A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin. Гарриет Бичер-Стоу

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СКАЧАТЬ then separated from me, and put up in her turn. She was bought by a man named Isaac R., residing in Montgomery County [Maryland], and then I was offered to the assembled purchasers. My mother, half distracted with the parting forever from all her children, pushed through the crowd, while the bidding for me was going on, to the spot where R. was standing. She fell at his feet, and clung to his knees, entreating him, in tones that a mother only could command, to buy her baby as well as herself, and spare to her one of her little ones at least. Will it, can it be believed, that this man, thus appealed to, was capable not merely of turning a deaf ear to her supplication, but of disengaging himself from her with such violent blows and kicks as to reduce her to the necessity of creeping out of his reach, and mingling the groan of bodily suffering with the sob of a breaking heart?

      Now, all these incidents that have been given are real incidents of slavery, related by those who know slavery by the best of all tests—experience; and they are given by men who have earned a character in freedom which makes their word as good as the word of any man living.

      The case of Lewis Clark might be called a harder one than common. The case of Douglass is probably a very fair average specimen.

      The writer has conversed, in her time, with a very considerable number of liberated slaves, many of whom stated that their own individual lot had been comparatively a mild one; but she never talked with one who did not let fall, first or last, some incident which he had observed, some scene which he had witnessed, which went to show some most horrible abuse of the system; and, what was most affecting about it, the narrator often evidently considered it so much a matter of course as to mention it incidentally, without any particular emotion.

      It is supposed by many that the great outcry among those who are opposed to slavery comes from a morbid reading of unauthenticated accounts gotten up in abolition papers, &c. This idea is a very mistaken one. The accounts which tell against the slave-system are derived from the continual living testimony of the poor slave himself; often from that of the fugitives from slavery who are continually passing through our Northern cities.

      As a specimen of some of the incidents thus developed, is given the following fact of recent occurrence, related to the author by a lady in Boston. This lady, who was much in the habit of visiting the poor, was sent for, a month or two since, to see a mulatto woman who had just arrived at a colored boarding-house near by, and who appeared to be in much dejection of mind. A little conversation showed her to be a fugitive. Her history was as follows: She, with her brother, were, as is often the case, both the children and slaves of their master. At his death they were left to his legitimate daughter as her servants, and treated with as much consideration as very common kind of people might be expected to show to those who were entirely and in every respect at their disposal.

      The wife of her brother ran away to Canada; and as there was some talk of selling her and her child, in consequence of some embarrassment in the family affairs, her brother, a fine-spirited young man, determined to effect her escape, also, to a land of liberty. He concealed her for some time in the back part of an obscure dwelling in the city, till he could find an opportunity to send her off. While she was in this retreat, he was indefatigable in his attentions to her, frequently bringing her fruit and flowers, and doing everything he could to beguile the weariness of her imprisonment.

      At length, the steward of a vessel, whom he had obliged, offered to conceal him on board the ship, and give him a chance to escape. The noble-hearted fellow, though tempted by an offer which would enable him immediately to join his wife, to whom he was tenderly attached, preferred to give this offer to his sister, and during the absence of the captain of the vessel she and her child were brought on board and secreted.

      The captain, when he returned and discovered what had been done, was very angry, as the thing, if detected, would have involved him in very serious difficulties. He declared, at first, that he would send the woman up into town to jail; but, by her entreaties and those of the steward, was induced to wait till evening, and send word to her brother to come and take her back. After dark the brother came on board, and, instead of taking his sister away, began to appeal to the humanity of the captain in the most moving terms. He told his sister’s history and his own, and pleaded eloquently his desire for her liberty. The captain had determined to be obdurate, but, alas! he was only a man. Perhaps he had himself a wife and child—perhaps he felt that, were he in the young man’s case, he would do just so for his sister. Be it as it may, he was at last overcome. He said to the young man, “I must send you away from my ship; I’ll put off a boat and see you got into it, and you must row off, and never let me see your faces again; and if, after all, you should come back and get on board, it will be your fault, and not mine.”

      So, in the rain and darkness, the young man and his sister and child were lowered over the side of the vessel, and rowed away. After a while the ship weighed anchor, but before she reached Boston it was discovered that the woman and child were on board.

      The lady to whom this story was related was requested to write a letter, in certain terms, to a person in the city whence the fugitive had come, to let the brother know of her safe arrival.

      The fugitive was furnished with work, by which she could support herself and child, and the lady carefully attended to her wants for a few weeks.

      One morning she came in, with a good deal of agitation, exclaiming, “O, ma’am, he’s come! George is come!” And in a few minutes the young man was introduced.

      The lady who gave this relation belongs to the first circles of Boston society; she says that she never was more impressed by the personal manners of any gentleman than by those of this fugitive brother. So much did he have the air of a perfect, finished gentleman, that she felt she could not question him with regard to his escape with the familiarity with which persons of his condition are commonly approached; and it was not till he requested her to write a letter for him, because he could not write himself, that she could realize that this fine specimen of manhood had been all his life a slave.

      The remainder of the history is no less romantic. The lady had a friend in Montreal, whither George’s wife had gone; and, after furnishing money to pay their expenses, she presented them with a letter to this gentleman, requesting the latter to assist the young man in finding his wife. When they landed at Montreal, George stepped on shore and presented this letter to the first man he met, asking him if he knew to whom it was directed. The gentleman proved to be the very person to whom the letter was addressed. He knew George’s wife, brought him to her without delay, so that, by return mail, the lady had the satisfaction of learning the happy termination of the adventure.

      This is but a specimen of histories which are continually transpiring; so that those who speak of slavery can say, “We speak that which we do know, and testify that we have seen.”

      But we shall be told the slaves are all a lying race, and that these are lies which they tell us. There are some things, however, about these slaves, which cannot lie. Those deep lines of patient sorrow upon the face; that attitude of crouching and humble subjection; that sad, habitual expression of hope deferred, in the eye—would tell their story, if the slave never spoke.

      It is not long since the writer has seen faces such as might haunt one’s dreams for weeks.

      Suppose a poor, worn-out mother, sickly, feeble and old—her hands worn to the bone with hard, unpaid toil—whose nine children have been sold to the slave-trader, and whose tenth soon is to be sold, unless by her labor as washerwoman she can raise nine hundred dollars! Such are the kind of cases constantly coming to one’s knowledge—such are the witnesses which will not let us sleep.

      Doubt has been expressed whether such a thing as an advertisement for a man, “dead or alive,” like the advertisement for George Harris, was ever published in the Southern States. The scene of the story in which that occurs is supposed СКАЧАТЬ