The Underground Railroad
my share of the work. The humblest and feeblest of us can do
something; and though I may be deficient in many of the
conventionalisms of city life, and be considered as a person of
good impulses, but unfinished, yet if there is common rough work
to be done, call on me."
Mrs. Harper was not content to make speeches and receive plaudits, but
was ever willing to do the rough work and to give material aid wherever
needed.
From another letter dated Lewis Centre, Ohio, we copy the following
characteristic extract:
"Yesterday I sent you thirty dollars. Take five of it for the
rescuers (who were in prison), and the rest pay away on the
books. My offering is not large; but if you need more, send me
word. Also how comes on the Underground Rail Road? Do you need
anything for that? You have probably heard of the shameful
outrage of a colored man or boy named Wagner, who was kidnapped
in Ohio and carried across the river and sold for a slave....
Ohio has become a kind of a negro hunting ground, a new Congo's
coast and Guinea's shore. A man was kidnapped almost under the
shadow of our capital. Oh, was it not dreadful?... Oh, may the
living God prepare me for an earnest and faithful advocacy of
the cause of justice and right!"
In those days the blows struck by the hero, John Brown, were agitating
the nation. Scarcely was it possible for a living soul to be more deeply
affected than this female advocate. Nor did her sympathies end in mere
words. She tendered material aid as well as heartfelt commiseration.
To John Brown's wife[A] she sent through the writer the following
letter:
[Footnote A: Mrs. Harper passed two weeks with Mrs. Brown at the house
of the writer while she was awaiting the execution of her husband, and
sympathized with her most deeply.]
LETTER TO JOHN BROWN'S WIFE.
FARMER CENTRE, OHIO, Nov. 14th.
MY DEAR MADAM:--In an hour like this the common words of
sympathy may seem like idle words, and yet I want to say
something to you, the noble wife of the hero of the nineteenth
century. Belonging to the race your dear husband reached forth
his hand to assist, I need not tell you that my sympathies are
with you. I thank you for the brave words you have spoken. A
republic that produces such a wife and mother may hope for
better days. Our heart may grow more hopeful for humanity when
it sees the sublime sacrifice it is about to receive from his
hands. Not in vain has your dear husband periled all, if the
martyrdom of one hero is worth more than the life of a million
cowards. From the prison comes forth a shout of triumph over
that power whose ethics are robbery of the feeble and oppression
of the weak, the trophies of whose chivalry are a plundered
cradle and a scourged and bleeding woman. Dear sister, I thank
you for the brave and noble words that you have spoken. Enclosed
I send you a few dollars as a token of my gratitude, reverence
and love.
Yours respectfully,
FRANCES ELLEN WATKINS.
Post Office address: care of William Still, 107 Fifth St.,
Philadelphia, Penn.
May God, our own God, sustain you in the hour of trial. If there
is one thing on earth I can do for you or yours, let me be
apprized. I am at your service.
Not forgetting Brown's comrades, who were then lying in prison under
sentence of death, true to the best impulses of her generous heart, she
thus wrote relative to these ill-fated prisoners, from Montpelier, Dec.
12th:
"I thank you for complying with my request. (She had previously
ordered a box of things to be forwarded to them.) And also that
you wrote to them. You see Brown towered up so bravely that
these doomed and fated men may have been almost overlooked, and
just think that I am able to send one ray through the night
around them. And as their letters came too late to answer in
time, I am better satisfied that you wrote. I hope the things
will reach them. Poor doomed and fated men! Why did you not send
them more things? Please send me the bill of expense.... Send me
word what I can do for the fugitives. Do you need any money? Do
I not owe you on the old bill (pledge)? Look carefully and see
if I have paid all. Along with this letter I send you one for
Mr. Stephens (one of Brown's men), and would ask you to send him
a box of nice things every week till he dies or is acquitted. I
understand the balls have not been extracted from him. Has not
this suffering been overshadowed by the glory that gathered
around the brave old man?... Spare no expense to make the last
hours of his (Stephens') life as bright as possible with
sympathy.... Now, my friend, fulfil this to the letter. Oh, is
it not a privilege, if you are sisterless and lonely, to be a
sister to the human race, and to place your heart where it may
throb close to down-trodden humanity?"
On another occasion in writing from the lecturing field hundreds of
miles away from Philadelphia, the sympathy she felt for the fugitives
found expression in the following language:
"How fared the girl who came robed in male attire? Do write me
every time you write how many come to your house; and, my dear
friend, if you have that much in hand of mine from my books,
will you please pay the Vigilance Committee two or three dollars
for me to help carry on the glorious enterprise. Now, please do
not write back that you are not going to do any such thing. Let
me explain a few matters to you. In the first place, I am able
to give something. In the second place, I am willing to do
so.... Oh, life is fading away, and we have but an hour of time!
