Library of Congress Subject Headings, 21st edition, 1998

LC Subject Headings:

• Hawkins, Walter, b. 1809?
• African Americans -- Maryland -- Biography.
• African Americans -- Canada -- Biography.
• Fugitive slaves -- Maryland -- Biography.
• African American clergy -- Canada -- Biography.
• Slaves -- Maryland -- Social life and customs.
• Plantation life -- Maryland -- History -- 19th century.
• Slavery -- United States -- History.
• British Methodist Episcopal Church -- Clergy -- Biography.

• 2000-04-18,
  Celine Noel and Wanda Gunther
  revised TEIHeader and created catalog record for the electronic edition.
  
  
• 1999-04-27,
  Natalia Smith, project manager,
  finished TEI-conformant encoding and final proofing.
  
  
• 1999-04-26,
  Bethany Ronnberg
  finished TEI/SGML encoding
  
  
• 1999-04-01
  Bethany Ronnberg and Susan Huffman
  finished scanning (OCR) and proofing.
  
  

FROM SLAVERY TO A BISHOPRIC
OR
THE LIFE OF BISHOP WALTER HAWKINS
OF
The British Methodist Episcopal Church Canada

BY

S. J. CELESTINE EDWARDS
ASSOCIATE OF KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON; LECTURER ON CHRISTIAN
EVIDENCES; FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE;
MEDICAL STUDENT AT THE LONDON HOSPITAL

LONDON
JOHN KENSIT, PUBLISHER
18 PATERNOSTER, E.C.
1891
[All Rights reserved]

TO
WILFRED T. GRENFELL, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., Superintendent of the Deep Sea Mission,
This Work is Dedicated,
AS A TOKEN OF MANY KINDNESSES RECEIVED DURING
THE LAST FIVE YEARS,
BY
THE AUTHOR.

LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED DURING THE
PREPARATION OF THIS BIOGRAPHY.

• A Visit to the United States. Sturge.
• Anti-Slavery days. Clark.
• American System of Government.
• Bancroft's History of the United States. 3 vols.
• Buckingham's America. 3 vols.
• Black America. W. Laird Clowes.
• Constitution of the United States. Paschal.
• English Nonconformity. Vaughan.
• Gesta Christe. Brace.
• Hosack's Law of Nations.
• History of European Morals. Lecky, 2 vols.
• History of the English People. Green.
• History of England. Macaulay.
• International Law. Gallandet.
• Irving's Life of Columbus.
• Life and Time of Fred. Douglas.
• Men and Manners in America. 2 vols
• Power and Progress of the United States. Poussin.
• Popular History of America. Mrs. Cooper.
• Prescott's History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.
• Robertson's America. 2 vols.
• The United States. 3 vols.
• The American Union. Spence.
• Travels in the United States. Lady Wortley.
• Willard's United States.
• White, Red, and Black. 3 vols.

CONTENTS.

• PREFACE,. . . . . xi
• INTRODUCTION,. . . . . xv
• CHAPTER I. Historical Sketch of Slavery in the New World,. . . . . 1
• CHAPTER II. Early Life,. . . . . 26
• CHAPTER III. Life as a Slave,. . . . . 35
• CHAPTER IV. Escape from Slavery,. . . . . 53
• CHAPTER V. Found at Last,. . . . . 65
• CHAPTER VI. Philadelphia,. . . . . 76
• CHAPTER VII. On the Road,. . . . . 86
• CHAPTER VIII. Buffalo,. . . . . 96
• CHAPTER IX. New Bedford,. . . . . 104

  ---

  Page x

• CHAPTER X. Life as a Farmer,. . . . . 113
• CHAPTER XI. Canada--"Where coloured men are free,". . . . . 123
• CHAPTER XII. The First Circuit,. . . . . 132
• CHAPTER XIII. St. Catharines,. . . . . 142
• CHAPTER XIV. Made Bishop,. . . . . 151
• CHAPTER XV. In England,. . . . . 164

PREFACE

        I UNDERTAKE this work, because I think it will probably act as a stimulus to the young men of my race, who, though physically free, have not yet realised the duty they owe to themselves, and to humanity at large, and especially to the British public, to whom I feel we owe a great debt of gratitude for leading the way for our emancipation in the New World. My experience in England has led me to think that many are somewhat disappointed that the Negro, from whom they expected so much fifty or sixty years ago, has not come up to their expectations, i.e., he has not improved his position quite as quickly as they feel he ought to have done. In this book I hope to set forth what Europeans well know: viz., that there is not a single nation in Europe who could have done more for itself, in the same time and under similar circumstances, than our race: they have expected too much of us, with far less opportunities. Besides, it is all very well to tell people what they ought to do, but it is quite another thing to give them the opportunity of doing.

        1st. We cannot expect much from a people who had to start an existence upon nothing, like the West Indian Negroes.

        2nd. Neither can we hope for much progress from any nation who are treated as our race have been, and are being treated, since the American Civil War. And

        3rd. No nation can be expected to advance in so-called civilisation whose faults are continually being paraded before them, as ours are in the literature of the superior race. It is well known, and most keenly felt, in every country where the Negro has been sent as an exile, that his superior brethren have used every means and meanness, not only to make him feel his position, but to prolong his degradation, and even to discourage any and every attempt on the part of the Negro to approach the social equality of the most abandoned white man. Our own conviction is that until the Negro knows and is convinced in head and heart that God has not sent him into the world as a mere toy to be kicked about by every and any one--until he learns that fate has not made him to be a mere spectator and serf-- we can never hope for better things to befall our people. Our aim in this book is not merely to give an account of one of our own kind, or to turn the light of this closing century upon slavery, but

to put into the hands of the rising generation the history of one who has, by sheer force of character, raised himself above the degrading condition of the life in which he was born.

        By following Walter Hawkins from a slave farm to a Bishopric, we shall see how Providence has provided every man with the means--if he will use them--to improve his position in the world; the young Negro will see that while he may not become a bishop, doctor, or lawyer, he may so utilise his opportunities that he shall command respect from those who have hitherto regarded all Negroes as vagrants, destined to wander on the face of the earth. The race will feel that, with patience, perseverance, and hard work, what Bishop Hawkins has done in one direction, millions may do in other ways. Ah! we trust that his life will urge the race not to look to others so much as to themselves. I confess my inability to do justice to the subject, as I have had no experience in this kind of work; and, secondly, I have had little time to give to its preparation, as I have to work for my living while prosecuting my studies. I have tried to give an historical sketch of slavery from its introduction in the New World down to the time of Bishop Hawkins. I have also tried to give an historical sketch of several places where he stopped before he finally settled in Canada, as I thought it would

add to the interest of the life of one who has served his race--and through them humanity--in a way I should like to serve them.

        I must thank my many friends for their advice and suggestions. I do hope, most sincerely, that no one will blame Bishop Hawkins for any statement which they might think ought to have been left out. Perhaps a little more polish would have made me choose better words to express myself; still I will trust to the generosity of the impartial reader to exonerate me from any wilful desire to wound the susceptibility of the race who are, for the most part, responsible for our shortcomings.

S. J. CELESTINE EDWARDS.

INTRODUCTION.

        NO race under heaven (except, perhaps, the Jewish nation) have suffered so many wrongs, endured more insults, and survived so many centuries of private and public vicissitudes as the African race. Many of the nations who afflicted the African are no more; yet, at this day, the nations who glory in the knowledge of their being members of the Aryan family, or some other real or imaginary race, take a pride in perpetually reminding the Negro of the inferiority of his kind: that he is a savage, or at least a child, who does not improve in intelligence, though he develops in body. Every nation of antiquity have had something to say in praise or blame of the Negro, and most, if not all, have had something to do with him. By all, ancient and modern, he has been robbed, murdered and enslaved; his daughter has been robbed of her virtue before his eyes; his home broken, and his country pillaged and laid waste. It is as yesterday that the nations of the West began to think seriously either of his country or the Negro,

or both; but none of the ancients ever afflicted the man as the moderns have done. Not content with setting tribe against tribe in Africa, they tore him away from the bosom of his country; packed him in ships, chained as though he were a murderer, and sold him. They were not content with these methods of degrading him, but every moral, mental and religious influence was kept from him--for centuries--save such as would tend to make him more docile to his master. Everything was done to completely crush the moral sense out of the man, and, as if all this loathsome treatment would not serve their purpose, historians and travellers, until late years, misrepresented him. Some even went as far as to say that his skull was too thick for culture-- rather a sad reflection on the Being or Power that called him into being. Believers in the Bible held that he was born to serve his brethren. Evolutionists maintained that there was only a step between him and the ape. Men of every profession have found fault with the Negro for his indolence, while priding themselves on superior virtues; nothing was too bad to say of him, even when the Negro rose above the condition in which might and superior craft had placed him. The Negro even now is only known as a "nigger". He is shouted at in the most enlightened cities in the world as a "darkey," "nigger," "Sambo,

etc. If he appears respectable, every effort is made in the United States to keep him down. The whites do not hesitate to say that "quashey" is only fit to be a hewer of wood and drawer of water; no matter how well he is educated or how clean his body, he must not sit next to the most degraded white man. Sometimes in a tram; at other times in a train; if he goes to the theatre, he must sit where all blacks are sitting. They will neither shave him nor serve him in a dram shop. In the church, where people are supposed to worship one God, the Negro cannot find a seat. When he was a slave he could cook the food and serve at the table; but now he is free he must not eat in the same room as the white man. The poor innocent child cannot be comfortable in the school where the white children are, no matter how much tax his father pays to the State; hence he must have his own church and chapel--except Roman Catholic--his own shaving and drinking saloon. In many of the States even the right of citizenship is denied him. Whatever crime he commits is too often magnified an hundred fold; and, when he is wronged, justice is withheld from him in courts of law for no other reason than that he is a Negro. Very often his greatest oppressors are men who have been forced to flee their own country by want or crime. There is a saying in

