Book: Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854)

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WM. H. SEWARD.




A Wish.


"Could I embody and unbosom now,
That which is most within me;--could I wreak
My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw
Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings strong or weak,
All that I would have sought, and all I seek,
Bear, know, and feel, and breathe,--into _one_ word,
And that one word were lightning"--

I would speak it, not to crush the oppressor, but to melt the chains
of slave and master, so that _both_ should go free.

[Illustration: (signature) Caroline M. Kirkland.]

NEW YORK, November 8th, 1853.




A Dialogue.

SCENE.--A BREAKFAST TABLE.

MRS. GOODMAN, _a widow_.
FRANK GOODMAN, _her son_.
MR. FREEMAN, _a Southern gentleman, brother to Mrs. Goodman_.
MR. DRYMAN, _a boarder_.


MR. FREEMAN. (_Sipping his coffee and looking over the morning paper_)
reads--

"The performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin attracts to the theatre very
unusual audiences. In the "genteel row" last evening, we observed the
strictest religionists of the day, not excepting puritanic
Presbyterians, and the sober disciples of Wesley and Fox. For
ourselves, we must candidly confess we have never witnessed such a
_play_ upon all the emotions of which humanity is susceptible. Mrs.
Stowe, however unworthy the name of Patriot, is at least entitled to
the credit of seizing the great thought of the age, and embodying it
in such a form as to make it presentable to every order of mind and
every class of society. She says, in effect, to Legislators, let me
furnish your amusements, and I care not who makes your laws."

* * * * *

Politicians would do well to look to this--(_laying down the paper and
speaking in a tone of impatience_)--so, so, Fanaticism is leading to
its legitimate results. Uncle Tom in our parlors, Uncle Tom in our
pulpits, and Uncle Tom in our plays.

_Mr. Dryman._ Truly "he eateth with publicans and sinners."

_Mr. F._ (_Not noticing Mr. D's remark._) One would think this last
appropriation of the vaunted hero would be sufficient to convince the
most radical of the demoralizing influence of these publications.

_Frank._ (_Modestly._) How differently people judge. Why, last
evening, when I saw crowds of the hardened and dissipated shedding
tears of honest sympathy, when Uncle Tom and Eva sang,

"I see a band of spirits bright,
And conquering palms they bear"--

I felt that the moral sentiment was asserting its supremacy even in
places of amusement.

_Mr. F._ Worse and worse, my nephew and namesake a theatre-goer.

_Mr. D._ (_In an under tone._) Namesake! "that's the unkindest cut of
all."

_Frank._ Not exactly a theatre-goer, uncle, though I confess I might
be, were the performance always as excellent as last evening.

_Mrs. Goodman._ Frank, my son, I hope thee will not attempt to drink
from a dirty pool because a pure stream flows into it.

_Frank._ But the rank and file of Democracy drank deep libations to
Liberty there, mother.

_Mr. D._ (_Passing his cup._) "Drink deep or taste not of the Pierian
spring."

_Mr. F._ (_Sarcastically._) Take care, you'll be found using the
products of slave labor!

_Frank._ (_Jocosely._)

"Think how many backs have smarted,
For the sweets," &c.

Take a bit of toast, Mr. Dryman, our northern products are perfectly
innocent, you know?

_Mr. D._ (_Helping himself bountifully._) "Ask no questions for
conscience's sake."

_Mr. F._ The practice of you Northerners is consistent with your
professions.

_Mr. D._ "Consistency, thou art a jewel!"

_Frank._ It is very hard to be consistent in this world, uncle. My
mother once made a resolution to use nothing polluted by Intemperance
or Oppression, but finding that it required her to take constant
thought "what we should eat and drink, and wherewithal we should be
clothed," she was fain to relax her discipline.

_Mrs. G._ Frank, thee must not transcend the truth in thy
mirthfulness.

_Frank._ Well, mother, did not some experiment of the kind lead to the
conclusion, that I might exercise my freedom in worldly amusements?

_Mrs. G._ Yes, my son, but thy enthusiasm about the theatre makes me
fear I have gone beyond my light.

_Mr. F._ (_Bitterly._) Never fear, sister, the young man will soon
prove that Abolition Societies and Theatres are admirable schools of
morals.

_Frank._ Uncle Tom at least has a good moral, and so has William Tell
and Pizarro--indeed I do not remember of ever reading a play which had
not.

_Mr. F._ (_In a tone of irony._) When I see a young man spending his
time at the theatre, in search of good morals, I think he "pays too
dear for his whistle."

