Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

“ Imperative business called Louis from home for one night. Minnie stood at the door and said, "Louis, I hate to have you go. I have been feeling so badly here lately, as if something was going to happen. Come home as soon as you can."
"I will, darling," he said, kissing her tenderly again and again. "I do feel rather loath to leave you, but death is every where, always lurking in ambush. A man may escape from an earthquake to be strangled by a hair. So, darling, keep in good spirits till I come." ”

“ Very pleasant were the relations between Minnie and the newly freed people.
She had found her work, and they had found their friend. She did not content herself with teaching them mere knowledge of books. She felt that if the race would grow in the right direction, it must plant the roots of progress under the hearthstone. She had learned from Anna those womanly arts that give beauty, strength and grace to the fireside, and it was her earnest desire to teach them how to make their homes bright and happy. ”

“ Hitherto Louis had known the race by their tenderness and compassion, but the war gave him an opportunity to become acquainted with men brave to do, brave to dare, and brave to die.
A colored man was the hero of one of the most tender, touching, and tragic incidents of the war. A number of soldiers were in a boat exposed to the fire of the rebels; on board was a colored man who had not enrolled as a soldier, though his soul was full of sublime valor. ”

“ Le Croix's brow grew darker, but he tried to conceal his vexation, and quietly said, "Darling, never mind. Don't puzzle your little head about matters you cannot understand, and which our wisest statesmen cannot solve."
Camilla said no more, but a new train of thought had been awakened. She had lived so much among the slaves, and had heard so many tales of sorrow breathed confidentially into her ears, that she had unconsciously imbibed their view of the matter; and without comprehending the injustice of the system, she had learned to view it from their standpoint of observation. ”

“ Mutually they were attracted to each other, and when they reached their destination, Minnie had begun to feel quite at home with Camilla.
"How is Aunt Miriam, or rather, my grandmother?" said Louis.
"She is well, and often wonders what has become of her poor boy; but she always has persisted in believing that she would see you again, and I know her dear old eyes will run over with gladness. But things have changed very much since we parted. We have passed through the fire since I saw you, and our troubles are not over yet; but we are hoping for better days. But we are at home. Let us alight." ”

“ I want you to come and be my Mammy. Agnes is dead; your husband is gone, and I want you to come and bring the baby to the house, and I am going to get him some beautiful dresses, and some lovely coral I saw in New Orleans, and I am going to dress him so handsomely, that I believe Pa will feel just as I do, and think it a shame that such a beautiful child should be a slave."
Camilla went home, and told her father what she had done. And he, willing to compromise with her, readily consented; and in a day or two the child and his grandmother were comfortably ensconced in their new quarters. ”

“ Because these mobs are rough and coarse I would have women vote. I would soften the asperity of the mobs, and bring into our politics a deeper and broader humanity. When I see intemperance send its floods of ruin and shame to the homes of men, and pass by the grog-shops that are constantly grinding out their fearful grist of poverty, ruin and death, I long for the hour when woman's vote will be levelled against these charnel houses ”

“ I always used to go to the mountains, and get plenty of work to do; but this year they wouldn't give me the situation because I had joined the radicals."
"What a shame," said Louis; "these men who have always had their rights of citizenship, seem to know so little of the claims of justice and humanity, that they are ready to brow-beat and intimidate these people for voting according to their best interests. And what saddens me most is to see so many people of the North clasping hands with these rebels and traitors, and to hear it repeated that these people are too ignorant to vote." ”

“ But if time has only strewed the path of Minnie with flowers, and ripened the promised beauty of her childhood, it has borne a heavy hand upon the destiny of the La Croix family.
La Croix is dead; but before his death he took the precaution to have Louis emancipated, and then made him a joint heir with his daughter. The will he entrusted to the care of Camilla; but the deed of emancipation he placed in the hands of Miriam, saying, "Here are your free papers, and here are Louis'. There is nothing in this world sure but death; and it is well to be on the safe side. ”

“ Anna had brought the high-chair in which their own darling had sat a few months before, when she had made gladness and sunshine around her parent's path.
There was a tender light in the eye of the Quakeress as she dusted the chair, and sat Minnie at the table.
"Do you think," said Thomas, addressing Josiah, "that we will ever outgrow this wicked, miserable prejudice?"
"Oh, yes, but it must be the work of time. Both races have their work to do. The colored man must outgrow his old condition of things, and thus create around him a new class of associations. ”

“ And to tell you the truth, having passed most of my life in white society, I did not feel that the advantages of that society would have ever paid me for the loss of my self-respect, by passing as white, when I knew that I was colored; when I knew that any society, however cultivated, wealthy or refined, would not be a social gain to me, if my color and not my character must be my passport of admission. ”

“ Louis' courage did not desert him, and he tried to nerve the hearts of those that were sinking with fear in those days of gloom and terror. His advice to the people was, "Defend your firesides if they are invaded, live as peaceably as you can, spare no pains to educate your children, be saving and industrious, try to get land under your feet and homes over your heads. My faith is very strong in political parties, but, as the world has outgrown other forms of wrong, I believe that it will outgrow this also. We must trust and hope for better things." ”

“ All day long Miriam sat alone with her dead, except when these kindly interruptions broke upon the monotony of her sorrow.
In the afternoon, Camilla, the only daughter of her master, entered her cabin, and throwing her arms around her neck exclaimed, "Oh! Mammy, I am so sorry I didn't know Agnes was dead. I've been on a visit to Mr. Le Grange's plantation, and I've just got back this afternoon, and as soon as I heard that Agnes was dead I hurried to see you. I would not even wait for my dinner. Oh! how sweet she looks," said Camilla, bending over the corpse, "just as natural as life. ”

