Women of distinction/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX.
SOJOURNER TRUTH.
("ISABELLA").
Sometimes historians review the lives and recount the deeds of certain members of their peculiar race with much timidity and regret. At other times some of them unfold and even maonifv the mistakes and inefficiencies of certain other less favored races, to the entire neglect and exclusion of any of their more important accomplishments.
It is in this light that the inhabitants of Africa, as well as Afro-Americans and all their direct relatives, have been held up to the world by some historians who are more zealous to draw a veil over our good deeds than they are ready to give credit for what the race has accomplished.
It is therefore a real pleasure, as well as a privilege, even at this late period of our country's history, to present in this short sketch a few of the important facts contained in the life of "Isabella," a once slave woman, of whom many of our women, both young and old, have never heard.
To hear of her trials, her difficulties, her embarrassments and her triumphs will be inspiring and encouraging to many of our young women.
She was possibly born some time between 1797 and 1800. Her parents were "James" and "Betsy," the slaves of a man of possibly Dutch descent, by the name 
SOJOURNER TRUTH.
of Ardinburgh, residing in Ulster county, N. Y. Isabella was one of many human chattels owned by this family; and although it seems that she was somewhat a favorate slave, yet she in after years vividly remembered the cold, wet, dark, sloppy cellar-room in which all the slaves of both sexes slept, having a little straw and, a poor excuse for a blanket as their entire bed outfit.
She also remembered the auction-block upon which she, at nine years of age, was sold to a John Nealy, of Ulster county, N. Y., for $100; the cruelty of her new owners; the frozen feet in winter with which she suffered, and, as Mrs. F. W. Titus puts it, "They gave her a plenty to eat and also a plenty of whippings." She had been taught by her mother to repeat the Lord's Prayer and to trust in God for all things and especially in times of trouble. This instruction she strictly adhered to and sought to be honest in all things.
However, she became the third lawful wife of a fellow-slave, Thomas, and was in after years the mother of five children. Often, when in the fields at work, she would place her babe in a basket suspended by a rope from the bough of a tree and let other little ones swing it to sleep. Sometime in 1817 the State made a law that all slaves forty years old and above should be free; others under were kept in slavery till 1827. Her master promised Isabella that if she would be real good and obedient he would give her free papers one year sooner, July 4, 1826.
When this long-looked-for day came he refused to keep his promise, and when the same date came in 1827 he also refused to comply with the law; so early one morning, as by "underground railroad," she left.
Some friends took her in; she was pursued and found. Rather than have her go back into slavery a friend paid twenty dollars for her services and five dollars for her child the remainder of that year, after which she was indeed free. Now homeless and friendless, in search of a child that had been, in this time, stolen by cruel hands and sold, night came on and she, a traveling stranger, was taken in by a Quaker family. As Mrs. Titus says, "They gave her lodgings for the night; and it is very amusing to hear her tell of the 'nice, high, clean, white, beautiful bed' assigned her to sleep in, which contrasted so strangely with her former pallets that she sat down and contemplated it, perfectly absorbed in wonder that such a bed should have been appropriated to one like herself For some time she thought that she would lie down beneath it, on her usual bedstead, the floor. 'I did, indeed,' says she, laughing heartily at her former self. However, she finally concluded to make use of the bed, for fear that not to do so might injure the feelings of her good hostess." She subsequently moved to New York City, and having already become a Christian, she united with the John Street Methodist Church and afterwards joined the Zion's Church in Church Street, in which was a large number of colored people. She entered heartily into the cause of a moral reformation which was being carried on among the degraded classes of women. In this she did much earnest work, even entering dens of wicked women where her comrades were rather too timid to enter. She, by strict economy, had deposited some of her earnings in. the savings bank; but being urged to invest it otherwise, she did so, losing all she had saved. Again she tried, but failing to accumulate on account of losses one way and another, she said, "The rich rob the poor and the poor rob each other." Upon deciding to leave New York on a lecturing tour through the East, she made ready a small bundle as her baggage and when about to leave informed her hostess that her name was no longer Isabella, but Sojourner. So she pursued her journey, speaking and lecturing to the people wherever she found them assembled. On one occasion, when at a camp-meeting, some young rowdies came in and broke up the meeting. It seemed as if a mob was threatened. She hid herself in one corner of the tent, but on thinking the matter over she said, "Shall I run away from the Devil—me, a servant of the living God? Have I not faith enough to go out and quell that mob, when it is written, 'One shall chase a thousand and two put ten thousand to flight'? I know there are not a thousand here, and I know I am a servant of the living God. I'll go to the rescue, and the Lord shall go with me and protect me." She drew herself a few rods to a little hill and began to sing:
It was early in the morning; it was early in the morning,
Just at the break of day,
When He rose, when He rose, when He rose,
And went to heaven on a cloud.
The rioters left the camp and came to hear her sing. She asked them why they surrounded her with such clubs in their hands. When told that they only wished to hear her sing, she made them pledge that if she would sing one more song they would not pester the meeting any more that night. So she began to sing:
I bless the Lord I've got my seal—to-day and to-day—
To sla' Goliath in the field—to-day and to-day.
The good old way is a righteous way;
I mean to take the kingdom in the good old way.
Before she had finished this song the mob crowd fled in a mass. In this she showed more tact and courage and real generalship than all the preachers in the camp could muster up. That she was a woman of power of speech there can be no question when one reads the many testimonials of the newspapers and friends of those days, when men possibly spoke the truth more at ease than now. The Rochester papers spoke of her while lecturing in the State of New York as follows:
She was for forty years a slave in the State of New York. Wholly uneducated, her eloquence is that of Nature, inspired by earnest zeal in her Heaven-appointed mission. She speaks to crowded houses everywhere. Let Rochester give her a cordial reception.
