Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation: 1838-1839 Part 10

_Sunday, 14th._--My dear E----. That horrid tragedy with which we have been threatened, and of which I was writing to you almost jestingly a few days ago, has been accomplished, and apparently without exciting anything but the most pa.s.sing and superficial sensation in this community. The duel between Dr. H---- and Mr. W---- did not take place, but an accidental encounter in the hotel at Brunswick did, and the former shot the latter dead on the spot. He has been brought home and buried here by the little church close to his mother's plantation; and the murderer, if he is even prosecuted, runs no risk of finding a jury in the whole length and breadth of Georgia who could convict him of anything. It is horrible.

I drove to church to-day in the wood wagon, with Jack and Aleck, Hector being our charioteer, in a gilt guard-chain and pair of slippers to match as the Sabbatic part of his attire. The love of dirty finery is not a trait of the Irish in Ireland, but I think it crops out strongly when they come out here; and the proportion of their high wages put upon their backs by the young Irish maid-servants in the north, indicates a strong addiction to the female pa.s.sion for dress. Here the tendency seems to exist in men and women alike; but I think all savage men rejoice, even more than their women, in personal ornamentation. The negroes certainly show the same strong predilection for finery with their womenkind.

I stopped before going into church to look at the new grave that has taken its place among the defaced stones, all overgrown with briers, that lie round it. Poor young W----! poor widowed mother, of whom he was the only son! What a savage horror! And no one seems to think anything of it, more than of a matter of course. My devotions were anything but satisfactory or refres.h.i.+ng to me. My mind was dwelling incessantly upon the new grave under the great oaks outside, and the miserable mother in her home. The air of the church was perfectly thick with sand-flies; and the disgraceful carelessness of the congregation in responding and singing the hymns, and their entire neglect of the prayer-book regulations for kneeling, disturbed and displeased me even more than the last time I was at church; but I think that was because of the total absence of excitement or feeling among the whole population of St. Simon's upon the subject of the b.l.o.o.d.y outrage with which my mind was full, which has given me a sensation of horror towards the whole community. Just imagine--only it is impossible to imagine--such a thing taking place in a New England village; the dismay, the grief, the shame, the indignation, that would fill the hearts of the whole population. I thought we should surely have some reference to the event from the pulpit, some lesson of Christian command over furious pa.s.sions. Nothing--n.o.body looked or spoke as if anything unusual had occurred; and I left the church, rejoicing to think that I was going away from such a dreadful state of society. Mr. B---- remained to preach a second sermon to the negroes--the duty of submission to masters who intermurder each other.

I had service at home in the afternoon, and my congregation was much more crowded than usual; for I believe there is no doubt at last that we shall leave Georgia this week. Having given way so much before when I thought I was praying with these poor people for the last time, I suppose I had, so to speak, expended my emotion; and I was much more composed and quiet than when I took leave of them before. But, to tell you the truth, this dreadful act of slaughter done in our neighbourhood by one man of our acquaintance upon another, impresses me to such a degree that I can hardly turn my mind from it, and Mrs. W---- and her poor young murdered son have taken almost complete possession of my thoughts.

After prayers I gave my poor people a parting admonition, and many charges to remember me and all I had tried to teach them during my stay. They promised with one voice to mind and do all that 'missis tell we;' and with many a parting benediction, and entreaties to me to return, they went their way. I think I have done what I could for them--I think I have done as well as I could by them; but when the time comes for ending any human relation, who can be without their misgivings? who can be bold to say, I could have done no more, I could have done no better?

In the afternoon I walked out, and pa.s.sed many of the people, who are now beginning, whenever they see me, to say, 'Good bye, missis!' which is rather trying. Many of them were clean and tidy, and decent in their appearance to a degree that certainly bore strong witness to the temporary efficacy of my influence in this respect. There is, however, of course much individual difference even with reference to this, and some take much more kindly and readily to cleanliness, no doubt to G.o.dliness too, than some others. I met Abraham, and thought that, in a quiet tete-a-tete, and with the pathetic consideration of my near departure to a.s.sist me, I could get him to confess the truth about the disappearance of the mutton; but he persisted in the legend of its departure through the locked door; and as I was only heaping sins on his soul with every lie I caused him to add to the previous ones, I desisted from my enquiries. Dirt and lying are the natural tendencies of humanity, which are especially fostered by slavery.

