Eber M. Pettit

“ 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 a slave could find the north star, and show his mother how he knew it, and by what signs he found it, he was ready to graduate—he had finished his education—but Charley, poor fellow, had been having an easy time, riding about with his master, caring for the horses, blacking his boots, and brushing his clothes, and had not thought of going north until his mother told him that he had been sold. ”

“ The Virginians would have scorned the idea of enslaving a white man or woman, but the time came when the bluest blood of Virginia betrayed itself in the blush on the cheek of beautiful women standing on the auction block in Richmond, Charleston and New Orleans. Beauty of face and of form had a market value; a beautiful woman would sell for the price of ten able bodied men, and even Christianity was an article of commerce. ”

“ While you sneer at and slander the negro for accepting his freedom, you go down in the dirt and lick the heels of the men who trample on you, and tell you that labor degrades you, and then straighten yourselves up and judge of the right of a class of men to vote by the color of their skin, as if that were the only thing in which your claim to the right of suffrage would bear competition with theirs. ”

“ Indeed, the whole mass of slaves in Kentucky, with all their disabilities as to education, the degradation and oppression necessarily attending their condition, are, in point of intellect, ahead of the poor whites that are scattered all over the slave States, a disgrace to our civilization; yet each white man holds a vote of equal power with the proudest aristocrat in the nation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Besides, Charley was terribly disappointed. He supposed he was to be delivered to his master; that a white man would feed him and help him on his way to freedom, when he could have $500 for less trouble and no risk, he had not supposed was possible. He began to feel dizzy and faint, went a few rods and sat down, and soon fell asleep. He dreamed that two men were putting him into jail; he struggled, and awoke up finding himself alone, and darkness all around. ”

“ I wonder if dogs are ever Christians. Oh, Prince! what is the difference betwixt you and me?” Her soliloquy was cut short by Prince; he sprang up and took an attitude of defense, looked around at her with a low whine, and then was about to spring forward. She spoke to him and he came close to her side and licked her face; she looked up and saw a man not more than forty feet off, holding a blood-hound by a rope and a rifle on his shoulder. She sprang to her feet, and putting her hand on Prince’s head, she exclaimed, “Stand off, or Prince shall kill both you and your dog!” ”

“ Large rewards in cash and political honors awaited the delivery of Loguen in Tennessee, and there were Democrats enough who wanted them, but nobody ever got the rewards, for both Loguen and Providence stood in the way. Loguen was a prophet, a type of our times, and has lived to see the prophecy fulfilled. “The lost cause” offered all the offices and all the treasure of the nation for the delivery of all the people, both white and black, into the hands of the slave power, but Grant & Colfax stood in the way; the nation is safe; nobody will be hurt. ”

“ William Holmes claimed to be a near relative to his master, whose name he bore, and who was a Senator in the Congress of the United States. He, too, had been promised his freedom, a boon that he had longed for every hour of a long life, until despairing of the fulfillment of the promise, he and his wife, in their old age, resolved to be free in this life and die in a free country, and they availed themselves of an opportunity to make their escape, the details of which they refused to divulge lest their friends might suffer. ”

“ As an offset to such grounds of fear, it may be well to remember that there is a large class of white men living in the midst of the black population in the old slave States, who are even more ignorant, more stupid, and in all respects more degraded than the slaves were, the slaveholders themselves being judges, yet the “poor white trash,” as the aristocracy and even the slaves call them, have equal rights at the ballot box with their rich and intelligent neighbors. ”

“ In no other nation except this does the attainment of high social position depend on the color of the skin, and here, secure to him his freedom and equal rights before the law and the black man in his struggle for social position will willingly bide his time.”
“Well,” said Ridgley, “I have not time now to answer all you have said, and to be honest I am constrained to acknowledge that the black man, even in slavery, does not occupy the lowest grade to which men are capable of going. We have, at the South, a class of low, white trash that Joe and Rosa would scorn to associate with.” ”

“ They made her stand on a table, and all the men present were allowed to handle her in the most shameful and immodest manner, which seemed to give her the most excruciating torture, but she bore it without a word until they tore her baby from her and dashed it into a corner of the room, when she fell from the table in convulsions, while the men laughed and urged on the sale of others. Oh, my God, forgive me! I shall never dare to go to sleep again while we own a slave,”—and she never did. ”

“ The Underground Railroad, it will be seen, has done much the greatest work in behalf of human liberty.
The conductors on this route were some of the noblest, self sacrificing men the world ever saw. No civil penalties dismayed them. They boldly proclaimed by deeds of moral heroism and self-sacrifice their faith in the higher law, before which human statutes were impotent when human liberty was at stake. ”

“ A man stands upon the block, dignified in manner, serious countenance, and silent. “Now, gentlemen and ladies,” says the auctioneer, “I offer you a first class servant. He is honest and faithful, and moreover he is a Christian; no sham I tell you, but a genuine, conscientious Christian man. He would die rather than commit a wrong act or betray his master. How much do you offer for a servant that you can depend on every time?”
Good men in the Slave States were silent, having no means of redress; the laws and public opinion were on the side of the slave holder. ”

