Charles Henry Fowler

“ Suppose that I had chosen to remain at Riverside Hall! What was to hinder you spiriting me away to the cotton fields of the Sunny South to wear my life away as if I were a mere animal, instead of being a human being like yourself, and one for whom Christ died? I therefore rejoice at dear mother's freedom; for slavery is nothing but a revolting crime—a system of robbery and murder! Now, here I am, and in a short time intend to appear on the public stage in the capacity of a lecturer, a singer and a player on the piano. ”

“ It was not only a great crime in General Forrest and his rebels murdering hundreds of Union men at Fort Pillow, but it was the greatest blunder they have yet committed as they will themselves find out at once. Instead of making over 200,000 men afraid of them, or deterring them from the battle entirely, we shall only go into battle ten times more eagerly than before, and do fighting ten times more valiant than ever. A shudder has already run over the entire North that will do more to unite the whole Union than if we had gained one of the greatest victories of war. ”

“ If I had any power to advise the Houses at Washington, I would advise them to take the scandal of lynching by the wild mobs into their own hands, and put a stop to it in their own way. And let Congress see that all races and crimes are treated alike, and let the duly constituted authorities of the States administer the laws for which they are appointed and paid. Lynching is not only a breach of the law, but it is murder itself, and a horrible system of crime and public disorder that have brought this most shameful nation into great disrepute. ”

“ The State of Kansas possessed many attractions for our oppressed and wronged people. All had often heard of the long struggle there between the border ruffians from the South, and the free soil men of the North, as to whether Kansas should be enslaved or free; and how at last it had been won by the Abolitionists as a free State. All had heard how the immortal John Brown (of glorious memory) had warred and fought in Kansas for the liberty of all people, and how in 1861 the struggle between slavery and liberty had been transferred from the soil of Kansas to the rebel lands of South Carolina. ”

“ From words they will most assuredly come to blows over that very 'peculiar institution,' and American slavery and all the evils that follow in its train, will pass away. But of one thing rest assured. The South will never consent to emancipate her slaves. They have been throwing it up in the face of the North these past fifty years that they can't get their own way; they will go out of the Union, and set up a slave empire of their own. Then they will attempt a dissolution of these glorious States. Then they will dare and defy you to force them back into the Union by the sword. ”

“ So terrible, indeed, was the impression produced by the loss of our poor ship, and the murder of 266 men at Havana, that almost every colored and white man in this nation seemed even to sigh and thirst to go and fight with Spain! Women by thousands and tens of thousands offered themselves as nurses, and to be used in any way that the Government pleased. Our colored men, once slaves, or the children of slaves, but now loyal freemen, came forward almost to a man, and with quite as much patriotism as their white brethren, at least, offered themselves as ready, quite ready to march to the war. ”

“ The last rebel had been forced to lay down his arms, and slavery, that had existed under the most aggravated form for about two hundred and fifty years, had been swept from the land, and there remained not the shadow of a doubt that every colored man, woman and child were entirely free. Then, like the Jews of old, after the drowning of Pharaoh and his rebel army in the Red sea, there arose a loud and long-continued song of joy from the hearts of all the 4,000,000 of freed people all over Secessia—from Mason and Dixon's line to the Rio Grande river ”

“ In all their plans, schemes and calculations, this slave-holding oligarchy have thrown the Almighty overboard, and every sacred right of the human race. They have treated the wronged and oppressed African as if he had neither rights nor feelings, and, indeed, as if he were not a human being at all. But there is a day coming, and it will soon be here, when the Great Creator of the entire human race will call an imperative halt to all this, and go into this war as we may, we will come out with four millions of people who will be redeemed from the yoke and curse of Southern bondage. ”

“ Lo! these many years! and we are at Buffalo, still. It is a great comfort to our hearts and minds to think that the entire colored race are no longer compelled to reside, to dwell, and sleep where they are bidden, as in the bad old times of slavery; but that here again a mighty change for the better has come over all our people, inasmuch as many of them nowadays have comfortable and pleasant homes of their own, where beautiful furniture and musical instruments can be seen—yes, even fine pianos, along which the supple fingers of the rising generation can fly with the best! ”

