The Underground Railroad
has one of the most interesting families that I have
ever seen in the South. They are building up a future
which if exceptional now I hope will become more general
hereafter. Every hand of his family is adding its quota
to the success of this experiment of a colored man both
trading and farming on an extensive scale. Last year his
wife took on her hands about 130 acres of land, and with
her force she raised about 107 bales of cotton. She has
a number of orphan children employed, and not only does
she supervise their labor, but she works herself. One
daughter, an intelligent young lady, is postmistress and
I believe assistant book-keeper. One son attends to the
planting interest, and another daughter attends to one
of the stores. The business of this firm of Montgomery &
Sons has amounted, I understand, to between three and
four hundred thousand dollars in a year. I stayed on the
place several days and was hospitably entertained and
kindly treated. When I come, if nothing prevents, I will
tell you more about them. Now for the next strange
truth. Enclosed I send you a notice from one of the
leading and representative papers of rebeldom. The
editor has been, or is considered, one of the
representative men of the South. I have given a lecture
since this notice, which brought out some of the most
noted rebels, among whom was Admiral Semmes. In my
speech I referred to the Alabama sweeping away our
commerce, and his son sat near him and seemed to receive
it with much good humor. I don't know what the papers
will say to-day; perhaps they will think that I dwelt
upon the past too much. Oh, if you had seen the rebs I
had out last night, perhaps you would have felt a little
nervous for me. However, I lived through it, and gave
them more gospel truth than perhaps some of them have
heard for some time.
A LECTURE.
We received a polite invitation from the trustees of the
State-street African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church to attend a
lecture in that edifice on Thursday evening. Being told that the
discourse would be delivered by a female colored lecturer from
Maryland, curiosity, as well as an interest to see how the
colored citizens were managing their own institutions, led us at
once to accept the invitation. We found a very spacious church,
gas-light, and the balustrades of the galleries copiously hung
with wreaths and festoons of flowers, and a large audience of
both sexes, which, both in appearance and behaviour, was
respectable and decorously observant of the proprieties of the
place. The services were opened, as usual, with prayer and a
hymn, the latter inspired by powerful lungs, and in which the
musical ear at once caught the negro talent for melody. The
lecturer was then introduced as Mrs. F.E.W. Harper, from
Maryland. Without a moment's hesitation she started off in the
flow of her discourse, which rolled smoothly and uninterruptedly
on for nearly two hours. It was very apparent that it was not a
cut and dried speech, for she was as fluent and as felicitous in
her allusions to circumstances immediately around her as she was
when she rose to a more exalted pitch of laudation of the
"Union," or of execration of the old slavery system. Her voice
was remarkable--as sweet as any woman's voice we ever heard, and
so clear and distinct as to pass every syllable to the most
distant ear in the house.
Without any effort at attentive listening we followed the
speaker to the end, not discerning a single grammatical
inaccuracy of speech, or the slightest violation of good taste
in manner or matter. At times the current of thoughts flowed in
eloquent and poetic expression, and often her quaint humor would
expose the ivory in half a thousand mouths. We confess that we
began to wonder, and we asked a fine-looking man before us,
"What is her color? Is she dark or light?" He answered, "She is
mulatto; what they call a red mulatto." The 'red' was new to us.
Our neighbor asked, "How do you like her?" We replied, "She is
giving your people the best kind and the very wisest of advice."
He rejoined, "I wish I had her education." To which we added,
"That's just what she tells you is your great duty and your
need, and if you are too old to get it yourselves, you must give
it to your children."
The speaker left the impression on our mind that she was not
only intelligent and educated, but--the great end of
education--she was enlightened. She comprehends perfectly the
situation of her people, to whose interests she seems ardently
devoted. The main theme of her discourse, the one string to the
harmony of which all the others were attuned, was the grand
opportunity that emancipation had afforded to the black race to
lift itself to the level of the duties and responsibilities
enjoined by it. "You have muscle power and brain power," she
said; "you must utilize them, or be content to remain forever
the inferior race. Get land, every one that can, and as fast as
you ean. A landless people must be dependent upon the landed
people. A few acres to till for food and a roof, however bumble,
over your head, are the castle of your independence, and when
you have it you are fortified to act and vote independently
whenever your interests are at stake." That part of her lecture
(and there was much of it) that dwelt on the moral duties and
domestic relations of the colored people was pitched on the
highest key of sound morality. She urged the cultivation of the
"home life," the sanctity of the marriage state (a happy
contrast to her strong-minded, free-love, white sisters of the
North), and the duties of mothers to their daughters. "Why,"
said she in a voice of much surprise, "I have actually heard
since I have been South that sometimes colored husbands
positively beat their wives! I do not mean to insinuate for a
moment that such things can possibly happen in Mobile. The very
appearance of this congregation forbids it; but I did hear of
one terrible husband defending himself for the unmanly practice
with 'Well, I have got to whip her or leave her.'"