Slaves may be infinitely wrong, and yet it is very hard to blame them.

I returned home, finding the heat quite oppressive. Late in the evening, when the sun had gone down a long time, I thought I would try and breathe the fresh sea air, but the atmosphere was thick with sand-flies, which drove me in at last from standing listening to the roar of the Atlantic on Little St. Simon's Island, the wooded belt that fends off the ocean surges from the north side of Great St. Simon's. It is a wild little sand-heap, covered with thick forest growth, and belongs to Mr. ----. I have long had a great desire to visit it. I hope yet to be able to do so before our departure.

I have just finished reading, with the utmost interest and admiration, J---- C----'s narrative of his escape from the wreck of the Poolaski: what a brave, and gallant, and unselfish soul he must be! You never read anything more thrilling, in spite of the perfect modesty of this account of his. If I can obtain his permission, and squeeze out the time, I will surely copy it for you. The quiet una.s.suming character of his usual manners and deportment adds greatly to his prestige as a hero. What a fine thing it must be to be such a man!

Dear E----. We shall leave this place next Thursday or Friday, and there will be an end to this record; meantime I am fulfilling all sorts of last duties, and especially those of taking leave of my neighbours, by whom the neglect of a farewell visit would be taken much amiss.

On Sunday, I rode to a place called Frederica to call on a Mrs. A----, who came to see me some time ago. I rode straight through the island by the main road that leads to the little church.

How can I describe to you the exquisite spring beauty that is now adorning these woods, the variety of the fresh new-born foliage, the fragrance of the sweet wild perfumes that fill the air? Honeysuckles twine round every tree; the ground is covered with a low white-blossomed shrub more fragrant than lilies of the valley. The accacuas are swinging their silver censers under the green roof of these wood temples; every stump is like a cla.s.sical altar to the sylvan G.o.ds, garlanded with flowers; every post, or stick, or slight stem, like a Bacchante's thyrsus, twined with wreaths of ivy and wild vine, waving in the tepid wind. Beautiful b.u.t.terflies flicker like flying flowers among the bushes, and gorgeous birds, like winged jewels, dart from the boughs,--and--and--a huge ground snake slid like a dark ribbon, across the path while I was stopping to enjoy all this deliciousness, and so I became less enthusiastic, and cantered on past the little deserted churchyard, with the new-made grave beneath its grove of n.o.ble oaks, and a little farther on reached Mrs. A----'s cottage, half hidden in the midst of ruins and roses.

This Frederica is a very strange place; it was once a town, _the_ town, the metropolis of the island. The English, when they landed on the coast of Georgia in the war, destroyed this tiny place, and it has never been built up again. Mrs. A----'s, and one other house, are the only dwellings that remain in this curious wilderness of dismantled crumbling grey walls compa.s.sionately cloaked with a thousand profuse and graceful creepers.

These are the only ruins properly so called, except those of Fort Putnam, that I have ever seen in this land of contemptuous youth. I hailed these picturesque groups and ma.s.ses with the feelings of a European, to whom ruins are like a sort of relations. In my country, ruins are like a minor chord in music, here they are like a discord; they are not the relics of time, but the results of violence; they recall no valuable memories of a remote past, and are mere enc.u.mbrances to the busy present. Evidently they are out of place in America, except on St. Simon's Island, between this savage selvage of civilisation and the great Atlantic deep. These heaps of rubbish and roses would have made the fortune of a sketcher; but I imagine the snakes have it all to themselves here, and are undisturbed by camp stools, white umbrellas, and ejaculatory young ladies.

