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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57821 ***
+
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+
+SCENES IN THE LIFE OF HARRIET TUBMAN.
+
+BY
+
+SARAH H. BRADFORD.
+
+
+AUBURN:
+W. J. MOSES, PRINTER.
+
+1869.
+
+
+[Illustration: HARRIET TUBMAN.]
+
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869,
+
+BY WILLIAM G. WISE,
+
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Northern District
+of New York.
+
+STEREOTYPED BY
+DENNIS BRO'S & CO.,
+AUBURN, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+The following little story was written by Mrs. Sarah H. Bradford, of
+Geneva, with the single object of furnishing some help to the subject of
+the memoir. Harriet Tubman's services and sufferings during the
+rebellion, which are acknowledged in the letters of Gen. Saxton, and
+others, it was thought by many, would justify the bestowment of a
+pension by the Government. But the difficulties in the way of procuring
+such relief, suggested other methods, and finally the present one. The
+narrative was prepared on the eve of the author's departure for Europe,
+where she still remains. It makes no claim whatever to literary merit.
+Her hope was merely that the considerably numerous public already in
+part acquainted with Harriet's story, would furnish purchasers enough to
+secure a little fund for the relief of this remarkable woman. Outside
+that circle she did not suppose the memoir was likely to meet with much
+if any sale.
+
+In furtherance of the same benevolent scheme, and in order to secure the
+whole avails of the work for Harriet's benefit, a subscription has been
+raised more than sufficient to defray the entire cost of publication.
+This has been effected by the generous exertions of Wm. G. Wise, Esq.,
+of this city. The whole amount was contributed by citizens of Auburn,
+with the exception of two liberal subscriptions by Gerrit Smith, Esq.,
+and Mr. Wendell Phillips.
+
+Mr. Wise has also consented, at Mrs. Bradford's request, to act as
+trustee for Harriet; and will receive, invest, and apply, for her
+benefit, whatever may accrue from the sale of this book.
+
+The spirited wood-cut likeness of Harriet, in her costume as scout, was
+furnished by the kindness of Mr. J. C. Darby, of this city.
+
+S. M. H.
+
+AUBURN, Dec. 1, 1868.
+
+[Illustration: Decoration]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+It is proposed in this little book to give a plain and unvarnished
+account of some scenes and adventures in the life of a woman who, though
+one of earth's lowly ones, and of dark-hued skin, has shown an amount of
+heroism in her character rarely possessed by those of any station in
+life. Her name (we say it advisedly and without exaggeration) deserves
+to be handed down to posterity side by side with the names of Joan of
+Arc, Grace Darling, and Florence Nightingale; for not one of these women
+has shown more courage and power of endurance in facing danger and death
+to relieve human suffering, than has this woman in her heroic and
+successful endeavors to reach and save all whom she might of her
+oppressed and suffering race, and to pilot them from the land of Bondage
+to the promised land of Liberty. Well has she been called "_Moses_," for
+she has been a leader and deliverer unto hundreds of her people.
+
+Worn down by her sufferings and fatigues, her health permanently
+affected by the cruelties to which she has been subjected, she is still
+laboring to the utmost limit of her strength for the support of her aged
+parents, and still also for her afflicted people--by her own efforts
+supporting two schools for Freedmen at the South, and supplying them
+with clothes and books; never obtruding herself, never asking for
+charity, except for "her people."
+
+It is for the purpose of aiding her in ministering to the wants of her
+aged parents, and in the hope of securing to them the little home which
+they are in danger of losing from inability to pay the whole amount
+due--which amount was partly paid when our heroine left them to throw
+herself into the work of aiding our suffering soldiers--that this little
+account, drawn from her by persevering endeavor, is given to the friends
+of humanity.
+
+The writer of this story has till very lately known less personally of
+the subject of it, than many others to whom she has for years been an
+object of interest and care. But through relations and friends in
+Auburn, and also through Mrs. Commodore Swift of Geneva, and her
+sisters, who have for many years known and esteemed this wonderful
+woman, she has heard tales of her deeds of heroism which seemed almost
+too strange for belief, and were invested with the charm of romance.
+
+During a sojourn of some months in the city of Auburn, while the war was
+in progress, the writer used to see occasionally in her Sunday-school
+class the aged mother of Harriet, and also some of those girls who had
+been brought from the South by this remarkable woman. She also wrote
+letters for the old people to commanding officers at the South, making
+inquiries about Harriet, and received answers telling of her untiring
+devotion to our wounded and sick soldiers, and of her efficient aid in
+various ways to the cause of the Union.
+
+By the graphic pen of Mrs. Stowe, the incidents of such a life as that
+of the subject of this little memoir might be wrought up into a tale of
+thrilling interest, equaling, if not exceeding, anything in her
+world-renowned "Uncle Tom's Cabin;" but the story of Harriet Tubman
+needs not the drapery of fiction; the bare unadorned facts are enough to
+stir the hearts of the friends of humanity, the friends of liberty, the
+lovers of their country.
+
+There are those who will sneer, there are those who have already done
+so, at this _quixotic attempt_ to make a heroine of a black woman, and a
+slave; but it may possibly be that there are some natures, though
+concealed under fairer skins, who have not the capacity to comprehend
+such general and self-sacrificing devotion to the cause of others as
+that here delineated, and therefore they resort to scorn and ridicule,
+in order to throw discredit upon the whole story.
+
+Much has been left out which would have been highly interesting, because
+of the impossibility of substantiating by the testimony of others the
+truth of Harriet's statements. But whenever it has been possible to find
+those who were cognizant with the facts stated, they have been
+corroborated in every particular.
+
+A few years hence and we seem to see a gathering where the wrongs of
+earth will be righted, and Justice, long delayed, will assert itself,
+and perform its office. Then not a few of those who had esteemed
+themselves the wise and noble of this world, "will begin with shame to
+take the lowest place;" while upon Harriet's dark head a kind hand will
+be placed, and in her ear a gentle voice will sound, saying: "Friend!
+come up higher!"
+
+S. H. B.
+
+
+The following letters to the writer from those well-known and
+distinguished philanthropists, Hon. Gerrit Smith and Wendell Phillips,
+and one from Frederick Douglass, addressed to Harriet, will serve as the
+best introduction that can be given of the subject of this memoir to its
+readers:
+
+
+_Letter from Hon. Gerrit Smith._
+
+
+     PETERBORO, June 13, 1868.
+
+     MY DEAR MADAME: I am happy to learn that you are to speak to the
+     public of Mrs. Harriet Tubman. Of the remarkable events of her life
+     I have no _personal_ knowledge, but of the truth of them as she
+     describes them I have no doubt.
+
+     I have often listened to her, in her visits to my family, and I am
+     confident that she is not only truthful, but that she has a rare
+     discernment, and a deep and sublime philanthropy.
+
+     With great respect your friend,
+
+     GERRIT SMITH.
+
+
+_Letter from Wendell Phillips._
+
+
+     JUNE 16, 1868.
+
+     DEAR MADAME: The last time I ever saw John Brown was under my own
+     roof, as he brought Harriet Tubman to me, saying: "Mr. Phillips, I
+     bring you one of the best and bravest persons on this
+     continent--_General_ Tubman, as we call her."
+
+     He then went on to recount her labors and sacrifices in behalf of
+     her race. After that, Harriet spent some time in Boston, earning
+     the confidence and admiration of all those who were working for
+     freedom. With their aid she went to the South more than once,
+     returning always with a squad of self-emancipated men, women, and
+     children, for whom her marvelous skill had opened the way of
+     escape. After the war broke out, she was sent with indorsements
+     from Governor Andrew and his friends to South Carolina, where in
+     the service of the Nation she rendered most important and efficient
+     aid to our army.
+
+     In my opinion there are few captains, perhaps few colonels, who
+     have done more for the loyal cause since the war began, and few men
+     who did before that time more for the colored race, than our
+     fearless and most sagacious friend, Harriet.
+
+     Faithfully yours,
+
+     WENDELL PHILLIPS.
+
+
+_Letter from Frederick Douglass._
+
+
+     ROCHESTER, August 29, 1868.
+
+     DEAR HARRIET: I am glad to know that the story of your eventful
+     life has been written by a kind lady, and that the same is soon to
+     be published. You ask for what you do not need when you call upon
+     me for a word of commendation. I need such words from you far more
+     than you can need them from me, especially where your superior
+     labors and devotion to the cause of the lately enslaved of our land
+     are known as I know them. The difference between us is very marked.
+     Most that I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has
+     been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every
+     step of the way. You on the other hand have labored in a private
+     way. I have wrought in the day--you in the night. I have had the
+     applause of the crowd and the satisfaction that comes of being
+     approved by the multitude, while the most that you have done has
+     been witnessed by a few trembling, scared, and foot-sore bondmen
+     and women, whom you have led out of the house of bondage, and whose
+     heartfelt "_God bless you_" has been your only reward. The midnight
+     sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses of your devotion
+     to freedom and of your heroism. Excepting John Brown--of sacred
+     memory--I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils
+     and hardships to serve our enslaved people than you have. Much that
+     you have done would seem improbable to those who do not know you
+     as I know you. It is to me a great pleasure and a great privilege
+     to bear testimony to your character and your works, and to say to
+     those to whom you may come, that I regard you in every way truthful
+     and trustworthy.
+
+     Your friend,
+
+     FREDERICK DOUGLASS.
+
+
+
+
+SOME SCENES
+
+IN THE
+
+LIFE OF HARRIET TUBMAN.
+
+
+Harriet Tubman, known at various times, and in various places, by many
+different names, such as "Moses," in allusion to her being the leader
+and guide to so many of her people in their exodus from the Land of
+Bondage; "the Conductor of the Underground Railroad;" and "Moll
+Pitcher," for the energy and daring by which she delivered a fugitive
+slave who was about to be dragged back to the South; was for the first
+twenty-five years of her life a slave on the eastern shore of Maryland.
+Her own master she represents as never unnecessarily cruel; but as was
+common among slaveholders, he often hired out his slaves to others, some
+of whom proved to be tyrannical and brutal to the utmost limit of their
+power.
+
+She had worked only as a field-hand for many years, following the oxen,
+loading and unloading wood, and carrying heavy burdens, by which her
+naturally remarkable power of muscle was so developed that her feats of
+strength often called forth the wonder of strong laboring men. Thus was
+she preparing for the life of hardship and endurance which lay before
+her, for the deeds of daring she was to do, and of which her ignorant
+and darkened mind at that time never dreamed.
+
+The first person by whom she was hired was a woman who, though married
+and the mother of a family, was still "Miss Susan" to her slaves, as is
+customary at the South. This woman was possessed of the good things of
+this life, and provided liberally for her slaves--so far as food and
+clothing went. But she had been brought up to believe, and to act upon
+the belief, that a slave could be taught to do nothing, and _would_ do
+nothing but under the sting of the whip. Harriet, then a young girl, was
+taken from her life in the field, and having never seen the inside of a
+house better than a cabin in the negro quarters, was put to house-work
+without being told how to do anything. The first thing was to put a
+parlor in order. "Move these chairs and tables into the middle of the
+room, sweep the carpet clean, then dust everything, and put them back in
+their places!" These were the directions given, and Harriet was left
+alone to do her work. The whip was in sight on the mantel-piece, as a
+reminder of what was to be expected if the work was not done well.
+Harriet fixed the furniture as she was told to do, and swept with all
+her strength, raising a tremendous dust. The moment she had finished
+sweeping, she took her dusting cloth, and wiped everything "so you could
+see your face in 'em, de shone so," in haste to go and set the table for
+breakfast, and do her other work. The dust which she had set flying only
+settled down again on chairs, tables, and the piano. "Miss Susan" came
+in and looked around. Then came the call for "Minty"--Harriet's name was
+Araminta at the South.
+
+She drew her up to the table, saying, "What do you mean by doing my work
+this way, you--!" and passing her finger on the table and piano, she
+showed her the mark it made through the dust. "Miss Susan, I done sweep
+and dust jus' as you tole me." But the whip was already taken down, and
+the strokes were falling on head and face and neck. Four times this
+scene was repeated before breakfast, when, during the fifth whipping,
+the door opened, and "Miss Emily" came in. She was a married sister of
+"Miss Susan," and was making her a visit, and though brought up with the
+same associations as her sister, seems to have been a person of more
+gentle and reasonable nature. Not being able to endure the screams of
+the child any longer, she came in, took her sister by the arm, and said,
+"If you do not stop whipping that child, I will leave your house, and
+never come back!" Miss Susan declared that "she _would_ not mind, and
+she slighted her work on purpose." Miss Emily said, "Leave her to me a
+few moments;" and Miss Susan left the room, indignant. As soon as they
+were alone, Miss Emily said: "Now, Minty, show me how you do your work."
+For the sixth time Harriet removed all the furniture into the middle of
+the room; then she swept; and the moment she had done sweeping, she took
+the dusting cloth to wipe off the furniture. "Now stop there," said Miss
+Emily; "go away now, and do some of your other work, and when it is time
+to dust, I will call you." When the time came she called her, and
+explained to her how the dust had now settled, and that if she wiped it
+off now, the furniture would remain bright and clean. These few words an
+hour or two before, would have saved Harriet her whippings for that day,
+as they probably did for many a day after.
+
+While with this woman, after working from early morning till late at
+night, she was obliged to sit up all night to rock a cross, sick child.
+Her mistress laid upon her bed with a whip under her pillow, and slept;
+but if the tired nurse forgot herself for a moment, if her weary head
+dropped, and her hand ceased to rock the cradle, the child would cry
+out, and then down would come the whip upon the neck and face of the
+poor weary creature. The scars are still plainly visible where the whip
+cut into the flesh. Perhaps her mistress was preparing her, though she
+did not know it then, by this enforced habit of wakefulness, for the
+many long nights of travel, when she was the leader and guide of the
+weary and hunted ones who were escaping from bondage.
+
+"Miss Susan" got tired of Harriet, as Harriet was determined she should
+do, and so abandoned her intention of buying her, and sent her back to
+her master. She was next hired out to the man who inflicted upon her the
+life-long injury from which she is suffering now, by breaking her skull
+with a weight from the scales. The injury thus inflicted causes her
+often to fall into a state of somnolency from which it is almost
+impossible to rouse her. Disabled and sick, her flesh all wasted away,
+she was returned to her _owner_. He tried to sell her, but no one would
+buy her. "Dey said dey wouldn't give a sixpence for me," she said.
+
+"And so," she said, "from Christmas till March I worked as I could, and
+I _prayed_ through all the long nights--I groaned and prayed for ole
+master: 'Oh Lord, convert master!' 'Oh Lord, change dat man's heart!'
+'Pears like I prayed all de time," said Harriet; "'bout my work,
+everywhere, I prayed an' I groaned to de Lord. When I went to de
+horse-trough to wash my face, I took up de water in my han' an' I said,
+'Oh Lord, wash me, make me clean!' Den I take up something to wipe my
+face, an' I say, 'Oh Lord, wipe away all my sin!' When I took de broom
+and began to sweep, I groaned, 'Oh Lord, wha'soebber sin dere be in my
+heart, sweep it out, Lord, clar an' clean!'" No words can describe the
+pathos of her tones, as she broke out into these words of prayer, after
+the manner of her people. "An' so," said she, "I prayed all night long
+for master, till the first of March; an' all the time he was bringing
+people to look at me, an' trying to sell me. Den we heard dat some of us
+was gwine to be sole to go wid de chain-gang down to de cotton an' rice
+fields, and dey said I was gwine, an' my brudders, an' sisters. Den I
+changed my prayer. Fust of March I began to pray, 'Oh Lord, if you ant
+nebber gwine to change dat man's heart, kill him, Lord, an' take him out
+ob de way.'
+
+"Nex' ting I heard old master was dead, an' he died jus' as he libed.
+Oh, then, it 'peared like I'd give all de world full ob gold, if I had
+it, to bring dat poor soul back. But I couldn't pray for him no longer."
+
+The slaves were told that their master's will provided that none of them
+should be sold out of the State. This satisfied most of them, and they
+were very happy. But Harriet was not satisfied; she never closed her
+eyes that she did not imagine she saw the horsemen coming, and heard the
+screams of women and children, as they were being dragged away to a far
+worse slavery than that they were enduring there. Harriet was married at
+this time to a free negro, who not only did not trouble himself about
+her fears, but did his best to betray her, and bring her back after she
+escaped. She would start up at night with the cry, "Oh, dey're comin',
+dey're comin', I mus' go!"
+
+Her husband called her a fool, and said she was like old Cudjo, who when
+a joke went round, never laughed till half an hour after everybody else
+got through, and so just as all danger was past she began to be
+frightened. But still Harriet in fancy saw the horsemen coming, and
+heard the screams of terrified women and children. "And all that time,
+in my dreams and visions," she said, "I seemed to see a line, and on the
+other side of that line were green fields, and lovely flowers, and
+beautiful white ladies, who stretched out their arms to me over the
+line, but I couldn't reach them nohow. I always fell before I got to the
+line."
