Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
suffered less, than himself. Yet how deplorable was his situation! what
terrible chastisements were inflicted upon his person! what still more
shocking outrages were perpetrated upon his mind! with all his noble
powers and sublime aspirations, how like a brute was he treated, even
by those professing to have the same mind in them that was in Christ
Jesus! to what dreadful liabilities was he continually subjected! how
destitute of friendly counsel and aid, even in his greatest
extremities! how heavy was the midnight of woe which shrouded in
blackness the last ray of hope, and filled the future with terror and
gloom! what longings after freedom took possession of his breast, and
how his misery augmented, in proportion as he grew reflective and
intelligent,—thus demonstrating that a happy slave is an extinct man!
how he thought, reasoned, felt, under the lash of the driver, with the
chains upon his limbs! what perils he encountered in his endeavors to
escape from his horrible doom! and how signal have been his deliverance
and preservation in the midst of a nation of pitiless enemies!
This Narrative contains many affecting incidents, many passages of
great eloquence and power; but I think the most thrilling one of them
all is the description _Douglass_ gives of his feelings, as he stood
soliloquizing respecting his fate, and the chances of his one day being
a freeman, on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay—viewing the receding
vessels as they flew with their white wings before the breeze, and
apostrophizing them as animated by the living spirit of freedom. Who
can read that passage, and be insensible to its pathos and sublimity?
Compressed into it is a whole Alexandrian library of thought, feeling,
and sentiment—all that can, all that need be urged, in the form of
expostulation, entreaty, rebuke, against that crime of crimes,—making
man the property of his fellow-man! O, how accursed is that system,
which entombs the godlike mind of man, defaces the divine image,
reduces those who by creation were crowned with glory and honor to a
level with four-footed beasts, and exalts the dealer in human flesh
above all that is called God! Why should its existence be prolonged one
hour? Is it not evil, only evil, and that continually? What does its
presence imply but the absence of all fear of God, all regard for man,
on the part of the people of the United States? Heaven speed its
eternal overthrow!
So profoundly ignorant of the nature of slavery are many persons, that
they are stubbornly incredulous whenever they read or listen to any
recital of the cruelties which are daily inflicted on its victims. They
do not deny that the slaves are held as property; but that terrible
fact seems to convey to their minds no idea of injustice, exposure to
outrage, or savage barbarity. Tell them of cruel scourgings, of
mutilations and brandings, of scenes of pollution and blood, of the
banishment of all light and knowledge, and they affect to be greatly
indignant at such enormous exaggerations, such wholesale misstatements,
such abominable libels on the character of the southern planters! As if
all these direful outrages were not the natural results of slavery! As
if it were less cruel to reduce a human being to the condition of a
thing, than to give him a severe flagellation, or to deprive him of
necessary food and clothing! As if whips, chains, thumb-screws,
paddles, blood-hounds, overseers, drivers, patrols, were not all
indispensable to keep the slaves down, and to give protection to their
ruthless oppressors! As if, when the marriage institution is abolished,
concubinage, adultery, and incest, must not necessarily abound; when
all the rights of humanity are annihilated, any barrier remains to
protect the victim from the fury of the spoiler; when absolute power is
assumed over life and liberty, it will not be wielded with destructive
sway! Skeptics of this character abound in society. In some few
instances, their incredulity arises from a want of reflection; but,
generally, it indicates a hatred of the light, a desire to shield
slavery from the assaults of its foes, a contempt of the colored race,
whether bond or free. Such will try to discredit the shocking tales of
slaveholding cruelty which are recorded in this truthful Narrative; but
they will labor in vain. _Mr. Douglass_ has frankly disclosed the place
of his birth, the names of those who claimed ownership in his body and
soul, and the names also of those who committed the crimes which he has
alleged against them. His statements, therefore, may easily be
disproved, if they are untrue.
In the course of his Narrative, he relates two instances of murderous
cruelty,—in one of which a planter deliberately shot a slave belonging
to a neighboring plantation, who had unintentionally gotten within his
lordly domain in quest of fish; and in the other, an overseer blew out
the brains of a slave who had fled to a stream of water to escape a
bloody scourging. _Mr. Douglass_ states that in neither of these
instances was any thing done by way of legal arrest or judicial
investigation. The Baltimore American, of March 17, 1845, relates a
similar case of atrocity, perpetrated with similar impunity—as
follows:—“_Shooting a slave._—We learn, upon the authority of a letter
from Charles county, Maryland, received by a gentleman of this city,
that a young man, named Matthews, a nephew of General Matthews, and
whose father, it is believed, holds an office at Washington, killed one
of the slaves upon his father’s farm by shooting him. The letter states
that young Matthews had been left in charge of the farm; that he gave
an order to the servant, which was disobeyed, when he proceeded to the
house, _obtained a gun, and, returning, shot the servant._ He
immediately, the letter continues, fled to his father’s residence,
where he still remains unmolested.”—Let it never be forgotten, that no
slaveholder or overseer can be convicted of any outrage perpetrated on
the person of a slave, however diabolical it may be, on the testimony
of colored witnesses, whether bond or free. By the slave code, they are
adjudged to be as incompetent to testify against a white man, as though
they were indeed a part of the brute creation. Hence, there is no legal
protection in fact, whatever there may be in form, for the slave
population; and any amount of cruelty may be inflicted on them with
impunity. Is it possible for the human mind to conceive of a more
horrible state of society?