I sat for a long time with Mrs. A----, and a friend of hers staying with her, a Mrs. A----, lately from Florida. The latter seemed to me a remarkable woman; her conversation was extremely interesting. She had been stopping at Brunswick, at the hotel where Dr. H---- murdered young W----, and said that the mingled ferocity and blackguardism of the men who frequented the house had induced her to cut short her stay there, and come on to her friend Mrs. A----'s. We spoke of that terrible crime which had occurred only the day after she left Brunswick, and both ladies agreed that there was not the slightest chance of Dr. H----'s being punished in any way for the murder he had committed; that shooting down a man who had offended you was part of the morals and manners of the southern gentry, and that the circ.u.mstance was one of quite too frequent occurrence to cause any sensation, even in the small community where it obliterated one of the princ.i.p.al members of the society. If the accounts given by these ladies of the character of the planters in this part of the south may be believed, they must be as idle, arrogant, ignorant, dissolute, and ferocious as that mediaeval chivalry to which they are fond of comparing themselves; and these are southern women, and should know the people among whom they live.

We had a long discussion on the subject of slavery, and they took as usual the old ground of justifying the system, _where_ it was administered with kindness and indulgence. It is not surprising that women should regard the question from this point of view; they are very seldom _just_, and are generally treated with more indulgence than justice by men. They were very patient of my strong expressions of reprobation of the whole system, and Mrs. A----, bidding me good-bye, said that, for aught she could tell, I might be right, and might have been led down here by Providence to be the means of some great change in the condition of the poor coloured people.

I rode home pondering on the strange fate that has brought me to this place so far from where I was born, this existence so different in all its elements from that of my early years and former a.s.sociations. If I believed Mrs. A----'s parting words, I might perhaps verify them; perhaps I may yet verify although I do not believe them. On my return home, I found a most enchanting bundle of flowers, sent to me by Mrs. G----; pomegranate blossoms, roses, honeysuckle, everything that blooms two months later with us in Pennsylvania.

I told you I had a great desire to visit Little St. Simon's, and the day before yesterday I determined to make an exploring expedition thither. I took M---- and the children, little imagining what manner of day's work was before me. Six men rowed us in the 'Lily,' and Israel brought the wood wagon after us in a flat. Our navigation was a very intricate one, all through sea swamps and marshes, mud-banks and sand-banks, with great white sh.e.l.ls and bleaching bones stuck upon sticks to mark the channel. We landed on this forest in the sea by Quash's house, the only human residence on the island. It was larger and better, and more substantial than the negro huts in general, and he seemed proud and pleased to do the honours to us. Thence we set off, by my desire, in the wagon through the woods to the beach; road there was none, save the rough clearing that the men cut with their axes before us as we went slowly on. Presently, we came to a deep dry ditch, over which there was no visible means of proceeding.

Israel told me if we would sit still he would undertake to drive the wagon into and out of it; and so, indeed, he did, but how he did it is more than I can explain to you now, or could explain to myself then. A less powerful creature than Montreal could never have dragged us through; and when we presently came to a second rather worse edition of the same, I insisted upon getting out and crossing it on foot. I walked half a mile while the wagon was dragged up and down the deep gulley, and lifted bodily over some huge trunks of fallen trees. The wood through which we now drove was all on fire, smoking, flaming, crackling, and burning round us. The sun glared upon us from the cloudless sky, and the air was one cloud of sand-flies and mosquitoes. I covered both my children's faces with veils and handkerchiefs, and repented not a little in my own breast of the rashness of my undertaking. The back of Israel's coat was covered so thick with mosquitoes that one could hardly see the cloth; and I felt as if we should be stifled, if our way lay much longer through this terrible wood.