The lecturer is a child of Nature, gifted beyond the common measure, witty, shrewd, sarcastic, with an open, broad honesty of heart and unbounded kindness. Wholly untaught in the schools, she is herself a study for the philosopher, and a wonder to all.
She is ahvays sensible, always suggestive, always original, earnest and practical, often eloquent and profound. She often asked visitors, "Don't you want to write your name in de Book of Life?" She delighted to have her distinguished friends write their names in this "Book of Life." Among those who wrote their names were Lucretia Mott (who calls herself a "co-laborer in the cause of our race"). Senators Revel, Morril, Pomeroy, H. Wilson, Patterson, and also Abraham Ivincoln and U. S. Grant. She received communications from Gerritt Smith, William Lloyd Garrison, Vice-President Colfax, Theodore Tilton and a host of other distinguished white men and women. She received calls from hundreds of the best Christian people of the North, and has been entertained in many of the aristocratic homes of the whites in this country. She sought to have the United States government set apart certain lands for the homes of ex-slaves. She was well prepared to do this work, having spent much time in the anti-slavery cause. A Northern paper said of her:
That old colored woman was so earnest, so fearless and untiring a laborer for her race during the long contest between freedom and slavery that she is known and loved by thousands in every State in the Union. Very black and without much education, she has remarkable faith in God, wonderfully clear perception of moral right and wrong, the most devoted love for the poor and needy, and the most untiring determination to carry forward plans for the amelioration of the condition of her race.
A Detroit paper said of her, among other things:
Those who have before heard her lectures will doubtless remember well the strong and yet well-modulated voice and the characteristic expressions in which she delivers her addresses, as well as the pith and point of her spicy sentences. Sojourner proposes to solicit government aid, in the way of having some portion of the as yet unoccupied lands of the West donated for the purpose as set forth in the petition first mentioned, and there to have suitable buildings erected and schools established, where the now dependent thousands of colored people may go, and not only attain an independence for themselves, but become educated and respectable citizens.
Harriet Beecher Stowe says of her:
I never knew a person who possessed so much of that subtle, controlling personal power, called presence, as she.
The following are samples of her poetical productions:
THE VALIANT SOLDIERS.
(Tune—"John Brown").
The following song written for the First Michigan Regiment of colored, soldiers, was composed by Sojourner Truth during the war, and was sung by her in Detroit and Washington.F. W. Titus.
We are the valiant soldiers who've 'listed for the war;
We are fighting for the Union, we are fighting for the law;
We can shoot a rebel farther than a white man ever saw,
As we go marching on,
chorus:
Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah, as we go marching on.
Look there above the center, where the flag is waving bright;
We are going out of slavery, we are bound for freedom's light;.
We mean to show Jeff Davis how the Africans can fight.
As we go marching on.—Cho.
We are done with hoeing cotton, we are done with hoeing corn;
We are colored Yankee soldiers as sure as you are born;
When massa hears us shouting he will think 'tis Gabriel's horn,
As we go marching on.—Cho.
They will have to pay us wages, the wages of their sin;
They will have to bow their foreheads to their colored kith and kin.
They will have to give us house-room, or the roof will tumble in,
As we go marching on.—Cho.
We hear the proclamation, massa, hush it as you will;
The birds will sing it to us, hopping on the cotton hill;
The 'possum up the gum-tree couldn't keep it still,
As he went climbing ow.—Cho.
Father Abraham has spoken, and the message has been sent;
The prison doors have opened, and out the prisoners went.
To join the sable army of African descent,
As we go marching on.—Cho.
The following original poem was sung at the close of a meeting, in which American slavery was discussed, at New Lisbon, Ohio:
I am pleading for my people—
A poor, down-trodden race.
Who dwell in freedom's boasted land,
With no abiding place.
I am pleading that my people
May have their rights astored [restored],
For they have long been toiling.
And yet had no reward.
They are forced the crops to culture.
But not for them they yield,
Although both late and early
They labor in the field.
Whilst I bear upon my body
The scars of many a gash,
I am pleading for my people
Who groan beneath the lash.
I am pleading for the mothers
Who gaze in wild despair
Upon the hated auction-block,
And see their children there.
I feel for those in bondage—
Well may I feel for them;
I know how fiendish hearts can be
That sell their fellow-men.
Yet those oppressors steeped in guilt—
I still would have them live;
For I have learned of Jesus
To suffer and forgive.
I want no carnal weapons,
No enginery of death,
For I love not to hear the sound
Of war's tempestuous breath.
I do not ask vou to engage
In death and bloody strife,
I do not dare insult my God
By asking for their life.
But while your kindest sympathies
To foreign lands do roam,
I would ask you to remember
Your own oppressed at home.
I plead with you to sympathize
With sighs and groans and scars,
And note how base the tyranny
Beneath the stripes and stars.
How she received her name: "And the Lord gave me Sojourner because I was to travel up an' down the land showin' the people their sins an' bein' a sign unto them. Afterwards I told the Lord I wanted another name, 'cause everybody else had two names, and the Lord gave me Truth, because I was to declare the truth to the people."
Although deprived of the advantages of even a common school education, that once slave girl became the most remarkable woman this century has produced; a wonder to the philosopher, the philanthropist and sage. A bold defender of the rights of men, a powerful temperance advocate, lecturer, preacher, reformer, and a most profound thinker and reasoner; a poet of no small merit, and in fact a sojourner wherever she found opportunity to do good. The world has indeed had but one Sojourner Truth.
While her bones lie lifeless in the dust she still lives on earth and in heaven. With grateful appreciation of a ereat woman we utter our final farewell to her dust:
Sleep peacefully silent, "Sojourner," in thy dust,
None hath labored more faithful than thou;
The work of thy life-time in the cause of the just
Is remembered by us, even now.