Leeds Anti-slavery Series, No. 34

FUGITIVE SLAVES:
DOUGLASS, PENNINGTON, WELLS BROWN, GARNETT, BIBB, AND OTHERS.

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"America has the mournful honour of adding a new department of civilization - the autobiography of escaped slaves." - EPHRAIM PEABODY, D. D.
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FREDERICK DOUGLASS

THAT slavery exists in this, the nineteenth century, is a great fact, for which we have too much of mournful and affecting testimony.  That it should be found amongst the degraded tribes that people the continent of Africa is not surprising - in a low state of society of society it always has existed; but that in America - the boasted land of liberty and light - the young republic, by whom the old worn-out nations of the East are to be taught how to reign and to rule - that her soil should be thus fearfully polluted is one of the most melancholy facts the lover of his kind can learn.  It is true effort have been made to wipe away the foul stain by which America has become a stumbling-block and a reproach, the world's wonder and shame; but hitherto with but little success.  Slavery, in its most hideous forms, still disgraces the Southern States.  Every year the number of its victims increases, and every year their doom seems more hopeless.  Since the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act, America has published to the world that, in all her broad dominion, there is not one single inch of ground where the slave can find refuge, and in which he can be free.
     Yet, if any men deserve freedom, these slaves do.  In spite of the curse, many of them have still the attributes of men.  They can think, and feel, and hope.  God has given them the breath of life.  On them, as well as the white, He has conferred the living soul.  Such a one was Frederick Douglass.  The

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English public have some recollection of him. A few years since he came to our shores, and spoke with power of the wrongs of the coloured race.  Many of our readers, we presume, have listened to the heart-stirring eloquence of his public appeals.  Many of them have read, we trust, the book in which he told the moving story of his life.  We intend here to give an outline of it.  It will teach that slavery is the curse it ever was; that, in spite of the outcry of indignant humanity, and the protest of religion against it, it remains unchanging and unchanged.  It will teach, also, that slavery is not the omnipotent thing it seems; that it will bow and become weak when a strong man resolves to trample it under foot.
     Frederick Douglass was born on an estate in Talbot County, Maryland. Slaves seldom know their birth-days, nor their father, and Douglass's case was no exception to the general rule.  His mother he never saw, to know, but three or four times in his life. His father was said to have been his master — a white man. Masters in America often sustain the paternal relation to their slaves.  These slaves invariably suffer greater hardships, and have more to contend with than others.  They are a perpetual offence to the mistress.  This class threatens to be an instrument for the removal of the very ills of which it is the effect.  Every year increases its number.  It was the knowledge of this fact that has already induced one American statesman to predict the fall of slavery by the inevitable laws of population.  At any rate, the increase of this class will put a stop in America to the Scriptural argument for slavery.  If the lineal descendants of Ham alone are to be Scripturally enslaved, then it must be soon admitted by the American slaveholders themselves, that American slavery is unscriptural, for the case of Douglass is that of an increasing number.  Every year swells the number of white men, who are not ashamed to be the fathers of slaves.
     Douglass's first master's name was Anthony.  He was not considered a rich slaveholder.  He owned two or three farms, and about thirty slaves.  These were under the care of an overseer, who was a miserable drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage monster.  His master was equally savage, if we may judge from the following anecdote.  One day a slave, named Aunt Hester, excited his displeasure; Douglass tells how he

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punished her: - "Before he commenced whipping Aunt Rester, he took her into the kitchen and stripped her from neck to waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back, entirely naked.  He then told her to cross her hands, calling her, at the same time, a d__d b___h.  After crossing her hands, he tied them with a strong rope, and led her to a stook under a large hook in the joist, put in fore that purpose.  He made her get upon the stook, and tied her hands to a hook.  She now stood fair for his infernal purpose.  Her arms were stretched out at her full length, so that she stood upon the ends of her toes.  He then said to her, 'Now you d__d b__h, I'll learn you how to disobey my orders!' and, after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy cow-skin, and soon the warm red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor.  I was so terrified and horror-stricken at the sight, I hid myself in a closet, and dare not venture out till long after the bloody transaction."  Nor was such horror unnatural.  Till then Douglass had lived with his grandmother on the outskirts of the plantation.  Consequently, to his young eyes, such scenes were sickening and strange.
     Douglass's master lived on the home plantation of Colonel Edward Lloyd, and was the colonel's clerk and superintendent.  The colonel kept from three to four hundred slaves on his home plantation, and owned a large number more on the farms belonging to him.  The overseer, when first Douglass knew the place, was a man rightly named Severe.  He seemed to take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish barbarity.  Scarcely a sentence escaped his lips that was not commenced or concluded with a horrid oath.   He filled the fields with blasphemy and blood.  "From the rising to the going down of the sun he was cursing, raving, cutting, and slashing among slaves of the field in the most frightful manner.  The next overseer, a Mr. Hopkins, was too humane, and did not stop long.  The slaves called him the good overseer; and goodness is a quality the slaveowner could well dispense with.  He was succeeded by a wretch, of whom one anecdote will be enough.  This Gore once undertook to whip one of Colonel Lloyd's slaves by the name of Demby.  He had given Demby but a few stripes, when, to get rid of the scourging, he ran and plunged himself into a creek, and stood there at the depth of his shoulders, re-

