/ 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD 
 
 
 
 A SOUTHERN TALE, 
 
 WITH NORTHERN COMMENTS. 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 "A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY." 
 
 " I did not err, there does a sable cloud 
 Turn forth her silver lining on the night." 
 
 MILTON S COMUS. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 TICK NOR AND FIELDS. 
 
 M DCCC LXI. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by 
 
 TlCKNOR AND FIELDS, 
 
 in the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
 STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY H. 0. HOUGHTON. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 DEATH AND BURIAL OF A SLAVE S INFANT . . 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 NORTHERN COMMENTS ON SOUTHERN LIFE . .5 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 MORBID NORTHERN CONSCIENCE 32 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 RESOLUTIONS FOR A CONVENTION . . . .53 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE GOOD NORTHERN LADY S LETTER FROM Tllfi 
 
 SOUTH 59 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 118 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OWNERSHIP IN MAN. THE OLD TESTAMENT SLA 
 VERY . . . 150 
 
 Ml.10125 
 
iv CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 THE TENURE 177 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 DISCUSSION IN PHILEMON S CHURCH AT THE RETURN 
 
 OF ONESIMUS 205 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE FUTURE . 239 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 DEATH AND BURIAL OF A SLAVE S INFANT. 
 
 The small and great are there, and the servant is free from his master." 
 
 SOUTHERN gentleman, who was visiting 
 in New York, sent me, with his reply to my 
 inquiries for the welfare of his family at 
 home, the following letter which he had just 
 received from one of his married daughters in the South. 
 The reader will be so kind as to take the assurance 
 which the writer hereby gives him, that the letter was 
 received under the circumstances now stated, and that it 
 is not a fiction. Certain names and the date only are, 
 for obvious reasons, omitted. 
 
 THE LETTER. 
 
 MY DEAR FATHER, 
 
 You have so recently heard from and about those of 
 us left here, and that in a so much more satisfactory way 
 than through letters, that it scarcely seems worth while 
 to write just yet. But Mary left Kate s poor little baby 
 
2 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 in such a pitiable state, that I think it will be a relief to 
 all to hear that its sufferings are ended. It died about 
 ten o clock the night that she left us, very quietly and 
 without a struggle, and at sunset on Friday we laid it in 
 its last resting-place. My husband and I went out in 
 the morning to select the spot for its burial, and finding 
 the state, of, aifairs, in the cemetery, we chose a portion 
 of grctunct^anq: f$l jiqfve it inclosed with a railing. They 
 have been very*ca*reless in the management of the ground, 
 $njl *l ai ^ e * allotted* rfeYsons to inclose and bury in any 
 shape ^iMvaj^they dioSe"* so that the whole is cut up in a 
 way that makes it difficult to find a place where two or 
 three graves could be put near each other. We did find 
 one at last, however, about the size of the Hazel Wood 
 lots ; and we will inclose it at once, so that when another, 
 either from our own family or those of the other branches, 
 wants a resting-place, there shall not be the same trouble. 
 Poor old Timmy lies there; but it is in a part of the 
 grounds where, the sexton tells us, the water rises within 
 three feet of the surface ; so, of course, we did not go 
 there for this little grave. His own family selected his 
 burial-place, and probably did not think of this. 
 
 Kate takes her loss very patiently, though she says 
 that she had no idea how much she would grieve after 
 the child. It had been sick so long that she said she 
 wanted to have it go ; but I knew when she said it that 
 she did not know what the parting would be. It is not 
 the parting alone, but it is the horror of the grave, the 
 tender child alone in the far off gloomy burial-ground, 
 the heavy earth piled on the tender little breast, the help 
 lessness that looked to you for protection which you could 
 not give, and the emptiness of the home to which you 
 return when the child is gone. He who made a mother s 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 3 
 
 heart and they \vho have borne it, alone can tell the 
 unutterable pain of all this. The little child is so care 
 fully and tenderly watched over and cherished while it is 
 with you, and then to leave it alone in the dread grave 
 where the winds and the rain beat upon it ! I know they 
 do not feel it, but since mine has been there, I have never 
 felt sheltered from the storms when they come. The 
 rain seems to fall on my bare heart. I have said more 
 than I meant to have said on this subject, and have left 
 myself little heart to write of anything else. Tell Mam 
 my that it is a great disappointment to me that her 
 name is not to have a place in my household. I was 
 always so pleased with the idea that my Susan and little 
 Cygnet should grow up together as the others had done ; 
 but it seems best that it should not be so, or it would not 
 have been denied. Tell Mary that Chloe staid that night 
 with Kate, and has been kind to her. All are well at 
 her house. 
 
 Of the persons named in this letter, 
 
 KATE is a slave-mother, belonging to the lady who 
 writes the letter. 
 
 CYGNET was Kate s babe. 
 
 MAMMY is a common appellation for a slave-nurse. 
 The Mammy to whom the message in the letter is sent 
 was nursery-maid when the writer of the letter and sev 
 eral brothers and sisters were young; and, more than 
 this, she was maid to their mother in early years. She 
 is still in this gentleman s family. Her name is Cygnet ; 
 Kate s babe was named for her. 
 
 MARY is the lady s married sister. 
 
 CHLOE is Mary s servant. 
 
4 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 THE incidental character of this letter and the way in 
 which it came to me, gave it a special charm. Some 
 recent traveller, describing his sensations at Heidelberg 
 Castle, speaks of a German song which he heard, at the 
 moment, from a female at some distance and out of sight. 
 This letter, like that song, derives much of its effect from 
 the unconsciousness of the author that it would reach a 
 stranger. 
 
 Having read this letter many times, always with the 
 same emotions as at first, I resolved to try the effect of 
 it upon my friend, A. Freeman North. He is an upright 
 man, much sought after in the settlement of estates, es 
 pecially where there are fiduciary trusts. Placing the 
 letter in his hands, I asked him, when he should have 
 read it, to put in writing his impressions and reflections. 
 The result will be found in the next chapter. Mrs. 
 North, also, will engage the reader s kind attention. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 NORTHERN COMMENTS ON SOUTHERN LIFE. 
 
 "As blind men use to bear their noses higher 
 Than those that have their eyes and sight entire." 
 
 HUDIBRAS. 
 
 " One woman reads another s character 
 Without the tedious trouble of decyphering." 
 
 BEN JONSON. New Inn. 
 
 SO then, this is a Southern heart which prompts these 
 loving, tender strains. This lady is a slave-holder. 
 It is a slave toward whom this fellow-feeling, this gen 
 tleness of pity, these acts of loving-kindness, these yearn 
 ings of compassion, these respectful words, and all this 
 care and assiduity, flow forth. 
 
 Is she not some singular exception among the people 
 of her country ; some abnormal product, an accidental 
 grace, a growth of luxuriant richness in a deadly soil, or, 
 at least, is .she not like Jenny Lind among singers ? 
 Surely we shall not look upon her like again. It would 
 be difficult to find even here at the North, the humane 
 North, nay, even among those who have solemnly conse 
 crated themselves as " the friends of the slave," and who 
 " remember them that are in bonds as bound with them," 
 a heart more loving and good, affections more natural 
 and pure. I am surprised. This was a slave-babe. Its 
 mother was this lady s slave. I am confused. This con- 
 
6 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 tradicts ray previous information ; it sets at nought my 
 ideas upon a subject which I believed I thoroughly un 
 derstood. 
 
 A little negro slave-babe, it seems, is dead, and its 
 owner and mistress is acting and speaking as Northern 
 ers do ! Yes, as Northerners do even when their own 
 daughters babes lie dead ! 
 
 The letter must be a forgery. No ; here it is before 
 me, in the handwriting of the lady, post-marked at the 
 place of her residence. But is it not, after all, a fiction ? 
 I can believe almost anything sooner than that I am mis 
 taken in the opinions and feelings which are contradicted 
 by this letter. In the spirit of Hume s argument against 
 the miracles of the Bible, I feel disposed, almost, to urge 
 that it would be a greater miracle that the course of 
 nature at the South in a slave-holder s heart should thus 
 be set aside than that there should not be, in some way, 
 deception about this letter. But still, here is the letter ; 
 and it is written to her father, whom she could not de 
 ceive, whom she had no motive, no wish, to delude. 
 Had it been written to a Northerner, I could have sur 
 mised that she was attempting to make false impressions 
 about slavery, and its influence on the slave-holder. Why 
 should she tell her father this simple tale, unless real af 
 fection for the babe and its mother were impelling her ? 
 This tries my faith. It is like an undesigned coincidence 
 in holy writ, which used so to stagger my unbelief. Pos 
 sibly, however, for I must maintain my previous con 
 victions if I can, possibly her father is such as our 
 anti-slavery lecturers and writers declare a slave-holder 
 naturally to be, and his daughter, herself a mother, is 
 seeking to touch his heart and turn him from his cruel 
 ties as a slave-holder by showing him, in this indirect, 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 7 
 
 beautiful manner, that slave-mothers have the feelings of 
 human beings. Perhaps I may therefore compromise 
 this matter by allowing, on one hand, that the daughter 
 is all that she appears to be, and claiming,, on the other, 
 that the father is all that a slave-holder oughts to be to 
 verify our Northern theories. But she herself is ja slave 
 holder, and therefore by our theory she ought to be im- 
 bruted. I beg her pardon, arid that of her father; but 
 they must consider how hard it is for us at the North to 
 conquer all our prejudices even under the influence of 
 such a demonstration as her letter. I ask one simple 
 question : Is not this slave-babe, (and her mother,) of 
 "the down-trodden," and is not this lady one of the down- 
 treading ? And yet she weeps, not because, as I 
 would have supposed, she had lost one hundred and fifty 
 dollars in the child, but as though she loved it like the 
 sick and dying child of a fellow-creature, of a mother like 
 herself. Now, who at the North ever hears of such a 
 thing in slavery ? The old New York Tabernacle could 
 have said, It is not in me ; the modern Boston Music 
 Hall says, It is not in me. None of the antislavery 
 papers, political or religious, say, We have heard the 
 fame thereof with our ears. Our Northern instructors 
 on the subject of slavery, the orators, the Uncle Tom s 
 Cabins, " The Scholar an Agitator," have never taught us 
 to believe this. The South, we are instructed to think, 
 is a Golgotha, a valley of Hinnom ; compacts with it are 
 covenants with hell. But here is one holy angel with its 
 music ; a ministering spirit ; but is she a Lot in Sodom ? 
 Abdiel in the revolted principality ? a desolate, mourning 
 Rizpah on that rock which overlooks four millions of 
 slaves and their tortures ? 
 
 In a less instructed state of mind on this subject, * I 
 
8 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 should once have said, on reading this letter, This is 
 slavery. Here is a view of life at the South. As a 
 traveller accidentally catches a sight of a family around 
 their table, and domestic life gleams upon him for a mo 
 ment ; as the opening door of a church suffers a few 
 notes of the psalm to reach the ear of one at a distance, 
 this letter, written evidently amidst household duties and 
 cares, discloses, in a touching manner, the domestic rela 
 tions of Southern families and their servants wherever 
 Christianity prevails. It is one strain of the ordinary 
 music of life in ten thousands of those households, falling 
 accidentally upon our ears, and giving us truthful, artless 
 impressions, such as labored statements and solemn dep 
 ositions would not so well convey, and which theories, 
 counter-statements, arguments, and invectives never can 
 refute. Our senior pastor would say that the letter is 
 like the Epistles of John, not a doctrinal exposition, 
 but a breathing forth of the spirit which the evangelical 
 history had inspired. I have come to know more, how 
 ever, than I did when I could have had such amiable but 
 unenlightened feelings. I have read the " Key to Uncle 
 Tom " and the " Barbarism of Slavery." 
 
 Still, I am sorely puzzled. " Kate," she says, " wanted 
 to have it go, it had been sick so long ; but I knew, when 
 she said it, she did not know what the parting would be." 
 
 " The parting ! " Has she read our Northern abstracts 
 and versions of the Dred Scott Decision, and are there, 
 in her view, any rights in a negro which she is bound to 
 respect ? Has she not heard that the Supreme Court of 
 the United States has absolved her from all her feelings 
 
 O 
 
 of humanity ? " The parting ! " Where has she lived 
 not to know how, according to our lecturers, families are 
 parted at the auction-block in the Southern States with- 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 9 
 
 out the least compunction ? We are constantly told, has 
 she not heard it ? that the slave at the South is a mere 
 "chattel," and that a slave-child is bought and sold as 
 recklessly as a calf, and that a parting between a slave- 
 mother and her children, sold and separated for life, is an 
 occurrence as familiar as the separation of animals and 
 their young, and no more regarded by slave-holders than 
 divorcements in the barn-yard. This being so, it must 
 follow that when a slave-babe dies, the only sorrow in the 
 hearts of the white owners is such as they feel when a 
 colt is kicked to death or a heifer is choked. This must 
 be so, if all is true which is meant to be conveyed when 
 we are told so often at the North that the slave is a mere 
 " chattel." Therefore I am puzzled by this lady s tears 
 for the mother of this little black babe. She says of the 
 mother of that poor little negro infant slave, " I knew she 
 did not dream what the parting would be." I repeat it, 
 my theory of slavery, that which I hold in common with 
 all enlightened friends of freedom, requires that this lady 
 should have a debased, imbruted nature, for she owns 
 human beings, has made property of God s image in 
 man. And now I feel creeping over me a dreadful 
 temptation to think that one may hold fellow-creatures in 
 bondage and yet be really humane, gentle, and as good 
 as a Northerner ! What fearful changes in politics would 
 come about should our people believe this ! It cannot be 
 that our great party of Freedom can ever go to pieces 
 ?nd disappoint the hopes of the world ; yet this would be 
 the case, if the feelings stirred by this letter should gain a 
 general acceptance. I cannot gainsay the facts. Here 
 is the letter. May it never see the light ; people are 
 much more influenced by such things than by mere logic, 
 and oh, what would befall the nation should our Northern 
 1* 
 
10 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 excitement against slavery cease, and should we leave 
 the whole subject to the South and to God ! What if 
 people should come to believe that the Southerners 
 fifteen or sixteen States of this Union are as humane, 
 Christian, and conscientious as the North ! 
 
 Who will resolve my painful doubts ? I do crave to 
 know what possible motive this lady could have had in 
 taking so much thought and care about the last resting- 
 place of this poor little black " chattel." You and your 
 husband, dear lady, seem to be as kind and painstaking 
 as though you knew that a fellow-creature of yours was 
 returning, " ashes to ashes, dust to dust." 
 
 One great Northern " friend of the slave " tells us that 
 the slaves at the South are degraded so to the level of 
 brutes, that baptizing them and admitting them to Chris 
 tian ordinances is about the same as though he should 
 say to his dogs, " I baptize thee, Bose, in," etc. This, he 
 tells us, he repeated many times here, and in England. 1 
 Nothing but love of truth and just hatred of " the sum of all 
 villanies" could, of course, have made him venture so 
 near the verge of unpardonable blasphemy as to speak 
 thus. Yet your feelings and behavior toward this babe 
 are in direct conflict with his theory. Pray whom am I 
 to believe ? 
 
 Perhaps now I have hit upon a solution. Some peo 
 ple, Walter Scott is an instance, bury their favorite dogs 
 with all the honors of a decorated sepulture. Rather 
 than believe that your slaves are commonly regarded by 
 you as your fellow-creatures, having rights which you 
 love to consider, or, that you do not mercilessly dispose 
 of them to promote your selfish interests, we, the North- 
 
 1 See " Sigma s " communications to the Boston Transcript, August, 
 1857. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 11 
 
 ern people, who have had the very best of teachers on the 
 subject of slavery, learnedly theoretical, reasoning from 
 the eternal principles of right, would incline to believe 
 that your interest in the burial of this little slave-babe 
 was merely that which your own child would feel on see 
 ing her kitten carefully buried at the foot of the apple- 
 tree. 
 
 One thing, however, suggests a difficulty in feeling our 
 way to this conclusion. I mention it because of the per 
 fect candor which guides the sentiments and feelings of 
 all Northern people in speaking of slavery and slave 
 holders. 
 
 The difficulty is this: Who was "poor oldTimmy"? 
 Some old slave in your father s family, I apprehend. 
 You seem sad at finding that his grave is not in the best 
 place. " The water rises within three feet of the sur 
 face;" we infer, from the regret which you seem to feel 
 at this, that you have some care and pity for your old 
 slaves, which extends even to their graves. But we had 
 well nigh borrowed strength to our prejudices from this 
 place of old Timmy s grave, and were saying with our 
 selves, Thus the slave-holders bury their slaves where the 
 water may overflow them ; but you seem to apologize to 
 your father for Timmy s having such a poor place for his 
 remains by saying, " His own " (Timmy s) " family se 
 lected his burying-place, and probably did not think of 
 this." Very kind in you, dear madam, to speak so. " The 
 friends of the slave " are greatly obliged to you for such 
 consideration. You say, " His own family selected his 
 burying-place." Do slaves have such a liberty ? Can 
 they go and come in their burying-grounds and choose 
 places for the graves of their kindred ? This is being 
 full as good to your servants, in this particular, as we are 
 
12 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 at the North to our domestics. You thought poor old 
 Timmy s grave was not in a spot sufficiently choice for 
 this little babe s grave, and, it seems, you inclosed a spot, 
 and inaugurated it by the burial of this child, for the last 
 resting-place of other babes, the kindred of this child and 
 of your other servants. This looks as though there were 
 some domestic permanence in some parts of the South 
 among the servants of a household ; and as though the birth 
 and death of a child have some other associations with you 
 than those which belong to the breeding and sale of poul 
 try. We are truly glad to think of all this. It is ex 
 ceedingly pleasant to have a good opinion of people, much 
 more so than to believe evil of them, and to accuse them 
 wrongfully. 
 
 In speaking thus to you, I make myself think and I 
 hope I do not seem self-complacent in saying it, for you 
 must have learned from the tone of my remarks, if from 
 no other source, that self-complacency is not a Northern 
 characteristic, especially in our feelings toward the South 
 but I make myself think, by this candid admission of 
 what seems good in you, of a venturesome remark by 
 Paul the Apostle to your brother slave-holder Philemon, in 
 that epistle in which he sends back the slave Onesimus, 
 a very trying epistle to us at the North, though, on the 
 whole, many of us keep up our confidence in inspiration 
 notwithstanding this epistle, especially as it is explained 
 to us by some at the North who know most of Southern 
 slavery, our inbred hatred of which, it is insisted by some 
 of our best scholars, should control even our interpreta 
 tion of the word of God. Paul speaks to this slave-holder, 
 Philemon, of "the acknowledging of every good thing 
 which is in you," which we think was exceedingly chari 
 table, considering that it was said to a holder of slaves ; and 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 13 
 
 perhaps quite too much so ; for the truth is not to be spok 
 en at all times, and especially not of those who hold their 
 fellow-men in bondage. I am often constrained to think 
 that it was an inconsiderate, unwise thing in the Apostle 
 to take this favorable view of that slave-tiolder ;- he may, 
 ho\vever, have written by permission, not by command 
 ment ; that would save his inspiration from reproach ; for 
 had he been inspired in writing this epistle, I ask myself, 
 Would he not have foreseen our great Northern conflict 
 with the mightiest injustice upon which the sun ever 
 shone ? and would he not have foreseen how much aid 
 and comfort that epistle would give the friends of oppres 
 sion on this continent ? One first truth in the minds of 
 the most eminent "friends of freedom " is this: " Slavery 
 is the sum of all villanies." Other truths follow in their 
 natural order ; among them the question of the inspiration 
 of the Bible has a place ; but slavery leads some of them 
 to think lightly, and to speak disparagingly, of the Bible, 
 because it comes in conflict with their theories regarding 
 slave-holding, which is certainly not always referred to in 
 Scripture in the tone which we prefer. There was the 
 Apostle James, too, writing about " works " in the same 
 unguarded manner as Paul when speaking of slaves and 
 slave-holders. Pity that he could not have let " works " 
 alone, seeing it was so important for the other Apostles to 
 establish the one idea of justification by faith. He made 
 great trouble for Luther and his companions in their con 
 test with Popery. Luther had to reject his epistle ; " stra- 
 minea epistola " he called it, an epistle of straw, 
 weak, worthless ; and he denied its inspiration, because it 
 conflicted with his doctrine of " faith alone." So much 
 for trying to be candid and just, and for presenting the 
 other side of a subject, or of a man, when the spirit of 
 
14 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 the age is averse to it, and candor is in danger of being 
 looked upon as a time-serving thing. Neither Paul nor 
 James, however, had felt the tonic, bracing effect of good 
 anti-slavery principles, or they would not have written, the 
 one such a letter to a slave-holder, and the other such a 
 back-oar argument against "faith alone." However, I 
 am disposed to think well of Paul and James, notwith 
 standing these the great errors of their lives. Indeed 
 I can almost forgive them, when I am reading other things 
 which they said and did. You will please acknowledge, 
 therefore, my dear madam, that in giving you credit for 
 kind feelings toward a poor slave and its mother, we are 
 disposed to be just ; yet I beg of you not to think that I 
 abate one jot or tittle of my belief that, in theory, slavery 
 is " the sum of all villanies," " an enormous wrong," " a 
 stupendous injustice." 
 
