
and the gentleman to whom they belong, and to whom the money for
their sale is to be transmitted, is a member of a Christian church
in New York, who will receive the money, and go thereafter to the
sacrament of his Lord and theirs, and think no more of it.
These two, whom we shall call Susan and Emmeline, had been the
personal attendants of an amiable and pious lady of New Orleans,
by whom they had been carefully and piously instructed and trained.
They had been taught to read and write, diligently instructed in
the truths of religion, and their lot had been as happy an one as
in their condition it was possible to be. But the only son of
their protectress had the management of her property; and, by
carelessness and extravagance involved it to a large amount, and
at last failed. One of the largest creditors was the respectable
firm of B. & Co., in New York. B. & Co. wrote to their lawyer in
New Orleans, who attached the real estate (these two articles and
a lot of plantation hands formed the most valuable part of it),
and wrote word to that effect to New York. Brother B., being, as
we have said, a Christian man, and a resident in a free State, felt
some uneasiness on the subject. He didn't like trading in slaves
and souls of men,--of course, he didn't; but, then, there were thirty
thousand dollars in the case, and that was rather too much money
to be lost for a principle; and so, after much considering, and
asking advice from those that he knew would advise to suit him,
Brother B. wrote to his lawyer to dispose of the business in the
way that seemed to him the most suitable, and remit the proceeds.
The day after the letter arrived in New Orleans, Susan and
Emmeline were attached, and sent to the depot to await a general
auction on the following morning; and as they glimmer faintly upon
us in the moonlight which steals through the grated window, we may
listen to their conversation. Both are weeping, but each quietly,
that the other may not hear.
"Mother, just lay your head on my lap, and see if you can't
sleep a little," says the girl, trying to appear calm.
"I haven't any heart to sleep, Em; I can't; it's the last
night we may be together!"
"O, mother, don't say so! perhaps we shall get sold
together,--who knows?"
"If 't was anybody's else case, I should say so, too, Em,"
said the woman; "but I'm so feard of losin' you that I don't see
anything but the danger."
"Why, mother, the man said we were both likely, and would
sell well."
Susan remembered the man's looks and words. With a deadly
sickness at her heart, she remembered how he had looked at Emmeline's
hands, and lifted up her curly hair, and pronounced her a first-rate
article. Susan had been trained as a Christian, brought up in the
daily reading of the Bible, and had the same horror of her child's
being sold to a life of shame that any other Christian mother might
have; but she had no hope,--no protection.
"Mother, I think we might do first rate, if you could get a place
as cook, and I as chambermaid or seamstress, in some family.
I dare say we shall. Let's both look as bright and lively
as we can, and tell all we can do, and perhaps we shall," said
Emmeline.
"I want you to brush your hair all back straight, tomorrow,"
said Susan.
"What for, mother? I don't look near so well, that way."
"Yes, but you'll sell better so."
"I don't see why!" said the child.
"Respectable families would be more apt to buy you, if they
saw you looked plain and decent, as if you wasn't trying to
look handsome. I know their ways better 'n you do," said Susan.
"Well, mother, then I will."
"And, Emmeline, if we shouldn't ever see each other again,
after tomorrow,--if I'm sold way up on a plantation somewhere, and
you somewhere else,--always remember how you've been brought up,
and all Missis has told you; take your Bible with you, and your
hymn-book; and if you're faithful to the Lord, he'll be faithful
to you."
So speaks the poor soul, in sore discouragement; for she
knows that tomorrow any man, however vile and brutal, however
godless and merciless, if he only has money to pay for her, may
become owner of her daughter, body and soul; and then, how is the
child to be faithful? She thinks of all this, as she holds her
daughter in her arms, and wishes that she were not handsome and
attractive. It seems almost an aggravation to her to remember how
purely and piously, how much above the ordinary lot, she has been
brought up. But she has no resort but to _pray_; and many such
prayers to God have gone up from those same trim, neatly-arranged,
respectable slave-prisons,--prayers which God has not forgotten,
as a coming day shall show; for it is written, "Who causeth one of
these little ones to offend, it were better for him that a millstone
were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths
of the sea."
The soft, earnest, quiet moonbeam looks in fixedly, marking
the bars of the grated windows on the prostrate, sleeping forms.
The mother and daughter are singing together a wild and melancholy
dirge, common as a funeral hymn among the slaves:
"O, where is weeping Mary?
O, where is weeping Mary?
'Rived in the goodly land.
She is dead and gone to Heaven;
She is dead and gone to Heaven;
'Rived in the goodly land."
These words, sung by voices of a peculiar and melancholy
sweetness, in an air which seemed like the sighing of earthy despair
after heavenly hope, floated through the dark prison rooms with a
pathetic cadence, as verse after verse was breathed out:
"O, where are Paul and Silas?
O, where are Paul and Silas?
Gone to the goodly land.
They are dead and gone to Heaven;
They are dead and gone to Heaven;
'Rived in the goodly land."
Sing on poor souls! The night is short, and the morning
will part you forever!
But now it is morning, and everybody is astir; and the worthy
Mr. Skeggs is busy and bright, for a lot of goods is to be
fitted out for auction. There is a brisk lookout on the toilet;
injunctions passed around to every one to put on their best face
and be spry; and now all are arranged in a circle for a last review,
before they are marched up to the Bourse.
Mr. Skeggs, with his palmetto on and his cigar in his mouth,
walks around to put farewell touches on his wares.
"How's this?" he said, stepping in front of Susan and Emmeline.
"Where's your curls, gal?"
The girl looked timidly at her mother, who, with the smooth
adroitness common among her class, answers,
"I was telling her, last night, to put up her hair smooth
and neat, and not havin' it flying about in curls; looks more
respectable so."
"Bother!" said the man, peremptorily, turning to the girl;
"you go right along, and curl yourself real smart!" He added,
giving a crack to a rattan he held in his hand, "And be back in
quick time, too!"
"You go and help her," he added, to the mother. "Them curls
may make a hundred dollars difference in the sale of her."
Beneath a splendid dome were men of all nations, moving to and
fro, over the marble pave. On every side of the circular area
were little tribunes, or stations, for the use of speakers and
auctioneers. Two of these, on opposite sides of the area, were
now occupied by brilliant and talented gentlemen, enthusiastically
forcing up, in English and French commingled, the bids of connoisseurs
in their various wares. A third one, on the other side, still
unoccupied, was surrounded by a group, waiting the moment of sale
to begin. And here we may recognize the St. Clare servants,--Tom,
Adolph, and others; and there, too, Susan and Emmeline, awaiting
their turn with anxious and dejected faces. Various spectators,
intending to purchase, or not intending, examining, and commenting
on their various points and faces with the same freedom that a set
of jockeys discuss the merits of a horse.
"Hulloa, Alf! what brings you here?" said a young exquisite,
slapping the shoulder of a sprucely-dressed young man, who was
examining Adolph through an eye-glass.
"Well! I was wanting a valet, and I heard that St. Clare's
lot was going. I thought I'd just look at his--"
"Catch me ever buying any of St. Clare's people! Spoilt niggers,
every one. Impudent as the devil!" said the other.
"Never fear that!" said the first. "If I get 'em, I'll soon
have their airs out of them; they'll soon find that they've
another kind of master to deal with than Monsieur St. Clare.
'Pon my word, I'll buy that fellow. I like the shape of him."
"You'll find it'll take all you've got to keep him. He's
deucedly extravagant!"
"Yes, but my lord will find that he _can't_ be extravagant
with _me_. Just let him be sent to the calaboose a few times, and
thoroughly dressed down! I'll tell you if it don't bring him to a
sense of his ways! O, I'll reform him, up hill and down,--you'll
see. I buy him, that's flat!"
Tom had been standing wistfully examining the multitude of
faces thronging around him, for one whom he would wish to call
master. And if you should ever be under the necessity, sir, of
selecting, out of two hundred men, one who was to become your
absolute owner and disposer, you would, perhaps, realize, just as
Tom did, how few there were that you would feel at all comfortable
in being made over to. Tom saw abundance of men,--great, burly,
gruff men; little, chirping, dried men; long-favored, lank, hard
men; and every variety of stubbed-looking, commonplace men, who
pick up their fellow-men as one picks up chips, putting them into
the fire or a basket with equal unconcern, according to their
convenience; but he saw no St. Clare.
A little before the sale commenced, a short, broad, muscular man,
in a checked shirt considerably open at the bosom, and pantaloons
much the worse for dirt and wear, elbowed his way through the crowd,
like one who is going actively into a business; and, coming up to
the group, began to examine them systematically. From the moment
that Tom saw him approaching, he felt an immediate and revolting
horror at him, that increased as he came near. He was evidently,
though short, of gigantic strength. His round, bullet head, large,
light-gray eyes, with their shaggy, sandy eyebrows, and stiff,
wiry, sun-burned hair, were rather unprepossessing items, it is to
be confessed; his large, coarse mouth was distended with tobacco,
the juice of which, from time to time, he ejected from him with
great decision and explosive force; his hands were immensely large,
hairy, sun-burned, freckled, and very dirty, and garnished with
long nails, in a very foul condition. This man proceeded to a very
free personal examination of the lot. He seized Tom by the jaw,
and pulled open his mouth to inspect his teeth; made him strip up
his sleeve, to show his muscle; turned him round, made him jump
and spring, to show his paces.
"Where was you raised?" he added, briefly, to these investigations.
"In Kintuck, Mas'r," said Tom, looking about, as if for deliverance.
"What have you done?"
"Had care of Mas'r's farm," said Tom.
"Likely story!" said the other, shortly, as he passed on.
He paused a moment before Dolph; then spitting a discharge of
tobacco-juice on his well-blacked boots, and giving a contemptuous
umph, he walked on. Again he stopped before Susan and Emmeline.
He put out his heavy, dirty hand, and drew the girl towards him;
passed it over her neck and bust, felt her arms, looked at her
teeth, and then pushed her back against her mother, whose patient
face showed the suffering she had been going through at every motion
of the hideous stranger.
The girl was frightened, and began to cry.
"Stop that, you minx!" said the salesman; "no whimpering
here,--the sale is going to begin." And accordingly the sale begun.
Adolph was knocked off, at a good sum, to the young gentlemen
who had previously stated his intention of buying him; and the
other servants of the St. Clare lot went to various bidders.
"Now, up with you, boy! d'ye hear?" said the auctioneer to Tom.
Tom stepped upon the block, gave a few anxious looks round;
all seemed mingled in a common, indistinct noise,--the clatter of
the salesman crying off his qualifications in French and English,
the quick fire of French and English bids; and almost in a moment
came the final thump of the hammer, and the clear ring on the last
syllable of the word _"dollars,"_ as the auctioneer announced his
price, and Tom was made over.--He had a master!
He was pushed from the block;--the short, bullet-headed man
seizing him roughly by the shoulder, pushed him to one side,
saying, in a harsh voice, "Stand there, _you!_"
Tom hardly realized anything; but still the bidding went
on,--ratting, clattering, now French, now English. Down goes the
hammer again,--Susan is sold! She goes down from the block, stops,
looks wistfully back,--her daughter stretches her hands towards her.
She looks with agony in the face of the man who has bought
her,--a respectable middle-aged man, of benevolent countenance.
"O, Mas'r, please do buy my daughter!"
"I'd like to, but I'm afraid I can't afford it!" said the
gentleman, looking, with painful interest, as the young girl mounted
the block, and looked around her with a frightened and timid glance.
The blood flushes painfully in her otherwise colorless cheek,
her eye has a feverish fire, and her mother groans to see
that she looks more beautiful than she ever saw her before.
The auctioneer sees his advantage, and expatiates volubly in
mingled French and English, and bids rise in rapid succession.
"I'll do anything in reason," said the benevolent-looking
gentleman, pressing in and joining with the bids. In a few moments
they have run beyond his purse. He is silent; the auctioneer grows
warmer; but bids gradually drop off. It lies now between an
aristocratic old citizen and our bullet-headed acquaintance.
The citizen bids for a few turns, contemptuously measuring his
opponent; but the bullet-head has the advantage over him, both in
obstinacy and concealed length of purse, and the controversy lasts
but a moment; the hammer falls,--he has got the girl, body and soul,
unless God help her!
Her master is Mr. Legree, who owns a cotton plantation on the
Red river. She is pushed along into the same lot with Tom and
two other men, and goes off, weeping as she goes.
The benevolent gentleman is sorry; but, then, the thing happens
every day! One sees girls and mothers crying, at these sales,
_always!_ it can't be helped, &c.; and he walks off, with his
acquisition, in another direction.
Two days after, the lawyer of the Christian firm of B. & Co.,
New York, send on their money to them. On the reverse of that
draft, so obtained, let them write these words of the great Paymaster,
to whom they shall make up their account in a future day: _"When
he maketh inquisition for blood, he forgetteth not the cry of the
humble!"_
CHAPTER XXXI
The Middle Passage
"Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look
upon iniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously,
and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is
more righteous than he?" --HAB. 1: 13.
On the lower part of a small, mean boat, on the Red river,
Tom sat,--chains on his wrists, chains on his feet, and a weight
heavier than chains lay on his heart. All had faded from his
sky,--moon and star; all had passed by him, as the trees and banks
were now passing, to return no more. Kentucky home, with wife and
children, and indulgent owners; St. Clare home, with all its
refinements and splendors; the golden head of Eva, with its saint-like
eyes; the proud, gay, handsome, seemingly careless, yet ever-kind
St. Clare; hours of ease and indulgent leisure,--all gone! and in
place thereof, _what_ remains?
It is one of the bitterest apportionments of a lot of slavery,
that the negro, sympathetic and assimilative, after acquiring,
in a refined family, the tastes and feelings which form the
atmosphere of such a place, is not the less liable to become
the bond-slave of the coarsest and most brutal,--just as a chair
or table, which once decorated the superb saloon, comes, at last,
battered and defaced, to the barroom of some filthy tavern, or some
low haunt of vulgar debauchery. The great difference is, that the
table and chair cannot feel, and the _man_ can; for even a legal
enactment that he shall be "taken, reputed, adjudged in law, to be
a chattel personal," cannot blot out his soul, with its own private
little world of memories, hopes, loves, fears, and desires.
Mr. Simon Legree, Tom's master, had purchased slaves at one
place and another, in New Orleans, to the number of eight, and
driven them, handcuffed, in couples of two and two, down to the
good steamer Pirate, which lay at the levee, ready for a trip up
the Red river.
Having got them fairly on board, and the boat being off, he came
round, with that air of efficiency which ever characterized him,
to take a review of them. Stopping opposite to Tom, who had been
attired for sale in his best broadcloth suit, with well-starched
linen and shining boots, he briefly expressed himself as follows:
"Stand up."
Tom stood up.
"Take off that stock!" and, as Tom, encumbered by his fetters,
proceeded to do it, he assisted him, by pulling it, with no
gentle hand, from his neck, and putting it in his pocket.
Legree now turned to Tom's trunk, which, previous to this, he
had been ransacking, and, taking from it a pair of old pantaloons
and dilapidated coat, which Tom had been wont to put on about his
stable-work, he said, liberating Tom's hands from the handcuffs,
and pointing to a recess in among the boxes,
"You go there, and put these on."
Tom obeyed, and in a few moments returned.
"Take off your boots," said Mr. Legree.
Tom did so.
"There," said the former, throwing him a pair of coarse, stout
shoes, such as were common among the slaves, "put these on."
In Tom's hurried exchange, he had not forgotten to transfer
his cherished Bible to his pocket. It was well he did so; for Mr.
Legree, having refitted Tom's handcuffs, proceeded deliberately to
investigate the contents of his pockets. He drew out a silk
handkerchief, and put it into his own pocket. Several little
trifles, which Tom had treasured, chiefly because they had amused
Eva, he looked upon with a contemptuous grunt, and tossed them over
his shoulder into the river.
Tom's Methodist hymn-book, which, in his hurry, he had
forgotten, he now held up and turned over.
Humph! pious, to be sure. So, what's yer name,--you belong
to the church, eh?"
"Yes, Mas'r," said Tom, firmly.
"Well, I'll soon have _that_ out of you. I have none o' yer
bawling, praying, singing niggers on my place; so remember.
Now, mind yourself," he said, with a stamp and a fierce glance
of his gray eye, directed at Tom, "_I'm_ your church now!
You understand,--you've got to be as _I_ say."
Something within the silent black man answered _No!_ and, as if
repeated by an invisible voice, came the words of an old prophetic
scroll, as Eva had often read them to him,--"Fear not! for I have
redeemed thee. I have called thee by name. Thou art MINE!"
But Simon Legree heard no voice. That voice is one he never
shall hear. He only glared for a moment on the downcast face
of Tom, and walked off. He took Tom's trunk, which contained a
very neat and abundant wardrobe, to the forecastle, where it was
soon surrounded by various hands of the boat. With much laughing,
at the expense of niggers who tried to be gentlemen, the articles
very readily were sold to one and another, and the empty trunk
finally put up at auction. It was a good joke, they all thought,
especially to see how Tom looked after his things, as they were
going this way and that; and then the auction of the trunk, that
was funnier than all, and occasioned abundant witticisms.
This little affair being over, Simon sauntered up again to
his property.
"Now, Tom, I've relieved you of any extra baggage, you see.
Take mighty good care of them clothes. It'll be long enough 'fore
you get more. I go in for making niggers careful; one suit has to
do for one year, on my place."
Simon next walked up to the place where Emmeline was sitting,
chained to another woman.
"Well, my dear," he said, chucking her under the chin,
"keep up your spirits."
The involuntary look of horror, fright and aversion, with which
the girl regarded him, did not escape his eye. He frowned fiercely.
"None o' your shines, gal! you's got to keep a pleasant face,
when I speak to ye,--d'ye hear? And you, you old yellow poco
moonshine!" he said, giving a shove to the mulatto woman to whom
Emmeline was chained, "don't you carry that sort of face! You's
got to look chipper, I tell ye!"
"I say, all on ye," he said retreating a pace or two back,
"look at me,--look at me,--look me right in the eye,--_straight_,
now!" said he, stamping his foot at every pause.
As by a fascination, every eye was now directed to the
glaring greenish-gray eye of Simon.
"Now," said he, doubling his great, heavy fist into something
resembling a blacksmith's hammer, "d'ye see this fist? Heft it!"
he said, bringing it down on Tom's hand. "Look at these yer bones!
Well, I tell ye this yer fist has got as hard as iron _knocking
down niggers_. I never see the nigger, yet, I couldn't bring down
with one crack," said he, bringing his fist down so near to the
face of Tom that he winked and drew back. "I don't keep none o'
yer cussed overseers; I does my own overseeing; and I tell you
things _is_ seen to. You's every one on ye got to toe the mark,
I tell ye; quick,--straight,--the moment I speak. That's the way
to keep in with me. Ye won't find no soft spot in me, nowhere.
So, now, mind yerselves; for I don't show no mercy!"
The women involuntarily drew in their breath, and the whole
gang sat with downcast, dejected faces. Meanwhile, Simon turned
on his heel, and marched up to the bar of the boat for a dram.
"That's the way I begin with my niggers," he said, to a
gentlemanly man, who had stood by him during his speech.
"It's my system to begin strong,--just let 'em know what
to expect."
"Indeed!" said the stranger, looking upon him with the
curiosity of a naturalist studying some out-of-the-way specimen.
"Yes, indeed. I'm none o' yer gentlemen planters, with lily
fingers, to slop round and be cheated by some old cuss of an
overseer! Just feel of my knuckles, now; look at my fist.
Tell ye, sir, the flesh on 't has come jest like a stone,
practising on nigger--feel on it."
The stranger applied his fingers to the implement in
question, and simply said,
"'T is hard enough; and, I suppose," he added, "practice
has made your heart just like it."
"Why, yes, I may say so," said Simon, with a hearty laugh.
"I reckon there's as little soft in me as in any one going.
Tell you, nobody comes it over me! Niggers never gets round me,
neither with squalling nor soft soap,--that's a fact."
"You have a fine lot there."
"Real," said Simon. "There's that Tom, they telled me he was
suthin' uncommon. I paid a little high for him, tendin' him
for a driver and a managing chap; only get the notions out that
he's larnt by bein' treated as niggers never ought to be, he'll
do prime! The yellow woman I got took in on. I rayther think she's
sickly, but I shall put her through for what she's worth; she
may last a year or two. I don't go for savin' niggers. Use up,
and buy more, 's my way;-makes you less trouble, and I'm quite
sure it comes cheaper in the end;" and Simon sipped his glass.
"And how long do they generally last?" said the stranger.
"Well, donno; 'cordin' as their constitution is. Stout fellers
last six or seven years; trashy ones gets worked up in two
or three. I used to, when I fust begun, have considerable trouble
fussin' with 'em and trying to make 'em hold out,--doctorin' on
'em up when they's sick, and givin' on 'em clothes and blankets,
and what not, tryin' to keep 'em all sort o' decent and comfortable.
Law, 't wasn't no sort o' use; I lost money on 'em, and 't was
heaps o' trouble. Now, you see, I just put 'em straight through,
sick or well. When one nigger's dead, I buy another; and I find
it comes cheaper and easier, every way."
The stranger turned away, and seated himself beside a gentleman,
who had been listening to the conversation with repressed
uneasiness.
"You must not take that fellow to be any specimen of Southern
planters," said he.
"I should hope not," said the young gentleman, with emphasis.
"He is a mean, low, brutal fellow!" said the other.
"And yet your laws allow him to hold any number of human
beings subject to his absolute will, without even a shadow of
protection; and, low as he is, you cannot say that there are not
many such."
"Well," said the other, "there are also many considerate
and humane men among planters."
"Granted," said the young man; "but, in my opinion, it is you
considerate, humane men, that are responsible for all the
brutality and outrage wrought by these wretches; because, if it
were not for your sanction and influence, the whole system could
not keep foothold for an hour. If there were no planters except
such as that one," said he, pointing with his finger to Legree,
who stood with his back to them, "the whole thing would go down like
a millstone. It is your respectability and humanity that licenses
and protects his brutality."
"You certainly have a high opinion of my good nature," said the
planter, smiling, "but I advise you not to talk quite so loud,
as there are people on board the boat who might not be quite so
tolerant to opinion as I am. You had better wait till I get up to
my plantation, and there you may abuse us all, quite at your leisure."
The young gentleman colored and smiled, and the two were soon
busy in a game of backgammon. Meanwhile, another conversation
was going on in the lower part of the boat, between Emmeline and
the mulatto woman with whom she was confined. As was natural, they
were exchanging with each other some particulars of their history.
"Who did you belong to?" said Emmeline.
"Well, my Mas'r was Mr. Ellis,--lived on 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 warnt
willin' to have nobody rest, day or night; and got so curous, there
couldn't nobody suit him. 'Pears like he just grew crosser, every
day; kep me up nights till I got farly 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."
"Had you any friends?" said Emmeline.
"Yes, my husband,--he's a blacksmith. Mas'r gen'ly hired
him out. They took me off so quick, I didn't even have time to
see him; and I's got four children. O, dear me!" said the woman,
covering her face with her hands.
It is a natural impulse, in every one, when they hear a tale
of distress, to think of something to say by way of consolation.
Emmeline wanted to say something, but she could not think of anything
to say. What was there to be said? As by a common consent, they
both avoided, with fear and dread, all mention of the horrible man
who was now their master.
True, there is religious trust for even the darkest hour.
The mulatto woman was a member of the Methodist church, and had an
unenlightened but very sincere spirit of piety. Emmeline had been
educated much more intelligently,--taught to read and write, and
diligently instructed in the Bible, by the care of a faithful and
pious mistress; yet, would it not try the faith of the firmest
Christian, to find themselves abandoned, apparently, of God, in
the grasp of ruthless violence? How much more must it shake the
faith of Christ's poor little ones, weak in knowledge and tender
in years!
The boat moved on,--freighted with its weight of sorrow,--up the
red, muddy, turbid current, through the abrupt tortuous windings
of the Red river; and sad eyes gazed wearily on the steep red-clay
banks, as they glided by in dreary sameness. At last the boat
stopped at a small town, and Legree, with his party, disembarked.
CHAPTER XXXII
Dark Places
"The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations
Of cruelty."[1]
[1] Ps. 74:20.
Trailing wearily behind a rude wagon, and over a ruder road,
Tom and his associates faced onward.
In the wagon was seated Simon Legree and the two women, still
fettered together, were stowed away with some baggage in the
back part of it, and the whole company were seeking Legree's
plantation, which lay a good distance off.
It was a wild, forsaken road, now winding through dreary pine
barrens, where the wind whispered mournfully, and now over log
causeways, through long cypress swamps, the doleful trees rising
out of the slimy, spongy ground, hung with long wreaths of funeral
black moss, while ever and anon the loathsome form of the mocassin
snake might be seen sliding among broken stumps and shattered
branches that lay here and there, rotting in the water.
It is disconsolate enough, this riding, to the stranger, who,
with well-filled pocket and well-appointed horse, threads the
lonely way on some errand of business; but wilder, drearier,
to the man enthralled, whom every weary step bears further from
all that man loves and prays for.
So one should have thought, that witnessed the sunken and
dejected expression on those dark faces; the wistful, patient
weariness with which those sad eyes rested on object after object
that passed them in their sad journey.
Simon rode on, however, apparently well pleased, occasionally
pulling away at a flask of spirit, which he kept in his pocket.
"I say, _you!_" he said, as he turned back and caught a
glance at the dispirited faces behind him. "Strike up a song,
boys,--come!"
The men looked at each other, and the "_come_" was repeated,
with a smart crack of the whip which the driver carried in
his hands. Tom began a Methodist hymn.
"Jerusalem, my happy home,
Name ever dear to me!
When shall my sorrows have an end,
Thy joys when shall--"[2]
[2] "_Jerusalem, my happy home_," anonymous hymn dating from
the latter part of the sixteenth century, sung to the tune of
"St. Stephen." Words derive from St. Augustine's _Meditations_.
"Shut up, you black cuss!" roared Legree; "did ye think I
wanted any o' yer infernal old Methodism? I say, tune up,
now, something real rowdy,--quick!"
One of the other men struck up one of those unmeaning songs,
common among the slaves.
"Mas'r see'd me cotch a coon,
High boys, high!
He laughed to split,--d'ye see the moon,
Ho! ho! ho! boys, ho!
Ho! yo! hi--e! oh!"_
The singer appeared to make up the song to his own pleasure,
generally hitting on rhyme, without much attempt at reason; and
the party took up the chorus, at intervals,
"Ho! ho! ho! boys, ho!
High--e--oh! high--e--oh!"
It was sung very boisterouly, and with a forced attempt at
merriment; but no wail of despair, no words of impassioned prayer,
could have had such a depth of woe in them as the wild notes of
the chorus. As if the poor, dumb heart, threatened,--prisoned,--took
refuge in that inarticulate sanctuary of music, and found there a
language in which to breathe its prayer to God! There was a prayer
in it, which Simon could not hear. He only heard the boys singing
noisily, and was well pleased; he was making them "keep up their spirits."
"Well, my little dear," said he, turning to Emmeline, and
laying his hand on her shoulder, "we're almost home!"
When Legree scolded and stormed, Emmeline was terrified; but
when he laid his hand on her, and spoke as he now did, she felt
as if she had rather he would strike her. The expression of his
eyes made her soul sick, and her flesh creep. Involuntarily she
clung closer to the mulatto woman by her side, as if she were
her mother.
"You didn't ever wear ear-rings," he said, taking hold of
her small ear with his coarse fingers.
"No, Mas'r!" said Emmeline, trembling and looking down.
"Well, I'll give you a pair, when we get home, if you're
a good girl. You needn't be so frightened; I don't mean to make
you work very hard. You'll have fine times with me, and live like
a lady,--only be a good girl."
Legree had been drinking to that degree that he was inclining to
be very gracious; and it was about this time that the enclosures
of the plantation rose to view. The estate had formerly belonged
to a gentleman of opulence and taste, who had bestowed some
considerable attention to the adornment of his grounds. Having died
insolvent, it had been purchased, at a bargain, by Legree, who used
it, as he did everything else, merely as an implement for
money-making. The place had that ragged, forlorn appearance, which
is always produced by the evidence that the care of the former
owner has been left to go to utter decay.
