The Freedmen's Book Part 5

This letter is still in existence, and some of the words are blotted out by tears that fell while the n.o.ble captive was writing it. Bonaparte paid no attention to this manly appeal. After weary waiting, Toussaint wrote again:--

"First Consul, it is a misfortune to me that I am not known to you. If you had thoroughly known me while I was in St. Domingo, you would have done me more justice. I am not learned; I am ignorant: but my heart is good. My father showed me the road to virtue and honor, and I am very strong in my conscience in that matter. If I had not been so devoted to the French government I should not be here. All my life I have been in active service, and now I am a miserable prisoner, without power to do anything, sunk in grief, and with health impaired. I ask you for my freedom, that I may labor for the support of my family. For my venerable father, now a hundred and five years old, who is blind, and needs my a.s.sistance; for my dearly loved wife, who, separated from me, cannot, I fear, endure the afflictions that overwhelm her; and for my cherished family, who have made the happiness of my life. I call on your greatness. Let your heart be softened by my misfortunes."

This touching appeal met with the same fate as the first. Bonaparte even had the meanness to forbid the prisoner's wearing an officer's uniform.

When he asked for a change of clothing, the cast-off suit of a soldier and a pair of old boots were sent him. There seemed to be a deliberate system of heaping contempt upon him. The daily sum allowed for his food was diminished, and the cold winds of autumn began to howl round his dungeon. They doubtless thought that so old a man, accustomed to tropical warmth, and the devotion of a loving family, would die under the combined influence of solitude, cold, and scanty food. But his iron const.i.tution withstood the severe test. The next step was to deprive him of his faithful servant, Mars Plaisir. Seeing him weep bitterly, Toussaint said to him: "Would I could console thee under this cruel separation. Be a.s.sured I shall never forget thy faithful services. Carry my last farewell to my wife and family."

The farewell never reached them. Mars Plaisir was lodged in another prison, lest he should tell of the slow murder that was going on in the Castle of Joux. Toussaint's supply of food was gradually diminished, till he had barely enough to keep him alive,--merely a little meal daily, which he had to prepare for himself in an earthen jug. The walls sparkled with frost, and the floor was slippery with ice, except immediately around his little fire. Thus he pa.s.sed through a most miserable winter. He was thin as a skeleton; but still he did not die.

As a last resort, the governor of the castle went away and took the keys of the dungeon with him. He was gone three days; and when he returned, Toussaint was lying stiff and cold on his heap of straw. Doctors were called in to examine him, and they certified that he died of apoplexy.

This was in April, 1803, after he had been more than eight months in that horrid dungeon, and when he was a little more than sixty years old.

The body was buried in the chapel under the castle. It was given out to the world that the deceased prisoner was a revolted slave, who had been guilty of every species of robbery and cruelty; and that he had been thrown into prison for plotting to deliver the island of St. Domingo into the hands of the English.

When the family of Toussaint l'Ouverture were informed of his death, they were overwhelmed with grief, though they had no idea of the horrid circ.u.mstances connected with it. The two oldest sons tried to escape from France, but were seized and imprisoned. The French government feared the consequences of their returning to St. Domingo. The youngest son soon after died of consumption. Madame Toussaint sank under the weight of her great afflictions. Her health became very feeble, and at times her mind wandered. When the power of Bonaparte was overthrown, and a new government introduced into France, a pension was granted for her support, and her two sons were released from prison. She died in their arms in 1816.

There was great consternation in St. Domingo when it was known that Toussaint l'Ouverture had been kidnapped and carried off. There was an attempt at mutiny among the black soldiers; but the leaders were shot by the French, and the spirit of insurrection was put down for a time. No tidings could be obtained from Toussaint, and after a while he was generally believed to be dead. But his prediction was fulfilled. The tree of Liberty, that had been cut down, did sprout again. Bonaparte sent new troops to St. Domingo to supply the place of those cut off by yellow fever. The French officers frequently subjected black soldiers to the lash, a punishment which had never been inflicted upon them since the days of Slavery. An active slave-trade was carried on with the other French colonies, where Slavery had been restored, and people were frequently smuggled away from St. Domingo and sold. The mulattoes found out that people of their color were sold, as well as blacks. They had formerly acted against their mothers' race, not because they were worse than other men, but because they had the same human nature that other men have. Being free born, and many of them educated and wealthy, and slaveholders also, they despised the blacks, who had always been slaves; but when Slavery touched people of their own color, they were ready to act with the negroes against the whites. Toussaint's generals, though they still held their old rank in the army, grew more and more distrustful of the French. When General Christophe accepted an invitation to dine with General Le Clerc, he ordered his troops to be in readiness for a sudden blow. The French officer who sat next him at table urged him to drink a great deal of wine; but Christophe was on his guard, and kept his wits about him. At last he repulsed the offer of wine with great rudeness, whereupon Le Clerc summoned his guard to be in readiness, and began to accuse Toussaint of treachery to the whites.