 I have just been reading your letter once more, and 
 the foolish tears pester me so that I can scarce see out of 
 my eyes. I find, dear madam, that you have known a 
 bitter sorrow which so many parents are carrying with 
 them to the grave. Your words make me think so of lit 
 tle graves elsewhere, that I forget for the time that you 
 are a slave-holder. Nor can I hardly believe that your 
 touching words are suggested by the death of a slave s 
 babe, when you speak of " the heavy earth piled on the 
 tender little breast." O my dear lady ! has a slave s 
 babe "a tender little breast"? Then you really think 
 so ! And you a slave-holder ! " Border Ruffianism," per 
 haps, has not yet reached your heart ; and yet I suppose 
 forgive me if I do you wrong that slave-holders 
 hearts generally need only to be removed to the " bor 
 ders," to manifest all their native " ruffianism." Can you 
 tell me whether there are any mothers in Missouri (near 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 15 
 
 Kansas) who feel toward their slaves who are mothers, as 
 you do ? There are so many people from the North in 
 Kansas (near Missouri) who have gone thither to prevent 
 you and your brethren and sisters from owning a fellow- 
 creature there, that I trust their influence will in- time ex 
 tend through all Missouri, and that white mothers in that 
 State will everywhere have such humane feelings toward 
 the blacks as we and you possess. 
 
 All that I ask of you now, is, that you give Kate her 
 liberty at once. Oh, do not say, as I fancy you will, 
 There is not a happier being than Kate in all the land of 
 freedom. " Fiat justitia," dear madam, " ruat crelum." 
 I cannot conceive how being " owned " is anything but a 
 curse. Really, we forget the miseries of the Five Points, 
 and of the dens in New York, Boston, Buffalo, and other 
 places at the North, the hordes in the city and State 
 institutions in New York Harbor, Deer Island, Boston, 
 and all such things, in our extreme pity for poor slave- 
 mothers, like Kate, whose children, when they get to be 
 about nine or ten years old, are liable to be sold. Honest 
 Mrs. Striker came to work in our family, not long since, 
 leaving her young child at home in the care of a young 
 woman who watched it for ten cents a day. I said to 
 her, Dear Mrs. Striker, are you not glad that you live in 
 a free state, and not where, when you return like a bird 
 to its nest at night, you may find your little one carried 
 off, you know not where, by some man-stealer, you know 
 not whom ? We honor your kind feelings, madam, but 
 you are not aware, probably, what overflowing love and 
 tender pity there is among us Northerners, toward your 
 slaves and their children. We are disinterested, too ; for 
 we nearly forget our own black people here at the North, 
 and more especially in Canada, to care for you and your 
 
16 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 people. And though hundreds of innocent young people 
 are decoyed into our Northern cities yearly from the coun 
 try and are made the victims of unhallowed passions, yet 
 the thought that some of your young people on those re 
 mote, solitary plantations, can be compelled by their mas 
 ters to do wrong on pain of being sold, fills us with such 
 unaffected distress that we think but little of voluntary or 
 compulsory debauchery in our own cities ; but we think 
 of dissolving the Union to rid ourselves of seeming com 
 plicity with such wickedness as we see to be inherent in 
 the relation of master and slave. We at the North 
 should all be wicked if we had such opportunities ; we 
 know, therefore, that you must be. Because you will not 
 let us reprove you for it, we cut off our correspondence 
 with your Southern ecclesiastical bodies. But I began to 
 speak of little graves. You will see by my involuntary 
 wandering from them how full our hearts are of your 
 colored people, and how self-forgetful we are in our de 
 sires and efforts to do them good. And yet some of your 
 Southern people can find it in their hearts to set at nought 
 these our most sacred Northern antipathies and commis 
 erations ! 
 
 But I constantly hear some of your words in your let 
 ter striking their gentle, sad chimes in my ears. " It is 
 not the parting alone, but the helplessness that looked to 
 you for protection which you could not give ; " " the emp 
 tiness of the home to which you return when the child is 
 gone." 
 
 Now, for such words, I solemnly declare that, in my 
 opinion, you, dear madam, never had a helpless slave look 
 to you for protection which you could give and which 
 you refused ; you, surely, never made a slave s home 
 desolate by taking her child from her. No, such words 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 17 
 
 as those which I have just quoted from your letter, are 
 a perfect assurance that neither you nor your kindred, 
 within your knowledge, are guilty of ruthless violations 
 of domestic ties among your colored people. Otherwise, 
 you could not write as you do about " desolate homes " 
 and " the child gone." While I read your letter and 
 think of you, I am reminded of those words : " Is not this 
 he whom they seek to kill ? " Why, if the insurgents 
 pikes were aimed at you and your child, I would almost 
 be willing to rush in and receive them in my own body. 
 Yet I would not be known at the North to have spoken 
 so strongly as this. my dear madam, if there were 
 only fifty righteous people (counting you) in the South, 
 people who knew what " desolate homes " and " the 
 child gone" mean, I should almost begin to hope that 
 our Southern Gomorrah might be spared. 
 
 But I fear that I am trespassing too far away from my 
 sworn fealty to Northern opinions and feelings. I begin 
 to fear that I may be tempted to be recreant to my in 
 born, inbred notions of liberty, while holding converse 
 with you, for there is something extremely seductive to 
 a Northerner in slavery; it is like the apple and the 
 serpent to the woman ; so that whoever goes to the 
 South, or has anything to do with slave-holders, is apt to 
 lose his integrity ; there is a Circean influence there for 
 Northern people ; thousands of once good, anti-slavery 
 men now lie dead and buried as to their reputations here at 
 the North, in consequence of having to do with the seduc 
 tive slave-power ; they would fill Bonaventura Cemetery, 
 in Savannah ; the Spanish moss, swaying on the limbs of 
 its trees, would be, in number, fit signals of their sub 
 jection to what you call right views on the subject of 
 slavery. 
 
18 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 Though I fear almost to hold converse with you, yet, 
 conscious of my innate love of liberty, I venture to do 
 so. Bunker Hill is within twenty miles of my home. 
 When I go to that sacred memorial of liberty, I strive to 
 fortify my soul afresh against the slave-power. After 
 hearing favorable things said, in Boston, about the South, 
 I can go to Faneuil Hall, and there, the doors being 
 carefully shut, walk enthusiastically about the room, 
 almost shouting, " Sam. Adams ! " " James Otis ! " 
 " Seventy-Six ! " " Shade of Warren ! " " No chains on 
 the Bay State ! " " Massachusetts in the van ! " " Give 
 me liberty or give me death ! " I can enjoy the priv 
 ilege of looking frequently on certain majestic figures 
 in our American Apocalypse, under the present vial, 
 but I need not name them. I meet in our book-stores 
 with " Lays of Freedom," never sung by such as you. 
 I see in the shop-windows the inspiring faces, in medal 
 lion, of those masterpieces of human nature, " the cham 
 pions of freedom," our chief abolitionists ; and shall I, 
 can I, ever succumb to the slave-power, even though it 
 approach me through the holy, all-subduing charms of 
 woman s influence ? No ! dear madam, ten thousand 
 times, No ! " Slave-power ! " to borrow Milton s figure 
 when speaking of Ithuriel and Satan, the word is as 
 the touch of fire to powder, to our brave anti-slavery 
 souls. You have, perhaps, seen a bull stopping in the 
 street, pawing the ground, throwing the dust over him 
 and covering himself with a cloud of it, his nose close to 
 the earth, and a low, bellowing sound issuing from his 
 nostrils. Your heart has died within you at the sight. 
 You have been made to feel how slight a defence is fan, 
 or sunshade, against such an antagonist, though you 
 should make them to fly suddenly open in his face. No 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 10 
 
 enemy of his was in sight, so far as you could perceive ; 
 you wondered what had excited his belligerent spirit ; 
 but he saw at a very great distance that which you could 
 not see ; he heard a voice you could not hjear, giving oc 
 casion to this show of prowess. That fearful combatant 
 on the highway, dear madam, is the North, and you are 
 the distant foe. You may affect to smile, perhaps, at the 
 valorous attitudes, the show of mettle in the bull, but 
 you have no idea, as I had the honor to say before, how 
 sturdy is our hatred of the slave-power and how ready 
 we are to do battle with it. We paw in the valley, and 
 are not afraid. 
 
 Never think to delude us, my dear lady, with the 
 thought that slavery in our Territories means such ladies 
 as you owning Kates and their little babes, and having 
 such hearts toward them as you seem to have ; for that 
 would take away a large part of the evil in slavery. Nor 
 must you expect us, in thinking of slavery as extending in 
 to our Territories, to picture to ourselves an accomplished 
 gentleman and lady searching a cemetery for a spot to be 
 the grave of a little slave-babe, and behaving themselves 
 as though they had feelings toward it and its mother ir 
 respective of the market-price of slaves. " Border Ruf 
 fians " are the archetypes of our ideas respecting all who 
 wish to extend slavery into our Territories. On the score 
 of humanity, madam, we have no objection to you and 
 your husband taking Kate and living in Kansas ; how 
 perfectly harmless that might seem to many! for, no 
 doubt, you and Kate are perfectly happy as mistress and 
 servant ; you would need domestics there, and how could 
 they and you be better pleased than if they and you were 
 just as Kate and you now are to each other ? but, O dear 
 madam, that would be slavery, and we are under sworn 
 
20 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 obligations here at the North to oppose the owning of 
 a human being with indiscriminate hatred. Say not it 
 seems hard that if you wish to live in Kansas, for exam 
 ple, you cannot have liberty to go there with Kate, who 
 is as much attached to you, I make no doubt, as any North 
 ern or English servant is to a household. Perhaps it 
 does seem perfectly natural and harmless, and no doubt 
 Kate s relation to you is as gentle and pleasant, almost, 
 as that of an adopted member of a family, who is half at 
 tendant, and half companion; this we understand. You 
 see nothing terrible in such a relation. O dear madam, 
 you have the misfortune to have been born under the 
 blinding, blighting influence of slavery, and cannot see 
 things in the true, just light in which they appear to us, 
 whose minds are unprejudiced and clear, and whose moral 
 sentiments on this great subject are more correct and ele 
 vated. What is making all this trouble in our nation ? 
 I will answer you in the burning words of a Northern 
 clergyman in his speech at a meeting called to sympathize 
 with the family of John Brown, after his death by martyr 
 dom : " The Slave-Power itself, standing up there in all its 
 deformity in the sight of Northern consciences, that is the 
 cause, [applause] and there the responsibility belongs." l 
 Yes, you are sinning against the Northern conscience ! It 
 is settled forever that you are evil-doers in holding your 
 present relation to the slave. We are bound to hem you 
 in as by fire, till, like a scorpion so fenced about, you die 
 by your own sting. We must proclaim liberty to your 
 captives. Step but one foot with Kate on free soil, and 
 our watchmen of liberty, set to break every yoke and 
 help fugitives on their way from the house of bondage, 
 will be around you in troops, and shout in her ear those 
 i Boston Conner, Nov. 26, 1859. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 21 
 
 electrifying and beatifying words, " You are a free wom 
 an ! " There her chains will drop ; she will cease to be 
 a slave, and become a human being. 
 
 Must I refer to your letter once more ? I hope to de 
 stroy its spell over me. But I wish at times. that I had 
 never seen that letter. "Tell Mammy that it is a great 
 disappointment to me that her name is not to have a place 
 in my household." Your little slave-babe, Kate s child, 
 you named Cygnet, because Mammy s name is Cygnet, 
 and she and your mother grew up together, and she has 
 been your kind, faithful servant and friend, as much 
 friend as servant, during all your youth till you were 
 married. And you seek to perpetuate her name in your 
 own household, and to have a little Cygnet grow up with 
 your own little Susan. " I was always pleased with the 
 idea that my Susan and little Cygnet should grow up to 
 gether ; but it seems best that it should not be so, or it 
 would not be denied." All this is very sweet and beauti 
 ful ; but now let me tell you, honestly, what the sponta 
 neous thought of a Northerner is, w r hile meditating on such 
 an apparently lovely picture. Here it is : Suppose that 
 Susan and little Cygnet, when both are three years old, 
 are playing in your front-yard some morning, and a cruel 
 slave-trader should look over the fence, and say to your 
 husband, " Fine little thing there, sir ; take a hunderd 
 and a ha f for her?" I ask, Would not your husband 
 (perhaps in need, just then, of money to pay a note) lay 
 down his newspaper, invite the fellow in to drink, and go 
 through the opening scene of " Uncle Tom s Cabin," coax 
 ing up the fellow s price ; and finally, would he not sell 
 little Cygnet while her mother was out of sight, push poor 
 little Susan into a room alone to cry her eyes out, and 
 you and your husband pocket the money ? Many of us 
 
22 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 at the North, dear madam, if you will take my unworthy 
 self as a specimen, and 1 am a very moderate anti-slavery 
 man and no fanatic, are quite as ready to believe such 
 things of you as the contrary. We have read " Uncle 
 Tom s Cabin." 
 
 Nothing could exceed the disgust and ridicule which 
 your letter would meet with at the hands of some of our 
 best anti-slavery men. I am thinking of it, just now, 
 as in the hands of Rev. Mr. Blank. The other day I 
 saw a cambric muslin handkerchief, richly embroidered, 
 blow past me out of a child s carriage. As I turned to 
 get it, a dog seized it, shook it, put both his paws on it, 
 rent it, made rags of it, threw it down, snatched it up, 
 and seemed vexed that there was no more of it to tear. 
 So will our abolitionists serve your letter, should they 
 ever see it. And, my dear madam, though I disapprove 
 their temper and language, yet I must confess that I 
 sympathize with them in their principles, the only differ 
 ence between them and me being that of social position 
 and manners. I must tell you that, after all, you are 
 probably unaware of the deception which you are prac 
 tising on yourself, in supposing that you are really as 
 loving and gentle toward a slave-mother and her child as 
 some might infer. Let but a good sale tempt you ! I 
 wait to know whether you would then write such a letter. 
 We have a ready answer to all the kind and good things 
 which are said about you, in this, w r hich you will see 
 and hear in all our speeches and essays, namely, " Sla 
 very is the sum of all villanies." That is to all our 
 thoughts and reasonings about slavery what the longitude 
 of Greenwich is to navigation. All your clergy, all your 
 physicians, all your judges and lawyers, all your fathers 
 and mothers, your gentlemen and ladies, all your children, 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 23 
 
 are heaped together by us in one name, to us an awful 
 name, Slave-power." We think about you as we do 
 of Egypt, with Israel in bondage. 
 
 And now that allusion furnishes me with an argument 
 against your letter, which I must, in conclusion, and sore 
 ly against many of my feelings, let fall, like a stone, upon 
 it, and crush it forever. Pharaoh s daughter was touched 
 with the cry of the little slave-babe, Moses ; but what 
 does that prove ? that Egyptian bondage was not " an 
 enormous wrong," a "stupendous injustice," "the sum 
 of all villanies " ? or that a Red Sea was not already 
 waiting to swallow up the slave-holders, horse and foot ? 
 
 You may write a thousand such letters, all over the 
 South ; but though they delude me for a while, it is only 
 until the moisture which they raise to my eyes from my 
 heart, by the pathos in them, dries up, and leaves my 
 vision clear of all the blinding though beautiful mists of 
 that error which has diffused itself over one half of this 
 goodly land, and, I grieve to add, which has fallen upon 
 many even here in New England, recreant sons of liberty, 
 traitors to the memories of Faneuil Hall and Bunker 
 Hill. 
 
24 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 LETTER FROM MR. NORTH, INCLOSING THE FOREGOING. 
 INFLUENCE OF THE LETTER UPON HIS WIFE. 
 
 MY DEAR MR. A. BETTERDAY GUMMING : 
 
 I have, as you see, complied with your request, and 
 herewith I send you my thoughts and feelings in view of 
 the good Southern lady s letter. I came near, once or 
 twice, abandoning some of my long-cherished principles, 
 under the influence of the letter and of the reflections to 
 which it gave rise. But I have been enabled to retain 
 my integrity. I am sorry to say that the letter has made 
 me some trouble through its effect on my wife, to whom, 
 incautiously, I read it. Very soon after I began to read, 
 I perceived that some natural drops were finding their 
 way down her tear-passage, leading her to a frequent use 
 of the handkerchief. By this means she interrupted me, 
 I should say, six or eight times, during the reading, and 
 as soon as I had finished she rose and left the room. 
 
 I remained, and wrote a large part of the accompany 
 ing reflections, and, near midnight, on repairing to my 
 room, I found that Mrs. North was asleep. She waked 
 me in the morning by asking me if I was asleep. I told 
 her that I would gladly listen to what she had to say. 
 
 She said, " Will you not please, my dear, stop the , 
 
 and the ," (naming two newspapers,) " and take 
 
 others ? " 
 
 " Why," said I, " what is the matter with them ? " 
 She began to weep again. In a few moments she said, 
 " I would give the world if I could have a conversation 
 with that Southern lady." 
 
 " I fear," said I, " that it would have a deleterious effect 
 on your attachment to the principles of liberty." 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 25 
 
 " Liberty ! " said she. " Oh, how foolish I have been ! 
 I see now that there is another side to that question." 
 
 " I hope, my dear," said I, " that you will say and do 
 nothing to occasion any reproach. Certainly, there are 
 two sides to every question. If you manifest any sur 
 prise at finding that there is another side to the Liberty 
 question, I fear that some will quote to you the fable of 
 the mouse who was born in a meal-chest." 
 
 " I never heard of it," said she. 
 
 " Why," said I, " the mouse one day stole up to the 
 edge of the chest, when the cover had been left open, 
 and, looking round on the barn-chamber, she said, Dear 
 me, I had no idea that the world was half so large. " 
 
 " The cover has been down and the meal has been in 
 my eyes long enough," said she. " I have been so much 
 accustomed for a long time to read in our papers about 
 enormous wrong, stupendous injustice, the slave- 
 breeders, 4 sum of all villanies, that, unconsciously, I 
 have come to think of the South, indiscriminately, as 
 though they were Robin Hood s men, or " 
 
 " O my dear," said I, " you must have known that 
 there are many good people at the South, notwithstand 
 ing slavery." 
 
 " How can there be one good man or woman there," 
 said she, " if all that those newspapers say of slave-hold 
 ing be true ? Husband, depend upon it we have been 
 believing a great lie. Just think of that letter. What a 
 tale many of those words reveal. .When the infants of 
 our former servants die, do our ladies write inch letters 
 about them ? I should judge that owning a fellow-crea 
 ture softens and refines the heart, if this letter is any sign, 
 instead of making them all barbarians. All the newspa 
 pers and novels in the world cannot do away the impres- 
 
26 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 sions which that letter has made on my mind. I tell you, 
 husband, having slaves is not the unmitigated curse to 
 owners nor to slaves that we have been taught to be 
 lieve." 
 
 " Perhaps," said I, interrupting her, " you would like 
 to live at the South, and own a few." 
 
 " I could not be hired by wealth," said she, " to have 
 them for help, even here. I never did like them ; and 
 when I think that there are good men and women who 
 do, and who are as kind to the poor creatures as this dear 
 lady, I think that we should give thanks to God." 
 
 "Oh, the Southern people are not all like this good 
 lady, by any means," said I. 
 