_Mrs. G._ And yet brother Frank speaks the truth. What success does
thee think a play would meet, which should represent such a man as
Uncle Tom yielding his principles and faith to the will of a Legree?

_Mr. F._ (_With great asperity._) Do you, too, Rebecca, advocate
theatres?

_Mrs. G._ It is not of theatres, but of books, that I am speaking.
Does thee recollect any work, the whole plot and design of which is
made to turn upon the triumph of the wicked over the good?

_Mr. F._ (_Musing._) Why--I--don't remember now--

_Frank._ (_In great surprise._) Why, mother, are there no books
written in favor of Slavery?

_Mrs. G._ I cannot think of any book which can be said to be written
for Slavery, in the sense that Uncle Tom's Cabin is written against
it. Such a work is, I think, impossible. No poet would attempt to
portray its moral aspects, and delineate its beauties, with the idea
of exciting our admiration and approval.

_Mr. F._ Spoken just like a woman! Your sex always seize upon some
thought gained through the sensibilities, and then bring in a
decision without farther investigation.

_Frank._ And is not the instinct of a woman a more perfect guide in
morals, than the reason of man?

_Mr. F._ (_Sarcastically._) Certainly--if it direct her son to the
theatre.

_Mr. D._ Or teach him the supremacy of the "Higher Law."

_Frank._ (_With warmth_.) My mother did not direct me to the theatre,
sir; she has taught me to love better things;--to her I owe all the
lofty sentiments of virtue and truth.

_Mrs. G._ Softly, softly Frank, theatres and Slavery will be quite
sufficient for this discussion, without introducing Woman's Rights.
(_To Mr. Freeman_.) Would it not be more consistent, brother, for thee
to disprove my argument, than to object to my method of obtaining it?

_Mr. F._ Nothing can be easier--you have asserted in round terms that
no work was ever written in favor of Slavery. What an absurdity! If
you have any information you must know that the southern press groans
with publications upon this topic.

_Mrs. G._ Still if thee examine the matter, thee will find that every
one of these books treats Slavery as a curse, and describes it not as
a _good_ but an _evil_, of which each man loads the guilt upon his
forefathers or his neighbors.

_Mr. F._ Granted they call it a curse, but assuredly they bring
forward a defence.

_Mrs. G._ Yes, they defend the Constitution; they defend the rights of
the south; they advocate Colonization, or point out the errors of
Abolitionists, but what one in word or in effect advocates the
principles of human Slavery? The truth is, brother, the system has the
literature of the world against it; and the south ought to see in this
reading age an infallible sign that the days of its cherished
institutions are numbered. Does thee not perceive that every novel and
every poem carries to the parlor, or, if it please thee, to the
theatre, an influence which will eventually re-act on the ballot-box.

_Frank._ Do you mean, mother, to include in your remarks the
discourses of Reverend Divines upon the Patriarchal Institution?

_Mrs. G._ I cannot except even these; for they acknowledge it an evil,
though they contend it exists by divine ordination, just as they
assert Original Sin to be the offspring of Eternal Decrees; but they
no more convince the Slaveholder, that he loves his bondman as
himself, than they convict him of the guilt of Adam's transgression.

_Mr. F._ What do you say to Webster's great speech on the compromise
measure?

_Mrs. G._ (_Pleasantly._) Is not the moral view of a question, about
as far as a woman's instinct ought to go?

_Mr. F._ Oh, no; go on, your strictures are quite amusing.

_Mrs. G._ Well, then, since _we_ have taken the position of a
reviewer, _we_ must confess that the last effort of the great Daniel
appears to us to be _on an Act of Congress_.

_Mr. D._ And _at_ the Presidential chair.

_Mrs. G._ (_Continuing._) It did not touch the merits of slavery at
all. Webster knew the feelings of the constituents too well to attempt
such a task. He therefore skilfully diverted their attention from his
real issue, to the glorious Union, and its danger from agitators, and
he thus carried with him the sympathies of many honest haters of
oppression.

_Mr. F._ Well, sister, I do not know but you will prove that there is
not an advocate for slavery on the face of the earth.

_Mrs. G._ Only such advocates as there is for robbery and war. Those
who find it for their interest to practice these crimes condemn them
in the abstract, or at most only apologize for them, as necessary and
expedient, under peculiar circumstances.

_Frank._ (_Laughing._) Why, mother, I shall certainly subscribe for
your "North American Review," particularly if you fill the literary
department as ably as you have the moral and political, to test which,
let me propound a question? If the reward of the good be the charm of
fiction, how do you account for the pleasure derived from tragedy,
where the good are overwhelmed with the evil?