There were parts of the lecturer's discourse that grated a
little on a white Southern ear, but it was lost and forgiven in
the genuine earnestness and profound good sense with which the
woman spoke to her kind in words of sound advice.
On the whole, we are very glad we accepted the Zion's
invitation. It gave us much food for new thought. It reminded
us, perhaps, of neglected duties to these people, and it
impressed strongly on our minds that these people are getting
along, getting onward, and progress was a star becoming familiar
to their gaze and their desires. Whatever the negroes have done
in the path of advancement, they have done largely without white
aid. But politics and white pride have kept the white people
aloof from offering that earnest and moral assistance which
would be so useful to a people just starting from infancy into a
life of self-dependence.
In writing from Columbiana and Demopolis, Alabama, about the first of
March, 1871, Mrs. Harper painted the state of affairs in her usually
graphic manner, and diligently was she endeavoring to inspire the people
with hope and encouragement.
"Oh, what a field there is here in this region! Let me give you
a short account of this week's work. Sunday I addressed a
Sunday-school in Taladega; on Monday afternoon a day-school. On
Monday I rode several miles to a meeting; addressed it, and came
back the same night. Got back about or after twelve o'clock. The
next day I had a meeting of women and addressed them, and then
lectured in the evening in the Court-House to both colored and
white. Last night I spoke again, about ten miles from where I am
now stopping, and returned the same night, and to-morrow evening
probably I shall speak again. I grow quite tired part of the
time. * * * And now let me give you an anecdote or two of
some of our new citizens. While in Taladega I was entertained
and well entertained, at the house of one of our new citizens.
He is living in the house of his former master. He is a
brick-maker by trade, and I rather think mason also. He was
worth to his owner, it was reckoned, fifteen hundred or about
that a year. He worked with him seven years; and in that seven
years he remembers receiving from him fifty cents. Now mark the
contrast! That man is now free, owns the home of his former
master, has I think more than sixty acres of land, and his
master is in the poor-house. I heard of another such case not
long since: A woman was cruelly treated once, or more than once.
She escaped and ran naked into town. The villain in whose clutch
she found herself was trying to drag her downward to his own low
level of impurity, and at last she fell. She was poorly fed, so
that she was tempted to sell her person. Even scraps thrown to
the dog she was hunger-bitten enough to aim for. Poor thing, was
there anything in the future for her? Had not hunger and cruelty
and prostitution done their work, and left her an entire wreck
for life? It seems not. Freedom came, and with it dawned a new
era upon that poor, overshadowed, and sin-darkened life. Freedom
brought opportunity for work and wages combined. She went to
work, and got ten dollars a month. She has contrived to get some
education, and has since been teaching school. While her former
mistress has been to her for help.
"Do not the mills of God grind exceedingly fine? And she has
helped that mistress, and so has the colored man given money,
from what I heard, to his former master. After all, friend, do
we not belong to one of the best branches of the human race? And
yet, how have our people been murdered in the South, and their
bones scattered at the grave's mouth! Oh, when will we have a
government strong enough to make human life safe? Only yesterday
I heard of a murder committed on a man for an old grudge of
several years' standing. I had visited the place, but had just
got away. Last summer a Mr. Luke was hung, and several other men
also, I heard."
While surrounded with this state of affairs, an appeal reached her
through the columns of the National Standard, setting forth a state of
very great suffering and want, especially on the part of the old, blind
and decrepit Freedmen of the District of Columbia. After expressing deep
pity for these unfortunates, she added: "Please send ten dollars to
Josephine Griffing for me for the suffering poor of the District of
Columbia. Just send it by mail, and charge to my account."
Many more letters written by Mrs. Harper are before us, containing
highly interesting information from Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida,
North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Maryland, and
even poor little Delaware. Through all these States she has traveled and
labored extensively, as has been already stated; but our space in this
volume will admit of only one more letter:
"I have been traveling the best part of the day. * * * Can
you spare a little time from your book to just take a peep at