What was once a smooth-shaven lawn before the house, dotted
here and there with ornamental shrubs, was now covered with frowsy
tangled grass, with horseposts set up, here and there, in it, where
the turf was stamped away, and the ground littered with broken
pails, cobs of corn, and other slovenly remains. Here and there,
a mildewed jessamine or honeysuckle hung raggedly from some ornamental
support, which had been pushed to one side by being used as a
horse-post. What once was a large garden was now all grown over
with weeds, through which, here and there, some solitary exotic
reared its forsaken head. What had been a conservatory had now no
window-shades, and on the mouldering shelves stood some dry, forsaken
flower-pots, with sticks in them, whose dried leaves showed they
had once been plants.
The wagon rolled up a weedy gravel walk, under a noble avenue
of China trees, whose graceful forms and ever-springing foliage
seemed to be the only things there that neglect could not daunt
or alter,--like noble spirits, so deeply rooted in goodness,
as to flourish and grow stronger amid discouragement and decay.
The house had been large and handsome. It was built in a manner
common at the South; a wide verandah of two stories running round
every part of the house, into which every outer door opened, the
lower tier being supported by brick pillars.
But the place looked desolate and uncomfortable; some windows
stopped up with boards, some with shattered panes, and shutters
hanging by a single hinge,--all telling of coarse neglect
and discomfort.
Bits of board, straw, old decayed barrels and boxes, garnished
the ground in all directions; and three or four ferocious-looking
dogs, roused by the sound of the wagon-wheels, came tearing out,
and were with difficulty restrained from laying hold of Tom and
his companions, by the effort of the ragged servants who came
after them.
"Ye see what ye'd get!" said Legree, caressing the dogs
with grim satisfaction, and turning to Tom and his companions.
"Ye see what ye'd get, if ye try to run off. These yer dogs has
been raised to track niggers; and they'd jest as soon chaw one on
ye up as eat their supper. So, mind yerself! How now, Sambo!"
he said, to a ragged fellow, without any brim to his hat, who was
officious in his attentions. "How have things been going?"
Fust rate, Mas'r."
"Quimbo," said Legree to another, who was making zealous
demonstrations to attract his attention, "ye minded what I
telled ye?"
"Guess I did, didn't I?"
These two colored men were the two principal hands on the
plantation. Legree had trained them in savageness and brutality
as systematically as he had his bull-dogs; and, by long practice
in hardness and cruelty, brought their whole nature to about the
same range of capacities. It is a common remark, and one that is
thought to militate strongly against the character of the race,
that the negro overseer is always more tyrannical and cruel than
the white one. This is simply saying that the negro mind has been
more crushed and debased than the white. It is no more true of
this race than of every oppressed race, the world over. The slave
is always a tyrant, if he can get a chance to be one.
Legree, like some potentates we read of in history, governed
his plantation by a sort of resolution of forces. Sambo and Quimbo
cordially hated each other; the plantation hands, one and all,
cordially hated them; and, by playing off one against another, he
was pretty sure, through one or the other of the three parties, to
get informed of whatever was on foot in the place.
Nobody can live entirely without social intercourse; and
Legree encouraged his two black satellites to a kind of coarse
familiarity with him,--a familiarity, however, at any moment liable
to get one or the other of them into trouble; for, on the slightest
provocation, one of them always stood ready, at a nod, to be a
minister of his vengeance on the other.
As they stood there now by Legree, they seemed an apt illustration
of the fact that brutal men are lower even than animals.
Their coarse, dark, heavy features; their great eyes, rolling
enviously on each other; their barbarous, guttural, half-brute
intonation; their dilapidated garments fluttering in the wind,--were
all in admirable keeping with the vile and unwholesome character
of everything about the place.
"Here, you Sambo," said Legree, "take these yer boys down to
the quarters; and here's a gal I've got for _you_," said he, as
he separated the mulatto woman from Emmeline, and pushed her towards
him;--"I promised to bring you one, you know."
The woman gave a start, and drawing back, said, suddenly,
"O, Mas'r! I left my old man in New Orleans."
"What of that, you--; won't you want one here? None o' your
words,--go long!" said Legree, raising his whip.
"Come, mistress," he said to Emmeline, "you go in here with me."
A dark, wild face was seen, for a moment, to glance at the
window of the house; and, as Legree opened the door, a female voice
said something, in a quick, imperative tone. Tom, who was looking,
with anxious interest, after Emmeline, as she went in, noticed
this, and heard Legree answer, angrily, "You may hold your tongue!
I'll do as I please, for all you!"
Tom heard no more; for he was soon following Sambo to the quarters.
The quarters was a little sort of street of rude shanties,
in a row, in a part of the plantation, far off from the house.
They had a forlorn, brutal, forsaken air. Tom's heart sunk when
he saw them. He had been comforting himself with the thought of
a cottage, rude, indeed, but one which he might make neat and quiet,
and where he might have a shelf for his Bible, and a place to be
alone out of his laboring hours. He looked into several; they were
mere rude shells, destitute of any species of furniture, except a
heap of straw, foul with dirt, spread confusedly over the floor,
which was merely the bare ground, trodden hard by the tramping of
innumerable feet.
"Which of these will be mine?" said he, to Sambo, submissively.
"Dunno; ken turn in here, I spose," said Sambo; "spects thar's
room for another thar; thar's a pretty smart heap o' niggers
to each on 'em, now; sure, I dunno what I 's to do with more."
It was late in the evening when the weary occupants of the
shanties came flocking home,--men and women, in soiled and tattered
garments, surly and uncomfortable, and in no mood to look pleasantly
on new-comers. The small village was alive with no inviting sounds;
hoarse, guttural voices contending at the hand-mills where their
morsel of hard corn was yet to be ground into meal, to fit it for
the cake that was to constitute their only supper. From the earliest
dawn of the day, they had been in the fields, pressed to work
under the driving lash of the overseers; for it was now in the very
heat and hurry of the season, and no means was left untried to
press every one up to the top of their capabilities. "True," says
the negligent lounger; "picking cotton isn't hard work." Isn't it?
And it isn't much inconvenience, either, to have one drop of water
fall on your head; yet the worst torture of the inquisition is
produced by drop after drop, drop after drop, falling moment after
moment, with monotonous succession, on the same spot; and work, in
itself not hard, becomes so, by being pressed, hour after hour,
with unvarying, unrelenting sameness, with not even the consciousness
of free-will to take from its tediousness. Tom looked in vain
among the gang, as they poured along, for companionable faces.
He saw only sullen, scowling, imbruted men, and feeble, discouraged
women, or women that were not women,--the strong pushing away the
weak,--the gross, unrestricted animal selfishness of human beings,
of whom nothing good was expected and desired; and who, treated in
every way like brutes, had sunk as nearly to their level as it was
possible for human beings to do. To a late hour in the night the
sound of the grinding was protracted; for the mills were few in
number compared with the grinders, and the weary and feeble ones
were driven back by the strong, and came on last in their turn.
"Ho yo!" said Sambo, coming to the mulatto woman, and
throwing down a bag of corn before her; "what a cuss yo name?"
"Lucy," said the woman.
"Wal, Lucy, yo my woman now. Yo grind dis yer corn, and
get _my_ supper baked, ye har?"
"I an't your woman, and I won't be!" said the woman, with
the sharp, sudden courage of despair; "you go long!"
"I'll kick yo, then!" said Sambo, raising his foot
threateningly.
"Ye may kill me, if ye choose,--the sooner the better!
Wish't I was dead!" said she.
"I say, Sambo, you go to spilin' the hands, I'll tell Mas'r
o' you," said Quimbo, who was busy at the mill, from which he had
viciously driven two or three tired women, who were waiting to
grind their corn.
"And, I'll tell him ye won't let the women come to the mills,
yo old nigger!" said Sambo. "Yo jes keep to yo own row."
Tom was hungry with his day's journey, and almost faint
for want of food.
"Thar, yo!" said Quimbo, throwing down a coarse bag, which
contained a peck of corn; "thar, nigger, grab, take car on 't,--yo
won't get no more, _dis_ yer week."
Tom waited till a late hour, to get a place at the mills; and
then, moved by the utter weariness of two women, whom he saw
trying to grind their corn there, he ground for them, put together
the decaying brands of the fire, where many had baked cakes before
them, and then went about getting his own supper. It was a new
kind of work there,--a deed of charity, small as it was; but it
woke an answering touch in their hearts,--an expression of womanly
kindness came over their hard faces; they mixed his cake for him,
and tended its baking; and Tom sat down by the light of the fire,
and drew out his Bible,--for he had need for comfort.
"What's that?" said one of the woman.
"A Bible," said Tom.
"Good Lord! han't seen un since I was in Kentuck."
"Was you raised in Kentuck?" said Tom, with interest.
"Yes, and well raised, too; never 'spected to come to dis
yer!" said the woman, sighing.
"What's dat ar book, any way?" said the other woman.
"Why, the Bible."
"Laws a me! what's dat?" said the woman.
"Do tell! you never hearn on 't?" said the other woman.
"I used to har Missis a readin' on 't, sometimes, in Kentuck; but,
laws o' me! we don't har nothin' here but crackin' and swarin'."
"Read a piece, anyways!" said the first woman, curiously,
seeing Tom attentively poring over it.
Tom read,-- "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest."
"Them's good words, enough," said the woman; "who says 'em?"
"The Lord," said Tom.
"I jest wish I know'd whar to find Him," said the woman.
"I would go; 'pears like I never should get rested again. My flesh
is fairly sore, and I tremble all over, every day, and Sambo's
allers a jawin' at me, 'cause I doesn't pick faster; and nights
it's most midnight 'fore I can get my supper; and den 'pears like
I don't turn over and shut my eyes, 'fore I hear de horn blow to
get up, and at it agin in de mornin'. If I knew whar de Lor was,
I'd tell him."
"He's here, he's everywhere," said Tom.
"Lor, you an't gwine to make me believe dat ar! I know de
Lord an't here," said the woman; "'tan't no use talking, though.
I's jest gwine to camp down, and sleep while I ken."
The women went off to their cabins, and Tom sat alone, by
the smouldering fire, that flickered up redly in his face.
The silver, fair-browed moon rose in the purple sky, and
looked down, calm and silent, as God looks on the scene of misery
and oppression,--looked calmly on the lone black man, as he sat,
with his arms folded, and his Bible on his knee.
"Is God HERE?" Ah, how is it possible for the untaught heart
to keep its faith, unswerving, in the face of dire misrule,
and palpable, unrebuked injustice? In that simple heart waged
a fierce conflict; the crushing sense of wrong, the foreshadowing,
of a whole life of future misery, the wreck of all past hopes,
mournfully tossing in the soul's sight, like dead corpses of
wife, and child, and friend, rising from the dark wave, and
surging in the face of the half-drowned mariner! Ah, was it easy
_here_ to believe and hold fast the great password of Christian
faith, that "God IS, and is the REWARDER of them that diligently
seek Him"?
Tom rose, disconsolate, and stumbled into the cabin that had
been allotted to him. The floor was already strewn with weary
sleepers, and the foul air of the place almost repelled him; but
the heavy night-dews were chill, and his limbs weary, and, wrapping
about him a tattered blanket, which formed his only bed-clothing,
he stretched himself in the straw and fell asleep.
In dreams, a gentle voice came over his ear; he was sitting
on the mossy seat in the garden by Lake Pontchartrain, and Eva,
with her serious eyes bent downward, was reading to him from the
Bible; and he heard her read.
"When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee,
and the rivers they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest
through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame
kindle upon thee; for I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel,
thy Saviour."
Gradually the words seemed to melt and fade, as in a divine
music; the child raised her deep eyes, and fixed them lovingly on
him, and rays of warmth and comfort seemed to go from them to his
heart; and, as if wafted on the music, she seemed to rise on shining
wings, from which flakes and spangles of gold fell off like stars,
and she was gone.
Tom woke. Was it a dream? Let it pass for one. But who
shall say that that sweet young spirit, which in life so
yearned to comfort and console the distressed, was forbidden
of God to assume this ministry after death?
It is a beautiful belief,
That ever round our head
Are hovering, on angel wings,
The spirits of the dead.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Cassy
"And behold, the tears of such as were oppressed, and they
had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was
power, but they had no comforter."
--ECCL. 4:1
It took but a short time to familiarize Tom with all that was to
be hoped or feared in his new way of life. He was an expert and
efficient workman in whatever he undertook; and was, both from
habit and principle, prompt and faithful. Quiet and peaceable in
his disposition, he hoped, by unremitting diligence, to avert from
himself at least a portion of the evils of his condition. He saw
enough of abuse and misery to make him sick and weary; but he
determined to toil on, with religious patience, committing himself
to Him that judgeth righteously, not without hope that some way of
escape might yet be opened to him.
Legree took a silent note of Tom's availability. He rated
him as a first-class hand; and yet he felt a secret dislike to
him,--the native antipathy of bad to good. He saw, plainly, that
when, as was often the case, his violence and brutality fell on
the helpless, Tom took notice of it; for, so subtle is the atmosphere
of opinion, that it will make itself felt, without words; and the
opinion even of a slave may annoy a master. Tom in various ways
manifested a tenderness of feeling, a commiseration for his
fellow-sufferers, strange and new to them, which was watched with
a jealous eye by Legree. He had purchased Tom with a view of
eventually making him a sort of overseer, with whom he might,
at times, intrust his affairs, in short absences; and, in his view,
the first, second, and third requisite for that place, was _hardness_.
Legree made up his mind, that, as Tom was not hard to his hand,
he would harden him forthwith; and some few weeks after Tom had
been on the place, he determined to commence the process.
One morning, when the hands were mustered for the field, Tom
noticed, with surprise, a new comer among them, whose appearance
excited his attention. It was a woman, tall and slenderly formed,
with remarkably delicate hands and feet, and dressed in neat and
respectable garments. By the appearance of her face, she might
have been between thirty-five and forty; and it was a face that,
once seen, could never be forgotten,--one of those that, at a glance,
seem to convey to us an idea of a wild, painful, and romantic history.
Her forehead was high, and her eyebrows marked with beautiful clearness.
Her straight, well-formed nose, her finely-cut mouth, and the
graceful contour of her head and neck, showed that she must once
have been beautiful; but her face was deeply wrinkled with lines
of pain, and of proud and bitter endurance. Her complexion was
sallow and unhealthy, her cheeks thin, her features sharp, and
her whole form emaciated. But her eye was the most remarkable
feature,--so large, so heavily black, overshadowed by long lashes
of equal darkness, and so wildly, mournfully despairing. There was
a fierce pride and defiance in every line of her face, in every
curve of the flexible lip, in every motion of her body; but in her
eye was a deep, settled night of anguish,--an expression so hopeless
and unchanging as to contrast fearfully with the scorn and pride
expressed by her whole demeanor.
Where she came from, or who she was, Tom did not know. The first
he did know, she was walking by his side, erect and proud, in the
dim gray of the dawn. To the gang, however, she was known; for
there was much looking and turning of heads, and a smothered yet
apparent exultation among the miserable, ragged, half-starved
creatures by whom she was surrounded.
"Got to come to it, at last,--grad of it!" said one.
"He! he! he!" said another; "you'll know how good it is, Misse!"
"We'll see her work!"
"Wonder if she'll get a cutting up, at night, like the rest
of us!"
"I'd be glad to see her down for a flogging, I'll bound!"
said another.
The woman took no notice of these taunts, but walked on, with
the same expression of angry scorn, as if she heard nothing.
Tom had always lived among refined, and cultivated people, and he
felt intuitively, from her air and bearing, that she belonged to
that class; but how or why she could be fallen to those degrading
circumstances, he could not tell. The women neither looked at him
nor spoke to him, though, all the way to the field, she kept close
at his side.
Tom was soon busy at his work; but, as the woman was at no great
distance from him, he often glanced an eye to her, at her work.
He saw, at a glance, that a native adroitness and handiness made
the task to her an easier one than it proved to many. She picked
very fast and very clean, and with an air of scorn, as if she
despised both the work and the disgrace and humiliation of the
circumstances in which she was placed.
In the course of the day, Tom was working near the mulatto
woman who had been bought in the same lot with himself. She was
evidently in a condition of great suffering, and Tom often heard her
praying, as she wavered and trembled, and seemed about to fall down.
Tom silently as he came near to her, transferred several handfuls
of cotton from his own sack to hers.
"O, don't, don't!" said the woman, looking surprised; "it'll
get you into trouble."
Just then Sambo came up. He seemed to have a special spite
against this woman; and, flourishing his whip, said, in brutal,
guttural tones, "What dis yer, Luce,--foolin' a'" and, with the
word, kicking the woman with his heavy cowhide shoe, he struck Tom
across the face with his whip.
Tom silently resumed his task; but the woman, before at
the last point of exhaustion, fainted.
"I'll bring her to!" said the driver, with a brutal grin.
"I'll give her something better than camphire!" and, taking a pin
from his coat-sleeve, he buried it to the head in her flesh.
The woman groaned, and half rose. "Get up, you beast, and work,
will yer, or I'll show yer a trick more!"
The woman seemed stimulated, for a few moments, to an
unnatural strength, and worked with desperate eagerness.
"See that you keep to dat ar," said the man, "or yer'll
wish yer's dead tonight, I reckin!"
"That I do now!" Tom heard her say; and again he heard her
say, "O, Lord, how long! O, Lord, why don't you help us?"
At the risk of all that he might suffer, Tom came forward
again, and put all the cotton in his sack into the woman's.
"O, you mustn't! you donno what they'll do to ye!" said
the woman.
"I can bar it!" said Tom, "better 'n you;" and he was at
his place again. It passed in a moment.
Suddenly, the stranger woman whom we have described, and who
had, in the course of her work, come near enough to hear Tom's
last words, raised her heavy black eyes, and fixed them, for a
second, on him; then, taking a quantity of cotton from her basket,
she placed it in his.
"You know nothing about this place," she said, "or you wouldn't
have done that. When you've been here a month, you'll be done
helping anybody; you'll find it hard enough to take care of your
own skin!"
"The Lord forbid, Missis!" said Tom, using instinctively to his
field companion the respectful form proper to the high bred
with whom he had lived.
"The Lord never visits these parts," said the woman, bitterly,
as she went nimbly forward with her work; and again the
scornful smile curled her lips.
But the action of the woman had been seen by the driver,
across the field; and, flourishing his whip, he came up to her.
"What! what!" he said to the woman, with an air of triumph,
"You a foolin'? Go along! yer under me now,--mind yourself, or
yer'll cotch it!"
A glance like sheet-lightning suddenly flashed from those
black eyes; and, facing about, with quivering lip and dilated
nostrils, she drew herself up, and fixed a glance, blazing with
rage and scorn, on the driver.
"Dog!" she said, "touch _me_, if you dare! I've power enough,
yet, to have you torn by the dogs, burnt alive, cut to inches!
I've only to say the word!"
"What de devil you here for, den?" said the man, evidently
cowed, and sullenly retreating a step or two. "Didn't mean no
harm, Misse Cassy!"
"Keep your distance, then!" said the woman. And, in truth, the
man seemed greatly inclined to attend to something at the other
end of the field, and started off in quick time.
The woman suddenly turned to her work, and labored with a
despatch that was perfectly astonishing to Tom. She seemed to
work by magic. Before the day was through, her basket was filled,
crowded down, and piled, and she had several times put largely
into Tom's. Long after dusk, the whole weary train, with their
baskets on their heads, defiled up to the building appropriated to the
storing and weighing the cotton. Legree was there, busily conversing
with the two drivers.
"Dat ar Tom's gwine to make a powerful deal o' trouble; kept
a puttin' into Lucy's basket.--One o' these yer dat will get
all der niggers to feelin' bused, if Masir don't watch him!"
said Sambo.
"Hey-dey! The black cuss!" said Legree. "He'll have to
get a breakin' in, won't he, boys?"
Both negroes grinned a horrid grin, at this intimation.
"Ay, ay! Let Mas'r Legree alone, for breakin' in! De debil
heself couldn't beat Mas'r at dat!" said Quimbo.
"Wal, boys, the best way is to give him the flogging to do,
till he gets over his notions. Break him in!"
"Lord, Mas'r'll have hard work to get dat out o' him!"
"It'll have to come out of him, though!" said Legree, as
he rolled his tobacco in his mouth.
"Now, dar's Lucy,--de aggravatinest, ugliest wench on de
place!" pursued Sambo.
"Take care, Sam; I shall begin to think what's the reason
for your spite agin Lucy."
"Well, Mas'r knows she sot herself up agin Mas'r, and
wouldn't have me, when he telled her to."
"I'd a flogged her into 't," said Legree, spitting, only
there's such a press o' work, it don't seem wuth a while to upset
her jist now. She's slender; but these yer slender gals will bear
half killin' to get their own way!"
"Wal, Lucy was real aggravatin' and lazy, sulkin' round;
wouldn't do nothin,--and Tom he tuck up for her."
"He did, eh! Wal, then, Tom shall have the pleasure of
flogging her. It'll be a good practice for him, and he won't put
it on to the gal like you devils, neither."
"Ho, ho! haw! haw! haw!" laughed both the sooty wretches;
and the diabolical sounds seemed, in truth, a not unapt
expression of the fiendish character which Legree gave them.
"Wal, but, Mas'r, Tom and Misse Cassy, and dey among 'em,
filled Lucy's basket. I ruther guess der weight 's in it, Mas'r!"
"_I do the weighing!_" said Legree, emphatically.
Both the drivers again laughed their diabolical laugh.
"So!" he added, "Misse Cassy did her day's work."
"She picks like de debil and all his angels!"
"She's got 'em all in her, I believe!" said Legree; and,
growling a brutal oath, he proceeded to the weighing-room.
Slowly the weary, dispirited creatures, wound their way
into the room, and, with crouching reluctance, presented their
baskets to be weighed.
Legree noted on a slate, on the side of which was pasted
a list of names, the amount.
Tom's basket was weighed and approved; and he looked, with an
anxious glance, for the success of the woman he had befriended.
Tottering with weakness, she came forward, and delivered
her basket. It was of full weight, as Legree well perceived; but,
affecting anger, he said,
"What, you lazy beast! short again! stand aside, you'll
catch it, pretty soon!"
The woman gave a groan of utter despair, and sat down on
a board.
The person who had been called Misse Cassy now came forward, and,
with a haughty, negligent air, delivered her basket. As she delivered
it, Legree looked in her eyes with a sneering yet inquiring glance.
She fixed her black eyes steadily on him, her lips moved slightly,
and she said something in French. What it was, no one knew; but
Legree's face became perfectly demoniacal in its expression, as
she spoke; he half raised his hand, as if to strike,--a gesture
which she regarded with fierce disdain, as she turned and walked away.
"And now," said Legree, "come here, you Tom. You see, I
telled ye I didn't buy ye jest for the common work; I mean to
promote ye, and make a driver of ye; and tonight ye may jest as
well begin to get yer hand in. Now, ye jest take this yer gal and
flog her; ye've seen enough on't to know how."
I beg Mas'r's pardon," said Tom; "hopes Mas'r won't set me
at that. It's what I an't used to,--never did,--and can't do,
no way possible."
"Ye'll larn a pretty smart chance of things ye never did know,
before I've done with ye!" said Legree, taking up a cowhide,
and striking Tom a heavy blow cross the cheek, and following up
the infliction by a shower of blows.
"There!" he said, as he stopped to rest; "now, will ye tell
me ye can't do it?"
"Yes, Mas'r," said Tom, putting up his hand, to wipe the blood,
that trickled down his face. "I'm willin' to work, night
and day, and work while there's life and breath in me; but this
yer thing I can't feel it right to do;--and, Mas'r, I _never_ shall
do it,--_never_!"
Tom had a remarkably smooth, soft voice, and a habitually
respectful manner, that had given Legree an idea that he would be
cowardly, and easily subdued. When he spoke these last words, a
thrill of amazement went through every one; the poor woman clasped
her hands, and said, "O Lord!" and every one involuntarily looked
at each other and drew in their breath, as if to prepare for the
storm that was about to burst.
Legree looked stupefied and confounded; but at last burst
forth,--"What! ye blasted black beast! tell _me_ ye don't
think it _right_ to do what I tell ye! What have any of you cussed
cattle to do with thinking what's right? I'll put a stop to it!
Why, what do ye think ye are? May be ye think ye'r a gentleman
master, Tom, to be a telling your master what's right, and what ain't!
So you pretend it's wrong to flog the gal!"
"I think so, Mas'r," said Tom; "the poor crittur's sick and feeble;
't would be downright cruel, and it's what I never will do, nor
begin to. Mas'r, if you mean to kill me, kill me; but, as to my
raising my hand agin any one here, I never shall,--I'll die first!"
Tom spoke in a mild voice, but with a decision that could not
be mistaken. Legree shook with anger; his greenish eyes glared
fiercely, and his very whiskers seemed to curl with passion; but,
like some ferocious beast, that plays with its victim before he
devours it, he kept back his strong impulse to proceed to immediate
violence, and broke out into bitter raillery.
"Well, here's a pious dog, at last, let down among us
sinners!--a saint, a gentleman, and no less, to talk to us sinners
about our sins! Powerful holy critter, he must be! Here, you rascal,
you make believe to be so pious,--didn't you never hear, out of yer
Bible, `Servants, obey yer masters'? An't I yer master? Didn't I
pay down twelve hundred dollars, cash, for all there is inside
yer old cussed black shell? An't yer mine, now, body and soul?" he
said, giving Tom a violent kick with his heavy boot; "tell me!"
In the very depth of physical suffering, bowed by brutal
oppression, this question shot a gleam of joy and triumph through
Tom's soul. He suddenly stretched himself up, and, looking earnestly
to heaven, while the tears and blood that flowed down his face
mingled, he exclaimed,
"No! no! no! my soul an't yours, Mas'r! You haven't bought
it,--ye can't buy it! It's been bought and paid for, by one that
is able to keep it;--no matter, no matter, you can't harm me!"
"I can't!" said Legree, with a sneer; "we'll see,--we'll see!
Here, Sambo, Quimbo, give this dog such a breakin' in as he
won't get over, this month!"
The two gigantic negroes that now laid hold of Tom, with
fiendish exultation in their faces, might have formed no unapt
personification of powers of darkness. The poor woman screamed
with apprehension, and all rose, as by a general impulse, while
they dragged him unresisting from the place.
CHAPTER XXXIV
The Quadroon's Story
And behold the tears of such as are oppressed; and on the side
of their oppressors there was power. Wherefore I praised the
dead that are already dead more than the living that are yet alive.
--ECCL. 4:1.
It was late at night, and Tom lay groaning and bleeding alone, in
an old forsaken room of the gin-house, among pieces of broken
machinery, piles of damaged cotton, and other rubbish which had
there accumulated.
The night was damp and close, and the thick air swarmed with
myriads of mosquitos, which increased the restless torture of his
wounds; whilst a burning thirst--a torture beyond all others--filled
up the uttermost measure of physical anguish.
"O, good Lord! _Do_ look down,--give me the victory!--give
me the victory over all!" prayed poor Tom, in his anguish.
A footstep entered the room, behind him, and the light of
a lantern flashed on his eyes.
"Who's there? O, for the Lord's massy, please give me some water!"
The woman Cassy--for it was she,--set down her lantern, and,
pouring water from a bottle, raised his head, and gave him drink.
Another and another cup were drained, with feverish eagerness.
"Drink all ye want," she said; "I knew how it would be. It isn't
the first time I've been out in the night, carrying water to
such as you."
"Thank you, Missis," said Tom, when he had done drinking.
"Don't call me Missis! I'm a miserable slave, like yourself,--a
lower one than you can ever be!" said she, bitterly; "but now,"
said she, going to the door, and dragging in a small pallaise, over
which she had spread linen cloths wet with cold water, "try, my
poor fellow, to roll yourself on to this."
Stiff with wounds and bruises, Tom was a long time in
accomplishing this movement; but, when done, he felt a sensible
relief from the cooling application to his wounds.
The woman, whom long practice with the victims of brutality had
made familiar with many healing arts, went on to make many
applications to Tom's wounds, by means of which he was soon
somewhat relieved.
"Now," said the woman, when she had raised his head on a roll
of damaged cotton, which served for a pillow, "there's the
best I can do for you."
Tom thanked her; and the woman, sitting down on the floor, drew
up her knees, and embracing them with her arms, looked fixedly
before her, with a bitter and painful expression of countenance.
Her bonnet fell back, and long wavy streams of black hair fell
around her singular and melancholy-face.