Presently we came to another impa.s.sable place, and again got out of the wagon, leaving Israel to manage it as best he could. I walked with the baby in my arms a quarter of a mile, and then was so overcome with the heat that I sat down in the burning wood, on the floor of ashes, till the wagon came up again. I put the children and M---- into it, and continued to walk till we came to a ditch in a tract of salt marsh, over which Israel drove triumphantly, and I partly jumped and was partly hauled over, having declined the entreaties of several of the men to let them lie down and make a bridge with their bodies for me to walk over. At length we reached the skirt of that tremendous wood, to my unspeakable relief, and came upon the white sand hillocks of the beach. The trees were all strained crooked, from the constant influence of the sea-blast. The coast was a fearful-looking stretch of dismal, trackless sand, and the ocean lay boundless and awful beyond the wild and desolate beach, from which we were now only divided by a patch of low coa.r.s.e-looking bush, growing as thick and tangled as heather, and so stiff and compact that it was hardly possible to drive through it. Yet in spite of this several lads who had joined our train rushed off into it in search of rabbits, though Israel called repeatedly to them, warning them of the danger of rattlesnakes. We drove at last down to the smooth sea sand; and here, outstripping our guides, was barred farther progress by a deep gully, down which it was impossible to take the wagon. Israel, not knowing the beach well, was afraid to drive round the mouth of it; and so it was determined that from this point we should walk home under his guidance. I sat in the wagon while he constructed a rough foot-bridge of bits of wood and broken planks for us, over the narrow chasm, and he then took Montreal out of the wagon and tied him behind it, leaving him for the other men to take charge of when they should arrive at this point. And so, having mightily desired to see the coast of Little St. Simon's Island, I did see it thoroughly; for I walked a mile and a half round it, over beds of sharp sh.e.l.ls, through swamps half knee deep, poor little S---- stumping along with dogged heroism, and Israel carrying the baby, except at one deep _mal pa.s.so_, when I took the baby and he carried S----; and so, through the wood round Quash's house, where we arrived almost fainting with fatigue and heat, and where we rested but a short time; for we had to start almost immediately to save the tide home.

I called at Mr. C----'s on my way back, to return him his son's ma.n.u.script, which I had in the boat for that purpose. I sent Jack, who had come to meet me with the horses, home, being too tired to attempt riding; and, covered with mud literally up to my knees I was obliged to lie down ignominiously all the afternoon to rest. And now I will give you a curious ill.u.s.tration of the utter subserviency of slaves. It seems that by taking the tide in proper season, and going by boat, all that horrible wood journey might have been avoided, and we could have reached the beach, with perfect ease in half the time; but because, being of course absolutely ignorant of this, I had expressed a desire to go through the wood, not a syllable of remonstrance was uttered by any one; and the men not only underwent the labour of cutting a path for the wagon and dragging it through and over all the impediments we encountered, but allowed me and the children to traverse that burning wood, rather than tell me that by waiting and taking another way I could get to the sea. When I expressed my astonishment at their not having remonstrated against my order, and explained how I could best achieve the purpose I had in view, the sole answer I got even from Israel was, 'Missis say so, so me do; missis say me go through the wood, me no tell missis go another way.' You see, my dear E----, one had need bethink oneself what orders one gives, when one has the misfortune to be despotic.

How sorry I am that I have been obliged to return that narrative of Mr.

C----'s without asking permission to copy it, which I did not do because I should not have been able to find the time to do it! We go away the day after to-morrow. All the main incidents of the disaster the newspapers have made you familiar with--the sudden and appalling loss of that fine vessel laden with the very flower of the south. There seems hardly to be a family in Georgia and South Carolina that had not some of its members on board that ill-fated s.h.i.+p. You know it was a sort of party of pleasure more than anything else; the usual annual trip to the north for change of air and scene, for the gaieties of Newport and Saratoga, that all the wealthy southern people invariably take every summer.

The weather had been calm and lovely; and dancing, talking, and laughing, as if they were in their own drawing-rooms, they had pa.s.sed the time away till they all separated for the night. At the first sound of the exploding boiler, Mr. C---- jumped up, and in his s.h.i.+rt and trousers ran on deck.