+
+One Saturday it was whispered in the quarters that two of Harriet's
+sisters had been sent off with the chain-gang. That morning she started,
+having persuaded three of her brothers to accompany her, but they had
+not gone far when the brothers, appalled by the dangers before and
+behind them, determined to go back, and in spite of her remonstrances
+dragged her with them. In fear and terror, she remained over Sunday, and
+on Monday night a negro from another part of the plantation came
+privately to tell Harriet that herself and brothers were to be carried
+off that night. The poor old mother, who belonged to the same mistress,
+was just going to milk. Harriet wanted to get away without letting her
+know, because she knew that she would raise an uproar and prevent her
+going, or insist upon going with her, and the time for this was not
+yet. But she must give some intimation to those she was going to leave
+of her intention, and send such a farewell as she might to the friends
+and relations on the plantation. These communications were generally
+made by singing. They sang as they walked along the country roads, and
+the chorus was taken up by others, and the uninitiated knew not the
+hidden meaning of the words--
+
+
+     When dat ar ole chariot comes,
+      I'm gwine to lebe you;
+     I'm boun' for de promised land,
+      I'm gwine to lebe you.
+
+
+These words meant something more than a journey to the Heavenly Canaan.
+Harriet said, "Here, mother, go 'long; I'll do the milkin' to-night and
+bring it in." The old woman went to her cabin. Harriet took down her
+sun-bonnet, and went on to the "big house," where some of her relatives
+lived as house servants. She thought she could trust Mary, but there
+were others in the kitchen, and she could say nothing. Mary began to
+frolic with her. She threw her across the kitchen, and ran out, knowing
+that Mary would follow her. But just as they turned the corner of the
+house, the master to whom Harriet was now hired, came riding up on his
+horse. Mary darted back, and Harriet thought there was no way now but
+to sing. But "the Doctor," as the master was called, was regarded with
+special awe by his slaves; if they were singing or talking together in
+the field, or on the road, and "the Doctor" appeared, all was hushed
+till he passed. But Harriet had no time for ceremony; her friends must
+have a warning; and whether the Doctor thought her "_imperent_" or not,
+she must sing him farewell. So on she went to meet him, singing:
+
+
+     I'm sorry I'm gwine to lebe you,
+      Farewell, oh farewell;
+     But I'll meet you in the mornin',
+      Farewell, oh farewell.
+
+
+The Doctor passed, and she bowed as she went on, still singing:
+
+
+     I'll meet you in the mornin',
+      I'm boun' for de promised land,
+     On the oder side of Jordan,
+      Boun' for de promised land.
+
+
+She reached the gate and looked round; the Doctor had stopped his horse,
+and had turned around in the saddle, and was looking at her as if there
+might be more in this than "met the ear." Harriet closed the gate, went
+on a little way, came back, the Doctor still gazing at her. She lifted
+up the gate as if she had not latched it properly, waved her hand to
+him, and burst out again:
+
+
+     I'll meet you in the mornin',
+      Safe in de promised land,
+     On the oder side of Jordan,
+      Boun' for de promised land.
+
+
+And she started on her journey, "not knowing whither she went," except
+that she was going to follow the north star, till it led her to liberty.
+Cautiously and by night she traveled, cunningly feeling her way, and
+finding out who were friends; till after a long and painful journey she
+found, in answer to careful inquiries, that she had at last crossed that
+magic "line" which then separated the land of bondage from the land of
+freedom; for this was before _we_ were commanded by law to take part in
+the iniquity of slavery, and aid in taking and sending back those poor
+hunted fugitives who had manhood and intelligence enough to enable them
+to make their way thus far towards freedom.
+
+"When I found I had crossed dat _line_," she said, "I looked at my hands
+to see if I was de same pusson. There was such a glory ober ebery ting;
+de sun came like gold through the trees, and ober the fields, and I felt
+like I was in Heaben."
+
+But then came the bitter drop in the cup of joy. She said she felt like
+a man who was put in State Prison for twenty-five years. All these
+twenty-five years he was thinking of his home, and longing for the time
+when he would see it again. At last the day comes--he leaves the prison
+gates--he makes his way to his old home, but his old home is not there.
+The house has been pulled down, and a new one has been put up in its
+place; his family and friends are gone nobody knows where; there is no
+one to take him by the hand, no one to welcome him.
+
+"So it was with me," she said. "I had crossed the line. I was _free_;
+but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a
+stranger in a strange land; and my home, after all, was down in
+Maryland; because my father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and
+friends were there. But I was free, and _they_ should be free. I would
+make a home in the North and bring them there, God helping me. Oh, how I
+prayed then," she said; "I said to de Lord, 'I'm gwine to hole stiddy on
+to _you_, an' I _know_ you'll see me through.'"
+
+She came to Philadelphia, and worked in hotels, in club houses, and
+afterwards at Cape May. Whenever she had raised money enough to pay
+expenses, she would make her way back, hide herself, and in various ways
+give notice to those who were ready to strike for freedom. When her
+party was made up, they would start always on Saturday night, because
+advertisements could not be sent out on Sunday, which gave them one day
+in advance.
+
+Then the pursuers would start after them. Advertisements would be posted
+everywhere. There was one reward of $12,000 offered for the head of the
+woman who was constantly appearing and enticing away parties of slaves
+from their master. She had traveled in the cars when these posters were
+put up over her head, and she heard them read by those about her--for
+she could not read herself. Fearlessly she went on, trusting in the
+Lord. She said, "I started with this idea in my head, 'Dere's _two_
+things I've got a _right_ to, and dese are, Death or Liberty--one or
+tother I mean to have. No one will take me back alive; I shall fight for
+my liberty, and when de time has come for me to go, de Lord will let dem
+kill me." And acting upon this simple creed, and firm in this trusting
+faith, she went back and forth _nineteen times_, according to the
+reckoning of her friends. She remembers that she went eleven times from
+Canada, but of the other journeys she kept no reckoning.
+
+While Harriet was working as cook in one of the large hotels in
+Philadelphia, the play of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was being performed for
+many weeks every night. Some of her fellow-servants wanted her to go and
+see it. "No," said Harriet, "I haint got no heart to go and see the
+sufferings of my people played on de stage. I've heard 'Uncle Tom's
+Cabin' read, and I tell you Mrs. Stowe's pen hasn't begun to paint what
+slavery is as I have seen it at the far South. I've seen de _real ting_,
+and I don't want to see it on no stage or in no teater."
+
+I will give here an article from a paper published nearly a year ago,
+which mentions that the price set upon the head of Harriet was much
+higher than I have stated it to be. When asked about this, Harriet said
+she did not know whether it was so, but she heard them read from one
+paper that the reward offered was $12,000.
+
+"Among American women," says the article referred to, "who has shown a
+courage and self-devotion to the welfare of others, equal to Harriet
+Tubman? Hear her story of going down again and again into the very jaws
+of slavery, to rescue her suffering people, bringing them off through
+perils and dangers enough to appall the stoutest heart, till she was
+known among them as 'Moses.'
+
+"_Forty thousand dollars_ was not too great a reward for the Maryland
+slaveholders to offer for her.
+
+"Think of her brave spirit, as strong as Daniel's of old, in its
+fearless purpose to serve God, even though the fiery furnace should be
+her portion. I have looked into her dark face, and wondered and admired
+as I listened to the thrilling deeds her lion heart had prompted her to
+dare. 'I have heard their groans and sighs, and seen their tears, and I
+would give every drop of blood in my veins to free them,' she said.
+
+"The other day, at Gerrit Smith's, I saw this heroic woman, whom the pen
+of genius will yet make famous, as one of the noblest Christian hearts
+ever inspired to lift the burdens of the wronged and oppressed, and what
+do you think she said to me? She had been tending and caring for our
+Union black (and white) soldiers in hospital during the war, and at the
+end of her labors was on her way home, coming in a car through New
+Jersey. A white man, the conductor, thrust her out of the car with such
+violence that she has not been able to work scarcely any since; and as
+she told me of the pain she had and still suffered, she said she did not
+know what she should have done for herself, and the old father and
+mother she takes care of, if Mr. Wendell Phillips had not sent her $60,
+that kept them warm through the winter. She had a letter from W. H.
+Seward to Maj.-Gen. Hunter, in which he says, 'I have known her long,
+and a nobler, higher spirit, or truer, seldom dwells in the human
+form.'"
+
+It will be impossible to give any connected account of the different
+journeys taken by Harriet for the rescue of her people, as she herself
+has no idea of the dates connected with them, or of the order in which
+they were made. She thinks she was about 25 when she made her own
+escape, and this was in the last year of James K. Polk's administration.
+From that time till the beginning of the war, her years were spent in
+these journeyings back and forth, with intervals between, in which she
+worked only to spend the avails of her labor in providing for the wants
+of her next party of fugitives. By night she traveled, many times on
+foot, over mountains, through forests, across rivers, mid perils by
+land, perils by water, perils from enemies, "perils among false
+brethren." Sometimes members of her party would become exhausted,
+foot-sore, and bleeding, and declare they could not go on, they must
+stay where they dropped down, and die; others would think a voluntary
+return to slavery better than being overtaken and carried back, and
+would insist upon returning; then there was no remedy but force; the
+revolver carried by this bold and daring pioneer would be pointed at
+their heads. "Dead niggers tell no tales," said Harriet; "Go on or die;"
+and so she compelled them to drag their weary limbs on their northward
+journey.
+
+At one time she collected and sent on a gang of thirty-nine fugitives in
+the care of others, as from some cause she was prevented from
+accompanying them. Sometimes, when she and her party were concealed in
+the woods, they saw their pursuers pass, on their horses, down the high
+road, tacking up the advertisements for them on the fences and trees.
+
+"And den how we laughed," said she. "_We_ was de fools, and _dey_ was de
+wise men; but we wasn't fools enough to go down de high road in de broad
+daylight." At one time she left her party in the woods, and went by a
+long and roundabout way to one of the "stations of the Underground
+Railway," as she called them. Here she procured food for her famished
+party, often paying out of her hardly-gained earnings, five dollars a
+day for food for them. But she dared not go back to them till night, for
+fear of being watched, and thus revealing their hiding-place. After
+nightfall, the sound of a hymn sung at a distance comes upon the ears
+of the concealed and famished fugitives in the woods, and they know that
+their deliverer is at hand. They listen eagerly for the words she sings,
+for by them they are to be warned of danger, or informed of safety.
+Nearer and nearer comes the unseen singer, and the words are wafted to
+their ears:
+
+
+     Hail, oh hail ye happy spirits,
+      Death no more shall make you fear,
+     No grief nor sorrow, pain nor anger (anguish)
+      Shall no more distress you there.
+
+     Around him are ten thousan' angels,
+      Always ready to 'bey comman'.
+     Dey are always hobring round you,
+      Till you reach the hebbenly lan'.
+
+     Jesus, Jesus will go wid you;
+      He will lead you to his throne;
+     He who died has gone before you,
+      Trod de wine-press all alone.
+
+     He whose thunders shake creation;
+      He who bids the planets roll;
+     He who rides upon the temple, (tempest)
+      An' his scepter sways de whole.
+
+     Dark and thorny is de desert,
+      Through de pilgrim makes his ways,
+     Yet beyon' dis vale of sorrow,
+      Lies de fiel's of endless days.
+
+
+I give these words exactly as Harriet sang them to me to a sweet and
+simple Methodist air. "De first time I go by singing dis hymn, dey don't
+come out to me," she said, "till I listen if de coast is clar; den when
+I go back and sing it again, dey come out. But if I sing:
+
+
+     Moses go down in Egypt,
+      Till ole Pharo' let me go;
+     Hadn't been for Adam's fall,
+      Shouldn't hab to died at all,
+
+
+den dey don't come out, for dere's danger in de way."
+
+And so by night travel, by hiding, by signals, by threatening, she
+brought the people safely to the land of liberty. But after the passage
+of the Fugitive Slave law, she said, "I wouldn't trust Uncle Sam wid my
+people no longer; I brought 'em all clar off to Canada."
+
+Of the very many interesting stories told me by Harriet, I cannot
+refrain from telling to my readers that of _Joe_, who accompanied her
+upon her seventh or eighth journey from Maryland to Canada.
+
+Joe was a noble specimen of a negro, and was hired out by his master to
+a man for whom he worked faithfully for six years, saving him the
+expense of an overseer, and taking all trouble off his hands. At length
+this man found him so absolutely necessary to him, that he determined to
+buy him at any cost. His master held him proportionably high. However,
+by paying a thousand dollars down for him, and promising to pay another
+thousand in a certain time, Joe passed into the hands of his new
+master.
+
+As may be imagined, Joe was somewhat surprised when the first order
+issued from his master's lips, was, "Now, Joe, strip and take a
+whipping!" Joe's experience of _whippings_, as he had seen them
+inflicted upon others, was not such as to cause him particularly to
+desire to go through the same operation on his own account; and he,
+naturally enough, demurred, and at first thought of resisting. But he
+called to mind a scene which he had witnessed a few days before, in the
+field, the particulars of which are too horrible and too harassing to
+the feelings to be given to my readers, and he thought it best to
+submit; but first he tried remonstrance.
+
+"Mas'r," said he, "habn't I always been faithful to you? Habn't I worked
+through sun an' rain, early in de mornin', and late at night; habn't I
+saved you an oberseer by doin' his work; hab you anyting to complain of
+agin me?"
+
+"No, Joe; I've no complaint to make of you; you're a good nigger, and
+you've always worked well; but the first lesson my niggers have to learn
+is that I am _master_, and that they are not to resist or refuse to obey
+anything I tell 'em to do. So the first thing they've got to do, is to
+be whipped; if they resist, they get it all the harder; and so I'll go
+on, till I kill 'em, but they've got to give up at last, and learn that
+I'm master."
+
+Joe thought it best to submit. He stripped off his upper clothing, and
+took his whipping without a word; but as he drew his clothes up over his
+torn and bleeding back, he said, "Dis is de last!" That night he took a
+boat and went a long distance to the cabin of Harriet's father, and
+said, "Next time Moses comes, let me know." It was only a week or two
+after that, that the mysterious woman whom no one could lay their finger
+on appeared, and men, women, and children began to disappear from the
+plantations. One fine morning Joe was missing, and his brother William,
+from another plantation; Peter and Eliza, too, were gone; and these made
+part of Harriet's next party, who began their pilgrimage from Maryland
+to Canada, or as they expressed it, from "Egypt to de land of Canaan."
+
+Their adventures were enough to fill a volume; they were pursued; they
+were hidden in "potato holes," while their pursuers passed within a few
+feet of them; they were passed along by friends in various disguises;
+they scattered and separated, to be led by guides by a roundabout way,
+to a meeting-place again. They were taken in by Sam Green, the man who
+was afterwards sent to State Prison for ten years for having a copy of
+"Uncle Tom's Cabin" in his house; and so, hunted and hiding and
+wandering, they came at last to the long bridge at the entrance of the
+city of Wilmington, Delaware. The rewards posted up everywhere had been
+at first five hundred dollars for Joe, if taken within the limits of the
+United States; then a thousand, and then fifteen hundred dollars, "an'
+all expenses clar an' clean, for his body in Easton Jail." Eight hundred
+for William, and four hundred for Peter, and twelve thousand for the
+woman who enticed them away. The long Wilmington Bridge was guarded by
+police officers, and the advertisements were everywhere. The party were
+scattered, and taken to the houses of different colored friends, and
+word was sent secretly to Thomas Garrett, of Wilmington, of their
+condition, and the necessity of their being taken across the bridge.
+Thomas Garrett is a Quaker, and a man of a wonderfully large and
+generous heart, through whose hands, Harriet tells me, two thousand
+self-emancipated slaves passed on their way to freedom. He was always
+ready, heart and hand and means, in aiding these poor fugitives, and
+rendered most efficient help to Harriet on many of her journeys back and
+forth. A letter received a few days since by the writer, from this
+noble-hearted philanthropist, will be given presently.