"It's no use, my poor fellow!" she broke out, at last, "it's of
no use, this you've been trying to do. You were a brave
fellow,--you had the right on your side; but it's all in vain, and
out of the question, for you to struggle. You are in the devil's
hands;--he is the strongest, and you must give up!"
Give up! and, had not human weakness and physical agony whispered
that, before? Tom started; for the bitter woman, with her wild
eyes and melancholy voice, seemed to him an embodiment of the
temptation with which he had been wrestling.
"O Lord! O Lord!" he groaned, "how can I give up?"
"There's no use calling on the Lord,--he never hears," said
the woman, steadily; "there isn't any God, I believe; or, if there
is, he's taken sides against us. All goes against us, heaven
and earth. Everything is pushing us into hell. Why shouldn't we go?"
Tom closed his eyes, and shuddered at the dark, atheistic words.
"You see," said the woman, "_you_ don't know anything about
it--I do. I've been on this place five years, body and soul,
under this man's foot; and I hate him as I do the devil! Here you
are, on a lone plantation, ten miles from any other, in the swamps;
not a white person here, who could testify, if you were burned
alive,--if you were scalded, cut into inch-pieces, set up for the
dogs to tear, or hung up and whipped to death. There's no law
here, of God or man, that can do you, or any one of us, the least
good; and, this man! there's no earthly thing that he's too good
to do. I could make any one's hair rise, and their teeth chatter,
if I should only tell what I've seen and been knowing to, here,--and
it's no use resisting! Did I _want_ to live with him? Wasn't I a
woman delicately bred; and he,--God in heaven! what was he, and
is he? And yet, I've lived with him, these five years, and cursed
every moment of my life,--night and day! And now, he's got a new
one,--a young thing, only fifteen, and she brought up, she says, piously.
Her good mistress taught her to read the Bible; and she's brought
her Bible here--to hell with her!"--and the woman laughed a wild
and doleful laugh, that rung, with a strange, supernatural sound,
through the old ruined shed.
Tom folded his hands; all was darkness and horror.
"O Jesus! Lord Jesus! have you quite forgot us poor critturs?"
burst forth, at last;-- "help, Lord, I perish!"
The woman sternly continued:
"And what are these miserable low dogs you work with, that you
should suffer on their account? Every one of them would turn
against you, the first time they got a chance. They are all of
'em as low and cruel to each other as they can be; there's no use
in your suffering to keep from hurting them."
"Poor critturs!" said Tom,-- "what made 'em cruel?--and, if
I give out, I shall get used to 't, and grow, little by little,
just like 'em! No, no, Missis! I've lost everything,--wife, and
children, and home, and a kind Mas'r,--and he would have set me
free, if he'd only lived a week longer; I've lost everything in
_this_ world, and it's clean gone, forever,--and now I _can't_ lose
Heaven, too; no, I can't get to be wicked, besides all!"
"But it can't be that the Lord will lay sin to our account,"
said the woman; "he won't charge it to us, when we're forced to
it; he'll charge it to them that drove us to it."
"Yes," said Tom; "but that won't keep us from growing wicked.
If I get to be as hard-hearted as that ar' Sambo, and as wicked,
it won't make much odds to me how I come so; it's the bein'
so,--that ar's what I'm a dreadin'."
The woman fixed a wild and startled look on Tom, as if a new
thought had struck her; and then, heavily groaning, said,
"O God a' mercy! you speak the truth! O--O--O!"--and, with
groans, she fell on the floor, like one crushed and writhing under
the extremity of mental anguish.
There was a silence, a while, in which the breathing of both
parties could be heard, when Tom faintly said, "O, please, Missis!"
The woman suddenly rose up, with her face composed to its
usual stern, melancholy expression.
"Please, Missis, I saw 'em throw my coat in that ar' corner,
and in my coat-pocket is my Bible;--if Missis would please get it
for me."
Cassy went and got it. Tom opened, at once, to a heavily
marked passage, much worn, of the last scenes in the life of Him
by whose stripes we are healed.
"If Missis would only be so good as read that ar',--it's
better than water."
Cassy took the book, with a dry, proud air, and looked over
the passage. She then read aloud, in a soft voice, and with a
beauty of intonation that was peculiar, that touching account of
anguish and of glory. Often, as she read, her voice faltered, and
sometimes failed her altogether, when she would stop, with an air
of frigid composure, till she had mastered herself. When she came
to the touching words, "Father forgive them, for they know not what
they do," she threw down the book, and, burying her face in the heavy
masses of her hair, she sobbed aloud, with a convulsive violence.
Tom was weeping, also, and occasionally uttering a smothered
ejaculation.
"If we only could keep up to that ar'!" said Tom;--"it seemed
to come so natural to him, and we have to fight so hard for 't!
O Lord, help us! O blessed Lord Jesus, do help us!"
"Missis," said Tom, after a while, "I can see that, some how,
you're quite 'bove me in everything; but there's one thing Missis
might learn even from poor Tom. Ye said the Lord took sides
against us, because he lets us be 'bused and knocked round; but ye
see what come on his own Son,--the blessed Lord of Glory,--wan't
he allays poor? and have we, any on us, yet come so low as he come?
The Lord han't forgot us,--I'm sartin' o' that ar'. If we suffer
with him, we shall also reign, Scripture says; but, if we deny Him,
he also will deny us. Didn't they all suffer?--the Lord and
all his? It tells how they was stoned and sawn asunder, and wandered
about in sheep-skins and goat-skins, and was destitute, afflicted,
tormented. Sufferin' an't no reason to make us think the Lord's
turned agin us; but jest the contrary, if only we hold on to him,
and doesn't give up to sin."
"But why does he put us where we can't help but sin?" said
the woman.
"I think we _can_ help it," said Tom.
"You'll see," said Cassy; "what'll you do? Tomorrow they'll
be at you again. I know 'em; I've seen all their doings; I can't
bear to think of all they'll bring you to;--and they'll make you
give out, at last!"
"Lord Jesus!" said Tom, "you _will_ take care of my soul?
O Lord, do!--don't let me give out!"
"O dear!" said Cassy; "I've heard all this crying and praying
before; and yet, they've been broken down, and brought under.
There's Emmeline, she's trying to hold on, and you're
trying,--but what use? You must give up, or be killed by inches."
"Well, then, I _will_ die!" said Tom. "Spin it out as long as
they can, they can't help my dying, some time!--and, after that,
they can't do no more. I'm clar, I'm set! I _know_ the Lord'll
help me, and bring me through."
The woman did not answer; she sat with her black eyes
intently fixed on the floor.
"May be it's the way," she murmured to herself; "but those that
_have_ given up, there's no hope for them!--none! We live in
filth, and grow loathsome, till we loathe ourselves! And we long
to die, and we don't dare to kill ourselves!--No hope! no hope! no
hope?--this girl now,--just as old as I was!
"You see me now," she said, speaking to Tom very rapidly;
"see what I am! Well, I was brought up in luxury; the first I
remember is, playing about, when I was a child, in splendid
parlors,--when I was kept dressed up like a doll, and company and
visitors used to praise me. There was a garden opening from the
saloon windows; and there I used to play hide-and-go-seek, under
the orange-trees, with my brothers and sisters. I went to a
convent, and there I learned music, French and embroidery, and
what not; and when I was fourteen, I came out to my father's funeral.
He died very suddenly, and when the property came to be settled,
they found that there was scarcely enough to cover the debts; and
when the creditors took an inventory of the property, I was set down
in it. My mother was a slave woman, and my father had always meant
to set me free; but he had not done it, and so I was set down in
the list. I'd always known who I was, but never thought much about it.
Nobody ever expects that a strong, healthy man is going to die.
My father was a well man only four hours before he died;--it was
one of the first cholera cases in New Orleans. The day after the
funeral, my father's wife took her children, and went up to her
father's plantation. I thought they treated me strangely, but
didn't know. There was a young lawyer who they left to settle the
business; and he came every day, and was about the house, and spoke
very politely to me. He brought with him, one day, a young man,
whom I thought the handsomest I had ever seen. I shall never forget
that evening. I walked with him in the garden. I was lonesome and
full of sorrow, and he was so kind and gentle to me; and he told me
that he had seen me before I went to the convent, and that he had
loved me a great while, and that he would be my friend and
protector;--in short, though he didn't tell me, he had paid two
thousand dollars for me, and I was his property,--I became his
willingly, for I loved him. Loved!" said the woman, stopping.
"O, how I _did_ love that man! How I love him now,--and always
shall, while I breathe! He was so beautiful, so high, so noble!
He put me into a beautiful house, with servants, horses, and
carriages, and furniture, and dresses. Everything that money
could buy, he gave me; but I didn't set any value on all that,--I
only cared for him. I loved him better than my God and my own soul,
and, if I tried, I couldn't do any other way from what he wanted me to.
"I wanted only one thing--I did want him to _marry_ me. I thought,
if he loved me as he said he did, and if I was what he seemed
to think I was, he would be willing to marry me and set me free.
But he convinced me that it would be impossible; and he told
me that, if we were only faithful to each other, it was marriage
before God. If that is true, wasn't I that man's wife? Wasn't I
faithful? For seven years, didn't I study every look and motion,
and only live and breathe to please him? He had the yellow fever,
and for twenty days and nights I watched with him. I alone,--and
gave him all his medicine, and did everything for him; and then he
called me his good angel, and said I'd saved his life. We had two
beautiful children. The first was a boy, and we called him Henry.
He was the image of his father,--he had such beautiful eyes, such
a forehead, and his hair hung all in curls around it; and he had
all his father's spirit, and his talent, too. Little Elise, he
said, looked like me. He used to tell me that I was the most
beautiful woman in Louisiana, he was so proud of me and the children.
He used to love to have me dress them up, and take them and me
about in an open carriage, and hear the remarks that people would
make on us; and he used to fill my ears constantly with the fine
things that were said in praise of me and the children. O, those
were happy days! I thought I was as happy as any one could be; but
then there came evil times. He had a cousin come to New Orleans,
who was his particular friend,--he thought all the world of him;--but,
from the first time I saw him, I couldn't tell why, I dreaded him;
for I felt sure he was going to bring misery on us. He got Henry
to going out with him, and often he would not come home nights till
two or three o'clock. I did not dare say a word; for Henry was so
high spirited, I was afraid to. He got him to the gaming-houses; and
he was one of the sort that, when he once got a going there, there
was no holding back. And then he introduced him to another lady,
and I saw soon that his heart was gone from me. He never told me,
but I saw it,--I knew it, day after day,--I felt my heart breaking,
but I could not say a word! At this, the wretch offered to buy me
and the children of Henry, to clear off his gamblng debts, which
stood in the way of his marrying as he wished;--and _he sold us_.
He told me, one day, that he had business in the country, and should
be gone two or three weeks. He spoke kinder than usual, and said
he should come back; but it didn't deceive me. I knew that the
time had come; I was just like one turned into stone; I couldn't
speak, nor shed a tear. He kissed me and kissed the children, a
good many times, and went out. I saw him get on his horse, and I
watched him till he was quite out of sight; and then I fell down,
and fainted.
"Then _he_ came, the cursed wretch! he came to take possession.
He told me that he had bought me and my children; and showed me
the papers. I cursed him before God, and told him I'd die sooner
than live with him."
"`Just as you please,' said he; `but, if you don't behave
reasonably, I'll sell both the children, where you shall never see
them again.' He told me that he always had meant to have me, from
the first time he saw me; and that he had drawn Henry on, and got
him in debt, on purpose to make him willing to sell me. That he
got him in love with another woman; and that I might know, after
all that, that he should not give up for a few airs and tears, and
things of that sort.
"I gave up, for my hands were tied. He had my children;--whenever
I resisted his will anywhere, he would talk about selling them,
and he made me as submissive as he desired. O, what a life it was!
to live with my heart breaking, every day,--to keep on, on, on,
loving, when it was only misery; and to be bound, body and soul,
to one I hated. I used to love to read to Henry, to play to him,
to waltz with him, and sing to him; but everything I did for this
one was a perfect drag,--yet I was afraid to refuse anything.
He was very imperious, and harsh to the children. Elise was a timid
little thing; but Henry was bold and high-spirited, like his father,
and he had never been brought under, in the least, by any one. He was
always finding fault, and quarrelling with him; and I used to live
in daily fear and dread. I tried to make the child respectful;--I
tried to keep them apart, for I held on to those children like
death; but it did no good. _He sold both those children_. He took
me to ride, one day, and when I came home, they were nowhere to
be found! He told me he had sold them; he showed me the money,
the price of their blood. Then it seemed as if all good forsook me.
I raved and cursed,--cursed God and man; and, for a while, I believe,
he really was afraid of me. But he didn't give up so. He told me
that my children were sold, but whether I ever saw their faces
again, depended on him; and that, if I wasn't quiet, they should
smart for it. Well, you can do anything with a woman, when you've
got her children. He made me submit; he made me be peaceable; he
flattered me with hopes that, perhaps, he would buy them back; and
so things went on, a week or two. One day, I was out walking, and
passed by the calaboose; I saw a crowd about the gate, and heard
a child's voice,--and suddenly my Henry broke away from two or
three men who were holding the poor boy screamed and looked into
my face, and held on to me, until, in tearing him off, they tore
the skirt of my dress half away; and they carried him in, screaming
`Mother! mother! mother!' There was one man stood there seemed to
pity me. I offered him all the money I had, if he'd only interfere.
He shook his head, and said that the boy had been impudent and
disobedient, ever since he bought him; that he was going to break
him in, once for all. I turned and ran; and every step of the way,
I thought that I heard him scream. I got into the house; ran, all
out of breath, to the parlor, where I found Butler. I told him,
and begged him to go and interfere. He only laughed, and told me
the boy had got his deserts. He'd got to be broken in,--the sooner
the better; `what did I expect?' he asked.
"It seemed to me something in my head snapped, at that moment.
I felt dizzy and furious. I remember seeing a great sharp
bowie-knife on the table; I remember something about catching it,
and flying upon him; and then all grew dark, and I didn't know any
more,--not for days and days.
"When I came to myself, I was in a nice room,--but not mine.
An old black woman tended me; and a doctor came to see me, and
there was a great deal of care taken of me. After a while, I
found that he had gone away, and left me at this house to be sold;
and that's why they took such pains with me.
"I didn't mean to get well, and hoped I shouldn't; but, in spite
of me the fever went off and I grew healthy, and finally got up.
Then, they made me dress up, every day; and gentlemen used to
come in and stand and smoke their cigars, and look at me, and ask
questions, and debate my price. I was so gloomy and silent, that
none of them wanted me. They threatened to whip me, if I wasn't
gayer, and didn't take some pains to make myself agreeable. At length,
one day, came a gentleman named Stuart. He seemed to have some
feeling for me; he saw that something dreadful was on my heart,
and he came to see me alone, a great many times, and finally
persuaded me to tell him. He bought me, at last, and promised
to do all he could to find and buy back my children. He went
to the hotel where my Henry was; they told him he had been sold
to a planter up on Pearl river; that was the last that I ever heard.
Then he found where my daughter was; an old woman was keeping her.
He offered an immense sum for her, but they would not sell her.
Butler found out that it was for me he wanted her; and he sent me
word that I should never have her. Captain Stuart was very kind
to me; he had a splendid plantation, and took me to it. In the
course of a year, I had a son born. O, that child!--how I loved it!
How just like my poor Henry the little thing looked! But I had
made up my mind,--yes, I had. I would never again let a child
live to grow up! I took the little fellow in my arms, when
he was two weeks old, and kissed him, and cried over him; and then
I gave him laudanum, and held him close to my bosom, while he slept
to death. How I mourned and cried over it! and who ever dreamed
that it was anything but a mistake, that had made me give it the
laudanum? but it's one of the few things that I'm glad of, now.
I am not sorry, to this day; he, at least, is out of pain. What
better than death could I give him, poor child! After a while, the
cholera came, and Captain Stuart died; everybody died that wanted
to live,--and I,--I, though I went down to death's door,--_I lived!_
Then I was sold, and passed from hand to hand, till I grew faded
and wrinkled, and I had a fever; and then this wretch bought me,
and brought me here,--and here I am!"
The woman stopped. She had hurried on through her story, with
a wild, passionate utterance; sometimes seeming to address it
to Tom, and sometimes speaking as in a soliloquy. So vehement and
overpowering was the force with which she spoke, that, for a season,
Tom was beguiled even from the pain of his wounds, and, raising himself
on one elbow, watched her as she paced restlessly up and down, her
long black hair swaying heavily about her, as she moved.
"You tell me," she said, after a pause, "that there is a God,--a
God that looks down and sees all these things. May be it's so.
The sisters in the convent used to tell me of a day of judgment,
when everything is coming to light;--won't there be vengeance, then!
"They think it's nothing, what we suffer,--nothing, what our
children suffer! It's all a small matter; yet I've walked the
streets when it seemed as if I had misery enough in my one heart
to sink the city. I've wished the houses would fall on me, or the
stones sink under me. Yes! and, in the judgment day, I will stand
up before God, a witness against those that have ruined me and my
children, body and soul!
"When I was a girl, I thought I was religious; I used to love
God and prayer. Now, I'm a lost soul, pursued by devils that
torment me day and night; they keep pushing me on and on--and I'll
do it, too, some of these days!" she said, clenching her hand,
while an insane light glanced in her heavy black eyes. "I'll send
him where he belongs,--a short way, too,--one of these nights, if
they burn me alive for it!" A wild, long laugh rang through the
deserted room, and ended in a hysteric sob; she threw herself on
the floor, in convulsive sobbing and struggles.
In a few moments, the frenzy fit seemed to pass off; she
rose slowly, and seemed to collect herself.
"Can I do anything more for you, my poor fellow?" she said,
approaching where Tom lay; "shall I give you some more water?"
There was a graceful and compassionate sweetness in her voice
and manner, as she said this, that formed a strange contrast
with the former wildness.
Tom drank the water, and looked earnestly and pitifully
into her face.
"O, Missis, I wish you'd go to him that can give you living waters!"
"Go to him! Where is he? Who is he?" said Cassy.
"Him that you read of to me,--the Lord."
"I used to see the picture of him, over the altar, when I
was a girl," said Cassy, her dark eyes fixing themselves in an
expression of mournful reverie; "but, _he isn't here!_ there's
nothing here, but sin and long, long, long despair! O!" She laid
her land on her breast and drew in her breath, as if to lift a
heavy weight.
Tom looked as if he would speak again; but she cut him short,
with a decided gesture.
"Don't talk, my poor fellow. Try to sleep, if you can."
And, placing water in his reach, and making whatever little
arrangements for his comforts she could, Cassy left the shed.
CHAPTER XXXV
The Tokens
"And slight, withal, may be the things that bring
Back on the heart the weight which it would fling
Aside forever; it may be a sound,
A flower, the wind, the ocean, which shall wound,--
Striking the electric chain wherewith we're darkly bound."
CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE, CAN. 4.
The sitting-room of Legree's establishment was a large, long
room, with a wide, ample fireplace. It had once been hung with
a showy and expensive paper, which now hung mouldering, torn
and discolored, from the damp walls. The place had that peculiar
sickening, unwholesome smell, compounded of mingled damp, dirt and
decay, which one often notices in close old houses. The wall-paper
was defaced, in spots, by slops of beer and wine; or garnished with
chalk memorandums, and long sums footed up, as if somebody had been
practising arithmetic there. In the fireplace stood a brazier full
of burning charcoal; for, though the weather was not cold, the
evenings always seemed damp and chilly in that great room; and
Legree, moreover, wanted a place to light his cigars, and heat his
water for punch. The ruddy glare of the charcoal displayed the
confused and unpromising aspect of the room,--saddles, bridles,
several sorts of harness, riding-whips, overcoats, and various
articles of clothing, scattered up and down the room in confused
variety; and the dogs, of whom we have before spoken, had encamped
themselves among them, to suit their own taste and convenience.
Legree was just mixing himself a tumbler of punch, pouring his
hot water from a cracked and broken-nosed pitcher, grumbling,
as he did so,
"Plague on that Sambo, to kick up this yer row between me and
the new hands! The fellow won't be fit to work for a week,
now,--right in the press of the season!"
"Yes, just like you," said a voice, behind his chair. It was
the woman Cassy, who had stolen upon his soliloquy.
"Hah! you she-devil! you've come back, have you?"
"Yes, I have," she said, coolly; "come to have my own way, too!"
"You lie, you jade! I'll be up to my word. Either behave
yourself, or stay down to the quarters, and fare and work with
the rest."
"I'd rather, ten thousand times," said the woman, "live in
the dirtiest hole at the quarters, than be under your hoof!"
"But you _are_ under my hoof, for all that," said he, turning
upon her, with a savage grin; "that's one comfort. So, sit
down here on my knee, my dear, and hear to reason," said he,
laying hold on her wrist.
"Simon Legree, take care!" said the woman, with a sharp flash
of her eye, a glance so wild and insane in its light as to
be almost appalling. "You're afraid of me, Simon," she said,
deliberately; "and you've reason to be! But be careful, for I've
got the devil in me!"
The last words she whispered in a hissing tone, close to
his ear.
"Get out! I believe, to my soul, you have!" said Legree,
pushing her from him, and looking uncomfortably at her.
"After all, Cassy," he said, "why can't you be friends with me,
as you used to?"
"Used to!" said she, bitterly. She stopped short,--a word
of choking feelings, rising in her heart, kept her silent.
Cassy had always kept over Legree the kind of influence that
a strong, impassioned woman can ever keep over the most brutal
man; but, of late, she had grown more and more irritable and
restless, under the hideous yoke of her servitude, and her
irritability, at times, broke out into raving insanity; and this
liability made her a sort of object of dread to Legree, who had
that superstitious horror of insane persons which is common to
coarse and uninstructed minds. When Legree brought Emmeline to
the house, all the smouldering embers of womanly feeling flashed
up in the worn heart of Cassy, and she took part with the girl;
and a fierce quarrel ensued between her and Legree. Legree, in a
fury, swore she should be put to field service, if she would not
be peaceable. Cassy, with proud scorn, declared she _would_ go to
the field. And she worked there one day, as we have described, to
show how perfectly she scorned the threat.
Legree was secretly uneasy, all day; for Cassy had an influence
over him from which he could not free himself. When she presented
her basket at the scales, he had hoped for some concession,
and addressed her in a sort of half conciliatory, half scornful
tone; and she had answered with the bitterest contempt.
The outrageous treatment of poor Tom had roused her still
more; and she had followed Legree to the house, with no particular
intention, but to upbraid him for his brutality.
"I wish, Cassy," said Legree, "you'd behave yourself decently."
"_You_ talk about behaving decently! And what have you been
doing?--you, who haven't even sense enough to keep from spoiling
one of your best hands, right in the most pressing season, just
for your devilish temper!"
"I was a fool, it's a fact, to let any such brangle come up,"
said Legree; "but, when the boy set up his will, he had to be
broke in."
"I reckon you won't break _him_ in!"
"Won't I?" said Legree, rising, passionately. "I'd like to
know if I won't? He'll be the first nigger that ever came it
round me! I'll break every bone in his body, but he _shall_
give up!"
Just then the door opened, and Sambo entered. He came
forward, bowing, and holding out something in a paper.
"What's that, you dog?" said Legree.
"It's a witch thing, Mas'r!"
"A what?"
"Something that niggers gets from witches. Keeps 'em from
feelin' when they 's flogged. He had it tied round his neck, with
a black string."
Legree, like most godless and cruel men, was superstitious.
He took the paper, and opened it uneasily.
There dropped out of it a silver dollar, and a long, shining
curl of fair hair,--hair which, like a living thing, twined itself
round Legree's fingers.
"Damnation!" he screamed, in sudden passion, stamping on the
floor, and pulling furiously at the hair, as if it burned him.
"Where did this come from? Take it off!--burn it up!--burn it up!"
he screamed, tearing it off, and throwing it into the charcoal.
"What did you bring it to me for?"
Sambo stood, with his heavy mouth wide open, and aghast with
wonder; and Cassy, who was preparing to leave the apartment,
stopped, and looked at him in perfect amazement.
"Don't you bring me any more of your devilish things!" said he,
shaking his fist at Sambo, who retreated hastily towards the door;
and, picking up the silver dollar, he sent it smashing through
the window-pane, out into the darkness.
Sambo was glad to make his escape. When he was gone, Legree
seemed a little ashamed of his fit of alarm. He sat doggedly
down in his chair, and began sullenly sipping his tumbler
of punch.
Cassy prepared herself for going out, unobserved by him; and
slipped away to minister to poor Tom, as we have already related.
And what was the matter with Legree? and what was there in a
simple curl of fair hair to appall that brutal man, familiar with
every form of cruelty? To answer this, we must carry the reader
backward in his history. Hard and reprobate as the godless man
seemed now, there had been a time when he had been rocked on the
bosom of a mother,--cradled with prayers and pious hymns,--his now
seared brow bedewed with the waters of holy baptism. In early
childhood, a fair-haired woman had led him, at the sound of Sabbath
bell, to worship and to pray. Far in New England that mother had
trained her only son, with long, unwearied love, and patient prayers.
Born of a hard-tempered sire, on whom that gentle woman had wasted
a world of unvalued love, Legree had followed in the steps of
his father. Boisterous, unruly, and tyrannical, he despised all her
counsel, and would none of her reproof; and, at an early age, broke
from her, to seek his fortunes at sea. He never came home but
once, after; and then, his mother, with the yearning of a heart
that must love something, and has nothing else to love, clung to
him, and sought, with passionate prayers and entreaties, to win
him from a life of sin, to his soul's eternal good.
That was Legree's day of grace; then good angels called him;
then he was almost persuaded, and mercy held him by the hand.
His heart inly relented,--there was a conflict,--but sin got the
victory, and he set all the force of his rough nature against the
conviction of his conscience. He drank and swore,--was wilder and
more brutal than ever. And, one night, when his mother, in the
last agony of her despair, knelt at his feet, he spurned her from
him,--threw her senseless on the floor, and, with brutal curses,
fled to his ship. The next Legree heard of his mother was, when,
one night, as he was carousing among drunken companions, a letter
was put into his hand. He opened it, and a lock of long, curling
hair fell from it, and twined about his fingers. The letter told
him his mother was dead, and that, dying, she blest and forgave him.
There is a dread, unhallowed necromancy of evil, that turns
things sweetest and holiest to phantoms of horror and affright.
That pale, loving mother,--her dying prayers, her forgiving
love,--wrought in that demoniac heart of sin only as a damning
sentence, bringing with it a fearful looking for of judgment and
fiery indignation. Legree burned the hair, and burned the letter;
and when he saw them hissing and crackling in the flame, inly
shuddered as he thought of everlasting fires. He tried to drink,
and revel, and swear away the memory; but often, in the deep night,
whose solemn stillness arraigns the bad soul in forced communion
with herself, he had seen that pale mother rising by his bedside,
and felt the soft twining of that hair around his fingers, till
the cold sweat would roll down his face, and he would spring from
his bed in horror. Ye who have wondered to hear, in the same
evangel, that God is love, and that God is a consuming fire, see
ye not how, to the soul resolved in evil, perfect love is the most
fearful torture, the seal and sentence of the direst despair?
"Blast it!" said Legree to himself, as he sipped his liquor;
"where did he get that? If it didn't look just like--whoo! I thought
I'd forgot that. Curse me, if I think there's any such thing as
forgetting anything, any how,--hang it! I'm lonesome! I mean to
call Em. She hates me--the monkey! I don't care,--I'll _make_
her come!"
Legree stepped out into a large entry, which went up stairs,
by what had formerly been a superb winding staircase; but the
passage-way was dirty and dreary, encumbered with boxes and
unsightly litter. The stairs, uncarpeted, seemed winding up,
in the gloom, to nobody knew where! The pale moonlight
streamed through a shattered fanlight over the door; the
air was unwholesome and chilly, like that of a vault.
Legree stopped at the foot of the stairs, and heard a voice
singing. It seemed strange and ghostlike in that dreary old house,
perhaps because of the already tremulous state of his nerves.
Hark! what is it?
A wild, pathetic voice, chants a hymn common among the
slaves:
"O there'll be mourning, mourning, mourning,
O there'll be mourning, at the judgment-seat of Christ!"
"Blast the girl!" said Legree. "I'll choke her.--Em! Em!" he
called, harshly; but only a mocking echo from the walls answered him.
