Part 25

Not long after, I one day saw a young lady, of fine person and handsomely dressed, coming up our front steps. She inquired for me, and was ushered into my study. A blue veil partly concealed her face and a pair of white gloves covered her hands. On being assured that I was Mr. S. J. May she said, “I have come to you, sir, as a friend of colored people and of slaves.” “Is it possible,” I replied, “that you are one of that class of my fellow-beings?” She removed her veil, and a slight tinge in her complexion revealed the fact that she belonged to the proscribed race,--a beautiful octoroon. “But where were you ever a slave?” I asked. “In New Orleans, sir. My master, who, I believe, was also my father, is concerned in a line of packet steamers that ply between New Orleans and Galveston. He has, for several years past, kept me on board one of his boats as the chamber-maid. This was rather an easy and not a disagreeable situation. I was with the lady passengers most of the time, and by my close attentions to them, especially when they were sea-sick, I conciliated many. They often made me presents of money, clothes, and trinkets. And, what was better than all, they taught me to read. At each end of the route I had hours and days of leisure, which I improved as best I could. The thought that I was a slave often tormented me. But, as in other respects I was comfortable, I might have continued in bondage, had I not found out that my master was about to sell me to a dissolute young man for the vilest of purposes. I at once looked about for a way of escape. Being so much of the time among the shipping at New Orleans, I had learnt to distinguish the vessels of different nations. So I went to one that I saw was an English ship, on board of which I espied a lady,--the captain’s wife. I asked if I might come on board. ‘Certainly,’ she replied. Encouraged by her kind manner, I soon revealed to her my secret and my wish to escape. She could hardly be persuaded that I was a slave. But when all doubt on that point was removed, she readily consented to take me with her to New York. To my unspeakable relief we sailed the next day. The captain was equally kind. I was able to pay as much as he would take for my passage, for I had succeeded in getting all the money I had saved, with much of my clothing, on board the ship the night before she left New Orleans. On our arrival at New York the captain took pains to inquire for the Abolitionists. He was directed to Mr. Lewis Tappan, and took me with him to that good gentleman. Mr. Tappan at once provided for my safety in that city, and the next day sent me to Mr. Myers, at Albany, on my way to you.”

I offered to find a place for her in some one of the best families in Syracuse; but she was afraid to remain here. She had seen in New York her master’s advertisement, offering five hundred dollars for her restoration to him. She was sure there were pursuers on her track. Two men in the car between Albany and Syracuse had annoyed and alarmed her by their close observation of her. One had seated himself by her side and tried to engage her in conversation and look through her veil. At length he asked her to take off the glove on her left hand. By this she knew he must have seen the advertisement, that stated, among other marks by which she might be identified, that one finger on her left hand was minus a joint. She at once called to the conductor and asked him to protect her from the impertinent liberties the man was taking with her. So he gave her another seat by a lady, and she reached our city without any further molestation, but in great alarm.

We secreted her several days, until we supposed her pursuers must have gone on. She occupied herself most of the time by reading, and we observed that she often was poring over a French book, and on inquiring learnt that she could read that language about as well as English. So soon as her fears were sufficiently allayed, I committed her to the care of one of my good antislavery parishioners who happened to be going to Oswego. He escorted her thither, saw her safely on board the steamboat for Kingston, and a few days afterwards I received a well-written letter from her informing me of her safe arrival, and that she had obtained a good situation in a pleasant family as children’s maid.

I need give my readers but one more specimen of the many passengers I have conducted on the Underground Railroad. At eleven o’clock one Saturday night, in the fall of the year, three stalwart negroes came to my door with “a pass” from a friend in Albany. They were miserably clad for that season of the year and almost famished with hunger. We gave them a good, hearty supper, but could not accommodate them through the night. So at twelve o’clock I sallied forth with them to find a place or places where they could be safely and comfortably kept, until we could forward them to Canada. This was not so easily done as it might have been at an earlier hour. I did not get back to my home until after two in the morning. The next forenoon, after sermon I made known to my congregation their destitute condition, and asked for clothes and money. Before night I received enough of each for the three, and some to spare for other comers. I need only add, that in due time they were safely committed to the protection of the British Queen.

Other friends of the slave in Syracuse were often called upon in like manner, and sometimes put to as great inconvenience as I was in the last instance named above. So we formed an association to raise the means to carry on our operations at this station. And we made an arrangement with Rev. J. W. Loguen to fit up suitably an apartment in his house for the accommodation of all the fugitives, that might come here addressed to either one of us. The charge thus committed to them Mr. Loguen and his excellent wife faithfully and kindly cared for to the last. And I more than suspect that the fugitives they harbored, and helped on their way, often cost them much more than they called upon us to pay.