Should we not, therefore, endeavor to let its history gladden
the earth? The nearer we ally ourselves to the wants and woes of
humanity in the spirit of Christ, the closer we get to the great
heart of God; the nearer we stand by the beating of the pulse of
universal love."
Doubtless it has not often been found necessary for persons desirous of
contributing to benevolent causes to first have to remove anticipated
objections. Nevertheless in some cases it would seem necessary to
admonish her not to be quite so liberal; to husband with a little more
care her hard-earned income for a "rainy day," as her health was not
strong.
"My health," she wrote at that time, "is not very strong, and I may have
to give up before long. I may have to yield on account of my voice,
which I think, has become somewhat affected. I might be so glad if it
was only so that I could go home among my own kindred and people, but
slavery comes up like a dark shadow between me and the home of my
childhood. Well, perhaps it is my lot to die from home and be buried
among strangers; and yet I do not regret that I have espoused this
cause; perhaps I have been of some service to the cause of human rights,
and I hope the consciousness that I have not lived in vain, will be a
halo of peace around my dying bed; a heavenly sunshine lighting up the
dark valley and shadow of death."
Notwithstanding this yearning for home, she was far from desiring at her
death, a burial in a Slave State, as the following clearly expressed
views show:
"I have lived in the midst of oppression and wrong, and I am
saddened by every captured fugitive in the North; a blow has
been struck at my freedom, in every hunted and down-trodden
slave in the South; North and South have both been guilty, and
they that sin must suffer."
Also, in harmony with the above sentiments, came a number of verses
appropriate to her desires in this respect, one of which we here give as
a sample:
"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."
In the State of Maine the papers brought to her notice the capture of
Margaret Garner, and the tragic and bloody deed connected therewith. And
she writes:
"Rome had her altars where the trembling criminal, and the worn
and weary slave might fly for an asylum--Judea her cities of
refuge; but Ohio, with her Bibles and churches, her baptisms and
prayers, had not one temple so dedicated to human rights, one
altar so consecrated to human liberty, that trampled upon and
down-trodden innocence knew that it could find protection for a
night, or shelter for a day."
In the fall of 1860, in the city of Cincinnati, Mrs. Harper was married
to Fenton Harper, a widower, and resident of Ohio. It seemed obvious
that this change would necessarily take her from the sphere of her
former usefulness. The means she had saved from the sale of her books
and from her lectures, she invested in a small farm near Columbus, and
in a short time after her marriage she entered upon house-keeping.
Notwithstanding her family cares, consequent upon married life, she only
ceased from her literary and anti-slavery labors, when compelled to do
so by other duties.
On the 23d of May, 1864, death deprived her of her husband.
Whilst she could not give so much attention to writing as she could have
desired in her household days, she, nevertheless, did then produce some
of her best productions. Take the following for a sample, on the return
from Cleveland, Ohio, of a poor, ill-fated slave-girl, (under the
Fugitive Slave Law):
TO THE UNION SAVERS OF CLEVELAND.
Men of Cleveland, had a vulture
Sought a timid dove for prey,
Would you not, with human pity,
Drive the gory bird away?
Had you seen a feeble lambkin,
Shrinking from a wolf so bold,
Would ye not to shield the trembler,
In your arms have made its fold?
But when she, a hunted sister,
Stretched her hands that ye might save,
Colder far than Zembla's regions
Was the answer that ye gave.
On the Union's bloody altar,
Was your hapless victim laid;
Mercy, truth and justice shuddered,
But your hands would give no aid.
And ye sent her back to torture,
Robbed of freedom and of right.
Thrust the wretched, captive stranger.
Back to slavery's gloomy night.
Back where brutal men may trample,
On her honor and her fame;
And unto her lips so dusky,
Press the cup of woe and shame.
There is blood upon your city,
Dark and dismal is the stain;
And your hands would fail to cleanse it,
Though Lake Erie ye should drain.
There's a curse upon your Union,
Fearful sounds are in the air;
As if thunderbolts were framing,
Answers to the bondsman's prayer.
Ye may offer human victims,
Like the heathen priests of old;
And may barter manly honor
For the Union and for gold.
But ye can not stay the whirlwind,
When the storm begins to break;
And our God doth rise in judgment,
For the poor and needy's sake.
And, your sin-cursed, guilty Union,
Shall be shaken to its base,
Till ye learn that simple justice,
Is the right of every race.
Mrs. Harper took the deepest interest in the war, and looked with
extreme anxiety for the results; and she never lost an opportunity to
write, speak, or serve the cause in any way that she thought would best
promote the freedom of the slave. On the proclamation of General
Fremont, the passages from her pen are worthy to be long remembered:
"Well, what think you of the war? To me one of the most
interesting features is Fremont's Proclamation freeing the
slaves of the rebels. Is there no ray of hope in that? I should
not wonder if Edward M. Davis breathed that into his ear. His