+
+As soon as Thomas Garrett heard of the condition of these poor people,
+his plan was formed. He engaged two wagons, filled them with
+bricklayers, whom of course he paid well for their share in the
+enterprise, and sent them across the bridge. They went as if on a
+frolic, singing and shouting. The guards saw them pass, and of course
+expected them to re-cross the bridge. After nightfall (and fortunately
+it was a dark night) the same wagons went back, but with an addition to
+their party. The fugitives were on the bottom of the wagons, the
+bricklayers on the seats, still singing and shouting; and so they passed
+by the guards, who were entirely unsuspicious of the nature of the load
+the wagons contained, or of the amount of property thus escaping their
+hands. And so they made their way to New York. When they entered the
+anti-slavery office there, Joe was recognized at once by the description
+in the advertisement. "Well," said Mr. Oliver Johnson, "I am glad to
+see the man whose head is worth fifteen hundred dollars." At this Joe's
+heart sank. If the advertisement had got to New York, that place which
+it had taken them so many days and nights to reach, he thought he was in
+danger still. "And how far is it now to Canada?" he asked. When told how
+many miles, for they were to come through New York State, and cross the
+Suspension Bridge, he was ready to give up. "From dat time Joe was
+silent," said Harriet; "he sang no more, he talked no more; he sat wid
+his head on his hand, and nobody could 'muse him or make him take any
+interest in anyting." They passed along in safety, and at length found
+themselves in the cars, approaching Suspension Bridge. The rest were
+very joyous and happy, but Joe sat silent and sad. Their
+fellow-passengers all seemed interested in and for them, and listened
+with tears, as Harriet and all their party lifted up their voices and
+sang:
+
+
+           I'm on my way to Canada,
+            That cold and dreary land;
+           The sad effects of slavery,
+            I can't no longer stand.
+           I've served my master all my days,
+            Widout a dime's reward;
+           And now I'm forced to run away,
+            To flee the lash abroad.
+     Farewell, ole master, don't think hard of me,
+     I'll travel on to Canada, where all the slaves are free.
+
+           The hounds are baying on my track,
+            Ole master comes behind,
+           Resolved that he will bring me back,
+            Before I cross de line;
+           I'm now embarked for yonder shore,
+            There a man's a man by law;
+           The iron horse will bear me o'er,
+            To shake de lion's paw.
+     Oh, righteous Father, wilt thou not pity me,
+     And aid me on to Canada where all the slaves are free.
+
+           Oh, I heard Queen Victoria say,
+            That if we would forsake
+           Our native land of slavery,
+            And come across the lake;
+           That she was standin' on de shore,
+            Wid arms extended wide,
+           To give us all a peaceful home
+            Beyond de rolling tide.
+       Farewell, ole master, etc.
+
+
+The cars began to cross the bridge. Harriet was very anxious to have her
+companions see the Falls. William, Peter, and Eliza came eagerly to look
+at the wonderful sight; but Joe sat still, with his head upon his hand.
+
+"Joe, come look at de Falls! Joe, you fool you, come see de Falls! its
+your last chance." But Joe sat still and never raised his head. At
+length Harriet knew by the rise in the center of the bridge, and the
+descent on the other side, that they had crossed "the line." She sprang
+across to Joe's seat, shook him with all her might, and shouted, "Joe,
+you've shook de lion's paw!" Joe did not know what she meant. "Joe,
+you're _free_!" shouted Harriet. Then Joe's head went up, he raised his
+hands on high, and his face, streaming with tears, to heaven, and broke
+out in loud and thrilling tones:
+
+
+     "Glory to God and Jesus too,
+      One more soul is safe!
+     Oh, go and carry de news,
+      One more soul got safe."
+
+
+"Joe, come and look at de Falls!" called Harriet.
+
+
+     "Glory to God and Jesus too,
+      One more soul got safe."
+
+
+was all the answer. The cars stopped on the other side. Joe's feet were
+the first to touch British soil, after those of the conductor.
+
+Loud roared the waters of Niagara, but louder still ascended the anthem
+of praise from the overflowing heart of the freeman. And can we doubt
+that the strain was taken up by angel voices, and that through the
+arches of Heaven echoed and re-echoed the strain:
+
+
+     Glory to God in the Highest,
+     Glory to God and Jesus too,
+      One more soul is safe.
+
+
+"The ladies and gentlemen gathered round him," said Harriet, "till I
+couldn't see Joe for the crowd, only I heard 'Glory to God and Jesus
+too!' louder than ever." William went after him, and pulled him,
+saying, "Joe, stop your noise! you act like a fool!' Then Peter ran in
+and jerked him mos' off his feet,--"Joe, stop your hollerin'! Folks'll
+think you're crazy!" But Joe gave no heed. The ladies were crying, and
+the tears like rain ran down Joe's sable cheeks. A lady reached over her
+fine cambric handkerchief to him. Joe wiped his face, and then he spoke.
+
+"Oh! if I'd felt like dis down South, it would hab taken _nine_ men to
+take me; only one more journey for me now, and dat is to Hebben!" "Well,
+you ole fool you," said Harriet, with whom there seems but one step from
+the sublime to the ridiculous, "you might a' looked at the Falls fust,
+and den gone to Hebben afterwards." She has seen Joe several times
+since, a happy and industrious freeman in Canada.
+
+When asked, as she often is, how it was possible that she was not afraid
+to go back, with that tremendous price upon her head, Harriet always
+answers, "Why, don't I tell you, Missus, t'wan't _me_, 'twas _de Lord_!
+I always _tole_ him, 'I trust to you. I don't know where to go or what
+to do, but I expect you to lead me,' an' he always did." At one time she
+was going down, watched for everywhere, after there had been a meeting
+of slaveholders in the court-house of one of the large cities of
+Maryland, and an added reward had been put upon her head, with various
+threats of the different cruel devices by which she should be tortured
+and put to death; friends gathered round her, imploring her not to go on
+directly in the face of danger and death, and this was Harriet's answer
+to them:
+
+"Now look yer! John saw the city, didn't he? Yes, John saw the city.
+Well, what did he see? He saw twelve gates--three of dose gates was on
+de north--three of 'em was on the east--and three of 'em was on de
+west--but dere was three of 'em on de _South_ too; an' I reckon if dey
+kill me down dere, I'll git into one of dem gates, don't you?"
+
+Whether Harriet's ideas of the geographical bearings of the gates of the
+Celestial City, as seen in the Apocalyptic vision, were correct or not,
+we cannot doubt that she was right in the deduction her faith drew from
+them; and that _somewhere_, whether north, south, east, or west, to our
+dim vision, there is a gate to be opened for Harriet, where the welcome
+will be given, "Come in thou blessed of my Father."
+
+Many of the stories told me by Harriet, in answer to questions, have
+been corroborated by letters, some of which will appear in this book.
+Of others, I have not been able to procure confirmation, owing to
+ignorance of the address of those conversant with the facts. I find
+among her papers, many of which are defaced by being carried about with
+her for years, portions of letters addressed to myself, by persons at
+the South, and speaking of the valuable assistance Harriet was rendering
+our soldiers in the hospital, and our armies in the field. At this time
+her manner of life, as related by herself, was this:
+
+"Well, Missus, I'd go to de hospital, I would, early eb'ry mornin'. I'd
+get a big chunk of ice, I would, and put it in a basin, and fill it with
+water; den I'd take a sponge and begin. Fust man I'd come to, I'd thrash
+away de flies, an' dey'd rise, dey would, like bees roun' a hive. Den
+I'd begin to bathe der wounds, an' by de time I'd bathed off three or
+four, de fire and heat would have melted de ice and made de water warm,
+an' it would be as red as clar blood. Den I'd go an' git more ice, I
+would, an' by de time I got to de nex' ones, de flies would be roun' de
+fust ones black an' thick as eber." In this way she worked, day after
+day, till late at night; then she went home to her little cabin, and
+made about fifty pies, a great quantity of ginger-bread, and two casks
+of root beer. These she would hire some contraband to sell for her
+through the camps, and thus she would provide her support for another
+day; for this woman never received pay or pension, and never drew for
+herself but twenty days' rations during the four years of her labors. At
+one time she was called away from Hilton Head, by one of our officers,
+to come to Fernandina, where the men were "dying off like sheep," from
+dysentery. Harriet had acquired quite a reputation for her skill in
+curing this disease, by a medicine which she prepared from roots which
+grew near the waters which gave the disease. Here she found thousands of
+sick soldiers and contrabands, and immediately gave up her time and
+attention to them. At another time, we find her nursing those who were
+down by hundreds with small-pox and malignant fevers. She had never had
+these diseases, but she seems to have no more fear of death in one form
+than another. "De Lord would take keer of her till her time came, an'
+den she was ready to go."
+
+When our armies and gun-boats first appeared in any part of the South,
+many of the poor negroes were as much afraid of "de Yankee Buckra" as
+of their own masters. It was almost impossible to win their confidence,
+or to get information from them. But to Harriet they would tell
+anything; and so it became quite important that she should accompany
+expeditions going up the rivers, or into unexplored parts of the
+country, to control and get information from those whom they took with
+them as guides.
+
+Gen. Hunter asked her at one time if she would go with several gun-boats
+up the Combahee River, the object of the expedition being to take up the
+torpedoes placed by the rebels in the river, to destroy railroads and
+bridges, and to cut off supplies from the rebel troops. She said she
+would go if Col. Montgomery was to be appointed commander of the
+expedition. Col. Montgomery was one of John Brown's men, and was well
+known to Harriet. Accordingly, Col. Montgomery was appointed to the
+command, and Harriet, with several men under her, the principal of whom
+was J. Plowden, whose pass I have, accompanied the expedition. Harriet
+describes in the most graphic manner the appearance of the plantations
+as they passed up the river; the frightened negroes leaving their work
+and taking to the woods, at sight of the gun-boats; then coming to peer
+out like startled deer, and scudding away like the wind at the sound of
+the steam-whistle. "Well," said one old negro, "Mas'r said de Yankees
+had horns and tails, but I nebber beliebed it till now." But the word
+was passed along by the mysterious telegraphic communication existing
+among these simple people, that these were "Lincoln's gun-boats come to
+set them free." In vain, then, the drivers used their whips, in their
+efforts to hurry the poor creatures back to their quarters; they all
+turned and ran for the gun-boats. They came down every road, across
+every field, just as they had left their work and their cabins; women
+with children clinging around their necks, hanging to their dresses,
+running behind, all making at full speed for "Lincoln's gun-boats."
+Eight hundred poor wretches at one time crowded the banks, with their
+hands extended towards their deliverers, and they were all taken off
+upon the gun-boats, and carried down to Beaufort.
+
+"I nebber see such a sight," said Harriet; "we laughed, an' laughed, an'
+laughed. Here you'd see a woman wid a pail on her head, rice a smokin'
+in it jus as she'd taken it from de fire, young one hangin' on behind,
+one han' roun' her forehead to hold on, 'tother han' diggin' into de
+rice-pot, eatin' wid all its might; hold of her dress two or three more;
+down her back a bag wid a pig in it. One woman brought two pigs, a
+white one, an' a black one; we took 'em all on board; named de white pig
+Beauregard, an' de black pig Jeff Davis. Sometimes de women would come
+wid twins hangin' roun' der necks; 'pears like I nebber see so many
+twins in my life; bags on der shoulders, baskets on der heads, and young
+ones taggin' behin', all loaded; pigs squealin', chickens screamin',
+young ones squallin'." And so they came pouring down to the gun-boats.
+When they stood on the shore, and the small boats put out to take them
+off, they all wanted to get in at once. After the boats were crowded,
+they would hold on to them so that they could not leave the shore. The
+oarsmen would beat them on their hands, but they would not let go; they
+were afraid the gun-boats would go off and leave them, and all wanted to
+make sure of one of these arks of refuge. At length Col. Montgomery
+shouted from the upper deck, above the clamor of appealing tones,
+"Moses, you'll have to give 'em a song." Then Harriet lifted up her
+voice and sang:
+
+
+     "Of all the whole creation in the east or in the west,
+     The glorious Yankee nation is the greatest and the best,
+     Come along! Come along! don't be alarmed,
+     Uncle Sam is rich enough to give you all a farm."
+
+
+At the end of every verse, the negroes in their enthusiasm would throw
+up their hands and shout "Glory," and the row-boats would take that
+opportunity to push off; and so at last they were all brought on board.
+The masters fled; houses and barns and railroad bridges were burned,
+tracks torn up, torpedoes destroyed, and the expedition was in all
+respects successful.
+
+This fearless woman was often sent into the rebel lines as a spy, and
+brought back valuable information as to the position of armies and
+batteries; she has been in battle when the shot was falling like hail,
+and the bodies of dead and wounded men were dropping around her like
+leaves in autumn; but the thought of fear never seems to have had place
+for a moment in her mind. She had her duty to perform, and she expected
+to be taken care of till it was done.
+
+Would that instead of taking them in this poor way at second-hand, my
+readers could hear this woman's graphic accounts of scenes she herself
+witnessed, could listen to her imitations of negro preachers in their
+own very peculiar dialect, her singing of camp-meeting hymns, her
+account of "experience meetings," her imitations of the dances, and the
+funeral ceremonies of these simple people. "Why, der language down dar
+in de far South is jus' as different from ours in Maryland, as you can
+think," said she. "Dey laughed when dey heard me talk, an' I could not
+understand dem, no how." She described a midnight funeral which she
+attended; for the slaves, never having been allowed to bury their dead
+in the day time, continued the custom of night funerals from habit.
+
+The corpse was laid upon the ground, and the people all sat round, the
+group being lighted up by pine torches.
+
+The old negro preacher began by giving out a hymn, which was sung by
+all. "An' oh! I wish you could hear 'em sing, Missus," said Harriet.
+"Der voices is so sweet, and dey can sing eberyting we sing, an' den dey
+can sing a great many hymns dat we can't nebber catch at all."
+
+The old preacher began his sermon by pointing to the dead man, who lay
+in a rude box on the ground before him.
+
+"_Shum?_ Ded-a-de-dah! _Shum, David?_ Ded-a-de-dah! Now I want you all
+to _flec'_ for moment. Who ob all dis congregation is gwine next to lie
+ded-a-de-dah? You can't go nowheres, my frien's and bredren, but Deff'll
+fin' you. You can't dig no hole so deep an' bury yourself dar, but God
+A'mighty's far-seein' eye'll fine you, an' Deff'll come arter you. You
+can't go into that big fort (pointing to Hilton Head), an' shut
+yourself up dar; dat fort dat Sesh Buckner said de debil couldn't take,
+but Deff'll fin' you dar. All your frien's may forget you, but Deff'll
+nebber forget you. Now, my bredren, prepare to lie ded-a-de-dah!"
+
+This was the burden of a very long sermon, after which the whole
+congregation went round in a sort of solemn dance, called the "spiritual
+shuffle," shaking hands with each other, and calling each other by name
+as they sang:
+
+
+     My sis'r Mary's boun' to go;
+     My sis'r Nanny's boun' to go;
+     My brudder Tony's boun' to go;
+     My brudder July's boun' to go.
+
+
+This to the same tune, till every hand had been shaken by every one of
+the company. When they came to Harriet, who was a stranger, they sang:
+
+
+     Eberybody's boun' to go!
+
+
+The body was then placed in a Government wagon, and by the light of the
+pine torches, the strange, dark procession moved along, singing a rude
+funeral hymn, till they reached the place of burial.
+
+Harriet's account of her interview with an old negro she met at Hilton
+Head, is amusing and interesting. He said, "I'd been yere seventy-three
+years, workin' for my master widout even a dime wages. I'd worked
+rain-wet sun dry. I'd worked wid my mouf full of dust, but would not
+stop to get a drink of water. I'd been whipped, an' starved, an' I was
+always prayin', 'Oh! Lord, come an' delibber us!' All dat time de birds
+had been flyin', an' de rabens had been cryin', and de fish had been
+sunnin' in de waters. One day I look up, an' I see a big cloud; it
+didn't come up like as de clouds come out far yonder, but it 'peared to
+be right ober head. Der was tunders out of dat, an' der was lightnin's.
+Den I looked down on de water, an' I see, 'peared to me a big house in
+de water, an' out of de big house came great big eggs, and de good eggs
+went on trou' de air, an' fell into de fort; an' de bad eggs burst
+before dey got dar. Den de Sesh Buckra begin to run, an de neber stop
+running till de git to de swamp, an' de stick dar an' de die dar. Den I
+heard 'twas the Yankee ship[1] firin' out de big eggs, an dey had come
+to set us free. Den I praise de Lord. He come an' put he little finger
+in de work, an' dey Sesh Buckra all go; and de birds stop flyin', and de
+rabens stop cryin', an' when I go to catch a fish to eat wid my rice,
+de's no fish dar. De Lord A'mighty'd come and frightened 'em all out of
+de waters. Oh! Praise de Lord! I'd prayed seventy-three years, an' now
+he's come an' we's all free."