the Southern States: "When the nigger is down keep him down, for when the nigger rises, hell rises"; and the whites seem to act very much on that principle. In the old days, though some acknowledged that "many of the Negroes possess a natural goodness of heart and warmth of affection," yet they used to fix their prices not merely according to their bodily powers, but in proportion to the docility and good disposition of their commodity; so at this very time, while they are patronising the Negro and professing friendliness towards him, every artifice is being used to stop his growth in the United States. Under the pretext of kindly feeling he is told to go out of the country. If the Negro should ask: "Where?" he is told: "Go back to your fatherland, or anywhere, so long as you go". The Negro might well reply: "1st. I did not come here by choice: you stole me from my country; you made money out of my degradation, blood and bones. 2nd. The country out of which you are sending me is no more yours than mine: white men came here because they were driven from Europe by tyranny and poverty; and you no sooner landed than you began to murder (in cold blood) the Indians, and plundered Africa to enrich yourselves, and built an empire; so that if you think that might is right I don't. 3rd. Moreover, your race have divided Africa among

themselves, and call it theirs. Don't you think that they ought to clear out in order that we might go in? And do you suppose that we can go out of your (so-called) country without your paying us our due? You have got a large indemnity to pay for the Negroes whom you threw overboard to lighten the cargo of your slave ships; for those whom you killed under the lash, chased to death by bloodhounds, and caused to perish in the slave-gang. What about the pay for nigh three hundred years of free labour? What about our property? And surely if all my race were willing to go, and you had removed every barrier in Africa, you will certainly have to find us a free and comfortable passage back, for we would not think of going as you brought us." We know it will be argued that the Negro has improved by being a slave. A few may have improved their condition--which was due, not to the generosity of slave-holders, but in spite of them--and the majority have paid enormously for it. Just think what it must mean to a nation who were instructed into the vices of a foreign power, and not many, or very little, of its virtues. To keep a man a slave, means a sacrifice of all his moral qualities. Courage, singleness of affection, gentleness and parental attachment were all offered up on the auction-block and the lash. The common decency which

the Negro in his savage condition regarded was abused by slavery. Men, women and children were thrown together. Marriage was unknown. We wonder a race did tolerate such iniquities from men viler than themselves. Still the Negro has outlived the ravages on his oppression, barbarity of his master, and will outlive the prejudices of to-day. In spite of his forcible removal from the land of his nativity, and in spite of all the difficulties of his forced condition, he increases and multiplies in every country whither he has been taken. And now the Negro has come through many vicissitudes to be a real political force in the world. At first he was pitied; now the Yankee begins to fear his number. We do not think any one of us need be alarmed about what Mr. Froude has had to say. We have outlived his master's hatred of our race; and we sincerely trust that in time the Negro will show the world that he is "worthier of regard and stronger, than the colour of his kind". Whatever other races may think about our future destiny, the Negro himself is very hopeful; we shall plod on and wait. The opening up of Africa, from whatever motives, is doing us and the nations good. The growing increase of the Negro population of the United States, Canada, the West Indies and South America are forces which are acting upon the

minds of our late masters with a certain amount of alarm. The spread of education among our race is enabling us to know what the white people have thought of us, and what they are now thinking. All these things will work wonders in our minds, and will tend to help us to shape our future course. We contemplate neither war nor bloodshed to gain our end: ours shall be a victory of peace, for "Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war". It is a long process; but it is a sure and sound policy. All other races have had, or are having, their day: ours is coming, when those who despised, degraded and abused us in our childish innocence shall know, that the Negro is a rational individual, composed of mind and body, of outward and inward being, of necessity and freedom like themselves--though to himself a mystery, to the ignorant a laughing-stock, and to philosophers the subject of speculation; yet to the world of spirits he is an object of deepest thought, of God's Almightiness, wisdom and love, a living witness veiled round by a black skin. He sees God at a distance, yet he is as certain of His existence and justice as the One Eternal Righteous Spirit as he is of his own. The Negro feels that he is a child of revelation--weak yet strong, poor, but rich in the faith; that, by patience and works, justice cannot long be withheld from his race.

CHAPTER I.

HISTORICAL SKETCH--SLAVERY.

        "BANISHMENT is but the change of place," said Seneca, "and this blessing we owe to the Almighty Power-- call it what you will--either God or an incorporeal Reason--a Divine Spirit or Fate, and the unchangeable course of causes and effects. It is, however, so ordered that nothing can be taken from us but what we can spare, and that which is most magnificent and valuable continues with us. Wherever we go, we have the heavens over our heads, and no farther from us than they were before; and so long as we can entertain our eyes and thoughts with these glories, what matters it what ground we tread?" This might be aptly applied to our race, who had no choice in their banishment from the Fatherland. The discovery of the West Indies by Columbus, and America by Cabot and Vespucci, drew the attention of Europe from domestic slumber to the New World, concerning the existence of which Europeans were, for the most part, sceptical. Not only a New World; but there was on the virgin soil a race of people who appeared to the Spaniards as an idle and improvident race, indifferent to most of the objects of human anxiety and comfort. Amid the region of the Vega the encircling seasons

brought them its stores of fruit, when some were ripening on their boughs, crops were being gathered in their full maturity from the fields--some trees budding into new life, while others blossomed into bloom, giving promise of still succeeding abundance.

        What need, then, were there for the childlike natives to garner up and anxiously provide for, coming days, when nature lavished their lands so abundantly? Theirs was a perpetual harvest. To men who lived in such abundance, what need of toiling, spinning, or labouring throughout the year, when neither nature nor custom prescribed the necessity of better clothing than the former herself supplied? Wherever the European went among these--children of the wood--it was a continual scene of festivities, and a constant stream of rejoicing; while the natives hastened from all parts to lay the treasures of their groves, streams, and mountains at the feet of beings whom they ignorantly thought had fallen from the skies to bring blessings to their country. We would that it were so; but the strangers betrayed their confidence, and proved themselves rather to have ascended from the abyss, bringing curses not blessings. As long as Isabella lived, the Indians found an efficient friend and protector; but "her death," says the Venerable Las Casas, "was the signal for their destruction". "Immediately on that event. . . Columbus, who seems to have had no doubt, from the first, of the Crown's absolute right of property over the natives, carried it to its full extent in the colonies. Every Spaniard, however

humble, had his proportion of slaves; and men, many of them not only incapable of estimating the awful responsibility of the situation, but without the least touch of humanity in their natures, were individually entrusted with unlimited power, of the disposal of the lives and destinies of their fellow-creatures. They abused this trust in the grossest manner; tasking the unfortunate Indian far beyond his strength, inflicting the most refined punishments on the indolent and hunting down those who resisted or escaped like so many beasts of chase, with ferocious bloodhounds.

        "Every step of the white man's progress in the New World may be said to have been on the corpse of a native. Faith is staggered by the recital of the number of victims immolated in these fair regions within a very few years after the discovery; and the heart sickens at the loathsome details of barbarities, recorded by one who, if his sympathies have led him sometimes to overcolour, can never be suspected of wilfully misstating facts of which he was an eye-witness.^* On the northern coast of South America --Terra Firma, as it was called in contrast with the islands--when it had been explored, and before its virgin soil had been polluted by the touch of selfish and self-seeking plunderers, it occurred to the ardent imaginative mind of Las Casas that a colony might be founded, in which Spaniards might exercise a sort of paternal rule over the gentle natives, whose

        * Prescott's History of Ferdinand and Isabella.

hospitality was evinced towards Columbus and his followers, in a marked manner, and to prove to the other settlers--whose avarice, pride, and sordid care had been made manifest in the paradise of the Indians --that the two races could live together and mingle with mutual profit. With this notion Las Casas undertook to select fifty men of upright character, who would advance the principle of equity in dealing with the natives, and make it their serious purpose to draw them by lawful means to the belief in the Gospel. To distinguish his men from the other Spaniards, they were to wear a white dress, with a coloured cross upon it, and to proclaim as widely as possible that their mission was one of peace. Within the limits of the proposed colony, slavery was to be forbidden.

        In his anxiety to lighten the expense of the colony and to procure revenue to the Crown, Columbus had recommended that the natives of the West Indies-- being cannibal and ferocious invaders of their peaceful neighbours--should be captured and sold as slaves, or exchanged with merchants for live stock, and other necessary supplies. This was in the year 1493.

        According to Las Casas, the Indians were to be won by presents to friendly relation with the colonists, and then hired to cultivate the soil for wages as free men. For himself, he asked for nothing except the right of selecting the men with whom he should try his experiment, liberty to advise freely and to exercise a regulating power over the colony along with the civil officers to be appointed by the Crown. Though

prompted by the best motives, Las Casas knew from experience that no royal sanction could be secured for any scheme of colonisation which did not promise some return to the revenue. Therefore, to satisfy this demand, and to save the lives of the natives, whom he passionately loved, he, in a moment of weakness, proposed that every one of his fifty settlers--whom he thought were as unselfish as himself--should have licence to buy three Negroes, with permission to increase the number to ten by the consent of the Protector.

        Evidently Las Casas thought that these Negroes were a stronger and hardier race than the Indians, and would share the toil and bear some of the heavier burdens of the natives in tilling the ground, etc. But the plan of this illustrious man never came to maturity; and not a single Negro was bought or sold under this clause in the charter. Moreover, he afterwards saw the folly of the scheme, and confessed it, saying: "I forgot for the moment that the sellers were men-stealers". Las Casas was not the first to introduce Negro slavery in the New World, as they must have been on the spot for him to suggest their purchase; in any case, we have no authentic date until 1503, when the first ship-load of Negroes was landed in the island of St. Domingo. The impossibility of effecting any improvement in the New World, unless the Spanish planters could command the labour of the natives, was an insuperable objection to Las Casas's plan. In order to overcome this difficulty, the Spaniards purchased a number of Negroes from the Portuguese

settlement on the coast of Africa. In 1503 only a few Negroes were brought into the West Indies; but, in 1511, we find that Ferdinand permitted the importation of a greater number.

        1st. Because they were proved to be more robust and hardier than the natives. 2nd. They were more capable of enduring fatigue, and more patient under servitude. 3rd. And that the labour of one Negro was thought to be equal to that of four Indians.