 "< Perad venture, " said she, " there be fifty righteous. 
 There must be tens of thousands. People like this lady 
 are very apt to make good the saying of the blackberry 
 pickers when they see a blackberry, Where there s one 
 there s more. The letter reads as though it were an 
 every-day thing, a matter of course, for this lady to be 
 kind and loving to the blacks ; and for my part I bless 
 any one who has anything to do for her or for those like her. 
 Our papers never tell us such stories as this letter con 
 tains. No, they do not love to hear them, I fear ; but if 
 a slave is beaten or ill-treated, then the chimes begin, 
 * enormous wrong, stupendous injustice, sum of all vil- 
 lanies. " 
 
 " Why, my dear," said I, " you are getting to be pro- 
 slavery very fast." 
 
 " Never," said she, " if you mean by that, as I suppose 
 you do, approving all that is involved in slavery and all 
 that is committed under the system." 
 
 " But," said I, " your present feeling toward this 
 Southern lady may insensibly lead you to believe that it 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 27 
 
 is right to own a fellow-creature. Does not Cowper 
 say, 
 
 " I would not have a slave to till my ground, 
 To carry me, to fan me while I sleep x - 
 
 And startle when I wake, for all the wealth 
 That sinews bought and sold have ever earned? * " _ 
 
 " How Kate must startle and go into convulsions 
 with terror every time this mistress wakes ! " she re 
 plied. " If Cowper had written in Alabama, instead of 
 describing a state of slavery such as existed in the Brit 
 ish possessions, and not, as in the South, mixed up with 
 his every-day life ; if the first face with which he had 
 become familiar as a babe had been a black face, the 
 face of his mother s slave loving him, and nursing him, 
 and he, in turn, had tended his old Mammy in her de 
 crepitude, his imagination would have contained some other 
 pictures than those in the lines which you quote. Had there 
 been a Mrs. Cowper, I fancy she would have been like 
 this lady y and perhaps we should have seen Mr. Cowper 
 acting the kind part of this lady s husband toward a 
 slave-mother and her babe, his property, so called. I 
 lay awake here, last night, while you were writing, and 
 thought it all over. What were you writing about so 
 long ? I wished that I had a pencil and paper near 
 me. Those English and French people who got rid of 
 slavery as one gets rid of a bunion, know nothing about 
 slavery mingled with our very life-blood. How self- 
 righteous they are ! Our people, too, are perpetually 
 quoting what Thomas Jefferson said about slavery in his 
 day. Pray, has there been no progress ? Why are we 
 not permitted to hear what Southern men, as good as 
 Jefferson, now say about modern slavery ? " 
 
 " My dear," said I, " perhaps you are not fully qualified 
 
28 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 as yet to judge of this great subject in all its relations. 
 The greatest and wisest men are divided in opinion 
 about it." 
 
 "Great subject!" said she, "please let me interrupt 
 you ; there is but one side to it, I should judge, from 
 reading our papers. What do some of the greatest and 
 wisest men, on the other side, have to say for them 
 selves ? Are they all friends of oppression, enemies 
 of freedom, minions of the slave-power, dough-faces ? 
 Husband, I am thoroughly disgusted. I have been com 
 pelled to have uncharitable feelings toward thousands of 
 people like this Southern lady ; I confess I have really 
 hated them, as I hate men-stealers and pirates. This 
 letter has convinced me of my sin. It is like the Gospel 
 in its effect upon me." 
 
 " But, my dear," said I, " recollect that good people 
 may be in great error, and we read, Thou shalt in any 
 wise rebuke thy neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him. 
 Now, to hold a fellow-being in bondage, howj*can it be 
 otherwise than stupendous injustice ? " 
 
 " I wonder," said she, " if Kate feels that she is in 
 bondage to this lady. I wonder if she would not think 
 it cruel, if her mistress should set her free." 
 
 "But it is wrong," said I, " to hold property in a hu 
 man being, whether the bondman be in favor of it or 
 not." 
 
 " Property ! " said she. " I should like to be such 
 property, if I were a black woman. If it were wrong 
 in the abstract," said she, "it might not be in prac 
 tice." 
 
 ".Oh," said I, " what a pro-slavery idea that is ! where 
 did you learn it ? " 
 
 " I learned it," said she, " at our corn-husking, when 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 29 
 
 the Squire read extracts from John Quincy Adams s 
 speech about China, in which he said that if China would 
 not open her trade to the world, it would be right to 
 make war upon her. Now war is wrong, but circum 
 stances sometimes make it right. So with holding certain 
 men in slavery, under certain circumstances. I cannot 
 believe that it is right to go and enslave whom we will ; 
 but the blacks being here, I can see that it may be the 
 very best thing for all concerned that they should be 
 owned. This may be God s way of having them gov 
 erned and educated." 
 
 I found that I was getting deeper into the subject than 
 I intended, and, besides, it was time to rise. As I left the 
 room, she said, " You will change those papers, won t you ? 
 then we will have some more pleasant talks about this 
 subject." She called to me from the door, " Please don t 
 send back the lady s letter ; I wish to copy it." This is 
 my reason for not sending the letter with my reply to it. 
 You will certainly give me credit for candor in telling you 
 all that my wife said. However, it is so easily answered 
 that I need not fear to intrust you with it. 
 Yours, for the slave, 
 
 A. FREEMAN NORTH. 
 
 P. S. After all, I concluded to retain this, and wait 
 till my wife had made what use she desired of the letter, 
 that I might be sure and return it to you safely. In the 
 mean time, I have changed the papers. How irresistible 
 a pleading woman is, especially a wife. Her very want 
 of logic makes her more so, when we are good-natured. 
 She came upon me with just such another supplication a 
 few mornings since. As soon as she awoke, she said, 
 " Husband, do please have our parlor window-sashes let 
 
30 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 down from the top." " For ventilation ? " said I. " Yes," 
 said she, " partly ; " but I saw that she smiled. " What 
 has made you think of it so suddenly ? " said I. " Do 
 you not want to catch some more canaries ? " said she. 
 " I suspect," said I, " that you would like to have ours es 
 cape." " Perhaps," said she, " that would be a relief 
 to you from your present embarrassment." Then I saw 
 that all this was banter. She wished to teaze me a little. 
 The truth is, I have two fine singing canaries and a 
 mocking-bird. Some of my pro-slavery friends delight to 
 pester me about them. They say that they mean to issue 
 a habeas corpus, and take them before Justice Bird, (who, 
 you know, queerly enough, happens to be United States 
 Commissioner,) and inquire if they be not restrained 
 of their freedom. I tell them that man has dominion 
 over all the fowls of the air. But they say, "Then 
 might makes right ! Is it not a fine thing that such a 
 lover of liberty and friend of freedom and enemy of op 
 pression should keep those little prisoners for his selfish 
 gratification. Come, be a practical emancipationist to the 
 extent of your ability ; set the South an example ; break 
 every yoke." " They are better off with me," said I ; 
 " the hawks or cats would catch them, or they would die 
 from exposure." " Expediency ! " said one of them ; " do 
 justice, if the heavens fall." " Fye at justitia ! " said 
 one, who pretended to take my part. " Ruat ccelum, Let 
 them rush to heaven," replied the other. " Parse ccelum, 
 please, sir," said my boy in the Academy. " Yes, past the 
 ceiling," said the lawyer, pretending to misunderstand 
 him ; " that s right, my son ; " and more wretched 
 punning of the same sort. Hence Mrs. North s pretend 
 ed supplication about the window-sashes. She has been in 
 excellent spirits ever since I stopped the papers. She says 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 31 
 
 that she wonders at herself so calm and happy. I heard 
 her yesterday calling at the stairs to a little lisping English 
 waiting-maid, who cannot pronounce s: "Judith," said 
 she, " did you not hear the parlor-bell ? " Judith walked 
 up, and said, " Mitthith North, lately you ve rung tho 
 eathy, that motht of the time I thought it mutht be a 
 acthident, and didn t come up at futht. I thpect the 
 wireth ith got ruthty." Mrs. North said nothing, but 
 afterward, in relating the affair to me, she said she truly 
 believed that it was owing to my stopping the papers. For 
 she could remember how often she went to the bell-rope 
 saying to herself as she pulled it, " sum of all villanies ! " 
 then " enormous wrong," with another pull, and then 
 " stupendous injustice," with another. Several times she 
 says Judith has rushed up to the parlor with " Ma am, 
 whath the matter ! the bell rung three timth right off." 
 She thinks that her nervous system will last longer with 
 out the papers than with them. As she told me this, she 
 was shutting down the lid of the piano for the night. As 
 it fell into its place, the strings set up a beautiful mur 
 mur. " Oh, hear that ! " said she ; " how solemn it is ! " 
 " I suppose," said I, " you would not have heard it, if those 
 papers had been in the house." I shall not tell you, a 
 bachelor, what she said and did. I trust that her views 
 on the great subject of freedom will get adjusted by and 
 by ; and I am debating with myself what papers to take, 
 having been obliged, for my own edification, to become a 
 subscriber to the reading-room. There, however, I meet 
 with a good many pro-slavery prints, and I am tempted to 
 look into them ; after which I frequently feel as though I 
 should pull a bell-rope three times. A. F. N. 
 
32 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MORBID NORTHERN CONSCIENCE. 
 
 " Heaven pities ignorance : 
 She s still the first that has her pardon sign d ; 
 All sins else see their faults ; she s, only, blind." 
 
 MIDDLETON : No Help like a Woman s. 
 
 [Accompanying note, from A. BETTERDAY GUMMING to A. 
 FREEMAN NORTH. 
 
 MY DEAR MR. NORTH, 
 
 With many thanks for your kindness and frankness, and 
 with my warmest congratulations to Mrs. North for the pleas 
 ant effect which the Southern lady s letter has had upon her, 
 I send you another document, hoping that she will read it to 
 you. It will not be worth while for me to say anything about 
 this production. It purports to be from a young man in one of 
 our New England literary institutions, whose aunt, with her 
 husband, was residing at the South for the health of a niece, a 
 sister to this young man ; they being orphans. The letter 
 is so entirely in the same key with your feelings that you can 
 not fail to be interested. Knowing that you love rare speci 
 mens in everything, I send you this as " the only one of its 
 kind," or as we say, " sui generis" A. B. C.] 
 
 College, . 
 
 MY DEAR AUNT, 
 
 I have not heard from you but once since your arrival 
 at the South. It is because sister is more unwell? or be- 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 33 
 
 cause you are very busy with your arrangements for the 
 winter ? or is it because, as I more than half suspect, you 
 are so much overcome by your first observation and ex 
 perience of slavery, that you have but little, strength left 
 
 to write to me from that " post of observation, 
 
 darker every hour " ? Perhaps you are mustering cour- 
 rage to tell me of the sights which you have seen, the little 
 while that you have been among the poor, enslaved chil 
 dren of the sun in our Southern house of bondage. 
 " Afraid to ask, yet much concerned to know," I wait im 
 patiently for a letter from you. I expect to make great 
 use of its details among my fellow-students, many of 
 whom, I mourn to say, have their hearts case-hardened 
 against the story of oppression. They will show an inter 
 est in everybody and everything sooner than in the slave 
 and his wrongs. They are not only callous on that sub 
 ject, but they laugh at your zeal and call it hard names. 
 
 No one can tell what I suffer in the cause of free 
 dom, through my well-meant endeavors to interest and 
 instruct others on the subject which absorbs my thoughts. 
 I know that I shall have your sympathy ; and when I 
 come to hear from you what your own eyes have seen, 
 ere this, in slavery, I shall esteem all my sufferings in 
 the cause of the slave as light as air. 
 
 I employ the intervals of study in walking among the 
 beautiful scenery of the village and its environs, if haply 
 I may meet with some to whom I may open my mind on 
 this great theme. The last time that I went out for this 
 purpose, I met with a sad sight. A horse was running 
 away with a buggy, while between the body of the car 
 riage and the \uheel I saw depending a foot, which I at 
 once inferred was that of a lady. The horse rushed by, 
 and sure enough, a young lady had fallen on the floor of the 
 
34 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 buggy, holding the reins, evidently entangled and embar 
 rassed in her posture, uttering the most heart-rending 
 cries and shrieks, with intermingled calls to the horse to 
 stop. 
 
 I could not help looking at the horse, as he passed, 
 with feelings of strong displeasure. To think that any 
 thing having an ear to hear and a sensibility to feel 
 should be so heedless of the cries of distress, roused up 
 my soul to indignation. As I reflected, however, it oc 
 curred to me that no doubt this horse had been subjected 
 to unkind treatment from his youth up. I began to 
 blame his owners. Had the law of kindness been ob 
 served in the early management of this horse, doubtless 
 he would have regarded the first appeal of this young 
 lady to him. May we not hope, dear Aunt, that a new 
 era is dawning upon us with regard to the universal 
 triumph of love and kindness over oppression of every 
 kind, and that the brute creation will partake of its be 
 nign influences ? The tone and manner in which horses 
 are spoken to often sends a chill to my heart. 
 
 This reminds me, if you will excuse longer delay in 
 my narrative, of some unfavorable impressions which I 
 received lately on my way to Boston, with regard to the 
 imperious manner in which a traveller is assailed by ad 
 vertisements on the fences, as you pass through the en 
 virons of the city. Every few miles, as the cars passed 
 along, I saw, printed on the rough boards of a fence : 
 " Visit " so and so ; " Use " so and so ; " Try " so and so. 
 I would not be willing to say how often my attention was 
 caught by those mandatory advertisements. At last I 
 became conscious of some feeling of resistance. Whether 
 it was that I began to breathe the air of Bunker Hill, and 
 the atmosphere which nourishes our most eminent friends 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 35 
 
 of freedom, so many of whom, you know, live in Boston 
 and vicinity, I cannot tell ; but I found myself saying, 
 with quite enough resentment and emphasis, " I will not 
 * use so and so ; I will not try so and so ; especially, I 
 will not visit so and so, First, It will not be conven 
 ient. Secondly, I have no occasion to do so. Thirdly, I 
 do not know the way ; but, Finally, I do not like to be 
 addressed in this manner, as an overseer of a Southern 
 plantation addresses a slave. I am not a slave. I am a 
 Massachusetts freeman." This way of speaking to peo 
 ple, dear Aunty, must be discountenanced. It will, by 
 and by, beget an aptitude for servile obedience ; the eye 
 and ear becoming accustomed to the forms of domination, 
 we shall have yokes and chains upon us before we are 
 aware. Some one says, " Let me write the songs for a 
 nation, and I care not who makes her laws." So say I, 
 Let me write imperative advertisements on fences and 
 buildings, and all resistance to Southern encroachments 
 and usurpation will soon be in vain. 
 
 But to resume my narrative. I began to look round, 
 as soon as my excitement about the runaway horse would 
 allow, for some one to whom I could open my overbur 
 dened mind on the subject of freedom. I espied a man 
 with an immense load of chairs, from a factory in our 
 neighborhood, as I supposed, on his way to Boston. Four 
 horses drew the load, which I saw was very heavy ; not so 
 heavy, I thought with myself, as that which four millions 
 of my fellow-men are this moment laboring with, over the 
 gloomy hills of darkness in our Southern States. I felt 
 impelled to address the driver on this great theme. So, 
 before he had reached the top of the hill, I called out, 
 
 " Driver ! " 
 
 Perhaps there was more stffldenness and zeal in my 
 
36 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 call than was judicious, but the driver immediately said 
 " Whoa ! " to his horses, and he ran hither and thither for 
 stones to block the wheels to keep his load from running 
 back, down hill. 
 
 I felt encouraged, by this, to think that he was of a 
 kind and pliable disposition ; and seeing the wheels forti 
 fied, arid the horses at rest, I felt more disposed to hold 
 conversation with the man. " Who knows," I said to 
 myself, " but that I may now make one new friend for 
 the slave ? " 
 
 " A warm day," said I. 
 
 " Yes, sir," said he, a little impatiently, I thought, 
 The sun was very hot, an August morning, no air stir 
 ring, well suited to make one think of toil and woe under 
 our Southern skies. 
 
 " Have you ever been at the South ? " said I, wiping 
 my forehead. 
 
 " No, sir," said he, picking out a knot in the snapper 
 of his whip, evidently to hide his embarrassment while 
 waiting to know the drift of my question. The sight of 
 his whip kindled in my soul new zeal for the poor slaves, 
 knowing as I did how many of them were at that moment 
 skipping in their tortures and striving to flee from the 
 piercing lash. 
 
 " Your toil in the hot sun with your load, my dear sir," 
 said I, " is well fitted to impress you with the thought of 
 the miseries under which four millions of your fellow-men 
 are every day groaning in our Southern country. I make 
 no doubt that you are grateful for the blessings of free 
 dom which we enjoy here at the North. I wish to ask 
 whether you are doing anything against oppression ; 
 whether you belong to any Association whose object 
 is" 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 37 
 
 " What on airth did you stop me for," said he, quite 
 impatiently, and yet with a lingering gleam of respect, 
 and with some hesitancy at any further rudeness of 
 speech. 
 
 "My dear sir," said I, "four millions of Southern 
 slaves are this very hour groaning under sorrows which 
 no tongue " 
 
 " You " (he hesitated a moment, and surveyed me 
 from head to foot, and then broke out,) " putty-headed, 
 white-birch-looking, nateral stoppin a load right near 
 the crown of a hill, no gully in the road, such a day as 
 this, and Ged ehp, " said he to his horses, as the 
 stones under the wheels that moment began to give way ; 
 and then he drew his lash through one hand, with a most 
 angry look. I really thought that I should have to feel 
 that lash. The thought instantly nerved me : I ll bear 
 it ! it s for the slave ; let me remember them, I might 
 have added, that are whipped as whipped with them ; 
 but at that moment the horses had reached the hill-top, 
 and the driver was by their side. 
 
 He called back, as he passed round the rear of his 
 load to the nigh side of his team. I caught only a few 
 of his last words ; " take your backbone for a for ard 
 X." I snapped my thumb and finger at him, though 
 not lifting my arm from my side. The human spinal 
 column, with its vertebrae, for an axle-tree of a wagon ! 
 And yet, I immediately thought, the poor negro s back 
 is truly " the for ard X " of the great wagon of our Amer 
 ican commerce. But I let him depart. 
 
 Salutary impressions, I cannot question, dear Aunty, 
 were made upon his mind. He had heard some things 
 which would occupy his thoughts in his solitary trudge on 
 his way to Boston. That thought comforted me as I was 
 
38 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 writhing a little on my way home, under his opprobrious 
 epithets ; for you know that I was always sensitive when 
 addressed with reproachful words. 
 
 I could not help recalling and analyzing his scalding 
 words of contempt. I took a certain pleasure in doing 
 so, because, as I saw and felt the power of each in suc 
 cession, I remembered what awful abuses flow from the 
 tongues of Southern masters and mistresses continually, 
 as they goad on their slaves to their work, or reproach 
 them for not bringing in the brick for which they had 
 given them no straw. So it was comparatively a light 
 affliction for me to remember that I had been called by 
 such hard names. " Putty-headed ! " said he. I infer, 
 dear Aunty, that he must have worked in the painter s de 
 partment, and had been familiar with putty ; hence he 
 drew the epithet, into whose signification I did not care 
 to inquire. " White-birch-looking ! " I suppose he re 
 ferred to the impression of imbecility which we have in 
 seeing a perfectly white tree in the woods among the 
 deep green of the sturdier trees. He may have referred 
 to the effect of sedentary habits on my complexion. 
 However, I soon forgot the particulars of his insulting 
 address, retaining only the impression that I had suffered, 
 and that willingly, in the bleeding cause of freedom. 
 
 It was a great relief to me that, just at that moment, a 
 very fine dog approached me and fawned upon me, then 
 ran ahead, and seemed afraid that I should send him 
 back. After a while I tried to drive him away, but he 
 insisted on following me, and I have no doubt that I might 
 have secured him, had I wished to do so. I was not a 
 little inclined, at one time, to take him home with me, and 
 to keep him as a companion in my walks. But he had a 
 collar with his own name, Bruno, upon it, and the name 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 39 
 
 of his owner. The question of right occurred to me. I 
 debated it. Applying some of the self-evident truths 
 established by our own Independence, I almost per 
 suaded myself that I might rightfully tal^e the dog. I 
 reasoned thus: 1. All dogs are born free and equal. 
 2. They have an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the 
 .pursuit of happiness. 3. All governments derive their 
 just powers from the consent of the governed. These 
 principles, breathed in, from childhood, with the atmos 
 phere of our glorious " Fourth," I did not hesitate to ap 
 ply in the case of the dog. I do not know what practical 
 conclusion I might have arrived at, but suddenly I lost 
 sight of Bruno in consequence of a new adventure, in the 
 process of which he disappeared. 
 