“ Here kindness encouraged his path, and in that peaceful home every voice that fell upon his ear was full of tenderness and sympathy. True, there were rough, coarse, brutal men even in that village, who for a few dollars or to prove their devotion to the South, would have readily remanded him to his master, but he was not aware of that. And so when he sank to his rest a sense of peace and safety stole over him, and his sleep was as calm and peaceful as the slumber of a child. ”

“ Chapter VII Ten years have elapsed since Minnie came to brighten the home of Thomas Carpenter, and although within the heart of Anna there is a spot forever green and sacred to the memory of her only child, yet Minnie holds an undivided place in their affections.
There is only one subject which is to them a source of concern. It is the connection of Minnie with the colored race. ”

“ This difference in their sentiments did not produce the least estrangement between them; only Camilla regretted to see Louis ready to raise his hand against the freedom of his mother's race, although he was perfectly unconscious of his connection with it, for the conflict which was then brewing between the North and the South was in fact a struggle between despotism and idea; between freedom on one side and slavery on the other. ”

“ State after State in the North had voted against enfranchising the colored man in their midst. The spirit of the lost cause revived, murders multiplied. The Ku Klux spread terror and death around. Every item of Northern meanness to the colored people in their midst was a message of hope to the rebel element of the South, which had only changed. Ballot and bullet had failed, but another resort was found in secret assassination. Men advocating equal rights did so at the peril of their lives, for violence and murder were rampant in the land. ”

“ Now every rebel can throw it in our teeth and say, 'See your great Republican party; they refuse to let the negro vote with them, but they force him upon us. They don't do it out of regard to the negro, but only to spite us.' I don't think, Minnie, that I am much given to gloomy forebodings, but I see from the temper and actions of these rebels, that they are encouraged and emboldened by these tidings from the North, and to-day they are turning people out of work for voting the radical ticket. ”

“ Still Louis and Minnie kept on their labors of love; their inner lives daily growing stronger and broader, for they learned to lean upon a strength greater than their own; and some of the most beautiful lessons of faith and trust they had ever learned, they were taught in the lowly cabins of these newly freed people. ”

“ The first one she entered was the home of an industrious couple who were just making a start in life. The room in which Minnie was, had no window-lights, only an aperture that supplied them with light, but also admitted the cold.
"Why don't you have window-lights?" said Minnie.
"Oh we must crawl before we walk;" and yet even in this humble home they had taken two orphan children of their race, and were giving them food and shelter. And this kindness to the orphans of their race Minnie found to be a very praiseworthy practice among some of those people who were not poorer than themselves. ”

“ Of course not; constant familiarity with the race has worn away all sense of physical repulsion but there is a prejudice which ought to be an American feeling; it is a prejudice against their rising in the scale of humanity. A prejudice which virtually says you are down, and I mean to keep you down. As a servant I tolerate you; you are useful as you are valuable, but rise one step in the scale of being, and I am ready to put you down. I see this in the treatment that the free colored people receive in parts of the South; they seem to me to be the outcasts of an outcast race. ”

“ Passing from the boudoir of his wife, he sought the room where Ellen sat, busily cutting and arranging the clothing for the field hands, and gazing furtively around he said, "here is Minnie's likeness. I have managed all right." "Thank Heaven!" said the sad hearted mother, as she paused to dry her tears, and then resumed her needle. "Anything is better—than Slavery." ”

“ If he who makes two blades of grass grow where only one flourished before is a benefactor of the human race, how much higher and holier must his or her work be who dispenses light, instead of darkness, knowledge, instead of ignorance, and over the ruins of the slave-pen and auction-block erects institutions of learning. ”

“ They must be learned in the fire. For months life seemed to me a dull, sad thing, and for a while I did not care whether I lived or died, the sunshine had suddenly faded from my path, and the future looked so dark and cheerless. But now, when I look back upon those days of gloom and suffering, I think they were among the most fruitful of my life, for in those days of pain and sorrow my resolution was formed to join the fortunes of my mother's race, and I resolved to brighten her old age with a joy, with a gladness she had never known in her youth. ”

“ We see in many parts of the North a very few of the colored people, and our impressions of them have received their coloring more or less from what the slaveholders have said of them."
"We have been taught that they are idle, improvident, and unfitted for freedom, and incapable of progression; and when we see them in the cities we see them overshadowed by wealth, enterprise, and activity, so that our unfavorable impressions are too often confirmed. ”

“ Yes, Louis," said she, "your country is in danger, but not from the Abolitionists in the North, but from the rebels and traitors in the South."
"Rebels and traitors!" said Louis, in a tone like one who felt the harsh grating of the words.
"Whom do you mean?"
"I mean," said she, "the ambitious, reckless men who have brought about this state of things. The men who are stabbing their country in their madness and folly; who are crowding our graves and darkening our homes ”

“ When they are reconstructing the government why not lay the whole foundation anew, and base the right of suffrage not on the claims of service or sex, but on the broader basis of our common humanity."
"Because, Minnie, we are not prepared for it. This hour belongs to the negro."
"But, Louis, is it not the negro woman's hour also? Has she not as many rights and claims as the negro man?"
"Well, perhaps she has, but, darling, you cannot better the condition of the colored men without helping the colored women. What elevates him helps her." ”

“ He is an Englishman by birth and he intends taking her home with him to England when a favorable opportunity presents itself. And that is far more honorable and manly than living together after the old order of things. I think," said Louis facing the floor "that a cruel wrong was done to Minnie and myself when life was given to us under conditions that doomed us to hopeless slavery, and from which we were rescued only by good fortune. I have heard some colored persons boasting of the white blood, but I always feel like blushing for mine. ”