The Negro in the American Rebellion: His Heroism and His Fidelity. William Wells Brown
badge of social inferiority, exposing him to insult in the steamboat and the railcar, and in all places of public resort, not even excepting the church; banishing him from remunerative occupations; expelling him from the legislative hall, the magistrate’s bench, and the jury-box; and crushing his noblest aspirations under a weight of prejudice and proscription which he struggles in vain to throw off. Against this unchristian and hateful spirit, every lover of liberty should enter his solemn protest. This hateful prejudice caused the breaking up of the school of Miss Prudence Crandall, in the State of Connecticut, in the early days of the antislavery agitation.
Next came the burning of Pennsylvania Hall, one of the most beautiful edifices in the City of Brotherly Love, simply because colored persons were permitted to occupy seats by the side of whites.
The enactment by Congress of the Fugitive Slave Law caused the friends of freedom, both at home and abroad, to feel that the General Government was fast becoming the bulwark of slavery. The rendition of Thomas Sims, and still later that of Anthony Burns, was, indeed, humiliating in the extreme to the people of the Northern States.
On that occasion, the sons of free, enlightened, and Christian Massachusetts, descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, bowed submissively to the behests of a tyranny more cruel than Austrian despotism; yielded up their dignity and self-respect; became the allies of slave-catchers, the associates and companions of bloodhounds. At the bidding of slaveholders and serviles, they seized the image of God, bound their fellow-man with chains, and consigned him to torture and premature death under the lash of a piratical overseer. God’s law and man’s rights were trampled upon; the self-respect, the constitutional privileges, of the free States, were ignominiously surrendered. A people who resisted a paltry tax upon tea, at the cannon’s mouth, basely submitted to an imposition tenfold greater, in favor of brutalizing their fellow-men. Soil which had been moistened with the blood of American patriots was polluted by the footsteps of slave-catchers and their allies.
The Boston Court House in chains, two hundred rowdies and thieves sworn in as special policemen, respectable citizens shoved off the side-walks by these slave-catchers; all for the purpose of satisfying “our brethren of the South.” But this act did not appease the feelings, or satisfy the demands, of the slave-holders, while it still further inflamed the fire of abolitionism.
The “Dred Scott Decision” added fresh combustibles to the smouldering heap. Dred Scott, a slave, taken by his master into free Illinois, and then beyond the line of 36° 30’, and then back into Missouri, sued for and obtained his freedom on the ground, that, having been taken where by the Constitution slavery was illegal, his master had lost all claim. But the Supreme Court, on appeal, reversed the judgment; and Dred Scott, with his wife and children, was taken back into slavery. By this decision in the highest court of American law, it was affirmed that no free negro could claim to be a citizen of the United States, but was only under the jurisdiction of the separate State in which he resided; that the prohibition of slavery in any Territory of the Union was unconstitutional; and that the slave-owner might go where he pleased with his property, throughout the United States, and retain his right.
This decision created much discussion, both in America and in Europe, and materially injured the otherwise good name of our country abroad.
The Constitution, thus interpreted by Judge Taney, became the emblem of the tyrants and the winding sheet of liberty, and gave a boldness to the people of the South, which soon showed itself, while good men at the North felt ashamed of the Government under which they lived.
The slave-holders in the cotton, sugar, and rice growing States began to urge the re-opening of the African slave-trade, and the driving out from the Southern States of all free colored persons.
In the Southern Rights’ Convention, which assembled at Baltimore, June 8, 1800, a resolution was adopted, calling on the Legislature to pass a law driving the free colored people out of the State. Nearly every speaker took the ground that the free colored people must be driven out to make the slave’s obedience more secure. Judge Mason, in his speech, said, “It is the thrifty and well-to-do free negroes, that are seen by our slaves, that make them dissatisfied.” A similar appeal was made to the Legislature of Tennessee. Judge Catron, of the Supreme Court of the United States, in a long and able letter to “The Nashville Union,” opposed the driving out of the colored people. He said they were among the best mechanics, the best artisans, and the most industrious laborers in the State, and that to drive them out would be an injury to the State itself. This is certainly good evidence in their behalf.
The State of Arkansas passed a law driving the free colored people out of the State, and they were driven out three years ago. The Democratic press howled upon the heels of the free blacks until they had all been expatriated; but, after they had been driven out, “The Little Rock Gazette”—a Democratic paper—made a candid acknowledgment with regard to the character of the free colored people. It said, “Most of the exiled free negroes are industrious and respectable. One of them, Henry King, we have known from our boyhood, and take the greatest pleasure in testifying to his good character. The community in which he casts his lot will be blessed with that noblest work of God, an honest man.”
Yet these free colored people were driven out of the State, and those who were unable to go, as many of the women and children were, were reduced to slavery.
“The New Orleans True Delta” opposed the passage of a similar law by the State of Louisiana. Among other things, it said, “There are a large free colored population here, correct in their general deportment, honorable in their intercourse with society, and free from reproach so far as the laws are concerned; not surpassed in the inoffensiveness of their lives by any equal number of-persons in any place, North or South.”
And yet these free colored persons were not permitted by law to school their children, or to read books that treated against the institution of slavery. The Rev. Samuel Green, a colored Methodist preacher, was convicted and sent to the Maryland penitentiary, in 1858, for the offence of being found reading “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
The growth of the “Free-Soil” party, which had taken the place of the “Liberty” party; and then the rapid increase of the “Republican” party; the struggle in Kansas; the “Oberlin Rescue Trials;” and, lastly, the “John Brown Raid,” carried the discussion of slavery to its highest point.
All efforts, in Congress, in the proslavery political conventions, and in the churches, only added fuel to the flame that was fast making inroads upon the vitals of the monster.
CHAPTER VI.—THE JOHN BROWN RAID.
John Brown.—His Religious Zeal.—His Hatred to Slavery.—Organization of his Army.—Attack on Harper’s Ferry.—His Execution.—John Brown’s Companions, Green and Copeland.—The Executions.
The year 1859 will long be memorable for the bold attempt of John Brown and his companions to burst the bolted door of the Southern house of bondage, and lead out the captives by a more effectual way than they had yet known: an attempt in which, it is true, the little band of heroes dashed themselves to bloody death, but, at the same time, shook the prison-walls from summit to foundation, and shot wild alarm into every tyrant-heart in all the slave-land. What were the plans and purposes of the noble old man is not precisely known, and perhaps will never be; but, whatever they were, there is reason to believe they had been long maturing—brooded over silently and secretly, with much earnest thought, and under a solemn sense of religious duty. As early as the fall of 1857, he began to organize his band, chiefly from among the companions of his warfare against the “Border Ruffians” in Kansas. Nine or ten of these spent the winter of 1857–8 in Iowa, where a Col. Forbes was to have given them military instruction; but he, having-fallen out with Brown, did not join them, and Aaron D. Stevens, one of the company, took his place.
About the middle of April, 1858, they left Iowa, and went to Chatham, Canada, where, on the 8th of May, was held a convention, called by a written