        In vain did Cardinal Ximenes protest "against the iniquity of reducing one race of men to slavery, while endeavouring to save the lives and restoring the liberty of another". Charles V. granted a patent to one of his Flemish favourites, by which he had the exclusive right to import four thousand Negroes to the New World. This man sold his patent to some Genoese merchants for 25,000 ducats, who degraded commerce by bringing a larger number of slaves than ever had been introduced before in the West Indies. From that time the traffic extended with alarming rapidity to the continent of America. The Africans, who were carried to the western world were, as a general rule, of the weakest of the people in their own country: people who did not fairly represent the best qualities and endowments of the race--even the traditions of their country were carried away in the most distorted form. They were for the most part people from the alluvial districts of Africa, who had been preyed upon by local diseases, and captives taken in those tribal wars which devastated large towns and

villages in the heart of the country, and is until this day. The more powerful tribes pushed the weaker ones from the abundant supplies of food--from the high lands to the sea coast--whither the white man either stole, bribed, or made war against them. They did not even scruple to call in the aid of the rum bottle, and every other unrighteous means, in order to entrap them to supply the slave market. Nevertheless, some of the better class and stalwart sons of Africa found themselves as slaves among the rabble. Hundreds of tribes were mixed together in the slave markets of the New World. The nefarious traffic in human flesh, which began in the midst of pestilence, war, and famine, soon pushed these Negroes beneath the physical standard of the hardier tribes of Africa; and the common moral standard of the human species, with which they were surrounded in their new home --the galling bond of slavery--bound their bodies, and fettered their intellectual faculties, impaired their social affection, and reduced them to move like common machines. The atrocious debasement of slavery paralysed their reflective faculty, suspended their judgment, so that their power of choice was nil; while reason and conscience had little influence over their conduct. Being governed by fear, the Negro became a mere automaton in the hands of his master.

        About one hundred and sixteen years after the Portuguese took the first few Negroes to the West Indies we find a slaver landing some slaves in Virginia (i.e., 1619) in exchange for food to relieve the

hunger of some famishing sailors. Better for those Negroes had they been eaten, rather than to have been enslaved, that others might eat. But the African was not alone; as it was a common thing at this time to send white men into servitude--being sent out as convicts from England, some of whom afterwards became masters, others slave-drivers. Thus the reader will readily understand how it was that they inflicted such dreadful punishment upon the Negro, as we shall hereafter mention.

        "Virginia was the mother of slavery in America, as well as 'the mother of Presidents,' unfortunate for her, unfortunate for the other colonies, and thrice unfortunate for the poor, weak, and friendless Negroes who, from 1619 to 1863, were made to yield their liberty, their toil, their bodies, and their intellects to a system which ground them to powder. While it thus affected the Africans, the white man and institutions felt the direful influence of slavery, for it touched the brightest features of social life, and they faded under the contact of its poisonous breath. It affected legislation, local and national; it made and destroyed statesmen; it prostrated and bullied honest public sentiment; it strangled the voice of the press, while it awed the pulpit into silent acquiescence; it organised the judiciary of the States, and wrote decisions of judges; it gave States their political being, and afterwards dragged them by the forehair through the stormy sea of a civil war; laid the parricidal fingers of treason against the fair throat of liberty: and

through all time to come no event will be more sincerely deplored than the introduction of slavery into the colony of Virginia.^* In degrading the Negro, the Virginian colonists did not fail to degrade themselves. How could it be otherwise? Can a man use pitch without smearing himself? Alas! for Virginia--better far had thy virgin soil remained untouched than that thou shouldst have witnessed the loud sad wails of agony sent up from the broken hearts of the sons of Africa, into whose mouths Burns put the following lines:--

                         It was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthral
                         For the lands of Virginia--ginia, O;
                         Torn from that lovely shore, and never to see it more,
                         And, alas! I am weary, weary, O.

                         All on that charming coast is no bitter snow and frost
                         Like the lands of Virginia--ginia, O;
                         There streams for ever flow, and there flowers for ever blow,
                         And, alas! I am weary, weary, O.

                         The burden I must bear, while the cruel scourge I fear
                         In the lands of Virginia--ginia, O;
                         And I think on my friends most dear, with the bitter, bitter tear,
                         And, alas! I am weary, weary, O.

        It appears, however, that Virginia began to repent of her iniquity in 1776, for William Gordon of Roxburgh, Mass., wrote: "The Virginians begin their declaration of rights by saying that 'all men are born equally free and independent; and have certain interests, and

        * Williams' History of the Negro Race in America.

natural rights, of which they cannot by any compact deprive themselves or their posterity, among which are their enjoyments of life and liberty'. The Congress declare that they 'hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain INALIENABLE RIGHTS--that among these are life, liberty,and pursuit of happiness'."

        Maryland, the State in which the Bishop was born, constituted a part, and was for a long time within the limits, of the colony of Virginia, consequently the slave traffic of the latter extended throughout the entire territory. Here the colonists found the soil rich; and the cultivation of tobacco would be a profitable enterprise. The country was new, and, the physical obstacles in the way of the advancement of civilisation being numerous and formidable, the demand for robust labourers became an absolute necessity; and, as Negroes were at hand and cheap, there was nothing to do but import them. Thus, in 1671, the legislature passed "an act encouraging the importation of Negroes and slaves," i.e., Negroes and white convicts. The former were "used to till the soil, fell trees, assist mechanics, and to man light crafts along the water-ways ". Steadily Africans found their way into houses of opulence and refinement, either on account of novelty or cheapness, or both. This gave rise to an import tax being imposed upon slaves imported into the colony, which did not destroy the vile traffic, but supplied grist to the

government's mill. In 1696 an act was passed laying "an imposition on the slaves and white persons imported into the colony". Mr. Williams explains that "the word 'imported' means persons who could not pay their passage, and were therefore indentured to the master of the vessel. When they arrived their time was hired out, if they were free, for a term of years at so much per year; but, if they were slaves, the buyer had to pay all claims against this species of property before he could acquire a fee-simple in the slave."^*

        In 1704 the legislature passed another act "imposing threepence per gallon on rum, wine, brandy, and spirits; twenty shillings per poll for Negroes, for raising a supply to defray the public charge in this province; and twenty shillings per poll on Irish servants, to prevent the importation of too great a number of Irish papists into this province": which act was passed for only "three years"; but the hell-conceived child, avarice, kept it alive with all its hideousness for twenty-one years. Rum, slavery, and bigotry were the forces which prompted the colonial economists of that day to stain the statute-book with such a vile law--depraved sentiments made law, and law fashioned slaves and servants into chattelled goods. Poor wooden-headed law-makers! knew ye not that the very law which ye made to keep your nests well-feathered would dehumanise and make you cruel tyrants? Ill-got fortune can never make villains respectable.

         *History of the Negro Race in America,p. 242.

The dignity of labour was dishonoured by your ill-conceived enactments; while a remorseless greed for wealth created, perpetuated, and deluged the country with a thirst for the blood of the innocent for gain. Few people at this day can picture to themselves the horrors of the slave traffic at that time, and long after. Masters were men who believed that the wretched slaves were indispensable to the property of the country--convicts, whose moral sense was already deadened by the crimes which caused them to be transported; men, whose religion was a mere name, whose moral sensibilities were numbed by their frequent acts of vice, and whose god was their passions, could not be expected to be humane. In fact, they were mostly members of the criminal class-- "people whose blood might have been traced through many generations of stupid, sluggish, and vicious ancestors, with no claim to merit but the names they bore". Indeed, such was the character of these "scoundrels" that the best colonists dreaded their continual increase, and well they might, when the "age revolted at the idea of going back to such as these for the roots of a genealogical tree". Here is a letter from one of these refuse of Europe, or his representative, taken from the Maryland Gazette of July 30, 1767: "I confess I am one who think a young country cannot be settled, cultivated, and improved without people of some sort; and that it is much better for the country to receive convicts than slaves. The wicked and bad amongst them that come into

this province mostly run away to the northward, mix with their people, and pass for honest men; while those more innocent, and who came for very small offences, serve their time out here, behave well, and become useful people." This convict, or otherwise, even estimated "that, for these last thirty years-- communibus annis-- there have been at least 600 convicts per year imported into this province, and these have probably gone into 400 families". Alas! for Maryland and for the poor African slave. Was it likely that people of the criminal class, so far removed from social and moral influence, and from all restraint, at a time when it was necessary for detectives to dog their every step in Europe--when there were no steamships crossing the Atlantic in seven days--when there was no electric telegraph, and the quickest passage took months--that these convicts would be transformed into angelic masters?

        "Who but a man swayed with the most sordid selfishness would endeavour," cried one of the colonists, "to disarm the people of the colony of all caution against imminent danger, lest their just apprehensions should interfere with his little scheme of profit? And who but such a man would appear publicly as an advocate for the importation of felons, the scouring of jails, and the abandoned outcasts of the British nation, as a mode in any sort eligible for peopling a young country?"

        These were the creatures who undoubtedly became, for the most part, masters and slave-drivers

in the terrible days which followed: felons and convicts, with hearts like flint, hardened in the furnace of crimes, let loose unrestrained, and given over to unbridled passions and lusts. It is this convict element which, through its numerous and ever-increasing popularity, created and inflamed popular sentiment in favour of an indiscriminate and cruel code of laws for the brutal government of Negro slavery. The pride of the revolting convict stunted every humane instinct in his nature, so that the African's helpless and dying appeal for mercy and kindness never moved him, except in the direction of making him feel his burden the more. These masters and Negro-drivers were considered by their contemporaries as "guilty of the most shameful misrepresentation and the grossest calumny upon the whole province, and the most abandoned profligates in the universe". Who, then, can wonder at their harsh treatment of the Negro?--whom these convicts hated, not because of his condition or circumstance, but on account of his barbaric nationality and colour. Thus, to make him feel more keenly his master's contempt and hatred, convicts no longer called the African a Negro, but "nigger"--so using the Negro to divert the attention of the virtuous colonists, who despised their pedigree, from their hateful selves. The convict class of Maryland had the honour to make a slave code, which, for barbarity and general inhumanity, has no equal--except in South Carolina --in the annals of American slavery.

        1st. In 1723 they made "an act to prevent tumultuous meetings and other irregularities of Negroes and other slaves," no matter for what purpose these meetings were held. They were to have their ears "cropt, on order of justice". What known and untold wrongs have been committed in the name, and under the pretext of doing "justice"! What sense of justice had these transported convicts ?

        2nd. The Negro was denied the right of possessing property--not even an ass--like one of those who voted for such a law.

        3rd. The act gave authority to any white man to kill a Negro who resisted an attempt to arrest him. If such authority had been given to the constables of England before these convicts were transported, there would not have been sufficient voting convicts left to carry such a clause.

