Chapter 21

"Fearing lest the suspicions of the trader might be excited as to the sentiments of Mr. Tyson towards him, an end was put to the part of the dialogue which related to the kidnapping, by saying, 'Well, I am much obliged to thee for thy information; we'll see this ----, and settle the matter with him;' and then turned the tide of conversation into a different direction.

"The same day Mr. Tyson sent for the person who was first mentioned as the person communicating the knowledge of the transaction, and asked him as to the fact of such communication. It was positively denied. He had 'not seen the informer for six weeks, except the last evening, when he brought a hack load of negroes to the tavern where he and his partner were lodgers.'

"'Were two boys among the number?'

"'Yes.'

"'Were they gagged?'

"'Yes.'

"The moment this man left his house, Mr. Tyson went in search of bailiffs and civil process. With these he proceeded to the place where the two boys were confined, and had them and all three of the traders taken into custody.

"It turned out afterwards, in the further prosecution of this investigation, (by what testimony we do not distinctly recollect,) that the informer who first came to Mr. Tyson had himself kidnapped the two boys. He sold them to the person upon whom he had endeavored, in the manner we have detailed, to affix the whole crime; who, refusing afterward to pay their price, and yet determined to retain them, exasperated the seller to such a degree that he resolved to sacrifice him; in attempting which he sacrificed himself, for he was afterward convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary.

"During the progress of any investigation originated by Mr. Tyson in behalf of individual freedom, his anxiety about the final issue, though concealed from the world, burned with intensity. His days were restless, his nights were sleepless, and himself, except when in company, which he avoided at those times, lost in the abstractions of hope or of despondency.

"When he succeeded, his joy was strong, but invisible or inaudible, save to the Father of all mercies. To him he never failed 'to pour out his soul' in pious thanksgivings for that he made him a humble instrument in the restoration of a fellow being to light and liberty.

"When he failed, which was seldom, after he had seriously undertaken a case, his sorrow was equally great, and as inscrutable to human observation, excepting that of the unfortunate objects of his care, who saw him mingling tears of sympathy with theirs of suffering.

"Though Mr. Tyson seldom failed in those cases which he had commenced in legal form, yet very many persons were turned hopelessly away whose cases were too groundless for adjudication; and often those who knew they had no cause for hope,--condemned to be torn from their connections and sold, as if to death, never to be heard of more,--would call merely to obtain his sympathies, as if the universe had no other friend for them.

"A man who lived with his master, in Anne Arundel county, came late one evening to Mr. Tyson, and begged that he would listen to his case. His master had promised him his freedom, provided he would raise and pay him the sum of five hundred dollars in six years; and he had earned half of the money, which he had given his master. The six years were not expired, yet he was about to be sold to Georgia. Mr. Tyson asked if 'there was any receipt for the money.' 'No.' 'Was there any witness who could prove its payment?' 'Nobody but his master's wife.' 'Then,' said Mr. Tyson, 'the law is against thee, and thou must submit. I can do nothing for thee.' Never, said Mr. Tyson, when relating this story, shall I forget the desperate resolution which showed itself in the countenance and manner of this man when he said, with clenched fist, his eyes raised to Heaven, his whole frame bursting with the purpose of his soul, while a smile of triumph played around his lips, 'I will die before the Georgia man shall have me.' And then suddenly melting into a flood of tears, he said, 'I cannot live away from my wife and children.' After this poor fellow had left me, said Mr. Tyson, I said to a person present, 'That is no common man; he will do what he has resolved.'

"A short time afterwards, the remains of a colored person who had been drowned in the basin at Baltimore were discovered. The fact coming to the knowledge of Mr. Tyson, he went to see the body, and recognized in its features and from its dress, the remains of the unfortunate man who, a short time before, had breathed the dreadful resolution in his presence."

Such are a few of the memorials which this friend of the human race has left behind him. He was not less persevering, and scarcely less successful in his endeavors to obtain the mitigation of the slave laws in Maryland. Some of the most repulsive of these were repealed or altered, particularly those restricting manumissions. Thus the condition and the prospects of the whole body of slaves was improved, in addition to _more than two thousand_ delivered by his immediate instrumentality from illegal bondage. Hundreds of free and happy families have cause at this day to bless the memory of "Father Tyson."

