Freedman

“ Who is that without?’
‘Glaucus, your freedman,’ answered a voice at the door, ‘with news!’
‘Enter, Glaucus, with your news!’ cried the lady, relinquishing her outer cloaks and wraps to the care of Lydia, who retired. The freedman entered—a low thick-set man, having a rough, but yet intelligent look about him. ”

“ The freedman is treated in every respect as a freeman. Again and again in the bill his rights are secured to him. Thus, for instance, in the fourth section, it is expressly provided that “every such freedman shall be treated in all respects as a free man, with all proper remedies in courts of justice, and no power or control shall be exercised with regard to him except in conformity with law.” Language cannot go further. In face of these positive words, so completely in harmony with the whole bill, it is vain to say that the freedman is not a freeman. ”

“ Frequent manumissions were swelling the freedman class to enormous dimensions. The emancipation of slaves by dying bequest was not then, indeed, inspired by the same religious motive as in the Middle Ages. But it was often dictated by the natural, human wish to make some return to faithful servants, and to leave a memory of kindness behind. ”

“ Many, perhaps the majority, of the agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau advise the freedmen that by their own industry they must expect to live. To this end they endeavor to secure employment for them, and to see that both contracting parties comply with their engagements. In some instances, I am sorry to say, the freedman’s mind does not seem to be disabused of the idea that a freedman has the right to live without care or provision for the future. The effect of the belief in division of lands is idleness and accumulation in camps, towns, and cities. ”

“ The slaves were freed, and it was right they should be freed; but Ethan and Abner were gone, and their households were left unto them desolate. Let the blacks take care of themselves.
So, all alone, down came David King, with such aid and instruction as the Freedman's Bureau could give him, to this little settlement among the pines, where the freedmen had built some cabins in a careless way, and then seated themselves to wait for fortune. Freedmen! Yes; a glorious idea! But how will it work its way out into practical life? ”

“ But now, after fourteen years of service and fourteen years of separation from the visible presence of slavery, during which he has shown both disposition and ability to supply the labor-market of the South, and that he could do so far better as a freedman than he ever did as a slave, that more cotton and sugar can be raised by the same hands under the inspiration of liberty and hope than can be raised under the influence of bondage and the whip, he is again, alas! ”

“ He was to all intents and purposes a prisoner still, for all his spurts of swagger and the youthful leap of his pulses, and while he did not admit that to himself, yet always, since he had the hard sense of the land of his birth — New England — he pondered that problem of existence. He felt instinctively that it would be a useless proceeding for him to approach any human being for employment. He knew that even the freedom, which he realized through all his senses like an essential perfume, could not yet overpower the reek of the prison. ”

“ The thought that men are made for other and better uses than slavery, throve best under the gentle treatment of a kind master. Its grim visage could assume no smiles able to fascinate the partially enlightened slave into a forgetfulness of his bondage, or of the desirableness of liberty.
I was not through the first month of my second year with the kind and gentlemanly Mr. Freeland before I was earnestly considering and devising plans for gaining that freedom which, when I was but a mere child, I had ascertained to be the natural and inborn right of every member of the human family. ”

“ Aiken shook her head.
"No, William, the same spirit that makes you restless and discontented now, would be with you, no matter how greatly improved might be your external condition. Mr. Freeman was once as poor as you are. Do you think him happier for his riches? Does he enjoy life more? Has wealth brought a greater freedom from care? Has it made his sleep sweeter? Far, very far from it. Riches have but increased the sources of discontent."
"This is not a necessary consequence. If Mr. Freeman turn a blessing into a curse, that is a defect in his particular case." ”

“ You may hurl a man so low, beneath the level of his kind, that he loses all just ideas of his natural position; but elevate him a little, and the clear conception of rights arises to life and power, and leads him onward. Thus elevated, a little, at Freeland’s, the dreams called into being by that good man, Father Lawson, when in Baltimore, began to visit me; and shoots from the tree of liberty began to put forth tender buds, and dim hopes of the future began to dawn. ”

“ It is difficult for a freeman to enter into the feelings of such fugitives. He cannot see things in the same light with the slave, because he does not, and cannot, look from the same point from which the slave does. "Why do you tremble," he says to the slave—"you are in a free state;" but the difficulty is, in realizing that he is in a free state, the slave might reply. A freeman cannot understand why the slave-master's shadow is bigger, to the slave, than the might and majesty of a free state ”

“ Freeman, whom many people thought fierce, was one of the most soft-hearted of men, and tolerant of everything but perfidy and cruelty. Though disposed to be positive in his opinions, he was always willing to reconsider a point when any new evidence was discovered or any new argument brought to his notice, and not unfrequently modified his view in the light of such evidence or arguments. ”

“ At such times he almost swaggered, he became fairly insolent with his new sense of freedom. He felt himself the equal if not the peer of all creation. Whenever a carriage or a motor-car passed him on the country road he assumed, with the skill of an actor, the air of a business man hastening to an important engagement. However, always his mind was working over a hard problem. He knew that his store of money was scanty, that it would not last long even with the strictest economy; he had no friends; a prison record is sure to leak out when a man seeks a job. ”

“ What's George Freeman? What's all the Freemans? I ain't never liked them. They wa'n't never up to our folks. His mother ain't never had a black silk dress to her name—never had a thing better than black cashmere, an' they ain't never had a thing but oil-cloth in their front entry, an' the Perry's ain't never noticed them either. I ain't never wanted Flora to go into that family. I never felt as if she was lookin' high enough, an' I knew George couldn't get no kind of a livin' jest being clerk in Mason's store. ”