It was natural that I should feel not a little curious, and sometimes quite anxious, to know how those whom I had helped into Canada were faring there. So I went twice to see; the first time to Toronto and its neighborhood, the second time to that part of Canada which lies between Lake Erie and Lake Huron. I visited Windsor, Sandwich, Chatham, and Buxton. In each of these towns I found many colored people, most of whom had escaped thither from slavery in one or another of the United States. With very few exceptions, I found them living comfortably, and, without an exception, all of them were rejoicing in their liberty.

I was particularly interested in the Buxton settlement, called so in honor of that distinguished English philanthropist, Hon. Fowell Buxton. It was established by the benevolent enterprise and managed by the excellent good sense of Rev. William King. This gentleman was a well-educated Scotch Presbyterian minister. He had come to America and settled in Mississippi. There he married a lady whose parents soon after died, leaving him, with his wife, in possession of a considerable property in slaves. He was ill at ease in such a possession, but, as he held it in the right of his wife, he did not feel at liberty to do with it as he would otherwise have done. A few years afterwards she died. By this dispensation he was made the sole proprietor of the persons of fifteen of his fellow-beings, and he was brought to feel that the great purpose of his life should be to deliver them from slavery, and place them in circumstances under which they might become what God had made them capable of being. With this purpose at heart he went to Canada. He purchased nine thousand acres of government land of good quality and well located, though covered with a dense forest. To this place he transported, from Mississippi, his fifteen slaves, and gave to each of them fifty acres. He then offered to sell farms for two dollars and a half an acre to colored men, who should bring satisfactory testimonials of good moral character and strictly temperate habits. When I was there in 1852, about four years after the beginning of his undertaking, there were ninety families settled in Buxton. Mr. King told me there had not been a single instance of intoxication or of any disorderly conduct, and most of them had nearly paid for their farms.

I spent the whole day with this wise man, this practical philanthropist, in visiting the settlers at their homes in the woods. I found them all contented, happy, enterprising. Several of them confessed to me that they had never suffered such hardships as they had experienced since they came to live in Canada. The severity of the cold had sometimes tried them to the utmost, and clearing up their heavy-timbered lands had been hard work indeed, especially for those who had been house-servants in Southern cities. But not one of them looked back with desiring eyes to the leeks and onions of the Egypt from which they had escaped. They seemed to be sustained and animated by one of the noblest sentiments that can take possession of the human soul,--the love of liberty, the determination to be free. They had cheerfully made sacrifices in this behalf. Like the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, many of them had fled from the abodes of ease, elegance, luxury, and sought homes in a wilderness that they might be free. Like them they counted it all joy to suffer,--perils by land and by water, travels by night, a flight in the winter, and a life in the wilds in an inhospitable climate, if by so suffering they might secure to themselves and their posterity the inestimable boon of liberty.

GEORGE LATIMER.

It must be obvious to my readers that I have not been guided in my narrative by the order of time, so much as by the relation of events and actors to one another. My last article had to do in part with occurrences that happened in 1852. I shall now return to 1842.

Much to my surprise, in 1842, I was nominated by Hon. Horace Mann, and appointed by the Massachusetts Board of Education, to succeed Rev. Cyrus Peirce as Principal of the Normal School then at Lexington.

At once was heard from various quarters murmurs of displeasure, because an _Abolitionist_ had been intrusted with the preparation of teachers for our common schools. Mr. Mann was not a little annoyed. He earnestly admonished me to beware of giving occasion to those unfriendly to the school to allege that I was taking advantage of my position to disseminate my antislavery opinions and spirit. I assured him that I should not conceal my sentiments and feelings on a subject of such transcendent importance. But he might depend upon me that I should not give any time that belonged to the school to any other institution or enterprise; that I should conscientiously endeavor to discharge faithfully every one of my duties; but that, as I should not be able to attend antislavery meetings, or co-operate personally with the Abolitionists, except perhaps in vacations, I should contribute to their treasury more money than I had hitherto been able to afford.

Accordingly, I consecrated every day and every evening of every week of term time to my duties, so long as I was principal of that school, excepting only the afternoon and evening of every Saturday. Those hours I always gave up to some kind of recreation. So much as this about myself, the readers will soon perceive, is pertinent to the tale now to be unfolded.

Some time in the month of October, 1842, an interesting young man, calling himself George Latimer, made his appearance in Boston. He was so nearly white that few suspected he belonged to the proscribed class. But soon afterwards a Mr. Gray, of Norfolk, Virginia, arrived in the city, and claimed the young man as his slave. At his instigation a constable arrested Latimer, and the keeper of Leverett Street Jail took him into confinement. Their only warrant for this assault upon the liberty of Latimer was a written order from the said Gray. It was as follows:--

“TO THE JAILER OF THE COUNTY OF SUFFOLK.

