The Boys of '61 Part 28

"Well, Mr. Brown, I am one."

Mr. Brown started involuntarily. He looked me all over from head to feet, giving a keen search. "'Pears how I shouldn't tink you could hab de heart to do it, sir."

"Do I look as though I should like to kill your little ones?"

"No, sir, I don't tink you would."

I told him who the Abolitionists were, and what they wished to do,-that they were friends of the slaves, and always had been. He grasped my hand, and said, "G.o.d bless you, sir." And then burst into hearty laughter.

Having been informed that it would be impossible to obtain a fowl of the negroes at that season of the year, I made the attempt; but though I offered treble the value, not one would part with a hen. They were looking forward to broods of chickens which would bring them in "heaps" of money in the fall of the year. The negro race understands the value of money quite as well as we who boast of Anglo-Saxon blood.

Entering the head-quarters of the commanding officer one day, I saw a thin, spare colored woman sitting before the fire. She nodded and smiled, ran her eyes over me, as if to take in every feature or peculiarity of my person and dress, then gazed into the fire and seemed absorbed in her own thoughts. A friend said, "That is our Sojourner Truth."

She had brought off several companies of negroes from the mainland, and had given a great deal of information concerning the movements of the Rebels. She had penetrated swamps, endured hardships, eluded Rebel pickets, visiting the plantations at midnight, and conversing with the slaves.

"I can travel all through the South, I reckon," she said.

"Are you not afraid that the Rebels will catch you?"

"Well, honey, I reckon they couldn't keep me," she said, with a smile.

She had exhibited such remarkable shrewdness and finesse in her exploits, and had rendered such valuable services to the department, that she was held in high esteem.

At that time, Mrs. Frances D. Gage, favorably known as a writer for the press, was residing on Paris Island. Seated one evening by the bright fire blazing on her hearth, I listened to her narrative of Sojourner Truth, who had been a slave, who had penetrated the far South in search of her lost children, who had run off many slaves to Canada, and who went round the country, impelled by the conviction that she had been called of G.o.d to testify against the sins of the people; hence her name, "Sojourner Truth."

The Nation's Ward.

The narration revealed traits of character, not unfrequently seen in the negro race, and it will not be out of place in this chapter, which is intended to give the position of a race at its lowest plane of life.

This wonderful woman lives in modern art. She is the original Libyan Sibyl, a statue by Mr. Story, which was more impressive than all others in the gallery of the World's Exhibition in London in 1862. Sojourner once called upon Mrs. Stowe, who has given us this account of the interview:[44]-

On her head she wore a bright Madras handkerchief, arranged as a turban, after the manner of her race. She seemed perfectly self-possessed and at her ease,-in fact, there was almost an unconscious superiority, not unmixed with a solemn twinkle of humor, in the odd, composed manner in which she looked down on me. Her whole air had at times a gloomy sort of drollery which impressed one strangely.

"So, this is you," she said.

"Yes," I answered.

"Well, honey, de Lord bless ye! I jes' thought I'd like to come an' have a look at ye. You's heerd o' me, I reckon?" she added.

"Yes, I think I have. You go about lecturing, do you not?"

"Yes, honey, that's what I do. The Lord has made me a sign unto this nation, an' I go round a-testifyin', an' showin' on 'em their sins agin my people."

So saying, she took a seat, and, stooping over and crossing her arms on her knees, she looked down on the floor, and appeared to fall into a sort of revery. Her great gloomy eyes and her dark face seemed to work with some undercurrent of feeling; she sighed deeply, and occasionally broke out,-

"O Lord! O Lord! Oh, the tears, an' the groans, an' the moans! O Lord!"

By this time I thought her manner so original that it might be worth while to call down my friends; and she seemed perfectly well pleased with the idea. An audience was what she wanted,-it mattered not whether high or low, learned or ignorant. She had things to say, and was ready to say them at all times, and to any one.