+
+The last time Harriet was returning from the war, with her pass as
+hospital nurse, she bought a half-fare ticket, as she was told she must
+do; and missing the other train, she got into an emigrant train on the
+Amboy Railroad. When the conductor looked at her ticket, he said, "Come,
+hustle out of here! We don't carry niggers for half-fare." Harriet
+explained to him that she was in the employ of Government, and was
+entitled to transportation as the soldiers were. But the conductor took
+her forcibly by the arm, and said, "I'll make you tired of trying to
+stay here." She resisted, and being very strong, she could probably have
+got the better of the conductor, had he not called three men to his
+assistance. The car was filled with emigrants, and no one seemed to take
+her part. The only words she heard, accompanied with fearful oaths,
+were, "Pitch the nagur out!" They nearly wrenched her arm off, and at
+length threw her, with all their strength, into a baggage-car. She
+supposed her arm was broken, and in intense suffering she came on to New
+York. As she left the car, a delicate-looking young man came up to her,
+and, handing her a card, said, "You ought to sue that conductor, and if
+you want a witness, call on me." Harriet remained all winter under the
+care of a physician in New York; he advised her to sue the Railroad
+company, and said that he would willingly testify as to her injuries.
+But the card the young man had given her was only a visiting card, and
+she did not know where to find him, and so she let the matter go.
+
+The writer here finds it necessary to apologize for the very desultory
+and hasty manner in which this little book is written. Being herself
+pressed for time, in the expectation of soon leaving the country, she is
+obliged to pen down the material to be used in the short and interrupted
+interviews she can obtain with Harriet, and also to use such letters and
+accounts as may be sent her, as they come, without being able to work
+them in, in the order of time. A very material assistance is to be
+rendered her by the kind offer of an account of Harriet's services
+during the war, written by Mr. Charles P. Wood, of Auburn, and kindly
+copied by one of Harriet's most faithful and most efficient friends,
+Mrs. S. M. Hopkins, of that place.
+
+It was a wise plan of our sagacious heroine to leave her old parents
+till the last to be brought away. They were pensioned off as too old to
+work, had a cabin, and a horse and cow, and were quite comfortable. If
+Harriet had taken them away before the young people, these last would
+have been sold into Southern slavery, to keep them out of her way. But
+at length Harriet heard that the old man had been betrayed by a slave
+whom he had assisted, but who had turned back, and when questioned by
+his wife, told her the story of his intended escape, and of the aid he
+had received from "Old Ben." This woman, hoping to curry favor with her
+master, revealed the whole to him, and "Old Ben" was arrested. He was to
+be tried the next week, when Harriet appeared upon the scene, and, as
+she says, "saved dem de expense ob de trial," and removed her father to
+a higher court, by taking him off to Canada. The manner of their escape
+is detailed in the following letter from Thomas Garrett, the Wilmington
+Quaker:
+
+
+     WILMINGTON, 6th Mo., 1868.
+
+     MY FRIEND: Thy favor of the 12th reached me yesterday, requesting
+     such reminiscences as I could give respecting the remarkable labors
+     of Harriet Tubman, in aiding her colored friends from bondage. I
+     may begin by saying, living as I have in a slave State, and the
+     laws being very severe where any proof could be made of any one
+     aiding slaves on their way to freedom, I have not felt at liberty
+     to keep any written word of Harriet's or my own labors, except in
+     numbering those whom I have aided. For that reason I cannot furnish
+     so interesting an account of Harriet's labors as I otherwise could,
+     and now would be glad to do; for in truth I never met with any
+     person, of any color, who had more confidence in the voice of God,
+     as spoken direct to her soul. She has frequently told me that she
+     talked with God, and he talked with her every day of her life, and
+     she has declared to me that she felt no more fear of being arrested
+     by her former master, or any other person, when in his immediate
+     neighborhood, than she did in the State of New York, or Canada, for
+     she said she never ventured only where God sent her, and her faith
+     in a Supreme Power truly was great.
+
+     I have now been confined to my room with indisposition more than
+     four weeks, and cannot sit to write much; but I feel so much
+     interested in Harriet that I will try to give some of the most
+     remarkable incidents that now present themselves to my mind. The
+     date of the commencement of her labors, I cannot certainly give;
+     but I think it must have been about 1845; from that time till 1860,
+     I think she must have brought from the neighborhood where she had
+     been held as a slave, from 60 to 80 persons, from Maryland, some 80
+     miles from here. No slave who placed himself under her care, was
+     ever arrested that I have heard of; she mostly had her regular
+     stopping places on her route; but in one instance, when she had two
+     stout men with her, some 30 miles below here, she said that God
+     told her to stop, which she did; and then asked him what she must
+     do. He told her to leave the road, and turn to the left; she
+     obeyed, and soon came to a small stream of tide water; there was no
+     boat, no bridge; she again inquired of her Guide what she was to
+     do. She was told to go through. It was cold, in the month of March;
+     but having confidence in her Guide, she went in; the water came up
+     to her arm-pits; the men refused to follow till they saw her safe
+     on the opposite shore. They then followed, and if I mistake not,
+     she had soon to wade a second stream; soon after which she came to
+     a cabin of colored people, who took them all in, put them to bed,
+     and dried their clothes, ready to proceed next night on their
+     journey. Harriet had run out of money, and gave them some of her
+     under-clothing to pay for their kindness. When she called on me two
+     days after, she was so hoarse she could hardly speak, and was also
+     suffering with violent toothache. The strange part of the story we
+     found to be, that the master of these two men had put up the
+     previous day, at the railroad station near where she left, an
+     advertisement for them, offering a large reward for their
+     apprehension; but they made a safe exit. She at one time brought as
+     many as seven or eight, several of whom were women and children.
+     She was well known here in Chester County and Philadelphia, and
+     respected by all true abolitionists. I had been in the habit of
+     furnishing her and those that accompanied her, as she returned from
+     her acts of mercy, with new shoes; and on one occasion when I had
+     not seen her for three months, she came into my store. I said,
+     "Harriet, I am glad to see thee! I suppose thee wants a pair of new
+     shoes." Her reply was "I want more than that." I, in jest, said, "I
+     have always been liberal with thee, and wish to be; but I am not
+     rich, and cannot afford to give much." Her reply was: "God tells me
+     you have money for me." I asked her "if God never deceived her?"
+     She said, "No!" "Well! how much does thee want?" After studying a
+     moment, she said: "About twenty-three dollars." I then gave her
+     twenty-four dollars and some odd cents, the net proceeds of five
+     pounds sterling, received through Eliza Wigham, of Scotland, for
+     her. I had given some accounts of Harriet's labor to the
+     Anti-Slavery Society of Edinburgh, of which Eliza Wigham was
+     Secretary. On the reading of my letter, a gentleman present said he
+     would send Harriet four pounds if he knew of any way to get it to
+     her. Eliza Wigham offered to forward it to me for her, and that was
+     the first money ever received by me for her. Some twelve months
+     after, she called on me again, and said that God told her I had
+     some money for her, but not so much as before. I had, a few days
+     previous, received the net proceeds of one pound ten shillings from
+     Europe for her. To say the least, there was something remarkable in
+     these facts, whether clairvoyance, or the divine impression on her
+     mind from the source of all power, I cannot tell; but certain it
+     was she had a guide within herself other than the written word, for
+     she never had any education. She brought away her aged parents in a
+     singular manner. They started with an old horse, fitted out in
+     primitive style with a _straw collar_, a pair of old chaise wheels,
+     with a board on the axle to sit on, another board swung with ropes,
+     fastened to the axle, to rest their feet on. She got her parents,
+     who were both slaves belonging to different masters, on this rude
+     vehicle to the railroad, put them in the cars, turned Jehu herself,
+     and drove to town in a style that no human being ever did before or
+     since; but she was happy at having arrived safe. Next day, I
+     furnished her with money to take them all to Canada. I afterwards
+     sold their horse, and sent them the balance of the proceeds. I
+     believe that Harriet succeeded in freeing all her relatives but one
+     sister and her three children. Etc., etc.
+
+     Thy friend,
+
+     THOS. GARRETT.
+
+
+Friend Garrett probably refers here to those who passed through his
+hands. Harriet was obliged to come by many different routes on her
+different journeys, and though she never counted those whom she brought
+away with her, it would seem, by the computation of others, that there
+must have been somewhere near three hundred brought by her to the
+Northern States and Canada.
+
+
+     Extracts from a letter written by Mr. Sanborn, Secretary of the
+     Massachusetts Board of State Charities.
+
+
+     MY DEAR MADAME: Mr. Phillips has sent me your note, asking for
+     reminiscences of Harriet Tubman, and testimonials to her
+     extraordinary story, which all her New England friends will, I am
+     sure, be glad to furnish.
+
+     I never had reason to doubt the truth of what Harriet said in
+     regard to her own career, for I found her singularly truthful. Her
+     imagination is warm and rich, and there is a whole region of the
+     marvelous in her nature, which has manifested itself at times
+     remarkably. Her dreams and visions, misgivings and forewarnings,
+     ought not to be omitted in any life of her, particularly those
+     relating to John Brown.
+
+     She was in his confidence in 1858-9, and he had a great regard for
+     her, which he often expressed to me. She aided him in his plans,
+     and expected to do so still further, when his career was closed by
+     that wonderful campaign in Virginia. The first time she came to my
+     house, in Concord, after that tragedy, she was shown into a room in
+     the evening, where Brackett's bust of John Brown was standing. The
+     sight of it, which was new to her, threw her into a sort of ecstacy
+     of sorrow and admiration, and she went on in her rhapsodical way to
+     pronounce his apotheosis.
+
+     She has often been in Concord, where she resided at the houses of
+     Emerson, Alcott, the Whitneys, the Brooks family, Mrs. Horace
+     Mann, and other well known persons. They all admired and respected
+     her, and nobody doubted the reality of her adventures. She was too
+     _real_ a person to be suspected. In 1862, I think it was, she went
+     from Boston to Port Royal, under the advice and encouragement of
+     Mr. Garrison, Governor Andrew, Dr. Howe, and other leading people.
+     Her career in South Carolina is well known to some of our officers,
+     and I think to Colonel Higginson, now of Newport, R. I., and
+     Colonel James Montgomery, of Kansas, to both of whom she was useful
+     as a spy and guide, if I mistake not. I regard her as, on the
+     whole, the most extraordinary person of her race I have ever met.
+     She is a negro of pure or almost pure blood, can neither read nor
+     write, and has the characteristics of her race and condition. But
+     she has done what can scarcely be credited on the best authority,
+     and she has accomplished her purposes with a coolness, foresight,
+     patience, and wisdom, which in a _white man_ would have raised him
+     to the highest pitch of reputation.
+
+     I am, dear Madame, very truly your servant,
+
+     F. B. SANBORN.
+
+
+Of the "dreams and visions" mentioned in this letter, the writer might
+have given many wonderful instances; but it was thought best not to
+insert anything which, with any, might bring discredit upon the story.
+When these turns of somnolency come upon Harriet, she imagines that her
+"spirit" leaves her body, and visits other scenes and places, not only
+in this world, but in the world of spirits. And her ideas of these
+scenes show, to say the least of it, a vividness of imagination seldom
+equaled in the soarings of the most cultivated minds.
+
+Not long since, the writer, on going into Harriet's room in the morning,
+sat down by her and began to read that wonderful and glorious
+description of the heavenly Jerusalem in the two last chapters of
+Revelations. When the reading was finished, Harriet burst into a
+rhapsody which perfectly amazed her hearer--telling of what she had seen
+in one of these visions, sights which no one could doubt had been real
+to her, and which no human imagination could have conceived, it would
+seem, unless in dream or vision. There was a wild poetry in these
+descriptions which seemed to border almost on inspiration, but by many
+they might be characterized as the ravings of insanity. All that can be
+said is, however, if this woman is insane, there has been a wonderful
+"method in her madness."
+
+At one time, Harriet was much troubled in spirit about her three
+brothers, feeling sure that some great evil was impending over their
+heads. She wrote a letter, by the hand of a friend, to a man named Jacob
+Jackson, who lived near there. Jacob was a free negro, who could both
+read and write, and who was under suspicion at that time, as it was
+thought he had something to do with the disappearance of so many slaves.
+It was necessary, therefore, to be very cautious in writing to him.
+Jacob had an adopted son, William Henry Jackson, also free, who had come
+South; and so Harriet determined to sign her letter with his name,
+knowing that Jacob would be clever enough to understand, by her peculiar
+phraseology, what meaning she intended to convey to him. She, therefore,
+after speaking of indifferent matters, said, "Read my letter to the old
+folks, and give my love to them, and tell my brothers to be always
+_watching unto prayer_, and when the _good old ship of Zion comes along,
+to be ready to step aboard_."
+
+The letter was signed "William Henry Jackson." Jacob was not allowed to
+have his letters till the self-elected inspectors had had the reading of
+them, and studied into their secret meaning. They, therefore, got
+together, wiped their glasses, and got them on, and proceeded to a
+careful perusal of this mysterious document. What it meant, they could
+not imagine; William Henry Jackson had no parents or brothers, and the
+letter was incomprehensible. White genius having exhausted itself, black
+genius was called in, and Jacob's letter was at last handed to him.
+Jacob saw at once what it meant, but tossed it down, saying, "Dat letter
+can't be meant for me, no how. I can't make head nor tail of it," and
+walked off and took immediate measures to let Harriet's brothers know
+secretly that she was coming, and they must be ready to start at a
+moment's notice for the North. When Harriet arrived there, it was the
+day before Christmas, and she found her three brothers, who had
+attempted to escape, were advertised to be sold on Christmas day to the
+highest bidder, to go down to the cotton and rice fields with the
+chain-gang. Christmas came on Sunday, and therefore they were not to be
+sold till Monday. Harriet arrived on Saturday, and gave them secret
+notice to be ready to start Saturday night, immediately after dark, the
+first stopping-place to be their father's cabin, forty miles away. When
+they assembled, their brother John was missing; but when Harriet was
+ready, the word was "Forward!" and she "nebber waited for no one." Poor
+John was almost ready to start, when his wife was taken ill, and in an
+hour or two, another little inheritor of the blessings of slavery had
+come into the world. John must go off for a "Granny," and then he would
+not leave his wife in her present circumstances. But after the birth of
+the child, he began to think he must start; the North and Liberty, or
+the South and life-long Slavery--these were the alternatives, and this
+was his last chance. He tried again and again to steal out of the door,
+but a watchful eye was on him, and he was always arrested by the
+question, "Where you gwine, John?" At length he told her he was going to
+try to see if he couldn't get hired out on Christmas to another man. His
+wife did not think that he was to be sold. He went out of the door, and
+stood by the corner of the house, near her bed, listening. At length, he
+heard her sobbing and crying, and not being able to endure it, he went
+back. "Oh! John," said his wife, "you's gwine to lebe me; but, wherebber
+you go, remember me an' de chillen." John went out and started at full
+speed for his father's cabin, forty miles away. At daybreak, he overtook
+the others in the "fodder house," near the cabin of their parents.
+Harriet had not seen her mother there for six years, but they did not
+dare to let the old woman know of their being in her neighborhood, or of
+their intentions, for she would have raised such an uproar in her
+efforts to detain them with her, that the whole plantation would have
+been alarmed. The poor old woman had been expecting the boys all day, to
+spend Christmas with her as usual. She had been hard at work, had killed
+a pig, and put it to all the various uses to which sinner's flesh is
+doomed, and had made all the preparations her circumstances admitted of,
+to give them a sumptuous entertainment, and there she sat watching. In
+the night, when Harriet and two of her brothers and two other men, who
+had escaped with them, arrived at the "fodder house," they were
+exhausted and famished. They sent the two strange men up to the house to
+try and speak to "Old Ben," their father, but not to let their mother
+know of their being in the neighborhood. The men succeeded in rousing
+old Ben, who came out, and as soon as he heard their story, he gathered
+together a quantity of provisions, and came down to the fodder house,
+and slipped them inside the door, taking care not to _see_ his
+children. Up among the ears of corn they lay, and one of them he had
+not seen for six years. It rained very hard all that Sunday, and there
+they lay all day, for they could not start till night. At about
+daybreak, John joined them. There were wide chinks in the boards of the
+fodder house, and through them they could see their father's cabin; and
+all day long, every few minutes, they would see the old woman come out,
+and, shading her eyes with her hand, take a long look down the road to
+see if her children were coming, and then they could almost hear her
+sigh as she turned into the house, disappointed.
+
+Two or three times the old man came down, and pushed food inside the
+door, and after nightfall he came to accompany them part of the way upon
+their journey. When he reached the fodder house, he tied his
+handkerchief tight over his eyes, and two of his sons taking him by each
+arm, he accompanied them some miles upon their journey. They then bade
+him farewell, and left him standing blind-fold in the middle of the
+road. When he could no longer hear their footsteps, he took off the
+handkerchief, and turned back.
+
+But before leaving, they had gone up to the cabin to take a silent
+farewell of the poor old mother. Through the little window of the cabin,
+they saw the old woman sitting by her fire with a pipe in her mouth, her
+head on her hand, rocking back and forth as she did when she was in
+trouble, and wondering what new evil had come to her children. With
+streaming eyes, they watched her for ten or fifteen minutes; but time
+was precious, and they must reach their next station before daybreak,
+and so they turned sadly away.
+
+When the holidays were over, and the men came for the three brothers to
+sell them, they could not be found. The first place to search was of
+course the plantation where all their relatives and friends lived. They
+went to the "big house," and asked the "Doctor" if he had seen anything
+of them. The Doctor said, "No, they mostly came up there to see the
+other niggers when they came for Christmas," but they hadn't been round
+at all. "Have you been down to Old Ben's?" the Doctor asked. "Yes."
+"What does Old Rit say?" "Old Rit says not one of 'em came this
+Christmas. She was looking for 'em most all day, and most broke her
+heart about it." "What does Old Ben say?" "Old Ben says that he hasn't
+seen one of his children this Christmas." "Well, if Old Ben says that,
+they haven't been round." And so the man-hunters went off disappointed.
+
+One of the other brothers, William Henry, had long been attached to a
+girl named Catherine, who lived with another master; but her master
+would not let her marry him. When William Henry made up his mind to
+start with Harriet, he determined to bring Catherine with him. And so he
+went to a tailor's, and bought a new suit of men's clothes, and threw
+them over the garden fence of Catherine's master. The garden ran down to
+a run, and Catherine had been notified where to find the clothes. When
+the time had come to get ready, Catherine went to the foot of the garden
+and dressed herself in the suit of men's clothes. She was soon missed,
+and all the girls in the house were set to looking for Catherine.
+Presently they saw coming up through the garden, as if from the river, a
+well-dressed little darkey, and they all stopped looking for Catherine
+to stare at him. He walked directly by them round the house, and went
+out of the gate, without the slightest suspicion being excited as to who
+he was. In a fortnight from that time, the whole party were safe in
+Canada.
+
+William Henry died in Canada, but Catherine has been seen and talked
+with by the writer, at the house of the old people.
+
+
+Of the many letters, testimonials, and passes, placed in the hands of
+the writer by Harriet, the following are selected for insertion in this
+book, and are quite sufficient to verify her statements.
+
+
+_A Letter from Gen. Saxton to a Lady of Auburn._
+
+
+     ATLANTA, GA., March 21, 1868.
+
+     MY DEAR MADAME: I have just received your letter informing me that
+     Hon. Wm. H. Seward, Secretary of State, would present a petition to
+     Congress for a pension to Harriet Tubman, for services rendered in
+     the Union Army during the late war. I can bear witness to the value
+     of her services in South Carolina and Florida. She was employed in
+     the hospitals and as a spy. She made many a raid inside the enemy's
+     lines, displaying remarkable courage, zeal, and fidelity. She was
+     employed by General Hunter, and I think by Generals Stevens and
+     Sherman, and is as deserving of a pension from the Government for
+     her services as any other of its faithful servants.
+
+     I am very truly yours,
+
+     RUFUS SAXTON, Bvt. Brig.-Gen. U. S. A.
+
+
+_Letter from Hon. Wm. H. Seward._
+
+
+     WASHINGTON, July 25, 1868.
+
+     MAJ.-GEN. HUNTER--
+
+     MY DEAR SIR: Harriet Tubman, a colored woman, has been nursing our
+     soldiers during nearly all the war. She believes she has a claim
+     for faithful services to the command in South Carolina with which
+     you are connected, and she thinks that you would be disposed to see
+     her claim justly settled.
+
+     I have known her long, and a nobler, higher spirit, or a truer,
+     seldom dwells in the human form. I commend her, therefore, to your
+     kind and best attentions.
+
+     Faithfully your friend,
+
+     WILLIAM H. SEWARD.
+
+
+_Letter from Col. James Montgomery._
+
+
+     ST. HELENA ISLAND, S. C., July 6, 1863.
+
+     HEADQUARTERS COLORED BRIGADE.
+
+     BRIG.-GEN. GILMAN, Commanding Department of the South--
+
+     GENERAL: I wish to commend to your attention, Mrs. Harriet Tubman,
+     a most remarkable woman, and invaluable as a scout. I have been
+     acquainted with her character and actions for several years.
+
+     Walter D. Plowden is a man of tried courage, and can be made
+     highly useful.
+
+     I am, General, your most ob't servant,
+
+     JAMES MONTGOMERY, Col. Com. Brigade.
+
+
+_Letter from Mrs. Gen. A. Baird._
+
+
+     PETERBORO, Nov. 24, 1864.
+
+     The bearer of this, Harriet Tubman, a most excellent woman, who has
+     rendered faithful and good services to our Union army, not only in
+     the hospital, but in various capacities, having been employed under
+     Government at Hilton Head, and in Florida; and I commend her to the
+     protection of all officers in whose department she may happen to
+     be.
+
+     She has been known and esteemed for years by the family of my
+     uncle, Hon. Gerrit Smith, as a person of great rectitude and
+     capabilities.
+
+     MRS. GEN. A. BAIRD.
+
+
+_Letter from Hon. Gerrit Smith._
+
+
+     PETERBORO, N. Y., Nov. 4, 1867.
+
+     I have known Mrs. Harriet Tubman for many years. Seldom, if ever,
+     have I met with a person more philanthropic, more self-denying,
+     and of more bravery. Nor must I omit to say that she combines with
+     her sublime spirit, remarkable discernment and judgment.
+
+     During the late war, Mrs. Tubman was eminently faithful and useful
+     to the cause of our country. She is poor and has poor parents. Such
+     a servant of the country should be well paid by the country. I hope
+     that the Government will look into her case.
+
+     GERRIT SMITH.
+
+
+_Testimonial from Gerrit Smith._
+
+
+     PETERBORO, Nov. 22, 1864.
+
+     The bearer, Harriet Tubman, needs not any recommendation. Nearly
+     all the nation over, she has been heard of for her wisdom,
+     integrity, patriotism, and bravery. The cause of freedom owes her
+     much. The country owes her much.
+
+     I have known Harriet for many years, and I hold her in my high
+     esteem.
+
+     GERRIT SMITH.
+
+
+_Certificate from Henry K. Durrant, Acting Asst. Surgeon, U. S. A._
+
+
+     I certify that I have been acquainted with Harriet Tubman for
+     nearly two years; and my position as Medical Officer in charge of
+     "contrabands" in this town and in hospital, has given me frequent
+     and ample opportunities to observe her general deportment;
+     particularly her kindness and attention to the sick and suffering
+     of her own race. I take much pleasure in testifying to the esteem
+     in which she is generally held.
+
+     HENRY K. DURRANT,
+     Acting Assistant Surgeon, U. S. A.
+     In charge "Contraband" Hospital.
+
+     Dated at Beaufort, S. C., the 3d day of May, 1864.
+
+     I concur fully in the above.
+
+     R. SAXTON, Brig.-Gen. Vol.
+
+
+The following are a few of the passes used by Harriet throughout the
+war. Many others are so defaced that it is impossible to decipher them.
+
+
+     HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH, HILTON HEAD, PORT ROYAL,
+     S. C., Feb. 19, 1863.
+
+     Pass the bearer, Harriet Tubman, to Beaufort and back to this
+     place, and wherever she wishes to go; and give her free passage at
+     all times, on all Government transports. Harriet was sent to me
+     from Boston by Gov. Andrew of Mass., and is a valuable woman. She
+     has permission, as a servant of the Government, to purchase such
+     provisions from the Commissary as she may need.
+
+     D. HUNTER, Maj.-Gen. Com.
+
+
+General Gillman, who succeeded General Hunter in command of the
+Department of the South, appends his signature to the same pass.
+
+
+     HEADQUARTERS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH, July 1, 1863.
+
+     Continued in force.
+
+     I. A. GILLMAN, Brig.-Gen. Com.
+
+     BEAUFORT, Aug. 28, 1862.
+
+
+     Will Capt. Warfield please let "Moses" have a little Bourbon
+     whiskey for medicinal purposes.
+
+     HENRY K. DURRANT, Act. Ass. Surgeon.
+
+
+     WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
+     March 20, 1865.
+
+     Pass Mrs. Harriet Tubman (colored) to Hilton Head and Charleston,
+     S. C., with free transportation on a Government transport.
+
+     By order of the Sec. of War.
+
+     LOUIS H., Asst. Adj.-Gen., U. S. A.
+
+     To Bvt. Brig.-Gen. Van Vliet, U. S. Q. M., N. Y.
+
+     Not transferable.
+
+
+     WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
+     July 22, 1865.
+
+     Permit Harriet Tubman to proceed to Fortress Monroe, Va., on a
+     Government transport. Transportation will be furnished free of
+     cost.
+
+     By order of the Secretary of War.
+
+     L. H., Asst. Adj.-Gen.
+
+     Not transferable.
+
+
+_Appointment as Nurse._
+
+
+     SIR:--I have the honor to inform you that the Medical Director
+     Department of Virginia has been instructed to appoint Harriet
+     Tubman nurse or matron at the Colored Hospital, Fort Monroe, Va.
+
+     Very respectfully, your obdt. servant,
+
+     V. K. BARNES, Surgeon-General.
+
+     HON. WM. H. SEWARD,
+
+     Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.
+
+
+     _Names of Harriet's Assistants, Scouts, or Pilots._
+
+     Scouts who are residents of Beaufort, and well acquainted with the
+     main land: Peter Barns, Mott Blake, Sandy Selters, Solomon Gregory,
+     Isaac Hayward, Gabriel Cohen, George Chrisholm.
+
+     Pilots who know the channels of the rivers in this vicinity, and
+     who acted as such for Col. Montgomery up the Combahee River:
+     Charles Simmons, Samuel Hayward.
+
+     App'd, R. SAXTON, Brig.-Gen.
+
+
+At this point the following good and kind letter from Rev. Henry Fowler
+is received:
+
+
+     AUBURN, June 23, 1868.
+
+     MY DEAR FRIEND:--I wish to say to you how gratified I am that you
+     are writing the biography of Harriet Tubman. I feel that her life
+     forms part of the history of the country, and that it ought not to
+     depend upon tradition to keep it in remembrance. Had not the
+     pressure of professional claims prevented, I should have aspired to
+     be her historian myself; but my disappointment in this regard is
+     more than met by the satisfaction experienced in hearing that you
+     are the chosen Miriam of this African "Moses;" the name by which
+     she was known among her emancipated followers from the land of
+     bondage. Blessed be God! a "Greater than Moses" has at last broken
+     every bond.
+
+     As ever, with warm regard, your friend,
+
+     HENRY FOWLER.
+
+
+The following account of the subject of this memoir is cut from the
+_Boston Commonwealth_ of 1863, kindly sent the writer by Mr. Sanborn:
+
+"It was said long ago that the true romance of America was not in the
+fortunes of the Indian, where Cooper sought it, nor in the New England
+character, where Judd found it, nor in the social contrasts of Virginia
+planters, as Thackeray imagined, but in the story of the fugitive
+slaves. The observation is as true now as it was before war, with swift,
+gigantic hand, sketched the vast shadows, and dashed in the high lights
+in which romance loves to lurk and flash forth. But the stage is
+enlarged on which these dramas are played, the whole world now sit as
+spectators, and the desperation or the magnanimity of a poor black woman
+has power to shake the nation that so long was deaf to her cries. We
+write of one of these heroines, of whom our slave annals are full,--a
+woman whose career is as extraordinary as the most famous of her sex can
+show.
+
+"Araminta Ross, now known by her married name of Tubman, with her
+sounding Christian name changed to Harriet, is the grand-daughter of a
+slave imported from Africa, and has not a drop of white blood in her
+veins. Her parents were Benjamin Ross and Harriet Greene, both slaves,
+but married and faithful to each other. They still live in old age and
+poverty, but free, on a little property at Auburn, N. Y., which their
+daughter purchased for them from Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State. She
+was born, as near as she can remember, in 1820 or in 1821, in Dorchester
+County, on the Eastern shore of Maryland, and not far from the town of
+Cambridge. She had ten brothers and sisters, of whom three are now
+living, all at the North, and all rescued from slavery by Harriet,
+before the War. She went back just as the South was preparing to secede,
+to bring away a fourth, but before she could reach her, she was dead.
+Three years before, she had brought away her old father and mother, at
+great risk to herself.
+
+"When Harriet was six years old, she was taken from her mother and
+carried ten miles to live with James Cook, whose wife was a weaver, to
+learn the trade of weaving. While still a mere child, Cook set her to
+watching his musk-rat traps, which compelled her to wade through the
+water. It happened that she was once sent when she was ill with the
+measles, and, taking cold from wading in the water in this condition,
+she grew very sick, and her mother persuaded her master to take her
+away from Cook's until she could get well.
+
+"Another attempt was made to teach her weaving, but she would not learn,
+for she hated her mistress, and did not want to live at home, as she
+would have done as a weaver, for it was the custom then to weave the
+cloth for the family, or a part of it, in the house.
+
+"Soon after she entered her teens she was hired out as a field hand, and
+it was while thus employed that she received a wound which nearly proved
+fatal, from the effects of which she still suffers. In the fall of the
+year, the slaves there work in the evening, cleaning up wheat, husking
+corn, etc. On this occasion, one of the slaves of a farmer named
+Barrett, left his work, and went to the village store in the evening.
+The overseer followed him, and so did Harriet. When the slave was found,
+the overseer swore he should be whipped, and called on Harriet, among
+others, to help tie him. She refused, and as the man ran away, she
+placed herself in the door to stop pursuit. The overseer caught up a
+two-pound weight from the counter and threw it at the fugitive, but it
+fell short and struck Harriet a stunning blow on the head. It was long
+before she recovered from this, and it has left her subject to a sort
+of stupor or lethargy at times; coming upon her in the midst of
+conversation, or whatever she may be doing, and throwing her into a deep
+slumber, from which she will presently rouse herself, and go on with her
+conversation or work.
+
+"After this she lived for five or six years with John Stewart, where at
+first she worked in the house, but afterwards 'hired her time,' and Dr.
+Thompson, son of her master's guardian, 'stood for her,' that is, was
+her surety for the payment of what she owed. She employed the time thus
+hired in the rudest labors,--drove oxen, carted, plowed, and did all the
+work of a man,--sometimes earning money enough in a year, beyond what
+she paid her master, 'to buy a pair of steers,' worth forty dollars. The
+amount exacted of a woman for her time was fifty or sixty dollars--of a
+man, one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars. Frequently Harriet
+worked for her father, who was a timber inspector, and superintended the
+cutting and hauling of great quantities of timber for the Baltimore
+ship-yards. Stewart, his temporary master, was a builder, and for the
+work of Ross used to receive as much as five dollars a day sometimes, he
+being a superior workman. While engaged with her father, she would cut
+wood, haul logs, etc. Her usual 'stint' was half a cord of wood in a
+day.
+
+"Harriet was married somewhere about 1844, to a free colored man named
+John Tubman, but she had no children. For the last two years of slavery
+she lived with Dr. Thompson, before mentioned, her own master not being
+yet of age, and Dr. T.'s father being his guardian, as well as the owner
+of her own father. In 1849 the young man died, and the slaves were to be
+sold, though previously set free by an old will. Harriet resolved not to
+be sold, and so, with no knowledge of the North--having only heard of
+Pennsylvania and New Jersey--she walked away one night alone. She found
+a friend in a white lady, who knew her story and helped her on her way.
+After many adventures, she reached Philadelphia, where she found work
+and earned a small stock of money. With this money in her purse, she
+traveled back to Maryland for her husband, but she found him married to
+another woman, and no longer caring to live with her. This, however, was
+not until two years after her escape, for she does not seem to have
+reached her old home in her first two expeditions. In December, 1850,
+she had visited Baltimore and brought away her sister and two children,
+who had come up from Cambridge in a boat, under charge of her sister's
+husband, a free black. A few months after she had brought away her
+brother and two other men, but it was not till the fall of 1851 that she
+found her husband and learned of his infidelity. She did not give way to
+rage or grief, but collected a party of fugitives and brought them
+safely to Philadelphia. In December of the same year, she returned, and
+led out a party of eleven, among them her brother and his wife. With
+these she journeyed to Canada, and there spent the winter, for this was
+after the enforcement of Mason's Fugitive Slave Bill in Philadelphia and
+Boston, and there was no safety except 'under the paw of the British
+Lion,' as she quaintly said. But the first winter was terribly severe
+for these poor runaways. They earned their bread by chopping wood in the
+snows of a Canadian forest; they were frost-bitten, hungry, and naked.
+Harriet was their good angel. She kept house for her brother, and the
+poor creatures boarded with her. She worked for them, begged for them,
+prayed for them, with the strange familiarity of communion with God
+which seems natural to these people, and carried them by the help of God
+through the hard winter.
+
+"In the Spring she returned to the States, and as usual earned money by
+working in hotels and families as a cook. From Cape May, in the fall of
+1852, she went back once more to Maryland, and brought away nine more
+fugitives.
+
+"Up to this time she had expended chiefly her own money in these
+expeditions--money which she had earned by hard work in the drudgery of
+the kitchen. Never did any one more exactly fulfill the sense of George
+Herbert--
+
+
+     "A servant with this clause
+     Makes drudgery divine."
+
+
+"But it was not possible for such virtues long to remain hidden from the
+keen eyes of the Abolitionists. She became known to Thomas Garrett, the
+large-hearted Quaker of Wilmington, who has aided the escape of three
+thousand fugitives; she found warm friends in Philadelphia and New York,
+and wherever she went. These gave her money, which she never spent for
+her own use, but laid up for the help of her people, and especially for
+her journeys back to the 'land of Egypt,' as she called her old home. By
+reason of her frequent visits there, always carrying away some of the
+oppressed, she got among her people the name of 'Moses,' which it seems
+she still retains.
+
+"Between 1852 and 1857, she made but two of these journeys, in
+consequence partly of the increased vigilance of the slaveholders, who
+had suffered so much by the loss of their property. A great reward was
+offered for her capture, and she several times was on the point of being
+taken, but always escaped by her quick wit, or by 'warnings' from
+Heaven--for it is time to notice one singular trait in her character.
+She is the most shrewd and practical person in the world, yet she is a
+firm believer in omens, dreams, and warnings. She declares that before
+her escape from slavery, she used to dream of flying over fields and
+towns, and rivers and mountains, looking down upon them 'like a bird,'
+and reaching at last a great fence, or sometimes a river, over which she
+would try to fly, 'but it 'peared like I wouldn't hab de strength, and
+jes as I was sinkin' down, dare would be ladies all drest in white ober
+dere, and dey would put out dere arms and pull me 'cross.' There is
+nothing strange in this, perhaps, but she declares that when she came
+North she remembered these very places as those she had seen in her
+dreams, and many of the ladies who befriended her were those she had
+been helped by in her visions.
+
+"Then she says she always knows when there is danger near her,--she
+does not know how, exactly, but ''pears like my heart go flutter,
+flutter, and den dey may say "Peace, Peace," as much as dey likes, _I
+know its gwine to be war!_' She is very firm on this point, and ascribes
+to this her great impunity, in spite of the lethargy before mentioned,
+which would seem likely to throw her into the hands of her enemies. She
+says she inherited this power, that her father could always predict the
+weather, and that he foretold the Mexican war.
+
+"In 1867 she made her most venturesome journey, for she brought with her
+to the North her old parents, who were no longer able to walk such
+distances as she must go by night. Consequently she must hire a wagon
+for them, and it required all her ingenuity to get them through Maryland
+and Delaware safe. She accomplished it, however, and by the aid of her
+friends she brought them safe to Canada, where they spent the winter.
+Her account of their sufferings there--of her mother's complaining and
+her own philosophy about it--is a lesson of trust in Providence better
+than many sermons. But she decided to bring them to a more comfortable
+place, and so she negotiated with Mr. Seward--then in the Senate--for a
+little patch of ground with a house on it, at Auburn, near his own
+home. To the credit of the Secretary of State it should be said, that
+he sold her the property on very favorable terms, and gave her some time
+for payment. To this house she removed her parents, and set herself to
+work to pay for her purchase. It was on this errand that she first
+visited Boston--we believe in the winter of 1858-9. She brought a few
+letters from her friends in New York, but she could herself neither read
+nor write, and she was obliged to trust to her wits that they were
+delivered to the right persons. One of them, as it happened, was to the
+present writer, who received it by another hand, and called to see her
+at her boarding-house. It was curious to see the caution with which she
+received her visitor until she felt assured that there was no mistake.
+One of her means of security was to carry with her the daguerreotypes of
+her friends, and show them to each new person. If they recognized the
+likeness, then it was all right.
+
+"Pains were taken to secure her the attention to which her great
+services to humanity entitled her, and she left New England with a
+handsome sum of money towards the payment of her debt to Mr. Seward.
+Before she left, however, she had several interviews with Captain Brown,
+then in Boston. He is supposed to have communicated his plans to her,
+and to have been aided by her in obtaining recruits and money among her
+people. At any rate, he always spoke of her with the greatest respect,
+and declared that 'General Tubman,' as he styled her, was a better
+officer than most whom he had seen, and could command an army as
+successfully as she had led her small parties of fugitives.
+
+"Her own veneration for Captain Brown has always been profound, and
+since his murder, has taken the form of a religion. She had often risked
+her own life for her people, and she thought nothing of that; but that a
+white man, and a man so noble and strong, should so take upon himself
+the burden of a despised race, she could not understand, and she took
+refuge from her perplexity in the mysteries of her fervid religion.
+
+"Again, she laid great stress on a dream which she had just before she
+met Captain Brown in Canada. She thought she was in 'a wilderness sort
+of place, all full of rocks and bushes,' when she saw a serpent raise
+its head among the rocks, and as it did so, it became the head of an old
+man with a long white beard, gazing at her 'wishful like, jes as ef he
+war gwine to speak to me,' and then two other heads rose up beside him,
+younger than he,--and as she stood looking at them, and wondering what
+they could want with her, a great crowd of men rushed in and struck down
+the younger heads, and then the head of the old man, still looking at
+her so 'wishful.' This dream she had again and again, and could not
+interpret it; but when she met Captain Brown, shortly after, behold, he
+was the very image of the head she had seen. But still she could not
+make out what her dream signified, till the news came to her of the
+tragedy of Harper's Ferry, and then she knew the two other heads were
+his two sons. She was in New York at that time, and on the day of the
+affair at Harper's Ferry, she felt her usual warning that something was
+wrong--she could not tell what. Finally she told her hostess that it
+must be Captain Brown who was in trouble, and that they should soon hear
+bad news from him. The next day's newspaper brought tidings of what had
+happened.
+
+"Her last visit to Maryland was made after this, in December, 1860; and
+in spite of the agitated condition of the country, and the greater
+watchfulness of the slaveholders, she brought away seven fugitives, one
+of them an infant, which must be drugged with opium to keep it from
+crying on the way, and so revealing the hiding place of the party. She
+brought these safely to New York, but there a new difficulty met her. It
+was the mad winter of compromises, when State after State, and
+politician after politician, went down on their knees to beg the South
+not to secede. The hunting of fugitive slaves began again. Mr. Seward
+went over to the side of compromise. He knew the history of this poor
+woman; he had given his enemies a hold on him, by dealing with her; it
+was thought he would not scruple to betray her. The suspicion was an
+unworthy one, for though the Secretary could betray a cause, he could
+not surely have put her enemies on the track of a woman who was thus in
+his power, after such a career as hers had been. But so little
+confidence was then felt in Mr. Seward, by men who had voted for him and
+with him, that they hurried Harriet off to Canada, sorely against her
+will.
+
+"She did not long remain there. The war broke out, for which she had
+been long looking, and she hastened to her New England friends to
+prepare for another expedition to Maryland, to bring away the last of
+her family.
+
+"Before she could start, however, the news came of the capture of Port
+Royal. Instantly she conceived the idea of going there and working
+among her people on the islands and the mainland. Money was given her,
+a pass was secured through the agency of Governor Andrew, and she went
+to Beaufort. There she has made herself useful in many ways--has been
+employed as a spy by General Hunter, and finally has piloted Col.
+Montgomery on his most successful expedition. We gave some notice of
+this fact last week. Since then we have received the following letter,
+dictated by her, from which it appears that she needs some contributions
+for her work. We trust she will receive them, for none has better
+deserved it. She asks nothing for herself, except that her wardrobe may
+be replenished, and even this she will probably share with the first
+needy person she meets.
+
+"'BEAUFORT, S. C., June 30, 1863.
+
+* * * "'Last fall, when the people here became very much alarmed for
+fear of an invasion from the rebels, all my clothes were packed and sent
+with others to Hilton Head, and lost; and I have never been able to get
+any trace of them since. I was sick at the time, and unable to look
+after them myself. I want, among the rest, a _bloomer_ dress, made of
+some coarse, strong material, to wear on _expeditions_. In our late
+expedition up the Combahee River, in coming on board the boat, I was
+carrying _two pigs_ for a poor sick woman, who had a child to carry, and
+the order "double quick" was given, and I started to run, stepped on my
+dress, it being rather long, and fell and tore it almost off, so that
+when I got on board the boat, there was hardly anything left of it but
+shreds. I made up my mind then I would never wear a long dress on
+another expedition of the kind, but would have a _bloomer_ as soon as I
+could get it. So please make this known to the ladies, if you will, for
+I expect to have use for it very soon, probably before they can get it
+to me.
+
+"'You have, without doubt, seen a full account of the expedition I refer
+to. Don't you think we colored people are entitled to some credit for
+that exploit, under the lead of the brave Colonel Montgomery? We
+weakened the rebels somewhat on the Combahee River, by taking and
+bringing away _seven hundred and fifty-six_ head of their most valuable
+live stock, known up in your region as "contrabands," and this, too,
+without the loss of a single life on our part, though we had good reason
+to believe that a number of rebels bit the dust. Of these seven hundred
+and fifty-six contrabands, nearly or quite all the able-bodied men have
+joined the colored regiments here.
+
+"'I have now been absent two years almost, and have just got letters
+from my friends in Auburn, urging me to come home. My father and mother
+are old and in feeble health, and need my care and attention. I hope the
+good people there will not allow them to suffer, and I do not believe
+they will. But I do not see how I am to leave at present the very
+important work to be done here. Among other duties which I have, is that
+of looking after the hospital here for contrabands. Most of those coming
+from the mainland are very destitute, almost naked. I am trying to find
+places for those able to work, and provide for them as best I can, so as
+to lighten the burden on the Government as much as possible, while at
+the same time they learn to respect themselves by earning their own
+living.
+
+"'Remember me very kindly to Mrs. ---- and her daughters; also, if you
+will, to my Boston friends, Mrs. C., Miss H., and especially to Mr. and
+Mrs. George L. Stearns, to whom I am under great obligations for their
+many kindnesses. I shall be sure to come and see you all if I live to go
+North. If you write, direct your letter to the care of C.'"
+
+In the Spring of 1860, Harriet Tubman was requested by Mr. Gerrit Smith
+to go to Boston to attend a large Anti-Slavery meeting. On her way, she
+stopped at Troy to visit a cousin, and while there, the colored people
+were one day startled with the intelligence that a fugitive slave, by
+the name of Charles Nalle, had been followed by his master (who was his
+younger brother, and not one grain whiter than he), and that he was
+already in the hands of the officers, and was to be taken back to the
+South. The instant Harriet heard the news, she started for the office of
+the U. S. Commissioner, scattering the tidings as she went. An excited
+crowd were gathered about the office, through which Harriet forced her
+way, and rushed up stairs to the door of the room where the fugitive was
+detained. A wagon was already waiting before the door to carry off the
+man, but the crowd was even then so great, and in such a state of
+excitement, that the officers did not dare to bring the man down. On the
+opposite side of the street stood the colored people, watching the
+window where they could see Harriet's sun-bonnet, and feeling assured
+that so long as she stood there, the fugitive was still in the office.
+Time passed on, and he did not appear. "They've taken him out another
+way, depend upon that," said some of the colored people. "No," replied
+others, "there stands 'Moses' yet, and as long as she is there, he is
+safe." Harriet, now seeing the necessity for a tremendous effort for his
+rescue, sent out some little boys to cry _fire_. The bells rang, the
+crowd increased, till the whole street was a dense mass of people. Again
+and again the officers came out to try and clear the stairs, and make a
+way to take their captive down; others were driven down, but Harriet
+stood her ground, her head bent down, and her arms folded. "Come, old
+woman, you must get out of this," said one of the officers; "I must have
+the way cleared; if you can't get down alone, some one will help you."
+Harriet, still putting on a greater appearance of decrepitude, twitched
+away from him, and kept her place. Offers were made to buy Charles from
+his master, who at first agreed to take twelve hundred dollars for him;
+but when that was subscribed, he immediately raised the price to fifteen
+hundred. The crowd grew more excited. A gentleman raised a window and
+called out, "Two hundred dollars for his rescue, but not one cent to his
+master!" This was responded to by a roar of satisfaction from the crowd
+below. At length the officers appeared, and announced to the crowd that
+if they would open a lane to the wagon, they would promise to bring the
+man down the front way.
+
+The lane was opened, and the man was brought out--a tall, handsome,
+intelligent _white_ man, with his wrists manacled together, walking
+between the U. S. Marshal and another officer, and behind him his
+brother and his master, so like him that one could hardly be told from
+the other. The moment they appeared, Harriet roused from her stooping
+posture, threw up a window, and cried to her friends: "Here he
+comes--take him!" and then darted down the stairs like a wild-cat. She
+seized one officer and pulled him down, then another, and tore him away
+from the man; and keeping her arms about the slave, she cried to her
+friends: "Drag us out! Drag him to the river! Drown him! but don't let
+them have him!" They were knocked down together, and while down she tore
+off her sun-bonnet and tied it on the head of the fugitive. When he
+rose, only his head could be seen, and amid the surging mass of people
+the slave was no longer recognized, while the master appeared like the
+slave. Again and again they were knocked down, the poor slave utterly
+helpless, with his manacled wrists streaming with blood. Harriet's
+outer clothes were torn from her, and even her stout shoes were all
+pulled from her feet, yet she never relinquished her hold of the man,
+till she had dragged him to the river, where he was tumbled into a boat,
+Harriet following in a ferry-boat to the other side. But the telegraph
+was ahead of them, and as soon as they landed he was seized and hurried
+from her sight. After a time, some school children came hurrying along,
+and to her anxious inquiries they answered, "He is up in that house, in
+the third story." Harriet rushed up to the place. Some men were
+attempting to make their way up the stairs. The officers were firing
+down, and two men were lying on the stairs, who had been shot. Over
+their bodies our heroine rushed, and with the help of others burst open
+the door of the room, dragged out the fugitive, whom Harriet carried
+down stairs in her arms. A gentleman who was riding by with a fine
+horse, stopped to ask what the disturbance meant; and on hearing the
+story, his sympathies seemed to be thoroughly aroused; he sprang from
+his wagon, calling out, "That is a blood-horse, drive him till he
+drops." The poor man was hurried in; some of his friends jumped in after
+him, and drove at the most rapid rate to Schenectady.
+
+This is the story Harriet told to the writer. By some persons it seemed
+too wonderful for belief, and an attempt was made to corroborate it.
+Rev. Henry Fowler, who was at the time at Saratoga, kindly volunteered
+to go to Troy and ascertain the facts. His report was, that he had had a
+long interview with Mr. Townsend, who acted during the trial as counsel
+for the slave, that he had given him a "rich narration," which he would
+write out the next week for this little book. But before he was to begin
+his generous labor, and while engaged in some kind efforts for the
+prisoners at Auburn, he was stricken down by the heat of the sun, and is
+for a long time debarred from labor.
+
+
+FUGITIVE SLAVE RESCUE IN TROY.
+
+From the Troy Whig, April 28, 1859.
+
+Yesterday afternoon, the streets of this city and West Troy were made
+the scenes of unexampled excitement. For the first time since the
+passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, an attempt was made here to carry its
+provisions into execution, and the result was a terrific encounter
+between the officers and the prisoner's friends, the triumph of mob
+law, and the final rescue of the fugitive. Our city was thrown into a
+grand state of turmoil, and for a time every other topic was forgotten,
+to give place to this new excitement. People did not think last evening
+to ask who was nominated at Charleston, or whether the news of the
+Heenan and Sayers battle had arrived--everything was merged into the
+fugitive slave case, of which it seems the end is not yet.
+
+Charles Nalle, the fugitive, who was the cause of all this excitement,
+was a slave on the plantation of B. W. Hansborough, in Culpepper County,
+Virginia, till the 19th of October, 1858, when he made his escape, and
+went to live in Columbia, Pennsylvania. A wife and five children are
+residing there now. Not long since he came to Sandlake, in this county,
+and resided in the family of Mr. Crosby until about three weeks ago.
+Since that time, he has been employed as coachman by Uri Gilbert, Esq.,
+of this city. He is about thirty years of age, tall, quite
+light-complexioned, and good-looking. He is said to have been an
+excellent and faithful servant.
+
+At Sandlake, we understand that Nalle was often seen by one H. F.
+Averill, formerly connected with one of the papers of this city, who
+communicated with his reputed owner in Virginia, and gave the
+information that led to a knowledge of the whereabouts of the fugitive.
+Averill wrote letters for him, and thus obtained an acquaintance with
+his history. Mr. Hansborough sent on an agent, Henry J. Wall, by whom
+the necessary papers were got out to arrest the fugitive.
+
+Yesterday morning about 11 o'clock, Charles Nalle was sent to procure
+some bread for the family by whom he was employed. He failed to return.
+At the baker's, he was arrested by Deputy United States Marshal J. W.
+Holmes, and immediately taken before United States Commissioner Miles
+Beach. The son of Mr. Gilbert, thinking it strange that he did not come
+back, sent to the house of William Henry, on Division Street, where he
+boarded, and his whereabouts was discovered.
+
+The examination before Commissioner Beach was quite brief. The evidence
+of Averill and the agent was taken, and the Commissioner decided to
+remand Nalle to Virginia. The necessary papers were made out and given
+to the Marshal.
+
+By this time it was two o'clock, and the fact began to be noised abroad
+that there was a fugitive slave in Mr. Beach's office, corner of State
+and first Streets. People in knots of ten or twelve collected near the
+entrance, looking at Nalle, who could be seen at an upper window.
+William Henry, a colored man, with whom Nalle boarded, commenced talking
+from the curb-stone in a loud voice to the crowd. He uttered such
+sentences as, "There is a fugitive slave in that office--pretty soon you
+will see him come forth. He is going to be taken down South, and you
+will have a chance to see him. He is to be taken to the depot, to go to
+Virginia in the first train. Keep watch of those stairs, and you will
+have a sight." A number of women kept shouting, crying, and by loud
+appeals excited the colored persons assembled.
+
+Still the crowd grew in numbers. Wagons halted in front of the locality,
+and were soon piled with spectators. An alarm of fire was sounded, and
+hose carriages dashed through the ranks of men, women, and boys; but
+they closed again, and kept looking with expectant eyes at the window
+where the negro was visible. Meanwhile, angry discussions commenced.
+Some persons agitated a rescue, and others favored law and order. Mr.
+Brockway, a lawyer, had his coat torn for expressing his sentiments, and
+other melees kept the interest alive.
+
+All at once there was a wild hulloa, and every eye was turned up to see
+the legs and part of the body of the prisoner protruding from the
+second-story window, at which he was endeavoring to escape. Then arose a
+shout! "Drop him!" "Catch him!" "Hurrah!" But the attempt was a
+fruitless one, for somebody in the office pulled Nalle back again, amid
+the shouts of a hundred pair of lungs. The crowd at this time numbered
+nearly a thousand persons. Many of them were black, and a good share
+were of the female sex. They blocked up State Street from First Street
+to the alley, and kept surging to and fro.
+
+Martin I. Townsend, Esq., who acted as counsel for the fugitive, did not
+arrive in the Commissioner's office until a decision had been rendered.
+He immediately went before Judge Gould, of the Supreme Court, and
+procured a writ of habeas corpus in the usual form, _returnable_
+immediately. This was given Deputy Sheriff Nathaniel Upham, who at once
+proceeded to Commissioner Beach's office, and served it on Holmes. Very
+injudiciously, the officers proceeded at once to Judge Gould's office,
+although it was evident they would have to pass through an excited,
+unreasonable crowd. As soon as the officers and their prisoner emerged
+from the door, an old negro, who had been standing at the bottom of the
+stairs, shouted, "Here they come," and the crowd made a terrific rush at
+the party.
+
+From the office of Commissioner Beach, in the Mutual Building, to that
+of Judge Gould, in Congress Street, is less than two blocks, but it was
+made a regular battle-field. The moment the prisoner emerged from the
+doorway, in custody of Deputy-Sheriff Upham, Chief of Police Quin,
+Officers Cleveland and Holmes, the crowd made one grand charge, and
+those nearest the prisoner seized him violently, with the intention of
+pulling him away from the officers, but they were foiled; and down First
+to Congress Street, and up the latter in front of Judge Gould's
+chambers, went the surging mass. Exactly what did go on in the crowd, it
+is impossible to say, but the pulling, hauling, mauling, and shouting,
+gave evidences of frantic efforts on the part of the rescuers, and a
+stern resistance from the conservators of the law. In front of Judge
+Gould's office the combat was at its height. No stones or other missiles
+were used; the battle was fist to fist. We believe an order was given to
+take the prisoner the other way, and there was a grand rush towards the
+West, past First and River Streets, as far as Dock Street. All this time
+there was a continual melee. Many of the officers were hurt--among them
+Mr. Upham, whose object was solely to do his duty by taking Nalle before
+Judge Gould in accordance with the writ of habeas corpus. A number in
+the crowd were more or less hurt, and it is a wonder that these were not
+badly injured, as pistols were drawn and chisels used.
+
+The battle had raged as far as the corner of Dock and Congress Streets,
+and the victory remained with the rescuers at last. The officers were
+completely worn out with their exertions, and it was impossible to
+continue their hold upon him any longer. Nalle was at liberty. His
+friends rushed him down Dock Street to the lower ferry, where there was
+a skiff lying ready to start. The fugitive was put in, the ferryman
+rowed off, and amid the shouts of hundreds who lined the banks of the
+river, Nalle was carried into Albany County.
+
+As the skiff landed in West Troy, a negro sympathizer waded up to the
+waist, and pulled Nalle out of the boat. He went up the hill alone,
+however, and there who should he meet but Constable Becker? The latter
+official seeing a man with manacles on, considered it his duty to arrest
+him. He did so, and took him in a wagon to the office of Justice
+Stewart, on the second floor of the corner building near the ferry. The
+Justice was absent.
+
+When the crowd on the Troy bank had seen Nalle safely landed, it was
+suggested that he might be recaptured. Then there was another rush made
+for the steam ferry-boat, which carried over about 400 persons, and left
+as many more--a few of the latter being soused in their efforts to get
+on the boat. On landing in West Troy, there, sure enough, was the
+prisoner, locked up in a strong office, protected by Officers Becker,
+Brown and Morrison, and the door barricaded.
+
+Not a moment was lost. Up stairs went a score or more of resolute
+men--the rest "piling in" promiscuously, shouting and execrating the
+officers. Soon a stone flew against the door--then another--and bang,
+bang! went off a couple of pistols, but the officers who fired them took
+good care to aim pretty high. The assailants were forced to retreat for
+a moment. "They've got pistols," said one. "Who cares?" was the reply;
+"they can only kill a dozen of us--come on." More stones and more
+pistol-shots ensued. At last the door was pulled open by an immense
+negro, and in a moment he was felled by a hatchet in the hands of
+Deputy-Sheriff Morrison; but the body of the fallen man blocked up the
+door so that it could not be shut, and a friend of the prisoner pulled
+him out. Poor fellow! he might well say, "Save me from my friends."
+Amid the pulling and hauling, the iron had cut his arms, which were
+bleeding profusely, and he could hardly walk, owing to fatigue.
+
+He has since arrived safely in Canada.
+
+
+     Statements made by Martin I. Townsend, Esq., of Troy, who was
+     counsel for the fugitive, Charles Nalle.
+
+
+Nalle is an octoroon; his wife has the same infusion of Caucasian blood.
+She was the daughter of her master, and had, with her sister, been bred
+by him in his family, as his own child. When the father died, both of
+these daughters were married and had large families of children. Under
+the highly Christian national laws "Old Virginny," these children were
+the slaves of their grandfather. The old man died, leaving a will,
+whereby he manumitted his daughters and their children, and provided for
+the purchase of the freedom of their husbands. The manumission of the
+children and grandchildren took effect; but the estate was insufficient
+to purchase the husbands of his daughters, and the father of his
+grandchildren. The manumitted, by another Christian, "conservative,"
+and "national" provision of law, were forced to leave the State, while
+the slave husbands remained in slavery. Nalle and his brother-in-law
+were allowed for a while to visit their families outside Virginia about
+once a year, but were at length ordered to provide themselves with new
+wives, as they would be allowed to visit their former ones no more. It
+was after this that Nalle and his brother-in-law started for the land of
+freedom, guided by the steady light of the north star. Thank God,
+neither family now need fear any earthly master or the bay of the
+blood-hound dogging their fugitive steps.
+
+Nalle returned to Troy with his family about July, 1860, and resided
+with them there for more than seven years. They are all now residents of
+the city of Washington, D. C. Nalle and his family are persons of
+refined manners, and of the highest respectability. Several of his
+children are red-haired, and a stranger would discover no trace of
+African blood in their complexions or features. It was the head of this
+family whom H. F. Averill proposed to doom to returnless exile and
+life-long slavery.
+
+When Nalle was brought from Commissioner Beach's office into the street,
+Harriet Tubman, who had been standing with the excited crowd, rushed
+amongst the foremost to Nalle, and running one of her arms around his
+manacled arm, held on to him without ever loosening her hold through the
+more than half-hour's struggle to Judge Gould's office, and from Judge
+Gould's office to the dock, where Nalle's liberation was accomplished.
+In the melee, she was repeatedly beaten over the head with policemen's
+clubs, but she never for a moment released her hold, but cheered Nalle
+and his friends with her voice, and struggled with the officers until
+they were literally worn out with their exertions, and Nalle was
+separated from them.
+
+True, she had strong and earnest helpers in her struggle, some of whom
+had white faces as well as human hearts, and are now in Heaven. But she
+exposed herself to the fury of the sympathizers with slavery, without
+fear, and suffered their blows without flinching. Harriet crossed the
+river with the crowd, in the ferry-boat, and when the men who led the
+assault upon the door of Judge Stewart's office, were stricken down,
+Harriet and a number of other colored women rushed over their bodies,
+brought Nalle out, and putting him in the first wagon passing, started
+him for the West.
+
+A livery team, driven by a colored man, was immediately sent on to
+relieve the other, and Nalle was seen about Troy no more until he
+returned a free man by purchase from his master. Harriet also
+disappeared, and the crowd dispersed. How she came to be in Troy that
+day, is entirely unknown to our citizens; and where she hid herself
+after the rescue, is equally a mystery. But her struggle was in the
+sight of a thousand, perhaps of five thousand spectators.
+
+This woman of whom you have been reading is poor, and partially disabled
+from her injuries; yet she supports cheerfully and uncomplainingly
+herself and her old parents, and always has several poor children in her
+house, who are dependent entirely upon her exertions. At present she has
+three of these children for whom she is providing, while their parents
+are working to pay back money borrowed to bring them on. She also
+maintains by her exertions among the good people of Auburn, two schools
+of freedmen at the South, providing them teachers and sending them
+clothes and books. She never asks for anything for herself, but she does
+ask the charity of the public for "her people."
+
+
+     For them her tears will fall,
+      For them her prayers ascend;
+     To them her toils and cares be given,
+      Till toils and cares will end.
+
+
+If any persons are disposed to aid her in her benevolent efforts, they
+may send donations to Rev. S. M. Hopkins, Professor in the Auburn
+Theological Seminary, who will make such disposition of the funds sent
+as may be designated by the donors.
+
+[Illustration: Decoration]
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] The Wabash
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+A few circumstances having come out in conversation with Harriet, they
+are added here, as they may be of interest to the reader.
+
+On asking Harriet particularly as to the age of her mother, she
+answered, "Well, I'll tell you, Missis. Twenty-three years ago, in
+Maryland, I paid a lawyer $5 to look up the will of my mother's first
+master. He looked back sixty years, and said it was time to give up. I
+told him to go back furder. He went back sixty-five years, and there he
+found the will--giving the girl Ritty to his grand-daughter (Mary
+Patterson), to serve her and her offspring till she was forty-five years
+of age. This grand-daughter died soon after, unmarried; and as there was
+no provision for Ritty, in case of her death, she was actually
+emancipated at that time. But no one informed her of the fact, and she
+and her dear children remained in bondage till emancipated by the
+courage and determination of this heroic daughter and sister. The old
+woman must then, it seems, be ninety-eight years of age, and the old man
+has probably numbered as many years. And yet these old people, living
+out beyond the toll-gate, on the South Street road, Auburn, come in
+every Sunday--more than a mile--to the Central Church. To be sure, deep
+slumbers settle down upon them as soon as they are seated, which
+continue undisturbed till the congregation is dismissed; but they have
+done their best, and who can doubt that they receive a blessing.
+Immediately after this they go to class-meeting at the Methodist Church.
+Then they wait for a third service, and after that start out home
+again."
+
+On asking Harriet where they got anything to eat on Sunday, she said, in
+her quiet way, "Oh! de ole folks nebber eats anyting on _Sunday_,
+Missis! We nebber has no food to get for dem on Sunday. Dey always
+fasts; and dey nebber eats anyting on Fridays. Good Friday, an' five
+Fridays hand gwine from Good Friday, my fader nebber eats or drinks, all
+day--fasting for de five bleeding wounds ob Jesus. All the oder Fridays
+ob de year he nebber eats till de sun goes down; den he takes a little
+tea an' a piece ob bread." "But is he a Roman Catholic, Harriet?" "Oh
+no, Misses; he does it for _conscience;_ we was taught to do so down
+South. He says if he denies himself for the sufferings of his Lord an'
+Master, Jesus will sustain him."
+
+It has been mentioned that Harriet never asks anything for herself, but
+whenever her people were in trouble, or she felt impelled to go South to
+guide to freedom friend or brother, or father and mother, if she had not
+time to work for the money, she was persistent till she got it from
+somebody. When she received one of her _intimations_ that the old people
+were in trouble, and it was time for her to go to them, she asked the
+Lord where she should go for the money. She was in some way, as she
+supposed, directed to the office of a certain gentleman in New York.
+When she left the house of her friends to go there, she said, "I'm gwine
+to Mr. ----'s office, an' I ain't gwine to lebe there, an' I ain't gwine
+to eat or drink till I git enough money to take me down after the ole
+people."
+
+She went into this gentleman's office.
+
+"What do you want, Harriet?" was the first greeting.
+
+"I want some money, sir."
+
+"You do? How much do you want?"
+
+"I want twenty dollars, sir."
+
+"_Twenty dollars?_ Who told you to come here for twenty dollars?"
+
+"De Lord tole me, sir."
+
+"Well, I guess the Lord's mistaken this time."
+
+"I guess he isn't, sir. Anyhow I'm gwine to sit here till I git it."
+
+So she sat down and went to sleep. All the morning and all the afternoon
+she sat there still, sleeping and rousing up--sometimes finding the
+office full of gentlemen--sometimes finding herself alone. Many
+fugitives were passing through New York at that time, and those who came
+in supposed that she was one of them, tired out and resting. Sometimes
+she would be roused up with the words, "Come, Harriet, you had better
+go. There's no money for you here." "No, sir. I'm not gwine till I git
+my twenty dollars."
+
+She does not know all that happened, for deep sleep fell upon her; but
+probably her story was whispered about, and she roused at last to find
+herself the happy possessor of _sixty dollars_, which had been raised
+among those who came into the office. She went on her way rejoicing, to
+bring her old parents from the land of bondage. She found that her
+father was to be tried the next Monday, for helping off slaves; so, as
+she says, she "removed his trial to a higher court," and hurried him off
+to Canada. One more little incident, which, it is hoped, may not be
+offensive to the young lady to whom it alludes, may be mentioned here,
+showing Harriet's extreme delicacy in asking anything for herself. Last
+winter ('67 and '68), as we all know, the snow was very deep for months,
+and Harriet and the old people were completely snowed-in in their little
+home. The old man was laid up with rheumatism, and Harriet could not
+leave home for a long time to procure supplies of corn, if she could
+have made her way into the city. At length, stern necessity compelled
+her to plunge through the drifts to the city, and she appeared at the
+house of one of her firm and fast friends, and was directed to the room
+of one of the young ladies. She began to walk up and down, as she always
+does when in trouble. At length she said, "Miss Annie?" "What, Harriet?"
+A long pause; then again, "Miss Annie?" "Well, what _is_ it, Harriet?"
+This was repeated four times, when the young lady, looking up, saw her
+eyes filled with tears. She then insisted on knowing what she wanted.
+And with a great effort, she said, "Miss Annie, could you lend me a
+quarter till Monday? I never asked it before." Kind friends immediately
+supplied all the wants of the family, but on Monday Harriet appeared
+with the quarter she had borrowed.
+
+But though so timid for herself, she is bold enough when the wants of
+her race are concerned. Even now, while friends are trying to raise the
+means to publish this little book for her, _she_ is going around with
+the greatest zeal and interest to raise a subscription for her
+Freedmen's Fair. She called on Hon. Wm. H. Seward, the other day, for a
+subscription to this object. He said, "Harriet, you have worked for
+others long enough. It is time you should think of yourself. If you ask
+for a donation for _yourself_, I will give it to you; but I will not
+help you to rob yourself for others."