        In 1751 the act of 1723 was supplemented in the master's favour, so that, if he were killed in taking the Negro, the legislature handed a sum of money to his relations. To crown their abominable enactments, and rob the Negro of the last vestige of the rights of manhood, an act was passed by which it was made legal, "not to hang a Negro" by the neck, but "his body was quartered and exposed to public view". Having augmented the fortune of his master, a respectable man sometimes thought fit to reward his old slave by giving him his freedom in his old age, or make

provision in his will, that at his death his slave or slaves should be emancipated. Again the Negro-hating convicts stepped in and forbade manumission by the last will and testament. From the introduction of slavery until 1780 Maryland, as we now know it, was stricken with silence in the face of the monstrous and stubborn slave traffic--the press was gagged, the men of God were struck with dumbness, and statesmen like dead fishes went with the stream. It was not until men like Jefferson exclaimed: "That throughout the whole commerce, master and slave, is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unrelenting despotism on the one part and degrading submission on the other," that a ray of hope began to shine through the dark horizon of "Black America ". "Our children see this," said Jefferson, "and learn to imitate it--for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education to him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive, either in his philanthropy or his self-love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But it is not generally sufficient. The parent storms; the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on some airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose tongue to the worst of passions, and, thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who

can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded who, permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part and the amor patriaeof the other?" In 1706 a society was formed at Trenton, New Jersey, for "the Abolition of Slavery". The Quakers set the example to Christian America by emancipating their slaves. Anti-slavery societies sprang up in almost every State; in vain did loud-mouthed pulpit orators of the ex-convict type try to prop up the traffic as a divine institution, when such men as Dr. Franklin threw in his lot with the abolitionists and charged the enemies of liberty. In 1789 he wrote: "Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils". Ever year, from the first formation of an anti-slavery society down to Garrison, was crowned with success; his efforts were untiring, and his method of attacking the traffic was unique. "I determined," said he, "at every hazard to lift up the standard of emancipation in the eyes of the nation, within sight of Bunker's Hill and in the birthplace of liberty. That standard is now unfurled, and long may it float unhurt by the spoilations of time or the missiles of a desperate foe; yea, till every chain is broken and every bondman set free! Let southern oppression tremble; let their secret abettors tremble; let all the

enemies of the persecuted black tremble. . . .On this question my influence, humble as it is, is felt at this moment to a considerable extent; and it shall be felt in coming years--not perniciously, but beneficially, not as a curse, but as a blessing--and posterity will bear testimony that I was right. I desire to thank God that He enables me to disregard the fear of man, which bringeth a snare, and speak truth in its simplicity and power; and I here close with this dedication:--

                         Oppression! I have seen thee face to face,
                         And met thy cruel eye and cloudy brow
                         By the soul-withering glance. I fear not now,
                         For dread to prouder feelings doth give place,
                         Of deep abhorrence, scorning the disgrace
                         Of slavish knees that at thy footstool bow;
                         I also kneel--but with far other vow
                         Do hail thee and thy herd of hirelings base;
                         I swear, while life-blood warms my throbbing veins,
                         Still to oppose and thwart, with heart and hand,
                         Thy brutalising sway--till Afric's chains
                         Are burst, and freedom rules the rescued land,
                         Trampling oppression and his iron rod;
                         Such is the vow I take--so help me, God!

        "Well done, thou prophet of the living God! Millions of Negroes bless thee and thine for all the energy which thou in thy glorious day did put forth!" Time would fail us to name the illustrious men and women who helped, both in England and America, to bring about the abolition of Negro slavery. Yet it must not be thought that these illustrious men were the first to express anti-slavery sentiments; for the Mosaic law pronounced death upon the manstealer. Zeno, the

founder of Stoicism, laid down the principle that "all men are equal, and that virtue alone establishes a difference between them". Anti-slavery sentiment was eloquent in the days of Christ, who Himself laid it down as a fundamental principle of the new religion that "whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them". Seneca taught the slave-holders of his time to "let your slaves laugh, or talk, or keep silence in your presence, as in that of the father of the family. Remember that he whom you call your slave belongs to the same race as yourself. Will you despise a man for circumstances which may become your own? We all have one common origin, and no other is nobler than another unless he is more ready for good deeds." That God-given mandate quoted above carried the gospel of humanity into the palaces of the Cæsars and Antonies. In 312 A.D. a law was passed under Constantine the Great condemning the poisoning of a slave, or tearing his body with the nails of a wild beast, or branding him to be homicide. In 314 A.D. liberty was declared a right which could not be taken away. Sixty years of captivity could not take from the free-born the right of demanding liberty. In 316 Constantine wrote to an archbishop: "It has pleased me for a long time to establish that, in the Christian Church, masters can give liberty to their slaves, provided they do it in the presence of all the assembled people and with the assistance of Christian priests, and that, in order to preserve the memory of the fact, some written document should inform

where they sign as parties or as witnesses"; and in 321 A.D. Constantine directed that "he who under a religious feeling has given a just liberty to his slaves in the bosom of the Christian Church will be thought to have made a gift of a right similar to Roman citizenship, which privilege was only granted to those who emancipate under the eyes of the priest".^*

        Chrysostom, the golden-mouth, who advised Vespasian to restore the republic, exhorted Trajan to devote himself to the welfare of his subjects, and imitate God in philanthropy, as well as those in which he proclaimed to the common people, who were his favourite auditors, the dignity of labour, the sin of slavery and the folly of training hermits. St. Theodore of Constantinople ventured to put forth the command: "Thou shalt possess no slave, neither for domestic purposes nor for the labour of the fields, for man is made in the image of God ". (Vide Gesta Christi.)

        The opposition of slavery shook the thrones of Europe during medieval times. In 441 A.D. a church council (Orange) enacted that a slave once emancipated in Church could not be made either slave or serf again without incurring ecclesiastical censures. The Justiman Code bristles with enactments against slavery. From Emperor Leo, 717 A.D., we find an unbroken stream of sentiments shaping law both for the amelioration of slaves and the suppression thereof. Thirty-seven

        *Vide Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii. p. 62.

church councils are reported to have passed acts favourable to slaves. One council called in London by Anselm forbade absolutely the nefarious business of selling human beings like brute beasts. Sir Thomas Smith, who was a statesman in the time of Elizabeth, 1570, said: "That already in his time slaves were unknown in England, and of serfs only a few survived, but that both conditions were recognised in English law. I think both in France and England the change of religion to the more gentle and more equal sort (as the Christian religion is in respect to the Gentiles) caused this whole kind of servile servitude and slavery to be brought into that moderation, so that they almost extinguished the whole." Austria and France led the way, and finally slavery was driven out of Europe, never to appear again.

        Then it found a home in the New World, but not even there could the wretch find rest for the sole of its feet, for in 1688 the "Friends" of Pennsylvania publicly protested against it, while the Roman Catholics hunted down the monster in the West Indies, as we have elsewhere shown; the work steadily went on until England could not endure the united efforts of Wilberforce and his stalwart co-workers, but yielded up the iniquitous system on the 29th of July, 1833, leaving America and the Americans to struggle on, though Jefferson had told his countrymen: "Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep for ever". At last this prophetic declaration was fulfilled, and the

down-trodden Negro took up arms and stood side by side with those heroic white men who were prepared to fight for the absolute emancipation of the people, God be thanked! We only regret that statesmen with the spirit of Franklin, Rush, Hamilton, and Jay; that divines like Hopkins, Edwards, Channing, and Stiles; philanthropists like Lundy, Woolman, and Garrison are not now moving among the Americans to crown the labours of those illustrious dead, by removing those obstacles which are second to slavery in importance. Alas! for the proud republic whose constitution is supposed to be founded upon "Liberty". Let America, in the fulness of her pride, wave on high in her banner fraternity and liberty, if not equality, to each of her subjects. Let America learn from most of the European powers that virtue, not colour, makes the man.

                         Then let us pray that come it may,
                         As come it will for a' that;
                         That man to man the World o'er
                         Shall brothers be for a' that.

        As sure as the day star of human liberty has arisen above the dark horizon of slavery, so assuredly will the sun of righteousness penetrate the black cloud of prejudice against the Negro, and shine in majestic splendour to the glory of God, and the peaceful dwelling together of the races which have made the United States what she is. Let Americans remember that the Negro helped to fight for her independence under the slave-holder Washington, and fought gloriously in

the Civil War. Remember, too, that they helped to augment the wealth of your boasted republic. We do not ask that her government should create right, but to protect them, as we are not now ignorant that governments are instituted to maintain order, secure peace, administer justice, and protect the rights of all people, and not to destroy or diminish them. We do not ask the United States' Government to enlarge the rights of the Negro by contracting the rights of the white man in order to equalise either property, social position, or political power. We know that such an act would involve the infringement and contraction of their rights. We know too that--

                         Order is heaven's first law, and thus confess'd,
                         Some are, and must be, greater than the rest;
                         More rich, more wise; but who infers from hence
                         That such are happier shocks common-sense.

--POPE.