“SIR,--George Latimer, a negro slave belonging to me, and a fugitive from my service in Norfolk, in the State of Virginia, who is now committed to your custody by John Wilson, my agent and attorney, I request and DIRECT you to hold on my account, at my costs, until removed by me according to law.

“JAMES B. GRAY.

“BOSTON, October 21, 1842.”

To this high-handed assumption of authority was added an indorsement, by a young lawyer of Boston, of which the following is a copy:--

“BOSTON, October 21, 1842.

“I hereby promise to pay to the keeper of the jail any sum due him for keeping the body of said Latimer, on demand.

“E. G. AUSTIN.”

With reason were the good people of Boston and the old Commonwealth aroused, excited, almost maddened with indignation and alarm at this insolent, daring assault upon the palladium of their liberty. If such a proceeding should be allowed, no one would be safe, black or white. Here comes a man from a distant part of our country, an utter stranger in our city, and arrests another man about as light-complexioned as himself, claims him as his negro slave, and, without offering any proof that he had ever held the man in that condition, hands him over to a common jailer for safe-keeping. This surely could not be borne with. Some of the colored people to whom Latimer was known first bestirred themselves. They attempted to get him out of prison by a writ of _habeas corpus_. Hon. Samuel E. Sewall, the long-tried friend of the oppressed, always ready to endure obloquy and encounter danger in their service, assisted by his friend, C. M. Ellis, Esq., earnestly endeavored to get that writ allowed. They petitioned for it in the Court at which Chief Justice Shaw was then presiding, and, strange to say, their petition was denied. That eminent jurist, on the authority of the United States Court, in the famous Prigg case, gave it as his opinion, that, by the supreme law of the land, so expounded, the man Gray had permission to come to Boston and seize the man Latimer (as he had done), put him into jail or some other place of confinement, and keep him there until he could have time to bring on proof that he was his property, and then take him off by the assistance of any persons he could get to help him. Accordingly, Judge Shaw refused the writ of _habeas corpus_, and left Latimer in Leverett Street prison. This action of the chief justice aggravated the public excitement.

Mr. Gray, alarmed probably by the outcries of indignation that came to him from so many quarters, brought charges against Latimer of thefts committed upon his property, both in Norfolk and in Boston, as the reason for his arrest. If this were true, it was said, he surely should have proceeded against the criminal, in the ordinary course at common law, and not under the decision in the Prigg case. But by this step he got himself into another and graver difficulty. George Latimer, instructed by his legal advisers, at once commenced the prosecution of Gray for slander and libel. So the biter, finding he was about to be bitten, let go this hold upon poor Latimer, and determined to rely wholly upon the decision of Judge Story of the United States Court, who was soon to hold a session in Boston.

But the excitement of the public had spread far and wide, and the tones of indignation were deeper and louder. An immense meeting was held in Faneuil Hall. Mr. Sewall presided, and made a full, clear statement of the case, exhibiting all its odious features. Mr. Edmund Quincy addressed the meeting with great force; and Mr. Phillips spoke most effectively. Public meetings on the subject were held in Lynn, Salem, New Bedford, Worcester, Abington, and in many other large towns. And petitions were prepared and extensively signed and sent to Congress, praying that we of the free States might be relieved from such outrages upon the feelings of the people, and such violations of common law, as could be perpetrated under the exposition of United States law, given by the court in the “Prigg case.” Petitions were also prepared and extensively signed to the Massachusetts Legislature, praying that the prisons and jails of the Commonwealth might not be used by slaveholders or their agents for the safe-keeping of their fugitive bondmen when retaken; and that all sheriffs, constables, police officers of every grade might be peremptorily forbidden, in any way, to assist in the capture or return of slaves.

The sheriff and the deputy sheriff of Suffolk County and the keeper of Leverett Street Jail were severely censured for the part they had taken in Mr. Gray’s service. And the sheriff was about to order the release of Latimer, when negotiations were entered into with Mr. Gray for the purchase of his victim’s emancipation. Fearing that he might lose all, he concluded to take a part, and sold him for four hundred dollars, although he had declared he would not let him go for three times that sum.

Wholly engrossed as I was by my duties in the Normal School, I could not help hearing of the great excitement, and sympathizing with those who were determined Massachusetts should not be made a hunting-ground for slaves. At length it was reported that there was to be “_a Latimer meeting_” at Waltham, five or six miles from Lexington. And lo! a few days afterwards there came letters from Rev. Samuel Ripley, then the prominent minister of Waltham, and from his son-in-law, the Rev. George F. Simmons, who a few years before had been compelled to resign his pastorate of the Unitarian Church of Mobile, and hastily leave the city, because he had dared to speak from his pulpit of the evils of slavery and the duties of those who held their fellow-beings in that condition.