“ We were not in despair, but the South yet retained all her strength, and was proud and defiant. They were also determined to fight on, and did fight on with a valor worthy of a better cause. But how could we expect more success than we had under the circumstances? So great was the prejudice against color that white men were even unwilling to fight side by side with our own people; and then Lincoln and his cabinet were all afraid of affronting the tender and delicate susceptibilities of the South by putting even their little finger on the heinous institution called "Domestic slavery." ”

“ The Fugitive Slave Law was a dead letter, for the great gospel guns over all the North had denounced it as a shame and a disgrace to a Christian nation; and when the South found that fugitive slaves would resist their pursuers unto death, and that their messengers were likely to be shot down, they ceased to send them, at the same time making the slave laws worse than ever before. However, the tighter and more oppressive they made them, in greater numbers did the slaves escape from the house of bondage, for who can stem the spirit of the brave? Slavery is an abomination before the Lord! ”

“ In the strictest sense of the term, he is a man of destiny. Born, like all true leaders and reformers, at a particular time, for a particular purpose; endowed by nature with a constitution which defies the encroachment of disease; with an intellect which craves the most rigid discipline; with a courage which knows no daring, and a conscience which repels the slightest innovation which might result to the detriment of his fellow-man, regardless of race, color or creed. It was for Abraham Lincoln to issue the proclamation of freedom, and thus save the nation from disintegration ”

“ Soldiers, the President of the United States shall be informed of your conduct on the present occasion, and the voice of the Representatives of the American nation shall applaud your valor, as your General now praises your ardor. The enemy is near! His sails cover the lakes. But the brave are united, and if he finds us contending with ourselves, it will be for the prize of valor and fame—its noblest reward. ”

“ All this time, 1838, the Abolitionists were under full swing, led on by William Lloyd Garrison, of Massachusetts, and backed up by all those who beheld the dawn of freedom on the Eastern horizon. Garrison's paper, "The Liberator," sent forth its blasts all over the Northern States; but the North at that time abode in thick darkness as to the rights of colored men to freedom on the self-same footing with themselves. And not only did thick darkness cover the land, but entire legions and hosts of the people were almost as much prejudiced upon the slave question as the slave-holders of the South. ”

“ As the South has been so violent over the matter of ruling her own States to the exclusion of the colored man, the grand hue and cry among some of our own people has been raised, "Let politics alone, and attend to your own business, and let the white man rule!" So far as I can see there is neither sense nor justice in such a cry as that. If the white man has a right to vote, so has the colored man. To stuff the ballot-boxes with manufactured votes, or to throw out those that colored men have voted, is simply breaking the law, and the central government should punish it as such. ”

“ My dear reader, we are often told that poverty is no disgrace, but that it is very inconvenient. Which is all true, indeed, too true; and what is still worse, it often cannot be helped. In days not so long since gone by, we used to be taunted with poverty, but if we had no possessions of our own in the days of slavery, we at least, like the apostle Paul, made others rich, and it was our oppressed people who built up the Sunny South—the richest section of the United States before the war. ”

“ I will leave it to my kind and gallant Tom to tell you how we got away; because I think that was the luckiest day in my whole life—unless, indeed, I consider also the day that my own dear mother and I sailed from New Orleans on the Columbia. There are great days in the lives of individuals as well as in the lives of nations, and I feel a heavenly presentiment in my own heart and soul that a great war is impending upon this nation, and that Almighty God will send it to set His people free. ”

“ Then drilling of colored men began at once, from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains, and from the Great Lakes to the Ohio and Missouri rivers, and now I believe that we have some two hundred thousand colored men in the field and in the fleets together. Neither have we fought for pay nor from any other personal selfish motive; we have fought for the salvation of Uncle Sam and the freedom of the slave at one and the same time. We have not fought for ourselves alone, we have fought for others, and all the commanding generals have ever given us a good word, and never a bad one. ”

“ Behold all the schools, colleges and places of learning of every name and nature thrown open in hundreds to our young people, both male and female! What a glorious array of splendid seminaries all over the great republic, besides hundreds belonging to the whites, to which we can obtain admission! It is true that there are others still barred against us on account of the prejudice still obtaining here and there owing to the color of the skin, but that will give way in due time, for there is nothing incapable of change but the Great Creator Himself. ”