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fusing to come out. Mr. Gore told him he would give him three calls, and that, if he did not come out at the third call, he would shoot him.  The first call was given: Demby made no response, hut stood his ground.  The second and third calls were given with the same results.  Mr. Gore then, without consultation or deliberation with any one, not even giving Demby an additional call, raised his musket to his face, taking deadly aim at his standing victim, and in an instant poor Demby was no more; his mangled body sank out of sight, and blood and brains marked the water where he had stood."  No punishment was awarded this man for the foul murder done.  He was continued in his office notwithstanding.  It was only a slave; and, when they are concerned, in America the laws of God and man are alike set aside.  On this plantation, then, grew up Douglass, till he was seven or eight years old.  To most, childhood is a
happy period of life; brightened by a mother's love, sheltered by a father's care.  Of these the slave knows nothing.  Douglass suffered from hunger and cold.  His food was of the coarsest fare, and rudely served up.  The children were all fed from a trough, like pigs.  No wonder, then, that he heard with joy that he was to live with his master's son-in-law.  It was an era in his life.  He was cleaned and fresh clothed.  A heavier heart than his might have been cheered by the change.
     At Baltimore, Douglass learned the value of learning.  His mistress began by teaching him the A B C.  He then advanced to spelling words of three or four letters; but here his master interfered, and put a veto on all further progress.  "If," said he, "you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell.  A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master - to do as he is told to do.  Now, if you teach that nigger (pointing to Douglass) how to read, there will be no keeping him; it will for ever unfit him to be a slave; he will at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master.  As to himself, it can do him no good, but a great deal of harm.  It will make him discontented and unhappy."  This was enough.  A new train of thought came into existence.  The secret of the white man's power was at once perceived.  Douglass silently resolved that he would win it and be free.  During the seven years he lived in this family he kept firmly to his resolution.  He got learning from children in the streets, from men

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in the docks - in fact, wherever he could; and as he grew in knowledge, so he grew in high hope and noble aim.  A book called the Columbian Orator taught him the arguments against slavery.  Sheridan's speeches on behalf of Catholic Emancipation, in the same book, furnished him with a bold denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights.  His eyes were opened.  The silver trump of freedom had spoken to his soul, and had there found an enduring response.  But difficulties beset him on every side.  It was long before he could even learn what was meant by an abolitionist.  Still hope had been aroused, and henceforth Douglass had but one aim in life.
     The death of Douglass's master led to his return, for a short time, to the place of his birth.  It was necessary there should be a valuation of the property, for the purpose of division, and Douglass was sent for, to see what he would fetch.  Douglass says, "We were all ranked together at the valuation.  Men and women, old and young, married and single, were ranked with horses, sheep, and swine.  There were horses and men, cattle and women, pigs and children, all holding the same rank in the scale of being, and were all subjected to the same narrow examination.  Silvery-headed age and sprightly youth, maids and matrons, had to undergo the same indelicate inspection.  At this moment I saw more clearly than ever the brutalising effects of slavery upon both slave and slaveholder."  Such a conclusion was a very obvious one.  Nor was it removed when the division of the property took place.  To the unfortunate slave, such an event is a serious crisis.  He may be torn from old associations and haunts - from kindred and from friends; he may be transferred from a master that he loves, to one he hates; and yet he must bear all in silence; - no words, no prayers, no tears of his are of any avail.  So far as Douglass was affected, the distribution of the property mattered but little.  He again went back to Orleans, and stopped there till 1832.  He then returned to St. Michael's, to live with Master Thomas Auld.  There are few slave-owners but have some good points.  This man, however, had none.  He and his wife were alike unforgiving, and cruel, and mean.  Yet this man was a religious man.  He was a professor of religion, and, what is more wonderful still, of the religion of Jesus of Naza-

