Autographs for Freedom Part 16

Self-love has fixed the chain around the arm of every leader and every soldier in the American anti-slavery army. Where would William Lloyd Garrison have been to-day, if any combination of circ.u.mstances could have shut in his soul's deep hatred of oppression, and prevented its finding utterance in burning words? He would have been dead and rotten. It is necessary to his own existence that he should work,--work for the slave; and in his work he gratifies all the strongest instincts of his nature, more completely than even the grossest sensualist can gratify _his_, by unlimited indulgence.

Gerritt Smith, too. Suppose he was compelled to h.o.a.rd his princely fortune, or spend it as most others do! O dear! what a dyspeptic we should have in six months; and all the hydropathic inst.i.tutes in the country could never keep him alive five years.

John P. Hale would soon be done with his rotund person and jovial face, if he could no longer send the sharp arrows of his wit and sarcasm into the consciences of his human-whipping neighbors.

It is a necessity of all great nations to hate meanness, and nothing under G.o.d's heaven ever was so mean as American slavery. Think of it.

_Men_ who swagger around with pistols and bowie-knifes to avenge their insulted honor, if any one should question it,--imagine one turning up his sleeves to horsewhip an old woman for burning his steak, or pocketing her wages, earned at the wash-tub!

No one with a soul above that of a pig-louse, could help loathing the system, the instant he saw it in its native meanness. Then, in order to keep his own self-respect,--to gratify the love of the good and true in his own soul, he _must_ express that loathing.

No disinterestedness about doing right, for n.o.body can be so much interested in the act as the doer of it.

Wrong-doing is the only possible self-abnegation, of which the whole range of thought admits.

All the humiliation and agony of the Saviour himself, were necessary to himself. Nothing less could have expressed the infinite love of the Divine nature; and in working out a most perfect righteousness for those he loved, he also wrought out a most perfect happiness for himself.

The eternal law of G.o.d links the happiness of all the creatures made in His image in an electric chain, united in the Divine love; and He, who has "a fellow-feeling for our infirmities," has given us a fellow-feeling with the sufferings of each other. So that no soul in which the Divine image is not totally obscured, can know of the misery of another, without a sympathetic throb of sorrow.

The true heart in Maine _cannot_ know that the slave-mother in Georgia is weeping for her children, torn from her arms by avarice, without feeling her anguish palpitating in its inmost core.

It is the pulsations of the sympathetic heart which stretches out the hand to interfere between her and her aggressor; and abolitionists are just seeking a soft pillow that they may "sleep o' nights."

It is selfishness, I tell you, all selfishness! The great whale when she gives up her own large life to protect her young one, and the little wren when she carries all the nice t.i.t bits to her babies, are as true to themselves as the old pig when she shoulders all her little family out of the trough.

The whale enjoys death, and the wren her little fellows' supper, with a better zest than an old grunter does her corn, and Wm. Gildersten in spending money and laboring to prevent any more scenes of brutal violence in his State, by punishing the one past, gratifies his own loves and longings quite as much as Judge Grier in grunting out his wrath against all lovers of liberty.

The one would enjoy being hanged for the cause of G.o.d and Humanity, more than the other would the luxury of hanging him, even if he could have _all_ the pleasure to himself,--be not only judge and persecutor, as he prefers, but marshal, jailor, and hangman to boot.

More than this, every creature, so far as other creatures are concerned, has a right to be happy in his own way. Nero had as much right to wish for power to cut off all the heads in Italy at one blow, as an innocent pig to wish for capacity to eat all the corn in the world. Mankind has no right to punish either for the desire or its manifestation. They should only make fences to prevent the accomplishment of the wish.

Americans have no right to punish Judge Grier for wishing to persecute everybody who attempts to enforce State laws against murderous a.s.saults by _his_ officers. They should content themselves with fencing his Honor in, or, if necessary, putting a ring in his nose. He has as much right to be Judge Grier as George Washington had to be George Washington, and is no more selfish in following the instincts of his nature, than Washington was in following his.

Without any great respect, I am your friend,

[Ill.u.s.tration: (signature) Jane G. Swisshelm]

On Freedom.

Once I wished I might rehea.r.s.e Freedom's paean in my verse, That the slave who caught the strain Should throb until he snapt his chain.