 A matronly looking lady came suddenly out of a gate, 
 with a cup in one hand containing a teaspoon, and a 
 brown earthen mug in the other hand. She pushed the 
 gate open before her, easily; but I saw that she was 
 embarrassed about shutting it. I stepped forward and 
 assisted her. 
 
 " Some kind office for the sick, I dare say," said I. 
 
 " A woman in that plastered house is very sick," said 
 she; "I have just fixed some marsh-mallow for her, to 
 see if it will ease her cough. Sorry to trouble you, sir, 
 but my cup was so full that I could not use my hands." 
 
 " I suppose," said I, " madam, if you will allow me to 
 detain you a moment," 
 
 " I am afraid my drink in the cup will get cold, sir, 
 but " - 
 
 " Only a moment, madam," said I ; (for I did not feel 
 at liberty to walk with her ;) " only a moment ; I am led 
 to think, by your kindness to this poor woman, of the 
 millions of bond-people in our Southern country who 
 
40 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 never feel the hand of love ministering to their sick and 
 dying" 
 
 " O you ignorant thing ! " said she, pouring the contents 
 of the cup into the mug, and then setting the cup on the 
 mug, all without looking at me ; " where were you born 
 and bred? You must be an abolitionist. Southern 
 ladies are the very best of nurses ; and as to their slaves 
 when they are sick, why their hearts are overflowing 
 why ! " said she, " I could tell you tales that would 
 make you cry like a baby the idea ! millions of slaves 
 sick and neglected ! Do you belong to College ? " 
 
 " Yes, madam," said I. 
 
 " Sophomore ? " said she. 
 
 " Yes, madam." But it was a cutting question. She 
 had an arch look as she asked it. 
 
 "Well sir," said she, with a graceful air, in a half 
 averted direction, " you have some things to learn about 
 your fellow-countrymen which are not put down in your 
 Moral Philosophies. Please do not betray your ignorance 
 on subjects about which you are evidently in midnight 
 darkness." She was some ways from me, but I heard 
 her continue : " Was there ever anything like this North 
 ern ignorance and prejudice about the Southern people ! " 
 
 I had nothing to do but resume my lonely walk. My 
 sense of desolateness no tongue can tell. I whistled for 
 Bruno, but in vain. She called me " an ignorant thing," 
 said I. Ignorant on the subject of slavery ! How easy 
 it is to misjudge ! Have I studied free-soil papers all 
 these years only to be called " an ignorant thing ! " I 
 could graduate to-day from this institution, though only 
 in my second year, if the examination were confined to 
 the subject of slavery. I have thoroughly understood 
 the theory ; I have learned by heart the codes of the 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 41 
 
 iniquitous system. I know it root and branch, from pith 
 to bark. All the lecturers on the subject have not labored 
 in vain, nor spent their strength for nought, with me. 
 And now to be called " ignorant ! " Just as though I 
 could not reason, that is, draw inferences from premises, 
 make deductions from facts. There is the great fact of 
 slavery ; it is " the sum of all villanies ; " men holding 
 their fellow-men in bondage for the sake of gain ; the 
 heart naturally covetous, oppressive, and cruel, where 
 power is unlimited. As though the law of kindness 
 could, in such circumstances, possibly prevail and miti 
 gate the sorrows of the bondman ! The direct influence 
 of slavery is to debase, to make barbarous, to petrify; I 
 know as well as though I saw it that the South must be 
 full of neglected, perishing objects, cast out to perish in 
 their sicknesses. You doubtless are acquainted, dear 
 Aunty, with the great change in the mode of reasoning 
 introduced by Lord Bacon. We reason now from facts to 
 conclusion ; this is called the inductive method, to collect 
 facts, then draw inferences. The facts which I have col 
 lected on the subject of slavery, in my reading and hear 
 ing, lead me to a perfect theory on the subject, and my 
 confidence in that theory is all which it could be if, like 
 you, I were now seeing it verified with my own eyes. 
 
 I reason on this subject of slavery, just as our philos 
 ophers reason about the moon. You have learned, dear 
 Aunt, ere this, that there is no water in the moon. Cer- 
 tai n things are observed by our telescopes, in the moon, 
 from which we are sure that there is no water there. 
 Now there are certain given facts in slavery. Slavery is 
 Barbarism. It consists in holding men to compulsory 
 servitude. The human heart is avaricious ; it gets all it 
 can, and keeps all it gets. Give it complete power over 
 
42 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 a human being, ancf there are no limits to its cupidity and 
 wrong-doing, but the finite nature of the thing itself. 
 Hence, does it not follow that there can be no disinterest 
 edness, no tender mercies in slavery ? Yes, dear Aunt, 
 as we are perfectly sure that there can be no water in 
 the moon, so are we sure, by the same unerring rule of 
 reasoning according to the inductive philosophy, that 
 there is not one drop of water in slavery for the parched 
 lips of a dying slave. I stated this to a member of our 
 Junior Class who is a wonderful metaphysician. He was 
 kind enough to say that he could discover no flaw in 
 the logic. Your letter, which, I trust, is now on its way 
 to me, I know will fully confirm my theory and conclu 
 sion. 
 
 This lady had probably been reading some miserable 
 cant about Southern humanity, for there are people 
 everywhere who take the wrong side of every subject, 
 from sheer obstinacy. What can disprove the laws of 
 human nature ? They require that things should be at 
 the South as our theories lay them down. 
 
 In our Institution I mourn to say there is much oppo 
 sition to the principles of freedom. Not only so, but the 
 students, many of them, mock at us who stand up against 
 oppression. 
 
 You may not be aware, dear Aunty, that I have a 
 habit, in walking, of keeping my hands firmly clenched, 
 and my thumbs laid flat and pressed down over the 
 knuckles of my forefingers. This, I am aware, gives 
 the thumbs a flattened look. One of our principal 
 pro-slavery students delights to laugh at me to my 
 face. Perhaps I am wrong in connecting everything 
 with this all-absorbing theme, but, truly, my thoughts 
 all run in that direction. Mother and you were ac- 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 43 
 
 customed to send me on errands when I was little, and 
 you placed your money in ray right hand and mother 
 hers in my left, because, on my return to our house, your 
 room was on the right hand of the entry. So I used to 
 go along, holding your respective moneys in my palms, 
 with my thumbs stopping the apertures. And now I am 
 persecuted for the fidelity which led me to acquire a 
 habit that cleaves to me to this day. But little did I 
 dream, dear Aunty, when I padded along like a straight 
 footed animal in the water, instead of having the free use 
 of my open palms to aid me in walking, that I was ac 
 quiring a habit to be to me an inlet of torture in behalf 
 of our manacled four millions, whose hands feel the gall 
 ing bonds of slavery. I take it joyfully, because it is all 
 for the slave. 
 
 The day that I came home from my two interviews 
 and efforts just related, a pro-slavery student, a Senior, 
 invited me into his room. He is exceedingly kind and 
 generous, though, I am sorry to say it, a friend of oppres 
 sion. He gave me a splendid apple, the first which I 
 had seen for the season. He dusted my coat with his 
 feather-duster, and he even dusted my boots. He asked 
 me how far I had been walking. I told him all which I 
 had said and done, thinking that it would profitably re 
 mind him of the great subject. He roared with laugh 
 ter. " Three cheers for Gustavus ; " k isn t that rich ; " 
 waving, all the while, the feather-duster, arid breaking 
 out with fresh peals, as I related one thing after another. 
 The noise which he made brought in several of the stu 
 dents from neighboring rooms, and he related my stories 
 to them as they stood with their thumbs and fingers hold 
 ing open their text-books at the places where they were 
 studying. They were a curious looking set, in their 
 
44 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 dressing-gowns, slippers, and smoking-caps ; and the 
 most of them, unfortunately, happened to be pro-slavery, 
 and advocates of oppression ; by which I mean, not in 
 favor of my mode of viewing and treating the subject of 
 slavery. One of them was so amused and excited that 
 he lost all self-control. He threw down his book, caught 
 me with his two hands about the waist, and tickled me so 
 that I fell upon the floor. Then they raised a shout. 
 We have cool nights here, sometimes, in the warmest 
 weather, and we keep, on the foot-boards of our beds, cot 
 ton comforters, called delusions, because they are so 
 downy and light. Two of the students took the Senior s 
 comforter and laid it on me ; then four of them sat down, 
 one on each corner, to keep me underneath. I have told 
 you that it was a sultry August day. I thought that I 
 should smother. I told them so, as well as my choked 
 voice would allow ; but one of them said, in a soft, meek 
 tone, as I writhed in distress, " Hush, Gustavus, lie still ; 
 you are certainly laboring under a delusion." This was 
 all the more painful from its being so cruelly true, in a 
 literal sense, while I knew that they had reference to my 
 views with regard to freedom, in the word " delusion." 
 What sustained me in those moments, dear Aunty ? It 
 was not that I had myself stood by when this trick was 
 played on Freshmen, and encouraged it by my actions ; 
 no, a higher and holier power than conscience of wrong 
 doing wrought upon me in those moments. Oh, I thought, 
 the very cotton which fills this comforter was cultivated 
 by the hand of a slave. And shall I complain at being 
 nearly smothered by it, when I remember what an incu 
 bus slavery is to the poor creature who gathered this 
 cotton, and what an incubus it is to our unhappy land ? 
 I was delivered at last from my load, because my tor- 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 45 
 
 mentors were tired of their sport. Would that there 
 were some prospect that they who load cruel burdens on 
 the slave were increasingly tired of their work ! 
 
 They would not, however, let me rise. So, thought I, 
 when we have taken the burden of slavery off from the 
 poor negro, unholy prejudice against color keeps him 
 from rising to a level with the rest of the community. I 
 begged that I might get up. They told me that my 
 morning exertions required longer rest. I told them that 
 I must get my Greek. Whereupon one of them stood 
 over me, with his arms raised in a deploring attitude, 
 and said, 
 
 " Sternitur infelix ! 
 Et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos." 
 
 This, dear Aunty, is the lamentation of a Latin poet over 
 a Greek soldier lying prostrate on the battle-field, far 
 from home ; " and dying he remembers his sweet 
 Greece." So they made game of me with the help of 
 the Classics, giving poignancy to their jokes by polishing 
 the tips with classical allusions. While I was under the 
 " delusion," they sung snatches of Bruce s Address to his 
 army ; and when they came to the words 
 
 " Who so base as be a slave ? 
 Let him turn and flee," 
 
 one of them ran a cane under the delusion and punched 
 me with it, keeping stroke to the music. This was little 
 short of profaneness. They asked me if the chair-maker s 
 harnesses were probably made by free or slave labor, 
 alluding, unfeelingly, to a mistake which I made in a 
 recitation one day, when two of those very students had 
 kept me talking about slavery up to the very moment 
 when the recitation-bell rang, so that I had not looked at 
 
46 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 my lesson. There are men in my class, and these were 
 some of them, who, I am told, are plotting to prevent my 
 having the first appointment, to which they know that 
 my marks at recitation entitle me. But may I never 
 be so prejudiced against those who differ from me on 
 the subject of slavery as to deny them credit for things 
 which they have fairly earned. I leave this to the 
 avowed enemies of human rights. For the cause of the 
 slave, I must gain the first appointment. 
 
 I alluded, just now, to my feelings at witnessing tricks 
 played on the Freshmen. Had the Sophomores asked 
 my advice before they played those tricks, I should 
 have dissuaded them ; but when they played them, with 
 such courage and enterprise, I stood before them with 
 admiration. But while I was under that quilt, I found 
 that I did not admire the Sophomores at all, any more 
 than I did the Seniors who then had me in their power. 
 
 The enemies of freedom, in College, had a great 
 triumph the other evening. One of them, in one of the 
 Literary Societies, read an Original Poem, the title of 
 which was, " The Fly-time of Freedom." He spoke of 
 " our glorious summer of Liberty " being infested and pes 
 tered with noisy, provoking things, which he character 
 ized under the names of dor-bugs, millers, and all those 
 creatures which fly into the room when the lamp is 
 lighted ; the swarms of black gnats which are about your 
 head in the woods ; horse-flies which stick, and leave 
 blood running; and devil s-darning-needles. One brave 
 man here, a great " friend of freedom," who, they falsely 
 say, loves to be persecuted, and longs for martyrdom, and 
 interprets everything that way, he described as a miller, 
 who seems to court death in the flame. I think he aimed 
 at me in speaking of soft, harmless bugs which creep 
 over your newspaper or book. Many faces were turned 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 47 
 
 to me as he repeated these lines. I am sorry to say the 
 piece was much applauded. It has put back the cause 
 of emancipation in College, I fear, a term. 
 
 The following introduction to another piece was writ 
 ten, and was read, at the same meeting, by a member of 
 my own class. I fear that there is a sly hit intended by 
 the writer, which I do not discern, at somebody, or some 
 thing, related to freedom. This I suspected from the 
 applause it excited on the part of those who I know are 
 the most deadly foes we have to free institutions. I ob 
 tained a copy of this introduction. It will serve, at least, 
 to show you^pbar Aunty, what a variety of topics we 
 have to excite our minds here in College. You can ex 
 ercise your discretion about letting uncle read it, as it is 
 on a subject of some delicacy. The writer says, 
 
 " I am collecting facts from our daily papers illustrat 
 ing the Barbarism of Matrimony. My list of wives 
 poisoned, beaten, maimed for life by their husbands, and 
 of divorces, cruel desertions, the effects on wives of in 
 temperance in husbands, is truly fearful. I make no 
 question that there are some happy marriages. But a 
 relation which affords such peculiar opportunities for 
 cruelty to women, must sooner or later disappear. No 
 doubt the time will come when marriage will be deemed 
 a relic of barbarism, and a bridal veil be exhibited as one 
 of the mock decorations of the unhappy victims. Hu 
 man nature in man is not good enough to be trusted with 
 such a responsibility as the happiness of woman. Let 
 Bachelors of Arts, on our parchments, suggest to us our 
 duty to aid, through our example, as well as by words, 
 in breaking this dreadful yoke, bidding those innocent 
 young women who are now, perhaps, fearfully looking at 
 us as their future oppressors, to be forever free. In the 
 
48 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 language of young Hamlet : I say, we will have no 
 
 Just before dark one evening, I was sitting in my room, 
 meditating on the great theme which absorbs my thoughts. 
 My eye was caught by the bright bolt of my door-lock, 
 the part of the bolt between the lock and the catch show 
 ing, beyond question, that the door was fastened. Some 
 one on the outside had turned a key upon me. 
 
 I had the self-possession to be quiet, for my mind 
 had been calmed by reflecting, in that twilight hour, 
 that now one more day of toil for the poor slaves was 
 over. 
 
 But as I looked at the bolt, my attention was diverted 
 by something near the top of the door, moving with a 
 strange motion. It was black ; it opened and shut. I 
 drew toward it. I found that it was the leg of a turkey, 
 the largest that I ever saw. It was held or fastened in 
 the ventilator over the door, while some one on the out 
 side was evidently pulling the tendons of the claw, mak 
 ing it open and shut. 
 
 There it performed its tragi-comic gibes for several 
 minutes. 
 
 I resumed my seat, unterrified, of course, and pro 
 ceeded to turn the spectre to good account. I addressed 
 it, in a moderate tone ; though I think that I used some 
 gesticulation. Said I : Personation of the Slave-power ! 
 predatory, grasping, black ! thinkest thou a panting fugi 
 tive lies hid under my " delusion ? " or wouldst thou 
 seize a freeman ? The ^Egis of Massachusetts is over 
 me. Gape ! Yawn ! Thou art powerless ; but thy im 
 pudence is sublime. Ten or fifteen voices then sol 
 emnly chanted these words : 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 49 
 
 " Emblem of Slavery 
 Clutching the Free ! 
 We ve digested the turkey 
 That gobbled on thee. 
 Sure as THANKSGIVING hastened, 
 Cock-turkey ! thy hour, 
 Thanksgivings shall blazon 
 Thy downfall, Slave-power ! 
 
 " The Slave-power has talons, 
 Like Nebuchadnezzar; 
 Slaves are the Lord s flagons 
 Our modern Belshazzar 
 From the Temple of Nature 
 Has stolen away. 
 
 Mean ! Mean ! be writ o er him ! 
 Wrath ! canst thou de " 
 
 Here screams of laughter, and a scampering in the en 
 try, and the turkey s leg tumbling into my room, ended 
 the trick and their cantillation. I was wishing to hear, in 
 the next stanza, the idea that as the tendons of the claw 
 were worked by a foreign power, so slavery at the South 
 owes its activity to Northern influence. Perhaps it is 
 due to myself to say that the word scampering, a few 
 lines above, has no revengeful reference, in its first sylla 
 ble, to the author of the trick. The cause of humanity, 
 I find, has a tendency to make one cautious and charita 
 ble in his use of words. 
 
 They have anti-slavery meetings in the village, now 
 and then, which I attend. All the talent of the place, 
 and the truly good, are there. One evening, when the 
 excitement rose high, a tall, awkward young man mount 
 ed the stage, and said that he wanted to offer one resolu 
 tion as a cap-sheaf. You will infer, dear Aunty, that he 
 was an agriculturist. He lifted his* paper high up in 
 one hand, while his other hand was extended in the other 
 direction, and so was his foot under that hand. He 
 3 
 
50 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 looked like Bootes, on the map of the heavens, which we 
 used to take with us, you know, in studying the comet. 
 " Read it ! " " Read it ! " said the meeting. " I will," 
 said he, flinging himself almost round once, in his excite 
 ment, reminding me of a war-dance, and then taking his 
 sublime attitude again ; when he read, 
 
 " Resolved, Mr. Cheerman, fact is, that Abolition is 
 everything, and nuthin else is nuthin ." 
 
 Some of the younger portion of the audience wished 
 to raise a laugh, but the reddening, angry faces of the 
 prominent friends of the slave were turned upon them 
 instantly, and overawed them. 
 
 All were silent for a moment, when the Chairman rose 
 to speak. He was a short man, with reddish hair, and 
 his teeth were almost constantly visible, his lips not 
 seeming to be an adequate covering for them. He had, 
 moreover, a habit of snuffing up with his nose, in do 
 ing which his upper lip, what there was of it, played its 
 part, and made him show his teeth by frequent spasms. 
 Being a little bow-legged, he made an awkward effort in 
 coming to the front of the stage ; but we all love him, 
 because he is such a vigorous friend of freedom, looking 
 as though he would willingly be executioner of all the 
 oppressors in the land. He said that he " utterly con 
 curred " with the mover in the spirit of his resolution ; it 
 was not, to be sure, in the usual form of resolutions, but 
 that could easily be fixed ; and he would suggest that it 
 be referred to the Standing Committee of the Freedom 
 League. " I agree to that," said the pro-slavery Senior 
 who gave me that entertainment in his room, (but who, 
 by the way, being a friend of oppression, had no right to 
 speak in a meeting in behalf of freedom ;) " I agree to 
 that," said he, "Mr. Chairman, and I move that the 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 51 
 
 School-master be added to the Committee." What a 
 cruel laugh went through the meeting ! while the most 
 distinguished friends of the slave had hard work to con 
 trol their faces. 
 
 I could not help going to the mover of the resolution 
 after the meeting ; and, laying two fingers of my right 
 hand on his arm, I said, " Don t be put down ; he tried 
 to reproach you for not being college-bred ; he had better 
 get the slaves well educated before he laughs at a Massa 
 chusetts freeman for not being a scholar." He tossed his 
 black fur-skin cap half-way to his head, and he wheeled 
 round as he caught it, saying, " Don t care, liberty s 
 better n larnin , nuff sight." " Both are good," said I, 
 " my friend, and we must give them both to the slave." 
 " Give em the larnin after y u ve sot em free ! " said 
 he ; " I ll fight for em ; don t want to hear nuthin bout 
 nuthin else but liberty to them that s bound." He 
 stooped and pulled a long whip and a tin pail from under 
 the seat of the pew where he had been sitting, making 
 considerable noise, so that the people, as they passed out, 
 turned, and the sight of him and his accoutrements made 
 great sport for some whose opinions and feelings were the 
 least to be regarded. I saw in him, dear Aunty, a fair 
 specimen of native, inbred love of liberty and hatred of 
 oppression, unsophisticated, to be relied on in our great 
 contest with the slave-power. I have been told, since 
 the meeting, that his Christian name is Isaiah. 
 