The sweet voice still sung on:
"Parents and children there shall part!
Parents and children there shall part!
Shall part to meet no more!"
And clear and loud swelled through the empty halls the refrain,
"O there'll be mourning, mourning, mourning,
O there'll be mourning, at the judgment-seat of Christ!"
Legree stopped. He would have been ashamed to tell of it,
but large drops of sweat stood on his forehead, his heart beat
heavy and thick with fear; he even thought he saw something white
rising and glimmering in the gloom before him, and shuddered to
think what if the form of his dead mother should suddenly appear
to him.
"I know one thing," he said to himself, as he stumbled back
in the sitting-room, and sat down; "I'll let that fellow alone,
after this! What did I want of his cussed paper? I b'lieve
I am bewitched, sure enough! I've been shivering and sweating,
ever since! Where did he get that hair? It couldn't have
been _that!_ I burnt _that_ up, I know I did! It would be a joke,
if hair could rise from the dead!"
Ah, Legree! that golden tress _was_ charmed; each hair had
in it a spell of terror and remorse for thee, and was used by a
mightier power to bind thy cruel hands from inflicting uttermost
evil on the helpless!
"I say," said Legree, stamping and whistling to the dogs,
"wake up, some of you, and keep me company!" but the dogs only
opened one eye at him, sleepily, and closed it again.
"I'll have Sambo and Quimbo up here, to sing and dance one
of their hell dances, and keep off these horrid notions," said
Legree; and, putting on his hat, he went on to the verandah, and
blew a horn, with which he commonly summoned his two sable drivers.
Legree was often wont, when in a gracious humor, to get these
two worthies into his sitting-room, and, after warming them up
with whiskey, amuse himself by setting them to singing, dancing
or fighting, as the humor took him.
It was between one and two o'clock at night, as Cassy was
returning from her ministrations to poor Tom, that she heard the
sound of wild shrieking, whooping, halloing, and singing, from the
sitting-room, mingled with the barking of dogs, and other symptoms
of general uproar.
She came up on the verandah steps, and looked in. Legree and
both the drivers, in a state of furious intoxication, were
singing, whooping, upsetting chairs, and making all manner of
ludicrous and horrid grimaces at each other.
She rested her small, slender hand on the window-blind, and
looked fixedly at them;--there was a world of anguish, scorn,
and fierce bitterness, in her black eyes, as she did so.
"Would it be a sin to rid the world of such a wretch?"
she said to herself.
She turned hurriedly away, and, passing round to a back
door, glided up stairs, and tapped at Emmeline's door.
CHAPTER XXXVI
Emmeline and Cassy
Cassy entered the room, and found Emmeline sitting, pale with
fear, in the furthest corner of it. As she came in, the girl
started up nervously; but, on seeing who it was, rushed forward,
and catching her arm, said, "O Cassy, is it you? I'm so glad you've
come! I was afraid it was--. O, you don't know what a horrid noise
there has been, down stairs, all this evening!"
"I ought to know," said Cassy, dryly. "I've heard it often enough."
"O Cassy! do tell me,--couldn't we get away from this place?
I don't care where,--into the swamp among the snakes,--anywhere!
_Couldn't_ we get _somewhere_ away from here?"
"Nowhere, but into our graves," said Cassy.
"Did you ever try?"
"I've seen enough of trying and what comes of it," said Cassy.
"I'd be willing to live in the swamps, and gnaw the bark
from trees. I an't afraid of snakes! I'd rather have one near me
than him," said Emmeline, eagerly.
"There have been a good many here of your opinion," said Cassy;
"but you couldn't stay in the swamps,--you'd be tracked by
the dogs, and brought back, and then--then--"
"What would he do?" said the girl, looking, with breathless
interest, into her face.
"What _wouldn't_ he do, you'd better ask," said Cassy.
"He's learned his trade well, among the pirates in the West Indies.
You wouldn't sleep much, if I should tell you things I've seen,--things
that he tells of, sometimes, for good jokes. I've heard screams
here that I haven't been able to get out of my head for weeks
and weeks. There's a place way out down by the quarters, where you
can see a black, blasted tree, and the ground all covered with
black ashes. Ask anyone what was done there, and see if they will
dare to tell you."
"O! what do you mean?"
"I won't tell you. I hate to think of it. And I tell you, the
Lord only knows what we may see tomorrow, if that poor fellow
holds out as he's begun."
"Horrid!" said Emmeline, every drop of blood receding from
her cheeks. "O, Cassy, do tell me what I shall do!"
"What I've done. Do the best you can,--do what you must,--and
make it up in hating and cursing."
"He wanted to make me drink some of his hateful brandy,"
said Emmeline; "and I hate it so--"
"You'd better drink," said Cassy. "I hated it, too; and
now I can't live without it. One must have something;--things
don't look so dreadful, when you take that."
"Mother used to tell me never to touch any such thing,"
said Emmeline.
"_Mother_ told you!" said Cassy, with a thrilling and bitter
emphasis on the word mother. "What use is it for mothers to say
anything? You are all to be bought and paid for, and your souls
belong to whoever gets you. That's the way it goes. I say, _drink_
brandy; drink all you can, and it'll make things come easier."
"O, Cassy! do pity me!"
"Pity you!--don't I? Haven't I a daughter,--Lord knows
where she is, and whose she is, now,--going the way her mother
went, before her, I suppose, and that her children must go,
after her! There's no end to the curse--forever!"
"I wish I'd never been born!" said Emmeline, wringing her hands.
"That's an old wish with me," said Cassy. "I've got used to
wishing that. I'd die, if I dared to," she said, looking out
into the darkness, with that still, fixed despair which was the
habitual expression of her face when at rest.
"It would be wicked to kill one's self," said Emmeline.
"I don't know why,--no wickeder than things we live and do,
day after day. But the sisters told me things, when I was in
the convent, that make me afraid to die. If it would only be the
end of us, why, then--"
Emmeline turned away, and hid her face in her hands.
While this conversation was passing in the chamber, Legree,
overcome with his carouse, had sunk to sleep in the room below.
Legree was not an habitual drunkard. His coarse, strong nature
craved, and could endure, a continual stimulation, that would have
utterly wrecked and crazed a finer one. But a deep, underlying
spirit of cautiousness prevented his often yielding to appetite in
such measure as to lose control of himself
This night, however, in his feverish efforts to banish from his
mind those fearful elements of woe and remorse which woke within
him, he had indulged more than common; so that, when he had discharged
his sable attendants, he fell heavily on a settle in the room, and
was sound asleep.
O! how dares the bad soul to enter the shadowy world of
sleep?--that land whose dim outlines lie so fearfully near to the
mystic scene of retribution! Legree dreamed. In his heavy and
feverish sleep, a veiled form stood beside him, and laid a cold,
soft hand upon him. He thought he knew who it was; and shuddered,
with creeping horror, though the face was veiled. Then he
thought he felt _that hair_ twining round his fingers; and then,
that it slid smoothly round his neck, and tightened and tightened,
and he could not draw his breath; and then he thought voices
_whispered_ to him,--whispers that chilled him with horror. Then
it seemed to him he was on the edge of a frightful abyss, holding
on and struggling in mortal fear, while dark hands stretched up,
and were pulling him over; and Cassy came behind him laughing, and
pushed him. And then rose up that solemn veiled figure, and drew
aside the veil. It was his mother; and she turned away from him,
and he fell down, down, down, amid a confused noise of shrieks,
and groans, and shouts of demon laughter,--and Legree awoke.
Calmly the rosy hue of dawn was stealing into the room.
The morning star stood, with its solemn, holy eye of light, looking
down on the man of sin, from out the brightening sky. O, with what
freshness, what solemnity and beauty, is each new day born; as if
to say to insensate man, "Behold! thou hast one more chance!
_Strive_ for immortal glory!" There is no speech nor language where
this voice is not heard; but the bold, bad man heard it not. He woke
with an oath and a curse. What to him was the gold and purple,
the daily miracle of morning! What to him the sanctity of the star
which the Son of God has hallowed as his own emblem? Brute-like,
he saw without perceiving; and, stumbling forward, poured out a
tumbler of brandy, and drank half of it.
"I've had a h--l of a night!" he said to Cassy, who just
then entered from an opposite door.
"You'll get plenty of the same sort, by and by," said she, dryly.
"What do you mean, you minx?"
"You'll find out, one of these days," returned Cassy, in the
same tone. "Now Simon, I've one piece of advice to give you."
"The devil, you have!"
"My advice is," said Cassy, steadily, as she began adjusting
some things about the room, "that you let Tom alone."
"What business is 't of yours?"
"What? To be sure, I don't know what it should be. If you
want to pay twelve hundred for a fellow, and use him right up in
the press of the season, just to serve your own spite, it's no
business of mine, I've done what I could for him."
"You have? What business have you meddling in my matters?"
"None, to be sure. I've saved you some thousands of dollars,
at different times, by taking care of your hands,--that's all the
thanks I get. If your crop comes shorter into market than any of
theirs, you won't lose your bet, I suppose? Tompkins won't lord it
over you, I suppose,--and you'll pay down your money like a lady,
won't you? I think I see you doing it!"
Legree, like many other planters, had but one form of
ambition,--to have in the heaviest crop of the season,--and he had
several bets on this very present season pending in the next town.
Cassy, therefore, with woman's tact, touched the only string that
could be made to vibrate.
"Well, I'll let him off at what he's got," said Legree;
"but he shall beg my pardon, and promise better fashions."
"That he won't do," said Cassy.
"Won't,-- eh?"
"No, he won't," said Cassy.
"I'd like to know _why_, Mistress," said Legree, in the
extreme of scorn.
"Because he's done right, and he knows it, and won't say
he's done wrong."
"Who a cuss cares what he knows? The nigger shall say what
I please, or--"
"Or, you'll lose your bet on the cotton crop, by keeping
him out of the field, just at this very press."
"But he _will_ give up,--course, he will; don't I know what
niggers is? He'll beg like a dog, this morning."
He won't, Simon; you don't know this kind. You may kill him
by inches,--you won't get the first word of confession out of him."
"We'll see,--where is he?" said Legree, going out.
"In the waste-room of the gin-house," said Cassy.
Legree, though he talked so stoutly to Cassy, still sallied forth
from the house with a degree of misgiving which was not common
with him. His dreams of the past night, mingled with Cassy's
prudential suggestions, considerably affected his mind. He resolved
that nobody should be witness of his encounter with Tom; and
determined, if he could not subdue him by bullying, to defer his
vengeance, to be wreaked in a more convenient season.
The solemn light of dawn--the angelic glory of the
morning-star--had looked in through the rude window of the shed
where Tom was lying; and, as if descending on that star-beam, came
the solemn words, "I am the root and offspring of David, and the
bright and morning star." The mysterious warnings and intimations
of Cassy, so far from discouraging his soul, in the end had roused
it as with a heavenly call. He did not know but that the day of
his death was dawning in the sky; and his heart throbbed with solemn
throes of joy and desire, as he thought that the wondrous _all_,
of which he had often pondered,--the great white throne, with its
ever radiant rainbow; the white-robed multitude, with voices as
many waters; the crowns, the palms, the harps,--might all break
upon his vision before that sun should set again. And, therefore,
without shuddering or trembling, he heard the voice of his persecutor,
as he drew near.
"Well, my boy," said Legree, with a contemptuous kick, "how do
you find yourself? Didn't I tell yer I could larn yer a thing
or two? How do yer like it--eh?
How did yer whaling agree with yer, Tom? An't quite so crank as ye
was last night. Ye couldn't treat a poor sinner, now, to a bit of
sermon, could ye,--eh?"
Tom answered nothing.
"Get up, you beast!" said Legree, kicking him again.
This was a difficult matter for one so bruised and faint;
and, as Tom made efforts to do so, Legree laughed brutally.
"What makes ye so spry, this morning, Tom? Cotched cold,
may be, last night."
Tom by this time had gained his feet, and was confronting
his master with a steady, unmoved front.
"The devil, you can!" said Legree, looking him over. "I believe
you haven't got enough yet. Now, Tom, get right down on yer
knees and beg my pardon, for yer shines last night."
Tom did not move.
"Down, you dog!" said Legree, striking him with his
riding-whip.
"Mas'r Legree," said Tom, "I can't do it. I did only what
I thought was right. I shall do just so again, if ever the
time comes. I never will do a cruel thing, come what may."
"Yes, but ye don't know what may come, Master Tom. Ye think
what you've got is something. I tell you 'tan't anything,--nothing
't all. How would ye like to be tied to a tree, and have a slow
fire lit up around ye;--wouldn't that be pleasant,--eh, Tom?"
"Mas'r," said Tom, "I know ye can do dreadful things;
but,"--he stretched himself upward and clasped his hands,--"but,
after ye've killed the body, there an't no more ye can do. And O,
there's all ETERNITY to come, after that!"
ETERNITY,--the word thrilled through the black man's soul with
light and power, as he spoke; it thrilled through the sinner's
soul, too, like the bite of a scorpion. Legree gnashed on him
with his teeth, but rage kept him silent; and Tom, like a man
disenthralled, spoke, in a clear and cheerful voice,
"Mas'r Legree, as ye bought me, I'll be a true and faithful
servant to ye. I'll give ye all the work of my hands, all my time,
all my strength; but my soul I won't give up to mortal man. I will
hold on to the Lord, and put his commands before all,--die or live;
you may be sure on 't. Mas'r Legree, I ain't a grain afeard to die.
I'd as soon die as not. Ye may whip me, starve me, burn me,--it'll
only send me sooner where I want to go."
"I'll make ye give out, though, 'fore I've done!" said
Legree, in a rage.
"I shall have _help_," said Tom; "you'll never do it."
"Who the devil's going to help you?" said Legree, scornfully.
"The Lord Almighty," said Tom.
"D--n you!" said Legree, as with one blow of his fist he
felled Tom to the earth.
A cold soft hand fell on Legree's at this moment. He turned,--it
was Cassy's; but the cold soft touch recalled his dream of the
night before, and, flashing through the chambers of his brain,
came all the fearful images of the night-watches, with a
portion of the horror that accompanied them.
"Will you be a fool?" said Cassy, in French. "Let him go!
Let me alone to get him fit to be in the field again. Isn't it
just as I told you?"
They say the alligator, the rhinoceros, though enclosed in
bullet-proof mail, have each a spot where they are vulnerable; and
fierce, reckless, unbelieving reprobates, have commonly this point
in superstitious dread.
Legree turned away, determined to let the point go for the time.
"Well, have it your own way," he said, doggedly, to Cassy.
"Hark, ye!" he said to Tom; "I won't deal with ye now,
because the business is pressing, and I want all my hands;
but I _never_ forget. I'll score it against ye, and sometime
I'll have my pay out o' yer old black hide,--mind ye!"
Legree turned, and went out.
"There you go," said Cassy, looking darkly after him; "your
reckoning's to come, yet!--My poor fellow, how are you?"
"The Lord God hath sent his angel, and shut the lion's
mouth, for this time," said Tom.
"For this time, to be sure," said Cassy; "but now you've got
his ill will upon you, to follow you day in, day out, hanging
like a dog on your throat,--sucking your blood, bleeding away your
life, drop by drop. I know the man."
CHAPTER XXXVII
Liberty
"No matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted
upon the altar of slavery, the moment he touches the sacred soil
of Britain, the altar and the God sink together in the dust, and
he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible
genius of universal emancipation."
CURRAN.[1]
[1] John Philpot Curran (1750-1817), Irish orator and judge
who worked for Catholic emancipation.
A while we must leave Tom in the hands of his persecutors,
while we turn to pursue the fortunes of George and his wife, whom
we left in friendly hands, in a farmhouse on the road-side.
Tom Loker we left groaning and touzling in a most immaculately
clean Quaker bed, under the motherly supervision of Aunt Dorcas,
who found him to the full as tractable a patient as a sick bison.
Imagine a tall, dignified, spiritual woman, whose clear muslin
cap shades waves of silvery hair, parted on a broad, clear forehead,
which overarches thoughtful gray eyes. A snowy handkerchief of
lisse crape is folded neatly across her bosom; her glossy brown
silk dress rustles peacefully, as she glides up and down the chamber.
"The devil!" says Tom Loker, giving a great throw to the bedclothes.
"I must request thee, Thomas, not to use such language,"
says Aunt Dorcas, as she quietly rearranged the bed.
"Well, I won't, granny, if I can help it," says Tom; "but
it is enough to make a fellow swear,--so cursedly hot!"
Dorcas removed a comforter from the bed, straightened the
clothes again, and tucked them in till Tom looked something like
a chrysalis; remarking, as she did so,
"I wish, friend, thee would leave off cursing and swearing,
and think upon thy ways."
"What the devil," said Tom, "should I think of _them_ for?
Last thing ever _I_ want to think of--hang it all!" And Tom
flounced over, untucking and disarranging everything, in a
manner frightful to behold.
"That fellow and gal are here, I 'spose," said he, sullenly,
after a pause.
"They are so," said Dorcas.
"They'd better be off up to the lake," said Tom; "the
quicker the better."
"Probably they will do so," said Aunt Dorcas, knitting peacefully.
"And hark ye," said Tom; "we've got correspondents in Sandusky,
that watch the boats for us. I don't care if I tell, now.
I hope they _will_ get away, just to spite Marks,--the cursed
puppy!--d--n him!"
"Thomas!" said Dorcas.
"I tell you, granny, if you bottle a fellow up too tight, I shall
split," said Tom. "But about the gal,--tell 'em to dress her up
some way, so's to alter her. Her description's out in Sandusky."
"We will attend to that matter," said Dorcas, with
characteristic composure.
As we at this place take leave of Tom Loker, we may as well
say, that, having lain three weeks at the Quaker dwelling,
sick with a rheumatic fever, which set in, in company with
his other afflictions, Tom arose from his bed a somewhat
sadder and wiser man; and, in place of slave-catching, betook
himself to life in one of the new settlements, where his talents
developed themselves more happily in trapping bears, wolves, and
other inhabitants of the forest, in which he made himself quite a
name in the land. Tom always spoke reverently of the Quakers.
"Nice people," he would say; "wanted to convert me, but couldn't
come it, exactly. But, tell ye what, stranger, they do fix up a
sick fellow first rate,--no mistake. Make jist the tallest kind
o' broth and knicknacks."
As Tom had informed them that their party would be looked for
in Sandusky, it was thought prudent to divide them. Jim, with
his old mother, was forwarded separately; and a night or two after,
George and Eliza, with their child, were driven privately into
Sandusky, and lodged beneath a hospital roof, preparatory to taking
their last passage on the lake.
Their night was now far spent, and the morning star of liberty
rose fair before them!--electric word! What is it? Is there
anything more in it than a name--a rhetorical flourish? Why, men
and women of America, does your heart's blood thrill at that word,
for which your fathers bled, and your braver mothers were willing
that their noblest and best should die?
Is there anything in it glorious and dear for a nation, that
is not also glorious and dear for a man? What is freedom to
a nation, but freedom to the individuals in it? What is freedom to
that young man, who sits there, with his arms folded over his broad
chest, the tint of African blood in his cheek, its dark fires in
his eyes,--what is freedom to George Harris? To your fathers,
freedom was the right of a nation to be a nation. To him, it is
the right of a man to be a man, and not a brute; the right to call
the wife of his bosom is wife, and to protect her from lawless
violence; the right to protect and educate his child; the right to
have a home of his own, a religion of his own, a character of his
own, unsubject to the will of another. All these thoughts were
rolling and seething in George's breast, as he was pensively leaning
his head on his hand, watching his wife, as she was adapting to her
slender and pretty form the articles of man's attire, in which it
was deemed safest she should make her escape.
"Now for it," said she, as she stood before the glass, and shook
down her silky abundance of black curly hair. "I say, George,
it's almost a pity, isn't it," she said, as she held up some of
it, playfully,--"pity it's all got to come off?"
George smiled sadly, and made no answer.
Eliza turned to the glass, and the scissors glittered as
one long lock after another was detached from her head.
"There, now, that'll do," she said, taking up a hair-brush;
"now for a few fancy touches."
"There, an't I a pretty young fellow?" she said, turning
around to her husband, laughing and blushing at the same time.
"You always will be pretty, do what you will," said George.
"What does make you so sober?" said Eliza, kneeling on one knee,
and laying her hand on his. "We are only within twenty-four
hours of Canada, they say. Only a day and a night on the lake,
and then--oh, then!--"
"O, Eliza!" said George, drawing her towards him; "that is it!
Now my fate is all narrowing down to a point. To come so near,
to be almost in sight, and then lose all. I should never live
under it, Eliza."
"Don't fear," said his wife, hopefully. "The good Lord would
not have brought us so far, if he didn't mean to carry us through.
I seem to feel him with us, George."
"You are a blessed woman, Eliza!" said George, clasping her with
a convulsive grasp. "But,--oh, tell me! can this great mercy be
for us? Will these years and years of misery come to an end?--shall
we be free?
"I am sure of it, George," said Eliza, looking upward, while
tears of hope and enthusiasm shone on her long, dark lashes.
"I feel it in me, that God is going to bring us out of bondage,
this very day."
"I will believe you, Eliza," said George, rising suddenly up,
"I will believe,--come let's be off. Well, indeed," said he,
holding her off at arm's length, and looking admiringly at her,
"you _are_ a pretty little fellow. That crop of little, short
curls, is quite becoming. Put on your cap. So--a little to
one side. I never saw you look quite so pretty. But, it's almost
time for the carriage;--I wonder if Mrs. Smyth has got Harry rigged?"
The door opened, and a respectable, middle-aged woman
entered, leading little Harry, dressed in girl's clothes.
"What a pretty girl he makes," said Eliza, turning him round.
"We call him Harriet, you see;--don't the name come nicely?"
The child stood gravely regarding his mother in her new and
strange attire, observing a profound silence, and occasionally
drawing deep sighs, and peeping at her from under his dark curls.
"Does Harry know mamma?" said Eliza, stretching her hands
toward him.
The child clung shyly to the woman.
"Come Eliza, why do you try to coax him, when you know that
he has got to be kept away from you?"
"I know it's foolish," said Eliza; "yet, I can't bear to have
him turn away from me. But come,--where's my cloak? Here,--how
is it men put on cloaks, George?"
"You must wear it so," said her husband, throwing it over
his shoulders.
"So, then," said Eliza, imitating the motion,--"and I must stamp,
and take long steps, and try to look saucy."
"Don't exert yourself," said George. "There is, now and then,
a modest young man; and I think it would be easier for you
to act that character."
"And these gloves! mercy upon us!" said Eliza; "why, my
hands are lost in them."
"I advise you to keep them on pretty strictly," said George.
"Your slender paw might bring us all out. Now, Mrs. Smyth, you
are to go under our charge, and be our aunty,--you mind."
"I've heard," said Mrs. Smyth, "that there have been men down,
warning all the packet captains against a man and woman, with
a little boy."
"They have!" said George. "Well, if we see any such people,
we can tell them."
A hack now drove to the door, and the friendly family who had
received the fugitives crowded around them with farewell greetings.
The disguises the party had assumed were in accordance with
the hints of Tom Loker. Mrs. Smyth, a respectable woman from the
settlement in Canada, whither they were fleeing, being fortunately
about crossing the lake to return thither, had consented to appear
as the aunt of little Harry; and, in order to attach him to her,
he had been allowed to remain, the two last days, under her sole
charge; and an extra amount of petting, jointed to an indefinite
amount of seed-cakes and candy, had cemented a very close attachment
on the part of the young gentleman.
The hack drove to the wharf. The two young men, as they appeared,
walked up the plank into the boat, Eliza gallantly giving her arm
to Mrs. Smyth, and George attending to their baggage.
George was standing at the captain's office, settling for
his party, when he overheard two men talking by his side.
"I've watched every one that came on board," said one, "and
I know they're not on this boat."
The voice was that of the clerk of the boat. The speaker
whom he addressed was our sometime friend Marks, who, with that
valuable perservance which characterized him, had come on to
Sandusky, seeking whom he might devour.
"You would scarcely know the woman from a white one," said Marks.
"The man is a very light mulatto; he has a brand in one of
his hands."
The hand with which George was taking the tickets and change
trembled a little; but he turned coolly around, fixed an unconcerned
glance on the face of the speaker, and walked leisurely toward
another part of the boat, where Eliza stood waiting for him.
Mrs. Smyth, with little Harry, sought the seclusion of the
ladies' cabin, where the dark beauty of the supposed little girl
drew many flattering comments from the passengers.
George had the satisfaction, as the bell rang out its farewell
peal, to see Marks walk down the plank to the shore; and drew
a long sigh of relief, when the boat had put a returnless
distance between them.
It was a superb day. The blue waves of Lake Erie danced,
rippling and sparkling, in the sun-light. A fresh breeze blew from
the shore, and the lordly boat ploughed her way right gallantly
onward.
O, what an untold world there is in one human heart! Who thought,
as George walked calmly up and down the deck of the steamer,
with his shy companion at his side, of all that was burning in
his bosom? The mighty good that seemed approaching seemed too good,
too fair, even to be a reality; and he felt a jealous dread, every
moment of the day, that something would rise to snatch it from him.
But the boat swept on. Hours fleeted, and, at last, clear and
full rose the blessed English shores; shores charmed by a mighty
spell,--with one touch to dissolve every incantation of slavery,
no matter in what language pronounced, or by what national
power confirmed.
George and his wife stood arm in arm, as the boat neared
the small town of Amherstberg, in Canada. His breath grew thick
and short; a mist gathered before his eyes; he silently pressed
the little hand that lay trembling on his arm. The bell rang; the
boat stopped. Scarcely seeing what he did, he looked out his
baggage, and gathered his little party. The little company were
landed on the shore. They stood still till the boat had cleared;
and then, with tears and embracings, the husband and wife, with
their wondering child in their arms, knelt down and lifted up their
hearts to God!
"'T was something like the burst from death to life;
From the grave's cerements to the robes of heaven;
From sin's dominion, and from passion's strife,
To the pure freedom of a soul forgiven;
Where all the bonds of death and hell are riven,
And mortal puts on immortality,
When Mercy's hand hath turned the golden key,
And Mercy's voice hath said, _Rejoice, thy soul is free."_
The little party were soon guided, by Mrs. Smyth, to the
hospitable abode of a good missionary, whom Christian charity has
placed here as a shepherd to the outcast and wandering, who are
constantly finding an asylum on this shore.
Who can speak the blessedness of that first day of freedom?
Is not the _sense_ of liberty a higher and a finer one than any of
the five? To move, speak and breathe,--go out and come in unwatched,
and free from danger! Who can speak the blessings of that rest
which comes down on the free man's pillow, under laws which insure
to him the rights that God has given to man? How fair and precious
to that mother was that sleeping child's face, endeared by the memory
of a thousand dangers! How impossible was it to sleep, in the
exuberant posession of such blessedness! And yet, these two had
not one acre of ground,--not a roof that they could call their
own,--they had spent their all, to the last dollar. They had
nothing more than the birds of the air, or the flowers of the
field,--yet they could not sleep for joy. "O, ye who take freedom
from man, with what words shall ye answer it to God?"
CHAPTER XXXVIII
The Victory
"Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory."[1]
[1] I Cor. 15:57.
Have not many of us, in the weary way of life, felt, in
some hours, how far easier it were to die than to live?
The martyr, when faced even by a death of bodily anguish and
horror, finds in the very terror of his doom a strong stimulant
and tonic. There is a vivid excitement, a thrill and fervor, which
may carry through any crisis of suffering that is the birth-hour
of eternal glory and rest.
But to live,--to wear on, day after day, of mean, bitter, low,
harassing servitude, every nerve dampened and depressed, every
power of feeling gradually smothered,--this long and wasting
heart-martyrdom, this slow, daily bleeding away of the inward life,
drop by drop, hour after hour,--this is the true searching test of
what there may be in man or woman.
When Tom stood face to face with his persecutor, and heard his
threats, and thought in his very soul that his hour was come,
his heart swelled bravely in him, and he thought he could bear
torture and fire, bear anything, with the vision of Jesus and heaven
but just a step beyond; but, when he was gone, and the present
excitement passed off, came back the pain of his bruised and weary
limbs,--came back the sense of his utterly degraded, hopeless,
forlorn estate; and the day passed wearily enough.