He also deeply interested himself on behalf of the Indian tribes; and once in company with another individual, as a deputation from the Society of Friends in Baltimore, undertook a dangerous journey to visit several tribes 1000 miles distant, to the north-west of the Ohio. The main object of the mission was to induce the Indians to refrain from the use of ardent spirits--of whose destructive effects the chiefs were themselves fully sensible. The following affecting address was made to an assembly of "Friends" in Baltimore, by Little Turtle, a chief famous for courage, sagacity and eloquence:

"Brothers and Friends:--When our forefathers first met on this great Island, your red brethren were very numerous! But since the introduction among us of what you call spirituous liquors, and what we think may justly be called poison, our numbers are greatly diminished. It has destroyed a great part of your red brethren.

"My Brothers and Friends:--We plainly perceive, that you see the very evil which destroyed your red brethren; it is not an evil of our own making; we have not placed it among ourselves; it is an evil placed among us by the white people; we look to them to remove it out of our country. We tell them, 'Brethren, bring us useful things; bring goods that will clothe us, our women and our children; and not this evil liquor, that destroys our reason, that destroys our health, and destroys our lives.' But all we can say on this subject is of no service, nor gives relief to your red brethren.

"My Brother and Friends:--I rejoice to find that you agree in opinion with us, and express an anxiety to be, if possible, of service to us, in removing this great evil out of our country; an evil which has had so much room in it; and has destroyed so many of our lives, that it causes our young men to say, 'we had better be at war with the white people.' This liquor, which they introduce into our country, is more to be feared than the gun and the tomahawk. There are more of us dead, since the treaty of Greenville, than we lost by the six years war before. It is all owing to the introduction of this liquor amongst us.

"Brothers:--When our young men have been out hunting, and are returning home, loaded with skins and furs, on their way if it happens that they come along where some of this whiskey is deposited, the white man who sells it, tells them to take a little drink; some of them will say 'no, I do not want it;' they go on till they come to another house, where they find more of the same kind of drink; it is there offered again; they refuse; and again the third time. But finally, the fourth or fifth time, one accepts of it and takes a drink; and getting one, he wants another; and then a third, and a fourth, till his senses have left him. After his reason comes back to him again, when he gets up and finds where he is, he asks for his peltry. The answer is, 'You have drank them,' 'Where is my gun?' 'It is gone?' 'Where is my blanket?' 'It is gone.' 'Where is my shirt?' 'You have sold it for whiskey!!' Now, Brothers, figure to yourselves, the condition of this man. He has a family at home; a wife and children, who stand in need of the profits of his hunting. What must be their wants, when he himself is even without a shirt?"

The journey of Elisha Tyson and his companion, James Gillingham, occurred a few years subsequent to the interview at which the preceding speech was made. They met a council of the Indians at Fort Wayne, whom Elisha Tyson addressed to the following effect:

"He painted in glowing colors the dreadful effects of intemperance--both upon civilized and savage life--told them that they must resolve to abstain entirely from it. If they admitted it at all among them, it would soon conquer them, and reduce them to a condition worse than that of the brute creation. That not until they abandoned altogether the use of ardent spirits would they be fit subjects for civilization. If they were ready to do this he would then unfold to them the blessings of civilization--the superiority of such a condition over the one in which they then subsisted. He traced their history from the earliest period to the present time--shewed them how, as the white population had expanded itself, they had retreated into the western wilderness--that if they did not remain, but continued to retreat, in a few years they would have no territory upon this continent. In order, therefore, to their permanent establishment, he recommended to them the practice of agriculture, as a substitute for hunting. He advised them to mark out their lands, and ask advice of the agents established by the Society of Friends among them, with respect to their cultivation. They stood ready, not only with their advice, but with their assistance; they were furnished for their use with all the necessary implements of husbandry, with beasts of the plough also, and beasts of burden.

"They had come a great distance, endured much privation and fatigue in order to see them, and must endure a great deal more before they could again behold their wives and their children. But they could bear it all with patience, nay with joy, if they could only have the satisfaction of seeing them adopt the disinterested advice which he had thus given them."

The following is one of the speeches made in reply, by White Loon, an influential chief:

"Brothers:--Ever since your great father Onas, (William Penn,) came upon this great island, the Quakers have been the friends of red men. They have proved themselves worthy of being the descendants of their great father. And now, when all the whites have forgotten that they owe any thing to us, the Quakers of Baltimore, though so far distant from us, have remembered the distressed condition of their red brethren, and interceded with the Great Spirit in our behalf.

"Brothers:--You have travelled very far to see us--you have climbed over mountains--you have swam over deep and rapid torrents--you have endured cold, and hunger, and fatigue, in order that you might have an opportunity of seeing your red brethren. For this, so long as life exists within us, we shall be very grateful.