_Mrs. G._ (_Smiling._) With great diffidence we reply to the query of
our learned friend. The force of tragedy consists in its depicting
evil so ruinous as to involve even the innocent in the catastrophe;
the pleasure is derived, we think, from the _failure_ of the
mischievous design, and the merited retribution which falls upon the
head of the plotters. In Romeo, "a scourge is laid upon the hate of
the Montagues and Capulets, by which all are punished;" Hamlet's
wicked uncle is justly served, drinking the poison tempered by
himself; and Iago pulls down ruin upon himself no less than upon
Cassio.

_Frank._ (_Bowing playfully_.) Your review meets my entire
approbation, inasmuch as it confirms my doctrine, that theatres always
give their verdict in favor of virtue.

_Mr. D._ "Casting out devils through Beelzebub."

_Mrs. G._ The artistic effect of every work of the imagination is
wrought upon what critics call the "sympathetic emotion of virtue,"
and the decisions of this faculty, so far as we understand them,
always correspond with what Christians believe concerning the "final
restitution of all things."

_Frank._ The theatre, then, ought to promote good morals--why does it
not?

_Mr. D._

"And many worthy men
Maintained it might be turned to good account,
And so perhaps it might, but never was."

_Mrs. G._ The "sympathetic emotion of virtue," not having an object,
never rises to passion, and therefore never produces action.
Philosophers tell us that a thought of virtue passing often through
the mind, without being wrought out into a fact, weakens the moral
sense; thus people may read the best of books, and witness the finest
exhibitions of moral beauty, and constantly retrograde in virtue. The
dissolute characters of players, who continually utter the loftiest
sentiments, and practice the lowest vices, are accounted for on this
principle; and we ought to judge the theatre as we do slavery, by its
demoralizing effect upon those engaged in it.

_Mr. F._ Do you mean to say, Rebecca, that slaveholding has the same
effect upon me that stage-playing has upon the actor?

_Mrs. G._ Well, brother, I put it to thy own conscience. Does thee
not, daily, in dealing with thy slaves, stifle thy emotions of piety,
generosity, and love, and is it not easier to do this now than it was
twenty years ago, when, with a heart full of tenderness and truth,
thee left us for thy southern home?

_Mr. F._ (_Rising and pacing the room with great agitation_.) Now,
sister, you are going to introduce another absurdity! Do I practice
the principles learned in the nursery? No, I do not! Do I believe
"honesty is the best policy" and its kindred humbugs? Of course I
don't! Show me the man who does? Do I follow the precepts of the
sermon on the Mount? Not I! The man who should undertake to do so
would make himself a perfect laughing-stock. I should like to see one
of your northern hypocrites attempt it. Ha! ha! ha! "Lay not up
treasure upon earth," and "take no thought for the morrow;" why, what
else do people take thought for, either North or South? It is not what
they shall eat, drink, or wear to-day, that worries them, but how they
shall lay up something for themselves or their children hereafter. You
silly women are always talking about righteousness, as if you really
thought it could enter in human plans, but we men of the world, who
have to wring the precious dollar from the hard hand of labor, know
better! I tell you, Rebecca, I don't believe there is a business-man
in your pious Quaker city even, who would dare acquaint his wife and
daughters with all his little arrangements for amassing wealth. Ha!
ha! ha! How the pretty things would stare at the tricks of the trade,
and simper: "Is that right?" As though anybody thought business
principles were gospel principles! As though they expected a man was
going to love his neighbor as himself, when he was making a bargain
with him! It provokes me to see you make yourself so ridiculous! You
ought to know that every man _acts_ on the principle, that "Wealth is
the chief good;" and you ought to know, too, that there the
slaveholders have the advantage of you entirely. They do right to
work, and grind it out of the slaves on a large scale, and call
Abraham and Moses to witness the patriarchal method, while your
northern mercenaries scheme and speculate how they can turn a penny
out of ignorance and poverty, and have not even the apology of a
precedent for their meanness. Why, one of our generous
southern planters is as far above one of your stingy
shave-three-cents-on-a-yard-tradesmen, as Robin Hood is above a
miserable tea-spoon burglar. The south sails under false colors, does
it? What flag do your platform men give to the wind, I should like to
know? What do they care for the Fugitive Slave Law? Half of them would
help a runaway to Canada with as good a will as they'd eat their
dinner. (_Coming close and sitting down, so as to look fixedly in her
face_.) I'll tell you what, sister, the chivalry of the south responds
to you northern Christians who prate so loud of brotherhood and
charity, in the words of young Cancer to his mother--"_Libenter tuis
praeceptis obsequar, si te prius idem facientem videro_."

