Historical Romance of the American Negro. Fowler Charles Henry

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СКАЧАТЬ attempts at insurrection. But for all that, there is not the slightest doubt in my own mind that they will go out of the Union, as they have been promising us to do for the last fifty years, if they cannot get their own way! In all their plans, schemes and calculations, this slave-holding oligarchy have thrown the Almighty overboard, and every sacred right of the human race. They have treated the wronged and oppressed African as if he had neither rights nor feelings, and, indeed, as if he were not a human being at all. But there is a day coming, and it will soon be here, when the Great Creator of the entire human race will call an imperative halt to all this, and go into this war as we may, we will come out with four millions of people who will be redeemed from the yoke and curse of Southern bondage. (Loud cheers).

      "I did not intend to make a lengthy address. I only wished to point out that we are drifting into war, and my own willingness to lend a hand to liberate the oppressed slave."

      Tom now resumed his seat amidst great applause. The audience, though taken by surprise by his speech, were greatly delighted, because of his willingness to go to the field.

      The reverend chairman now called on the glee club to give us some more of their musical compositions and campaign songs. These were given with a hearty good will, so that the enthusiasm of the audience rose higher and higher. The newspaper reporters were also kept busy, and a good account of the proceedings of this very successful abolition meeting was found in several of the papers next morning, and very extensively read. Before we scattered for the night, the Rev. Doctor Henderson arose, and made the following closing remarks to the audience:

      "Ladies and gentlemen: We have all listened to a rare treat this night. Just think of it! The South calls these two ladies and this gentleman their 'goods and chattels,' and for the very life of me I do not see how a war can be avoided, and then we shall know what their so-called goods and chattels will do when the storm shall burst upon us in all its fury. No, no! I do not see how a war is to be avoided, for the passions of both the North and the South are being worked up in precisely the same way as is usual in quarrels between individuals, and no doubt but it will all end by coming to blows in a terrible conflict.

      "In the meantime it is our duty to keep agitating as never before. It is a perfect outrage on humanity to hold in bondage such refined persons as these three here present to-night. We must agitate this great question, night and day, till the sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings. I now call for a vote of thanks to Mrs. John B. Sutherland, and to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Lincoln. Let three rousing cheers be given for them!"

      The audience rose to their feet, gave three cheers and a tiger, and the great demonstration came to an end.

      CHAPTER V

      The Negro's Complaint – John Brown's Raid – The Secession of the Southern States – Battle of Milliken's Bend – Battle at Fort Hudson – The Effect of the Emancipation Proclamation on this Nation and the Entire Christian World.

      As my indulgent readers would perhaps like to know the lines of "The Negro's Complaint," which were sung so beautifully by the campaign glee club that night at the great meeting at Buffalo, I will here insert them. They were written by the Honorable William Cowper, of England, and directed against British slavery in the West Indies, and the slave trade generally. They apply with such force and truth to that self-same blood-red crime as carried on by the United States that they are worthy of being committed to memory by every true lover of poetry in the English language throughout the world.

THE NEGRO'S COMPLAINT

      Forced from home and all its pleasures,

      Africa's coast I left forlorn,

      To increase a stranger's treasures

      O'er the raging billows borne.

      Men from England bought and sold me,

      Paid my price in paltry gold;

      But, though theirs they have enrolled me,

      Minds are never to be sold.

      Still in thought as free as ever,

      What are England's rights? I ask;

      Me from delights to sever,

      Me to torture, me to task?

      Fleecy locks and dark complexion

      Cannot forfeit nature's claim;

      Skins may differ, but affection

      Dwells in white and black the same.

      Why did all-creating nature

      Make the plant for which we toil?

      Sighs must fan it – tears must water,

      Sweat of ours must dress the soil.

      Hark! Ye masters, iron-hearted,

      Lolling at your jovial boards —

      Think how many backs have smarted

      For the sweets your cane affords!

      Hark! He answers. Wild tornadoes

      Strewing yonder seas with wrecks,

      Wasting towns, plantations, meadows,

      Are the voice with which he speaks;

      He, foreseeing what vexations

      Afric's sons should undergo,

      Fixed their tyrant's habitations

      Where his whirlwinds answer – No!

      By our blood in Afric wasted,

      Ere our necks received the chain,

      By the miseries we have tasted

      Crossing in your barks the main;

      By our sufferings since ye brought us

      To the man-degrading mart —

      All, sustained by patience, taught us,

      Only by a broken heart.

      Count our nation brutes no longer,

      Till some reason ye shall find

      Worthier of regard, and stronger

      Than the color of the kind;

      Slaves of gold, whose sordid dealings

      Tarnish all your boasted powers,

      Prove that ye have human feelings

      Ere ye proudly question ours!

      Time passed on, and Tom and I, and Mr. and Mrs. Sutherland, still continued to occupy the same house. The Lord blessed the entire household, and none of us had ever cause to regret the steps we had taken and carried out with such speed. We enlisted heart and soul in the grand anti-slavery movement, and blew the bellows with all our might to help on the good cause of liberty and perfect freedom. The border ruffians in Kansas had been beaten back into the South, which was the first open fight between the two high contending parties. That put the angry South in no good humor. Like an ungovernable, high-strung virago, her temper was up, and she threatened secession, and dreamed of extending a new slave empire around the Gulf of Mexico. The abolitionists of the North were unyielding, and the two sections were drifting into war.

      In the midst of so much combustion and heated temper, it would have been remarkable, indeed, if there had been no "flame" that burst out here or there. In all impending struggles and revolutions there is always someone who voices the pent-up feelings of one party or the other, and sometimes of both. On the impulse of the moment, as it were by an act of inspiration, somebody steps out of the ranks, and becomes the leader on his side. The man who led the way on the part of the anti-slavery party, was the famous John Brown, who figured so largely in Kansas, and in 1859 seized upon the United States Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, in Virginia, while he was leading on a handful of white and colored men for the purpose of effecting a general rising of the slaves throughout the South. But the Virginians came pouring down upon him and his little band. Some were killed СКАЧАТЬ