Half a Century Part 10

CHAPTER XXII.

RECEPTION OF THE VISITER.

While preparing matter for the first number of the _Visiter_, I had time to think that so far as any organization was concerned, I stood alone. I could not work with Garrison on the ground that the Const.i.tution was pro-slavery, for I had abandoned that in 1832, when our church split on it and I went with the New School, who held that it was then anti-slavery. The Covenanters, before it was adopted, denounced it as a "Covenant with death and an agreement with h.e.l.l." I had long ago become familiar with the arguments on that side, and I concluded they were fallacious, and could not go back to them even for a welcome into the abolition ranks.

The political action wing of the anti-slavery party had given formal notice that no woman need apply for a place among them. True, there was a large minority who dissented from this action, but there was division enough, without my furnishing a cause for contention. So I took pains to make it understood that I belonged to no party. I was fighting slavery on the frontier plan of Indian warfare, where every man is Captain-lieutenants, all the corporals and privates of his company. I was like the Israelites in the days when there was no king, and "every man did that which, was right in his own eyes."

It seemed good unto me to support James G. Birney, for President, and to promulgate the principles of the platform on which he stood in the last election. This I would do, and no man had the right or power to stop me. My paper was a six column weekly, with a small Roman letter head, my motto, "Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward," the names of my candidates at the head of the editorial column and the platform inserted as standing matter.

It was quite an insignificant looking sheet, but no sooner did the American eagle catch sight of it, than he swooned and fell off his perch. Democratic roosters straightened out their necks and ran screaming with terror. Whig c.o.o.ns scampered up trees and barked furiously. The world was falling and every one had "heard it, saw it, and felt it."

It appeared that on some inauspicious morning each one of three-fourths of the secular editors from Maine to Georgia had gone to his office suspecting nothing, when from some corner of his exchange list there sprang upon him such a horror as he had little thought to see.

A woman had started a political paper! A woman! Could he believe his eyes? A woman! Instantly he sprang to his feet and clutched his pantaloons, shouted to the a.s.sistant editor, when he, too, read and grasped frantically at his ca.s.simeres, called to the reporters and pressmen and typos and devils, who all rushed in, heard the news, seized their nether garments and joined the general chorus, "My breeches! oh, my breeches!" Here was a woman resolved to steal their pantaloons, their trousers, and when these were gone they might cry "Ye have taken away my G.o.ds, and what have I more?" The imminence of the peril called for prompt action, and with one accord they shouted, "On to the breach, in defense of our breeches! Repel the invader or fill the trenches with our n.o.ble dead."

"That woman shall not have _my_ pantaloons," cried the editor of the big city daily; "nor my pantaloons" said the editor of the dignified weekly; "nor my pantaloons," said he who issued manifestos but once a month; "nor mine," "nor mine," "nor mine," chimed in the small fry of the country towns.

Even the religious press could not get past the tailor shop, and "pantaloons" was the watchword all along the line. George D. Prentiss took up the cry, and gave the world a two-third column leader on it, stating explicitly, "She is a man all but the pantaloons." I wrote to him asking a copy of the article, but received no answer, when I replied in rhyme to suit his case:

Perhaps you have been busy Horsewhipping Sal or Lizzie, Stealing some poor man's baby, Selling its mother, may-be.

You say--and you are witty-- That I--and, tis a pity-- Of manhood lack but dress; But you lack manliness, A body clean and new, A soul within it, too.

Nature must change her plan Ere you can be a man.

This turned the tide of battle. One editor said, "Brother George, beware of sister Jane." Another, "Prentiss has found his match." He made no reply, and it was not long until I thought the pantaloon argument was dropped forever.

There was, however, a bright side to the reception of the _Visiter_.

Horace Greeley gave it respectful recognition, so did N.P. Willis and Gen. Morris in the _Home Journal_. Henry Peterson's _Sat.u.r.day Evening Post, G.o.dey's Lady's Book_, Graham's and Sargeant's magazines, and the anti-slavery papers, one and all, gave it pleasant greeting, while there were other editors who did not, in view of this innovation, forget that they were American gentlemen.