Long before his wounds were healed, Legree insisted that he
should be put to the regular field-work; and then came day after
day of pain and weariness, aggravated by every kind of injustice
and indignity that the ill-will of a mean and malicious mind could
devise. Whoever, in _our_ circumstances, has made trial of pain,
even with all the alleviations which, for us, usually attend it,
must know the irritation that comes with it. Tom no longer wondered
at the habitual surliness of his associates; nay, he found the
placid, sunny temper, which had been the habitude of his life,
broken in on, and sorely strained, by the inroads of the same thing.
He had flattered himself on leisure to read his Bible; but there
was no such thing as leisure there. In the height of the season,
Legree did not hesitate to press all his hands through, Sundays
and week-days alike. Why shouldn't he?--he made more cotton by
it, and gained his wager; and if it wore out a few more hands, he
could buy better ones. At first, Tom used to read a verse or two
of his Bible, by the flicker of the fire, after he had returned
from his daily toil; but, after the cruel treatment he received,
he used to come home so exhausted, that his head swam and his eyes
failed when he tried to read; and he was fain to stretch himself
down, with the others, in utter exhaustion.
Is it strange that the religious peace and trust, which had
upborne him hitherto, should give way to tossings of soul and
despondent darkness? The gloomiest problem of this mysterious life
was constantly before his eyes,--souls crushed and ruined, evil
triumphant, and God silent. It was weeks and months that Tom
wrestled, in his own soul, in darkness and sorrow. He thought of
Miss Ophelia's letter to his Kentucky friends, and would pray
earnestly that God would send him deliverance. And then he would
watch, day after day, in the vague hope of seeing somebody sent to
redeem him; and, when nobody came, he would crush back to his soul
bitter thoughts,--that it was vain to serve God, that God had
forgotten him. He sometimes saw Cassy; and sometimes, when summoned
to the house, caught a glimpse of the dejected form of Emmeline,
but held very little communion with either; in fact, there was no
time for him to commune with anybody.
One evening, he was sitting, in utter dejection and prostration,
by a few decaying brands, where his coarse supper was baking.
He put a few bits of brushwood on the fire, and strove to
raise the light, and then drew his worn Bible from his pocket.
There were all the marked passages, which had thrilled his soul so
often,--words of patriarchs and seers, poets and sages, who from
early time had spoken courage to man,--voices from the great cloud
of witnesses who ever surround us in the race of life. Had the
word lost its power, or could the failing eye and weary sense no
longer answer to the touch of that mighty inspiration? Heavily
sighing, he put it in his pocket. A coarse laugh roused him; he
looked up,--Legree was standing opposite to him.
"Well, old boy," he said, "you find your religion don't work,
it seems! I thought I should get that through your wool, at last!"
The cruel taunt was more than hunger and cold and nakedness.
Tom was silent.
"You were a fool," said Legree; "for I meant to do well by you,
when I bought you. You might have been better off than Sambo,
or Quimbo either, and had easy times; and, instead of getting cut
up and thrashed, every day or two, ye might have had liberty to
lord it round, and cut up the other niggers; and ye might have had,
now and then, a good warming of whiskey punch. Come, Tom, don't
you think you'd better be reasonable?--heave that ar old pack of
trash in the fire, and join my church!"
"The Lord forbid!" said Tom, fervently.
"You see the Lord an't going to help you; if he had been, he
wouldn't have let _me_ get you! This yer religion is all a mess
of lying trumpery, Tom. I know all about it. Ye'd better hold to
me; I'm somebody, and can do something!"
"No, Mas'r," said Tom; "I'll hold on. The Lord may help me,
or not help; but I'll hold to him, and believe him to the last!"
"The more fool you!" said Legree, spitting scornfully at him,
and spurning him with his foot. "Never mind; I'll chase you down,
yet, and bring you under,--you'll see!" and Legree turned away.
When a heavy weight presses the soul to the lowest level at
which endurance is possible, there is an instant and desperate
effort of every physical and moral nerve to throw off the weight;
and hence the heaviest anguish often precedes a return tide of joy
and courage. So was it now with Tom. The atheistic taunts of his
cruel master sunk his before dejected soul to the lowest ebb; and,
though the hand of faith still held to the eternal rock, it was a
numb, despairing grasp. Tom sat, like one stunned, at the fire.
Suddenly everything around him seemed to fade, and a vision rose
before him of one crowned with thorns, buffeted and bleeding.
Tom gazed, in awe and wonder, at the majestic patience of the face;
the deep, pathetic eyes thrilled him to his inmost heart; his soul
woke, as, with floods of emotion, he stretched out his hands and
fell upon his knees,--when, gradually, the vision changed: the
sharp thorns became rays of glory; and, in splendor inconceivable,
he saw that same face bending compassionately towards him, and a
voice said, "He that overcometh shall sit down with me on my throne,
even as I also overcome, and am set down with my Father on his throne."
How long Tom lay there, he knew not. When he came to himself,
the fire was gone out, his clothes were wet with the chill and
drenching dews; but the dread soul-crisis was past, and, in the
joy that filled him, he no longer felt hunger, cold, degradation,
disappointment, wretchedness. From his deepest soul, he that
hour loosed and parted from every hope in life that now is, and
offered his own will an unquestioning sacrifice to the Infinite.
Tom looked up to the silent, ever-living stars,--types of the
angelic hosts who ever look down on man; and the solitude of the
night rung with the triumphant words of a hymn, which he had sung
often in happier days, but never with such feeling as now:
"The earth shall be dissolved like snow,
The sun shall cease to shine;
But God, who called me here below,
Shall be forever mine.
"And when this mortal life shall fail,
And flesh and sense shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil
A life of joy and peace.
"When we've been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining like the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we first begun."
Those who have been familiar with the religious histories of
the slave population know that relations like what we have
narrated are very common among them. We have heard some from their
own lips, of a very touching and affecting character. The psychologist
tells us of a state, in which the affections and images of the mind
become so dominant and overpowering, that they press into their
service the outward imagining. Who shall measure what an all-pervading
Spirit may do with these capabilities of our mortality, or the ways
in which He may encourage the desponding souls of the desolate?
If the poor forgotten slave believes that Jesus hath appeared and
spoken to him, who shall contradict him? Did He not say that his,
mission, in all ages, was to bind up the broken-hearted, and set
at liberty them that are bruised?
When the dim gray of dawn woke the slumberers to go forth to the
field, there was among those tattered and shivering wretches one
who walked with an exultant tread; for firmer than the ground he
trod on was his strong faith in Almighty, eternal love. Ah, Legree,
try all your forces now! Utmost agony, woe, degradation, want,
and loss of all things, shall only hasten on the process by which
he shall be made a king and a priest unto God!
From this time, an inviolable sphere of peace encompassed the
lowly heart of the oppressed one,--an ever-present Saviour
hallowed it as a temple. Past now the bleeding of earthly regrets;
past its fluctuations of hope, and fear, and desire; the human
will, bent, and bleeding, and struggling long, was now entirely
merged in the Divine. So short now seemed the remaining voyage of
life,--so near, so vivid, seemed eternal blessedness,--that life's
uttermost woes fell from him unharming.
All noticed the change in his appearance. Cheerfulness and
alertness seemed to return to him, and a quietness which no
insult or injury could ruffle seemed to possess him.
"What the devil's got into Tom?" Legree said to Sambo. "A while
ago he was all down in the mouth, and now he's peart as a cricket."
"Dunno, Mas'r; gwine to run off, mebbe."
"Like to see him try that," said Legree, with a savage grin,
"wouldn't we, Sambo?"
"Guess we would! Haw! haw! ho!" said the sooty gnome,
laughing obsequiously. "Lord, de fun! To see him stickin' in de
mud,--chasin' and tarin' through de bushes, dogs a holdin' on to
him! Lord, I laughed fit to split, dat ar time we cotched Molly.
I thought they'd a had her all stripped up afore I could get 'em off.
She car's de marks o' dat ar spree yet."
"I reckon she will, to her grave," said Legree. "But now,
Sambo, you look sharp. If the nigger's got anything of this sort
going, trip him up."
"Mas'r, let me lone for dat," said Sambo, "I'll tree de coon.
Ho, ho, ho!"
This was spoken as Legree was getting on his horse, to go to
the neighboring town. That night, as he was returning, he
thought he would turn his horse and ride round the quarters, and
see if all was safe.
It was a superb moonlight night, and the shadows of the graceful
China trees lay minutely pencilled on the turf below, and
there was that transparent stillness in the air which it seems
almost unholy to disturb. Legree was a little distance from the
quarters, when he heard the voice of some one singing. It was not
a usual sound there, and he paused to listen. A musical tenor
voice sang,
"When I can read my title clear
To mansions in the skies,
I'll bid farewell to every fear,
And wipe my weeping eyes
"Should earth against my soul engage,
And hellish darts be hurled,
Then I can smile at Satan's rage,
And face a frowning world.
"Let cares like a wild deluge come,
And storms of sorrow fall,
May I but safely reach my home,
My god, my Heaven, my All."[2]
[2] "On My Journey Home," hymn by Isaac Watts, found in many
of the southern country songbooks of the ante bellum period.
"So ho!" said Legree to himself, "he thinks so, does he? How I hate
these cursed Methodist hymns! Here, you nigger," said he, coming
suddenly out upon Tom, and raising his riding-whip, "how dare you
be gettin' up this yer row, when you ought to be in bed? Shut yer
old black gash, and get along in with you!"
"Yes, Mas'r," said Tom, with ready cheerfulness, as he rose
to to in.
Legree was provoked beyond measure by Tom's evident happiness;
and riding up to him, belabored him over his head and shoulders.
"There, you dog," he said, "see if you'll feel so comfortable,
after that!"
But the blows fell now only on the outer man, and not, as
before, on the heart. Tom stood perfectly submissive; and yet
Legree could not hide from himself that his power over his bond
thrall was somehow gone. And, as Tom disappeared in his cabin,
and he wheeled his horse suddenly round, there passed through his
mind one of those vivid flashes that often send the lightning of
conscience across the dark and wicked soul. He understood full
well that it was GOD who was standing between him and his victim,
and he blasphemed him. That submissive and silent man, whom taunts,
nor threats, nor stripes, nor cruelties, could disturb, roused a
voice within him, such as of old his Master roused in the demoniac
soul, saying, "What have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of
Nazareth?--art thou come to torment us before the time?"
Tom's whole soul overflowed with compassion and sympathy for
the poor wretches by whom he was surrounded. To him it seemed
as if his life-sorrows were now over, and as if, out of that strange
treasury of peace and joy, with which he had been endowed from
above, he longed to pour out something for the relief of their
woes. It is true, opportunities were scanty; but, on the way to
the fields, and back again, and during the hours of labor, chances
fell in his way of extending a helping-hand to the weary, the
disheartened and discouraged. The poor, worn-down, brutalized
creatures, at first, could scarce comprehend this; but, when it
was continued week after week, and month after month, it began to
awaken long-silent chords in their benumbed hearts. Gradually and
imperceptibly the strange, silent, patient man, who was ready to
bear every one's burden, and sought help from none,--who stood
aside for all, and came last, and took least, yet was foremost to
share his little all with any who needed,--the man who, in cold
nights, would give up his tattered blanket to add to the comfort
of some woman who shivered with sickness, and who filled the baskets
of the weaker ones in the field, at the terrible risk of coming
short in his own measure,--and who, though pursued with unrelenting
cruelty by their common tyrant, never joined in uttering a word of
reviling or cursing,--this man, at last, began to have a strange
power over them; and, when the more pressing season was past, and
they were allowed again their Sundays for their own use, many would
gather together to hear from him of Jesus. They would gladly have
met to hear, and pray, and sing, in some place, together; but Legree
would not permit it, and more than once broke up such attempts,
with oaths and brutal execrations,--so that the blessed news had
to circulate from individual to individual. Yet who can speak the
simple joy with which some of those poor outcasts, to whom life
was a joyless journey to a dark unknown, heard of a compassionate
Redeemer and a heavenly home? It is the statement of missionaries,
that, of all races of the earth, none have received the Gospel with
such eager docility as the African. The principle of reliance and
unquestioning faith, which is its foundation, is more a native
element in this race than any other; and it has often been found
among them, that a stray seed of truth, borne on some breeze of
accident into hearts the most ignorant, has sprung up into fruit,
whose abundance has shamed that of higher and more skilful culture.
The poor mulatto woman, whose simple faith had been well-nigh
crushed and overwhelmed, by the avalanche of cruelty and wrong
which had fallen upon her, felt her soul raised up by the hymns
and passages of Holy Writ, which this lowly missionary breathed
into her ear in intervals, as they were going to and returning from
work; and even the half-crazed and wandering mind of Cassy was
soothed and calmed by his simple and unobtrusive influences.
Stung to madness and despair by the crushing agonies of a life,
Cassy had often resolved in her soul an hour of retribution,
when her hand should avenge on her oppressor all the injustice and
cruelty to which she had been witness, or which _she_ had in her
own person suffered.
One night, after all in Tom's cabin were sunk in sleep, he was
suddenly aroused by seeing her face at the hole between the logs,
that served for a window. She made a silent gesture for him
to come out.
Tom came out the door. It was between one and two o'clock at
night,--broad, calm, still moonlight. Tom remarked, as the light
of the moon fell upon Cassy's large, black eyes, that there was
a wild and peculiar glare in them, unlike their wonted fixed despair.
"Come here, Father Tom," she said, laying her small hand on
his wrist, and drawing him forward with a force as if the hand
were of steel; "come here,--I've news for you."
"What, Misse Cassy?" said Tom, anxiously.
"Tom, wouldn't you like your liberty?"
"I shall have it, Misse, in God's time," said Tom. "Ay, but
you may have it tonight," said Cassy, with a flash of sudden
energy. "Come on."
Tom hesitated.
"Come!" said she, in a whisper, fixing her black eyes on him.
"Come along! He's asleep--sound. I put enough into his brandy
to keep him so. I wish I'd had more,--I shouldn't have wanted you.
But come, the back door is unlocked; there's an axe there, I put
it there,--his room door is open; I'll show you the way.
I'd a done it myself, only my arms are so weak. Come along!"
"Not for ten thousand worlds, Misse!" said Tom, firmly,
stopping and holding her back, as she was pressing forward.
"But think of all these poor creatures," said Cassy. "We might
set them all free, and go somewhere in the swamps, and find an
island, and live by ourselves; I've heard of its being done.
Any life is better than this."
"No!" said Tom, firmly. "No! good never comes of wickedness.
I'd sooner chop my right hand off!"
"Then _I_ shall do it," said Cassy, turning.
"O, Misse Cassy!" said Tom, throwing himself before her, "for the
dear Lord's sake that died for ye, don't sell your precious soul
to the devil, that way! Nothing but evil will come of it. The Lord
hasn't called us to wrath. We must suffer, and wait his time."
"Wait!" said Cassy. "Haven't I waited?--waited till my head
is dizzy and my heart sick? What has he made me suffer? What has
he made hundreds of poor creatures suffer? Isn't he wringing the
life-blood out of you? I'm called on; they call me! His time's
come, and I'll have his heart's blood!"
"No, no, no!" said Tom, holding her small hands, which were
clenched with spasmodic violence. "No, ye poor, lost soul, that
ye mustn't do. The dear, blessed Lord never shed no blood but his
own, and that he poured out for us when we was enemies. Lord, help
us to follow his steps, and love our enemies."
"Love!" said Cassy, with a fierce glare; "love _such_ enemies!
It isn't in flesh and blood."
"No, Misse, it isn't," said Tom, looking up; "but _He_ gives it
to us, and that's the victory. When we can love and pray over
all and through all, the battle's past, and the victory's
come,--glory be to God!" And, with streaming eyes and choking voice,
the black man looked up to heaven.
And this, oh Africa! latest called of nations,--called to the
crown of thorns, the scourge, the bloody sweat, the cross of
agony,--this is to be _thy_ victory; by this shalt thou reign with
Christ when his kingdom shall come on earth.
The deep fervor of Tom's feelings, the softness of his voice,
his tears, fell like dew on the wild, unsettled spirit of the
poor woman. A softness gathered over the lurid fires of her eye;
she looked down, and Tom could feel the relaxing muscles of her
hands, as she said,
"Didn't I tell you that evil spirits followed me? O! Father
Tom, I can't pray,--I wish I could. I never have prayed since my
children were sold! What you say must be right, I know it must;
but when I try to pray, I can only hate and curse. I can't pray!"
"Poor soul!" said Tom, compassionately. "Satan desires to
have ye, and sift ye as wheat. I pray the Lord for ye. O! Misse
Cassy, turn to the dear Lord Jesus. He came to bind up the
broken-hearted, and comfort all that mourn."
Cassy stood silent, while large, heavy tears dropped from
her downcast eyes.
"Misse Cassy," said Tom, in a hesitating tone, after surveying
her in silence, "if ye only could get away from here,--if the
thing was possible,--I'd 'vise ye and Emmeline to do it; that
is, if ye could go without blood-guiltiness,--not otherwise."
"Would you try it with us, Father Tom?"
"No," said Tom; "time was when I would; but the Lord's given
me a work among these yer poor souls, and I'll stay with 'em
and bear my cross with 'em till the end. It's different with you;
it's a snare to you,--it's more'n you can stand,--and you'd better
go, if you can."
"I know no way but through the grave," said Cassy. "There's no
beast or bird but can find a home some where; even the snakes
and the alligators have their places to lie down and be quiet; but
there's no place for us. Down in the darkest swamps, their dogs
will hunt us out, and find us. Everybody and everything is against
us; even the very beasts side against us,--and where shall we go?"
Tom stood silent; at length he said,
"Him that saved Daniel in the den of lions,--that saves the
children in the fiery furnace,--Him that walked on the sea,
and bade the winds be still,--He's alive yet; and I've faith to
believe he can deliver you. Try it, and I'll pray, with all my
might, for you."
By what strange law of mind is it that an idea long
overlooked, and trodden under foot as a useless stone, suddenly
sparkles out in new light, as a discovered diamond?
Cassy had often revolved, for hours, all possible or probable
schemes of escape, and dismissed them all, as hopeless and
impracticable; but at this moment there flashed through her mind
a plan, so simple and feasible in all its details, as to awaken an
instant hope.
"Father Tom, I'll try it!" she said, suddenly.
"Amen!" said Tom; "the Lord help ye!"
CHAPTER XXXIX
The Stratagem
"The way of the wicked is as darkness; he knoweth not at what he
stumbleth."[1]
[1] Prov. 4:19.
The garret of the house that Legree occupied, like most other
garrets, was a great, desolate space, dusty, hung with cobwebs,
and littered with cast-off lumber. The opulent family that had
inhabited the house in the days of its splendor had imported a
great deal of splendid furniture, some of which they had taken away
with them, while some remained standing desolate in mouldering,
unoccupied rooms, or stored away in this place. One or two immense
packing-boxes, in which this furniture was brought, stood against
the sides of the garret. There was a small window there, which
let in, through its dingy, dusty panes, a scanty, uncertain light
on the tall, high-backed chairs and dusty tables, that had once
seen better days. Altogether, it was a weird and ghostly place;
but, ghostly as it was, it wanted not in legends among the
superstitious negroes, to increase it terrors. Some few years
before, a negro woman, who had incurred Legree's displeasure, was
confined there for several weeks. What passed there, we do not
say; the negroes used to whisper darkly to each other; but it was
known that the body of the unfortunate creature was one day taken
down from there, and buried; and, after that, it was said that
oaths and cursings, and the sound of violent blows, used to ring
through that old garret, and mingled with wailings and groans of
despair. Once, when Legree chanced to overhear something of this
kind, he flew into a violent passion, and swore that the next one
that told stories about that garret should have an opportunity of
knowing what was there, for he would chain them up there for a week.
This hint was enough to repress talking, though, of course, it did
not disturb the credit of the story in the least.
Gradually, the staircase that led to the garret, and even the
passage-way to the staircase, were avoided by every one in the
house, from every one fearing to speak of it, and the legend was
gradually falling into desuetude. It had suddenly occurred to
Cassy to make use of the superstitious excitability, which was so
great in Legree, for the purpose of her liberation, and that of
her fellow-sufferer.
The sleeping-room of Cassy was directly under the garret.
One day, without consulting Legree, she suddenly took it upon her,
with some considerable ostentation, to change all the furniture
and appurtenances of the room to one at some considerable distance.
The under-servants, who were called on to effect this movement,
were running and bustling about with great zeal and confusion, when
Legree returned from a ride.
"Hallo! you Cass!" said Legree, "what's in the wind now?"
"Nothing; only I choose to have another room," said Cassy, doggedly.
"And what for, pray?" said Legree.
"I choose to," said Cassy.
"The devil you do! and what for?"
"I'd like to get some sleep, now and then."
"Sleep! well, what hinders your sleeping?"
"I could tell, I suppose, if you want to hear," said Cassy, dryly.
"Speak out, you minx!" said Legree.
"O! nothing. I suppose it wouldn't disturb _you!_ Only groans,
and people scuffing, and rolling round on the garre, floor, half
the night, from twelve to morning!"
"People up garret!" said Legree, uneasily, but forcing a
laugh; "who are they, Cassy?"
Cassy raised her sharp, black eyes, and looked in the face of
Legree, with an expression that went through his bones, as she
said, "To be sure, Simon, who are they? I'd like to have _you_
tell me. You don't know, I suppose!"
With an oath, Legree struck at her with his riding-whip; but
she glided to one side, and passed through the door, and looking
back, said, "If you'll sleep in that room, you'll know all about it.
Perhaps you'd better try it!" and then immediately she shut and
locked the door.
Legree blustered and swore, and threatened to break down the
door; but apparently thought better of it, and walked uneasily
into the sitting-room. Cassy perceived that her shaft had struck
home; and, from that hour, with the most exquisite address, she
never ceased to continue the train of influences she had begun.
In a knot-hole of the garret, that had opened, she had
inserted the neck of an old bottle, in such a manner that when
there was the least wind, most doleful and lugubrious wailing sounds
proceeded from it, which, in a high wind, increased to a perfect
shriek, such as to credulous and superstitious ears might easily
seem to be that of horror and despair.
These sounds were, from time to time, heard by the servants,
and revived in full force the memory of the old ghost legend.
A superstitious creeping horror seemed to fill the house; and
though no one dared to breathe it to Legree, he found himself
encompassed by it, as by an atmosphere.
No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man.
The Christian is composed by the belief of a wise, all-ruling
Father, whose presence fills the void unknown with light and order;
but to the man who has dethroned God, the spirit-land is, indeed,
in the words of the Hebrew poet, "a land of darkness and the shadow
of death," without any order, where the light is as darkness.
Life and death to him are haunted grounds, filled with goblin forms
of vague and shadowy dread.
Legree had had the slumbering moral elements in him roused
by his encounters with Tom,--roused, only to be resisted by the
determinate force of evil; but still there was a thrill and commotion
of the dark, inner world, produced by every word, or prayer, or
hymn, that reacted in superstitious dread.
The influence of Cassy over him was of a strange and singular kind.
He was her owner, her tyrant and tormentor. She was, as he knew,
wholly, and without any possibility of help or redress, in his
hands; and yet so it is, that the most brutal man cannot live
in constant association with a strong female influence, and not be
greatly controlled by it. When he first bought her, she was, as
she said, a woman delicately bred; and then he crushed her, without
scruple, beneath the foot of his brutality. But, as time, and
debasing influences, and despair, hardened womanhood within her,
and waked the fires of fiercer passions, she had become in a measure
his mistress, and he alternately tyrannized over and dreaded her.
This influence had become more harassing and decided, since
partial insanity had given a strange, weird, unsettled cast to all
her words and language.
A night or two after this, Legree was sitting in the old
sitting-room, by the side of a flickering wood fire, that
threw uncertain glances round the room. It was a stormy,
windy night, such as raises whole squadrons of nondescript noises
in rickety old houses. Windows were rattling, shutters flapping,
and wind carousing, rumbling, and tumbling down the chimney, and,
every once in a while, puffing out smoke and ashes, as if a legion
of spirits were coming after them. Legree had been casting up
accounts and reading newspapers for some hours, while Cassy sat in
the corner; sullenly looking into the fire. Legree laid down his
paper, and seeing an old book lying on the table, which he had
noticed Cassy reading, the first part of the evening, took it up,
and began to turn it over. It was one of those collections of
stories of bloody murders, ghostly legends, and supernatural
visitations, which, coarsely got up and illustrated, have a strange
fascination for one who once begins to read them.
Legree poohed and pished, but read, turning page after page,
till, finally, after reading some way, he threw down the book,
with an oath.
"You don't believe in ghosts, do you, Cass?" said he, taking
the tongs and settling the fire. "I thought you'd more sense than
to let noises scare _you_."
"No matter what I believe," said Cassy, sullenly.
"Fellows used to try to frighten me with their yarns at sea,"
said Legree. "Never come it round me that way. I'm too tough
for any such trash, tell ye."
Cassy sat looking intensely at him in the shadow of the corner.
There was that strange light in her eyes that always impressed
Legree with uneasiness.
"Them noises was nothing but rats and the wind," said Legree.
"Rats will make a devil of a noise. I used to hear 'em
sometimes down in the hold of the ship; and wind,--Lord's sake! ye
can make anything out o' wind."
Cassy knew Legree was uneasy under her eyes, and, therefore,
she made no answer, but sat fixing them on him, with that strange,
unearthly expression, as before.
"Come, speak out, woman,--don't you think so?" said Legree.
"Can rats walk down stairs, and come walking through the entry,
and open a door when you've locked it and set a chair against
it?" said Cassy; "and come walk, walk, walking right up to your
bed, and put out their hand, so?"
Cassy kept her glittering eyes fixed on Legree, as she spoke,
and he stared at her like a man in the nightmare, till, when
she finished by laying her hand, icy cold, on his, he sprung back,
with an oath.
"Woman! what do you mean? Nobody did?"
"O, no,--of course not,--did I say they did?" said Cassy,
with a smile of chilling derision.
"But--did--have you really seen?--Come, Cass, what is it,
now,--speak out!"
"You may sleep there, yourself," said Cassy, "if you want
to know."
"Did it come from the garret, Cassy?"
"_It_,--what?" said Cassy.
"Why, what you told of--"
"I didn't tell you anything," said Cassy, with dogged sullenness.
Legree walked up and down the room, uneasily.
"I'll have this yer thing examined. I'll look into it,
this very night. I'll take my pistols--"
"Do," said Cassy; "sleep in that room. I'd like to see
you doing it. Fire your pistols,--do!"
Legree stamped his foot, and swore violently.
"Don't swear," said Cassy; "nobody knows who may be hearing you.
Hark! What was that?"
"What?" said Legree, starting.
A heavy old Dutch clock, that stood in the corner of the
room, began, and slowly struck twelve.
For some reason or other, Legree neither spoke nor moved;
a vague horror fell on him; while Cassy, with a keen, sneering
glitter in her eyes, stood looking at him, counting the strokes.
"Twelve o'clock; well _now_ we'll see," said she, turning,
and opening the door into the passage-way, and standing as if
listening.
"Hark! What's that?" said she, raising her finger.
"It's only the wind," said Legree. "Don't you hear how
cursedly it blows?"
"Simon, come here," said Cassy, in a whisper, laying her hand
on his, and leading him to the foot of the stairs: "do you
know what _that_ is? Hark!"
A wild shriek came pealing down the stairway. It came from
the garret. Legree's knees knocked together; his face grew white
with fear.
"Hadn't you better get your pistols?" said Cassy, with a sneer
that froze Legree's blood. "It's time this thing was looked
into, you know. I'd like to have you go up now; _they're at it_."
"I won't go!" said Legree, with an oath.
"Why not? There an't any such thing as ghosts, you know!
Come!" and Cassy flitted up the winding stairway, laughing, and
looking back after him. "Come on."
"I believe you _are_ the devil!" said Legree. "Come back
you hag,--come back, Cass! You shan't go!"
But Cassy laughed wildly, and fled on. He heard her open the
entry doors that led to the garret. A wild gust of wind swept
down, extinguishing the candle he held in his hand, and with it
the fearful, unearthly screams; they seemed to be shrieked in his
very ear.
Legree fled frantically into the parlor, whither, in a few
moments, he was followed by Cassy, pale, calm, cold as an avenging
spirit, and with that same fearful light in her eye.
"I hope you are satisfied," said she.