The scene was one of horrible confusion; women screaming, men swearing, the deck strewn with broken fragments of all descriptions, the vessel leaning frightfully to one side, and everybody running hither and thither in the darkness in horror and dismay. He had left Georgia with Mrs. F---- and Mrs. N----, the two children, and one of the female servants of these ladies under his charge. He went immediately to the door of the ladies'

cabin and called Mrs. F----; they were all there half-dressed; he bade them dress as quickly as possible and be ready to follow and obey him. He returned almost instantly, and led them to the side of the vessel, where, into the boats, that had already been lowered, desperate men and women were beginning to swarm, throwing themselves out of the sinking s.h.i.+p. He bade Mrs. F---- jump down into one of these boats which was only in the possession of two sailors; she instantly obeyed him, and he threw her little boy to the men after her. He then ordered Mrs. N----, with the negro woman, to throw themselves off the vessel into the boat, and, with Mrs. N----'s baby in his arms, sprang after them. His foot touched the gunwale of the boat, and he fell into the water; but recovering himself instantly, he clambered into the boat, which he then peremptorily ordered the men to set adrift, in spite of the shrieks, and cries, and commands, and entreaties of the frantic crowds who were endeavouring to get into it.

The men obeyed him, and rowing while he steered, they presently fell astern of the s.h.i.+p, in the midst of the darkness and tumult and terror.

Another boat laden with people was near them. For some time they saw the heartrending spectacle of the sinking vessel, and the sea strewn with mattresses, seats, planks, &c, to which people were clinging, floating, and shrieking for succour, in the dark water all round them. But they gradually pulled further and further out of the horrible chaos of despair, and, with the other boat still consorting with them, rowed on. They watched from a distance the piteous sight of the ill-fated steamer settling down, the gay girdle of light that marked the line of her beautiful saloons and cabins gradually sinking nearer and nearer to the blackness, in which they were presently extinguished; and the s.h.i.+p, with all its precious human freight engulfed--all but the handful left in those two open boats, to brave the dangers of that terrible coast!

They were somewhere off the North Carolina sh.o.r.e, which, when the daylight dawned, they could distinctly see, with its ominous line of breakers and inhospitable perilous coast. The men had continued rowing all night, and as the summer sun rose flaming over their heads, the task of pulling the boat became dreadfully severe; still they followed the coast, Mr. C---- looking out for any opening, creek, or small inlet, that might give them a chance of landing in safety. The other boat rowed on at some little distance from them.

All the morning, and through the tremendous heat of the middle day, they toiled on without a mouthful of food--without a drop of water. At length, towards the afternoon, the men at the oars said they were utterly exhausted and could row no longer, and that Mr. C---- must steer the boat ash.o.r.e. With wonderful power of command, he prevailed on them to continue their afflicting labour. The terrible blazing sun pouring on all their unsheltered heads had almost annihilated them; but still there lay between them and the land those fearful foaming ridges, and the women and children, if not the men themselves, seemed doomed to inevitable death in the attempt to surmount them. Suddenly they perceived that the boat that had kept them company was about to adventure itself in the perilous experiment of landing. Mr. C---- kept his boat's head steady, the men rested on their oars, and watched the result of the fearful risk they were themselves about to run. They saw the boat enter the breakers--they saw her whirled round and capsized, and then they watched, slowly emerging and dragging themselves out of the foaming sea, _some_, and only some, of the people that they knew the boat contained. Mr. C----, fortified with this terrible ill.u.s.tration of the peril that awaited them, again besought them to row yet for a little while further along the coast, in search of some possible place to take the boat safely to the beach, promising at sunset to give up the search; and again the poor men resumed their toil, but the line of leaping breakers stretched along the coast as far as eye could see, and at length the men declared they could labour no longer, and insisted that Mr. C---- should steer them to sh.o.r.e. He then said that he would do so, but they must take some rest before encountering the peril which awaited them, and for which they might require whatever remaining strength they could command. He made the men leave the oars and lie down to sleep for a short time, and then, giving the helm to one of them, did the same himself. When they were thus a little refreshed with this short rest, he prepared to take the boat into the breakers.

He laid Mrs. N----'s baby on her breast, and wrapped a shawl round and round her body so as to secure the child to it, and said, in the event of the boat capsizing, he would endeavour to save her and her child. Mrs.