“ The rising generation knows little of the thoughts and feelings, and the sufferings of their fathers and mothers on their way to freedom, and the present happy condition of things. But I am like that mountain traveller of whom I have just spoken, and I sit at times and muse and muse upon the tremendous excitement all over the North on the slavery question, and how the Abolitionists demanded freedom, and the South would not listen to any such thing. ”

“ But all the same it is slavery, and not freedom. Almighty God certainly never meant that one man should own another. Besides, these odious Spaniards, a lying, thieving nation, have promised the civilized nations of the world a hundred times to abolish slavery, but they have always broken their promises, and they will continue to break them until they are compelled to give their slaves up by force. Spain is a dark, suspicious nation, reduced to the last stages of poverty, but swollen with ignorance and pride. ”

“ We visited the Vale of Llangollen, the Vale of Clwyd, the Vale of Conway, saw Bettws-y-Coed, the Pass of Llanberis, and, indeed, the best things in all North Wales, including lakes, rivers, waterfalls, and glorious romance without end. The warm-hearted, impulsive Welsh people almost carried us all off our feet with their unbounded enthusiasm, and the tremendous warmth of their welcome. They are the greatest singers in the world. Indeed, all Wales is one sea of song, and they sing well, and they even dearly love to sing. ”

“ I am not aware whether you have ever visited Niagara Falls or not, as I have never heard you say, but whether or not, it is a most wonderful place, and one well worth the trouble of coming even from the ends of the earth to see. It is well for Buffalo and all the towns and villages that lie around about this river, that they are so located, that is, so near the falls, because there is always a great tide of people coming here from every land beneath the sun, almost; and these same people seem never, never to grow weary of one of the most stupendous works that the great Creator has made. ”

“ The Great Creator and his daughter "Nature" made no mistakes. My own marriage with my own beloved Tom has been no failure. We have never repented of it, either of us. We could have done no better. And so it was with Fred. Douglass and his beloved Anna, from Baltimore. There never was a more manly bridegroom than he. Above all things he was a Christian and a gentleman, in the very essence of his nature; a man of lofty honor and principle, and with such a man as that a young woman is forever in safety. ”

“ All around Lake Erie and the Niagara River, both in Canada and the State of New York, the fair face of Nature is just blooming; all the woods are dressed in their mantle of green, the countless birds sing among the branches, and all things hereabout clearly shows that the self-same God that has adorned the State of Kentucky has done as much in these parts. ”

“ But by the grace of God, and the blood of the Americans, both white and black, we are now all free, and thousands upon thousands of our dear people have acquired splendid educations, in all the different professions and walks of life, and they have proved to the whole world, both men and women, that there is talent and genius among our sons and daughters who have forged to the front, who are self-made men and women, indeed—men and women who have risen from the ranks, just the same as officers and commanders start up from the ranks in the time of war. ”

“ War surely is a terrible thing at its best estate. Nations have often waged war for mere conquest and ambition, which was the greatest crime that ever could have been committed. But here was a war for freedom—the freedom of millions of slaves. It was for this freedom that we had prayed for the assistance of the Most High God, and troubled the country, labored and toiled in all possible ways. It was for this freedom that all the chivalrous Christianity of the nation had put forth all its efforts ”

“ My many delightful journeys to the dearly beloved friends in Canada, and their return visits to me, have been like glorious rainbows that spanned the heavens of my happiness on earth. Then there is the permanent love and friendship of the many brave and true hearts that have thrown light and pleasure upon my path all along the line—good and faithful friends who assisted in pulling down the powers of slavery, and who now rejoice, in common with myself, that the mighty work was done at last, and that all our grand destiny is still before us. ”

“ THE GRAVE OF NICK BIDDLE. Deeds are indestructible; ideas are imperishable, and mind is immortal. "Children," says George Eliot, "may be strangled, deeds never; they have an indestructible life, both in mind and outside of our consciousness." It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that many of the ancients of the distant past should have predicated eternal life upon deeds and ideas. Deeds which are formidable, and ideas which grow and expand, and gather strength, until they become the very life of the social, moral and religious structure of the nation. ”