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reth.  In 1832 this man attended a Methodist camp meeting, and there experienced religion. "I indulged," says Douglass, "a faint hope that his conversion would lead him to emancipate his slaves, and that, if it did not do this, it would, at any rate, make him more kind and humane."  It did, however, nothing of the kind; he was worse than ever.  Before he was converted - if such a phrase may be used with reference to him - he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity.  But after that he brought religion to his aid.  Yet he made the greatest pretensions to piety.  His house was the house of prayer.  He prayed morning, noon, and night.  He was a class-leader, a revivalist, and an exhorter.  Many were made converts by him, and ministers of that Saviour who came to loose the prisoner, and set the captive free, ate at this man's table, and slept under this man's roof.  "I have seen him," says Douglass, "tie up a lame young woman, and whip her with a heavy cow-skin upon her naked shoulders, causing the Warm red blood to drip; and, in justification of the bloody deed, he would quote this passage of Scripture: - 'He that knoweth his master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes.' "  This reminds us of

Bad as all this is, yet worse follows.  In the neighbourhood there lived a man named Covey "a nigger breaker" a professor of religion, and a class leader in the Methodist Church!  To this man Douglass was sent to be broken in.  Strange as it may seem, few men, at times, were more devotional than he.  Family devotions were always commenced with singing, and it generally devolved upon Douglass to set the tune.  Though like those who wept as they remembered Zion, at times Douglass refused to sing the Lord's song in a strange land.  At such times the man prayed with more than ordinary fervour.  Indeed, this man was a very pillar in the church, yet actually he was compelling his woman slave to commit the sin of adultery.  The facts of the case were these.  Mr. Covey was a poor man, and, just commencing life, he was only able to buy one slave; and he bought her, as he said, for a breeder.  She had already given birth to one child, which proved to be just

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what he wanted.  After buying her, he hired a married man to live with him one year; and him he used to fasten up with her every night.  The consequence was, in twelve months' time, the miserable woman gave birth to twins, much to the delight of this Christian professor, who, if Douglass be an authority, succeeded in breaking him in, in body and soul.  He felt himself transformed into a brute, and led the life of one.  And yet there were times when the man within him would arise and put forth its powers.  On Sabbath mornings he would stand gazing on Chesapeake Bay, whose broad bosom was ever white with sails from every quarter of the habitable globe, and would long that he like them could fly away and be at rest.  Everyday the cruelty of Covey became more unendurable.  Douglass ran away, and appealed to his master, but in vain.  However, the final struggle drew near.  One morning, while he was feeding the horses, "Mr. Covey entered the stable with a long rope, and, just as I was half out of the loft, he caught hold of my legs, and was about tying me.  As soon as I found what he was up to, I gave a sudden spring, and, as I did so, he holding to my legs, I was brought sprawling on the stable floor.  Mr. Covey seemed now to think he had me, and could do what he pleased; but at this moment - from whence came the spirit I don't know - I resolved to fight, and suiting my action to the resolution, I seized Covey hard by the throat, and, as I did so, I rose.  He held on to me, and I to him.  My resistance was so entirely unexpected, that Covey seemed taken all aback.  He trembled like a leaf.  This gave me assurance, and I held him uneasy, causing the blood to run where I touched him with the ends of my fingers.  Mr. Covey soon called out to Hughes for help.  Hughes came, and, while Covey held me, attempted to tie my right hand.  While he was in the act of doing so, I watched my opportunity, and gave him a heavy kick close under the ribs.  This kick fairly sickened Hughes, so that he left me in the hands of Mr. Covey.  This kick had the effect of weakening Hughes, but Covey also, when he saw Hughes bending over with pain, his courage quailed.  He asked me if I meant to persist in that resistance.  I told him I did, come what might; that he had used me like a brute for six months, and that I was determined to be used so no longer.  With that, he strove to drag