F---- and her boy he gave in charge to one of the sailors, and the coloured woman who was with her to the other; and they promised solemnly, in case of misadventure to the boat, to do their best to save these helpless creatures; and so they turned, as the sun was going down, the bows of the boat to the terrible sh.o.r.e. They rose two of the breakers safely, but then the oar of one of the men was struck from his hand, and in an instant the boat whirled round and turned over. Mr. C---- instantly struck out to seize Mrs. N----, but she had sunk, and though he dived twice he could not see her; at last, he felt her hair floating loose with his foot, and seizing hold of it, grasped her securely and swam with her to sh.o.r.e. While in the act of doing so, he saw the man who had promised to save the coloured woman making alone for the beach; and even then, in that extremity, he had power of command enough left to drive the fellow back to seek her, which he did, and brought her safe to land. The other man kept his word of taking care of Mrs. F----, and the latter never released her grasp of her child's wrist, which bore the mark of her agony for weeks after their escape. They reached the sands, and Mrs. N----'s shawl having been unwound, her child was found laughing on her bosom. But hardly had they had time to thank G.o.d for their deliverance when Mr. C---- fell fainting on the beach; and Mrs. F----, who told me this, said that for one dreadful moment they thought that the preserver of all their lives had lost his own in the terrible exertion and anxiety that he had undergone.

He revived, however, and crawling a little further up the beach, they burrowed for warmth and shelter as well as they could in the sand, and lay there till the next morning, when they sought and found succour.

You cannot imagine, my dear E----, how strikingly throughout this whole narrative the extraordinary power of Mr. C----'s character makes itself felt,--the immediate obedience that he obtained from women whose terror might have made them unmanageable, and men whose selfishness might have defied his control; the wise though painful firmness, which enabled him to order the boat away from the side of the peris.h.i.+ng vessel, in spite of the pity that he felt for the many, in attempting to succour whom he could only have jeopardized the few whom he was bound to save; the wonderful influence he exercised over the poor oarsmen, whose long protracted labour postponed to the last possible moment the terrible risk of their landing.

The firmness, courage, humanity, wisdom, and presence of mind, of all his preparations for their final tremendous risk, and the authority which he was able to exercise while struggling in the foaming water for his own life and that of the woman and child he was saving, over the man who was proving false to a similar sacred charge,--all these admirable traits are most miserably transmitted to you by my imperfect account; and when I a.s.sure you that his own narrative, full as it necessarily was of the details of his own heroism, was as simple, modest, and unpretending, as it was interesting and touching, I am sure you will agree with me that he must be a very rare man. When I spoke with enthusiasm to his old father of his son's n.o.ble conduct, and asked him if he was not proud of it, his sole reply was,--'I am glad, madam, my son was not selfish.'

Now, E----, I have often spoken with you and written to you of the disastrous effect of slavery upon the character of the white men implicated in it; many, among themselves, feel and acknowledge it to the fullest extent, and no one more than myself can deplore that any human being I love should be subjected to such baneful influences; but the devil must have his due, and men brought up in habits of peremptory command over their fellow men, and under the constant apprehension of danger, and awful necessity of immediate readiness to meet it, acquire qualities precious to themselves and others in hours of supreme peril such as this man pa.s.sed through, saving by their exercise himself and all committed to his charge.

I know that the southern men are apt to deny the fact that they do live under an habitual sense of danger; but a slave population, coerced into obedience, though unarmed and half fed, _is_ a threatening source of constant insecurity, and every southern _woman_ to whom I have spoken on the subject, has admitted to me that they live in terror of their slaves.

Happy are such of them as have protectors like J---- C----. Such men will best avoid and best encounter the perils that may a.s.sail them from the abject subject, human element, in the control of which their n.o.ble faculties are sadly and unworthily employed.

_Wednesday, 17th April._--I rode to-day after breakfast, to Mrs. D----'s, another of my neighbours, who lives full twelve miles off. During the last two miles of my expedition, I had the white sand hillocks and blue line of the Atlantic in view. The house at which I called was a tumble-down barrack of a dwelling in the woods, with a sort of poverty-stricken pretentious air about it, like sundry 'proud planters' dwellings that I have seen. I was received by the sons as well as the lady of the house, and could not but admire the lordly rather than manly indifference, with which these young gentlemen, in gay guard chains and fine attire, played the gallants to me, while filthy, bare-footed half naked negro women brought in refreshments, and stood all the while fanning the cake, and sweetmeats, and their young masters, as if they had been all the same sort of stuff. I felt ashamed for the lads. The conversation turned upon Dr.