"Brothers:--That wide region of country over which you have passed, was once filled with red men. Then was there a plenty of deer and buffalo, and all kinds of game. But the white people came from beyond the great water; they landed in multitudes on our shores; they cut down our forests; they drove our warriors before them, and frightened the wild herds, so that they sought security in the deep shades of the west.

"Brothers:--These white men were not your grandfathers; for, as I said before, the sons of Onas were always the friends of red men.

"Brothers:--The whites are still advancing upon us. They have reached our territory, and have built their wigwams within our very hunting grounds. Our game is vanishing away.

"Brothers:--Formerly our hunters pursued the wild deer, and the buffalo, and the bear; and when they killed them they ate their flesh for food, and used their skins as covering for themselves, their old men, their women, and their children. But now, they kill them that they may have plenty of skins and furs to sell to the white men. The consequence of this is, the game is destroyed wantonly, and faster than our necessities require.

"Brothers:--We would not mind all this, provided these skins and furs were exchanged for useful articles--for implements of husbandry, or clothes for our old men, our women, and our children. But they are too often bartered away for whiskey, that vile poison, which has sunk even Wapakee into the dust.

"Brothers:--We shall soon be under the necessity either of leaving our hunting grounds or of converting them into pastures and fields of corn. Under the kind assistance of our brothers, the Quakers, we have already proceeded a great way. You have witnessed, as you have passed among us, the good effects of the kindness of our brothers. We are disposed to go on as we have begun, until our habits and manners, as well as the face of our country, shall be changed and look like those of the white people.

"Brothers:--Accept from us this belt of wampum and pipe of peace. And may the Great Sasteretsy, who conducted you here in safety, still go with you and restore you in peace and happiness to the arms of your women and children."

After this, with ceremonies such as those already described, but, if possible, accompanied with more solemnity, the chiefs dissolved the council.

It is a melancholy reflection, that soon such memorials as these will be the only remains of that noble but unfortunate race who once peopled the continent of North America. _War_ has slain its thousands, but _alcohol_ its tens of thousands; and the fortitude which could bear without shrinking the most cruel inflictions of torture, has proved powerless to resist the seductions of strong drink. It is to be feared a heavy retribution awaits the white man, the pitiless author of their extermination.

The biographer of E. Tyson has taken great pains to represent him as a friend to the Colonization Society, but in this respect I am informed, by one who well knew him, he has done him great injustice. It is confessed, indeed, that for a long period E. Tyson viewed this scheme with great jealousy. "When we saw," remarks this writer, "domestic tyrants, and men who had actually, in the southern slave-trade, speculated in the flesh and blood of their fellow creatures, united with their betters in a society, the professed object of which was the peopling of a continent with freemen by the depopulation of a continent of slaves, he argued, as he had a right to argue, mischief to the cause." No evidence is adduced to show that this same distrust of the Colonization Society was ever removed, beyond the fact that, having been the means of liberating eleven native Africans from a slave-ship, he cooperated with Gen. Harper, an influential colonizationist, in restoring them to their native country, which bordered upon the colony of Liberia. This was the last public act of his life.

"The great concern in which he had spent his life was the constant topic of his conversation; and he continued with his latest breath to enforce the claims of the unhappy sons of slavery upon the humanity of their brethren. It was natural that he should feel a strong anxiety about the fate of those who, through his exertions, had been restored to their friends in Africa. He was on the alert to hear intelligence of their fate--his spirit seemed to follow them across the mighty waters. On one occasion he was heard to say, 'If I could only hear of their safe arrival I should die content;' and on another, that he 'had prayed to the Father of Mercies that he would be pleased to spare his life until he could receive the pleasing intelligence.' His prayer was heard. The news reached his ears amid the last lingerings of life. He shed tears of joy on the occasion; and when he had sufficiently yielded to the first burst of feeling, exclaimed, like one satiated with earthly happiness, 'Now I am ready to die; my work is done.' His expressions were prophetic; for in the short space of forty-eight hours, on the 16th of February, 1824, at the age of 75 years, he breathed his soul into the hands of God Almighty."

The following are some notices of his personal appearance and mental characteristics:

"The person of Mr. Tyson was about six feet in height, though the habit of leaning forward as he walked, gave a less appearance to his stature. The rest of his frame was suited to his height.

"The features of his countenance were strong. His forehead was high; his nose large, and of the Roman order; his eyes were dark and piercing; his lips so singularly expressive, that even in their stillest mood they would almost seem to be uttering the purposes of his mind. Indeed his whole face was indicative, to a striking degree, of the passions and feelings of his soul.