There were some saucy notices from "John Smith," editor of _The Great West_, a large literary sheet published in Cincinnati. After John and I had pelted each other with paragraphs, a private letter told me that she, who had then won a large reputation as John Smith, was Celia, who afterwards became my very dear friend until the end of her lovely life, and who died the widow of another dear friend, Wm. H. Burleigh.

In the second number of the _Visiter_, James H. McClelland, as secretary of the county convention, published its report and contributed an able article, thus recognizing it as the much needed county organ of the Liberty Party.

CHAPTER XXIII.

MY CROOKED TELESCOPE.

In the autumn of 1847, Dr. Robert Mitch.e.l.l, of Indiana, Pa., was tried in Pittsburg, in the United States Court, before Judge Grier, for the crime of harboring fugitive slaves. In an old cabin ten miles from Indiana, on one of the doctor's farms, some colored men had taken refuge and worked as harvest hands in the neighborhood. To it came the sheriff at midnight with a posse, and after as desperate a resistance as unarmed men could make, two were captured. On one of these was found a note:

"Kill a sheep and give Jerry the half.

ROB'T MITCh.e.l.l."

The name of the man who had the note was Jerry. It was addressed to a farmer who kept sheep for the doctor, so it was conclusive evidence of the act charged, and the only defense possible was want of knowledge.

There was no proof that Dr. Mitch.e.l.l knew Jerry to be a slave, none, surely, that he knew him to be the property of plaintiff, who was bound to give notice of ownership before he could be ent.i.tled to damages from defendant.

This defense Judge Grier overruled, by deciding that no notice was required, the law presumed a guilty knowledge on the part of defendant.

Under this ruling Dr. Mitch.e.l.l was fined $5,000 and the costs, which were $5,000 additional. His homestead and a magnificent tract of pine land lying on the northern slope of the Alleghenies, were sold by the sheriff of Indiana county to pay the penalty of this act of Christian charity; but the Dr. said earnestly, "I'll do it again, if they take every dollar I have."

This ruling was alarming, for under it, it was unsafe either to sell or give food or lodging to a stranger. The alarm was general, and even pro-slavery men regretted that this necessary act of justice should fall so heavily on so good and gentle a man. There was much unfavorable comment, but all in private, for the Pittsburg press quailed before Judge Grier, and libel laws were the weapon with which he most loved to defend the dignity of the bench. One editor he had kept in jail three months and ruined his business. Col. Hiram Kane was a brilliant writer, a poet and pungent paragraphist, and had at one time criticised some of Judge Grier's decisions, when by a libel suit the Judge had broken up his business and kept him in jail eighteen months. Public sentiment was on Kane's side, and he had an ovation on his release, when he became city editor of the _Journal_.

There was disappointment that I had not criticised Judge Grier's course in the first number of the _Visiter_, but this was part of my plan. In the second number I stated that there had been for a long time a great legal luminary visible in the Pennsylvania heavens, which had suddenly disappeared. I had been searching for him for several weeks with the best telescopes in the city, and had about given him up as a lost star, when I bethought me of Paddy, who had heated his gun-barrel and bent it around a tree so that he might be able to shoot around corners. Paddy's idea was so excellent that I had adopted it and made a crooked telescope, by which I had found that luminary almost sixty degrees below our moral horizon. From this I proceeded to the merits of the case.

Judge Grier and Dr. Mitch.e.l.l were both elders in the Presbyterian church. The Judge administered to men the eucharist oath to follow Christ, then usurped the law-making power of the United States to punish them for obeying one of the plainest precepts of the Master.

The article seemed to throw him into a furious pa.s.sion. He threatened to sue Mr. Riddle for having the _Visiter_ printed and sold in his office, and, as for me, I was to suffer all the pains and penalties which law and public scorn could inflict. He demanded a satisfactory retraction and apology as the least atonement he could accept for the insult. These Mr. Riddle promised in my name, and I did not hesitate to make the promise good.

My next article was headed "An Apology," and in it I stated the circ.u.mstances which had called it out, and the pleasant prospect of my being sent to Mount Airy (our county jail) in case this, my apology, was not satisfactory. I should of course do my best to satisfy his honor, but in case of failure, should take comfort in the fact that the Mount would make a good observatory. From that height I should be able to use my telescope much better than in my present valley of humiliation.