 The meeting that evening appointed me a delegate to 
 an Anti-slavery Convention which is to be held before 
 long. I am expected to represent the College on the 
 great arena of freedom. They have done me too much 
 honor. Since my appointment, the students have sent 
 me, anonymously, through the post-office, resolutions 
 
52 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 to be presented by me at the Convention. I have copied 
 them into a book as they came in, and I will transcribe 
 them for you and send them herewith. The spirit of 
 liberty is, on the whole, certainly rising among the stu 
 dents. As the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the 
 Church, I cannot but hope that my trials in the cause 
 of freedom have wrought good in the Institution. Some 
 who send in these resolutions privately, are, no doubt, 
 secret friends, needing a little more courage to face the 
 pro-slavery feeling and sentiment which are all about 
 them. Some one who read these resolutions suggested 
 the idea of their being a burlesque. I repudiated the 
 idea at once. They will commend themselves to you, 
 dear Aunty, I am sure, as honest and truthful. 
 
 The President called me to his room yesterday, and 
 asked me about the treatment which I received from those 
 Seniors. While I was telling him of it, I noticed that 
 he kept his handkerchief close to his face almost all the 
 time. I thought at first that his nose bled, or that he had 
 a toothache; but I afterward believed that he was weep 
 ing at the story of my wrongs. A Southerner, in the 
 Junior Class, said he had no doubt that the President 
 was laughing heartily all the time. None but a minion 
 of the slave-power could have suggested this idea. The 
 President felt so much that he merely told me to return 
 to my room. 
 
 But I perceive, by the students with letters and papers 
 in their hands, that the mail is in. I will add a postscript, 
 if I find a letter from you ; and I will send on the resolu 
 tions at once. Write soon, dear Aunty, to your loving 
 nephew, and to 
 
 Yours for the slave, 
 
 GUSTAVUS. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 53 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 RESOLUTIONS FOR A CONVENTION. 
 
 "Nay, and thou lt mouth, 
 I ll rant as well as thou." HAMLET. 
 
 I. 
 
 T)ESOLVED, That the continued practice of wild 
 JL\J geese to visit the South for the winter, flying over 
 free soil Concord, Lexington, Bunker Hill, Faneuil 
 Hall, on their way to the land of despotism, cannot be 
 too loudly deplored by all the friends of freedom in the 
 North ; and that the laws of nature are evidently imper 
 fect in not yielding to the known anti-slavery sentiments 
 of this great Northern people so far as to make the in 
 stincts of said geese conform to our most sacred antipa 
 thies and detestations. 
 
 II. 
 
 Resolved, That the abolitionists of Maine, and of the 
 British Provinces, resident near the summer haunts of 
 said geese, be requested to consider whether measures 
 may not be adopted whereby anti-slavery tracts, and 
 card-pictures illustrating the atrocious cruelties of sla 
 very, and appeals to the consciences of the South, or at 
 least instructions to the colored people as to their right 
 and duty to assert their liberty, may not be fastened to 
 
54 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 these birds of passage, to make them apostles of liber 
 ty ; so that while they continue to disregard the bleeding 
 cause of humanity, their very cackle may be converted 
 into lays of freedom. 
 
 III. 
 
 Whereas we read in the Revelation a description of the 
 wall of heaven as having " on the South three gates," a 
 number equal to that assigned to the North, 
 
 Resolved, That this description being in total disregard 
 of the great modern anti-slavery movement, the book 
 which contains it cannot have been divinely inspired ; and 
 that a true anti-slavery Bible would have represented 
 those pro-slavery gates as shut, with the inscription over 
 them : Enter from the North. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Resolved, That the great abolitionist who represents 
 himself in his speeches as baptizing his dogs, in just ridi 
 cule of the baptism of chattel slaves, is worthy, with his 
 dogs, of a place in the heavens among the constellations ; 
 and that anti-slavery astronomers be requested to make a 
 Southern constellation for them somewhere near the head 
 of The Serpent, as rivals to " Canes Venatici" which pro- 
 slavery astronomers no doubt designed, in blasphemous 
 profanation of the heavens, to represent their bloodhounds 
 hunting fugitive slaves, placing it in disgusting proximity 
 to our own Northern Ursa Major. And the friends of 
 the slave are hereby invited to make that new constella 
 tion their cynosure, vowing by it, and anti-slavery lovers 
 arranging their matrimonial engagements, if possible, 
 so as to plight their troth only when it is in the as 
 cendant. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 55 
 
 V. 
 
 Resolved, That we shall hail it as a sign of progress 
 and an omen for good, when anti-slavery women, with the 
 sensibility which belongs to their sex, shall become so 
 interpenetrated with the sentiments of freedom, that they 
 can distinguish by the sense of taste the oyster grown in 
 James River, Richmond, Virginia, and handled by the 
 toil-worn slave, from that which grew on free soil. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Resolved, That our noble anti-slavery poets be requested 
 to compose sonnets addressed to the whippoorwill, appeal 
 ing to that sorrowful-tuned bird by our associations with 
 his name, and by his own historic relationship to the vic 
 tims of oppression, to desert the South and to frequent 
 our woods and pastures in greater numbers, that the sen 
 sibilities of our people may be continually touched by his 
 notes and his name, so suggestive of the monstrous lash 
 which rules over one half of this great nation. And the 
 anti-slavery members of the Legislature are hereby re 
 quested to seek legislative enactments whereby the whip 
 poorwill may be further domiciliated at the North, and 
 be provided with protection during the winter season. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Resolved, That bobolinks, blue jays, orioles, martins, 
 and swallows, who visit the rice-fields of the South, and 
 live upon the unrequited toil of four millions of our fel 
 low-men, should not, upon their return, be viewed with 
 favor by the friends of equal rights at the North, but 
 should be destroyed by sportsmen as a sacrifice to out 
 raged humanity. And no true anti-slavery taxidermist 
 
56 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 will, in our judgment, be found willing to stuff the skin 
 of one of those mean and traitorous birds for any public 
 or private ornithological show-case. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Resolved, That one subject of great interest, well suited 
 to occupy the attention of Massachusetts freemen and 
 friends of liberty the current year, is this : Whether the 
 great whips in Dock Square, Boston, which stand pro 
 fessedly as signs before the doors of whip -makers shops, 
 but are in the very sight of Faneuil Hall, shall be allowed 
 to remain within that sacred precinct of liberty; and that 
 we tender our thanks to those who are investigating the 
 question whether the whips were not originally placed, 
 and are not now maintained, there by the slave-power, 
 in mockery of our Northern hatred of oppression. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Resolved, That, if it be true that the steel pen which 
 signed the bill for the removal of a Judge of Probate for 
 doing an accursed duty as U. S. Commissioner, was taken 
 from the Council Chamber and is now in the possession 
 of one who has driven it into the edge of his chamber- 
 door casement, and every night hangs his watch upon it, 
 at the head of his bed, with the infatuated notion that 
 thereby, through some " most fine spirit of sense," the tick 
 of a death-watch will disturb the political dreams of our 
 Massachusetts rulers, we hereby declare that this is most 
 chimerical and visionary, and that the great party of 
 freedom in Massachusetts need not feel the slightest ap 
 prehension that our rulers have the least misgivings as to 
 the morality of their conduct in the removal of said offi 
 cer, nor that they fear political retribution for that deed ; 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 57 
 
 nor do we believe that the death-watch will ever tick in 
 the ear of freedom in Massachusetts. 
 
 X. 
 
 Resolved, That in the acquiescence of many at the 
 North in the entire justice of a universal massacre, by 
 the slaves, of their masters, including women and chil 
 dren, we recognize a state of preparedness for the pro 
 scription and banishment of all who do not come up to 
 the high abolition standard ; but that in carrying out that 
 project, we ought first to seek the reclamation of the vic 
 tims, and therefore that due inquiry ought to be made 
 concerning the most effective modes of persuasion, as, for 
 example, thumb-screws, racks, wheels, scorpions, water- 
 dropping for the head, bags of snakes, tweezers, and 
 steel-pointed beds, it being apparent that our agony for 
 the slave cannot be satisfied except by his liberation, or 
 by the forcible subjection to us of all who oppose it. 
 And we do hereby request all the friends of freedom now 
 travelling in despotic countries to make inquiry as to the 
 most approved methods of persuading the mind by ap 
 peals to it through the sensibilities of the flesh, and to be 
 prepared with this information against the time when the 
 sublime march of abolition philanthropy shall arrive at 
 the limits of forbearance with all the Northern advocates 
 of oppression. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Whereas no one who holds slaves can be a Christian ; 
 and whereas Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were slave-hold 
 ers, Abraham himself having owned more slaves than 
 any Southerner ; and whereas a synonyme of heaven, in 
 the New Testament, is " Abraham s bosom ; " and whereas 
 3* 
 
58 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 no true friend of freedom can consistently have Christian 
 communion with slave-holders, 
 
 Resolved, That we look with deep interest to the intro 
 duction among us of the principles of the Hindoo philos 
 ophy and religion (including the transmigration of souls), 
 through tentative articles in our magazines ; by which there 
 is opening to us a way of escape from that heaven one 
 exponent of which is, to lie in the bosom of a slave 
 holder. 
 
 xn. 
 
 And in conclusion, 
 
 Be it Resolved, That Bunker Hill was since Mount 
 Sinai, that Faneuil Hall is far in advance of the Taber 
 nacle in the Wilderness ; and that our anti-slavery liter 
 ature is immeasurably beyond epistles to Philemon and 
 other inspired pro-slavery tracts. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 59 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE GOOD NORTHERN LADY S LETTER FROM THE 
 SOUTH. 
 
 " No haughty gesture marks his gait, 
 No pompous tone his word ; 
 No studied attitude is seen, 
 No palling nonsense heard ; 
 He ll suit his bearing to the hour, 
 Laugh, listen, learn, or teach, 
 With joyous freedom in his mirth, 
 And candor in his speech." ELIZA COOK. 
 
 [My friend, A. Freeman North, having read the foregoing, 
 returned it with a hasty note, in pencil, saying, "Please 
 send me the Aunt s reply, if you have it, or can procure 
 it." I accordingly sent it, and we have it here.] 
 
 MY DEAR NEPHEW, 
 
 Your letter came while we had gone into the country 
 for a fortnight. Hattie is much improved, and I trust 
 will soon be well. I gave her your letter to read. She 
 told me that she could not find it in her heart to wonder 
 at you for it ; for once she should probably have written 
 very much in the same strain. 
 
 It was Easter Monday afternoon when our steamboat 
 reached the wharf. "We took an open carriage and drove 
 toward the hotel. As we reached the centre of the city, 
 the place seemed to be full of colored people, who evi 
 dently had just come out of their meeting-houses. This 
 
60 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 was our first view of the blacks. Our driver had to stop 
 frequently while they were crossing the streets, and 
 we had full opportunity to enjoy the sight. Hattie ex 
 claimed, after looking at them a few moments, 
 
 " Why, Uncle, they are human beings ! " 
 
 " What did you suppose they were ? " said he. 
 
 " Uncle," said she, " these cannot be slaves. Where do 
 you suppose the yokes are ? " 
 
 " Now, Hattie," said he, " you were not so simple as 
 to suppose that they wore yokes, like wild cows and 
 swine." 
 
 " Why," said she, " our papers are always telling about 
 their being reduced to a level with brutes, and every 
 Sabbath since I was a child, it seems to me, I have 
 heard the prayer, Break every yoke ! Last Sabbath our 
 minister, you remember, said, Abraham was a slave 
 holder, David a murderer, and Peter lied and swore. 
 Why, Uncle, these black people look like gentlemen and 
 ladies ! If slave-holders are like murderers and thieves, 
 these cannot be their slaves ! " 
 
 " Ask that elderly gentleman," said your Uncle. He 
 was stopping for our carriage to pass, a portly man, 
 with a ruffled shirt, and a rich-looking cane, the end of 
 which he kept on the ground, holding the top of it at some 
 distance from him. 
 
 " Please, sir, will you tell me if these are the slaves ? " 
 said Hattie. 
 
 He looked round, while he kept his arm and the top 
 of his cane describing large arcs of a circle. 
 
 " They are our colored people, Miss," said he, ex 
 changing a smile with your Uncle and me. 
 
 " Well, sir," said Hattie, more earnestly than before, 
 " are they slaves ? " 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. Gl 
 
 He politely nodded assent, but was apparently inter 
 ested by something which caught his eye. He then took 
 out a snuff-box, and, looking round about him while open 
 ing it, said, 
 
 " Some of them dress too much, Miss , too much, 
 altogether." 
 
 " Kid gloves of all colors," said Hattie, soliloquiz 
 ing. " Red morocco Bibles and hymn-books. What a 
 white cloud of a turban ! Part of the choir, I take 
 it, those, with their singing-books. Elegant spruce 
 young fellow, isn t he, Aunt ? with the violoncello. Ven 
 erable old couple, there ! over eighty, both of them. 
 Well," continued Hattie, " I will give up, if these are 
 the slaves." 
 
 " Don t make up your mind too suddenly," said your 
 Uncle ; u you will see other things." 
 
 " Uncle," said she, " what I have seen here in fifteen 
 minutes shows me that at least one half of that which I 
 have learned at the North about the slaves is false. Our 
 novels and newspapers are all the time misleading 
 us." 
 
 " And yet," said your Uncle, " perhaps everything they 
 say may be true by itself; it may have happened." 
 
 " Why, Aunt," said she, " such a load is gone from my 
 mind since looking upon these colored people that I feel 
 almost well. Why, there s a wedding ! " said she. " Driver, 
 do stop ! Uncle, please let us go in." 
 
 They left me, and went into a meeting-house, where a 
 black bridegroom, in a blue broadcloth suit, white waist 
 coat, kid gloves, patent-leather shoes, and white hose, and 
 an ebony bride, in white muslin caught up with jessamines, 
 and a myrtle wreath on her head, had gone in, followed 
 by a train of colored people. The white people, invited 
 
62 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 guests, it seems, were already assembled. The sexton 
 told your Uncle that the parties were servants, each to a 
 respectable family. This was a new picture to Hattie. 
 She said that in looking back to the steamboat, an hour 
 ago, the revelations made to her by what she had seen 
 and heard, in that short time, all new, all surprising and 
 delightful, afforded her some idea of the sensations of a 
 soul after it has been one hour within the veil. We sat 
 in the carriage, and saw the procession pass out, when 
 the choir, who had been in the church before the wed 
 ding, practising tunes, resumed their singing. 
 
 "Now the idea," said Hattie, after we had listened 
 awhile, " that they can forget that they are slaves long 
 enough to meet and practise psalm-tunes ! " 
 
 " You evidently think," said your Uncle, " that they 
 would not sing the Lord s songs, if this were to them a 
 strange land." 
 
 " They certainly have not hung their harps upon the 
 willows by these rivers of Babylon," said Hattie. 
 
 " Why, some of our people at the North are to-day 
 writhing in anguish, because of these slaves, and are im 
 precating God s vengeance, and praying that the slaves 
 may get their liberty, even by violence, while the slaves 
 themselves are practising psalm-tunes ! " 
 
 " And getting married," said your Uncle. 
 
 " Yes, Sir," said Hattie, " and this week our paper 
 
 will come to us from New York loaded with articles about 
 bondage and sum of all villanies, and poor, toil-worn 
 slaves. Toil-worn ! I never saw such a lively set of 
 people. Do see that little mite of a round black child, 
 in black jacket and pants ; he looks like a drop of ink ; 
 Oh, isn t he cunning ! Little boy ! what is your " 
 
 " Come, come ! " said your Uncle, " you are getting too 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 63 
 
 much excited ; you will pay for all this to-morrow with 
 one of your headaches." 
 
 But a new surprise awaited us. The driver stopped 
 opposite a large, plain-looking building, and told us that 
 we had better step in. On entering, w6 involuntarily 
 started back, for I never saw a house more densely filled ; 
 and all were blacks. It was a sable cloud ; but the sun 
 was in it. The choir were singing a select piece. The 
 principal soprano, an elegant-looking black girl, dressed 
 in perfect taste, held her book from her in her very small 
 hand covered with a straw-colored glove. The singing 
 was charming. We asked a white-headed negro in the 
 vestibule what was going on. 
 
 " Why, it is Easter Monday, Missis." 
 
 " Is this an Episcopal church ? " 
 
 "No; Baptist." 
 
 "What are all these people here for?" said your 
 Uncle. 
 
 " Why, to worship, Sir, I hope. It s holiday." 
 
 " Do they go to church, holidays ? " 
 
 " Why," said he, with a smile and bow, " some of the 
 best of em, p raps." 
 
 We returned to the carriage. 
 
 " Think," said your uncle, " of two thousand people at 
 the North spending a part of Artillery Election Day in 
 Boston, for example, in going to church ! " 
 
 "Well," said Hattie, "if I were not to live another 
 day, I would bless God for having let me live to see these 
 things. I am so glad to find people happy who I had 
 supposed were weeping and wailing." 
 
 We admonished her that she had not seen the whole 
 of slavery. 
 
 A very interesting coincidence happened to us the next 
 
64 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 day. We took tea at Rev. Mr. s. A splendid 
 
 bride-cake adorned the table. As Hattie was admiring 
 the ornaments on the cake, the lady of the clergyman 
 smiled and said, 
 
 " This is from a colored wedding." 
 
 Sure enough, that black bride whom we saw the day 
 before had sent her minister s wife this loaf. Said 
 
 Miss , "I was hurrying to get a silk dress made 
 
 last week, but my dressmaker put me off, because she 
 was working for Phillis B. s wedding." 
 
 We both gave a glance at Hattie. She sat gazing at 
 
 Miss , her lips partly open, her eyes moistened, 
 
 a picture in which delight and incredulity were in pleas 
 ant strife, 
 
 We have been in the interior a fortnight. One thing 
 filled me with astonishment, soon after I came here, namely, 
 to find widow ladies and their daughters, all through the 
 interior of Southern States, living remote from other hab 
 itations, surrounded by twenty, fifty, or a hundred slaves. 
 Hattie and I spent a week with a widow lady, whose head 
 slave was her overseer. There was not a white man 
 within a mile of the house. More than twenty black 
 men, slaves, were in the negro quarter. I awoke the 
 first night, and said to Hattie, 
 
 " Do you know that you are sleeping on a volcano ? " 
 " What do you mean, Aunt ? You frighten me." 
 " Well, it will not make an eruption to-night," said I. 
 " We will examine into it to-morrow." 
 
 At breakfast I asked the lady how she dared to live so. 
 E told her that we at the North generally fancied South 
 ern people sleeping on their arms, expecting any night to 
 be murdered by their slaves. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 65 
 
 " It ought to be so, ought it not ? " said she, " according 
 to your Northern theory of slavery ; and it may get to 
 be so, if your people persist in some of their ways. My 
 only fear is of some white men who live about two miles 
 off. I keep two of my men-servants in the house at 
 night as a protection against white depredators." 
 
 " But," said Hattie, " there have been insurrections. 
 Are you not afraid that your slaves will rise and assert 
 their liberty ? " 
 
 The lady smiled and was evidently hesitating whether 
 to answer seriously or not, when Hattie continued, 
 
 " Aunt ! now I see what you meant by our sleeping on 
 a volcano." 
 
 " Yes," said I, u we at the North often speak of you 
 Southerners as sleeping on a volcano. Our idea is that 
 the blacks here are prisoners, stealing about in a sulky 
 mood, vengeance brooding in their hearts, and that they 
 wait for their time of deliverance, as prisoners in our 
 state-prison watch their chance to escape." 
 
 " Well," said she, " I believe I am the only slave 
 on the premises. I am sure that no one but myself is 
 watching for a chance to escape. I would run away 
 from these people if I could. But what shall I do with 
 them ? I ani not willing to sell them, for when I have 
 hinted at leaving, there is such entreaty for me to remain, 
 and such demonstrations of affection and attachment, that 
 T give it up. 
 