"Blast you, Cass!" said Legree.
"What for?" said Cassy. "I only went up and shut the doors.
_What's the matter with that garret_, Simon, do you suppose?"
said she.
"None of your business!" said Legree.
"O, it an't? Well," said Cassy, "at any rate, I'm glad _I_ don't
sleep under it."
Anticipating the rising of the wind, that very evening, Cassy
had been up and opened the garret window. Of course, the
moment the doors were opened, the wind had drafted down, and
extinguished the light.
This may serve as a specimen of the game that Cassy played
with Legree, until he would sooner have put his head into a lion's
mouth than to have explored that garret. Meanwhile, in the night,
when everybody else was asleep, Cassy slowly and carefully accumulated
there a stock of provisions sufficient to afford subsistence for
some time; she transferred, article by article, a greater part of
her own and Emmeline's wardrobe. All things being arranged, they
only waited a fitting opportunity to put their plan in execution.
By cajoling Legree, and taking advantage of a good-natured
interval, Cassy had got him to take her with him to the neighboring
town, which was situated directly on the Red river. With a memory
sharpened to almost preternatural clearness, she remarked every
turn in the road, and formed a mental estimate of the time to be
occupied in traversing it.
At the time when all was matured for action, our readers may,
perhaps, like to look behind the scenes, and see the final
_coup d'etat_.
It was now near evening, Legree had been absent, on a ride
to a neighboring farm. For many days Cassy had been unusually
gracious and accommodating in her humors; and Legree and she had
been, apparently, on the best of terms. At present, we may behold
her and Emmeline in the room of the latter, busy in sorting and
arranging two small bundles.
"There, these will be large enough," said Cassy. Now put on
your bonnet, and let's start; it's just about the right time."
"Why, they can see us yet," said Emmeline.
"I mean they shall," said Cassy, coolly. "Don't you know that
they must have their chase after us, at any rate? The way of
the thing is to be just this:--We will steal out of the back door,
and run down by the quarters. Sambo or Quimbo will be sure
to see us. They will give chase, and we will get into the swamp;
then, they can't follow us any further till they go up and give
the alarm, and turn out the dogs, and so on; and, while they are
blundering round, and tumbling over each other, as they always do,
you and I will slip along to the creek, that runs back of the house,
and wade along in it, till we get opposite the back door. That will
put the dogs all at fault; for scent won't lie in the water.
Every one will run out of the house to look after us, and then
we'll whip in at the back door, and up into the garret, where I've
got a nice bed made up in one of the great boxes. We must stay in
that garret a good while, for, I tell you, he will raise heaven
and earth after us. He'll muster some of those old overseers on
the other plantations, and have a great hunt; and they'll go over
every inch of ground in that swamp. He makes it his boast that
nobody ever got away from him. So let him hunt at his leisure."
"Cassy, how well you have planned it!" said Emmeline. "Who ever
would have thought of it, but you?"
There was neither pleasure nor exultation in Cassy's
eyes,--only a despairing firmness.
"Come," she said, reaching her hand to Emmeline.
The two fugitives glided noiselessly from the house, and
flitted, through the gathering shadows of evening, along by
the quarters. The crescent moon, set like a silver signet in the
western sky, delayed a little the approach of night. As Cassy
expected, when quite near the verge of the swamps that encircled
the plantation, they heard a voice calling to them to stop. It was
not Sambo, however, but Legree, who was pursuing them with
violent execrations. At the sound, the feebler spirit of Emmeline
gave way; and, laying hold of Cassy's arm, she said, "O, Cassy,
I'm going to faint!"
"If you do, I'll kill you!" said Cassy, drawing a small,
glittering stiletto, and flashing it before the eyes of the girl.
The diversion accomplished the purpose. Emmeline did not
faint, and succeeded in plunging, with Cassy, into a part of the
labyrinth of swamp, so deep and dark that it was perfectly hopeless
for Legree to think of following them, without assistance.
"Well," said he, chuckling brutally; "at any rate, they've got
themselves into a trap now--the baggage! They're safe enough.
They shall sweat for it!"
"Hulloa, there! Sambo! Quimbo! All hands!" called Legree,
coming to the quarters, when the men and women were just returning
from work. "There's two runaways in the swamps. I'll give five
dollars to any nigger as catches 'em. Turn out the dogs! Turn out
Tiger, and Fury, and the rest!"
The sensation produced by this news was immediate. Many of the
men sprang forward, officiously, to offer their services, either
from the hope of the reward, or from that cringing subserviency
which is one of the most baleful effects of slavery. Some ran one
way, and some another. Some were for getting flambeaux of pine-knots.
Some were uncoupling the dogs, whose hoarse, savage bay added not
a little to the animation of the scene.
"Mas'r, shall we shoot 'em, if can't cotch 'em?" said Sambo,
to whom his master brought out a rifle.
"You may fire on Cass, if you like; it's time she was gone to
the devil, where she belongs; but the gal, not," said Legree.
"And now, boys, be spry and smart. Five dollars for him that gets
'em; and a glass of spirits to every one of you, anyhow."
The whole band, with the glare of blazing torches, and whoop,
and shout, and savage yell, of man and beast, proceeded down
to the swamp, followed, at some distance, by every servant in
the house. The establishment was, of a consequence, wholly deserted,
when Cassy and Emmeline glided into it the back way. The whooping and
shouts of their pursuers were still filling the air; and, looking
from the sitting-room windows, Cassy and Emmeline could see the
troop, with their flambeaux, just dispersing themselves along the
edge of the swamp.
"See there!" said Emmeline, pointing to Cassy; "the hunt is begun!
Look how those lights dance about! Hark! the dogs! Don't you hear?
If we were only _there_, our chances wouldn't be worth a picayune.
O, for pity's sake, do let's hide ourselves. Quick!"
"There's no occasion for hurry," said Cassy, coolly; "they are
all out after the hunt,--that's the amusement of the evening!
We'll go up stairs, by and by. Meanwhile," said she, deliberately
taking a key from the pocket of a coat that Legree had thrown down
in his hurry, "meanwhile I shall take something to pay our passage.
She unlocked the desk, took from it a roll of bills, which
she counted over rapidly.
"O, don't let's do that!" said Emmeline.
"Don't!" said Cassy; "why not? Would you have us starve in
the swamps, or have that that will pay our way to the free states.
Money will do anything, girl." And, as she spoke, she put the money
in her bosom.
"It would be stealing," said Emmeline, in a distressed whisper.
"Stealing!" said Cassy, with a scornful laugh. "They who
steal body and soul needn't talk to us. Every one of these bills
is stolen,--stolen from poor, starving, sweating creatures, who
must go to the devil at last, for his profit. Let _him_ talk
about stealing! But come, we may as well go up garret; I've got a
stock of candles there, and some books to pass away the time.
You may be pretty sure they won't come _there_ to inquire after us.
If they do, I'll play ghost for them."
When Emmeline reached the garret, she found an immense box,
in which some heavy pieces of furniture had once been brought,
turned on its side, so that the opening faced the wall, or
rather the eaves. Cassy lit a small lamp, and creeping round
under the eaves, they established themselves in it. It was
spread with a couple of small mattresses and some pillows; a
box near by was plentifully stored with candles, provisions, and
all the clothing necessary to their journey, which Cassy had arranged
into bundles of an astonishingly small compass.
"There," said Cassy, as she fixed the lamp into a small hook,
which she had driven into the side of the box for that purpose;
"this is to be our home for the present. How do you like it?"
"Are you sure they won't come and search the garret?"
"I'd like to see Simon Legree doing that," said Cassy.
"No, indeed; he will be too glad to keep away. As to the servants,
they would any of them stand and be shot, sooner than show their
faces here."
Somewhat reassured, Emmeline settled herself back on her pillow.
"What did you mean, Cassy, by saying you would kill me?"
she said, simply.
"I meant to stop your fainting," said Cassy, "and I did do it.
And now I tell you, Emmeline, you must make up your mind _not_
to faint, let what will come; there's no sort of need of it.
If I had not stopped you, that wretch might have had his hands
on you now."
Emmeline shuddered.
The two remained some time in silence. Cassy busied herself
with a French book; Emmeline, overcome with the exhaustion, fell
into a doze, and slept some time. She was awakened by loud shouts
and outcries, the tramp of horses' feet, and the baying of dogs.
She started up, with a faint shriek.
"Only the hunt coming back," said Cassy, coolly; "never fear.
Look out of this knot-hole. Don't you see 'em all down there?
Simon has to give up, for this night. Look, how muddy his horse
is, flouncing about in the swamp; the dogs, too, look rather
crestfallen. Ah, my good sir, you'll have to try the race again
and again,--the game isn't there."
"O, don't speak a word!" said Emmeline; "what if they should
hear you?"
"If they do hear anything, it will make them very particular
to keep away," said Cassy. "No danger; we may make any noise we
please, and it will only add to the effect."
At length the stillness of midnight settled down over the house.
Legree, cursing his ill luck, and vowing dire vengeance on
the morrow, went to bed.
CHAPTER XL
The Martyr
"Deem not the just by Heaven forgot!
Though life its common gifts deny,--
Though, with a crushed and bleeding heart,
And spurned of man, he goes to die!
For God hath marked each sorrowing day,
And numbered every bitter tear,
And heaven's long years of bliss shall pay
For all his children suffer here."
BRYANT.[1]
[1] This poem does not appear in the collected works of William
Cullen Bryant, nor in the collected poems of his brother, John
Howard Bryant. It was probably copied from a newspaper or magazine.
The longest way must have its close,--the gloomiest night will
wear on to a morning. An eternal, inexorable lapse of moments
is ever hurrying the day of the evil to an eternal night, and the
night of the just to an eternal day. We have walked with our humble
friend thus far in the valley of slavery; first through flowery
fields of ease and indulgence, then through heart-breaking separations
from all that man holds dear. Again, we have waited with him in
a sunny island, where generous hands concealed his chains with
flowers; and, lastly, we have followed him when the last ray of
earthly hope went out in night, and seen how, in the blackness of
earthly darkness, the firmament of the unseen has blazed with stars
of new and significant lustre.
The morning-star now stands over the tops of the mountains,
and gales and breezes, not of earth, show that the gates of day
are unclosing.
The escape of Cassy and Emmeline irritated the before surly
temper of Legree to the last degree; and his fury, as was to be
expected, fell upon the defenceless head of Tom. When he hurriedly
announced the tidings among his hands, there was a sudden light in
Tom's eye, a sudden upraising of his hands, that did not escape him.
He saw that he did not join the muster of the pursuers. He thought
of forcing him to do it; but, having had, of old, experience of
his inflexibility when commanded to take part in any deed of
inhumanity, he would not, in his hurry, stop to enter into any
conflict with him.
Tom, therefore, remained behind, with a few who had learned
of him to pray, and offered up prayers for the escape of
the fugitives.
When Legree returned, baffled and disappointed, all the
long-working hatred of his soul towards his slave began to gather
in a deadly and desperate form. Had not this man braved him,--steadily,
powerfully, resistlessly,--ever since he bought him? Was there not
a spirit in him which, silent as it was, burned on him like the
fires of perdition?
"I _hate_ him!" said Legree, that night, as he sat up in his bed;
"I _hate_ him! And isn't he MINE? Can't I do what I like
with him? Who's to hinder, I wonder?" And Legree clenched his fist,
and shook it, as if he had something in his hands that he could
rend in pieces.
But, then, Tom was a faithful, valuable servant; and,
although Legree hated him the more for that, yet the consideration
was still somewhat of a restraint to him.
The next morning, he determined to say nothing, as yet; to
assemble a party, from some neighboring plantations, with
dogs and guns; to surround the swamp, and go about the
hunt systematically. If it succeeded, well and good; if not,
he would summon Tom before him, and--his teeth clenched and his
blood boiled--_then_ he would break the fellow down, or--there
was a dire inward whisper, to which his soul assented.
Ye say that the _interest_ of the master is a sufficient
safeguard for the slave. In the fury of man's mad will, he will
wittingly, and with open eye, sell his own soul to the devil to
gain his ends; and will he be more careful of his neighbor's body?
"Well," said Cassy, the next day, from the garret, as she
reconnoitred through the knot-hole, "the hunt's going to begin
again, today!"
Three or four mounted horsemen were curvetting about, on the
space in front of the house; and one or two leashes of strange
dogs were struggling with the negroes who held them, baying and
barking at each other.
The men are, two of them, overseers of plantations in the
vicinity; and others were some of Legree's associates at the
tavern-bar of a neighboring city, who had come for the interest of
the sport. A more hard-favored set, perhaps, could not be imagined.
Legree was serving brandy, profusely, round among them, as also
among the negroes, who had been detailed from the various plantations
for this service; for it was an object to make every service of
this kind, among the negroes, as much of a holiday as possible.
Cassy placed her ear at the knot-hole; and, as the morning air
blew directly towards the house, she could overhear a good deal
of the conversation. A grave sneer overcast the dark, severe
gravity of her face, as she listened, and heard them divide out
the ground, discuss the rival merits of the dogs, give orders about
firing, and the treatment of each, in case of capture.
Cassy drew back; and, clasping her hands, looked upward,
and said, "O, great Almighty God! we are _all_ sinners; but
what have _we_ done, more than all the rest of the world, that
we should be treated so?"
There was a terrible earnestness in her face and voice, as
she spoke.
"If it wasn't for _you_, child," she said, looking at Emmeline,
"I'd _go_ out to them; and I'd thank any one of them that _would_
shoot me down; for what use will freedom be to me? Can it
give me back my children, or make me what I used to be?"
Emmeline, in her child-like simplicity, was half afraid of the
dark moods of Cassy. She looked perplexed, but made no answer.
She only took her hand, with a gentle, caressing movement.
"Don't!" said Cassy, trying to draw it away; "you'll get
me to loving you; and I never mean to love anything, again!"
"Poor Cassy!" said Emmeline, "don't feel so! If the Lord
gives us liberty, perhaps he'll give you back your daughter; at
any rate, I'll be like a daughter to you. I know I'll never see
my poor old mother again! I shall love you, Cassy, whether you love
me or not!"
The gentle, child-like spirit conquered. Cassy sat down by her,
put her arm round her neck, stroked her soft, brown hair; and
Emmeline then wondered at the beauty of her magnificent eyes, now
soft with tears.
"O, Em!" said Cassy, "I've hungered for my children, and
thirsted for them, and my eyes fail with longing for them!
Here! here!" she said, striking her breast, "it's all desolate,
all empty! If God would give me back my children, then I could pray."
"You must trust him, Cassy," said Emmeline; "he is our Father!"
"His wrath is upon us," said Cassy; "he has turned away in anger."
"No, Cassy! He will be good to us! Let us hope in Him,"
said Emmeline,--"I always have had hope."
The hunt was long, animated, and thorough, but unsuccessful;
and, with grave, ironic exultation, Cassy looked down on Legree,
as, weary and dispirited, he alighted from his horse.
"Now, Quimbo," said Legree, as he stretched himself down in the
sitting-room, "you jest go and walk that Tom up here, right away!
The old cuss is at the bottom of this yer whole matter; and I'll
have it out of his old black hide, or I'll know the reason why!"
Sambo and Quimbo, both, though hating each other, were joined
in one mind by a no less cordial hatred of Tom. Legree had
told them, at first, that he had bought him for a general overseer,
in his absence; and this had begun an ill will, on their part,
which had increased, in their debased and servile natures, as
they saw him becoming obnoxious to their master's displeasure.
Quimbo, therefore, departed, with a will, to execute his orders.
Tom heard the message with a forewarning heart; for he knew
all the plan of the fugitives' escape, and the place of their
present concealment;--he knew the deadly character of the man he
had to deal with, and his despotic power. But he felt strong in
God to meet death, rather than betray the helpless.
He sat his basket down by the row, and, looking up, said,
"Into thy hands I commend my spirit! Thou hast redeemed me, oh Lord
God of truth!" and then quietly yielded himself to the rough, brutal
grasp with which Quimbo seized him.
"Ay, ay!" said the giant, as he dragged him along; ye'll cotch
it, now! I'll boun' Mas'r's back 's up _high!_ No sneaking
out, now! Tell ye, ye'll get it, and no mistake! See how ye'll
look, now, helpin' Mas'r's niggers to run away! See what ye'll get!"
The savage words none of them reached that ear!--a higher
voice there was saying, "Fear not them that kill the body, and,
after that, have no more that they can do." Nerve and bone of that
poor man's body vibrated to those words, as if touched by the finger
of God; and he felt the strength of a thousand souls in one. As he
passed along, the trees. and bushes, the huts of his servitude,
the whole scene of his degradation, seemed to whirl by him as the
landscape by the rushing ear. His soul throbbed,--his home was
in sight,--and the hour of release seemed at hand.
"Well, Tom!" said Legree, walking up, and seizing him grimly
by the collar of his coat, and speaking through his teeth, in a
paroxysm of determined rage, "do you know I've made up my mind to
KILL YOU?"
"It's very likely, Mas'r," said Tom, calmly.
"I _have_," said Legree, with a grim, terrible calmness,
"_done--just--that--thing_, Tom, unless you'll tell me what you
know about these yer gals!"
Tom stood silent.
"D'ye hear?" said Legree, stamping, with a roar like that
of an incensed lion. "Speak!"
"_I han't got nothing to tell, Mas'r_," said Tom, with a
slow, firm, deliberate utterance.
"Do you dare to tell me, ye old black Christian, ye don't
_know_?" said Legree.
Tom was silent.
"Speak!" thundered Legree, striking him furiously. Do you
know anything?"
"I know, Mas'r; but I can't tell anything. _I can die!_"
Legree drew in a long breath; and, suppressing his rage, took
Tom by the arm, and, approaching his face almost to his, said,
in a terrible voice, "Hark 'e, Tom!--ye think, 'cause I've let you
off before, I don't mean what I say; but, this time, _I've made up
my mind_, and counted the cost. You've always stood it out again'
me: now, _I'll conquer ye, or kill ye!_--one or t' other. I'll count
every drop of blood there is in you, and take 'em, one by one,
till ye give up!"
Tom looked up to his master, and answered, "Mas'r, if you was
sick, or in trouble, or dying, and I could save ye, I'd _give_
ye my heart's blood; and, if taking every drop of blood in this
poor old body would save your precious soul, I'd give 'em freely,
as the Lord gave his for me. O, Mas'r! don't bring this great sin
on your soul! It will hurt you more than 't will me! Do the worst
you can, my troubles'll be over soon; but, if ye don't repent,
yours won't _never_ end!"
Like a strange snatch of heavenly music, heard in the lull
of a tempest, this burst of feeling made a moment's blank pause.
Legree stood aghast, and looked at Tom; and there was such a silence,
that the tick of the old clock could be heard, measuring, with
silent touch, the last moments of mercy and probation to that
hardened heart.
It was but a moment. There was one hesitating pause,--one
irresolute, relenting thrill,--and the spirit of evil came back,
with seven-fold vehemence; and Legree, foaming with rage, smote
his victim to the ground.
Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart.
What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear. What
brother-man and brother-Christian must suffer, cannot be told us,
even in our secret chamber, it so harrows the soul! And yet, oh my
country! these things are done under the shadow of thy laws!
O, Christ! thy church sees them, almost in silence!
But, of old, there was One whose suffering changed an
instrument of torture, degradation and shame, into a symbol of
glory, honor, and immortal life; and, where His spirit is, neither
degrading stripes, nor blood, nor insults, can make the Christian's
last struggle less than glorious.
Was he alone, that long night, whose brave, loving spirit was
bearing up, in that old shed, against buffeting and brutal stripes?
Nay! There stood by him ONE,--seen by him alone,--"like
unto the Son of God."
The tempter stood by him, too,--blinded by furious, despotic
will,--every moment pressing him to shun that agony by the betrayal
of the innocent. But the brave, true heart was firm on the Eternal
Rock. Like his Master, he knew that, if he saved others, himself
he could not save; nor could utmost extremity wring from him words,
save of prayers and holy trust.
"He's most gone, Mas'r," said Sambo, touched, in spite of
himself, by the patience of his victim.
"Pay away, till he gives up! Give it to him!--give it to
him!" shouted Legree. I'll take every drop of blood he has, unless
he confesses!"
Tom opened his eyes, and looked upon his master. "Ye poor
miserable critter!" he said, "there ain't no more ye can do!
I forgive ye, with all my soul!" and he fainted entirely away.
"I b'lieve, my soul, he's done for, finally," said Legree,
stepping forward, to look at him. "Yes, he is! Well, his mouth's
shut up, at last,--that's one comfort!"
Yes, Legree; but who shall shut up that voice in thy soul?
that soul, past repentance, past prayer, past hope, in whom the
fire that never shall be quenched is already burning!
Yet Tom was not quite gone. His wondrous words and pious
prayers had struck upon the hearts of the imbruted blacks, who had
been the instruments of cruelty upon him; and, the instant Legree
withdrew, they took him down, and, in their ignorance, sought to
call him back to life,--as if _that_ were any favor to him.
"Sartin, we 's been doin' a drefful wicked thing!" said
Sambo; "hopes Mas'r'll have to 'count for it, and not we."
They washed his wounds,--they provided a rude bed, of some
refuse cotton, for him to lie down on; and one of them, stealing
up to the house, begged a drink of brandy of Legree, pretending
that he was tired, and wanted it for himself. He brought it back,
and poured it down Tom's throat.
"O, Tom!" said Quimbo, "we's been awful wicked to ye!"
"I forgive ye, with all my heart!" said Tom, faintly.
"O, Tom! do tell us who is _Jesus_, anyhow?" said Sambo;--"Jesus,
that's been a standin' by you so, all this night!--Who is he?"
The word roused the failing, fainting spirit. He poured
forth a few energetic sentences of that wondrous One,--his life,
his death, his everlasting presence, and power to save.
They wept,--both the two savage men.
"Why didn't I never hear this before?" said Sambo; "but I
do believe!--I can't help it! Lord Jesus, have mercy on us!"
"Poor critters!" said Tom, "I'd be willing to bar' all I
have, if it'll only bring ye to Christ! O, Lord! give me these two
more souls, I pray!"
That prayer was answered!
CHAPTER XLI
The Young Master
Two days after, a young man drove a light wagon up through
the avenue of China trees, and, throwing the reins hastily on the
horse's neck, sprang out and inquired for the owner of the place.
It was George Shelby; and, to show how he came to be there,
we must go back in our story.
The letter of Miss Ophelia to Mrs. Shelby had, by some
unfortunate accident, been detained, for a month or two, at some
remote post-office, before it reached its destination; and, of
course, before it was received, Tom was already lost to view among
the distant swamps of the Red river.
Mrs. Shelby read the intelligence with the deepest concern;
but any immediate action upon it was an impossibility. She was
then in attendance on the sick-bed of her husband, who lay delirious
in the crisis of a fever. Master George Shelby, who, in the
interval, had changed from a boy to a tall young man, was her
constant and faithful assistant, and her only reliance in superintending
his father's affairs. Miss Ophelia had taken the precaution to
send them the name of the lawyer who did business for the St.
Clares; and the most that, in the emergency, could be done, was to
address a letter of inquiry to him. The sudden death of Mr.
Shelby, a few days after, brought, of course, an absorbing pressure
of other interests, for a season.
Mr. Shelby showed his confidence in his wife's ability, by
appointing her sole executrix upon his estates; and thus immediately
a large and complicated amount of business was brought upon her hands.
Mrs. Shelby, with characteristic energy, applied herself to
the work of straightening the entangled web of affairs; and she
and George were for some time occupied with collecting and examining
accounts, selling property and settling debts; for Mrs. Shelby was
determined that everything should be brought into tangible and
recognizable shape, let the consequences to her prove what they
might. In the mean time, they received a letter from the lawyer
to whom Miss Ophelia had referred them, saying that he knew nothing
of the matter; that the man was sold at a public auction, and that,
beyond receiving the money, he knew nothing of the affair.
Neither George nor Mrs. Shelby could be easy at this result;
and, accordingly, some six months after, the latter, having business
for his mother, down the river, resolved to visit New Orleans, in
person, and push his inquiries, in hopes of discovering Tom's
whereabouts, and restoring him.
After some months of unsuccessful search, by the merest
accident, George fell in with a man, in New Orleans, who happened
to be possessed of the desired information; and with his money in
his pocket, our hero took steamboat for Red river, resolving to
find out and re-purchase his old friend.
He was soon introduced into the house, where he found Legree
in the sitting-room.
Legree received the stranger with a kind of surly hospitality,
"I understand," said the young man, "that you bought, in
New Orleans, a boy, named Tom. He used to be on my father's place,
and I came to see if I couldn't buy him back."
Legree's brow grew dark, and he broke out, passionately:
"Yes, I did buy such a fellow,--and a h--l of a bargain I
had of it, too! The most rebellious, saucy, impudent dog! Set up
my niggers to run away; got off two gals, worth eight hundred or
a thousand apiece. He owned to that, and, when I bid him tell me
where they was, he up and said he knew, but he wouldn't tell; and
stood to it, though I gave him the cussedest flogging I ever gave
nigger yet. I b'lieve he's trying to die; but I don't know as
he'll make it out."
"Where is he?" said George, impetuously. "Let me see him."
The cheeks of the young man were crimson, and his eyes flashed
fire; but he prudently said nothing, as yet.
"He's in dat ar shed," said a little fellow, who stood
holding George's horse.
Legree kicked the boy, and swore at him; but George, without
saying another word, turned and strode to the spot.
Tom had been lying two days since the fatal night, not suffering,
for every nerve of suffering was blunted and destroyed. He lay,
for the most part, in a quiet stupor; for the laws of a powerful
and well-knit frame would not at once release the imprisoned spirit.
By stealth, there had been there, in the darkness of the night,
poor desolated creatures, who stole from their scanty hours'
rest, that they might repay to him some of those ministrations of
love in which he had always been so abundant. Truly, those poor
disciples had little to give,--only the cup of cold water; but it
was given with full hearts.
Tears had fallen on that honest, insensible face,--tears
of late repentance in the poor, ignorant heathen, whom his dying
love and patience had awakened to repentance, and bitter prayers,
breathed over him to a late-found Saviour, of whom they scarce knew
more than the name, but whom the yearning ignorant heart of man
never implores in vain.
Cassy, who had glided out of her place of concealment, and,
by overhearing, learned the sacrifice that had been made for
her and Emmeline, had been there, the night before, defying
the danger of detection; and, moved by the last few words which
the affectionate soul had yet strength to breathe, the long winter
of despair, the ice of years, had given way, and the dark, despairing
woman had wept and prayed.
When George entered the shed, he felt his head giddy and
his heart sick.
"Is it possible,,--is it possible?" said he, kneeling down
by him. "Uncle Tom, my poor, poor old friend!"
Something in the voice penetrated to the ear of the dying.
He moved his head gently, smiled, and said,
"Jesus can make a dying-bed
Feel soft as down pillows are."
Tears which did honor to his manly heart fell from the
young man's eyes, as he bent over his poor friend.
"O, dear Uncle Tom! do wake,--do speak once more! Look up!
Here's Mas'r George,--your own little Mas'r George. Don't you
know me?"
"Mas'r George!" said Tom, opening his eyes, and speaking
in a feeble voice; "Mas'r George!" He looked bewildered.
Slowly the idea seemed to fill his soul; and the vacant
eye became fixed and brightened, the whole face lighted up, the
hard hands clasped, and tears ran down the cheeks.
"Bless the Lord! it is,--it is,--it's all I wanted! They haven't
forgot me. It warms my soul; it does my heart good! Now I shall
die content! Bless the Lord, on my soul!"
"You shan't die! you _mustn't_ die, nor think of it! I've come
to buy you, and take you home," said George, with impetuous vehemence.
"O, Mas'r George, ye're too late. The Lord's bought me, and is
going to take me home,--and I long to go. Heaven is better
than Kintuck."
"O, don't die! It'll kill me!--it'll break my heart to
think what you've suffered,--and lying in this old shed, here!
Poor, poor fellow!"
"Don't call me poor fellow!" said Tom, solemnly, "I _have_ been
poor fellow; but that's all past and gone, now. I'm right in
the door, going into glory! O, Mas'r George! _Heaven has come!_
I've got the victory!--the Lord Jesus has given it to me! Glory be
to His name!"
George was awe-struck at the force, the vehemence, the power,
with which these broken sentences were uttered. He sat
gazing in silence.