        Thus, we only demand justice for our race, a right which the constitution affirms in the following terms: "All citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States," and as long as she withholds a little of the rights which this and other sections of the constitution allow, so long we will persist in making our demand. Why should our race contribute to the maintenance of the government in the shape of taxes when black children are kicked out of State schools? Why should a Negro be punished if he breaks the law, and a white man go free when he does the same? Is not a

government impotent when it cannot protect the weak and promote the welfare of all citizens? If a government is based upon popular and democratic principles as that of the United States, is it not its duty to protect the weak elector, and punish those who use force to prevent some citizens from using their electoral rights? In Great Britain and Ireland the most ignorant and unlettered farm labourer who is a lodger or householder can vote, but in the United States the Negro, because he has been a slave, too often cannot do so. Which then is the freest country, and in which have the subjects the most liberty? Where is the protection for the respectable Negro citizen in a tram, train, or 'bus in the U.S.A.? The Negro does not beg for pity or favour; he merely asks for more of justice, and less of either. Let the United or any other State withhold justice as long as it likes from the weaker members of the community, the day will come when those very people will rise either by craft or force, or both, and have it. What people could have been more oppressed than the Frenchmen of the preceding two centuries? From the most servile deference to monarchy, men passed at once to a democracy of a bolder character than either the Greek or the United States' republics. They sprang from a gradation of ranks which rose tier upon tier, assigning to the upper class special privileges, and heaping on the lower orders penalties and fiscal burdens. The nation dropped into a level on which all citizens were equal. God forbid that the Negro problem should bring such

a calamity upon America as the French Revolution! But the more a people suffer the more revengeful will they become, when they get the opportunity. Let America remember that the marvellous revolution of opinion which produced such an upheaval was not the growth of a few years, but a power that was long brewing. The Negroes may yet have their Voltaires and Rosseaus to kindle the explosive. Even in our time tyranny had to give way in Germany, Italy, Greece, and poor down-trodden Egypt. Russia cannot hold out for ever against Nihilism; and the Negro in the United States will not continue to endure the wrongs which are being inflicted upon his race until the end of time, any more than other nations. Let experience speak, and the awful dread of irreparable consequences have weight with the Yankees. Every day the pressure grows, the friction between the two races gets more severe, and the rising tide of education is making the Negro more sensitive to his wrongs and the mockery of the words of the constitution. If the government does not fall back upon the law and maintain its dignity, if the majority does not blend order with freedom and safety with progress, the tide which is steadily rising will crumble piecemeal the old cliffs of the constitution; and woe to them who live in a fool's paradise! May heaven forgive the folly of the strong and defend the weak is the sincere wish of every Negro.

CHAPTER II.

EARLY LIFE.

        Life is like the transition from class to class in a school. The schoolboy who has not learnt arithmetic in the early classes cannot secure it when he comes to mechanics in the higher: each section has its own sufficient work. He may be a good philosopher or a good historian, but a bad arithmetician he remains for life, for he cannot lay a foundation at the moment when he must be building the superstructure. The regiment which has not perfected itself in its manoeuvres on the parade ground cannot learn them before the guns of the enemy. And just in the same way a young person who has slept his youth away, and become idle and selfish and hard, cannot make up for that afterwards. He may do something: he may be religious--yes; but he cannot be what he might have been. There is a part of his heart which will remain uncultivated to the end. The Apostles could share their Master's suffering -- they could not save Him. Youth has its irreparable past. --F. W. ROBERTSON.

        YES, "Youth has its irreparable past," but the misfortunes of youth were not self-imposed; it was the tyranny of slavery which loaded Walter Hawkins, as soon as he was born, with calamities, most of which he has never been able to overcome. While some only know misery by comparison with their own happiness, this man was made to experience it before he could understand what it meant. From his birth he was

made to go under a dark, bleak rock--on a sunless shore--in company with those who could not explain why he was born to such a cruel fate. They could not even pity him, since they themselves were martyrs to the same heartless destiny. Himself and they might have felt that there was a thing called happiness by people whom they had seen laughing, or singing those sacred songs which he would one day learn: that was the only cup of consolation they had to drink from. But as years rolled on, and the slave-driver compelled him to speak in subdued tones, it was then the child began to comprehend the mystery of the sunless path--which afterwards made him incapable of being in love with his fate. What he would have been if he had not been born, nursed, and spent his early days in bondage we cannot tell; this we will venture to say from what we shall learn from his life --there was the making of a man worthy of any race in the slave child.

        Bishop Walter Hawkins was born at Georgetown, Maryland, in the district of Columbia, in or about the year 1809, at a time when the United States no less than Great Britain were beginning to be stirred from centre to circumference with the anti-slavery agitation. His father and mother were both pure-blooded Negroes, whose ancestors were among the millions that were stolen from the bosom of their fatherland to supply the labour market of America. They were both slaves at the time of the birth of their son Walter. At the age of forty his father was encouraged by the Quakers

--whom we have said were the first to free their slaves in the United States--to work overtime after he had fulfilled his long day's work for his master. In this way the poor man managed to save the sum of 365 dollars (£73 4s. 2d.), with which he purchased his liberty. Heaven only knows what the slaves would have had to go through, but for the humanity and practical sympathy of those unostentatious Christians. Bishop Hawkins does not seem to remember much about his mother, for she died when he was quite young. Although the children lost much by her death, it certainly was great gain to this mother, who dared not call the children of her anguish her own. What a glorious emancipation was hers! Better far is thy lot to be numbered with the dead than to have lived to be hunted down by bloodhounds or whipped by ex-convicts. What a glorious transformation is thine! Thy death was a far better thing than the insults of bullies more degraded than thyself. Was thy death not preferred, than to live to see thy loved ones torn one by one from thy heart, and sent off in the chain-gang never to see them in the flesh any more, or, what is worse, to see and not to know that they were verily part and parcel of thyself?

        Out of a large family, the Bishop can only remember two brothers and two sisters. Who knows but that before Walter was born the others were carried into the south, from whence it was believed that neither the living nor dead ever returned to relate the horrors of the life of a slave in yonder region? The eldest of

the two sisters died, while the eldest brother, determined no longer to serve his master, ran away; we hope he was never recaptured. The Bishop, one sister, and a younger brother--who fell down a flight of stairs, in consequence of which he became a cripple for the rest of his life--was all the family left to Hawkins the elder. The cripple was given as a present to the old man, but he did not enjoy the present of his own son for long, for he followed his mother into the eternal world. Listen to the heartless language of this descendant of a convict: "Old man, you can have him; he is of no use to me". Nevertheless the man was glad to have one free child, though he be a cripple. At the death of the master the remaining two children became the property of widow Jane Robinson, the sister of one Robert Beverly, a rich squire, who always supplied her with all the necessaries of life, as she was what they called very poor. And a most eccentric creature was this Jane Robinson. Following the custom and spirit of the age, she professed the popular religion. She used to teach young Hawkins to lie on her behalf, but would have him whipped if he did so on his own responsibility, or threaten him with being "cast into a lake of fire and brimstone"; not her religious belief, but the effect of slavery on the slave-holder made them so inconsistent as to say to the slave boy: "If there is a knock, put on a clean white apron, and go to the door, open it, and if it is Mrs. Thomas Bell or Mrs. Frank Keys tell her I am gone out". Evidently old Jane believed

that there must have been some virtue in a "clean white apron"; perhaps it served to cover a multitude of sins. Not content with putting this lie into the boy's mouth, she would stand off where she could hear him tell the lie, and having satisfied herself that the lad had done his duty well, i.e.,according to her moral standard, she would laugh with delight, like a daughter of an ex-convict, at the exploits of her illustrious father's dashing acts of villainy. Having done this, old Jane would say: "Go to your work (not with a clean white apron) in ten minutes". When she thought that he was there she would go and look around and say, pushing the soil with her foot: "Are you cutting the weeds all right, John?" If he replied in the affirmative, when he was not strictly accurate, old Jane Robinson would say, by way of exhortation: "John, you must not lie. Don't you know that all liars are cast into the lake that burns for ever?" How was he to know? and if there were such a place ought not old Jane to have the warmest corner? Who is to be blamed if this boy grew up to be a hardened liar? If it were just for him to lie for his mistress without fear of being "cast into the lake that burns for ever," why not do it for himself? Slavery was a bad--not to say a hard--schoolmaster for the Negro; moreover it was fruitful in respect of raising a race of men who were at once semi-barbarous, immoral and degraded physically as well as mentally. The Bishop says: "Jane Robinson always had her prayers in her private room three times a-day"; and he could often

hear her say: "O Lord, have mercy upon the poor Africans!" and groaned as if her soul was really troubled about them. But what avails prayers and groans when she, like so many other slave-holders, persisted in degrading the African? Yet these prayers and groans constituted the religion of the pious Christians of Negro-driving America. Their ministers were their paid puppets, who taught the slaves from the pulpit that they must obey their masters and mistresses in all things. These men of God did not think or feel that it was beneath the dignity of their vocation to tell the Negroes "that some He made masters and mistresses for taking care of their children and others belonging to them. . . others He hath made slaves and servants to assist and work for their masters and mistresses that provide for them, and some others He hath made ministers and teachers to instruct the rest, to show them what they ought to do, and put them in mind of their several duties". God called them, but the devil shook the bag.

        The Right Rev. Bishop Meade of Virginia, in an address to slaves, said: "Almighty God hath been pleased to make you slaves here, and to give you nothing but labour and poverty in this world, which you are obliged to submit to, as it is His will that it should be so. Your bodies, you know, are not your own: they are at the disposal of those you belong to." And others of these paid "liars for God" published a catechism for slaves, in which they had the impudence to ask and answer the following questions: "Is it right

for a servant to run away, and is it right to harbour a runaway?--No. What did the Apostle Paul do to Onesimus, who was a runaway? Did he harbour him or send him back to his master? Answer--He sent him back to his master with a letter." Yes, and this minister ought to have added: "Receive him not as a servant but above a servant, a brother in Christ". Of course the puppet was paid to keep the last clause out--nay, more, the slave was even taught that "to disobey his master was to yield to the temptation of the devil". Bishop Hawkins tells us of one Parson Baulch, who was accustomed to preach once a month in the Presbyterian Church, in the neighbourhood in which he lived, to the slaves. This venerable old man used to take the same text, and preached the same sermon for twenty years, as testified by his father and grandfather, to which they were bound to listen, under pains of being whipped. The text was: "Servants, obey your masters," and the substance of the sermon was: "Sam and Sukey, you must mind all you are told to do by your masters, and obey. You must not steal from them. Should they lose a pin, and you find it, you must give it to them. You must not lie, and you must not run away from them." While thus speaking, he would put his finger on the supposed text in the open Bible, and, looking in the gallery where all the slaves were allowed to sit, would continue his apology for a sermon by saying: "The Lord says (I suppose the lord of mammon), if you are good to your masters and mistresses, He has got a kitchen in

heaven, and you all will go there by-and-by". What if Parson Baulch is in that kitchen now? A more hateful caricature of a sermon cannot be conceived than this wretched mutilation of the righteous character of God. In every denomination were found men of Parson Baulch's stamp, except the Quakers and a few laymen who protested against this libel on the Deity. But many of the slave-holders would carry it away and repeat it (parrot-like) to the poor slaves. Poor Jane Robinson had been pretty well off during some portion of her husband's life, but, unfortunately for her and her slaves, he ran through his money by drinking and gambling, two offsprings of slavery, and at last he died from the effects of his riotous living, leaving old Jane, a son and a daughter in possession of five slaves as their fortune, which was considered very little to live upon; consequently she became very stingy in her fare. If she put herself upon a smaller fare, it was certainly a bad look-out for the stomachs of her five Negroes, who were soon after made to feel as if their throats were cut. Inasmuch as her rich brother Beverly came to her assistance and relieved her wants, she continued to buy the cheapest meal and bread she could find for her slaves. It was a part of the policy of many of the slave-holders not to feed the Negro too highly, and with that fear they gave him too little. Just as they maintained that "if the slave were not allowed to read the Bible" he would remain an intellectual infant, whom they could bend at will, but if they were allowed to read it the game was up, so they

feared that by the perusal of such a book the slave "would be converted not into a Christian, but a demon," i.e.,he could no longer be kept in subjection. Old Jane Robinson did with the food exactly what a thousand masters and mistresses did with both food and religion, viz., diluted and adulterated them in quantity and quality to suit the peculiar institution in which millions of human beings were kept as chattels. The pinch of hunger made the young man yearn for liberty.