 " Here," said she, "are seven house-servants, large and 
 small, to do work which at the North a man and two ca 
 pable girls would easily do. I have to devise ways to sub 
 divide work and give each a share. My husband carried 
 it so far that he had one boy to black boots and another 
 shoes, and these two bureaus were kept separate." 
 
66 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 " Oh," said I, " what a curse slavery is to you ! " 
 
 " As to that," said she, " it is the negroes who are a 
 curse, not their slavery. So long as they are on the 
 same soil with us, the subordination which slavery estab 
 lishes makes it the least of two evils. If there is any 
 curse in the case, it is the blacks themselves, not their 
 slavery. Were it not for their enslavement to us, we 
 should hate them and drive them away, like Indiana 
 and Illinois and Oregon and Kansas. Now we cherish 
 them, and their interests are ours, 
 
 " Two distinct races," said she, " never have been able 
 to live together unless one was subordinate and dependent. 
 This, you know, all history teaches. Your fanatics say it 
 should not be so ; they talk about liberty, equality, and 
 fraternity, and put guns and pikes into the hands of the 
 inferior race, here, to help them rise in the scale of be 
 ing, as they term it. What God rr ,ans to accomplish in 
 this matter of slavery I do not see. 
 
 " Suppose, merely for illustration," said she, " that cot 
 ton should be superseded. Vast numbers of our slaves 
 might then be useless here. What would become of 
 them ? We should implore the North to relieve us of 
 them, in part. Then would rise up the Northern antipa 
 thy to the negro, stronger, probably, in the abolitionist 
 than in the pro-slavery man ; and as we sought to remove 
 the negroes northward and westward, the Free States 
 would invoke the Supreme Court, and the Dred Scott de 
 cision, and then we should see, with a witness, whether the 
 black man has any rights on free soil which the orig 
 inal settlers * are bound to respect. Think of bleeding 
 Kansas, even, refusing to incorporate negro-suffrage in 
 her constitution, when left free to follow the dictates of 
 common sense, and a wise self-interest. I sometimes 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 67 
 
 think that that one thing, as a philosophical fact, is worth 
 all the trouble which Kansas has cost. It cannot be 
 unholy prejudice against color. It is human nature 
 asserting the laws which God has established in it. 
 
 " I never," said she, " find abolitionists quoting the 
 whole of the verse which says : and hath made of one 
 blood all the nations of the earth. " 
 
 " What," said I, " do they leave out ? " 
 
 " * And hath fixed the bounds of their habitations, are 
 some of the next words," said she. 
 
 But you will tire of this. I will resume my story. I 
 will only say that I told the lady that some of my gentle 
 man friends would call her a strong-minded woman. 
 
 Your letter made me think of something which hap 
 pened to a lady, a fellow-traveller of ours, a few weeks 
 ago. She came here to visit a lady whose husband owns 
 one hundred and fifty slaves. The morning after she 
 reached the plantation, as she told me, she was awaked 
 by the cracking of whips. She listened ; human voices, 
 raised above the ordinary pitch, were mingling with the 
 sounds. She lay till she could endure it no longer. 
 Coming down to the piazza, she saw a white man mend 
 ing a harness on a horse. " Those whips," said she, in 
 quiringly, " they have rather interfered with my peace. 
 Any of the colored people been doing wrong?" He 
 hesitated, and kept on fixing his harness, till, finally, he 
 turned round, for he had been standing with his back 
 to her and, as she supposed, to hide his chagrin at being 
 questioned on so trying a subject. " Truth is, Madam," 
 said he, taking a large piece of tobacco and a knife from 
 his pocket, and helping himself slowly, "truth is, we 
 have so much of this work to do, we have to begin early. 
 
68 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 Sorry it disturbed you ; " and he gathered up the reins 
 and drove off. 
 
 The whips kept up their racket. " Here," said she to 
 herself, "is the house of Bondage. How can I spend a 
 month here ? " She thought that she would peep round 
 the house. Yet she feared that she should be considered 
 as intruding into things which she had better not meddle 
 with. But the screams became so fearful that she could 
 no longer restrain herself. She rushed round the corner 
 of the house, and came full against a black woman rins 
 ing some fustian clothes in a tub near the rain-spout. 
 " Do dear tell me," said she, " what they are doing to 
 those people. Who is whipping them ? What have they 
 done?" The black woman stopped, and looked round 
 .without taking her hands from her tub, and then said, as 
 she went on rinsing, " Lorfull help you, Missis, dem s de 
 young uns scaring de birds out of de grain." 
 
 What bliss there was to her in that moment of relief ! 
 Six or eight little negroes were sauntering about at their 
 morning work, each having a rude whip, with tape for a 
 snapper, interrupting the hungry birds at their breakfast. 
 
 I expected to see a wretched, down-trodden, alms-house 
 looking set of creatures ; for the word slave, and all the 
 changes which are rung on that word, made me think 
 only of people who are convicts, such as you see in the 
 state-prison yard at Charlestown, Mass. I never ex 
 pected that they would look me in the face, but would 
 skulk by me as a spy or enemy. A Christian heart is 
 overjoyed to find what religion and society have done 
 for these colored people. If one who had never heard 
 of " slavery " should be set down here, the Northern idea 
 of " bondage" would not soon occur to him. 
 
 In the Presbytery which includes Charleston, S. C., 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 69 
 
 there are two thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine 
 church-members, and of these one thousand six hundred- 
 and thirty-seven, more than one half, are colored. In 
 State Street, Mobile, there is a colored Methodist Church 
 who pay their minister, from their own money, twelve 
 hundred dollars a year. Not long since they took up a 
 voluntary contribution for Home Missions, amounting to 
 one hundred and twenty dollars. Their preacher was 
 sent by the Conference, according to rotation, into another 
 field, and the blacks presented him with a valuable suit 
 of clothes. 
 
 You see things here, good and evil, side by side, and 
 mixed up together, one thing counterbalancing another. 
 If you reason theoretically upon this subject, as you do 
 " about the moon," to quote from your letter, it is enough 
 to make one almost a lunatic, and I do not wonder that 
 some of our good people at the North, who pore over this 
 subject in this way, are on the borders of insanity. 
 
 My great mistake at the North with regard to this sub 
 ject of slavery was, I reasoned about it in the abstract, 
 instead of considering it in connection with those who are 
 slaves under our laws, bound up with us in our civil con 
 stitution. Things might be true or false, right or wrong, 
 in connection with the enslavement of a race who had 
 never been slaves, which cannot be applied to the colored 
 people of the South. Hence, the arguments and the ap 
 peals founded on the wrongfulness of reducing you or me 
 to slavery are obviously misapplied when used to urge 
 the emancipation of these slaves. Moreover, my thoughts 
 about slavery were governed by my associations with the 
 word slave, in its worst sense. This is wholly wrong, and 
 it is the source of most of our mistakes on this subject. 
 
 Dreadful things happen here to some of the slaves in 
 
70 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 the hands of passionate men. One slave who had run 
 away was caught, and was beaten for a long time, and 
 melted turpentine was then poured upon his wounds. 
 He lingered for several hours. But the horror and ex 
 ecration which this deed met with were no greater at the 
 North than at the South. It cannot be denied that sla 
 very, as well as marriage, affords peculiar provocations 
 and facilities for cruel deeds, according to the doctrine 
 of your friend and fellow-Sophomore. But in which sec 
 tion there is the more of unpunished wickedness, I am 
 slow to pronounce, for I do not wish to condemn my own 
 people, nor to justify others in their sins. An excellent 
 minister in Cincinnati not long since preached a sermon 
 on murder, in which he stated that " during his residence 
 in that city, there had been more than one hundred mur 
 ders, or an average of two a month, while in no instance 
 had the perpetrator been executed." Reading lately of a 
 husband at the North throwing oil of vitriol from a bot 
 tle, filled for the purpose, over his wife s face and neck, 
 and of a Northern clergyman feeding his young wife, as 
 she sat on his knee, with apple on which he had sprinkled 
 arsenic, I questioned whether human nature were not 
 about the same everywhere. The theoretical right of a 
 master, in certain cases, to put his slave to death, without 
 judge or jury, is controlled by the self-interest of the 
 owner who, of course, does not recklessly destroy his 
 own property. The slave-codes are no just exponent of 
 the actual state of things in slavery. For example, by 
 law a master may not furnish his slave with less than a 
 peck of corn a week. This has a barbarous look. But 
 to see the slaves feasting on the fat of the land you certain 
 ly would not be reminded of the " peck of corn," except 
 by contrast. There must be some legal standard, below 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 71 
 
 which if an inhuman master falls in providing for his 
 servant, he can be prosecuted. Hence the "peck of 
 corn." By the will of an eminent citizen at the North, 
 establishing courses of lectures for all coming time, the 
 pay of each lecturer is to be determined by the market 
 value, at the time, of a bushel of wheat. This is a fair 
 standard for the unit of measure. 
 
 In arguing with one who should insist that the abuses 
 in slavery are a reason for breaking up the institution in 
 this country, I should feel justified in maintaining that 
 there are as many instances of a happy relation between 
 master and servant in the Southern country as there are 
 happy marriages in the same number of households any 
 where. Let there be four millions of an inferior, de 
 pendent race mixed up with a superior race, anywhere 
 on earth, and of course, while human nature is what it 
 is, there will be hardships, wrong-doings, oppressions, and 
 barbarisms. At the North, we get scraps of anguish in 
 the newspapers relating to hardships at the South; and 
 many pore upon them till they make themselves half-crazed. 
 All the circumstances serving to qualify the narrative are 
 sometimes withheld, and the stories are told with dramatic 
 art. There is sorrow enough everywhere to furnish ma 
 terial for such kind of writing, especially to those who 
 make it their calling, or find it for their interest, to pub 
 lish it. But the goings-on of life, at the South, with its 
 alleviations and comforts, the practical mitigations of an 
 oppressive system, theoretical evils qualified by difference 
 of color, constitution, and history, and all the goodness 
 and mercy which Christianity and a well-ordered state 
 of society provide, we at the North do not see. Nor do 
 our people consider that running away, and the complaints 
 of the slaves, are partly chargeable to the discontent and 
 
72 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 restlessness of human nature ; but we seem to take it for 
 granted that every one who flees from the South is as 
 though he had escaped from a prison-ship. 
 
 While at the North, I remember reading an article, 
 signed with initials, in a prominent Massachusetts maga 
 zine, which contained this sentence : " Arsenic is univer 
 sally in possession of the negroes; but it is considered 
 the part of wisdom, where families are poisoned, that the 
 fact should be kept as secret as possible." This was 
 brought very powerfully to my mind one day on passing 
 through King Street, in Charleston, and seeing for a 
 painted sign over an apothecary s shop, a tall, benevolent- 
 looking negro, in his shirt sleeves, behind a golden mor 
 tar, with the pestle in his hands, as though at work. 
 
 Now, I thought with myself, as I stood and enjoyed 
 the sight, what a palpable and eloquent, though unde 
 signed and silent, refutation that is, of all such Northern 
 chimeras. If poisons are mixed with articles of food or 
 medicine by the negroes with any noticeable frequency, 
 the sign of a negro compounding medicines for public 
 sale would surely be, to customers, the most detersive 
 sign which an apothecary could erect over his premises. 
 That little incident, and things like it, which are meeting 
 you at every turn, show the state of things here to be 
 in pleasing contrast to the horrors with which the im 
 aginations of many of us Northerners are peopled. I find, 
 in the " Charleston Mercury," a good cut of this " negro 
 and golden mortar," and I send it to you as an appro 
 priate answer to much of your letter. 
 
 Our landlord, driving us about the country the other 
 day, and needing silver change, came to a gang of slaves 
 in a field, and cried out, " Boys, got any silver for a five 
 dollar gold piece ? " Several hands went into as many 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 73 
 
 pockets, at once, and a lively fellow among them getting 
 the start, jumped over the fence, and changed the money. 
 I had been here a month when I received your letter, 
 and when I read it I at first laughed as heartily, I sus 
 pect, as " the pro-slavery Senior " did. J?hen I- pitied 
 you, and I pitied myself for my own former ign.orance, 
 and I pitied very many of our Northern people, and, not 
 the least, such persons as poor " Isaiah," who I know are 
 honest, but are grievously misled. The word slavery 
 is, to us, an awful word. Very much of our anti-slavery 
 feeling is a perfectly natural instinct. You cannot see 
 Java sparrows in a cage, nor even a mother-hen tied to 
 her coop, without a lurking wish to give them liberty. On 
 thinking of being " a slave," we immediately make the 
 case our own, and imagine what it would be for us to be 
 in bondage to the will of another. We cannot easily be 
 convinced that this is not exactly parallel with being one 
 of the slaves at the South, nor that to be a slave does not 
 have these things for its inseparable conditions, which, we 
 imagine, are always obtruding their direful visages ; name 
 ly, " auction-block," " overseer," " whip," " chattelism," 
 " separations," " down-trodden," " cattle." Hence it is 
 easy for orators and preachers to work on our sympathies. 
 There are scattered facts enough to justify any tale which 
 any public speaker chooses to relate. I confess that my 
 respect for many of our Northern people has not risen, 
 as I see them from this point of view. They ought not 
 to be so easily duped, so ready to believe evil, so quickly 
 carried away by partial representations, and so unwilling 
 to take comprehensive views of such a subject as this. 
 I condemn myself in speaking thus ; I partly blame the 
 novel-writers, and the editors of party papers, and politi 
 cal leaders. But we ought at the North to understand 
 4 
 
74 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 this subject better, to listen willingly to information from 
 great and good men who have spent their lives among 
 the slaves, and to discriminate between the evil and the 
 good. The result may be that we shall not change our 
 inbred views, nor cease to dissent from those who advo 
 cate slavery as a necessary means of civilization in its 
 highest forms ; but we shall certainly differ from those 
 who declare it to be, practically, an unmitigated curse to 
 all concerned. I am often made to wish that the South 
 erners could be relieved of our Northern hostility and its 
 effects upon them, just to see them laboring, as they then 
 would, to correct certain evils which ought to be redressed. 
 We are all apt to neglect our duty, more or less, when 
 we are suffering abuse. 
 
 Educate this people, some years longer, in the way in 
 which they are going on, and they cannot be slaves in 
 any objectionable sense. Tens of thousands of them, now, 
 are not slaves in any such sense, and they never can be ; 
 they could not be recklessly sold at auction ; the owners 
 would revolt at it, and those in want of servants would 
 meet with great competition in obtaining such as these. 
 A church-member who should separate husband and wife 
 for no fault, would be disciplined at the South as surely 
 as for inhumanity at the North. But oh, we say at the 
 North, only to think, that all those fine-looking people 
 whom Hattie saw from the barouche, that Monday 
 afternoon, were liable on Tuesday morning to have their 
 kid gloves and finery taken from them, and to be marched 
 off to the auction-block ! Hence our commiseration. 
 And it is a most groundless commiseration. 
 
 One thing is especially impressed on my mind. There 
 being sins and evils in slavery, as all confess, there are 
 men and women here who are perfectly competent 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 75 
 
 to manage them without our help. There is nothing 
 that seems to me more offensive than our self-righteous 
 ness, as I must call it, at the North, in exalting ourselves 
 above our fathers and brethren of all Christian denomi 
 nations at the South ; as though there were^no conscience, 
 no Christian sensibility, no piety here, but it must .all be 
 supplied from the North. When I hear these Southern 
 ministers preach and pray, and see them laboring for the 
 colored people, and then think of our designation of our 
 selves at the North, " friends of the slave," and remember 
 that all our anti-slavery influence has been positively in 
 jurious to the best interests of the slave at the South, I 
 have frequently been led to exclaim, What an inesti 
 mable blessing it would be to this colored race, and to our 
 whole land, if anti-slavery, in the offensive sense of that 
 word, could at once and forever cease ! and I have as 
 often questioned in my own mind whether slavery has 
 not been, and is not now, the occasion of more sin at the 
 North than at the South, and whether we at the North 
 are not more displeasing in the sight of God for the things 
 which are said and done there, in connection with anti- 
 slavery, than the South with all the sins and evils inci 
 dent to slave-holding. I am coming to this belief. 
 
 The people who most frequently excite my commis 
 eration are the free blacks. They are "scattered and 
 peeled." The Free States dread their coming ; they can 
 not rise in the Slave States. Even the slaves look down 
 upon them, sometimes. " Who are you ? " said a slave to 
 a free black, in my hearing ; " you don t belong to any 
 body ! " Some States have given them notice to quit, 
 within a specified time, or they must be sold. Some here 
 insist that slavery is the only proper condition for the 
 blacks, and they would reduce them back to bondage. 
 
76 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 Others remonstrate at this as cruel. Surely it is a choice 
 of evils for them, to be free, or to be slaves, if they remain 
 here. There is one thought that affords a ray of conso 
 lation, they are better off, in either condition, than they 
 once were in Africa. It is unquestionable to my mind 
 that their relation to the whites, even in bondage, is, as the 
 general rule, mercy to them, while they are on the same 
 soil with the whites. Allow it to be theoretically wrong 
 to be a slave, it is, under existing circumstances, pro 
 tection and a blessing, compared with any arrangement 
 which has yet been proposed. I have not sufficient pa 
 tience to argue with those, North or South, who contend 
 for slavery as a normal condition. I should be called at 
 the North " pro-slavery ; " but the North is in a passion 
 on this subject. I am not, and I never can be, an advo 
 cate for this relation, in itself, but as a present necessity. 
 
 I once heard a speaker at an anti-slavery meeting at 
 home say, " They tell us how elevated the blacks are, 
 how intelligent, how pious ; that shows how fit they are 
 for freedom, how wrong it is to hold such people in bond 
 age. As much as you raise the slaves in our opinion, 
 you deepen the guilt of the slave-holder." 
 
 This used to dwell much on my mind. I see the thing 
 differently now. You remember your Uncle Enoch, from 
 Madras, who made your first Malay kite. I remember a 
 fable which he told you when he was flying the kite for 
 the first time. " A kite," he said, " high in the air, reasoned 
 thus : If, notwithstanding this string, I fly so high, what 
 would I not do, if I could break away ! It gave a dash 
 and became free, and was soon in the woods." I do not 
 mean to strain the comparison ; but, certainly, a string 
 has raised, and now keeps up, the colored race, here. 
 How they would do, if the string were cut, let wiser heads 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 77 
 
 than mine decide. They cannot have my scissors, at 
 present. 
 
 The way to be friends of the slave, I now see, is to be 
 the real friends of their masters, and to pray that the in 
 fluences of truth and love may fill their hearts. Where this 
 is the case, the slaves, as a laboring class, are better off 
 than any separate class of laboring people on earth, both 
 for this world and the next. 
 
 As to setting them free at once and indiscriminately, it 
 would be as unjust to them as it originally was to steal 
 them from Africa. So it appears to me. What God 
 means to do with them, no one can tell. That He has 
 been doing a marvellous work of mercy for the poor 
 creatures is manifest. They were slaves at home ; they 
 have changed their situation to their benefit. I have 
 made up my mind to leave this great problem the 
 destiny of the blacks to my Maker, and, in the mean 
 time, pray in behalf of the owners, that they may have 
 a heart to act toward them according to the golden rule. 
 I am glad that I am not oppressed with the responsibility 
 of ownership. Those who assume it should be encour 
 aged by us to treat their charge as a trust committed to 
 them for a season. I do not argue, much less plead, for 
 the continuance of this system ; it may be abolished very 
 soon, but that is with Providence. I have acquired no 
 feelings toward the institution which would not lead me 
 to rejoice in emancipation the moment that it would be 
 for the good of the colored people. 
 
