Historical Romance of the American Negro. Fowler Charles Henry
rescued by the kindness and daring of my own daughter. (Loud cheers). The South has told you ten thousand times that we of the colored race are only fit for hewers of wood and drawers of water, like the Gibeonites. These drawers of water of our poor, oppressed race, that they themselves may live in mansions more palatial than the lords, and barons, and dukes of Continental Europe and the British Isles. Who ever heard of such unmanliness and cowardice? Men who ape the aristocracy of Europe, and even surpass them in brilliant, grand displays, wringing their wealth from the oppressed African!
"I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that Almighty God is getting tired of such refined badness, and that the day is coming, and will soon be here when such a storm of wrath will be upon the South as will wipe out the blood-red crime of slavery from Mason and Dixon's line to the Rio Grande. The sooner that day of judgment comes the better!
"Just look abroad over all these far-spreading Northern and Western States, and hear how they are ringing with the loud notes of freedom, and the sounds of coming conflict! I am free to say that upon this night, and at this very hour there are hundreds of meetings going on all along the Northern States for the purpose of enlightening the nation as to the real character, intentions and purposes of the South. The South is not ignorant of these things. They have got Argus eyes for all we do, both in Congress and out of it, and they will push things as fast and as far as they dare. They will give us no rest till we are either all slaves, or all free! (Loud applause). I look around me at the political skies, and I see them growing blacker and blacker as the great national storm is gathering. John Brown and the free-soil men are in Kansas; loud and angry words are being bandied forth between the occupants of the two ends of the house – between the powerful North and the passionate South. From words they will most assuredly come to blows over that very 'peculiar institution,' and American slavery and all the evils that follow in its train, will pass away. But of one thing rest assured. The South will never consent to emancipate her slaves. They have been throwing it up in the face of the North these past fifty years that they can't get their own way; they will go out of the Union, and set up a slave empire of their own. Then they will attempt a dissolution of these glorious States. Then they will dare and defy you to force them back into the Union by the sword. The day is coming, and what will you do about it?" (Great cheering).
CHAPTER IV
Continuation and End of the Great Abolition Meeting at Buffalo.
"The determination of the slave-holding oligarchy is to keep our persecuted race under a bushel – both soul and body – and to sit down on the top of that bushel for all coming time. They are stone blind to the fact that they are sitting on the top of a bushel of dynamite, which will blow them sky-high one of these days, with terrible effect. They have entirely forgotten that this world belongs to God; and they and the devil between them have made up their minds to do as they please. Between bloodhounds and cowhides they think they will do very well. My own firm belief is that a war is coming upon us that will carry mourning into every house in this great republic, both North and South. There are thousands and ten thousands of the very same opinion as myself. The South will never surrender their 'peculiar institution.' If it were dogs, cows or horses that they were called upon to give up, they would cheerfully give them up for a fair price. But the very 'Old Lad' himself is in the business when it comes to claim property in men and women, especially when those men and women happen to be better than themselves, which is usually the case. (Loud laughter and cheering all over the hall). When a dog, a horse or a cow runs away, they will let it go, but if it be a man or a woman, they will pursue the fugitive over mountains, lakes and rivers, and even die in the attempt to bring them back to slavery. If this rising storm shall end in a war, the old lie that the black man will not fight will certainly be exploded, for every slave will go to the field, if necessary, and their strong arms will knock down the 'peculiar institution.' (Great applause).
"On my way down the Mississippi to New Orleans, they brought an old colored man on board, having sold him to a family resident in the Queen City of the South. I conversed much with that grand old hero, and it was wonderful to see what an intuitive knowledge he had of human nature, and what a vast amount of natural goodness there was still left in him, after so much hard experience, labor and toil among the cane brakes and cotton fields. Such a man as Judah – for that was his name – ought to have been a bishop in the Church of God, instead of being reckoned among the bales and bundles, and goods and chattels, of the Southern States. If that good man (who left such a deep impression on the hearts and minds of all Christian people who conversed with him) – if he had been free according to the will of God, and been educated like white men, instead of being robbed and plundered of his rights, he would have made a splendid bishop, for I am perfectly positive that he had every qualification for that office in the highest degree. That saintly man – that Judah – should this very day be the right reverend and honored bishop among his brethren in a nation where all are free, instead of being no more than a favored spaniel or ornament to grace the pride of some family in New Orleans. If that grand old man had only had the same opportunities that the white bishops have had, he would at this hour be gracing the churches and halls of this nation, the very same as white men do. The day of judgment is at hand that will reverse all that!
"On the same voyage down the Mississippi to New Orleans, they brought on board a fair and beautiful creature of seventeen, who, like Judah, was also intended to grace a baronial hall in the Queen City of the South. A more attractive woman I have never seen anywhere. It was pitiable to think of her future. She was graceful in all her movements; most handsome; had a musical voice, and was withal a splendid singer. Where she was born I cannot tell, but they gave $2,500 for her! The more I looked at poor Julia, the more mournful I became. What a glorious ornament for society she would have been had she been free! Almost any honorable man would have been proud to make her his wife. She could have led the choir in the house of God, and could have sung with the minstrels before Queen Victoria and all the crowned heads of Europe. She might have been a bright and shining light in some way or other, under the guiding hand of divine providence; her life and times might have been written by some famous author, and read by millions of people in this and other nations of the earth.
"In this way we can go on to the end of the chapter. Our traducers and slanderers say that we are unfit for this, that and the other thing, which is a deliberate and willful falsehood. We are well qualified for everything that any other race upon earth is qualified to perform, and that is the very reason why our maligners say we are not; and they are even unwilling to give us the chance to try. It is true that a few of us are educated, but very few. We three, that is, myself and daughter and her husband, were taught a little because we were favorably situated under Mr. Jackson, but the slave-holders, as a general thing, make a specialty of keeping us in the most complete ignorance, and it is a crime for a slave to be taught to read, write and cast accounts, and it is also a crime for any man to be found teaching him.
"But there is a better day coming, and will soon be here; only we will have to pass through a time of the most tremendous affliction before the better times arrive. When, by the predetermined will of God, all men and women are free from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Lakes to the Gulf, then, indeed, shall we arise and shine forth, for our light will be come, and the glory of the Lord will be risen upon us. Then shall new schools and colleges be established all over the land, into which our sons and daughters will crowd, and they will also go to those which have been long established. Then shall our professional men and women go forth in their thousands and ten thousands, and spread to lands and islands beyond the seas. Then shall our senators and representatives enter the halls of Congress at Washington, and every state legislature. Our surgeons and physicians shall then ride forth precisely the same as their white brothers duly armed with the very same diplomas, authorizing them to heal the sick, and alleviate the ailments of those that are afflicted, instead of wearing their lives away in the cane brakes, the cotton fields and the rice swamp of the South as slaves. They may labor all over the far-extended lands as freemen toiling for themselves and their families at useful trades, and laying up money against a rainy day. Then shall children go forth in their hundreds and thousands to be trained like others for the duties of life, and to become the ornaments of society. Then shall our afflicted sons and daughters sit no longer in the galleries of the churches of the land as so many 'goods and chattels" thrust away up into the corner, but walk forth in freedom to the house of the Lord on the Sabbath day – go forth