                         Ye clouds! that far above me float and pause,
                         Whose pathless march no mortal can control!
                         Ye ocean waxes! that, wheresoe'er ye roll,
                         Yield homage only to eternal laws!
                         Ye woods! that listen to the night-bird's singing,
                         Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined,
                         Save when your own imperious branches, swinging,
                         Have made a solemn music of the wind!
                         Where, like a man beloved of God,
                         Through glooms which never woodman trod,
                         How oft, pursuing fancies holy,
                         My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound,
                         Inspired, beyond the guess of folly,
                         By each rude shape and wild, unconquerable sound!
                         Oh, ye loud waves! and oh, ye forests high!
                         And oh, ye clouds that far above me soared!
                         Thou rising sun! thou blue, rejoicing sky!
                         Yea, everything that is and will be free!--
                         Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be,
                         With what deep virtue I have still adored
                         The spirit of divinest liberty!

--COLERIDGE.

CHAPTER III.

LIFE AS A SLAVE.

        The results of the institution of slavery was to encourage a tyrannical and ferocious spirit in the masters--cast a stigma upon free labour and at once degraded and dehumanised the Negro. It is true that there were instances of sympathy between some masters and slaves, but, unfortunately, it was more than outweighed by a long series of the most atrocious acts of cruelty, which were practised in their capture in Africa, on the voyages to America, and on the plantations. --S. J. CELESTINE EDWARDS.

                         On him alone was doom of pain
                         From the morning of his birth,
                         On him alone the curse of Cain
                         Fell like a flail on the garnered grain,
                         And struck him to the earth.--ANON.

        ALTHOUGH Spence deplored slavery as a lamentable evil and regarded it as a great human wrong, and said that it was a degradation to the blacks, an injury to the master, and a detriment to society at large, yet he tried to justify the system by saying that "the Negroes had at all times abundant food; the sufferings of fireless winter were unknown to them; medical attendance was always at command; in old age there was no fear of workhouse; their children were never a burden or care; and their labour, though long, was neither difficult nor unhealthy". Given that this is absolutely true, we maintain that the system was

iniquitous, inasmuch as "it ignored the essential characteristic of the man--the existence". In the words of Sallust: "Of two natures, the one is common to us with the gods, the other with the beasts". Undoubtedly, slavery sought to obliterate the more vital, and verily denied the nobler, of these two natures. What is the use of an abundance of everything when one is deprived of his liberty? Nor is the crime of keeping a man a slave minimised by talking about "the amount of degradation resulting from any cause must be limited by the height from whence there was room to fall," for surely it is a come down for any man, however ignorant--though free--to be torn from his home by force and fraud, and transported like a convict into servitude for an indefinite period: a condition where every precaution was adopted to prevent intellectual improvement. Granted that the intellectual condition of the slave had not fallen from a height equal to that of the race in the home to which he was transported, was slavery calculated to raise him above the condition of his savage life? Mr. Spence answers: "Yes, a positive gain"; we say: "Prove your assertion". He answers: "Their conversation and domestic habits are cheerful, they are fond of singing and dancing of a very energetic description; visitors to the Southern States constantly express their surprise at the drollery and gaiety they meet with". A slave had no domestic life; singing and dancing were the opiates with which the poor wretches drowned their sorrows. It is a characteristic of the Negro to be--or rather to profess to be--as

happy as he can under the condition he is in, which you, Mr. Spence, and too many others, mistook for real contentment. In the happiest moment of their life, there arose in some an irrepressible desire for freedom which no danger or power could restrain, no hardship deterred, and no bloodhound could alarm. This desire haunted them night and day; they talked about it to each other in confidence; they knew that the system which bound them was as unjust as it was cruel, and that they ought to strive, as a duty to themselves and their children, to escape from it, as the slaves in Jamaica tried to do in 1732, unknown to them, and later as their neighbours in St. Domingo succeeded in doing: and such was the state of mind beneath all their singing and dancing that, had they means as they had desire, there would have been no slave-holder to talk about the happiness of his slaves. To enslave men successfully and safely it was necessary to keep their minds occupied with thoughts and aspirations short of the liberty of which they were deprived. Thus masters gave the slaves some holidays, which served the purpose of keeping their minds occupied with prospective pleasures within the limits of slavery. It was during these holidays that the young man could go wooing; the married man went to see his wife; the father and mother to see their children; the industrious and money-making could earn a few dollars: it was then that the strong tried their strength at wrestling or boxing; then the drinker drank plenty of whisky, and the religious spent their time in praying,

preaching, singing and exhorting. Before these holidays their pleasures were in prospect, after they were pleasures of reflection; but for these holidays, which acted as safety-valves, the rigours of bondage would have been carried off by the explosive elements produced in the minds of the slaves by the injustice and fraud of slavery. In his savage state the Negro was at liberty to eat what he liked and could get by his own activity, but as a slave he was forced to have "Johnny cakes" and black treacle, with rare variation. This cake was made out of corn-meal, salt, and water, and baked on a piece of barrel-head. At dinner-time old Jane Robinson would call her slaves and give each of them a piece and a little molasses, which she would pour into a large plate so as to make it look much more than it really was; of course there was no blessing asked on this meal. The necessary preliminary having been gone through, Walter would receive his allowance with all the humility of one who had received a knighthood from his Queen. It is needless to say that he soon polished off the "Johnny cake," licked the treacle and bowed ready for more, to which Mrs. Robinson would gravely reply: "You young rascal, do you mean to breed a famine? Go to your work!" Can anyone wonder at slaves singing:--

                         "We raise the wheat,
                         They eat the corn;
                         We bake the bread,
                         They give us the crust;
                         We sift the meal,
                         They give us the husk"?

        Of course, if the Negro asked for bread, the slave-holder was bound to give him a stone. Besides baking the corn-meal dough upon a piece of barrel-head, the slaves were accustomed to wash their hoes, put the dough upon it, and bake their cake before the fire; hence the name "hoe-cake". If the slave had not a variety of dishes he certainly had a variety of means of producing the same cake; thus, instead of cooking them on hoes and barrel-heads, they would roll the dough into a round lump and cover it with cabbage leaves, sweep away the ashes from the hearth, lay the dough upon the ground and cover it over with ashes and fire. Honourable exceptions there were, but they were few and hard to find, who did not try to get as much work as possible, at very little cost for food and clothing. Some masters and mistresses would send their slaves to the market to beg food, of whom Dame Robinson was one; and, when the slaves returned laden with provisions, they would take the food from them as if the provision was theirs and not the property of the slaves: a job Walter did not like, as the poor slaves often got more kicks than cabbages; so he used to turn round the first corner after he left his mistress's house and loaf about until he thought it was time to go home again, pulling a long face because people would not part with their sweet potatoes, etc., without money, which would force the old lady to go marketing herself, when Walter would follow her as light porter; but he seldom got any of the good things which he brought home for his mistress. The time

came, however, when this young slave began to get tired of his way of spending an existence which seemed to have no end. Something whispered to him: "Muzzle not the ox that treadeth out the corn"; from whence the words came he knew not. As he could not read, he must have heard them from someone who could. However they came, he thought himself to be the ox, and that he was muzzled by slavery; so he made up his mind to take off his muzzle and go in for a good feed the first chance he got. But he remembered that the old parson had told them not to steal, lest they would be cast into a "lake which burned for ever," besides the lashing he would get. Hunger is a sharp thorn. If he ate anything which was not given to him, he would have been accused of theft. Supposing he risked the lash and the "burning lake," how was he to get at the old dame's store in which the food was kept? "Surely," thought he, "I work for what I get"; and, after all, what was the use of working and not getting enough food to satisfy his hunger? "It cannot therefore be wrong to take what I have worked for." Walter quieted his conscience by deciding to steal some food; so, whether it were stealing or not, he'd chance hell, the whip, and everything, and have a good round meal the first chance he had. They say everything comes to those that wait: so Walter waited for his opportunity; and one day, when Dame Robinson and her daughter went out, and knowing that she would leave the keys at home, Walter set his sister to watch while he hunted

everywhere he could think to find them; at last it occurred to his mind to look under her pillow, and there to his great joy he found them -- a happy thought for his hungry stomach. Having found them he made for the store, where he took flour, lard, butter, sugar, and as much of other good things as he could find. With the flour and lard he made short cakes, which he baked in a Dutch oven. When cooked, he called his sister, and set himself to get "a good square meal" for once in his life; and, having had enough, he put away what he could not eat for another time. Soon after they had finished, the old lady came home; and, after having had her tea, she gave her slaves their share; but Walter had had more than enough, consequently he hid the biscuits which she had given him away. But the worst was to come. Thinking that old Jane was taking her usual nap, one day, after this event, Walter sat down in the garden munching away at the sugar he had stolen; but the old dame, who was evidently aware that she had been robbed, only professed to have been asleep, and had slyly got up and looked out of the window only to find the young man eating her sugar. So she stealthily walked out and sneaked beside him, as he sat by the side of a large gooseberry tree eating gooseberries and sugar. She exclaimed: "You young rascal, I have caught you at last". You can imagine the young man's surprise; he was like the boy who, being sent with his father's dinner, sat down by the roadside, and was in the act of eating it when his mother came upon him,