“ There is nothing very striking or peculiar about my career as a freeman, when viewed apart from my life as a slave. The relation subsisting between my early experience and that which I am now about to narrate, is, perhaps, my best apology for adding another chapter to this book.
Disappearing from the kind reader, in a flying cloud or balloon, (pardon the figure,) driven by the wind, and knowing not where I should land—whether in slavery or in freedom—it is proper that I should remove, at once, all anxiety, by frankly making known where I alighted. ”

“ Freeland's. It had, however, never entirely subsided. I hated slavery, always, and the desire for freedom only needed a favorable breeze, to fan it into a blaze, at any moment. The thought of only being a creature of the present and the past, troubled me, and I longed to have a future—a future with hope in it. To be shut up entirely to the past and present, is abhorrent to the human mind; it is to the soul—whose life and happiness is unceasing progress—what the prison is to the body ”

“ History is but past politics, just as politics are present history. This cardinal truth Mr. Freeman, as a narrator of events, fully apprehends; and this it is that gives such lucidity and value to all his writings. He has, moreover, moral courage of the highest order, and admirable tenacity of purpose. To his own mind his objects are invariably clear; and he takes the most direct, if sometimes not the most pleasant, means of clarifying the minds of others. ”

“ My faculties and powers of body and soul are not my own, but are the property of a fellow mortal, in no sense superior to me, except that he has the physical power to compel me to be owned and controlled by him. By the combined physical force of the community, I am his slave,—a slave for life." With thoughts like these, I was perplexed and chafed; they rendered me gloomy and disconsolate. The anguish of my mind may not be written.
At the close of the year 1835, Mr. Freeland, my temporary master, had bought me of Capt. Thomas Auld, for the year 1836. ”

“ On a certain occasion, he, with two or three others, who were planning some act of insubordination, called into the room of William Aiken and asked him to join them.
“It will be such grand sport,” said Freeman.
“But will it be right?” asked the more conscientious lad.
“Right or wrong, we are going to do it. Who cares for the president and all the faculty put together? They are a set of hypocrites and oppressors: make the best you can of them.” ”

“ Freeman is not without his limitations. His mind is a peculiarly English mind, strong in facts and shrewd at inferences, but weak and timid in the application of first principles. Original speculators like Spencer or Bain might logically overthrow the very foundations of his political and religious beliefs, and he would never know or care. He is an accomplished specialist in letters, and he is content so to be. Living all his days the life of a squire of his county, his habits of thought are as realistic as those of the class of which he is so great and unwonted an ornament. ”

“ So, then, it would be dangerous to our liberty to have such a law as that of England which allows, in certain cases, a freeman who is likely to become a freebooter, or at least a hanger-on upon the community, to be compelled to work for himself; and not at all dangerous to that same liberty to compel one half of our population to work for the other! ”

“ Freeland's, my condition was every way improved. I was no longer the poor scape-goat that I was when at Covey's, where every wrong thing done was saddled upon me, and where other slaves were whipped over my shoulders. Mr. Freeland was too just a man thus to impose upon me, or upon any one else.
It is quite usual to make one slave the object of especial abuse, and to beat him often, with a view to its effect upon others, rather than with any expectation that the slave whipped will be improved by it, but the man with whom I now was, could descend to no such meanness and wickedness. ”

“ His assumption of a common interest between them was most distasteful; but for all that the minister resumed his chair.
“Now, as I’ve told you, my daughter appears unwilling to allow me out of her sight. She tries to cover her watchfulness under a pretense of solicitude for my health. I’m not well, of course; was knocked down and beaten about the head by one of those devils in the prison— Can’t call them men: no decent man would choose to earn his living that way. But cosseting and coddling in a warm house will never restore me. I want freedom—nothing less. ”

“ We ask too much when we treat them as feudal slaves and expect them to act like crusaders.
Four years ago they were freemen—professional men, prairie-farmers, ranchers, lumber-jacks, surveyors. They willfully forewent their liberty that an ideal might conquer. It is the fact that they were freemen in the truest sense that makes them fight so bravely. They were men accustomed to take risks, to stand upon two legs and confront Nature unafraid. We may treat them as schoolboys, but it is their triumphant manhood that gives them their dash and splendid self-reliance up front. ”

“ Freeland lived only three miles from St. Michael’s, on an old worn out farm, which required much labor to restore it to anything like a self-supporting establishment.
I was not long in finding Mr. Freeland to be a very different man from Mr. Covey. Though not rich, Mr. Freeland was what may be called a well-bred southern gentleman, as different from Covey, as a well-trained and hardened Negro breaker is from the best specimen of the first families of the south. Though Freeland was a slaveholder, and shared many of the vices of his class, he seemed alive to the sentiment of honor. ”

“ Men seldom see themselves as others see them; and while, to ourselves, everything connected with our contemplated escape appeared concealed, Mr. Freeland may have, with the peculiar prescience of a slaveholder, mastered the huge thought which was disturbing our peace in slavery. ”

“ When I stepped into the Old Bailey dock I was calm and collected. All my energies were strung for one task—the defence of my own liberty and of the rights of Freethought.
That very morning the Freethinker appeared with its usual illustration. It was the last number I edited for twelve months. My final article was entitled, "No Surrender," and I venture to quote it in full, as exhibiting my attitude towards the prosecution within the shadow of the prison walls:—
"The City Corporation is lavishly spending other people's money in its attempt to put down the Freethinker. ”

“ Why may nor I be denied the liberty of freeseeing as well as freethinking? Yet nobody pretends that the first is unlawful, for a cat may look on a king; though you be nearsighted, or have weak or sore eyes, or are blind, you may be a freeseer; you ought to see for yourself, and not trust to a guide to choose the colour of your stockings, or save you from falling into a ditch. ”