“ Loguen declined answering the question, when the gentleman said, “You need have no fear of me, I shall not hurt you.” “I presume not,” said Loguen, “but since the fugitive slave law was passed my friends advise me to go to Canada, or to some place where I am not known as a fugitive, but I am going to stay where I choose to stay, and go where I choose to go, and I hope no one will ever try to enforce that law on me, not that I fear anything for myself, but somebody will get hurt.” ”

“ The laws never interfere in such matters when all parties are free. Slavery forces amalgamation; it is not in practice among free men. What thou sayest in relation to the difficulty in controling so large a body of ignorant men, having their rights denied them, is without foundation, for when they are free they will not long remain in ignorance, and as to the right of franchise, if they cannot be made good citizens without it, then why deprive them of it?” “Why deprive them?” said Ridgley, “they are deprived of it already!” ”

“ I noticed that among the rights of which thee takes it for granted that black men, after emancipation, will be deprived, thee has classed what thee calls ‘social position.’ In that thou art mistaken; social position is not a right of which free men can be deprived by law, it is a condition to which men attain, or fail in the attainment, by conduct, talents and energy. ”

“ Being a young lady’s maid she had many opportunities for improvement, and suffered few of the privations incident to the life of a slave. Instead of making her satisfied with her condition, the privileges she enjoyed served to make her feel more keenly the degradation of slavery, and she resolved, when not more than ten years of age, to escape to a land of freedom or die in the attempt. ”

“ I will give you a practical illustration:
“‘The State of Kentucky passed a school law and created a fund for this class of white children, but they never availed themselves of it. Not a common schoolhouse has been built because they never asked for one, and finally the school fund was appropriated to other objects; whereas, not only the law makes it a penal offense to teach a negro, free or slave, to read, but subjects the negro to a public whipping for trying to learn ; yet there are more slaves in this county who can read and write than there are of that class of whites. ”

“ Whatever cruelty might have been practiced toward the slaves, little of it came under his observation, but in trying to do his duty to all classes, the poor and the rich, the bond and the free, the degradation of the low order of the white population became a source of astonishment and grief to him and the slaves, who seemed both more intelligent and more happy than they, so far as he had observed, occupied an enviable position in comparison. ”

“ No institution has ever existed in this country, whose business was transacted with more perfect fidelity, more profound secrecy, more harmony in the working of its complicated machinery and yet with such tremendous results.
It had, like all other rail roads, its offices and stations, engineers and conductors, ticket agents and train dispatchers, hotels and eating houses. The fugitive slave law passed by Congress in 1850, imposed a penalty of $1,000 fine and imprisonment for selling or giving a meal of victuals to one of the passengers on this road, or for helping them on their way. ”

“ We know that our readers will thank the conductor for his interesting sketches. Faithful as he was in the perilous business, we can say that we heartily rejoice that his occupation is gone. No more fugitives from slavery will ever seek his humane protection and aid and no more slave catchers will ever wratch his steps in search of the the terror-stricken fugitive for liberty. ”

“ Hamilton understand that I fully appreciated the beautiful arrangement of Providence in creating a people capable of appreciating the social comforts and intellectual enjoyments of our advanced civilization, with the hopes and the happiness of the Christian religion, and in relieving us of the labor necessarily attendant upon such a state of things by giving us possession of a race of beings not only incapable of such enjoyments, but whose minds and bodies were exactly adapted to the performance of the labor and drudgery needed by us. ”

“ Since the slaves were emancipated, schools have been established for the benefit of all classes, black and white, of which the blacks almost universally avail themselves, while the aforesaid class of poor whites, with few exceptions, treat every attempt to educate and elevate them with utmost scorn. When traveling in the slave States twenty years ago, I found this class of white people unable to give any information as to the distance to the nearest town, and not one in ten knew the name of the county where they lived. ”

“ Some of the best men in the nation were stockholders; men of wealth and influence, men in office, State and national,—men, women and children identified themselves with its affairs. It had the aid and approval of the most distinguished philanthropists of the age, and many far-seeing politicians, descrying the conflict between slave and free labor, took sides with the latter. ”

“ The people met in convention, denounced the law and the men who enacted it, and resolved that no slave should be carried out of Syracuse. The slaveholders, encouraged by the course pursued by the President and the leading members of Congress of all parties, became more and more insolent, and cracked their slave whips in plantation style. One of them threatened on the floor of Congress, that whenever another anti-slavery convention should be held in Syracuse a fugitive should be arrested and sent back to slavery from that city. ”

“ On the subject of slavery they had never thought or cared much, but they had an impression that negroes were created expressly for slaves; that as to their capacity for the attainment of knowledge and science and the enjoyment of civilized life and social comforts and pleasures, there was no comparison between them and even the most ignorant and degraded of the white race. Therefore, they argued that slavery was the normal condition of the negro. ”

“ Talk about human rights, human sympathies, self-evident principles, ‘liberty and the pursuit of happiness;’ such talk may have been very well once, but it is different now. Why, here is your Whig President, (Fillmore,) and that party, you know, claims to embody all the decency and all the religion in the nation—he would be down upon me with his fines and imprisonment, his marshals and his army. It is right to hold slaves, and wrong for them to run away. ”