Each of those gentlemen cordially invited me, urgently requested me, to attend the meeting in behalf of George Latimer that was to be held in their meeting-house, adding that it was appointed on the next Saturday evening, so as to accommodate the operatives in the factories, who were not required to work on that evening.

As I have already said, Saturday evening was my _leisure_ time. Always on closing school at noon of Saturday, I endeavored to lay aside my cares with my textbooks, and if possible think no more of school until Sunday evening, when I never failed to examine the lessons I intended to teach the next day. It seemed to me that nothing would refresh and recreate me so much as attending an antislavery meeting, and giving vent to my pent-up feelings. Then I was the more eager to go to Waltham, because Mr. Ripley was one of those who had been particularly severe and satirical in their remarks upon _my_ appointment to the charge of the Normal School. I really wished to see how he would look, and act, and speak, under the inspiration of his new-born zeal in the cause of freedom. So I informed my two devoted assistants, who needed recreation not less than myself, and who I knew were zealous Abolitionists, of my intention, and invited them to accompany me. Almost immediately I received the names of twenty of my pupils who wished to attend the meeting. Accordingly, I procured two double sleighs, and we started for Waltham, as I supposed in good season. But we did not reach the meeting-house until just as the exercises were to begin. We naturally walked in together without the slightest thought of making a parade. But on opening the door, we found all the pews filled excepting the conspicuous ones, on either side of the pulpit. To these, therefore, we went as quietly as possible, but not without attracting the notice of the audience, and calling out the remark from more than one, “There comes Mr. May with his Normal School!”

Before long I was invited by Rev. Mr. Ripley, who presided, to address the meeting. I did so for twenty minutes or more, and I have no doubt that my words and manner, my accents and emphases, showed plainly enough how deep was my abhorrence of slavery, and how sincerely I sympathized in the public alarm caused by the high-handed procedure of the claimant of Latimer and his abettors.

I returned to Lexington revived, invigorated, knowing that I had neglected no duty to the school, and utterly unconscious that I had violated any obligations, expressed or implied by my words, when I accepted the appointment. But a few days afterwards I received a letter from Mr. Mann, complaining of what I had done, informing me that I had given serious offence to several prominent gentlemen of Waltham, and had lost as a pupil a bright, fine girl who was intending to enter my school at the beginning of the next term. I replied stating the circumstances of the case just as I have done above,--that I had taken no time, withheld no attention, no thought, which was due to the school; adding that I did not believe any concealment of my sentiments, or other unreasonable concessions to the prejudices of the proslavery portion of the community, would conciliate them. But, as it seemed my understanding of my duties differed so much from his, I thought it best for me to retire from the position; and therefore I tendered him my resignation. This he would not communicate to the Board, and requested me to withdraw it. I did so. But scarcely a month had elapsed before it was announced in the newspapers that I was to deliver one in a course of antislavery lectures in Boston, without stating, as I had requested, that it would be given _during my vacation_. This brought a still more earnest remonstrance from Mr. Mann, showing how hard pressed he was on every side by the conflicting influences, in the midst of which he was striving so nobly to infuse into our common schools the right spirit, and to establish our system of public instruction upon the true principles of human development and culture. In this instance he was more easily satisfied that I had not departed from even the letter of our agreement, though I have no doubt he wished I would keep my antislavery zeal in abeyance through my vacations, as well as in term time.

I have given this recollection, that my readers may be more fully informed to what extent the so-called free States of our Union, not excepting Massachusetts, were permeated by the spirit of the slaveholders, or rather by the disposition to acquiesce in their most overbearing demands.

Let it not, however, for a moment be inferred, from what I have related, that Horace Mann was ever willing, for any consideration, to abandon the rights of the enslaved to the will of their oppressors, and suffer the dominion of slaveholders to be extended over the whole of our country. Far otherwise. A few years after the arrest of Latimer, Mr. Mann became a member of Congress; and there he uttered some of the boldest words for freedom and humanity ever heard in our Capitol. As he assured his constituents, in convention at Dedham on the 6th November, 1850, “with voice and vote, by expostulation and by remonstrance, by all means in his power, to the full extent of his ability, he resisted the passage of all the laws” proposed in Mr. Clay’s Omnibus Bill, especially the one respecting fugitives from slavery. He emphatically declared that “he regarded the question of human freedom, with all the public and private consequences dependent upon it, both now and in all futurity, as first, foremost, chiefest among all the questions that have been before the government, or are likely to be before it.”