H----'s trial; for there has been a trial as a matter of form, and an acquittal as a matter of course; and the gentlemen said, upon my expressing some surprise at the latter event, that there could not be found in all Georgia a jury who would convict him, which says but little for the moral sense of 'all Georgia.' From this most painful subject we fell into the Brunswick ca.n.a.l, and thereafter I took my leave and rode home. I met my babies in the wood-wagon, and took S---- up before me, and gave her a good gallop home. Having reached the house with the appet.i.te of a twenty-four miles' ride, I found no preparation for dinner, and not so much as a boiled potato to eat, and the sole reply to my famished and disconsolate exclamations was--'Being that you order none, missis, I not know.' I had forgotten to order my dinner, and my _slaves_, unauthorised, had not ventured to prepare any. Wouldn't a Yankee have said, 'Wal now, you went off so uncommon quick, I kinder guessed you forgot all about dinner,' and have had it all ready for me? But my slaves durst not, and so I fasted till some tea could be got for me.

This was the last letter I wrote from the plantation, and I never returned there, nor ever saw again any of the poor people among whom I lived during this winter, but Jack, once, under sad circ.u.mstances. The poor lad's health failed so completely, that his owners humanely brought him to the north, to try what benefit he might derive from the change; but this was before the pa.s.sing of the Fugitive Slave Bill, when touching the soil of the northern states, a slave became free; and such was the apprehension felt lest Jack should be enlightened as to this fact by some philanthropic abolitionist, that he was kept shut up in a high upper room of a large empty house, where even I was not allowed to visit him. I heard at length of his being in Philadelphia; and upon my distinct statement that I considered freeing their slaves the business of the Messrs. ---- themselves, and not mine, I was at length permitted to see him. Poor fellow! coming to the north did not prove to him the delight his eager desire had so often antic.i.p.ated from it; nor under such circ.u.mstances is it perhaps much to be wondered at that he benefited but little by the change,--he died not long after.

I once heard a conversation between Mr. O---- and Mr. K----, the two overseers of the plantation on which I was living, upon the question of taking slaves, servants, necessary attendants, into the northern states; Mr. O---- urged the danger of their being 'got hold of,' i.e., set free by the abolitionists, to which Mr. K---- very pertinently replied, 'Oh, stuff and nonsense, I take care when my wife goes north with the children, to send Lucy with her; _her children are down here, and I defy all the abolitionists in creation to get her to stay north_.' Mr. K---- was an extremely wise man.

APPENDIX

I wrote the following letter after reading several leading articles in the _Times_ newspaper, at the time of the great sensation occasioned by Mrs.

Beecher Stowe's novel of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and after the Anti-Slavery Protest which that book induced the women of England to address to those of America, on the subject of the condition of the slaves in the southern states.

My dear E----. I have read the articles in the _Times_ to which you refer, on the subject of the inaccuracy of Mrs. Beecher Stowe's book as a picture of slavery in America, and have ascertained who they were written by.

Having done so, I do not think it worth while to send my letter for insertion, because, as that is the tone deliberately taken upon the subject by that paper, my counter statement would not, I imagine, be admitted into its columns. I enclose it to you, as I should like you to see how far from true, according to my experience, the statements of the '_Times'_ Correspondent' are. It is impossible of course to know why it erects itself into an advocate for slavery; and the most charitable conjecture I can form upon the subject is, that the Stafford House demonstration may have been thought likely to wound the sensitive national views of America upon this subject; and the statement put forward by the _Times_, contradicting Mrs. Stowe's picture, may be intended to soothe their irritation at the philanthropic zeal of our lady abolitionists.

Believe me, dear E----,

Yours always truly,

F.A.K.