exclaiming: "Richard!" to which the boy coolly answered: "Why, I did not expect you so soon". But for his near-sightedness he would have seen his mother coming. So also on account of Walter's absent-mindedness he did not take precaution to eat his sugar at night or when his mistress had gone out again. But fate decreed otherwise. What could the poor half-starved boy say? Yonder on the side of a small hill stood some willow-trees; thither the old lady proceeded, and reached up to break, from one of them, a piece stout enough to wreak her old vengeance on the thieving slave-boy. But good nature interposed, and ere she attempted to break off the stick there came a breeze which took her off her feet, by lifting the limb of the willow as the branch ascended. She let it go, and poor Jane Robinson fell and rolled down the hillside. Poor Jane! what if she were killed? That young Negro would have been lynched in four quarters for a crime he had never committed. Seeing the old dame did not make any attempt to get up, Walter looked down to see what had become of his mistress. What thoughts must have rushed into Walter's mind! Suppose she say he pushed her down or was directly the cause of her falling? he dared not deny it; whether he did or not, she would have been believed if only she had made a charge, as there was no court of appeal against the ipse dixit of a slave-holder. What must he do? To run away and be recaptured would make it appear as though he were guilty. But fear, reason, compassion for the old dame moved the heart

of the Negro to go to her assistance and help the fallen. While helping her up he thought: "I am doing this, but I know she will hire a man who whips slaves to whip me," feeling that she could not do it herself, as he was bigger and stronger than he used to be. But Jane Robinson was hurt, and the moment she got on her feet she made for the house as quickly as possible, to have the rest which she had disturbed to catch the thief. Walter escaped his thrashing then only to think it had to come, but night came and nothing was said, and no Negro-whipper came; so the day's doings, and the dread and horrors of the whip, were forgotten in sleep.

        Morning came, and the day passed without anything being said; finally, the culprit escaped his thrashing altogether. Why? Eternity alone will reveal, for Walter has never been able to solve the problem. All other attempts at whipping were held in reserve, until he attended a midnight meeting and did not get back in time to get his rest, so that he could not do his work the next day with alacrity.

        Thinking he had been carousing all night, she began to pound him with the first thing she got hold of. Poor fellow! he could do better with sleep than with the stick; but what has that to do with the slave-holder, who wanted work out of her slave?

        The system under which he laboured forbade consideration and gave little practical sympathy to a weary slave, and when it was time to rest, what had the slave to sleep upon? The sleeping apartments,

if they could have been called such, had little regard for decency. Old and young, male and female, married and single, were glad to drop down like so many brute beasts upon the common clay floor, each covered with his or her own blanket, their only protection from cold and exposure. How much of rest had a slave? The night, however short, was cut off at both ends: slaves worked late and rose early. Then part of the night was spent in mending their scanty clothing for decency's sake, and in cooking their food for the morrow--in fact, they were whipped for over-sleep more than for drunkenness, a sin which the masters rarely reproved; while neither age nor sex found favour for sleeping too much. If they slept too long the overseer stood at the quarter door, armed like a hedgehog, with stick and whip, ready to deal merciless blows upon those who were a little behind time. Thus, when the horn blew, there was a general rush for the door, each trying to be first, as the last one was sure to get a blow from the brute. He was accounted a good master who allowed his slaves to leave the field to eat their hoe-cake and salt pork or herrings; those who had their meals in the field had it thrown in a row in the corner of the fences or hedge, so as not to lose time to and from the field.^* Consequently loss of sleep was a great privation to the one whose religious zeal had carried him to a camp meeting at night, for which he had to pay very dearly the

        * Life of Fred. Douglas.

next day. Anyhow old Jane got square with Walter, for she paid him for his past offences. But hunger and thrashing had silently been doing their work in his mind. They served to create and intensify his desire to be free, which was brought to a climax one Sunday evening when old Jane began on his poor bones, which he could bear no longer, and he turned upon the old lady, looking fiercely at her. Being pressed with blows he raised his hand to strike her-- what a damnable system that would prompt a man to strike a woman, however strong and wicked, much less old Jane Robinson!--but to his honour he did not let his hand come down upon her. The fierce look and raised hand cured her, for she never tried to whip him again, we hope, nor any of her other slaves.

        It was nonsense for those who were free and lived by slavery to talk about the comfort of the Negro as a slave, when his monthly fare was eight pounds of pickled pork or its equivalent in fish; the pork was often tainted and the fish was of an inferior kind. With his pork or fish he had given him one bushel of Indian meal, unbolted, of which fifteen per cent. was fitter for hogs than man; with this one pint of salt was given. The yearly allowance of clothing was not more ample than the supply of food. It consisted of two tow-linen shirts, one pair of trousers of the same coarse material for summer, and a pair of woollen trousers and a woollen jacket for winter, with one pair of yarn stockings of the coarsest description. Children under ten years of age had neither stockings,

shoes, jackets nor trousers. They had two coarse tow-linen shirts a-year, and when these were worn out they went naked until the next allowance day. Without the least regard to whether they were boys or girls, men or women, beds they had none; one coarse blanket was given them, i.e., men and women; the poor children had to huddle themselves where they could in the corners of the huge chimneys, with their feet in the ashes to keep them warm.^*

        Besides saying that the Negro was better off than pitmen and sailors, Mr. Spence observed: "The mind of the Negro avoids reflection on the past, and abstains from investigating the future"; if they did not, they ought to have been kept as slaves "for ever and ever". But slave-holders lived in a fools' paradise; what brute, living in a climate such as Maryland, would not feel the pinch of cold and hunger with the miserable fare they were allowed? What man would not try and kill, steal, lie, or do anything to satisfy these cravings? Nay, how did these poor wretches survive under that cruel curse? Why did they not rise and mercilessly butcher the fiends who thus maltreated them? Did they not know that "who would be free, themselves must strike the blow"? Alas! Alas! Starvation, cold and hunger conspired, and verily took away what courage was left in them, when they left the shore of their native land. Yet not all, for there were slaves whose spirit no lash could ever

        *Vide Life and Time of Fred. Douglas, p. 29.

conquer, whom labour, cold, hunger, and starvation could not make docile; these stole, escaped, killed bloodhounds, fought their overseers, and even died rather than be conquered--died martyrs for the liberty from which either they or their ancestors were stolen. Walter Hawkins shared this love of freedom and spirit of resistance to injustice. The close fist which only partly fed him on hoe-cakes and black treacle, the scanty clothing through which the fierce, cutting north-wester pierced and chilled his blood, the hard earth on which he slept, and the deprivation of calling himself his own, were the forces which made him reflect and haunted him like a nightmare, and made him think and lay his plans to be his own master.

        What did the slave-holder know of the inmost workings of the mind of the Negro? Aboriginal barbarity and slavery were the only circumstances under which they had an opportunity of contemplating him. What use did they make of these opportunities to study them? None; and to this day the same ignorance influences the strong prejudices which abound in the United States against the Negro. He has characteristics of his own, as his white brethren have. There lies in him a simple-mindedness which is mistaken for a love of personal slavery. Indeed, he has little in his intellect that is separable from his warm affection; while men have deduced the absurd notion that the Negro is fit for nothing but subservience to the superior race, they forget that it took their race thousands of years to evolve a Darwin

from the ape condition. Cicero thought that a Briton was unfit to serve the accomplished Atticus.

        While smarting under this sense of the injustice of the institution of slavery, the son of Mr. Robinson, who had followed his father's footsteps in drinking and gambling, came home one day hard up for cash, and, not knowing any better way to raise money to satisfy his passions, resolved on selling Walter, whom he called, saying: "Do you want a master?" Of course, he had no other choice but to answer: "Yes, sir". So he took the young man to a slave-dealer who bought and sold slaves to owners in the South. The dealer and southern plantations brought to his mind all the terrible things he had heard about those parts, and well he might, for the law by which slaves were governed in the Carolinas was a provincial law as old as 1740, but was made perpetual in 1783. By this law every Negro was presumed a slave unless the contrary appeared. In the ninth clause, two justices of the peace and three freeholders had power to put slaves to any manner of death. The evidence against them might have been without oath. No slave was to traffic on his own account. Any person who murdered a slave was to pay £100, or £14 if he cut out the tongue of a slave. Any white man meeting seven slaves together on a high road could give them twenty lashes each, and no man could teach a slave to write under a penalty of £100 currency. The terrors of the South had nothing to do with young Robinson, who wanted money, which he valued much

more than a Negro. Walter stood by while the bargain was being made, and heard the dealer offer nine hundred dollars for his body. Speaking to Walter, he said: "Can you plough and grub? Can you do general work on the farm?" The poor fellow could do no more than please his master by answering "yes" to all his questions, which pleased both the dealer and young Robinson, for whose benefit all the lies were told. The bargain being struck, an arrangement was made for Walter to re-appear the next morning at seven o'clock; at the same time, he was to bid good-bye to his friends; but be sure, said he, that you are on the spot at seven. Knowing that he did not mean to go, though his master had had the price of his body in his pocket, the young man, who might have been weeping, put his thumbs under what ought to have been a vest, whistling "Hail, Columba". Being tired of whistling, he began to think:" You will never see me again, old man; what a fool you were to part with your money before you got your goods". But Walter had not yet realised the difficulty of the situation. So complete were the ramifications of the slave system that a slave could not get away as easily as he imagined. Still resolved to flee, he went straight to his old father and told him that he was sold. "Sold!" exclaimed the old man; "to whom?" "Why, to old Cidley, the Negro-dealer." After a pause the old man said: "They will sell my last child," and burst into tears, weeping like a child. He talked and wept with his son until he bathed the floor at his feet. At last he said: "Boy,

run away". "I will," responded Walter. But now his troubles began, for he did not know, and the old man could not tell him, where to go any distance beyond ten miles in either direction from where they stood, as it was a part of the policy of slavery to keep them in ignorance as to distance. But if resolution could not break rocks, it could climb mountains. As night came on, the old man lay down to find consolation in sleep. Then it was that Walter crept out of the house into the open field, looking up to the stars, begging them to befriend a poor Negro in his endeavour to make good his escape from slavery. But, alas! there was no answer. Suddenly a thought struck him to go and see a young man whom he had met at a midnight meeting, and who was a Christian. He ran and walked until he arrived at the boarding-house in which he was employed as a waiter. He rapped at the door, and, as fate would have it, there was no one in but himself. Looking out of the window, he called out : "Who is there?" "It is I, Robert!" The young man opened the door and told Walter to come in. Then Walter told him all his troubles and his resolve. "Stop here," replied the sympathising fellow. But woe to Robert if they had caught him in his room! There Walter remained undisturbed for nearly four weeks.