Indeed, the mere prospect had so improved my gla.s.s, that I had caught a new view of our sunken star, and to-day, this dispenser of justice, this gentleman with the high sense of honor, was a criminal under sentence of death by the divine law. "He who stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death."

Judge Grier had helped a gang of thieves to steal Jerry, whose ancestors had been stolen in Africa. The original thief sold all he could sell--the t.i.tle of a thief--and as the stream cannot rise above the fountain, Jerry's master held the same t.i.tle to him that any man would to Judge Grier's horse, provided he had stolen it. The purchaser of a stolen horse acquired no t.i.tle in him, and the purchaser of a stolen man acquired no t.i.tle in him. The man who helped another steal a horse, was a horse thief, and the man who helped another steal a man, was a man thief, condemned to death by divine law. Jerry, after having been once stolen, had recovered possession of himself, and his master and other thieves had re-stolen him! Judge Grier, with full knowledge of this fact, had prost.i.tuted law for the benefit of the thieves.

Nothing more was heard of a libel suit. Two years after, James McMasters was sued for harboring a fugitive; was to be tried before Grier, and spoke to his lawyer about summoning the editor of the _Visiter_. The attorney exclaimed:

"Oh bring her, by all means! No matter what she knows, or whether she knows anything; bring her into court, and I'll win the case for you.

Grier is more afraid of her than of the devil."

The editor was summoned, gave testimony, and found Judge Grier a most courteous and considerate gentleman, with no signs of fear. The case hung on the question of notice. The Judge reversed his former decision, and those who were apt to feed beggars, breathed more freely.

A case was tried for the remanding of a slave, and lawyer Snowden appeared for the master. The _Visiter_ sketched the lawyer as his client's dog, Towser; a dog of the blood-hound breed, with a brand new bra.s.s collar, running with his nose to the ground, while his owner clapped his hands and shouted: "Seek him, seek him Towser!"

This caught the fancy of the street boys, who called him, "Towser, where's your collar?" "Seek him, Towser." He was the last Pittsburg lawyer who took a case against a slave, and public sentiment had so advanced that there never afterwards was a fugitive taken out of the county.

CHAPTER XXIV.

MINT, c.u.mMIN AND ANNIS.

While the bench and bar were thus demanding the attention of the _Visiter_, the pulpit was examining its morals with a microscope, and defending the sum of all villainies as a Bible inst.i.tution. The American churches, with three exceptions, not only neglected "the weightier matters of the law, judgment and mercy," but were the main defense of the grossest injustice, the most revolting cruelty; and, to maintain an appearance of sanct.i.ty, were particularly devout and searching in the investigation of small sins.

A religions contemporary discovered that the _Visiter_ did actually advertise "Jayne's Expectorant," and such an expectoration of pious reprehension as this did call forth! The _Visiter_ denied that the advertis.e.m.e.nt was immoral, and carried the war into Africa--that old man-stealing Africa--and there took the ground that chattel slavery never did exist among the Jews; that what we now charge upon them as such was a system of bonded servitude; that the contract was originally between master and servant; the consideration of the labor paid to the servant; that in all cases of transfer, the master sold to another that portion of the time and labor of the servant, which were still due; that there was no hint of any man selling a free man into slavery for the benefit of the seller; that the servants bought from "the heathen around about," were bought from themselves, or in part at least, for their benefit, to bring them under general law and into the church; that nothing like American slavery was ever known in the days of Moses, or any other day than that of this great Republic, since our slavery was "the vilest that ever saw the sun," John Wesley being witness.

The _Visiter_ cited the purchase by Joseph of the people of Egypt, and Leviticus xxv, x.x.xix: "If thy brother be waxen poor and sell himself unto thee." The Bible had not then been changed to suit the exigencies of slavery. In later editions, "sell himself" is converted into "be sold," but as the pa.s.sage then stood it was a sledge-hammer with which one might beat the whole pro-slavery Bible argument into atoms, and while the _Visiter_ used it with all the force it could command, it took the ground that if the Bible did sanction slavery, the Bible must be wrong, since nothing could make slavery right.

CHAPTER XXV.

FREE SOIL PARTY.