The effect of a religious profession on the conduct of southern masters
is vividly described in the following Narrative, and shown to be any
thing but salutary. In the nature of the case, it must be in the
highest degree pernicious. The testimony of _Mr. Douglass_, on this
point, is sustained by a cloud of witnesses, whose veracity is
unimpeachable. “A slaveholder’s profession of Christianity is a
palpable imposture. He is a felon of the highest grade. He is a
man-stealer. It is of no importance what you put in the other scale.”
Reader! are you with the man-stealers in sympathy and purpose, or on
the side of their down-trodden victims? If with the former, then are
you the foe of God and man. If with the latter, what are you prepared
to do and dare in their behalf? Be faithful, be vigilant, be untiring
in your efforts to break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free.
Come what may—cost what it may—inscribe on the banner which you unfurl
to the breeze, as your religious and political motto—“NO COMPROMISE
WITH SLAVERY! NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!”
WM. LLOYD GARRISON BOSTON,
_May_ 1, 1845.
LETTER FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ.
BOSTON, _April_ 22, 1845.
My Dear Friend:
You remember the old fable of “The Man and the Lion,” where the lion
complained that he should not be so misrepresented “when the lions
wrote history.”
I am glad the time has come when the “lions write history.” We have
been left long enough to gather the character of slavery from the
involuntary evidence of the masters. One might, indeed, rest
sufficiently satisfied with what, it is evident, must be, in general,
the results of such a relation, without seeking farther to find whether
they have followed in every instance. Indeed, those who stare at the
half-peck of corn a week, and love to count the lashes on the slave’s
back, are seldom the “stuff” out of which reformers and abolitionists
are to be made. I remember that, in 1838, many were waiting for the
results of the West India experiment, before they could come into our
ranks. Those “results” have come long ago; but, alas! few of that
number have come with them, as converts. A man must be disposed to
judge of emancipation by other tests than whether it has increased the
produce of sugar,—and to hate slavery for other reasons than because it
starves men and whips women,—before he is ready to lay the first stone
of his anti-slavery life.
I was glad to learn, in your story, how early the most neglected of
God’s children waken to a sense of their rights, and of the injustice
done them. Experience is a keen teacher; and long before you had
mastered your A B C, or knew where the “white sails” of the Chesapeake
were bound, you began, I see, to gauge the wretchedness of the slave,
not by his hunger and want, not by his lashes and toil, but by the
cruel and blighting death which gathers over his soul.
In connection with this, there is one circumstance which makes your
recollections peculiarly valuable, and renders your early insight the
more remarkable. You come from that part of the country where we are
told slavery appears with its fairest features. Let us hear, then, what
it is at its best estate—gaze on its bright side, if it has one; and
then imagination may task her powers to add dark lines to the picture,
as she travels southward to that (for the colored man) Valley of the
Shadow of Death, where the Mississippi sweeps along.
Again, we have known you long, and can put the most entire confidence
in your truth, candor, and sincerity. Every one who has heard you speak
has felt, and, I am confident, every one who reads your book will feel,
persuaded that you give them a fair specimen of the whole truth. No
one-sided portrait,—no wholesale complaints,—but strict justice done,
whenever individual kindliness has neutralized, for a moment, the
deadly system with which it was strangely allied. You have been with
us, too, some years, and can fairly compare the twilight of rights,
which your race enjoy at the North, with that “noon of night” under
which they labor south of Mason and Dixon’s line. Tell us whether,
after all, the half-free colored man of Massachusetts is worse off than
the pampered slave of the rice swamps!
In reading your life, no one can say that we have unfairly picked out
some rare specimens of cruelty. We know that the bitter drops, which
even you have drained from the cup, are no incidental aggravations, no
individual ills, but such as must mingle always and necessarily in the
lot of every slave. They are the essential ingredients, not the
occasional results, of the system.
After all, I shall read your book with trembling for you. Some years
ago, when you were beginning to tell me your real name and birthplace,
you may remember I stopped you, and preferred to remain ignorant of
all. With the exception of a vague description, so I continued, till
the other day, when you read me your memoirs. I hardly knew, at the
time, whether to thank you or not for the sight of them, when I
reflected that it was still dangerous, in Massachusetts, for honest men
to tell their names! They say the fathers, in 1776, signed the
Declaration of Independence with the halter about their necks. You,
too, publish your declaration of freedom with danger compassing you