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me to a stick that was lying just out of the stable door; he meant to knock me down.  But just as he was leaning over to get the stick, I seized him with both hands by the collar, and brought him by a sudden smash to the ground.  By this time Bill came.  Covey called upon him for assistance.  Bill wanted to know what he could do.  Covey said,  'Take hold of him - take hold of him 'Bill said his master hired him out to work, and not to help to whip me, so he left Covey and myself to fight our battle out.  We were at it for nearly two hours.  Covey at length let me go, puffing and blowing at a great rate, saying,  'That if I had not resisted, he would not have whipped me half so much.' "  This battle was the turning point in Douglass's career as a slave.  The whole six months he spent after that, with his master, he never laid the weight of his finger upon him in anger.  It recalled departed self-confidence.  It re-inspired the determination to be free.  From that hour Douglass felt that however he might be a slave in form, he had ceased to be a slave in fact.  A new era commenced now for him - old things passed away, all things became new.
     In 1834, Douglass was transferred to a new master, who had the merit of being open and frank, and not a professor of that religion which, in the Southern States of America, is a covering for the most horrid crimes, and a pretext for the commission of the foulest wrongs.  Can we wonder that any man should loathe the society and the religion of such men!  Religion has often been wronged - often has her fair name been loaded with disgrace; but never is she so wronged or disgraced as when she is worn as a cloak by men who dare, in direct violation of her precepts, to traffic in human flesh and blood to sell their fellow-men as they do the beasts of the field.
     In this new service again Douglass nursed thoughts of freedom. Nor did he labour for himself alone.  His fellow-sufferers shared his sympathies, his hopes, and his labours.  He held a Sabbath-school; and, that they might be fitted for freedom, he filled their breasts with thoughts similar to his own.  They planned, decided, and acted together; but, alas for poor human nature, in that band there was a traitor; the plot was discovered, and, of course, suppressed.  The discovery was not so disastrous as at first anticipated; so far as Douglass was concerned, it ended in sending him back to Baltimore, where,

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after working diligently and saving a little money, he managed to effect his escape.  His feelings after the event he thus describes in his own graphic language: -
     "I have been frequently asked how I felt when I found myself in a free State.  I have never been able to answer the question with any satisfaction to myself.  It was a moment of the highest excitement I ever experienced.  I suppose I felt as one ay imagine the unarmed mariner to feel, when he is rescued by a friendly man-of-war from the pursuit of a pirate.  In writing to a dear friend, immediately after my arrival at New York, I said I felt like one who had escaped a den of hungry lions.  This state of mind, however, very soon subsided; and I was again seized with a feeling of great insecurity and loneliness.  I was yet liable to be taken back, and subjected to all the tortures of slavery.  This in itself was enough to damp the ardour of my enthusiasm.  But the loneliness overcame me.  There I was in the midst of thousands, and yet a perfect stranger; without home and without friends, in the midst of thousands of my own brethren - children of a common father - and yet I dared not unfold to any one of them my sad condition.  I was afraid to speak to any one, for fear
of speaking to the wrong one, and thereby falling into the hands of money-loving kidnappers, whose business it was to lie in wait for the panting fugitive, as the ferocious beasts of the forest lie in wait for their prey.  The motto which I adopted when I started from slavery was this - 'Trust no man!' I saw in every white man an enemy, and in almost every coloured man cause for distrust.  It was a most painful situation; and to understand it one must needs experience it, or imagine himself in similar circumstances."
     In New York, whither Douglass fled, he found kind friends, by whose assistance he removed to New Bedford, where he married, and for some time lived by any kind of labour that came within his reach.  So long as he was free, he cared not how lowly the labour was.  He was resolved bravely to fight
the battle of life for himself.  One evening in August, 1841, an anti-slavery convention was held at Nantucket - the leading abolitionists were there.  The excitement was great and growing.  In the midst of it all there rose a noble-looking mulatto, whose appearance denoted no common intellectual power.  At

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first he spoke tremblingly.  He had never addressed a public audience; but he spoke of the wrongs of his race - of what he had seen, and heard, and felt - of the triumph of the oppressor - of might victorious over right - of life turned into a curse - of manhood degraded and undone - of a God of love defied.  Words came swift and full of power.  Men listened with wonder and delight.  The name of the speaker was Frederick Douglass.  That night witnessed his consecration to the sacred cause that aims to break the fetters of the slave.  He put his hand to the plough, and since then he has never looked back.  That night decided the destiny of his life.  Ever since he has pleaded the cause which, as surely as there is a God in heaven, will triumph on the earth.  Some time Frederick Douglass spent in England on an anti-slavery mission.  He returned to America, where he edits a paper, established to carry out the object of his life.  Comparatively speaking a young man, we may hope for him many years of noble and self-rewarding toil.  The narrative of his life is calculated to do much in this respect, for he who can read it without indignation against slavery - without resolving as far as he can to extinguish it - without denouncing the American Church and American society, till that accursed thing be put down, must have indeed a flinty heart, and be something less than man.