Tom grasped his hand, and continued,--"Ye mustn't, now, tell
Chloe, poor soul! how ye found me;--'t would be so drefful to her.
Only tell her ye found me going into glory; and that I couldn't
stay for no one. And tell her the Lord's stood by me everywhere
and al'ays, and made everything light and easy. And oh, the poor
chil'en, and the baby;--my old heart's been most broke for 'em,
time and agin! Tell 'em all to follow me--follow me! Give my love
to Mas'r, and dear good Missis, and everybody in the place! Ye don't
know! 'Pears like I loves 'em all! I loves every creature
everywhar!--it's nothing _but_ love! O, Mas'r George! what a thing
't is to be a Christian!"
At this moment, Legree sauntered up to the door of the shed,
looked in, with a dogged air of affected carelessness, and
turned away.
"The old satan!" said George, in his indignation. "It's a comfort
to think the devil will pay _him_ for this, some of these days!"
"O, don't!,--oh, ye mustn't!" said Tom, grasping his hand;
"he's a poor mis'able critter! it's awful to think on 't! Oh, if
he only could repent, the Lord would forgive him now; but I'm
'feared he never will!"
"I hope he won't!" said George; "I never want to see _him_
in heaven!"
"Hush, Mas'r George!--it worries me! Don't feel so! He an't
done me no real harm,--only opened the gate of the kingdom for me;
that's all!"
At this moment, the sudden flush of strength which the joy of
meeting his young master had infused into the dying man gave way.
A sudden sinking fell upon him; he closed his eyes; and that
mysterious and sublime change passed over his face, that told the
approach of other worlds.
He began to draw his breath with long, deep inspirations;
and his broad chest rose and fell, heavily. The expression of his
face was that of a conqueror.
"Who,--who,--who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"
he said, in a voice that contended with mortal weakness; and, with
a smile, he fell asleep.
George sat fixed with solemn awe. It seemed to him that the
place was holy; and, as he closed the lifeless eyes, and rose
up from the dead, only one thought possessed him,--that expressed
by his simple old friend,--"What a thing it is to be a Christian!"
He turned: Legree was standing, sullenly, behind him.
Something in that dying scene had checked the natural
fierceness of youthful passion. The presence of the man was simply
loathsome to George; and he felt only an impulse to get away from
him, with as few words as possible.
Fixing his keen dark eyes on Legree, he simply said, pointing
to the dead, "You have got all you ever can of him. What shall I
pay you for the body? I will take it away, and bury it decently."
"I don't sell dead niggers," said Legree, doggedly. "You are
welcome to bury him where and when you like."
"Boys," said George, in an authoritative tone, to two or three
negroes, who were looking at the body, "help me lift him up,
and carry him to my wagon; and get me a spade."
One of them ran for a spade; the other two assisted George
to carry the body to the wagon.
George neither spoke to nor looked at Legree, who did not
countermand his orders, but stood, whistling, with an air of
forced unconcern. He sulkily followed them to where the wagon
stood at the door.
George spread his cloak in the wagon, and had the body
carefully disposed of in it,--moving the seat, so as to give
it room. Then he turned, fixed his eyes on Legree, and said,
with forced composure,
"I have not, as yet, said to you what I think of this most
atrocious affair;--this is not the time and place. But, sir, this
innocent blood shall have justice. I will proclaim this murder.
I will go to the very first magistrate, and expose you."
"Do!" said Legree, snapping his fingers, scornfully. "I'd like
to see you doing it. Where you going to get witnesses?--how
you going to prove it?--Come, now!"
George saw, at once, the force of this defiance. There was
not a white person on the place; and, in all southern courts,
the testimony of colored blood is nothing. He felt, at that moment,
as if he could have rent the heavens with his heart's indignant
cry for justice; but in vain.
"After all, what a fuss, for a dead nigger!" said Legree.
The word was as a spark to a powder magazine. Prudence was
never a cardinal virtue of the Kentucky boy. George turned,
and, with one indignant blow, knocked Legree flat upon his face;
and, as he stood over him, blazing with wrath and defiance, he
would have formed no bad personification of his great namesake
triumphing over the dragon.
Some men, however, are decidedly bettered by being knocked down.
If a man lays them fairly flat in the dust, they seem
immediately to conceive a respect for him; and Legree was one of
this sort. As he rose, therefore, and brushed the dust from his
clothes, he eyed the slowly-retreating wagon with some evident
consideration; nor did he open his mouth till it was out of sight.
Beyond the boundaries of the plantation, George had noticed a dry,
sandy knoll, shaded by a few trees; there they made the grave.
"Shall we take off the cloak, Mas'r?" said the negroes,
when the grave was ready.
"No, no,--bury it with him! It's all I can give you, now,
poor Tom, and you shall have it."
They laid him in; and the men shovelled away, silently.
They banked it up, and laid green turf over it.
"You may go, boys," said George, slipping a quarter into
the hand of each. They lingered about, however.
"If young Mas'r would please buy us--" said one.
"We'd serve him so faithful!" said the other.
"Hard times here, Mas'r!" said the first. "Do, Mas'r, buy
us, please!"
"I can't!--I can't!" said George, with difficulty, motioning
them off; "it's impossible!"
The poor fellows looked dejected, and walked off in silence.
"Witness, eternal God!" said George, kneeling on the grave
of his poor friend; "oh, witness, that, from this hour, I will do
_what one man can_ to drive out this curse of slavery from my land!"
There is no monument to mark the last resting-place of our friend.
He needs none! His Lord knows where he lies, and will raise him up,
immortal, to appear with him when he shall appear in his glory.
Pity him not! Such a life and death is not for pity! Not in the
riches of omnipotence is the chief glory of God; but in self-denying,
suffering love! And blessed are the men whom he calls to fellowship
with him, bearing their cross after him with patience. Of such it
is written, "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted."
CHAPTER XLII
An Authentic Ghost Story
For some remarkable reason, ghostly legends were uncommonly
rife, about this time, among the servants on Legree's place.
It was whisperingly asserted that footsteps, in the dead of night,
had been heard descending the garret stairs, and patrolling
the house. In vain the doors of the upper entry had been locked;
the ghost either carried a duplicate key in its pocket, or availed
itself of a ghost's immemorial privilege of coming through the
keyhole, and promenaded as before, with a freedom that was alarming.
Authorities were somewhat divided, as to the outward form of
the spirit, owing to a custom quite prevalent among negroes,--and,
for aught we know, among whites, too,--of invariably shutting the
eyes, and covering up heads under blankets, petticoats, or whatever
else might come in use for a shelter, on these occasions. Of course,
as everybody knows, when the bodily eyes are thus out of the
lists, the spiritual eyes are uncommonly vivacious and perspicuous;
and, therefore, there were abundance of full-length portraits of
the ghost, abundantly sworn and testified to, which, as if often
the case with portraits, agreed with each other in no particular,
except the common family peculiarity of the ghost tribe,--the
wearing of a _white sheet_. The poor souls were not versed in
ancient history, and did not know that Shakspeare had
authenticated this costume, by telling how
"The sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the streets of Rome."[1]
[1] _Hamlet_, Act I, scene 1, lines 115-116
And, therefore, their all hitting upon this is a striking fact in
pneumatology, which we recommend to the attention of spiritual
media generally.
Be it as it may, we have private reasons for knowing that
a tall figure in a white sheet did walk, at the most approved
ghostly hours, around the Legree premises,--pass out the doors,
glide about the house,--disappear at intervals, and, reappearing,
pass up the silent stairway, into that fatal garret; and that, in
the morning, the entry doors were all found shut and locked as firm
as ever.
Legree could not help overhearing this whispering; and it was
all the more exciting to him, from the pains that were taken
to conceal it from him. He drank more brandy than usual; held up
his head briskly, and swore louder than ever in the daytime; but
he had bad dreams, and the visions of his head on his bed were
anything but agreeable. The night after Tom's body had been carried
away, he rode to the next town for a carouse, and had a high one.
Got home late and tired; locked his door, took out the key, and
went to bed.
After all, let a man take what pains he may to hush it down,
a human soul is an awful ghostly, unquiet possession, for a
bad man to have. Who knows the metes and bounds of it? Who knows
all its awful perhapses,--those shudderings and tremblings, which
it can no more live down than it can outlive its own eternity!
What a fool is he who locks his door to keep out spirits, who has
in his own bosom a spirit he dares not meet alone,--whose voice,
smothered far down, and piled over with mountains of earthliness,
is yet like the forewarning trumpet of doom!
But Legree locked his door and set a chair against it; he set
a night-lamp at the head of his bed; and put his pistols there.
He examined the catches and fastenings of the windows, and then
swore he "didn't care for the devil and all his angels," and went
to sleep.
Well, he slept, for he was tired,--slept soundly. But, finally,
there came over his sleep a shadow, a horror, an apprehension
of something dreadful hanging over him. It was his mother's shroud,
he thought; but Cassy had it, holding it up, and showing it to him.
He heard a confused noise of screams and groanings; and, with it
all, he knew he was asleep, and he struggled to wake himself.
He was half awake. He was sure something was coming into his room.
He knew the door was opening, but he could not stir hand or foot.
At last he turned, with a start; the door _was_ open, and he saw
a hand putting out his light.
It was a cloudy, misty moonlight, and there he saw it!--something
white, gliding in! He heard the still rustle of its ghostly garments.
It stood still by his bed;--a cold hand touched his; a voice said,
three times, in a low, fearful whisper, "Come! come! come!"
And, while he lay sweating with terror, he knew not when or how,
the thing was gone. He sprang out of bed, and pulled at the door.
It was shut and locked, and the man fell down in a swoon.
After this, Legree became a harder drinker than ever before.
He no longer drank cautiously, prudently, but imprudently and
recklessly.
There were reports around the country, soon after that he was
sick and dying. Excess had brought on that frightful disease
that seems to throw the lurid shadows of a coming retribution back
into the present life. None could bear the horrors of that sick
room, when he raved and screamed, and spoke of sights which almost
stopped the blood of those who heard him; and, at his dying bed,
stood a stern, white, inexorable figure, saying, "Come! come! come!"
By a singular coincidence, on the very night that this vision
appeared to Legree, the house-door was found open in the morning,
and some of the negroes had seen two white figures gliding down
the avenue towards the high-road.
It was near sunrise when Cassy and Emmeline paused, for a
moment, in a little knot of trees near the town.
Cassy was dressed after the manner of the Creole Spanish
ladies,--wholly in black. A small black bonnet on her head, covered
by a veil thick with embroidery, concealed her face. It had been
agreed that, in their escape, she was to personate the character
of a Creole lady, and Emmeline that of her servant.
Brought up, from early life, in connection with the highest
society, the language, movements and air of Cassy, were all in
agreement with this idea; and she had still enough remaining with
her, of a once splendid wardrobe, and sets of jewels, to enable
her to personate the thing to advantage.
She stopped in the outskirts of the town, where she had noticed
trunks for sale, and purchased a handsome one. This she
requested the man to send along with her. And, accordingly, thus
escorted by a boy wheeling her trunk, and Emmeline behind her,
carrying her carpet-bag and sundry bundles, she made her appearance
at the small tavern, like a lady of consideration.
The first person that struck her, after her arrival, was
George Shelby, who was staying there, awaiting the next boat.
Cassy had remarked the young man from her loophole in the
garret, and seen him bear away the body of Tom, and observed with
secret exultation, his rencontre with Legree. Subsequently she
had gathered, from the conversations she had overheard among the
negroes, as she glided about in her ghostly disguise, after
nightfall, who he was, and in what relation he stood to Tom.
She, therefore, felt an immediate accession of confidence, when
she found that he was, like herself, awaiting the next boat.
Cassy's air and manner, address, and evident command of money,
prevented any rising disposition to suspicion in the hotel.
People never inquire too closely into those who are fair on
the main point, of paying well,--a thing which Cassy had
foreseen when she provided herself with money.
In the edge of the evening, a boat was heard coming along,
and George Shelby handed Cassy aboard, with the politeness which
comes naturally to every Kentuckian, and exerted himself to provide
her with a good state-room.
Cassy kept her room and bed, on pretext of illness, during
the whole time they were on Red river; and was waited on, with
obsequious devotion, by her attendant.
When they arrived at the Mississippi river, George, having
learned that the course of the strange lady was upward, like his
own, proposed to take a state-room for her on the same boat with
himself,--good-naturedly compassionating her feeble health, and
desirous to do what he could to assist her.
Behold, therefore, the whole party safely transferred to
the good steamer Cincinnati, and sweeping up the river under a
powerful head of steam.
Cassy's health was much better. She sat upon the guards, came
to the table, and was remarked upon in the boat as a lady that
must have been very handsome.
From the moment that George got the first glimpse of her face,
he was troubled with one of those fleeting and indefinite
likenesses, which almost every body can remember, and has been, at
times, perplexed with. He could not keep himself from looking at
her, and watchin her perpetually. At table, or sitting at her
state-room door, still she would encounter the young man's eyes
fixed on her, and politely withdrawn, when she showed, by her
countenance, that she was sensible to the observation.
Cassy became uneasy. She began to think that he suspected
something; and finally resolved to throw herself entirely on his
generosity, and intrusted him with her whole history.
George was heartily disposed to sympathize with any one who
had escaped from Legree's plantation,--a place that he could
not remember or speak of with patience,--and, with the courageous
disregard of consequences which is characteristic of his age and
state, he assured her that he would do all in his power to protect
and bring them through.
The next state-room to Cassy's was occupied by a French lady,
named De Thoux, who was accompanied by a fine little daughter,
a child of some twelve summers.
This lady, having gathered, from George's conversation, that
he was from Kentucky, seemed evidently disposed to cultivate
his acquaintance; in which design she was seconded by the graces
of her little girl, who was about as pretty a plaything as ever
diverted the weariness of a fortnight's trip on a steamboat.
George's chair was often placed at her state-room door; and
Cassy, as she sat upon the guards, could hear their conversation.
Madame de Thoux was very minute in her inquiries as to Kentucky,
where she said she had resided in a former period of her life.
George discovered, to his surprise, that her former residence
must have been in his own vicinity; and her inquiries showed a
knowledge of people and things in his vicinity, that was perfectly
surprising to him.
"Do you know," said Madame de Thoux to him, one day, "of
any man, in your neighborhood, of the name of Harris?"
"There is an old fellow, of that name, lives not far from my
father's place," said George. "We never have had much intercourse
with him, though."
"He is a large slave-owner, I believe," said Madame de Thoux,
with a manner which seemed to betray more interest than she
was exactly willing to show.
"He is," said George, looking rather surprised at her manner.
"Did you ever know of his having--perhaps, you may have
heard of his having a mulatto boy, named George?"
"O, certainly,--George Harris,--I know him well; he married
a servant of my mother's, but has escaped, now, to Canada."
"He has?" said Madame de Thoux, quickly. "Thank God!"
George looked a surprised inquiry, but said nothing.
Madame de Thoux leaned her head on her hand, and burst into tears.
"He is my brother," she said.
"Madame!" said George, with a strong accent of surprise.
"Yes," said Madame de Thoux, lifting her head, proudly,
and wiping her tears, "Mr. Shelby, George Harris is my brother!"
"I am perfectly astonished," said George, pushing back his
chair a pace or two, and looking at Madame de Thoux.
"I was sold to the South when he was a boy," said she. "I was
bought by a good and generous man. He took me with him to the
West Indies, set me free, and married me. It is but lately that
he died; and I was going up to Kentucky, to see if I could find
and redeem my brother."
"I heard him speak of a sister Emily, that was sold South,"
said George.
"Yes, indeed! I am the one," said Madame de Thoux;--"tell
me what sort of a--"
"A very fine young man," said George, "notwithstanding the
curse of slavery that lay on him. He sustained a first rate
character, both for intelligence and principle. I know, you see,"
he said; "because he married in our family."
"What sort of a girl?" said Madame de Thoux, eagerly.
"A treasure," said George; "a beautiful, intelligent,
amiable girl. Very pious. My mother had brought her up, and
trained her as carefully, almost, as a daughter. She could read
and write, embroider and sew, beautifully; and was a beautiful singer."
"Was she born in your house?" said Madame de Thoux.
"No. Father bought her once, in one of his trips to New Orleans,
and brought her up as a present to mother. She was about eight
or nine years old, then. Father would never tell mother what
he gave for her; but, the other day, in looking over his old papers,
we came across the bill of sale. He paid an extravagant sum for her,
to be sure. I suppose, on account of her extraordinary beauty."
George sat with his back to Cassy, and did not see the absorbed
expression of her countenance, as he was giving these details.
At this point in the story, she touched his arm, and, with
a face perfectly white with interest, said, "Do you know the names
of the people he bought her of?"
"A man of the name of Simmons, I think, was the principal
in the transaction. At least, I think that was the name on the
bill of sale."
"O, my God!" said Cassy, and fell insensible on the floor
of the cabin.
George was wide awake now, and so was Madame de Thoux.
Though neither of them could conjecture what was the cause of
Cassy's fainting, still they made all the tumult which is proper
in such cases;--George upsetting a wash-pitcher, and breaking two
tumblers, in the warmth of his humanity; and various ladies in
the cabin, hearing that somebody had fainted, crowded the state-room
door, and kept out all the air they possibly could, so that, on the
whole, everything was done that could be expected.
Poor Cassy! when she recovered, turned her face to the wall,
and wept and sobbed like a child,--perhaps, mother, you can
tell what she was thinking of! Perhaps you cannot,--but she felt
as sure, in that hour, that God had had mercy on her, and that she
should see her daughter,--as she did, months afterwards,--when--but
we anticipate.
CHAPTER XLIII
Results
The rest of our story is soon told. George Shelby, interested,
as any other young man might be, by the romance of the incident,
no less than by feelings of humanity, was at the pains to send
to Cassy the bill of sale of Eliza; whose date and name all
corresponded with her own knowledge of facts, and felt no doubt
upon her mind as to the identity of her child. It remained now
only for her to trace out the path of the fugitives.
Madame de Thoux and she, thus drawn together by the singular
coincidence of their fortunes, proceeded immediately to Canada,
and began a tour of inquiry among the stations, where the numerous
fugitives from slavery are located. At Amherstberg they found the
missionary with whom George and Eliza had taken shelter, on their
first arrival in Canada; and through him were enabled to trace the
family to Montreal.
George and Eliza had now been five years free. George had
found constant occupation in the shop of a worthy machinist, where
he had been earning a competent support for his family, which, in
the mean time, had been increased by the addition of another daughter.
Little Harry--a fine bright boy--had been put to a good school,
and was making rapid proficiency in knowledge.
The worthy pastor of the station, in Amherstberg, where George
had first landed, was so much interested in the statements of
Madame de Thoux and Cassy, that he yielded to the solicitations
of the former, to accompany them to Montreal, in their search,--she
bearing all the expense of the expedition.
The scene now changes to a small, neat tenement, in the
outskirts of Montreal; the time, evening. A cheerful fire blazes
on the hearth; a tea-table, covered with a snowy cloth, stands
prepared for the evening meal. In one corner of the room was a
table covered with a green cloth, where was an open writing-desk,
pens, paper, and over it a shelf of well-selected books.
This was George's study. The same zeal for self-improvement,
which led him to steal the much coveted arts of reading and writing,
amid all the toil and discouragements of his early life, still led
him to devote all his leisure time to self-cultivation.
At this present time, he is seated at the table, making notes
from a volume of the family library he has been reading.
"Come, George," says Eliza, "you've been gone all day. Do put
down that book, and let's talk, while I'm getting tea,--do."
And little Eliza seconds the effort, by toddling up to her
father, and trying to pull the book out of his hand, and install
herself on his knee as a substitute.
"O, you little witch!" says George, yielding, as, in such
circumstances, man always must.
"That's right," says Eliza, as she begins to cut a loaf of bread.
A little older she looks; her form a little fuller; her air more
matronly than of yore; but evidently contented and happy as woman
need be.
"Harry, my boy, how did you come on in that sum, today?"
says George, as he laid his land on his son's head.
Harry has lost his long curls; but he can never lose those
eyes and eyelashes, and that fine, bold brow, that flushes
with triumph, as he answers, "I did it, every bit of it, _myself_,
father; and _nobody_ helped me!"
"That's right," says his father; "depend on yourself, my son.
You have a better chance than ever your poor father had."
At this moment, there is a rap at the door; and Eliza goes and
opens it. The delighted--"Why! this you?"--calls up her husband;
and the good pastor of Amherstberg is welcomed. There are two more
women with him, and Eliza asks them to sit down.
Now, if the truth must be told, the honest pastor had arranged
a little programme, according to which this affair was to
develop itself; and, on the way up, all had very cautiously and
prudently exhorted each other not to let things out, except according
to previous arrangement.
What was the good man's consternation, therefore, just as
he had motioned to the ladies to be seated, and was taking out his
pocket-handkerchief to wipe his mouth, so as to proceed to his
introductory speech in good order, when Madame de Thoux upset the
whole plan, by throwing her arms around George's neck, and letting
all out at once, by saying, "O, George! don't you know me? I'm your
sister Emily."
Cassy had seated herself more composedly, and would have carried
on her part very well, had not little Eliza suddenly appeared
before her in exact shape and form, every outline and curl, just
as her daughter was when she saw her last. The little thing peered
up in her face; and Cassy caught her up in her arms, pressed her
to her bosom, saying, what, at the moment she really believed,
"Darling, I'm your mother!"
In fact, it was a troublesome matter to do up exactly in proper
order; but the good pastor, at last, succeeded in getting
everybody quiet, and delivering the speech with which he had intended
to open the exercises; and in which, at last, he succeeded so well,
that his whole audience were sobbing about him in a manner that ought
to satisfy any orator, ancient or modern.
They knelt together, and the good man prayed,--for there are
some feelings so agitated and tumultuous, that they can find
rest only by being poured into the bosom of Almighty love,--and
then, rising up, the new-found family embraced each other, with a
holy trust in Him, who from such peril and dangers, and by such
unknown ways, had brought them together.
The note-book of a missionary, among the Canadian fugitives,
contains truth stranger than fiction. How can it be otherwise,
when a system prevails which whirls families and scatters their
members, as the wind whirls and scatters the leaves of autumn?
These shores of refuge, like the eternal shore, often unite again,
in glad communion, hearts that for long years have mourned each
other as lost. And affecting beyond expression is the earnestness
with which every new arrival among them is met, if, perchance, it
may bring tidings of mother, sister, child or wife, still lost to
view in the shadows of slavery.
Deeds of heroism are wrought here more than those of romance,
when defying torture, and braving death itself, the fugitive
voluntarily threads his way back to the terrors and perils of that
dark land, that he may bring out his sister, or mother, or wife.
One young man, of whom a missionary has told us, twice
re-captured, and suffering shameful stripes for his heroism, had
escaped again; and, in a letter which we heard read, tells his
friends that he is going back a third time, that he may, at last,
bring away his sister. My good sir, is this man a hero, or a
criminal? Would not you do as much for your sister? And can you
blame him?
But, to return to our friends, whom we left wiping their eyes,
and recovering themselves from too great and sudden a joy.
They are now seated around the social board, and are getting
decidedly companionable; only that Cassy, who keeps little
Eliza on her lap, occasionally squeezes the little thing, in
a manner that rather astonishes her, and obstinately refuses to
have her mouth stuffed with cake to the extent the little one
desires,--alleging, what the child rather wonders at, that she has
got something better than cake, and doesn't want it.
And, indeed, in two or three days, such a change has passed over
Cassy, that our readers would scarcely know her. The despairing,
haggard expression of her face had given way to one of gentle trust.
She seemed to sink, at once, into the bosom of the family, and take
the little ones into her heart, as something for which it long
had waited. Indeed, her love seemed to flow more naturally to the
little Eliza than to her own daughter; for she was the exact image
and body of the child whom she had lost. The little one was a
flowery bond between mother and daughter, through whom grew up
acquaintanceship and affection. Eliza's steady, consistent piety,
regulated by the constant reading of the sacred word, made her a
proper guide for the shattered and wearied mind of her mother.
Cassy yielded at once, and with her whole soul, to every good
influence, and became a devout and tender Christian.
After a day or two, Madame de Thoux told her brother more
particularly of her affairs. The death of her husband had left
her an ample fortune, which she generously offered to share with
the family. When she asked George what way she could best apply
it for him, he answered, "Give me an education, Emily; that has
always been my heart's desire. Then, I can do all the rest."
On mature deliberation, it was decided that the whole family
should go, for some years, to France; whither they sailed, carrying
Emmeline with them.
The good looks of the latter won the affection of the first mate
of the vessel; and, shortly after entering the port, she became
his wife.
George remained four years at a French university, and, applying
himself with an unintermitted zeal, obtained a very thorough
education.
Political troubles in France, at last, led the family again
to seek an asylum in this country.
George's feelings and views, as an educated man, may be
best expressed in a letter to one of his friends.
"I feel somewhat at a loss, as to my future course. True, as
you have said to me, I might mingle in the circles of the whites,
in this country, my shade of color is so slight, and that of my
wife and family scarce perceptible. Well, perhaps, on sufferance,
I might. But, to tell you the truth, I have no wish to.
"My sympathies are not for my father's race, but for my mother's.
To him I was no more than a fine dog or horse: to my poor
heart-broken mother I was a _child_; and, though I never saw
her, after the cruel sale that separated us, till she died, yet I
_know_ she always loved me dearly. I know it by my own heart.
When I think of all she suffered, of my own early sufferings, of
the distresses and struggles of my heroic wife, of my sister, sold
in the New Orleans slave-market,--though I hope to have no unchristian
sentiments, yet I may be excused for saying, I have no wish to pass
for an American, or to identify myself with them.
"It is with the oppressed, enslaved African race that I cast
in my lot; and, if I wished anything, I would wish myself two
shades darker, rather than one lighter.
"The desire and yearning of my soul is for an African _nationality_.
I want a people that shall have a tangible, separate existence
of its own; and where am I to look for it? Not in Hayti; for in
Hayti they had nothing to start with. A stream cannot rise above
its fountain. The race that formed the character of the Haytiens
was a worn-out, effeminate one; and, of course, the subject race
will be centuries in rising to anything.
"Where, then, shall I look? On the shores of Africa I see
a republic,--a republic formed of picked men, who, by energy and
self-educating force, have, in many cases, individually, raised
themselves above a condition of slavery. Having gone through a
preparatory stage of feebleness, this republic has, at last, become
an acknowledged nation on the face of the earth,--acknowledged by
both France and England. There it is my wish to go, and find myself
a people.
"I am aware, now, that I shall have you all against me; but,
before you strike, hear me. During my stay in France, I have
followed up, with intense interest, the history of my people
in America. I have noted the struggle between abolitionist and
colonizationist, and have received some impressions, as a distant
spectator, which could never have occurred to me as a participator.
"I grant that this Liberia may have subserved all sorts of
purposes, by being played off, in the hands of our oppressors,
against us. Doubtless the scheme may have been used, in unjustifiable
ways, as a means of retarding our emancipation. But the question
to me is, Is there not a God above all man's schemes? May He not
have over-ruled their designs, and founded for us a nation by them?
"In these days, a nation is born in a day. A nation starts, now,
with all the great problems of republican life and civilization
wrought out to its hand;--it has not to discover, but only to apply.
Let us, then, all take hold together, with all our might, and see
what we can do with this new enterprise, and the whole splendid
continent of Africa opens before us and our children. _Our nation_
shall roll the tide of civilization and Christianity along its
shores, and plant there mighty republics, that, growing with the
rapidity of tropical vegetation, shall be for all coming ages.
"Do you say that I am deserting my enslaved brethren? I think not.
If I forget them one hour, one moment of my life, so may God
forget me! But, what can I do for them, here? Can I break
their chains? No, not as an individual; but, let me go and form
part of a nation, which shall have a voice in the councils of
nations, and then we can speak. A nation has a right to argue,
remonstrate, implore, and present the cause of its race,--which an
individual has not.
"If Europe ever becomes a grand council of free nations,--as
I trust in God it will,--if, there, serfdom, and all unjust and
oppressive social inequalities, are done away; and if they, as
France and England have done, acknowledge our position,--then, in
the great congress of nations, we will make our appeal, and present
the cause of our enslaved and suffering race; and it cannot be that
free, enlightened America will not then desire to wipe from her
escutcheon that bar sinister which disgraces her among nations,
and is as truly a curse to her as to the enslaved.