        Certainly when the next morning came there was no Walter to be found, and we can well imagine the kind of advertisements, placards, and bloodhounds that would be set on his track, besides the pressure that

would be brought to bear on the old man, his father, to tell where his son was. Of course he could not tell, as he did not see him go away. And what were the thoughts of the runaway? Uppermost in his mind would be the fact that his father and sister would be wondering whether he was recaptured, famishing in the woods, dead, or being driven in a slave-gang, such as they had seen with dread passing through the town. We will give here an account of one of these gangs as witnessed in Virginia by an Englishman about seventy-five years ago. "I took the boat this morning and crossed the ferry over to Portsmouth, the small town which I told you is opposite to this place. It was a court day, and a large crowd of people were gathered about the door of the court-house. I had hardly got upon the steps to look in when my ears were assailed by the voice of singing, and, turning round to discover from what direction it came, I saw a group of about thirty Negroes of different sizes and ages following a rough-looking white man who sat carelessly lolling in his sulky. They had just turned round the corner, and were coming up the main street to pass by the spot where I stood, on their way out of town. As they came nearer, I saw some of them loaded with chains to prevent their escape, while others had hold of each other's hands, strongly grasped, as if to support themselves in their affliction. I particularly noticed a poor mother with an infant sucking at her breast as she walked along, while two small children had hold of her apron on either side, almost running to keep up

with the rest. They came along singing a little wild hymn of sweet and mournful melody, flying, by a divine instinct of the heart, to the consolation of religion-- the last refuge of the unhappy--to support them in their distress. The sulky now stopped before a tavern, a little distance from the court-house, and the driver got out. . . then he, having supplied himself with brandy, and his horse with water (the poor Negroes, of course, wanted nothing), stepped into his chair again, cracked his whip, and drove on, while the miserable exiles followed in funeral procession behind him."

                         Over the spirits there came
                         A feeling of wonder and sadness--
                         Strange forebodings of ill,
                         Unseen, and that cannot be compassed.
                         As at the tramps of a horse's
                         Hoof on the turf of the prairies,
                         Far in advance are closed
                         The leaves of the shrinking mimosa;
                         So at the hoof-beats of fate,
                         With sad forebodings of evil,
                         Shrinks and closes the heart,
                         Ere the stroke of doom has attained it.

CHAPTER IV.

ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY.

        The desires of a people are seldom prejudicial to liberty, because they commonly spring from actual oppression or an apprehension of it. --MACHIAVELLI.

        Pursuing these ideas, I sat down close by my table, and, leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to myself the miseries of confinement. I was in a right frame for it, and so I gave full scope to my imagination. --STERNE.

        No wonder that Sydney Smith said: "No virtuous man ought to trust his character, or the character of his children, to the demoralising effects produced by commanding slaves. Justice, gentleness, pity and humanity soon give way before them; conscience suspends its functions. The love of command, the maintenance of restraints, get the better of every other feeling, and cruelty has no other limit than fear." Think what the feelings of this young Negro must have been in his hiding-place, as all the horrors of a slave-gang stared him in the face. Trembling, but never dreading his danger, he crept out one night, and hastened to tell his poor father and sister that he was still on the best side of the chain-gang. The moment he opened the door, his step-mother

told him to go out, for the hunters had been there several times a-day with the bloodhounds to hunt him down. The poor fellow begged to see his father, but the woman, knowing and fearing the penalty of his being seen there, insisted on his leaving the house, and that right away; so he obeyed and stepped out of the door. Just as he did so, one of the two-legged bloodhounds who were looking for him entered the gate. While he hesitated to see whether Walter was his prize, the lad bolted like a shot out of a cannon. Kind fate had interposed, for the constable had not his dogs with him that time, or he would have captured his man. It was little use the fellow giving chase to a young man running for his life and liberty, for Walter soon left him out of sight and sound, and back he went to his hiding-place at his friend Robert's, where he arrived with the perspiration dripping from his face, while his whole body was trembling with fear. Robert not being in on his arrival, Walter sat down to recover himself, and he no sooner gathered himself together than Robert walked in, and wanted to know what was the matter. "Why," said Walter, "I had a narrow escape of being caught by the constable." "Then," replied Robert, "you must go from here now; you can't stay any longer"; for he knew that if the two-legged bloodhound had kept up the chase he would be sure to make enquiry there, and, if found, he would be severely punished for harbouring a runaway. "I can't," said Walter, "as I don't know where to go, and I have no money to get food with."

The good friend put his hand in his pocket and took out a five-dollar note, saying: "This will take you to a free country". Then arose another difficulty, viz., the passport, in the shape of free papers, that he might show when he went for his railway ticket. So Walter said: "I have no free papers, and I don't know any way to get them. I have not even any white to be my friend to say I am free." To be sure, no white man in that part of the country would tell a lie or disgrace himself by helping a Negro to make good his escape. So why dream about it? "Now is your chance to make the best of a bad job," said Robert. While they were thus discussing, another freed man came in, not knowing that Walter had taken refuge there: so that Walter had to tell him his troubles, and how he had escaped the constable. "Why," said the fellow, "the hounds have just gone by; 'tis a wonder they did not stop here and ask or search for you. Here is five dollars; it will take you where you want to go." Yet neither he nor Robert could tell the runaway the exact route he was to take. "Anyhow," said they, "go, and we will pray for you if you will pray for yourself." Blessed encouragement! Well might Tennyson make Edith say:--

                         "God help me! I know nothing--can but pray,
                         For Harold pray--pray, pray, no help but prayer,
                         A breath that fleets beyond this iron world
                         And touches Him that made it."

        Why should not these two Negroes pray for their Friend who was suffocating in bondage, and now seeks

to breathe fresh air? "What an asylum hath the troubled soul in prayer." In the awful solitude of night, in the yearnings of the soul for freedom from physical or moral bondage, and in the thrill of sacred emotions which stirs our inmost soul, there is consolation in prayer. Now, if the slave-holder prays to God, why should not the slave pray? Surely if the Deity loves justice and abounds in compassion He might help the poor Negro.

        Robert discussed the route to the free country with both his friends, and gave Walter what hints he could, and bade the runaway "Godspeed".

        Having taken leave of Robert, Walter and his other freed friend started and arrived at the house of the latter in perfect safety. Here he stayed from Friday night until Monday morning. When the day dawned, and ere the monarch of the day began to scale the horizon, Walter was up and made for the depôt (railway-station), where he found crowds of people, both white and black, taking their tickets for Baltimore-- the whites were being served first. Our runaway stood aside until everyone had been served, and then he stepped boldly to the wicket door to get his, when he was saluted by the ticket-seller with "Good-morning," quite a coincidence, as blacks were always expected to salute first. Having returned the compliment, he asked for a ticket. "Where are you going?" was the next query, asked in a short, sharp tone (as if to throw him off his guard), although very good-naturedly. "Baltimore," was the ready reply, with the complimentary,

"sir". According to custom he ought to have asked Hawkins for his papers, but the quick reply, spoken in a confidential tone, brought the ticket, and Walter handed him the money. The booking-clerk went on writing, and the other made his way to the railway carriage, took his seat in a dirty one, in which only Negroes were made to travel. Not many minutes after the train started off, having in the same compartment a few Negroes, but fearing lest they should speak to him, and therefore the more readily recognise that he was a runaway, or cross-question him in a manner that might lead him to betray himself, Hawkins played the fool by whittling some pieces of wood which he had picked up about the station, and, taking some strings out of his pockets, and a piece of paper, made and unmade a parcel until he arrived at Baltimore. Here he got out.

        Being hungry, he asked a boy to show him a place where he could get some food, who directed him to a basement which was used as an eating-house. While going down the steps a fine-looking man met him face to face. "Good-morning," said he to Walter, with a knowing sort of look, which aroused the suspicion of the runaway. Keeping his wits about him, he continued down and asked the price of a meal, when he was told it would be twenty-five cents. In this place he happened to see his own likeness on a bill which he thought contained a reward for his capture. At once he thought that the man who had spoken to him was not his friend, but one who was looking out for runaways. So he put on a bold front, gave the man

twenty-five cents, and asked him to keep the food warm for him. If the man is still keeping that eating-house, he may be keeping the food warm yet, for, instead of returning, he took to his heels, leaving both the food and the man behind him. When he got out of sight he asked another boy--he was afraid to address an adult--to tell him the name of the nearest free State, and where he could get a car that could take him there. "Look!" said the little fellow, "there they are, and they will be going soon!" We ought to tell the reader that Baltimore was one of the centres of the anti-slavery movement, and it was in that city that Benjamin Lundy, the John the Baptist of the new era, established an anti-slavery journal, The Genius of Universal Emancipation,in 1821, and laboured until 1831, at which time he wrote: "I have, within the period above-named (ten years), sacrificed thousands of dollars of my own earnings. I have travelled upwards of five thousand miles on foot, and more than twenty thousand miles in other ways; have visited nineteen States of this union, and held more than two hundred public meetings; have performed two voyages to the West Indies, by which means the emancipation of a considerable number of slaves has been effected, and the way paved for the enfranchisement of many more." It was in this same city that Dr. Buchanan delivered an oration in 1731 upon the "Moral and Political Evil of Slavery". What would Walter Hawkins have given if he had only known that there were such men at Baltimore as

Quaker Lundy? It was not to be, so he made his way to the depôt; when he got there he found a crowd similar to what he met at the first railway station. Instead of waiting, as he had done before, he pressed forward, only to be cursed and sworn at by the booking-clerk, to stand by while the white people got served; but there was danger in that, as he might have been seen by the man, who would certainly not lose sight of him again. So with all the cheek imaginable he pushed his way within the barrier. When the fellow demanded to see his free papers, without any hesitation he pulled out the bundles which he had made of whittled wood, etc., in the train on his way from Haverdegrass to Baltimore. But by another happy coincidence fo