 You are looking for my letter to furnish you with 
 details of horrors in slavery. Wherever poor human 
 nature is, there you will find imperfection and sin ; and 
 of course power over others is always liable to great 
 abuses. If I were to follow the plan of those who col- 
 
78 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 lect the horrors of slavery and spread them out before 
 our Northern friends, but should gather merely the beau 
 tiful and touching incidents which I meet with, and which 
 are related to me, I could make people think that slavery 
 is not an evil. But I have not seen an intelligent South 
 erner who, admitting all that we had said about the hap 
 piness of the slaves as a class, did not go far beyond me 
 in declaring that the presence of a subject, abject race, 
 cannot fail to be an evil. There is not an ultraist at the 
 North, whom, if he had their confidence, and were not 
 put in antagonism to him, the Southerners could not 
 make ashamed, and put to silence, by telling him evil 
 things about slavery, which he had never contemplated, 
 and by admitting most fully things which he would ex 
 pect them to deny. But they are placed in a false posi 
 tion by his clamor and anger, which set them against 
 him and his doctrines. They say, " Allowing all that the 
 North asserts, here are the colored people on our hands ; 
 what are we to do with them ? " Not one of the North 
 ern " friends of the slave," nor all of them together, have 
 ever proposed a feasible plan with regard to the disposal 
 of the slaves, which would be kind or even humane to 
 the blacks. Moreover, theoretical arguments against 
 slavery, and representations of it, from many quarters, 
 are so palpably wrong, that replies to them and refuta 
 tions are counted by us at the North as defences of " op 
 pression ; " which they were never designed to be. I am 
 surprised at the extent and depth of real anti-slavery 
 feeling at the South. Sometimes I question whether 
 Providence is not permitting the antagonism of the North 
 and South to continue just to compel the South to hold 
 these colored people in connection with themselves for 
 their good, until God s purposes of mercy for them are 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 79 
 
 accomplished, and " the time, times and half a time " of 
 their captivity is fulfilled. If Northern resistance to 
 slavery had ceased, perhaps the South would have rid 
 herself of the blacks sooner than would have been for 
 their good. 
 
 I hope that you will not think me " a strong-minded 
 woman " in what I here repeat to you of the opinions and 
 expressions which I have gathered in listening to the con 
 versation of intelligent people on this subject. I write 
 these things for your instruction, and also as memoranda 
 for my own future use. 
 
 It is a cherished idea with many excellent people that 
 the time will come when there will not be a slave in this 
 land, nor on the earth. If they mean by this that the 
 time will come when every man in every face will see a 
 brother and a friend, it is certainly true. But if they 
 mean by it that ownership in man will come to an end, 
 their opinion and prophecy are as good as those of men 
 who should undertake to differ from them, and no better ; 
 while both would be entirely presumptuous in being posi 
 tive on such a subject. Some people seem to think that, 
 in the good time coming, it is as though we should dwell 
 out-of-doors, among flowers and fruits, with few wants, 
 these being supplied by the spontaneous offerings of nature. 
 
 Others, however, suppose that we shall still need some 
 to shovel, take care of horses, work over the fire the 
 greater part of the day in preparing food, go of errands, 
 and, in short, be a serving class. They suppose that the 
 same sovereign God which distributes instincts, and wis 
 dom, variously, to animals, and gifts of understanding to 
 men, will, in the same sovereign way, create men and 
 women with such degrees of capacity and suscepti 
 bility as will lead inevitably to their being superiors and 
 
80 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 inferiors, and that this will be, as it is now where love 
 and kindness reign, the source of the greatest happiness 
 to all concerned. 
 
 This being so, none of us will venture to say that no 
 one of the existing races of men will, to the end of time, 
 be of such gentle, dependent natures as to find their 
 highest happiness and welfare in being, generally, in the 
 capacity of servants. Some of all races, we do not ob 
 ject, may be servants to the end of time. No one will 
 say to his Maker that it will be unjust for Him to put a 
 whole race of men forever in that serving condition, mak 
 ing them, according to their capacity, most happy in being 
 so. For " Who hath been His counsellor ? " That the 
 Africans are under a cloud of God s mysterious provi 
 dence, no one denies. I will not dictate to my Maker 
 when He shall remove that cloud, while I still endeavor to 
 mitigate the effects of it upon my fellow-creatures, the 
 blacks. I do not know that he may not perpetuate, to 
 the end of time, a relationship of dependency to other 
 races in this African race. I know nothing about it. 
 But I always feel impelled to say these things, when I 
 hear good men confidently predicting that ownership 
 in man will soon and forever come to an end. I re 
 ply, It may be in the highest measure necessary to the 
 happiness of the human family, at its best estate, that one 
 race, or that races, should be in the relation of inferiors, 
 finding their very best advantage in the relative place 
 which a sovereign God has assigned them in the scale of 
 intelligence, by holding that relation to the end of time. 
 Of course it would cease to be a curse ; it would become 
 one of those subordinate parts in the great orchestral 
 music of life which subdue and soften it for the highest 
 effect. If any one gets angry at such an idea, I leave 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 81 
 
 him to his folly ; for he is angry without a cause at ine, 
 who have, in this idea, expressed no wish that it may be 
 true ; and he is angry that his Maker should do a thing 
 which contradicts his pet notions about " freedom." But 
 the singular fact of slavery in this land, continued and 
 defended under all political changes, and now having the 
 prospect of being more firmly established than ever by 
 means of our great national commotion on this subject, is 
 enough to make a serious mind reflect whether it be 
 wholly the work of Satan, or whether the providence of 
 God be not concerned in this great and difficult problem. 
 
 It is certainly remarkable that religion, which once 
 gained such a footing in Africa, so soon and entirely died 
 out there, but that the Africans, transported to our land, 
 are of all races the most susceptible to religious influ 
 ences. If we should visit a foreign missionary field, and 
 learn that the mission had been blessed to the extent 
 which has characterized the labors of Christians at the 
 South for their slaves, of whom, according to the " Edu 
 cational Journal," Forsyth, Ga., there are now four 
 hundred and sixty-five thousand connected with the 
 churches of all denominations, we should regard it as 
 the chief of all the works of God in connection with 
 modern missions. It is this providential and Christian 
 view of slavery which quiets my mind. Now, suppose 
 that, contemplating a foreign missionary field where such 
 results should be found, one should object : " But there 
 are evils there ; people do not all treat their dependants 
 as they ought ; hardships, cruelties, and some barbarisms 
 remain ; " we should not, I apprehend, proceed to scut 
 tle such a ship to drown the vermin. But I can see that 
 Satan must be in great wrath to find himself spoiled of 
 so many subjects. One stronger than he has brought 
 4* 
 
82 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 here hundreds of thousands, who, in Africa, would have 
 perished forever, but who are now civilized and Chris 
 tianized. Satan would be glad, I think, to see American 
 slavery come to an end. We have no right to go and 
 steal people in order to convert them ; the salvation of 
 these slaves will not, in one iota, extenuate the guilt and 
 punishment of those who were engaged in the slave-trade. 
 But " the wrath of men shall praise Thee." In the writ 
 ings of anti-slavery men I do not remember to have met 
 with cordial acknowledgments of what religion has done 
 for the slaves at the South. They coldly admit the fact, 
 but often they speak disparagingly of the negro s religion, 
 which is full as good as that of converts in our foreign 
 missionary fields, as good, judging from some things in 
 Paul s Epistle to the Ephesians, as that of some converts 
 to whom he wrote. Our Northern anti-slavery people 
 cannot bear to have anything good discovered or praised 
 in connection with slavery. 
 
 My own hopeful persuasion is, that great and marvel 
 lous works of Divine Providence and grace are in reserve 
 for the African people in their own land, and that we are 
 to prove to have been their educators. Most sincerely 
 do I hope, however, that the number of scholars and 
 future propagators of religion and civilization, imported 
 here from Africa, will not need to be increased, consider 
 ing that one hundred and fifty per cent, of deaths by 
 violence take place in procuring a given number of 
 slaves. This is but one objection ; others are sufficiently 
 obvious. Both parts of that passage of Scripture are 
 exceedingly interesting : " Princes shall come out of 
 Egypt ; Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands unto God." 
 Egypt, the basest of kingdoms, shall yet send forth first- 
 rate men ; and Ethiopia, even, shall be the worshipper 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 83 
 
 of God. I hope that these prophecies, though fulfilled 
 once, are yet to have their great accomplishment. This 
 is my persuasion, and I trust that every nation will be 
 independent ; but I shall not discard the Bible, if my 
 interpretation and hope should fail. Ethiopia is cer 
 tainly stretching out her hands unto God in our Southern 
 country. 
 
 Hattie received some papers for children from a young 
 friend at the North, last week. After attending the col 
 ored Sabbath-school in , and teaching a class of 
 
 nicely-dressed, bright little " slave " gh ls, and hearing 
 the school sing their beautiful songs, with melodious 
 voices, such as, I can truly say, I never heard surpassed 
 at the North, and after looking upon the teachers, who 
 represented the very flower of Southern society, the su 
 perintendent being a man who would adorn any station, 
 you cannot fully conceive with what feelings I read, in 
 one of Hattie s little papers from the North, these lines, 
 set to music for the use of Northern children : 
 
 " I dwell where the sun shines gayly and bright, 
 Where flowers of rich beauty are ever in sight; 
 Here blooms the magnolia, here orange-trees wave; 
 But oh, not for /we, I m a poor little slave. 
 
 " They say { Sunny South is the name of my home ; 
 Tis here that your robins and blue-birds are come, 
 While snows cover nests up, and angry winds rave ; 
 They may rest here, not // / m a poor little slave. 
 
 " Here beautiful mothers, mid splendors untold, 
 Their fairy -like babes to their fond bosoms fold ; 
 My mammy s worked out, and lies here in the grave; 
 There s none to kiss ?ne, I m a poor little slave. 
 
 " I ve heard mistress telling her sweet little son, 
 What Jesus, the loving, for children has done; 
 Perhaps little black ones he also will save ; 
 I ask him to take me, a poor little slave ! " 
 
84 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 No wonder, Gustavus, that you write such letters as 
 your last, fed and nourished as you are on such things 
 as this. I took it with me that evening to a missionary 
 
 party at the house of Judge . I read the lines. 
 
 The ladies said nothing for a time, till at last one said 
 to me, " Such things have helped us in seceding." The 
 Judge took the lines, looked them over, and, smiling, 
 handed them back to me, saying, " Madam, is Massachu 
 setts a dark place ? " " Yes," said a young gentleman, 
 " and the dark places of the earth are full of the habita 
 tions of cruelty." " Oh," said I, " how prejudiced you all 
 are !" Whereupon they all laughed. "Now," said I, "you 
 think, no doubt, that the author of such a piece is malign. 
 I know nothing of its origin, but I venture to say it was 
 written by one whose heart overflows with love to every 
 body, but who is * laboring under a delusion. " I did not 
 tell them of the " delusion " which you were " under," in 
 the Senior s room, but I said, " I have a nephew in a 
 New England college who has the Northern evil very 
 badly. But he is so very kind. Set him to write poetry 
 about the South and he would produce just such lamen 
 table stanzas." Nothing will cure these fancies, about 
 oranges and magnolias not blooming for the little ne 
 groes, so well as to bring these good people where 
 they can see them pelting one another with oranges, 
 such as these poets never dreamed of, and making 
 money by selling magnolias to passengers at the rail 
 way stations. 
 
 " Here beautiful mothers, mid splendors untold," etc. 
 I went with the wife of a planter to her " Maternal 
 Association " of slave-mothers. She gathers the fifteen 
 mothers among her servants once a fortnight, and spends 
 an afternoon talking to them about the education of their 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 85 
 
 children, and reading to them ; and when she knelt with 
 them and prayed, I cried so all the time that I hardly 
 heard anything. Oh what a tale of love was that Mater 
 nal Association ! " Here beautiful mothers mid splen 
 dors untold," etc. ; those words kept themselves in my 
 thoughts. Now tell this to some great " friend of the 
 slave," in Massachusetts, and what will he say ? " All 
 very good, I dare say; hope she will go a little further, 
 and give those fifteen their liberty." I sometimes say, 
 " Must I go back to the North, and hear and read such 
 things?" 
 
 Yes, it is such things as these, simple and inconsider 
 able as you may deem them, which are dividing us irrec 
 oncilably, and breaking up the Union. It is not Messrs. 
 
 , nor their frenzy, but it is Christian brethren who 
 
 allow their Sabbath-school children, for example, to say 
 and sing, " I ve heard mistress telling her sweet little 
 son, what Jesus, the loving, for children has done," making 
 the impression that such a Christian mother leaves a col 
 ored child in her house, without instruction, to draw the 
 inference, if it will, that Jesus, perhaps, will love a " poor 
 little slave ! " There are no words to depict the feeling 
 of injustice and cruelty which this conveys to the hearts 
 of our Christian friends at the South. " Let us go out of 
 the Union !" they cry, in their blind grief; but where will 
 they go ? for while our Northern people write and pub 
 lish and sin or and teach their children to sin " such things, 
 
 O O C5 " 
 
 we can have nothing but mutual hatred, and perhaps ex 
 terminating wars. We must change. If our Northern 
 people would discriminate, and, while retaining all their 
 natural feelings against oppression and man-stealing, 
 would admit that " ownership in man " is not necessarily 
 oppression nor man-stealing, they would do themselves 
 
86 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 justice and contribute to the peace of the country. " But 
 O ! " they say, " look at the iniquitous system. If separat 
 ing families, and destroying marriage, and liberty to chas 
 tise at pleasure, and to kill, are not sin, what is sin ? " So 
 they impute the system, and everything in it, to the people 
 who live under it. How a system can be a sin, it would 
 puzzle some of them, who say that all sin consists in ac 
 tion, to explain. And when they came to look into the 
 system itself, they would find, that if slavery is to exist, 
 some laws regulating it are, of necessity, self-protective, 
 and must be coercive. Even in Illinois, it is enacted that 
 a black man shall not be a witness against a white man. 
 But if the slaves could swear in court, every one sees 
 that the whites must be at the mercy of their servants. 
 The testimony of the honest among them is procured, 
 though indirectly, and it has weight with juries ; but it is 
 a wise provision to exclude them as sworn witnesses. So 
 of other things, which theoretically are oppressive, but 
 practically right ; while many things in the system which 
 are rigorous are as little used as the equipments in an 
 arsenal in times of peace. 
 
 When you quote John Wesley s words and apply them 
 to the South : " Slavery is the sum of all villanies," you 
 unconsciously utter a fearful slander. Whatever may 
 have been true of British slavery, in foreign plantations, 
 in Wesley s day, the good man never would utter such 
 words about our Southern people could he see and enjoy 
 that which gladdens every Christian heart. If slavery 
 be, necessarily, "the sum of all villanies," as you and 
 many use, the expression, the relation cannot exist with 
 out making each slave-holder a villain, in all the degrees 
 of villany. You will do well to look into the cant 
 phrases of " freedom," before you indulge in the use of 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 87 
 
 them. The bishops and clergy of the noble army of 
 Methodists in the South wjjuld not sustain their great 
 chief in applying the phrase in question to the actual 
 state of things in the Southern country. Wesley used 
 those words concerning slavery in foreign colonies ; he 
 had not seen it mixed up with society in England, as it 
 is in the South. 
 
 Taking the blacks as they are, and comparing them 
 also with what they would be in Africa, or if set free, to 
 remain in connection with the whites, slavery is not a 
 curse. To be free is, of course, in itself a blessing. But 
 it depends on many things whether, under existing cir 
 cumstances, being a slave here is practically a curse. 
 Our people generally insist that it must be, and therefore 
 that it is. Here they are mistaken, as I now view the 
 subject. The British people and the French, looking at 
 the blacks in a colony, settle the question of emancipa 
 tion in their own minds without much difficulty. But it 
 would be found to be a different thing to emancipate 
 the colored race, to live side by side with the English 
 people in the mother-country. In that case, a contest 
 between the two races for the possession of power, and 
 innumerable offences and practical difficulties, would, in 
 time, lead to the extermination, or expatriation, of one 
 of the two races, or to their intermarriage, if the univer 
 sal history of such conjunction of races is any guide. 
 
 I do not wonder that the good lady with the " marsh- 
 mallow " exclaimed so at your groundless commiseration 
 of the sick among the slaves. You have no more idea 
 of the practical relation between the whites and the 
 blacks, the owners and the slaves, than most of the Eng 
 lish people, who have never been here, have of our Fed 
 eral and State relations. 
 
88 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 I will tell you an incident which I know to be literally 
 true. 
 
 A lady from a free state was visiting at the South. 
 Calling upon a married lady, a near relative of one who 
 has been Vice-President of the United States, she found 
 her with a little sick black babe at her breast. 
 
 The Northern lady started with astonishment. I am 
 not informed whether she was what is called among us a 
 " friend of the slave ; " the eminent lady friend whom 
 she visited certainly was such, in the best sense. The 
 Northern lady s feelings of repugnance would not be 
 found to be peculiar to her among our Northern people. 
 The little babe died on the lap of the Southern lady. 
 
 So you see that there are more things here than are 
 dreamed of in your philosophy. When you stigmatize 
 the Southerners as oppressors!, my only consolation for 
 you is that you know not what you do. Imagine, now, 
 the Rev. Mr. Blank, a-t the North, relating that little in 
 cident : u Behold and see this monstrous picture of infinite 
 hypocrisy : The Slave-power with a slave at its breast ! 
 Yes, rather than lose one or two hundred dollars worth 
 of human " property," a distinguished lady slave-holder 
 will give her nourishment to a slave-infant. So they fat 
 ten the accursed system out of their own bodies and 
 souls." Such is a fair specimen of this man s frenzy; 
 and there are multitudes all over the Free States who will 
 listen to such language and applaud it. But how cruel it 
 is, how low and wicked ! I pray Heaven to deliver you 
 from being an abolitionist in the cast of your mind, your 
 temper, and spirit. Nothing gives me such an idea of 
 the world of despair as when I read ultra anti-slavery 
 speeches. I see how the lost will hate God s mysterious 
 providence, and revile it ; and how they will fight with 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 89 
 
 each other, and pour out their furious invective and sar 
 casm and vituperation, and scourge one another with their 
 fiery tongues, as they now do, when some one of the party 
 appears to falter. If there were not something truly good 
 in connection with slavery amid all its evils, ! think such 
 men would not oppose it. 
 
 Pray, who are these gentlemen, and who are their ex 
 tremely zealous anti-slavery friends of more respectable 
 standing, that they should have such immense instalments 
 of sympathy and pity for the " poor slave " ? Their 
 neighbors are as susceptible as they to every form of hu 
 man sorrow ; they know as much, their judgments are as 
 sound, their motives are as good as theirs. Had these 
 zealous people made new discoveries, or, were the subject 
 of slavery new, we might give them credit for being on 
 the hill-tops, while we were in the vales. This pas 
 sionate sympathy, on the part of some, for " the down 
 trodden," as they call the negroes, is not like zeal for a 
 theological, or a political, or a scientific, doctrine, which 
 would justify its adherents in rebuking the error and in 
 difference of others ; for if slavery be as they represent 
 it, the proofs of it must be as self-evident as starvation. 
 What if a class of men among us should rage against 
 those who do not contribute largely to the Syrian suffer 
 ers, as the zealous anti-slavery people reproach and even 
 revile those who do not see slavery with their eyes ? We 
 should then say, " Friends, who are you, that you should 
 claim to have all the virtuous sensibility ? " 
 
 But more than this, I doubt, I venture to deny, and 
 that on philosophical grounds, the true philanthropy of 
 these people. For true love and kindness always create 
 something of their own kind where they have full power. 
 Are there any words or acts of love, kindness, gentleness, 
 
90 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 mercy, toward others, in the speeches and doings of the 
 zealous anti-slavery people ? 
 
 I wish that you had been with me, one evening, in a 
 corner of the Methodist meeting-house, where I sat and 
 enjoyed the slaves prayer-meeting. I had been filled 
 with distress that day by reading, in Northern papers, the 
 doings and speeches at excited meetings called to sympa 
 thize with servile insurrection. In this prayer-meeting 
 the slaves rose one after another, went in front, and re 
 peated each a hymn, then resumed their seats, while some 
 one, moved by the sentiments of the hymn, would lead in 
 prayer. A white gentleman presided, according to cus 
 tom, and I was the only other white person present. Go 
 ing to that meeting with the impressions upon my heart 
 of the terrible excitements which you were witnessing at 
 home, and saying to myself, " O my soul, thou hast 
 heard the sound of the trumpet and the alarm of war ! " 
 you cannot imagine what my feelings were when the larg 
 est negro that I ever saw rose and stood before the desk, 
 and repeated the following hymn by Rev. Charles Wes 
 ley. The first lines, you may well suppose, startled me, 
 and made me think that the insurrection had reached even 
 here. 
 
 " Equip me for the war, 
 
 And teach my hands to fight; 
 My simple, upright heart prepare, 
 
 And guide my words aright. 
 
 u Control my every thought, 
 
 My whole of sin remove ; 
 Let all my works in thee be wrought, 
 
 Let all be wrought in love. 
 