"Treachery!" exclaimed the indignant Christophe. "Have you not broken oaths and treaties, and violated the sacred rights of hospitality? Those whose blood flows for our liberty are rewarded with prison, banishment, death. Friends, soldiers, heroes of our mountains, are no longer around me. Toussaint, the pride of our race, the terror of our enemies, whose genius led us from Slavery to Liberty, who adorned peace with lovely virtues, whose glory fills the world, was put in irons, like the vilest criminal!"

General Le Clerc deemed it prudent to preserve outward composure, for General Christophe had informed him that troops were in readiness to protect him. But notwithstanding many ominous symptoms of discontent among the blacks and mulattoes, he blindly persevered in carrying out the cruel policy of Bonaparte. Shiploads of slaves were brought into St.

Domingo and openly sold. Then came a decree authorizing slaveholders to resume their old authority over the blacks. Bitterly did Toussaint's officers regret having trusted to the promises of the French authorities. The consciousness of having been deceived made the fire of freedom burn all the more fiercely in their souls. The blacks were everywhere ready to die rather than be slaves again. In November, 1803, General Christophe published a doc.u.ment in which he said:--

"The independence of St. Domingo is proclaimed. Toward men who do us justice we will act as brothers. But we have sworn not to listen with clemency to any one who speaks to us of Slavery. We will be inexorable, perhaps even cruel, toward those who come from Europe to bring among us death and servitude. No sacrifice is too costly, and all means are lawful, when men find that freedom, the greatest of all blessings, is to be wrested from them."

The closing scenes of the revolution were too horrible to be described.

General Rochambeau, who commanded the French army after the death of General Le Clerc, was a tyrannical and cruel tool of the slaveholders.

Everywhere colored men were seized and executed without forms of law.

Maurepas, who had been one of Toussaint's most distinguished generals, was seized on suspicion of favoring insurrection. His epaulets were nailed to his shoulders with spikes, he was suspended from the yard-arm of a vessel, while his wife and children, and four hundred of his black soldiers, were thrown over to the sharks before his eyes. The trees were hung with the corpses of negroes. Some were torn to pieces by bloodhounds trained for the purpose; some were burnt alive. Sixteen of Toussaint's bravest generals were chained by the neck to the rocks of an uninhabited island, and left there to perish. Most of these victims were firm in the midst of their tortures, and died with the precious word Freedom on their lips. A mother, whose daughters were going to be executed, said to them: "Be thankful. You will not live to be the mothers of slaves."

I am happy to record that all the whites were not dest.i.tute of feeling.

Some sea-captains, who were ordered to take negroes out to sea and drown them, contrived to aid their escape to the mountains, or landed them on other sh.o.r.es.

The blacks, driven to desperation, became as cruel as their oppressors.

They visited upon white men, women, and children all the barbarities they had seen and suffered. The wife of General Paul, brother of Toussaint, was dragged from her peaceful home, and drowned by French soldiers. This murder made him perfectly crazy with revenge. Though naturally of a mild disposition, he thenceforth had no mercy on anybody of white complexion. His old father, Gaou-Guinou, who survived Toussaint about a year, was filled with the same spirit, and the last words he uttered were a malediction on the whites. The spirit of the infernal regions raged throughout all cla.s.ses, and it was all owing to the wickedness of Slavery.

On the last day of November, 1803, little more than a year after the abduction of Toussaint, the French were driven from the island, never more to return. The colony, which might have been a source of wealth to them, if Toussaint had been allowed to carry out his plans, was lost to France forever. St. Domingo became independent, under its old name of Hayti; and General Christophe, who was as able as Toussaint, but more ambitious, was proclaimed emperor. A law was pa.s.sed, and still remains in force, that no white man should own a foot of soil on the island. But white Americans and Europeans reside there, and transact various kinds of business under the protection of equal laws.

