William Still

“ And then poor Concklin! How my heart expanded in love to him, as he told me his adventures, his trials, his toils, his fears and his hopes! After hearing all, and then seeing and communing with the family, now joyful in hopes of soon seeing their husband and father in the land of freedom; now in terror lest the human blood-hounds should be at their heels, I felt as though I could lay down my life in the cause of the oppressed. In that hour or two of intercourse with Peter's family, my heart warmed with love to them. I never saw more interesting young men. ”

“ Are we not in closest league and union with those who claim and use the right to buy and sell human beings, God's poor, the lambs of Christ, a union, which we imagine brings us in as much silver and gold as compensates for the sacrifice of our humanity and manhood? Nay, are we not under a law to do the base work of bloodhounds, hunting the panting fugitives for freedom? ”

“ Their tarring and feathering of good citizens; their riding them upon rails, and ducking them, in dirty ponds; their destruction of liberty presses, and the hanging of John Brown and his friends, to intimidate men from the advocacy of freedom, will all come tumbling upon their own heads as a just retribution for their outrageous brutality. Only let us persevere, and oppressed humanity, bent in timid silence throughout the south, will rise and throw off the yoke of Slavery and rejoice in beholding itself free! ”

“ As the time drew near to make the offer to his wife's master to purchase her with his children, his heart failed him through fear of awakening the ire of slaveholders against him, as he knew that the law and public sentiment were alike deadly opposed to the spirit of freedom in the slave. Indeed, as innocent as a step in this direction might appear, in those days a man would have stood about as good a chance for his life in entering a lair of hungry hyenas, as a slave or free colored man would, in talking about freedom. ”

“ Now, sir, allow me to make an appeal to your humanity, although we are aware of your power to hold as property those poor slaves, mother, daughter and two sons,—that in no part of the United States could they escape and be secure from your claim—nevertheless, would your understanding, your heart, or your conscience reprove you, should you restore to them, without price, that dear freedom, which is theirs by right of nature, or would you not feel a satisfaction in so doing which all the wealth of the world could not equal? ”

“ We may well exclaim how event after event has paved the way for freedom. In the crucible of disaster and defeat God has stirred the nation, and permitted no permanent victory to crown her banners while she kept her hand upon the trembling slave and held him back from freedom. And even now the scale may still seem to oscillate between the contending parties, and some may say, Why does not God give us full and quick victory? My friend, do not despair if even deeper shadows gather around the fate of the nation, that truth will not ultimately triumph, and the right be established and vindicated ”

“ Picture to the mind's eye this remarkable procession of nearly three thousand men, women and children fleeing from Slavery, and finding in this brave, large-hearted man, a friend equal to their needs in so critical an emergency! No wonder he was feared by the slave-holders, not alone of his own State, but of the whole South. If their human chattels once reached his outpost, there was indeed little hope of their reclamation. The friend and helper of fugitives from Slavery, truly their Moses, he was more than this, he was the discriminating, outspoken, uncompromising opponent of Slavery itself. ”

“ Our heart may grow more hopeful for humanity when it sees the sublime sacrifice it is about to receive from his hands. Not in vain has your dear husband periled all, if the martyrdom of one hero is worth more than the life of a million cowards. From the prison comes forth a shout of triumph over that power whose ethics are robbery of the feeble and oppression of the weak, the trophies of whose chivalry are a plundered cradle and a scourged and bleeding woman. ”

“ Her injunction to "MIND THE SLAVE," comes to us as the dying admonition of one, whose life was a beautiful exemplification of the duty and the privilege thus enjoined. It imposes, indeed, no new obligation; but coming from such a source, it will linger in our memory while life and its scenes shall last, inspiring in us, we hope, a purer and a more ardent devotion to the cause of freedom and humanity. And may we not hope that others also, will catch a new inspiration from the dying message of our departed friend: "MIND THE SLAVE!" ”

“ To the black race, and especially that part of it once slave, it is more than a history of a time of peril. It is for them what Exodus was to the fugitives from Egypt, a history and an inspiration as well. They may learn from it of their heroes and how deeply the love of liberty was implanted in their bosoms. The Swiss never tire of the story of their Tell, nor the Welsh of that of their Glendower. Every nation has its exemplar, whose bravery and virtues are a perpetual lesson and source of admiration. ”

“ Behold that great multitude, more than three millions of men and feeble women and children, wandering on our soil; no not wandering, but chained down, not allowed to stir a step at their own free will, crushed and hunted with all the power of one of the mightiest nations that the world has yet seen, wielded to keep them down in the depths of the deepest degradation into which human beings can be plunged. ”