But the Spirit said, "Not so; Speak it not, or speak it low; Name not lightly to be said, Gift too precious to be prayed, Pa.s.sion not to be exprest But by heaving of the breast; Yet,--would'st thou the mountain find Where this deity is shrined, Who gives the seas and sunset-skies Their unspent beauty of surprise, And, when it lists him, waken can Brute and savage into man; Or, if in thy heart he shine, Blends the starry fates with thine, Draws angels nigh to dwell with thee, And makes thy thoughts archangels be; Freedom's secret would'st thou know?-- Right thou feelest rashly do.

[Ill.u.s.tration: (signature) R. W. Emerson.]

Mary Smith,

AN ANTI-SLAVERY REMINISCENCE.

Some years ago a free colored woman, who was born in New England, and had gone to the south to attend upon some family, was shipwrecked, as she was returning northwards, on the coast of North Carolina. She, however, as well as some of the crew of the vessel, was saved. The half-civilized people of that region rendered some a.s.sistance to the shipwrecked party; but Mary Smith was detained by one of the natives as a slave.

The poor woman succeeded in getting a letter written to some person in Boston, in which the particulars of her story were narrated. Either this letter, or one afterwards written, contained references to people in Boston who were acquainted with her.

It was not very easy, even with these references, to get sufficient evidence to prove the freedom and ident.i.ty of an obscure person, who had been away from Boston for some years. A strong interest, however, was felt in the case wherever it became known. And Rev. Samuel Snowden, well-remembered by the name of Father Snowden, with his usual indomitable energy and perseverance in aiding persons of his own color in distress, succeeded in finding people in Boston who were well acquainted with Mary Smith, and recollected her having left that place to go to the south. Pursuing his inquiries with great diligence, he ascertained the place of her birth, which was somewhere in New Hampshire. I forget the name of the town.

Affidavits were now procured, which established the place of Mary Smith's birth, her residence in Boston, and the time of her departure for the south, and other circ.u.mstances to corroborate her story.

Edward Everett, who was at this time Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, at the request of Mary Smith's friends, forwarded the doc.u.ments they had obtained, accompanied with an urgent letter from himself, demanding her release from captivity, on the ground of her being a free citizen of Ma.s.sachusetts.

The Governor of North Carolina replied very courteously to Governor Everett. He admitted the right of the woman to her freedom, and acknowledged that no person in North Carolina could lawfully detain her as a slave. But, at the same time he said, that as Governor, he had no power to interfere with the person who held her in custody. The decision on her right to freedom, depended on another department of the government. He promised, however, to write to the man who held her, and solicit her release.

The remonstrances of the Governor of North Carolina proved successful.

Mary Smith soon arrived in Boston. And some of her old acquaintances who had given the evidence which led to her release, hastened to meet her and congratulate her on her escape from bondage. At the meeting they looked on her for some moments with astonishment, for they could trace in her features no resemblance to their former companion. A speedy explanation took place, from which it appeared that all the doc.u.ments sent to North Carolina related to one Mary Smith; but the woman whose liberty they procured, was another Mary Smith.

Governor Everett had a hearty laugh when Father Snowden told him the happy result of his letter to the Governor of North Carolina.

The moral of this story is, that a plain, common name, is sometimes more useful to its owner, than a more brilliant one.

[Ill.u.s.tration: (signature) S. E. Sewall]

NOTE.--I have endeavored to give the facts of Mary Smith's story with exact accuracy, writing from memory only, without the aid of anything written. It is possible I may be mistaken in some immaterial circ.u.mstance.

Freedom--Liberty.

Freedom and Liberty are synonymes. Freedom is an essence; Liberty, an accident. Freedom is born with a man; Liberty may be conferred on him.

Freedom is progressive; Liberty is circ.u.mscribed. Freedom is the gift of G.o.d; Liberty, the creature of society. Liberty may be taken away from a man; but, on whatsoever soul Freedom may alight, the course of that soul is thenceforth onward and upward; society, customs, laws, armies, are but as wythes in its giant grasp, if they oppose, instruments to work its will, if they a.s.sent. Human kind welcome the birth of a free soul with reverence and shoutings, rejoicing in the advent of a fresh off-shoot of the Divine Whole, of which this is but a part.

[Ill.u.s.tration: (signature) James McCune Smith]

NEW-YORK, Nov. 22d, 1853.

An Aspiration.

You want my autograph. Permit me, then, to sign myself the friend of every effort for human emanc.i.p.ation in our own country, and throughout the world. G.o.d speed the day when all chains shall fall from the limbs and from the soul, and universal liberty co-exist with universal righteousness and universal peace. In this work I am