Perhaps it sometimes seemed to Toussaint, in the loneliness of his dungeon, as if all his great sacrifices and efforts for his oppressed race had been in vain. But they were not in vain. G.o.d raised him up to do a great work, which he faithfully performed; and his spirit is still "marching on." Slavery becomes more and more odious in the civilized world, and nation after nation abolishes it. Fifty years after the death of Toussaint all the slaves in the French colonies were emanc.i.p.ated. How his spirit must rejoice to look on the West Indies now!

In 1850 the grave of Toussaint l'Ouverture was discovered by some engineers at work on the Castle of Joux. His skull was placed on a shelf in the dungeon where he died, and is shown to travellers who visit the place.

For a long while great injustice was done to the memory of Toussaint l'Ouverture, and also to the blacks who fought so fiercely in resistance of Slavery; for the histories of St. Domingo were written by prejudiced French writers, or by equally prejudiced mulattoes. But at last the truth is made known. Candid, well-informed persons now acknowledge that the blacks of St. Domingo sinned cruelly because they were cruelly sinned against; and Toussaint l'Ouverture, seen in the light of his own actions, is acknowledged to be one of the greatest and best men the world has ever produced. A very distinguished English poet, named Wordsworth, has written an admirable sonnet to his memory. The celebrated Harriet Martineau, of England, has made him the hero of a beautiful novel. Wendell Phillips, one of the most eloquent speakers in the United States, has eulogized his memory in a n.o.ble lecture, delivered in various parts of the country, before thousands and thousands of hearers. And James Redpath has recently published in Boston a biography of Toussaint l'Ouverture, truthfully portraying the pure and great soul of that martyred hero.

Well may the Freedmen of the United States take pride in Toussaint l'Ouverture, as the man who made an opening of freedom for their oppressed race, and by the greatness of his character and achievements proved the capabilities of Black Men.

It is better to be a lean freeman than a fat slave.--_A Proverb in Hayti._

THE ASPIRATIONS OF MINGO.

A slave in one of our Southern States, named Mingo, was endowed with uncommon abilities. If he had been a white man, his talents would have secured him an honorable position; but being colored, his great intelligence only served to make him an object of suspicion. He was thrown into prison, to be sold. He wrote the following lines on the walls, which were afterward found and copied. A Southern gentleman sent them to a friend in Boston, as a curiosity, and they were published in the Boston Journal, many years ago. The night after Mingo wrote them, he escaped from the slave-prison; but he was tracked and caught by bloodhounds, who tore him in such a shocking manner that he died. By that dreadful process his great soul was released from his enslaved body. His wife lived to be an aged woman, and was said to have many of his poems in her possession. Here are the lines he wrote in his agony while in prison:--

"Good G.o.d! and must I leave them now, My wife, my children, in their woe?

'Tis mockery to say I'm sold!

But I forget these chains so cold, Which goad my bleeding limbs; though high My reason mounts above the sky.

Dear wife, they cannot sell the rose Of love that in my bosom glows.

Remember, as your tears may start, They cannot sell the immortal part.

Thou Sun, which lightest bond and free, Tell me, I pray, is liberty The lot of those who n.o.blest feel, And oftest to Jehovah kneel?

Then I may say, but not with pride, I feel the rushings of the tide Of reason and of eloquence, Which strive and yearn for eminence.

I feel high manhood on me now, A spirit-glory on my brow; I feel a thrill of music roll, Like angel-harpings, through my soul; While poesy, with rustling wings, Upon my spirit rests and sings.

_He_ sweeps my heart's deep throbbing lyre, Who touched Isaiah's lips with fire."

May G.o.d forgive his oppressors.

BURY ME IN A FREE LAND.

BY FRANCES E. W. HARPER.

Make me a grave where'er you will, In a lowly plain or a lofty hill; Make it among earth's humblest graves, But not in a land where men are slaves.

I ask no monument proud and high, To arrest the gaze of the pa.s.sers by; All that my yearning spirit craves Is, Bury me not in a Land of Slaves.

PHILLIS WHEATLEY.

BY L. MARIA CHILD.