“ Well, perhaps it is my lot to die from home and be buried among strangers; and yet I do not regret that I have espoused this cause; perhaps I have been of some service to the cause of human rights, and I hope the consciousness that I have not lived in vain, will be a halo of peace around my dying bed; a heavenly sunshine lighting up the dark valley and shadow of death. ”

“ I have lived in the midst of oppression and wrong, and I am saddened by every captured fugitive in the North; a blow has been struck at my freedom, in every hunted and down-trodden slave in the South; North and South have both been guilty, and they that sin must suffer. ”

“ You cannot speak of the slave without remembering her, who did so much to make Slavery impossible. You cannot speak of freedom, without recalling that enfranchised spirit, which, free from all control, save that of conscience and God, labored for absolute liberty for the whole human race. We cannot think of the partial triumph of freedom in this country, without rejoicing in the great part she took in the victory. Lucretia Mott is one of the noblest representatives of ideal womanhood. ”

“ How much one needs the Spirit of our dear Master to make one's life a living, loving force to help men to higher planes of thought and action. I am giving all my lectures with free admission; but still I get along, and the way has been opening for me almost ever since I have been South. Oh, if some more of our young women would only consecrate their lives to the work of upbuilding the race! Oh, if I could only see our young men and women aiming to build up a future for themselves which would grandly contrast with the past—with its pain, ignorance and low social condition. ”

“ Did I want to be a slave? No. Did God make me to be a slave? No. But I am only a man, only one of the human race; and if not created to be a slave, then no other human being was made for that purpose. My wife and children, dearer to me than my heart's blood, were they made for the auction-block? Never! And so it was all very easily settled here (pointing to his breast) . (Great cheering.) I could not help being an uncompromising abolitionist.
Here allow me to pay a brief tribute to the American abolitionists. ”

“ For three years James suffered in a place of concealment, before he found the way opened to escape. When he resolved on having his freedom he was much under twenty-one years of age, a brave young man, for three years, with unfailing spirit, making resistance in the city of Richmond to the slave Power!
Such heroes in the days of Slavery, did much to make the infernal system insecure, and to keep alive the spirit of freedom in liberty-loving hearts the world over, wherever such deeds of noble daring were made known. ”

“ And now, fellow-citizens, you may ask, what is our object in thus exhibiting to you the alarming influence of the slave power? Do we wish to excite in your bosoms feelings of hatred against citizens of a common country? Do we wish to array the Free states against the Slave states in hostile strife? No, fellow-citizens. But we wish to show you that, while the slave states are inferior to us in free population, having not even one half of ours; inferior in morals, being the region of bowie knives and duels, of assassinations and lynch law ”

“ Stowe has clothed American slavery in the graceful garb of fiction, Solomon Northrup comes up from the dark habitation of Southern cruelty where slavery fattens and feasts on human blood with such mournful revelations that one might almost wish for the sake of humanity that the tales of horror which he reveals were not so. Oh, how can we pamper our appetites upon luxuries drawn from reluctant fingers? ”

“ It is rather a wonder to me that so many can escape, the masters are so continually watching them. The poor man that secreted himself so long, must, indeed, have suffered dreadfully, and been exceedingly resolute to brave dangers so long.
It was so characteristic of her to take an interest in everything that pertained to the Underground Rail Road, that even the deliverance of a little nameless boy was not beneath her notice. To her mind, his freedom was just as dear to him as if he had been the son of the President of the United States. ”

“ Being a man of excellent natural gifts, as well as of religious fervor and devotion to a remarkable degree, he seemed admirably fitted to represent the slave in chains, looking up to God with an eye of faith, and again the fugitive in Canada triumphant and rejoicing with joy unspeakable over his deliverance, yet not forgetting those in bonds, as bound with them. The beauty of an unshaken faith in the good Father above could scarcely have shone with a brighter lustre than was seen in this simple-hearted believer. ”

“ While I am in favor of Universal suffrage, yet I know that the colored man needs something more than a vote in his hand: he needs to know the value of a home life; to rightly appreciate and value the marriage relation; to know how and to be incited to leave behind him the old shards and shells of slavery and to rise in the scale of character, wealth and influence. Like the Nautilus outgrowing his home to build for himself more 'stately temples' of social condition. A man landless, ignorant and poor may use the vote against his interests ”

“ And all that is great and noble in the past, all the patriots and martyrs that have suffered in man's behalf, all the sacred instincts and hopes of the human soul are on our side, and the welfare of untold generations of men. Oh, if God, in his infinite bounty, grants us the grace to appreciate the transcendent worth of the cause which is now at stake, there is no trouble that can befall us, no, not the loss of property, of idolized parents or children, or life itself, that we shall not count a blessed privilege. ”