"The mind of Mr. Tyson was strong, rather than brilliant. With scarcely any imagination, he possessed a judgment almost infallible in its decisions; great powers of reason, which were more conspicuous for the certainty of its conclusions than remarkable for displaying the train of inferences by which it arrived at them. He possessed wonderful acuteness of understanding, quickness of perception, and readiness of reply.

"For these qualities he was indebted more to nature than to art. He was not educated for the exalted station of a philanthropist, but for the business of the world; and yet he seemed fitted exactly for the part he acted. He possessed not the refinements of education; he had not learned to soar into the regions of fancy, his destiny was upon the earth; and he knew no flight but that which bears the soul to heaven."

APPENDIX E. P. 68.

THE "AMISTAD CAPTIVES."

The following statements are drawn from a "History of the Amistad Captives, &c., by John W. Barber, member of the Connecticut Historical Society;" from the authentic reports of the proceedings in the courts of law, and from a letter of my friend, Lewis Tappan, to the public papers.

"During the month of August, 1839, the public attention was somewhat excited by several reports stating that a vessel of suspicious and piratical character had been seen near the coast of the United States, in the vicinity of New York. This vessel was represented as a 'long, low, black schooner,' and manned by blacks. The United States steamer Fulton and several revenue cutters were despatched after her, and notice was given to the collectors at various sea ports."

This suspicious looking schooner proved to be the "Amistad," which was eventually captured off Culloden Point, by Lieut. Gedney, of the U.S. brig "Washington." At this time, however, the Africans, who were in possession of the vessel, were in communication with the shore, and peaceably trafficking with the inhabitants for a supply of water for their intended voyage to their own country. They had spontaneously submitted to the command of one of their number, Cinque, a man of extraordinary natural capacity. When they were taken, he was separated from his companions and conveyed on board the brig.

"Cinque having been put on board of the 'Washington,' displayed much uneasiness, and seemed so very anxious to get on board the schooner that his keepers allowed him to return. Once more on the deck of the 'Amistad,' the blacks clustered around him, laughing, screaming, and making other extravagant demonstrations of joy. When the noise had subsided, he made an address, which raised their excitement to such a pitch, that the officer in command had Cinque led away by force. He was returned to the 'Washington,' and was manacled to prevent his leaping overboard. On Wednesday, he signified by motions that if they would take him on board the schooner again, he would show them a handkerchief full of doubloons. He was accordingly sent on board. His fetters were taken off, and he once more went below, where he was received by the Africans in a still more wild and enthusiastic manner than he was the day previous. Instead of finding the doubloons, he again made an address to the blacks, by which they were very much excited. Dangerous consequences were apprehended. Cinque was seized, taken from the hold, and again fettered. While making his speech, his eye was often turned to the sailors in charge: the blacks yelled, leapt about, and seemed to be animated with the same spirit and determination of their leader. Cinque, when taken back to the 'Washington,' evinced little or no emotion, but kept his eye steadily fixed on the schooner."

An event so extraordinary and unprecedented as the capture of the "Amistad," excited the most lively interest among all classes. The Africans, forty-four in number, were brought to New Haven and secured in the county jail. A number of gentlemen formed themselves into a committee to watch over their interests, and immediately there was begun a long and complicated series of judicial proceedings, to determine how they should be disposed of. Ruiz and Montez, the two white men, late the prisoners, but claiming to be the owners of the Africans, caused them to be indicted for piracy and murder. This was almost immediately disposed of, on the ground that the charges, if true, were not cognizable in the American courts, the alleged offences having been perpetrated on board a Spanish vessel. The Africans therefore were in no immediate danger of capital punishment. Ruiz and Montez on their part seem to have met with sympathy and kindness, and to testify their gratitude caused the following to be inserted in the New York papers:

"A CARD.

"NEW LONDON, AUGUST 29, 1839.

"The subscribers, Don Jose Ruiz, and Don Pedro Montez, in gratitude for their most unhoped for and providential rescue from the hands of a ruthless gang of African bucaneers and an awful death, would take this means of expressing, in some slight degree, their thankfulness and obligation to Lieut. Com. T.R. Gedney, and the officers and crew of the U.S. surveying brig Washington, for their decision in seizing the Amistad, and their unremitting kindness and hospitality in providing for their comfort on board their vessel, as well as the means they have taken for the protection of their property.

"We also must express our indebtedness to that nation whose flag they so worthily bear, with an assurance that this act will be duly appreciated by our most gracious sovereign, her Majesty the Queen of Spain.

DON JOSE, RUIZ,

DON PEDRO MONTEZ."

Ruiz and Montez are thus described by a correspondent of the New London Gazette, who visited the Amistad immediately after its capture: