Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad/Chapter XII
CHAPTER XII.
On the eastern shore of the Chesapeake, in the State of Maryland, there lived, about forty years ago, a remarkable woman by the name of Margaret. She was born on a slave ship on its way from Africa to Baltimore, just before the importation of slaves was prohibited. She, with her mother, fell into the hands of a family who gave them religious instruction, and Margaret, while young, exhibited traits of character that were regarded as remarkable for one of her race. Of a proud, indomitable spirit, yet having acute moral sense, a disposition naturally amiable, of cheerful temperament, and crushed with a sense of her degraded condition, she was unusually capable in all kinds of housework, and especially active and competent as nurse when any of the family were sick. By observation she learned the polite manners and graceful deportment of ladies of the family and those who visited there. Her obedience to every command, her kindness to any one who was in trouble, and polite deportment toward all, seemed to be the result of a conscientious desire to imitate her Saviour whom she had early learned to love.
At sixteen years of age she went to live with her young mistress, who was married to a planter in that fertile country known as the “Eastern Shore.” At eighteen Margaret was a large woman, tall and well formed, her complexion black as jet, her countenance always pleasant, though she seldom laughed. She talked but little, even to those of her own race. At twenty years of age she became the wife of a worthy young man to whom she had given her best affections. Not long after, her young master became very angry with her for what he called stubbornness and resistance to his will, and threatened to chastise her by whipping—a degradation that she had always felt that she could not submit to, and yet to obey her master in the thing he demanded would be still worse. She therefore told him that she would not be whipped, she would rather die, and gave him warning that any attempt to execute his threat would surely result in the death of one of them. He knew her too well to risk the experiment, and decided to punish her in another way. He sold her husband, and she saw him bound in chains and driven off with a large drove of men and women for the New Orleans market. He then put her in the hands of a brutal overseer, with directions to work her to the extent of her ability on a tobacco plantation, which command was enforced up to the day of the birth of her child. At the end of one week she was driven again to the field and compelled to perform a full task, having at no time any abatement of her work on account of her situation, with the exception of one week. It was the custom on the plantations to establish nurseries, presided over by old, broken down slaves, where mothers might leave their infants during the work hours, but this privilege was denied to Margaret. She was obliged to leave her child under the shade of a bush in the field, returning to it but twice during the long day. On returning to the child one evening she found it apparently senseless, exhausted with crying, and a large serpent lying across it. Although she felt that it would he better for both herself and child if it were dead, yet a mother’s heart impelled her to make an effort to save it, and by caressing and careful handling she resuscitated it.
As soon as she heard its feeble, wailing cry, she made a vow to deliver her boy from the cruel power of slavery or die in the attempt, and falling prostrate, she prayed for strength to perform her vow, and for grace and patience to sustain her in her suffering, toil and hunger; then pressing her child to her bosom, she fled with all the speed of which she was capable toward the North Star. Having gone a mile or two, she heard something pursuing her; on looking round she saw Watch, the old house dog. Watch was a large mastiff, somewhat old, and with him Margaret had ever been a favorite, and since she had been driven to the field, Watch often visited her at her cabin in the evening. She feared it would not be safe to allow Watch to go with her, but she could not induce him to go back, so she resumed her flight, accompanied by her faithful escort. At break of day she hid herself on the border of a plantation and soon fell asleep.
Toward evening she was aroused by the noise made by the slaves returning to their quarters, and seeing an old woman lingering behind all the others, she called her, told her troubles and asked for food. The old woman returned about midnight with a pretty good supply of food, which Margaret divided with Watch, and then started on taking the north star for her guide. The second day after she left, the Overseer employed a hunter with his dogs to find her. He started with an old slut and three whelps, thinking, no doubt, that as the game was only a woman and her infant child, it would be a good time to train his pups.
Margaret had been missed at roll call the morning after her flight, but the Overseer supposed she was hiding near the place for a day or two, and that hunger would soon drive her up; therefore, when the hunter started, he led the old dog, expecting to find her in an hour or two, but not overtaking her the first day, on the next morning he let his hounds loose, intending to follow on horseback, guided by their voices. About noon, the old dog struck the track at the place where Margaret had made her little camp the day before, and she bounded off with fresh vigor, leaving the man and the younger dogs beyond sight and hearing. The young dogs soon lost the track where Margaret forded the streams, and the old dog was miles away, leaving the hunter without a guide to direct him.
Margaret had been lying in the woods on the bank of a river, intending to start again as soon as it was dark, when she was startled by the whining and nervous motions of old Watch, and listening, she heard the hoarse ringing bay of a blood-hound. Although she had expected that she would be hunted with dogs, and recalled over and over again the shocking accounts related by Overseers to the slaves, of fugitives overtaken and torn in pieces by the savage Spanish blood-hounds, she had not, until now, realized the horrors of her situation. She expected to have to witness the destruction of her child by the savage brute, and then be torn in pieces herself She did not, however, lose her presence of mind. The river or inlet near her camp was too wide and too deep to be forded at that place, but she fastened her child to her shoulders and waded in as far as she could, taking a club to defend herself. Meanwhile, old Watch lay with his nose between his feet, facing the coming foe. The hound, rendered more fierce by the freshness of the track, came rushing headlong with nose to the gronnd, scenting her prey, and seemed not to see old Watch, until, leaping to pass over him, she found her wind-pipe suddenly collapsed in the massive jaws of the old mastiff. The struggle was not very noisy, for Watch would not even growl, and the hound could not, but it was terribly energetic. The hound made rapid and persuasive gestures with her paws and tail, but it was of no use, the jaws of old Watch relaxed not until all signs of life in his enemy had ceased. Margaret came back from the river, and would have embraced her faithful friend, but fearing that a stronger pack was following, she hastily threw the dead hound into the river and pursued her journey.
It would make this sketch too long to relate all Margaret’s adventures before she reached New York City, where she lived many years. Within a few hours after her providential escape by the aid of her faithful friend, old Watch, from the fangs of the slave hunter’s hound, she fell into the hands of friends, who kept her secreted until she could be sent into a free State; while there, she learned about the pursuit by the hunter, and that he never knew what became of his best hound. After the chase was abandoned, she, through a regular line, similar to our U. G. R. R., was sent to Philadelphia and then to New York, where she became a celebrated nurse, and always befriended the poor of all colors and all nationalities. She rented a good house which was a home for herself and boy, and also for old Watch while he lived. When her boy, whom she called Samuel, was old enough to go to school, she found a place for him in Westchester Co., where he obtained the rudiments of an education, and afterwards in the family of a gentleman in Central New York,[1] he enjoyed the advantages of a thorough education, and became a devoted minister of the gospel in the Congregational Church. I often met him during the early history of the U. G. R. R., of which he was an efficient agent. Samuel was one of the most eloquent men I have ever heard speak. He was a fine looking man, though he was so black it was sometimes said that it grew dark when he entered a room ; but it grew light when he began to speak. I never saw Margaret, but I have heard Samuel relate her sufferings and adventures, and describe her loving kindness to him and her self-sacrificing devotion to the interests of suffering humanity, in language and expression such as I never dare try to imitate. He was well informed, and knew the history of our country better than some men who make greater pretensions, in illustration of which I will relate, as well as I can, an incident at which several ladies and gentlemen who witnessed it were much amused.
It was at a time when a stirring political campaign excited all classes. In a parlor at a hotel a man was giving his opinions on political affairs in a voice loud enough for all in the room to hear. His theme was the abuse that the North had heaped upon the South. The man had been introduced to gentlemen in the room as the Rev. Mr.——, though one person told me that all the use he had made of his claim to the sacred office for thirty years had been to demand exemption from taxes on the ground of being a clergyman. He proceeded to eulogize the Southerners as a brave, noble, refined people, suffering untold abuse and calumny from the whole North except his party ; it was a state of things not to be put up with much longer ; the slaveholders and their Democratic friends were going to settle the question with the bayonet ! “Well,” said a gentleman from Vermont, to whom the discourse seemed to be directed, “ please tell us wherein we have abused our friends down South.” “I’ll tell you,” said he, “here’s this State of New York; finding the climate and other things unfavorable to slavery, they passed a law abolishing it, to take effect in twenty years, for the purpose of giving time to run off' all the slaves and sell them, so that when the time arrived, the slaves had all been sold, and now we are demanding the liberation of the slaves for which we have pocketed the money.” Samuel had stopped there for the night and sat by the table apparently reading, while he listened to the conversation. As the Vermonter made no answer, Samuel turned his face towards the reverend gentleman and said, “Are you not mistaken in relation to this matter?” The reverend looked at him scornfully, as if he would decline talking with a black man, but as he liked to dispute better than he liked anything else except money and aristocracy, and no doubt expecting to wipe out the black spot, he said, “What do you know about it?” “I know,” replied Sam, “that not a slave was ever legally sold to be taken out of this State, or taken out of the State to be sold, after the passage of the law abolishing slavery. The law itself made it a penal offense to do so, and even a Congressman could not take his slave servant to Washington without giving bonds of $1,000 to return him to this State. No, sir, the slaves were not sold out of the State!” The statement was made in such a prompt, downright manner, that Rev.—— dared not dispute it, but went on to say that “Massachusetts was less particular in her legislation. After realizing cash for every slave owned in the State, they are arrogantly demanding freedom for the same and all the rest of the slaves, and making more disturbance than all the other States put together.”
“Begging your pardon,” said Sam, “I wish to say that you were pointed out to me as the man who owns the best library in this County. Most surely, sir, you have read history to little purpose if you do not know that slavery was not abolished in Massachusetts by legislation, and that not an hour was allowed those who held slaves in that State in which they might sell or run them off.” “This is a precious piece of nonsense you are relating,” said ——, “who does not know that Massachusetts was once a slave State, and that it is now one of the free States?” “True,” said Samuel, “but there was no gradual emancipation nor selling of slaves, and there was no legislation about it. When Massachusetts became a State, and the people of the State adopted a constitution, the preamble, or, as they called it, their bill of rights, was copied almost verbatim from the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, which declares, briefly, that all men have equal rights, and have equal right to protection in the enjoyment thereof. As soon as the constitution was adopted by the people, a gentleman residing in Hampden Co., who could not have been a Democrat of your stamp, though he held nine or ten slaves, said to his foreman, a very intelligent slave, “Thomas, I think you are legally entitled to freedom. I have thought about it a long time, especially since we have declared our independence, and are sacrificing thousands of lives and millions of property in defense of the principles that we publish to the world as our excuse for so doing; and now our State having embodied the same principle into the constitution as the fundamental law of the State, you are as much entitled to freedom as I am. To test this question, I wish you to employ counsel and bring a suit against me in the Supreme Court for illegally holding you in slavery, urging your claim under the bill of rights in the constitution. You will need money to retain a lawyer, and here are a hundred dollars which you can use for that purpose.” I need not relate the proceedings in detail—if you desire to know the history of emancipation in Massachusetts, you can, no doubt, find it in your library. I will only say, to substantiate my first statement, that the suit was commenced and carried through to the highest court, and decided every time in favor of Thomas, his master paying all costs and counsel fees. When it had been decided in the last court, the Governor of the State made proclamation that all persons heretofore held as slaves in Massachusetts were free, and warned all persons against buying or selling, or in any way treating them as slaves, and guaranteed to them all the rights of citizens of the State, since which time people in that State transact all kinds of business without question as to the color of their skin. For the rest, as to how the people north and south treat each other, and the position they occupy before the world in regard to education, refinement, enterprise and Christian civilization, I respectfully refer you to the debate between Webster and Hayne, which, of course, may be found in your library.”
I have met but once since, and that was in 1863, when he was holding forth to a crowd on the beauties of the southern system of labor, southern refinement, etc., and predicting that after they had thrashed us at the North, there would be some hope of our improvement. The last I heard of Samuel he went to England, and was sent by the government on a mission of some kind to Jamaica, W.I.
- ↑ Gerritt Smith.