I called down Dr. Beecher, Professor Allen, and two or three other clergymen, who, together with my husband and family, made a roomful. No princess could have received a drawing-room with more composed dignity than Sojourner her audience. She stood among them calm and erect as one of her own native palm-trees waving alone in the desert. I presented one after another to her, and at last said,-

"Sojourner, this is Dr. Beecher. He is a very celebrated preacher."

"Is he?" she said, offering her hand in a condescending manner, and looking down on his white head. "Ye dear lamb, I'm glad to see ye! De Lord bless ye! I loves preachers. I'm a kind o' preacher myself."

"You are?" said Dr. Beecher. "Do you preach from the Bible?"

"No, honey, can't preach from de Bible,-can't read a letter."

"Why, Sojourner, what do you preach from, then?"

Her answer was given with a solemn power of voice, peculiar to herself, that hushed every one in the room.

"When I preaches, I has jest one text to preach from, an' I always preaches from this one. My text is, 'When I found Jesus.'"

"Well, you couldn't have a better one," said one of the ministers.

She paid no attention to him, but stood and seemed swelling with her own thoughts, and then began this narration:-

"Well, now, I'll jest have to go back, an' tell ye all about it. Ye see, we was all brought over from Africa, father an' mother an' I, an' a lot more of us; an' we was sold up an' down, an' hither an' yon; an' I can 'member, when I was a little thing, not bigger than this 'ere," pointing to her grandson, "how my ole mammy would sit out o' doors in the evenin', an' look up at the stars an' groan. She'd groan an' groan, an' says I to her,-

"'Mammy, what makes you groan so?'

"An' she'd say,-

"'Matter enough, chile! I'm groanin' to think o' my poor children: they don't know where I be, an' I don't know where they be: they looks up at the stars, an' I looks up at the stars, but I can't tell where they be.

"'Now,' she said, 'chile, when you're grown up, you may be sold way from your mother an' all your ole friends, an' have great troubles come on ye; an' when you has these troubles come on ye, ye jes' go to G.o.d, an' He'll help ye.'

"An' says I to her,-

"'Who is G.o.d, anyhow, mammy?'

"An' says she,-

"'Why, chile, you jes' look up dar! It's Him that made all dem!'

"Well, I didn't mind much 'bout G.o.d in them days. I grew up pretty lively an' strong, an' could row a boat, or ride a horse, or work round, an' do 'most anything.

"At last I got sold away to a real hard ma.s.sa an' missis. Oh, I tell you, they was hard! 'Peared like I couldn't please 'em nohow. An' then I thought o' what my old mammy told me about G.o.d; an' I thought I'd got into trouble, sure enough, an' I wanted to find G.o.d, an' I heerd some one tell a story about a man that met G.o.d on a threshin'-floor, an' I thought, 'Well an' good, I'll have a threshin'-floor, too.' So I went down in the lot, an' I threshed down a place real hard, an' I used to go down there every day, an' pray an' cry with all my might, a-prayin' to the Lord to make my ma.s.sa an' missis better, but it didn't seem to do no good; an' so says I, one day,-

"'O G.o.d, I been a-askin' ye, an' askin' ye, an askin' ye, for all this long time, to make my ma.s.sa an' missis better, an' you don't do it, an' what can be the reason? Why, maybe you can't. Well, I shouldn't wonder ef you couldn't. Well, now, I tell you, I'll make a bargain with you. Ef you'll help me git away from my ma.s.sa an' missis, I'll agree to be good; but ef you don't help me, I really don't think I can be. Now,' says I,'I want to git away; but the trouble's jest here: ef I try to git away in the night, I can't see; an' ef I try to git away in the daytime, they'll see me, an' be after me.'

"Then the Lord said to me, 'Get up two or three hours afore daylight, an' start off.'

"An' says I, 'Thank'ee, Lord! that's a good thought.'

"So up I got, about three o'clock in the mornin', an' I started an' travelled pretty fast, till, when the sun rose, I was clear away from our place an' our folks, an' out o' sight. An' then I begun to think I didn't know nothin' where to go. So I kneeled down, an' says I,-