_Mrs. G._ (_very gently_.) These strictures, brother, are too keenly
just. They remind me of Kossuth's assertion, that there is not yet a
Christian nation on the earth, nor yet a Christian church, that dare
venture entirely upon the principles of the Gospel. Still, the
aberration of reformers proves no more in favor of slavery, than the
vices and miseries of civilized life prove that barbarism is the
natural and happy state of the human race; nay, these very aberrations
prove that a centripetal power counteracts the opposing force, and
holds them within the genial influence of the sun of truth.

The law of spiritual gravitation is little understood. But thousands
of philosophers are closely observing the phenomena, and carefully
comparing them with the data given in the Sermon on the Mount; and it
is not too much to hope that this generation will give to the world a
Newton, whose moral mathematics shall demonstrate that the _law_ of
_love_ is the true theory of individual and national prosperity.

_Mr. F._ Well, sister, I wish you much joy of your millennial state;
but before the Sermon on the Mount becomes the code of nations, I
guess you will find--

_Mr. D._ (_interrupting_.) "A little more grape, Captain Bragg!"

_Frank._ I tell you, uncle, "there's a good time coming." Mother is a
prophet. I have watched her words all my life, and I never knew them
fall to the ground.

_Mrs. G._ Observe, my friends, that the Sermon on the Mount puts
blessing before requirement. If you accept these beatitudes as the
gift of your Divine Master, you will find that obedience to the
precepts which follow, is not the unwilling service of a bondsman, but
the free and natural action of an unfranchised spirit.

[Illustration: (signature) C. A. Bloss]

CLOVER STREET SEM., November 10th, 1853.


[Illustration: Gerritt Smith (Engraved by J. C. Buttre)]




A Time of Justice will Come


We are conscious of the odium that rests upon us. We feel that we are
wronged; but we are not impatient for the righting of our wrongs. We
bide our time. The men that shall come after us, will do us justice.
The present generation of America cannot "judge righteous judgment,"
in the case of the uncompromising friends of freedom, religion, and
law. They are so debauched and blinded by slavery, and by the perverse
and low ideas of freedom, religion, and law, which it engenders, that
they "call evil good, and good evil; put darkness for light, and light
for darkness; put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter." They have
been living out the lie of slavery so long, and have been, thereby,
deadening their consciences so long, as to be now well nigh incapable
of perceiving the wide and everlasting distinctions between truth and
falsehood.

GERRITT SMITH.




Hope and Confidence.


O! What a strange thing is the human heart!
With its youth, and its joy and fear!
It doats upon creatures that day-dreams impart,--
Full sorely it grieves when their beauties depart,
And weeps bitter tears over their bier.

The veriest gleamings that dart into birth,
Reveal to its being of light:
The dimliest shadows that flit upon earth,
Allure it, with promise of pleasure and mirth
In a country, where never is night.

It leaves the sure things of its own real home,
To pursue the mere phantoms of thought!
Well knowing, that certain, there soon must come,
An end to the visions, that so gladsome,
It bewilder'd, has eagerly sought.

[Illustration: Chas. L. Reason (Engraved by J. C. Buttre)]

It fleeth the wholesome prose of life,
With its riches all sure and told:
And scorning the beauties, that calmly in strife
Truth fashions, it longs for the things all rife
With glitter, and color, and gold.

It buildeth its home 'neath an ever calm sky,
Near streams wherein crown-jewels sleep,--
And there it reposeth: while soothingly nigh,
Some loved one, perchance, doth most wooingly sigh,
As the zephyrs all full-laden creep.

Thus it musingly wasteth its strength, in dreams
Of bliss, that can never prove true:
And ever it revels amid what seems,
A paradise smiling with Hope's warm beams,
And flowers all spangled with dew.

But, even as flowers are broken and fade,
And yield up their perfumes--their souls,--
So vanish the colors of which dreams are made,--
So perish the structures on which Hope is staid,
And the treasures to which the heart holds.

In vain does it follow the wandering forms
That promise, yet always recede:--
Too briefly the sunshine is darken'd by storms:
Hope minstrels it onward, yet never informs
Of the dangers unseen, that impede.

The Heart trusts the outward: "Of man 'tis the whole."
Thus Confidence clings to decay!
It feels the sweet homage that riches control,--
And laughs in contempt at the wealth of the soul:
And behold! now, friends wait for their prey.