“ You shall not so negotiate with foreign powers, as to open markets for the products of slave labor alone. You shall not so manage things at home, as every few years to bring bankruptcy upon our country. You shall not, in the apportionment of public moneys, have what you call your 'property' represented, and thus get that which, by no right, belongs to you. You shall not have the power to bring your slaves upon our free soil, and take them away at pleasure; nor to reclaim them, when they, panting for liberty, have been able to escape your grasp ”

“ You must listen to the impassioned appeal of the wife, whose husband's retreat has been discovered, and whose footsteps are dogged by the blood-hounds of Slavery. You must hear the husband, as I did, a few weeks ago, himself bound and helpless, beg you for God's sake to save his wife. You must see such a woman as Hannah Dellam, with her noble-looking boy at her side, pleading in vain before a pro-slavery judge, that she is of right free; that her son is entitled to his freedom ”

“ She has nerved the frail and shrinking heart of woman for high and holy deeds. The worn and weary have rested their fainting heads upon her bosom, and gathered strength from her words and courage from her counsels. She has been the staff of decrepit age and the joy of manhood in its strength. She has bent over the form of lovely childhood, and suffered it to have a place in the Redeemer's arms. She has stood by the bed of the dying, and unveiled the glories of eternal life, gilding the darkness of the tomb with the glory of the resurrection. ”

“ The condition of our people, the wants of our children, and the welfare of our race demand the aid of every helping hand, the God-speed of every Christian heart. It is a work of time, a labor of patience, to become an effective school teacher; and it should be a work of love in which they who engage should not abate heart or hope until it is done. And after all, it is one of woman's most sacred rights to have the privilege of forming the symmetry and rightly adjusting the mental balance of an immortal mind. ”

“ For the colored man no history can be more instructive and inspiring than this, of his own making, and written by one of his own race. The generations are growing in light. Not to know of those who were stronger than shackles, who were pioneers in the grand advance toward freedom; not to know of what characters the race could produce when straightened by circumstances, nor of those small beginnings which ended in triumphant emancipation, will, in a short time, be a reproach. ”

“ As its pages reveal the methods by which aid was given to the escaping slave, one is compelled to wonder almost as if he were facing a revelation. The secrets of Masonry are not more mysterious than were the ways of these officials who clothed, fed and comforted the fugitive, while they apparently never knew his name or whereabouts. Even those who never believed in the existence of an UNDERGROUND RAILWAY, or who, believing, cursed its existence, will read its history, at this time, with the relish of astonishment and the zest of discoverers. ”

“ We would have you, like men, firmly resolved to maintain your own rights. We would have you say to the South,—if you choose to hug to your bosom that system which is continually injuring and impoverishing you; that system which reduces two millions and a half of native Americans in your midst to the most abject condition of ignorance and vice, withholding from them the very key of knowledge; that system which is at war with every principle of justice, every feeling of humanity; that system which makes man the property of man, and perpetuates that relation from one generation to another ”

“ It is the cause of truth, of humanity, and of God, to which we invite your aid. It is a cause of which you never need be ashamed. Living, you may be thankful, and dying, you may be thankful, for having labored in it. We have, as co-laborers with us, the noblest allies that man can wish. Within, we have the deepest convictions of conscience, the clearest deductions of reason; and, all over the world, wherever man is found, the first, the most ardent longings of the human soul. ”

“ Graves, of the death of your dear father; the intelligence makes me feel sad and sorrowful; I sincerely sympathize with you and all your brothers and sisters, in your mournful bereavement; but you do not mourn without hope, for you have an assurance in his death that your loss is his infinite gain. For he was a good Christian, a good husband, a good father, a good citizen, and a truly good Samaritan, for his heart, his hand and his purse, were ever open to the wants of suffering humanity, wherever he found it; irrespective of the country, religion, or complexion of the sufferer. ”

“ We first quote from a letter dated Darlington, S.C., May 13, 1867:
"You will see by this that I am in the sunny South.... I here read and see human nature under new lights and phases. I meet with a people eager to hear, ready to listen, as if they felt that the slumber of the ages had been broken, and that they were to sleep no more.... I am glad that the colored man gets his freedom and suffrage together; that he is not forced to go through the same condition of things here, that has inclined him so much to apathy, isolation, and indifference, in the North. ”

“ She looks down with pity, and, if she could, she would look with scorn upon all the petty distinctions that exist among men. She casts her benignant eye abroad over the earth, and, wherever she sees man, she sees him as man, as a being made in the image of God, whether an Indian, an African, or a Caucasian sun may shine upon him. She stoops from heaven to raise the fallen, to bind up the broken-hearted, to release the oppressed, to give liberty to the captive, and to break the fetters of those that are bound. ”