"But, you will tell me, our race have equal rights to mingle
in the American republic as the Irishman, the German, the Swede.
Granted, they have. We _ought_ to be free to meet and mingle,--to
rise by our individual worth, without any consideration of caste
or color; and they who deny us this right are false to their own
professed principles of human equality. We ought, in particular,
to be allowed _here_. We have _more_ than the rights of common
men;--we have the claim of an injured race for reparation. But, then,
_I do not want it_; I want a country, a nation, of my own. I think
that the African race has peculiarities, yet to be unfolded in the
light of civilization and Christianity, which, if not the same with
those of the Anglo-Saxon, may prove to be, morally, of even a
higher type.
"To the Anglo-Saxon race has been intrusted the destinies of
the world, during its pioneer period of struggle and conflict.
To that mission its stern, inflexible, energetic elements, were
well adapted; but, as a Christian, I look for another era to arise.
On its borders I trust we stand; and the throes that now convulse
the nations are, to my hope, but the birth-pangs of an hour of
universal peace and brotherhood.
"I trust that the development of Africa is to be essentially a
Christian one. If not a dominant and commanding race, they are,
at least, an affectionate, magnanimous, and forgiving one. Having
been called in the furnace of injustice and oppression, they have
need to bind closer to their hearts that sublime doctrine of love
and forgiveness, through which alone they are to conquer, which it
is to be their mission to spread over the continent of Africa.
"In myself, I confess, I am feeble for this,--full half the
blood in my veins is the hot and hasty Saxon; but I have an
eloquent preacher of the Gospel ever by my side, in the person of
my beautiful wife. When I wander, her gentler spirit ever restores
me, and keeps before my eyes the Christian calling and mission of
our race. As a Christian patriot, as a teacher of Christianity,
I go to _my country_,--my chosen, my glorious Africa!--and to her,
in my heart, I sometimes apply those splendid words of prophecy:
`Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, so that no man went
through thee; _I_ will make thee an eternal excellence, a joy of
many generations!'
"You will call me an enthusiast: you will tell me that I have
not well considered what I am undertaking. But I have
considered, and counted the cost. I go to _Liberia_, not as an
Elysium of romance, but as to _a field of work_. I expect to work
with both hands,--to work _hard_; to work against all sorts of
difficulties and discouragements; and to work till I die. This is
what I go for; and in this I am quite sure I shall not be disappointed.
"Whatever you may think of my determination, do not divorce
me from your confidence; and think that, in whatever I do,
I act with a heart wholly given to my people.
"GEORGE HARRIS."
George, with his wife, children, sister and mother, embarked
for Africa, some few weeks after. If we are not mistaken, the
world will yet hear from him there.
Of our other characters we have nothing very particular to
write, except a word relating to Miss Ophelia and Topsy, and a
farewell chapter, which we shall dedicate to George Shelby.
Miss Ophelia took Topsy home to Vermont with her, much to the
surprise of the grave deliberative body whom a New Englander
recognizes under the term "_Our folks_." "Our folks," at first,
thought it an odd and unnecessary addition to their well-trained
domestic establishment; but, so thoroughly efficient was Miss
Ophelia in her conscientious endeavor to do her duty by her eleve,
that the child rapidly grew in grace and in favor with the family
and neighborhood. At the age of womanhood, she was, by her own
request, baptized, and became a member of the Christian church in
the place; and showed so much intelligence, activity and zeal, and
desire to do good in the world, that she was at last recommended,
and approved as a missionary to one of the stations in Africa; and
we have heard that the same activity and ingenuity which, when a
child, made her so multiform and restless in her developments, is
now employed, in a safer and wholesomer manner, in teaching the
children of her own country.
P.S.--It will be a satisfaction to some mother, also, to state,
that some inquiries, which were set on foot by Madame de Thoux,
have resulted recently in the discovery of Cassy's son. Being a
young man of energy, he had escaped, some years before his mother,
and been received and educated by friends of the oppressed in
the north. He will soon follow his family to Africa.
CHAPTER XLIV
The Liberator
George Shelby had written to his mother merely a line, stating
the day that she might expect him home. Of the death scene
of his old friend he had not the heart to write. He had tried
several times, and only succeeded in half choking himself; and
invariably finished by tearing up the paper, wiping his eyes, and
rushing somewhere to get quiet.
There was a pleased bustle all though the Shelby mansion,
that day, in expectation of the arrival of young Mas'r George.
Mrs. Shelby was seated in her comfortable parlor, where a
cheerful hickory fire was dispelling the chill of the late autumn
evening. A supper-table, glittering with plate and cut glass, was
set out, on whose arrangements our former friend, old Chloe, was
presiding.
Arrayed in a new calico dress, with clean, white apron,
and high, well-starched turban, her black polished face glowing
with satisfaction, she lingered, with needless punctiliousness,
around the arrangements of the table, merely as an excuse for
talking a little to her mistress.
"Laws, now! won't it look natural to him?" she said.
"Thar,--I set his plate just whar he likes it,round by the fire.
Mas'r George allers wants de warm seat. O, go way!--why didn't
Sally get out de _best_ tea-pot,--de little new one, Mas'r George
got for Missis, Christmas? I'll have it out! And Missis has heard
from Mas'r George?" she said, inquiringly.
"Yes, Chloe; but only a line, just to say he would be home
tonight, if he could,--that's all."
"Didn't say nothin' 'bout my old man, s'pose?" said Chloe,
still fidgeting with the tea-cups.
"No, he didn't. He did not speak of anything, Chloe. He said
he would tell all, when he got home."
"Jes like Mas'r George,--he's allers so ferce for tellin'
everything hisself. I allers minded dat ar in Mas'r George.
Don't see, for my part, how white people gen'lly can bar to hev
to write things much as they do, writin' 's such slow, oneasy kind
o' work."
Mrs. Shelby smiled.
"I'm a thinkin' my old man won't know de boys and de baby.
Lor'! she's de biggest gal, now,--good she is, too, and peart,
Polly is. She's out to the house, now, watchin' de hoe-cake.
I 's got jist de very pattern my old man liked so much, a bakin'.
Jist sich as I gin him the mornin' he was took off. Lord bless
us! how I felt, dat ar morning!"
Mrs. Shelby sighed, and felt a heavy weight on her heart, at
this allusion. She had felt uneasy, ever since she received
her son's letter, lest something should prove to be hidden behind
the veil of silence which he had drawn.
"Missis has got dem bills?" said Chloe, anxiously.
"Yes, Chloe."
"'Cause I wants to show my old man dem very bills de
_perfectioner_ gave me. `And,' say he, `Chloe, I wish you'd stay
longer.' `Thank you, Mas'r,' says I, `I would, only my old man's
coming home, and Missis,--she can't do without me no longer.'
There's jist what I telled him. Berry nice man, dat Mas'r Jones was."
Chloe had pertinaciously insisted that the very bills in
which her wages had been paid should be preserved, to show her
husband, in memorial of her capability. And Mrs. Shelby had
readily consented to humor her in the request.
"He won't know Polly,--my old man won't. Laws, it's five
year since they tuck him! She was a baby den,--couldn't but
jist stand. Remember how tickled he used to be, cause she would
keep a fallin' over, when she sot out to walk. Laws a me!"
The rattling of wheels now was heard.
"Mas'r George!" said Aunt Chloe, starting to the window.
Mrs. Shelby ran to the entry door, and was folded in the arms
of her son. Aunt Chloe stood anxiously straining her eyes
out into the darkness.
"O, _poor_ Aunt Chloe!" said George, stopping compassionately,
and taking her hard, black hand between both his; "I'd have given
all my fortune to have brought him with me, but he's gone to a
better country."
There was a passionate exclamation from Mrs. Shelby, but
Aunt Chloe said nothing.
The party entered the supper-room. The money, of which
Chloe was so proud, was still lying on the table.
"Thar," said she, gathering it up, and holding it, with a
trembling hand, to her mistress, "don't never want to see nor hear
on 't again. Jist as I knew 't would be,--sold, and murdered on
dem ar' old plantations!"
Chloe turned, and was walking proudly out of the room.
Mrs. Shelby followed her softly, and took one of her hands, drew
her down into a chair, and sat down by her.
"My poor, good Chloe!" said she.
Chloe leaned her head on her mistress' shoulder, and sobbed
out, "O Missis! 'scuse me, my heart's broke,--dat's all!"
"I know it is," said Mrs. Shelby, as her tears fell fast;
"and _I_ cannot heal it, but Jesus can. He healeth the broken
hearted, and bindeth up their wounds."
There was a silence for some time, and all wept together.
At last, George, sitting down beside the mourner, took her hand,
and, with simple pathos, repeated the triumphant scene of her
husband's death, and his last messages of love.
About a month after this, one morning, all the servants of the
Shelby estate were convened together in the great hall that
ran through the house, to hear a few words from their young master.
To the surprise of all, he appeared among them with a bundle of
papers in his hand, containing a certificate of freedom to every
one on the place, which he read successively, and presented, amid
the sobs and tears and shouts of all present.
Many, however, pressed around him, earnestly begging him not
to send them away; and, with anxious faces, tendering back
their free papers.
"We don't want to be no freer than we are. We's allers had all
we wanted. We don't want to leave de ole place, and Mas'r
and Missis, and de rest!"
"My good friends," said George, as soon as he could get a silence,
"there'll be no need for you to leave me. The place wants as many
hands to work it as it did before. We need the same about the
house that we did before. But, you are now free men and
free women. I shall pay you wages for your work, such as we shall
agree on. The advantage is, that in case of my getting in debt, or
dying,--things that might happen,--you cannot now be taken up and
sold. I expect to carry on the estate, and to teach you what,
perhaps, it will take you some time to learn,--how to use the rights
I give you as free men and women. I expect you to be good, and
willing to learn; and I trust in God that I shall be faithful, and
willing to teach. And now, my friends, look up, and thank God for
the blessing of freedom."
An aged, partriarchal negro, who had grown gray and blind on the
estate, now rose, and, lifting his trembling hand said, "Let us
give thanks unto the Lord!" As all kneeled by one consent, a more
touching and hearty Te Deum never ascended to heaven, though borne
on the peal of organ, bell and cannon, than came from that honest
old heart.
On rising, another struck up a Methodist hymn, of which
the burden was,
"The year of Jubilee is come,--
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home."
"One thing more," said George, as he stopped the congratulations
of the throng; "you all remember our good old Uncle Tom?"
George here gave a short narration of the scene of his death,
and of his loving farewell to all on the place, and added,
"It was on his grave, my friends, that I resolved, before God,
that I would never own another slave, while it was possible
to free him; that nobody, through me, should ever run the risk of
being parted from home and friends, and dying on a lonely plantation,
as he died. So, when you rejoice in your freedom, think that you
owe it to that good old soul, and pay it back in kindness to his
wife and children. Think of your freedom, every time you see UNCLE
TOM'S CABIN; and let it be a memorial to put you all in mind to
follow in his steps, and be honest and faithful and Christian as
he was."
CHAPTER XLV
Concluding Remarks
The writer has often been inquired of, by correspondents from
different parts of the country, whether this narrative is a
true one; and to these inquiries she will give one general answer.
The separate incidents that compose the narrative are, to
a very great extent, authentic, occurring, many of them, either
under her own observation, or that of her personal friends.
She or her friends have observed characters the counterpart of
almost all that are here introduced; and many of the sayings are
word for word as heard herself, or reported to her.
The personal appearance of Eliza, the character ascribed to her,
are sketches drawn from life. The incorruptible fidelity,
piety and honesty, of Uncle Tom, had more than one development, to
her personal knowledge. Some of the most deeply tragic and romantic,
some of the most terrible incidents, have also their paralle
in reality. The incident of the mother's crossing the Ohio river
on the ice is a well-known fact. The story of "old Prue," in the
second volume, was an incident that fell under the personal
observation of a brother of the writer, then collecting-clerk to
a large mercantile house, in New Orleans. From the same source
was derived the character of the planter Legree. Of him her brother
thus wrote, speaking of visiting his plantation, on a collecting
tour; "He actually made me feel of his fist, which was like a
blacksmith's hammer, or a nodule of iron, telling me that it was
`calloused with knocking down niggers.' When I left the plantation,
I drew a long breath, and felt as if I had escaped from an ogre's den."
That the tragical fate of Tom, also, has too many times had
its parallel, there are living witnesses, all over our land,
to testify. Let it be remembered that in all southern states it
is a principle of jurisprudence that no person of colored lineage
can testify in a suit against a white, and it will be easy to see
that such a case may occur, wherever there is a man whose passions
outweigh his interests, and a slave who has manhood or principle
enough to resist his will. There is, actually, nothing to protect
the slave's life, but the _character_ of the master. Facts too
shocking to be contemplated occasionally force their way to the
public ear, and the comment that one often hears made on them is
more shocking than the thing itself. It is said, "Very likely such
cases may now and then occur, but they are no sample of general
practice." If the laws of New England were so arranged that a master
could _now and then_ torture an apprentice to death, would it be
received with equal composure? Would it be said, "These cases are
rare, and no samples of general practice"? This injustice is an
_inherent_ one in the slave system,--it cannot exist without it.
The public and shameless sale of beautiful mulatto and quadroon
girls has acquired a notoriety, from the incidents following the
capture of the Pearl. We extract the following from the speech
of Hon. Horace Mann, one of the legal counsel for the defendants
in that case. He says: "In that company of seventy-six persons,
who attempted, in 1848, to escape from the District of Columbia in
the schooner Pearl, and whose officers I assisted in defending,
there were several young and healthy girls, who had those peculiar
attractions of form and feature which connoisseurs prize so highly.
Elizabeth Russel was one of them. She immediately fell into the
slave-trader's fangs, and was doomed for the New Orleans market.
The hearts of those that saw her were touched with pity for
her fate. They offered eighteen hundred dollars to redeem her;
and some there were who offered to give, that would not have much
left after the gift; but the fiend of a slave-trader was inexorable.
She was despatched to New Orleans; but, when about half way there,
God had mercy on her, and smote her with death. There were two
girls named Edmundson in the same company. When about to be sent
to the same market, an older sister went to the shambles, to plead
with the wretch who owned them, for the love of God, to spare his
victims. He bantered her, telling what fine dresses and fine
furniture they would have. `Yes,' she said, `that may do very well
in this life, but what will become of them in the next?' They too
were sent to New Orleans; but were afterwards redeemed, at an
enormous ransom, and brought back." Is it not plain, from this,
that the histories of Emmeline and Cassy may have many counterparts?
Justice, too, obliges the author to state that the fairness
of mind and generosity attributed to St. Clare are not without a
parallel, as the following anecdote will show. A few years since,
a young southern gentleman was in Cincinnati, with a favorite
servant, who had been his personal attendant from a boy. The young
man took advantage of this opportunity to secure his own freedom,
and fled to the protection of a Quaker, who was quite noted in
affairs of this kind. The owner was exceedingly indignant. He had
always treated the slave with such indulgence, and his confidence
in his affection was such, that he believed he must have been
practised upon to induce him to revolt from him. He visited the
Quaker, in high anger; but, being possessed of uncommon candor and
fairness, was soon quieted by his arguments and representations.
It was a side of the subject which he never had heard,--never had
thought on; and he immediately told the Quaker that, if his slave
would, to his own face, say that it was his desire to be free,
he would liberate him. An interview was forthwith procured, and
Nathan was asked by his young master whether he had ever had any
reason to complain of his treatment, in any respect.
"No, Mas'r," said Nathan; "you've always been good to me."
"Well, then, why do you want to leave me?"
"Mas'r may die, and then who get me?--I'd rather be a free man."
After some deliberation, the young master replied, "Nathan, in your
place, I think I should feel very much so, myself. You are free."
He immediately made him out free papers; deposited a sum of
money in the hands of the Quaker, to be judiciously used in
assisting him to start in life, and left a very sensible and kind
letter of advice to the young man. That letter was for some time
in the writer's hands.
The author hopes she has done justice to that nobility, generosity,
and humanity, which in many cases characterize individuals at the,
South. Such instances save us from utter despair of our kind.
But, she asks any person, who knows the world, are such characters
_common_, anywhere?
For many years of her life, the author avoided all reading
upon or allusion to the subject of slavery, considering it as too
painful to be inquired into, and one which advancing light and
civlization would certainly live down. But, since the legislative
act of 1850, when she heard, with perfect surprise and consternation,
Christian and humane people actually recommending the remanding
escaped fugitives into slavery, as a duty binding on good
citizens,--when she heard, on all hands, from kind, compassionate
and estimable people, in the free states of the North, deliberations
and discussions as to what Christian duty could be on this head,--she
could only think, These men and Christians cannot know what slavery
is; if they did, such a question could never be open for discussion.
And from this arose a desire to exhibit it in a _living dramatic
reality_. She has endeavored to show it fairly, in its best and
its worst phases. In its _best_ aspect, she has, perhaps, been
successful; but, oh! who shall say what yet remains untold in that
valley and shadow of death, that lies the other side?
To you, generous, noble-minded men and women, of the
South,--you, whose virtue, and magnanimity and purity of character,
are the greater for the severer trial it has encountered,--to you
is her appeal. Have you not, in your own secret souls, in your
own private conversings, felt that there are woes and evils, in
this accursed system, far beyond what are here shadowed, or can
be shadowed? Can it be otherwise? Is _man_ ever a creature to be
trusted with wholly irresponsible power? And does not the slave
system, by denying the slave all legal right of testimony, make
every individual owner an irresponsible despot? Can anybody fall
to make the inference what the practical result will be? If there
is, as we admit, a public sentiment among you, men of honor, justice
and humanity, is there not also another kind of public sentiment
among the ruffian, the brutal and debased? And cannot the ruffian,
the brutal, the debased, by slave law, own just as many slaves as
the best and purest? Are the honorable, the just, the high-minded
and compassionate, the majority anywhere in this world?
The slave-trade is now, by American law, considered as piracy.
But a slave-trade, as systematic as ever was carried on on the
coast of Africa, is an inevitable attendant and result of
American slavery. And its heart-break and its horrors, can they
be told?
The writer has given only a faint shadow, a dim picture, of
the anguish and despair that are, at this very moment, riving
thousands of hearts, shattering thousands of families, and driving
a helpless and sensitive race to frenzy and despair. There are
those living who know the mothers whom this accursed traffic has
driven to the murder of their children; and themselves seeking in
death a shelter from woes more dreaded than death. Nothing of
tragedy can be written, can be spoken, can be conceived, that equals
the frightful reality of scenes daily and hourly acting on our
shores, beneath the shadow of American law, and the shadow of the
cross of Christ.
And now, men and women of America, is this a thing to be
trifled with, apologized for, and passed over in silence?
Farmers of Massachusetts, of New Hampshire, of Vermont, of
Connecticut, who read this book by the blaze of your winter-evening
fire,--strong-hearted, generous sailors and ship-owners of Maine,--is
this a thing for you to countenance and encourage? Brave and generous
men of New York, farmers of rich and joyous Ohio, and ye of the
wide prairie states,--answer, is this a thing for you to protect
and countenance? And you, mothers of America,--you who have learned,
by the cradles of your own children, to love and feel for all
mankind,--by the sacred love you bear your child; by your joy in
his beautiful, spotless infancy; by the motherly pity and tenderness
with which you guide his growing years; by the anxieties of his
education; by the prayers you breathe for his soul's eternal good;--I
beseech you, pity the mother who has all your affections, and not one
legal right to protect, guide, or educate, the child of her bosom!
By the sick hour of your child; by those dying eyes, which you
can never forget; by those last cries, that wrung your heart when
you could neither help nor save; by the desolation of that empty
cradle, that silent nursery,--I beseech you, pity those mothers
that are constantly made childless by the American slave-trade!
And say, mothers of America, is this a thing to be defended,
sympathized with, passed over in silence?
Do you say that the people of the free state have nothing
to do with it, and can do nothing? Would to God this were true!
But it is not true. The people of the free states have defended,
encouraged, and participated; and are more guilty for it, before
God, than the South, in that they have not the apology of education
or custom.
If the mothers of the free states had all felt as they should,
in times past, the sons of the free states would not have been
the holders, and, proverbially, the hardest masters of slaves;
the sons of the free states would not have connived at the extension
of slavery, in our national body; the sons of the free states would
not, as they do, trade the souls and bodies of men as an equivalent
to money, in their mercantile dealings. There are multitudes of
slaves temporarily owned, and sold again, by merchants in northern
cities; and shall the whole guilt or obloquy of slavery fall only
on the South?
Northern men, northern mothers, northern Christians, have
something more to do than denounce their brethren at the South;
they have to look to the evil among themselves.
But, what can any individual do? Of that, every individual
can judge. There is one thing that every individual can do,--they
can see to it that _they feel right_. An atmosphere of sympathetic
influence encircles every human being; and the man or woman who
_feels_ strongly, healthily and justly, on the great interests of
humanity, is a constant benefactor to the human race. See, then,
to your sympathies in this matter! Are they in harmony with the
sympathies of Christ? or are they swayed and perverted by the
sophistries of worldly policy?
Christian men and women of the North! still further,--you have
another power; you can _pray!_ Do you believe in prayer? or has
it become an indistinct apostolic tradition? You pray for the
heathen abroad; pray also for the heathen at home. And pray for
those distressed Christians whose whole chance of religious
improvement is an accident of trade and sale; from whom any
adherence to the morals of Christianity is, in many cases, an
impossibility, unless they have given them, from above, the courage
and grace of martyrdom.
But, still more. On the shores of our free states are emerging
the poor, shattered, broken remnants of families,--men and women,
escaped, by miraculous providences from the surges of
slavery,--feeble in knowledge, and, in many cases, infirm in moral
constitution, from a system which confounds and confuses every
principle of Christianity and morality. They come to seek a refuge
among you; they come to seek education, knowledge, Christianity.
What do you owe to these poor unfortunates, oh Christians?
Does not every American Christian owe to the African race some
effort at reparation for the wrongs that the American nation has
brought upon them? Shall the doors of churches and school-houses
be shut upon them? Shall states arise and shake them out?
Shall the church of Christ hear in silence the taunt that is thrown
at them, and shrink away from the helpless hand that they stretch out;
and, by her silence, encourage the cruelty that would chase them
from our borders? If it must be so, it will be a mournful spectacle.
If it must be so, the country will have reason to tremble, when it
remembers that the fate of nations is in the hands of One who is
very pitiful, and of tender compassion.
Do you say, "We don't want them here; let them go to Africa"?
That the providence of God has provided a refuge in Africa, is,
indeed, a great and noticeable fact; but that is no reason why
the church of Christ should throw off that responsibility to this
outcast race which her profession demands of her.
To fill up Liberia with an ignorant, inexperienced,
half-barbarized race, just escaped from the chains of slavery,
would be only to prolong, for ages, the period of struggle and
conflict which attends the inception of new enterprises. Let the
church of the north receive these poor sufferers in the spirit of
Christ; receive them to the educating advantages of Christian
republican society and schools, until they have attained to somewhat
of a moral and intellectual maturity, and then assist them in their
passage to those shores, where they may put in practice the lessons
they have learned in America.
There is a body of men at the north, comparatively small,
who have been doing this; and, as the result, this country has
already seen examples of men, formerly slaves, who have rapidly
acquired property, reputation, and education. Talent has been
developed, which, considering the circumstances, is certainly
remarkable; and, for moral traits of honesty, kindness, tenderness
of feeling,--for heroic efforts and self-denials, endured for the
ransom of brethren and friends yet in slavery,--they have been
remarkable to a degree that, considering the influence under which
they were born, is surprising.
The writer has lived, for many years, on the frontier-line
of slave states, and has had great opportunities of observation
among those who formerly were slaves. They have been in her family
as servants; and, in default of any other school to receive them,
she has, in many cases, had them instructed in a family school,
with her own children. She has also the testimony of missionaries,
among the fugitives in Canada, in coincidence with her own experience;
and her deductions, with regard to the capabilities of the race,
are encouraging in the highest degree.
The first desire of the emancipated slave, generally, is
for _education_. There is nothing that they are not willing to
give or do to have their children instructed, and, so far as the
writer has observed herself, or taken the testimony of teachers
among them, they are remarkably intelligent and quick to learn.
The results of schools, founded for them by benevolent individuals
in Cincinnati, fully establish this.
The author gives the following statement of facts, on the
authority of Professor C. E. Stowe, then of Lane Seminary, Ohio,
with regard to emancipated slaves, now resident in Cincinnati;
given to show the capability of the race, even without any very
particular assistance or encouragement.
The initial letters alone are given. They are all residents
of Cincinnati.
"B----. Furniture maker; twenty years in the city; worth
ten thousand dollars, all his own earnings; a Baptist.
"C----. Full black; stolen from Africa; sold in New Orleans;
been free fifteen years; paid for himself six hundred dollars; a
farmer; owns several farms in Indiana; Presbyterian; probably worth
fifteen or twenty thousand dollars, all earned by himself.
"K----. Full black; dealer in real estate; worth thirty
thousand dollars; about forty years old; free six years; paid
eighteen hundred dollars for his family; member of the Baptist
church; received a legacy from his master, which he has taken good
care of, and increased.
"G----. Full black; coal dealer; about thirty years old; worth
eighteen thousand dollars; paid for himself twice, being once
defrauded to the amount of sixteen hundred dollars; made all his
money by his own efforts--much of it while a slave, hiring his time
of his master, and doing business for himself; a fine, gentlemanly
fellow.
"W----. Three-fourths black; barber and waiter; from Kentucky;
nineteen years free; paid for self and family over three
thousand dollars; deacon in the Baptist church.
"G. D----. Three-fourths black; white-washer; from Kentucky;
nine years free; paid fifteen hundred dollars for self and family;
recently died, aged sixty; worth six thousand dollars."
Professor Stowe says, "With all these, except G----, I have been,
for some years, personally acquainted, and make my statements
from my own knowledge."
The writer well remembers an aged colored woman, who was employed
as a washerwoman in her father's family. The daughter of this
woman married a slave. She was a remarkably active and capable
young woman, and, by her industry and thrift, and the most persevering
self-denial, raised nine hundred dollars for her husband's freedom,
which she paid, as she raised it, into the hands of his master.
She yet wanted a hundred dollars of the price, when he died.
She never recovered any of the money.
These are but few facts, among multitudes which might be
adduced, to show the self-denial, energy, patience, and honesty,
which the slave has exhibited in a state of freedom.
And let it be remembered that these individuals have thus
bravely succeeded in conquering for themselves comparative wealth
and social position, in the face of every disadvantage and
discouragement. The colored man, by the law of Ohio, cannot be a
voter, and, till within a few years, was even denied the right of
testimony in legal suits with the white. Nor are these instances
confined to the State of Ohio. In all states of the Union we see
men, but yesterday burst from the shackles of slavery, who, by a
self-educating force, which cannot be too much admired, have risen
to highly respectable stations in society. Pennington, among
clergymen, Douglas and Ward, among editors, are well known instances.
If this persecuted race, with every discouragement and
disadvantage, have done thus much, how much more they might do if
the Christian church would act towards them in the spirit of her Lord!
This is an age of the world when nations are trembling and convulsed.
A mighty influence is abroad, surging and heaving the world,
as with an earthquake. And is America safe? Every nation
that carries in its bosom great and unredressed injustice has in
it the elements of this last convulsion.
For what is this mighty influence thus rousing in all nations
and languages those groanings that cannot be uttered, for
man's freedom and equality?
O, Church of Christ, read the signs of the times! Is not
this power the spirit of Him whose kingdom is yet to come, and
whose will to be done on earth as it is in heaven?
But who may abide the day of his appearing? "for that day
shall burn as an oven: and he shall appear as a swift witness
against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow
and the fatherless, and that _turn aside the stranger in his right_:
and he shall break in pieces the oppressor."
Are not these dread words for a nation bearing in her bosom
so mighty an injustice? Christians! every time that you pray that
the kingdom of Christ may come, can you forget that prophecy
associates, in dread fellowship, the _day of vengeance_ with the
year of his redeemed?
A day of grace is yet held out to us. Both North and South have
been guilty before God; and the _Christian church_ has a heavy
account to answer. Not by combining together, to protect injustice
and cruelty, and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to
be saved,--but by repentance, justice and mercy; for, not surer is
the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than
that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on
nations the wrath of Almighty God!