It trusteth in glory, and beauty, and youth,--
In love-vows that ne'er are to die:
But soon the Death-king, in whose heart is no ruth,
Enfolds it,--and mounting aloft, of Truth
Thus sings, as turns glassy the eye.

"There's nothing so lovely and bright below,
As the shapes of the purified mind!
Nought surer to which the weak heart can grow,
On which it can rest, as it onward doth go,
Than that Truth which its own tendrils bind.

"Yes! Truth opes within a pure sun-tide of bliss,
And shows in its ever calm flood,
A transcript of regions, where no darkness is,
Where HOPE its conceptions may realize,
And CONFIDENCE sleep in 'The Good.'"

[Illustration: (signature) Chas. L. Reason.]




A Letter that Speaks for Itself.


To T---- M----.

Disinterested benevolence, my dear sir, has nothing at all to do with
abolitionism. Nay, I doubt very much if there is such a thing as
disinterested benevolence; but be this as it may, there is no occasion
for it in the anti-slavery ranks.

It is selfishness,--sheer selfishness, that has thus far carried on
the war with slavery and wrong in all times; and selfishness must
break the chains of the American slave.

Self-love has fixed the chain around the arm of every leader and every
soldier in the American anti-slavery army. Where would William Lloyd
Garrison have been to-day, if any combination of circumstances could
have shut in his soul's deep hatred of oppression, and prevented its
finding utterance in burning words? He would have been dead and
rotten. It is necessary to his own existence that he should
work,--work for the slave; and in his work he gratifies all the
strongest instincts of his nature, more completely than even the
grossest sensualist can gratify _his_, by unlimited indulgence.

Gerritt Smith, too. Suppose he was compelled to hoard his princely
fortune, or spend it as most others do! O dear! what a dyspeptic we
should have in six months; and all the hydropathic institutes in the
country could never keep him alive five years.

John P. Hale would soon be done with his rotund person and jovial
face, if he could no longer send the sharp arrows of his wit and
sarcasm into the consciences of his human-whipping neighbors.

It is a necessity of all great nations to hate meanness, and nothing
under God's heaven ever was so mean as American slavery. Think of it.
_Men_ who swagger around with pistols and bowie-knifes to avenge their
insulted honor, if any one should question it,--imagine one turning up
his sleeves to horsewhip an old woman for burning his steak, or
pocketing her wages, earned at the wash-tub!

No one with a soul above that of a pig-louse, could help loathing the
system, the instant he saw it in its native meanness. Then, in order
to keep his own self-respect,--to gratify the love of the good and
true in his own soul, he _must_ express that loathing.

No disinterestedness about doing right, for nobody can be so much
interested in the act as the doer of it.

Wrong-doing is the only possible self-abnegation, of which the whole
range of thought admits.

All the humiliation and agony of the Saviour himself, were necessary
to himself. Nothing less could have expressed the infinite love of the
Divine nature; and in working out a most perfect righteousness for
those he loved, he also wrought out a most perfect happiness for
himself.

The eternal law of God links the happiness of all the creatures made
in His image in an electric chain, united in the Divine love; and He,
who has "a fellow-feeling for our infirmities," has given us a
fellow-feeling with the sufferings of each other. So that no soul in
which the Divine image is not totally obscured, can know of the misery
of another, without a sympathetic throb of sorrow.

The true heart in Maine _cannot_ know that the slave-mother in Georgia
is weeping for her children, torn from her arms by avarice, without
feeling her anguish palpitating in its inmost core.

It is the pulsations of the sympathetic heart which stretches out the
hand to interfere between her and her aggressor; and abolitionists are
just seeking a soft pillow that they may "sleep o' nights."

It is selfishness, I tell you, all selfishness! The great whale when
she gives up her own large life to protect her young one, and the
little wren when she carries all the nice tit bits to her babies, are
as true to themselves as the old pig when she shoulders all her little
family out of the trough.

The whale enjoys death, and the wren her little fellows' supper, with
a better zest than an old grunter does her corn, and Wm. Gildersten in
spending money and laboring to prevent any more scenes of brutal
violence in his State, by punishing the one past, gratifies his own
loves and longings quite as much as Judge Grier in grunting out his
wrath against all lovers of liberty.

The one would enjoy being hanged for the cause of God and Humanity,
more than the other would the luxury of hanging him, even if he could
have _all_ the pleasure to himself,--be not only judge and
persecutor, as he prefers, but marshal, jailor, and hangman to boot.

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