THE REV. JAMES W. C. PENNINGTON, D. D.

Is another fugitive from American slavery, whose history is well known, and whose character is highly appreciated in England.  The ancient and renowned University of Heidelberg, fro whose venerable halls have gone forth masters in the loftiest departments of human lore, conferred an honorary degree upon Pennington for his abilities and reputation.  The work which he has done in England, on behalf of his enslaved brethren, and the interest he has aroused on their behalf  has been very great.  Nor is this surprising.  Despite what he says in reference to the painful defects of his education, it must be conceded that his amiable and gentlemanly deportment, his pliant and elegant mind, the culture and the power which he possesses, have won for him the esteem of very many; while his eloquence and pathos have touched the hearts of multitudes who have been privileged to hear him.

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WILLIAM WELLS BROWN,

An intelligent, good-looking coloured man, is now in England, a fugitive slave, legally the property of another man, and cannot return to his native country for fear of being taken back into slavery.  His narrative is replete with painful interest.  In 1849, Brown was a delegate to the Peace Congress at Paris, where he spoke with much effect.  His address is eloquent and impressive.  He has delivered nearly five hundred lectures in England on slavery, twenty to thirty on temperance, and has addressed nearly one hundred public meetings, having travelled through Great Britain about 12,000 miles.  He intended returning to America, but the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law prevented it.
     William Wells Brown has recently published a work, entitled Three Years in Europe, &c., affording additional evidence of the falsity of the long-cherished notion, that the black man is mentally inferior to his white brethren.  Yet, in the land of his birth, there is no spot on which Brown may not be claimed as a fugitive, and carried back to chains and bondage.  Thank God!  in England we do not recognise the right of any to hold a property in the flesh and blood of their fellow-men.

THE REV. HENRY H. GARNETT

Is another noble specimen of the negro race, a man who dares not return to the United States for fear of the fugitive slave-law.  He was in England recently, and is well known having addressed many public meetings.  He has recently gone to the West Indies as a missionary.
     The names of Henry Bibb, the Rev. Josiah Henson, Henry Box Brown, and William and Ellen Craft, and many others, might also be brought forward as illustrations of the accursed evils of slavery, and the blessings of freedom.  Often has the indignation of those who hate slavery found expression in burning words and almost superhuman eloquence; but never yet has there been a mind which has fully comprehended all its vast enormity, a heart that has been adequately impressed by its horrors, or a tongue which could not exclaim - as it sounded forth its loftiest periods, and thrilled the deepest by its terrible recitals - " THE HALF HAS NOT BEEN TOLD!"

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We have only mentioned a few of the fugitive slaves with whom we are best acquainted; those who have visited Great Britain, or taken up their residence in it to escape the dangers of the Fugitive Slave Law.  Most, or all of these have written and published narratives of their lives in slavery, and how they were fortunate enough to escape from its horrors.  To these works, which may be had through all booksellers on application, the reader is referred for realities exceeding any romance.
     The Chronotype, an American paper, has the following remarks on this kind of publications: - "This fugitive slave literature is destined to be a powerful lever.  We have the most profound conviction of its potency.  We see in it the easy and infallible means of abolitionizing the free states.  Argument provokes argument, reason is met by sophistry; but narratives of slaves go right to the hearts of men.  We defy any man to think with any patience or tolerance of slavery after reading Bibb's narrative, unless he is one of those infidels to nature who float on the race as monsters, from it, but not of it.  Put a dozen copies of this book into every school, district, or neighbourhood in the free states, and you might sweep the whole north on a thorough-going liberty platform for abolishing slavery, everywhere and everyhow.  Stir up honest men's souls with such a book, and they won't set much by disclaimers; they won't be squeamish how radically they vote against a system which surpasses any hell which theology has ever been able to conjure up."
     One conclusion forced upon the philosophical reader of such narratives of runaway slaves is this, that however tolerable chattel-slavery may be as an institution for savage and babarous life, when you bring it into the purlieus of civilization and Christianity, it becomes unspeakably iniquitous and intolerable.  If the Americans really mean to uphold slavery, they must - there is no help for it - abolish Christianity, printing, art, science, and take their victims back to the standard of Central Africa, or the days of Shem, Ham, and Japhet.

Leeds Anti-slavery Series. No. 34
Sold by W. and F. G. CASH, 5, Bishopsgate Street, London; and by JANE JOWETT, Friends' Meeting Yard, Leeds, at 1s. 2. per 100.