+
+Harriet's charity for all the human race is unbounded. It embraces even
+the slaveholder--it sympathizes even with Jeff. Davis, and rejoices at
+his departure to other lands, with some prospect of peace for the
+future. She says, "I tink dar's many a slaveholder'll git to Heaven. Dey
+don't know no better. Dey acts up to de light dey hab. You take dat
+sweet little child (pointing to a lonely baby)--'pears more like an
+angel dan anyting else--take her down dere, let her nebber know nothing
+'bout niggers but they was made to be whipped, an' she'll grow up to use
+the whip on 'em jus' like de rest. No, Missus, its because dey don't
+know no better." May God give the people to whom the story of this woman
+shall come, a like charity, so that through their kindness the last days
+of her stormy and troubled life may be calm and peaceful.
+
+[Illustration: Decoration]
+
+
+
+
+WOMAN-WHIPPING,
+
+ETHICALLY AND ESTHETICALLY CONSIDERED.
+
+BY S. M. HOPKINS,
+
+PROFESSOR IN THE AUBURN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.
+
+
+
+
+ESSAY ON WOMAN-WHIPPING.
+
+
+The subject of the preceding memoir appears to have retained all her
+life a feeling recollection of the effects of the whip in the hands of
+her youthful mistress. Considering the vigor and frequency of the
+application, this is not strange. Infinite cuffs and thwacks, more or
+less, pass into oblivion; but a flogging with a raw-hide is not easily
+forgotten. A slave's experience of the whip, however, was not confined
+to his or to _her_ early days. A slave race must be controlled by fear
+and pain: and the discipline, it was naturally thought, could not begin
+too early. From childhood to old age they were liable to stripes, for
+any reason or for no reason. If the slave was guilty of no fault, he
+might be whipped, as appears from the preceding narrative, merely to
+impress him with a salutary sense of the master's right and disposition
+to whip.
+
+A Northern man, born and bred under the influences of freedom and the
+protection of law, and made acquainted with slavery in its old palmy
+days, can never forget his sensations at his first sight of a
+slave-whipping. The utmost he has ever seen in the way of corporal
+punishment has been the switching of some obstreperous child by
+competent authority; a discipline administered with prudence and
+moderation; drawing no blood and leaving no scar. He now sees an adult
+person stripped to the skin, his arms tied at their utmost stretch above
+his head, or across some object which binds him into a posture the best
+adapted to feel the full force of each blow. The instrument of suffering
+is not a birch twig or a ferule, but a twisted raw-hide, or heavy "black
+snake;" either of them highly effective weapons in the hands of a stout
+executioner. Our Northern novice stands horror-stricken and paralyzed
+for a moment; but at the second or third blow, and the piteous scream of
+_Oh Lord! Massa!_ which follows, he digs his fingers into his ears, and
+rushes to the furthest corner of his tent or dwelling, to escape the
+scene. Even if he _could_ have endured the sight and sound a while
+longer, he dared not. The horror in his face, and perhaps the
+irrepressible word or act of interference was too sure to bring upon
+himself the vengeance due to a "d--d Abolitionist." The little knot of
+Southern _habitués_ look on with critical inspection, squirting
+tobacco-juice, with their hands in their pockets.
+
+If the subject is a woman, the interest rises higher, and the crowd
+would be greater. There is a refinement of cruelty in the whipping of a
+woman which used to stimulate agreeably the dull sensibilities of a
+Southern mob. A dish of torture had to be peppered very high to please
+the palates of those epicures in brutality. The helplessness and terror
+of the victim, the exposure of her person, the opportunity for coarse
+jests at her expense, all combined to make it a scene of rare enjoyment.
+How the "chivalric" mind can endure the loss of such gratifications it
+is difficult to conceive. The Romans were weaned from crucifixions and
+gladiatorial combats very gradually. The process of ameliorating
+criminal law and humanizing public sentiment went on for more than two
+centuries. It was full four hundred years after the epoch of our
+redemption when the monk Telemachus threw himself between the hired
+swordsmen, whom a Christian audience was applauding, and laid down his
+own life to wind up the spectacle. But the bloody morsel has been
+snatched from the mouths of the "chivalry" at one clutch. No wonder
+their mortification vents itself in weeping and wailing, and knashing
+of teeth, and in such miscellaneous atrocities as their "Ku-Klux-Klans"
+can venture to inflict on helpless freedmen and radicals.[2]
+
+A recent Southern paper (the _Virginia Advertiser_) finds a providential
+provision for the enslavement of the negro race in the thickness of
+their skulls, enabling them to bear without injury the blows inflicted
+in sudden rage by their masters; a suggestive confession, by the way, of
+the influence of slavery on the tempers of the slaveholders. The whole
+race must be prepared, it seems, for blows on the head with whatever
+weapon came to hand! But admitting the thickness of the skulls, it
+appears from an incident in the preceding pages, as well as from other
+known instances, that the inventive genius of the slave-whipping
+chivalry contrived to baffle the humane designs of Providence--a negro
+skull well padded with wool might bear without injury the blow of a
+boot-jack or a hammer, and yet prove insufficient to resist the impact
+of a musket-ball or a ten-pound weight. It is of no avail to plate a
+vessel with six inches of iron, if she is to be pounded with bolts that
+can mash an eight-inch armor. Apparently, Divine Providence stopped
+short of the necessary security for the predestined slave race. It
+should have arranged for a progressive thickening of the negro cranium
+to meet the increase of violence on the part of the master; until at
+length slavery might be encountered with a difficulty like that which
+besets naval gunnery, viz., what would be the result if an infrangible
+African skull should be beaten by an irresistable Caucasian club?
+
+But even this Virginia _laudator temporis acti_, this melancholy mourner
+at the tomb of defunct slavery, does not allege any such Providential
+thickening of the negro cuticle as to amount to a satisfactory anæthesis
+against whipping. It has never been proven that a Virginia paddle or a
+Georgia raw-hide well applied did not make the blood spirt as freely
+through a black skin as through a white one; nor has any Southern savant
+of the Nott and Gliddon school shown that there was not the same
+_relative_ delicacy of organization in the slave woman as in the free. A
+black woman was, relatively to the black man, the more delicate subject
+for the whip; something more sensitive to the shame of stripping, more
+liable to terror, and of rather softer fiber; so that the lash went
+deeper both into soul and sense than in the case of her sable brother.
+
+And this fact made the black woman a very suitable subject for the whip
+in the hands of the Southern lady. To succeed in slave-whipping as in
+any other fine art, the Horatian canon must be regarded, which requires
+us to take a subject suited to our strength. It would have been
+unreasonable, in ordinary cases, to expect a "dark-eyed daughter of the
+South" to flog handsomely a stalwart negro man; she sometimes did it,
+after he had been well tied up. But the slave girl was exactly suited to
+her flagellating capacities. A good many women, North as well as South,
+manifest a tendency to become tyrants in their own households, and love
+to bully their servants. But this is an evil of a mitigated nature in
+Northern society. The stupidest "help" in the kitchen knows she is safe
+from any other lash than her mistress' tongue, and is commonly an adept
+at the business of answering back again.
+
+But the Southern mistress was a domestic devil with horns and claws;
+selfish, insolent, accustomed to be waited on for everything. She grew
+up with the instinct of tyranny--to punish violently the least neglect
+or disobedience in her servants. The variable temper of girlhood, not
+ugly unless thwarted, became in the "Southern matron" a chronic fury.
+She was her own "overseer," and, like that out-door functionary, had her
+own scepter, which she did not bear in vain. The raw-hide lay upon the
+shelf within easy reach, and her arm was vigorous with exercise. The
+breaking of a plate, the spilling of a cup, the misplacing of a pin in
+her dress, or any other misadventure in the chapter of accidents, was
+promptly illustrated with numerous cuts. The lash well laid on the
+shoulders of a black _femme-de-chambre_, or screaming child, was an
+agreeable titillation of the nervous sensibilities of the languid
+creole; a headache, or a heartache, transferred itself through the
+medium of the raw-hide to the back of Phillis or Araminta. They no doubt
+whipped sometimes, like Mr. Squeers, for the mere fun of the thing. It
+is an exquisite pleasure to a cowardly nature to have some creature to
+torment; and there is this nemesis about cruelty that it engenders an
+appetite which, like that for alcoholic stimulents, for ever demands
+increased indulgence. It was the vindictive woman's nature in the South
+that protracted and gave added ferocity to the rebellion. These
+woman-whipping wives and mothers it was who hounded on the masculine
+chivalry to the work of exterminating the "accursed Yankees," and thus
+made their own punishment so much sorer than it need have been.
+
+The mention of these amiable Southern characteristics cannot fail to
+recall that highly suggestive scene of the Malebolge, with the
+illustration of Gustave Doré, in which the tempters and destroyers of
+women are seen scourged with Whips, in the hands of demons; especially
+when we remember that the whipping of slave women to make them consent
+to their own dishonor, was one of the usages of the patriarchal
+chivalry. There is not a scene in which the imaginings of Dante have
+been better seconded by the pencil of the great French artist: the
+flying wretches hurrying in opposite directions, as the crowds in the
+Jubilee year trampled each other, going and returning across the St.
+Angelo Bridge; among them the bat-winged fiends with whips, lashing
+right and left! In the throng are female figures: women who in life
+tortured and corrupted other women. What terror in face and attitude!
+How desperately they grapple with the rocks to lift themselves out of
+reach of the scourge! And these two demons in the foreground! What an
+absolute idealization of muscular ferocity! Every sinewy line in their
+cantour displays the force of a fallen demi-god; their very tails curl
+with delight in their ministry of vengeance.
+
+
+     Ahi; come facen levar le berze,
+     Alle prime percosse, e gia nessuno,
+     Le second aspettava ne le terze!
+
+
+Ah! how they make them skip! There is Legree and Tom Gordon, and Madame
+de Schlangenbad, from Louisiana, and Mrs. Crawley (_née_ Sharp) from
+South Carolina, squirming under the torture! A very instructive, if not
+agreeable exhibition!
+
+But this fury in celestial Southern bosoms was merely institutional. Dip
+the gentlest nature into the element of irresponsible power, and it
+becomes in time covered over with a foul incrustation of cruelty. Those
+beastly Roman ladies of Juvenal's time, who could order a slave woman to
+be whipped to death without condescending to give any other reason than
+their _sic volo, sic jubeo_, were not naturally worse than others. Take
+any Roman or Southern girl of ten years of age, put a whip in her hands,
+and a helpless slave child at her mercy; let her see nothing but
+brutality to inferiors all around her, and by the time she is ready to
+be married, she can hold up her thumb to the standing gladiator in the
+arena, or beg her lover to bring her back from Bull Run a ring from the
+bones of some Yankee soldier. It is a publicly known private fact,
+illustrative of the influence of slavery on the female character, that
+when a certain Northern clergyman applied to her father for the hand of
+a celebrated Maryland heiress, the reply was, "You are quite welcome to
+her! but I think it only fair to tell you that if I were going to storm
+hell, I should put her in the advance."
+
+There is every reason to hope, therefore, that the Southern character,
+both male and female, will become gradually ameliorated by the changed
+condition under which it will hereafter be formed. It is a common error,
+one in which the Southern people themselves share, that there is
+something in their climate to nurse and to justify their "high spirit,"
+_anglicé_ their quarrelsomeness and brutality of temper. It is very
+pleasant to lay off upon Nature or Providence what belongs only to will
+or institutions. A man indulges in violent passions with little
+restraint or remorse, so long as he can persuade himself he is merely
+what certain positive natural laws make him. What an opiate for a
+conscience defiled with lust and blood, to think that this is only
+natural to the "sunny South." But in fact, the people of warm,
+temperate, and tropical regions are most commonly gentle of mood; the
+climate acts as an anodyne, and soothes them into a peaceful equilibrium
+of the passions. The negroes of the Southern States are not passionate
+or vindictive--well for their late masters and present persecutors that
+they are not! What they may become from the treatment they are
+experiencing from those preternatural and predestinated fools, is
+another question.
+
+The only reason the "chivalry" are bad-tempered and quarrelsome, is
+found in that despotism in which they have been nursed, and which
+associates the idea of personal dignity with an instant resort to
+violence at any contradiction. But for slavery, the people of
+Mississippi would have been no more addicted to street fights, dueling,
+midnight assassinations, etc., than the people of Massachusetts. That
+the former have any advantage in respect to courage, has been
+sufficiently disproved by the rebellion. Whether the ex-Confederate
+ladies may or may not be able to "fire the Southern heart" for another
+attempt to overthrow the Government, it will at least never be done
+under the persuasion that one Southerner is equal to five or any other
+number above unity, of Yankees.
+
+The traditions of slavery, indeed, will remain to keep alive among the
+late slaveholding caste, the insolent and unchristian temper on which
+they have prided themselves. But having no more helpless dependants to
+storm at and abuse, their valor will needs submit to gradual
+modifications. Some degree of self-government will become a necessity.
+It may require several generations; but _institutions_ ceasing to
+corrupt them, the loss of wealth, the necessity of work and a new Gospel
+of peace, better than their old slaveholding Christianity, will
+gradually educate them into a law-abiding, orderly, and virtuous people.
+
+The Southern woman will of course share early in this beneficent
+change--no longer perverted into a she-devil by the possession of
+unrestrained power, and paying just wages to servants, who, if not
+suited with their work, can leave without having to run off; her gentler
+virtues will have a chance to assert themselves. Her striking qualities
+will subside into a charming vivacity of temper. She will become a
+gracious and pious mater-familias; she will perhaps in time learn to
+apply to her own children a portion of that discipline of which her
+slaves enjoyed a monopoly. In short, there neither is nor ever was any
+reason, slavery excepted, why the Southern whites should not possess a
+character for industry, peacefulness, and religion, equal to that of
+the rural districts of New York and New England.
+
+Thank God that we have lived to see such awful barbarisms extinct! In
+fifty years the last woman-whipper at the South will be as dead as
+Cleopatra; as dead as the pre-Adamite brute organizations. History will
+be ashamed to record their doings. The fictions in which they are
+enbalmed will be lost in the better coming era of morals and letters. By
+the time the South has been overflowed and regenerated by a beneficent
+inundation of Northern "carpet-baggers," with Yankee capital and
+enterprise, it will be forgotten that a race capable of the crimes
+referred to in the preceding story, ever existed.
+
+[Illustration: Decoration]
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[2] It is curiously illustrative of the mixed childishness and ferocity
+which characterizes the Southern civilization, that this secret
+association of ruffians, organized to terrorize the loyal South, styles
+itself by an absurd, mis-spelled name, and goes about on its nightly
+work of murder in harlequin costume, with one of its leaders acting the
+part of ghost, to frighten the superstitious blacks. Some more
+courageous freedman occasionally makes a _bona fide_ ghost of this
+masquerade.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF SUBSCRIBERS
+
+TO THE
+
+PUBLISHING FUND.
+
+
+GERRIT SMITH,           Peterboro, N. Y.,      $25 00
+
+WENDELL PHILLIPS,       Boston, Mass.,          25 00
+
+J. S. SEYMOUR,          Auburn, N. Y.,          25 00
+
+D. M. OSBORNE,             "     "              25 00
+
+CHAS. P. WOOD,             "     "              25 00
+
+WM. H. SEWARD, JR.,        "     "              25 00
+
+J. N. KNAPP,               "     "              25 00
+
+RUFUS SARGENT,             "     "              25 00
+
+H. IVISON,              New York                25 00
+
+TIMOTHY L. BARKER,      San Francisco, Cal.,    20 00
+
+WM. G. WISE,            Auburn, N. Y.,          10 00
+
+G. I. LETCHWORTH,          "     "              10 00
+
+S. L. BRADLEY              "     "              10 00
+
+I. F. TERRILL              "     "              10 00
+
+ABIJAH FITCH,              "     "              10 00
+
+T. M. POMEROY, M. C.,      "     "              10 00
+
+F. L. GRISWOLD,            "     "              10 00
+
+CYRENUS WHEELER,           "     "              10 00
+
+JOHN CHEDELL,              "     "              10 00
+
+DAVID WRIGHT,              "     "              10 00
+
+JOSIAH BARBER,             "     "              10 00
+
+GEO. E. BARBER,            "     "              10 00
+
+S. WILLARD, M. D.,         "     "              10 00
+
+RICHARD STEEL,             "     "               5 00
+
+C. H. MERRIMAN,            "     "               5 00
+
+J. LEWIS GRANT,            "     "               5 00
+
+A. H. GOSS,                "     "               5 00
+
+CHRISTOPHER MORGAN,        "     "               5 00
+
+J. M. HURD,                "     "               5 00
+
+W. J. SUTTON,              "     "               5 00
+
+WM. A. KIRBY,              "     "               5 00
+
+THOS. MCCREA,              "     "               5 00
+
+J. N. STARIN,              "     "               5 00
+
+C. P. FORD,                "     "               5 00
+
+
+[Illustration: Decoration]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, by 
+Sarah Hopkins Bradford
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57821 ***