Phillis Wheatley was born in Africa, and brought to Boston, Ma.s.sachusetts, in the year 1761,--a little more than a hundred years ago. At that time the people in Ma.s.sachusetts held slaves. The wife of Mr. John Wheatley of Boston had several slaves; but they were getting too old to be very active, and she wanted to purchase a young girl, whom she could train up in such a manner as to make her a good domestic. She went to the slave-market for that purpose, and there she saw a little girl with no other clothing than a piece of dirty, ragged carpeting tied round her. She looked as if her health was feeble,--probably owing to her sufferings in the slave-ship, and to the fact of her having no one to care for her after she landed. Mrs. Wheatley was a kind, religious woman; and though she considered the sickly look of the child an objection, there was something so gentle and modest in the expression of her dark countenance, that her heart was drawn toward her, and she bought her in preference to several others who looked more robust. She took her home in her chaise, put her in a bath, and dressed her in clean clothes. They could not at first understand her; for she spoke an African dialect, sprinkled with a few words of broken English; and when she could not make herself understood, she resorted to a variety of gestures and signs. She did not know her own age, but, from her shedding her front teeth at that time, she was supposed to be about seven years old. She could not tell how long it was since the slave-traders tore her from her parents, nor where she had been since that time. The poor little orphan had probably gone through so much suffering and terror, and been so unable to make herself understood by anybody, that her mind had become bewildered concerning the past. She soon learned to speak English; but she could remember nothing about Africa, except that she used to see her mother pour out water before the rising sun. Almost all the ancient nations of the world supposed that a Great Spirit had his dwelling in the sun, and they worshipped that Spirit in various forms.

One of the most common modes of worship was to pour out water, or wine, at the rising of the sun, and to utter a brief prayer to the Spirit of that glorious luminary. Probably this ancient custom had been handed down, age after age, in Africa, and in that fashion the untaught mother of little Phillis continued to worship the G.o.d of her ancestors. The sight of the great splendid orb, coming she knew not whence, rising apparently out of the hills to make the whole world glorious with light, and the devout reverence with which her mother hailed its return every morning, might naturally impress the child's imagination so deeply, that she remembered it after she had forgotten everything else about her native land.

A wonderful change took place in the little forlorn stranger in the course of a year and a half. She not only learned to speak English correctly, but she was able to read fluently in any part of the Bible.

She evidently possessed uncommon intelligence and a great desire for knowledge. She was often found trying to make letters with charcoal on the walls and fences. Mrs. Wheatley's daughter, perceiving her eagerness to learn, undertook to teach her to read and write. She found this an easy task, for her pupil learned with astonishing quickness. At the same time she showed such an amiable, affectionate disposition, that all members of the family became much attached to her. Her grat.i.tude to her kind, motherly mistress was unbounded, and her greatest delight was to do anything to please her.

When she was about fourteen years old, she began to write poetry; and it was pretty good poetry, too. Owing to these uncommon manifestations of intelligence, and to the delicacy of her health, she was never put to hard household work, as was intended at the time of her purchase. She was kept constantly with Mrs. Wheatley and her daughter, employed in light and easy services for them. Her poetry attracted attention, and Mrs. Wheatley's friends lent her books, which she read with great eagerness. She soon acquired a good knowledge of geography, history, and English poetry; of the last she was particularly fond. After a while, they found she was trying to learn Latin, which she so far mastered as to be able to read it understandingly. There was no law in Ma.s.sachusetts against slaves learning to read and write, as there have been in many of the States; and her mistress, so far from trying to hinder her, did everything to encourage her love of learning. She always called her affectionately, "My Phillis," and seemed to be as proud of her attainments as if she had been her own daughter. She even allowed her to have a fire and light in her own chamber in the evening, that she might study and write down her thoughts whenever they came to her.

Phillis was of a very religious turn of mind, and when she was about sixteen she joined the Orthodox Church, that worshipped in the Old-South Meeting-house in Boston. Her character and deportment were such that she was considered an ornament to the church. Clergymen and other literary persons who visited at Mrs. Wheatley's took a good deal of notice of her. Her poems were brought forward to be read to the company, and were often much praised. She was not unfrequently invited to the houses of wealthy and distinguished people, who liked to show her off as a kind of wonder. Most young girls would have had their heads completely turned by so much flattery and attention; but seriousness and humility seemed to be natural to Phillis. She always retained the same gentle, modest deportment that had won Mrs. Wheatley's heart when she first saw her in the slave-market. Sometimes, when she went abroad, she was invited to sit at table with other guests; but she always modestly declined, and requested that a plate might be placed for her on a side-table. Being well aware of the common prejudice against her complexion, she feared that some one might be offended by her company at their meals. By pursuing this course she manifested a natural politeness, which proved her to be more truly refined than any person could be who objected to sit beside her on account of her color.