 " Oh, arm me with the mind, 
 
 Meek Lamb ! that was in thee; 
 And let my knowing zeal be join d 
 With perfect charity. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 91 
 
 " With calm and temper d mind 
 
 Let me enforce thy call ; 
 And vindicate thy gracious will, 
 
 Which offers life to all. 
 
 " Oh, may I love like thee, 
 
 In all thy footsteps tread; 
 Thou hatest all iniquity, 
 
 But nothing thou hast made. 
 
 " Oh, may I learn the art, 
 
 With meekness to reprove ; 
 To hate the sin with all my heart, 
 
 But still the sinner love." 
 
 You must read this hymn to " Isaiah," and tell him 
 about the prayer-meeting. While the "friends of the 
 slave," as you call them, are holding such humiliating 
 meetings as you describe, in behalf of the slaves, and are 
 vexing themselves and chafing under the imagination of 
 their unmitigated sorrows and " oppression," the slaves 
 themselves, all over the South, are holding prayer-meet 
 ings, and are blessing God that they are " raised way up 
 to heaven s gate in privilege." As I sat in that prayer- 
 meeting I could almost have risen and asked the prayers 
 of the slaves in behalf of many at the North who are 
 making themselves and others nearly insane on their be 
 half. But I thought of my former ignorance and preju 
 dice, and said, "And such were some of you." , 
 
 I will tell you some of the little incidents which meet 
 one every day, and which give you impressions respect 
 ing the relations between the whites and blacks, full as 
 instructive as those received in any other way. 
 
 Crossing a public street, which is steep, in the city of 
 
 , a truckle-cart came by me at great speed, drawn 
 
 by a white boy, with another white boy pushing, and 
 seated in it, erect and laughing, was a fine-looking black 
 
92 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 boy of about the same age as his white playmates. 
 Around the corner of another street there came by me, 
 with a skip-and-jump step, two white girls, about thirteen 
 years old, and between them the arms of the three all 
 intertwined was another girl of the same age, as black 
 as ebony. On they went jumping, and keeping step, and 
 singing. 
 
 I had not been accustomed to such sights in Beacon 
 Street, on my visits to Boston. " Friends of the 
 slave," as we most surely are, and some of us being 
 decorated with that name by way of distinction, signifi 
 cant of our all-absorbing business "to raise the black 
 man at the South to the condition of a human being," 
 when we get them there we are not greeted in the streets 
 with pictures of white and black children on such terms 
 as appeared in these two casual incidents. Nothing at 
 first struck me with greater \vonder at the South than to 
 see the most fashionably dressed ladies in the most public 
 streets stop to help a black woman with a burden on her 
 head, if she needed assistance, or to hold a gate open for 
 a man with a wheelbarrow. 
 
 One white boy cried to another across a street, " Come 
 along, it s most time to be in school." The other an 
 swered, in a petulant tone, " I a n t going to school." 
 A tall, white-headed negro was passing ; his black sur- 
 tout nearly touched the ground ; he had on his arm a 
 very nice market-basket, covered with a snow-white nap 
 kin, and in his right hand a long cane. Hearing what 
 the last boy said, he came to a full stand, put down 
 his basket, clasped his long cane with both hands, and 
 brought it down on the brick sidewalk with three quick 
 raps, and then a rap at each of these points of admira 
 tion : " What ! what ! what ! " said he, drawing himself 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 93 
 
 up to express surprise, and calling out with magisterial 
 voice ; " Go to school ! my son ! go to school ! and 
 larn ! a heap ! " the cane making emphasis at every 
 expression. The white boy retreated under the impres 
 sion of a well-deserved, though kind, rebuke. He did 
 not call the old man " nigger," nor in any way insult 
 him. 
 
 But here is an incident of a different kind. 
 
 Standing to talk with a man who had charge of my 
 baggage, in the passage-way between the baggage-room 
 and the colored passengers apartment. I saw a white 
 man with a pert, flurried manner and coarse look ascend 
 the steps of the cars, and behind him a tall graceful 
 black man, a little older than the other, with signs of 
 gentleness and dignity in his appearance. As he stooped 
 and turned, his air and carriage would have commanded 
 attention anywhere. The white man, seeing him enter 
 the wrong door, cried out to him with an impudent voice, 
 ordered him back, pointed him to the proper room, and 
 told him to go in there and make himself " oneasy," with 
 a laugh at his own attempt at inaccurate talk as he cast 
 a glance at some white men standing by. The black man 
 was his slave. The natural and proper order of things 
 was reversed in their relation to each other. 
 
 I looked at the black man as he took his seat, and, 
 without being observed, I kept my eye on his face. He 
 cast his eye out of the window, as though to relieve a 
 struggle of emotions, but a calm expression settled down 
 upon his features. 
 
 A Southern gentleman, a slave-holder, witnessing the 
 scene with me, said, 
 
 " Disgusting ! There, madam, you have one of the 
 great evils of slavery, irresponsible power in the hands 
 
94 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 of men who are not fit to be intrusted with authority over 
 others. No man, I sometimes think, ought to be allowed 
 to hold slaves till he has submitted to examination as to 
 character, or brings certificates of a good disposition. I 
 know that man. His father was from [a New Eng 
 land State.] He is what we call a torn-down character. 
 His neighbors all " but the signal was given for start 
 ing, and the conversation was broken off. 
 
 My first thought was, How glad I would be to set that 
 man free from such bondage ! The next thought was, 
 Where would I send him to be free from " the power of 
 the dog ? " I had been reading, in a Boston paper, a lec 
 ture delivered in Boston, by a distinguished " friend of the 
 slave," against Mr. Webster and Mr. Choate, before an 
 " immense audience." I thought, How much better it is 
 to be a Christian slave, even to this master, than to sit in 
 the seat of the scornful, applauding such a lecture ! 
 
 The poor slave was having his probation and disci 
 pline, as we all have ours, and he was suffering, as we all 
 do in our turns, from an impudent tongue. Little did he 
 think that a fellow-creature, looking at him at that mo 
 ment, was reminded, by his meekness under insult, of 
 Him, our example, who, under such provocation, opened 
 not his mouth, and that I was made to remember, as I 
 stood there and received instruction from him, that the 
 best alleviation and cure of anguished sensibility under 
 ill-treatment is in this same silence, and in thoughts of 
 Jesus. 
 
 After the cars had started, I took my Bible from my 
 carpet-bag, and read these passages : " Servants, be sub 
 ject to your masters with all fear ; not only to the good 
 and gentle, but also to the froward. For this is thank 
 worthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 95 
 
 grief, suffering wrongfully." Then this is enforced by 
 the example of our incarnate God and Saviour, who is 
 held up to Christian slaves as their example ; and in this 
 connection, not only in this passage, but elsewhere in 
 speaking to slaves, the Apostle brings in the most sub 
 lime truths relating to redemption. You will be struck 
 with this in reading what is said to slaves, that in several 
 cases, the train of thought proceeds directly from their 
 condition and its duties, to the most sublime and beautiful 
 truths of salvation. How divinely wise did these ex 
 hortations to slaves appear to me, that morning, in contrast 
 with the spirit of the Northern abolitionist, and his talk 
 about " Bunker Hill," " 7 6," and his "grandfather s old 
 gun over the mantel-piece," and his injunctions to slaves as 
 to the duty of stealing, and even murdering, if necessary, 
 to effect their liberty. This is not the spirit of the New 
 Testament. The idea of submission on the part of 
 " servants " to " masters," of " pleasing them well in all 
 things," of " fear and trembling," " not purloining but show 
 ing good fidelity in all things," is not found in the Gospel 
 of the abolitionist. He complains that we do not send 
 the true Gospel to the South. There are passages in the 
 Epistles addressed to slaves, which, if faithfully regarded, 
 would make fugitive slave laws for the most part need 
 less. No wonder that the New Testament, with its ex 
 hortations to meekness and patience under suffering, and 
 the duty of those who are " under the yoke," and of 
 masters as being " worthy of honor," and the caution 
 that the slave do not take undue liberty where his master 
 is a believer, nor assert the doctrine of equality in Christ 
 as a ground for undue familiarity, or disobedience, is 
 repudiated by the vengeful spirit of the abolitionist. 
 How well the Apostle understood him ! " If any man 
 
96 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 teach otherwise," that is, contrary to these injunctions 
 as to the duty of slaves who have believing masters, " he 
 is proud, (that is the leading feature of his error) he 
 is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and 
 strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil 
 surmisings." What an anomaly it would be to have an 
 abolition convention opened with reading a collect of 
 Paul s inspired directions to masters and slaves. 
 
 But we never hear anything quoted from the Bible cm 
 the subject but " break every yoke ! " " let the oppressed 
 go free ! " " undo the heavy burdens ! " I was telling a 
 slave-holder of the frequency with which we hear these 
 expressions in public prayer. " I could join in every 
 one of them," said he ; " I am for breaking every yoke, 
 South and North, unbinding every heavy burden, and 
 destroying every form of oppression. But they must 
 be actual, not theoretical, nor imaginary." 
 
 This gentle slave in the cars, we will suppose, refuses 
 opportunities to escape, but complies with the exhorta 
 tions of the New Testament, " enduring grief, suffer 
 ing wrongfully." His master is at last touched by his 
 meekness, his " not answering again." I should relate 
 only that which I know to have happened, should I say, 
 that one day this master is filled with distress on account 
 of sin. He goes out into the cotton-field and finds 
 Jacob. 
 
 " Jacob," he says, " I am a great sinner. Jacob, I feel 
 that I am sinking into hell. Jacob, pray for me. I mean 
 to turn about, if I live." 
 
 u Dat s jest what I ve sought de Lord for, massa, dis 
 six months coming New Year. Let s go up into de loft ; 
 it s whar I ve wrastled for you in prayer." 
 
 He leads the way. The floor of the loft is covered 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 97 
 
 with cotton-seed. A wheelbarrow is in the middle of 
 the floor. Jacob takes off his jacket, and with it brushes 
 the cotton-seed away from one side of the wheelbarrow, 
 lays the jacket down for his master to kneel upon, and 
 goes to the other side. Like Jacob at Peniel, he has 
 power over the angel, and prevails ; he weeps and makes 
 supplication unto him. The master breaks out in prayer. 
 He rises and says, 
 
 " Jacob, forgive me if I ve been unkind to you ; I ve 
 seen that you are a Christian ; now if you want to leave 
 me for anybody else, say so." 
 
 " Thank you, massa ; only sarve de Lord with gladness 
 for all de good things he has done for you, and I ll sarve 
 you de same. Please go home and tell missis ; she told 
 me to pray for you ; twill finish up her joy." 
 
 This is better than running away and going to Canada. 
 Those Christians who send the Gospel to the South by mis 
 sionaries and religious tracts, to promote such scenes as this, 
 do a better work than though they withheld missionaries 
 and tracts from one half of the nation, and called it 
 " Standing up for Jesus." 
 
 I am sometimes inclined to put down all that I see and 
 hear, good and bad, and publish a book to satisfy my 
 truly candid but mistaken friends at the North as to the 
 real truth on this subject. But I have in mind the way 
 in which similar works have already been received and 
 treated by an unreasoning, passionate North. I have 
 amused myself sometimes in imagining what certain writ 
 ers would say to some of the incidents which I have relat 
 ed in this letter. Let me attempt to show you the spirit 
 and manner of our Northern reviewers when one ven 
 tures to state favorable things relating to slavery. I will 
 take some of the incidents already related in this letter 
 
98 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 and let these men review them. I am perfectly familiar 
 with their style, from having been employed in helping 
 your uncle prepare the notices of new publications for 
 
 the " Review." Here, then, I will give you first a 
 
 supposed notice of my little book, should I make one, from 
 a Northern religious newspaper, quoting, in all cases, the 
 identical expressions from articles which I have read : 
 " The authoress, it seems, is yet in her Paradise of 
 slavery. Her i opulent friends and the slave-holders gen 
 erally, it would appear, got up little tableaux for her, to 
 impose on her good-nature. Knowing the times when 
 she took her daily walks, they put the fattest and sleekest 
 black boy whom they could find, into a truckle-cart, and 
 made two of the sons of the * most opulent citizens race 
 down hill with him. Slavery, therefore, is not the bad 
 thing she and we had supposed. The female teacher of 
 a school in the neighborhood of her daily walk was 
 suborned, most probably, by the opulent ladies of the 
 place, to practise another pleasing trick. Two white 
 girls and a black girl were made to practise running with 
 their arms interlocked, and one day, as our friend came 
 in sight, they were pushed out to astonish her with one 
 instance of white girls hugging a negro slave-child. No 
 doubt our friend, on seeing these three together, solilo 
 quized as follows : 
 
 " See Truth, Love, and Mercy in triumph descending, 
 All nature now glowing in Eden s first bloom." 
 
 The old negro, respectable and well off, was one of those 
 rare exceptions to surrounding degradation which you now 
 and then see in Southern cities. The poor slave in the 
 cars, gentle, timid, quivering, was the true exponent ot 
 slavery. Had our authoress filled her book with such 
 illustrations exclusively, she would have written more 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 99 
 
 truthfully, more for her reputation with the real * friends 
 of the slave, and, we confess, more in accordance with 
 our taste." 
 
 A writer in a very respectable publication at the 
 North, already referred to, gave us several years ago 
 a curious piece of criticism on some publication which 
 he regarded as too favorable to slavery. His pages, some 
 of them, were crowded with daggers, in the shape of ex 
 clamation marks, two, three, four, and, in one instance, 
 five, at the end of quotations from the book under review. 
 It was he that made the assertion about the " arsenic," as 
 being " universally in the hands of the slaves." 
 
 I shall now let him review my little stories. I quote 
 many of his words : 
 
 " To show the ignorance and simplicity of our travel 
 ling lady, we give the following, and what will the North 
 say to this new argument in favor of slavery ? namely, 
 a truckle-cart ! a black boy riding ! ! two white boys giv 
 ing him a ride ! ! ! and three girls, one of them black ! arm 
 in arm ! ! romping. It is not the fault of this writer, 
 that she cannot understand a principle ; < she is a New 
 England Orthodox, * and a fair specimen of the limita 
 tions of that type of mankind/ But does not the lady 
 know, why negro boys are put in truckle-carts ? * If not, 
 any of her Southern friends could have told her. We 
 can tell her; we have lived at the South. These 
 white boys were sent on an errand with their cart, and 
 to increase its momentum down hill, and, withal, to tease 
 and worry a fellow-creature, with a skin not colored like 
 their own, they made this poor slave-boy get in. She 
 should have seen the poor creature trudging home, up 
 hill, under a Southern sun, after the little white tyrants 
 had done with him, unless it was the case, which we more 
 
100 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 than half suspect, that the ride was a stratagem to convey 
 the poor child to the auction-block. l How the merry 
 dogs, the white boys, must have laughed at this North 
 ern lady s complacent looks at them. She had no tears 
 for the poor old white-headed negro, who, hearing the 
 word school from the lips of his white young masters, 
 had such a rush of sorrow come over his soul at the 
 thought of the midnight ignorance in which the slave- 
 driver s whip had kept him, that he actually dropped his 
 burden in the public street, and uttered incautious words, 
 for which, no doubt, old as he was, he caught a terrible 
 flogging. Why, in the name of humanity, did not the 
 authoress load her pages, as she might so easily have 
 done, with scenes like that in the cars? There is 
 slavery ! patent ! undisguised ! ! In the other cases it 
 is slavery, indeed, but covered with the pro-slavery 
 lady s snow-white napkin." 
 
 Here is a review of me and of my little stories, by a 
 distinguished New England divine, and author. He has 
 written much on slavery. Having prepared notices of 
 some of his writings on this subject, I am familiar with 
 his turns of thought and modes of expression. I have 
 great regard for him, and always read him with pleasure 
 and profit, not excepting when he writes as follows, in 
 doing which he has the approbation of large numbers 
 among the Northern clergy of all denominations, except 
 the Episcopalians, who, more than other Northern 
 ministers, are remarkably free from ultraisms. 
 
 " Concerning the truckle-cart, * we would say this, 
 that unquestionably the moral power of the incident 
 was all which the writer assumes, but its logical se 
 quences * we utterly deny. Slavery is evil, and only 
 evil, and that continually ; now, to infer that agreeable 
 
THE SABfiE Gl.Ol D. \\ ibt 
 
 relations can subsist between the children of masters and 
 the children of slaves under the immense, malignant, 
 and all-pervading influence of slavery, abhorred of 
 Heaven and all good men, does violence to all sound 
 principles of reasoning, and is at war wjth the mani 
 fest rules of Providence/ 
 
 " And as to the three girls * we are prepared to say 
 that the author did not look deep enough into the philos 
 ophy of human motives under the controlling power of 
 slavery. For slavery makes men improvident, and their 
 children also ; (see Judge Jay, Weld on Slavery, etc.) 
 These white girls, therefore, probably had no money in 
 their pockets ; it was the time of recess ; they were hungry ; 
 the black child we presume had money in her pocket, for 
 by the authoress s own showing (in the story of a slave 
 changing a gold piece for the landlord), slaves may have 
 money of their own. Had our authoress followed her trio 
 down to the confectioner s, there she might have seen 
 these white children cajoling the poor black, and making 
 her treat them ; in preparation for which they affected to 
 put their arms around her ; but, in the true diabolical 
 spirit of slavery, it was only to devour. 
 
 " We have no space to enter philosophically into the 
 instruction afforded us by the old negro and the school 
 boys ; but there is deep meaning in it, which the true 
 friends of the slave, who may read it, will do well to 
 ponder. The old negro is the prophetic representation 
 of his down-trodden race, crying with bewildered accents, 
 he heeds not where, Go to school ! boys ; go to school ! 
 Let a united North echo back his words, suiting their 
 political action to them, and saying to the colored chil 
 dren, with an authority which shall shake the very pillars 
 of the Union, Go to school, boys ! go to school ! 
 
CLOUD. 
 
 " Nor can we, for the tears which dim our sight, speak 
 as we would of the wretched master and his amiable 
 slave in the cars. The sketch reminded us of the best in 
 Uncle Tom. We need books filled with such pictures, to 
 electrify the slumbering sensibilities of the North. Wan 
 ton candor in speaking of slavery, is the most unpardon 
 able of sins. There is a time to tell the whole truth ; but 
 the wise man says, There is a time to keep silence. " 
 
 I did not pretend, Gentlemen Reviewers, that my little, 
 pleasing incidents were arguments in favor of slavery ; 
 you should not have been so alarmed ; you are really 
 rude ; I almost feel disposed to say to you, for each of 
 my tales, as the Rosemary said to the Wild Boar, - 
 
 " Sus, apage ! baud tibi spiro ; " 
 
 which, not having a poetical friend near to translate for 
 me, I venture to render as follows : 
 
 " Thus to the Boar replied the Rosemary: 
 O swine, depart ! I do not breathe for thee." 
 
 In noticing the manner in which many Northern 
 writers, some of them amiable men, receive the candid 
 views and statements of travellers and visitors at the 
 South, I have been made to think of a company of 
 the owls, such as you see in Audubon, listening to the 
 reading of David s one hundred and fourth Psalm, in 
 which he describes nature. Not a smile of satisfaction ; 
 on the contrary, if you 
 
 "Molest the ancient, solitary reign " 
 
 of prejudice in their minds against the South, they either 
 mope, or make a sad noise. With regard to others, are 
 there any limits to their anger and denunciations ? You 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 103 
 
 may, without difficulty, imagine how this appears to the 
 Southerner, who knows the truthfulness of the represen 
 tations which excite this passionate resentment, and how 
 much the character of the North for ordinary candor 
 falls in his esteem, and how little disposed he is to heed 
 their admonitions, and how absurd their demands upon 
 his ecclesiastical bodies to suffer their remonstrances, 
 appear, together with their subsequent withdrawal of 
 fellowship for the reason publicly assigned ; namely, that 
 the South will not let them admonish her " in the Lord." 
 Indeed, whatever may be true of slavery, the South 
 looks on the great body of zealous anti-slavery people as 
 being in as false and unnatural a state of excitement as 
 the Massachusetts people were in the times of witchcraft. 
 A great delusion is over the minds of many at the North, 
 like one of our eastern sea-fogs. It always makes a 
 Southerner merry, when listening, in New York or Bos 
 ton, for example, to a lecture, if the speaker concludes a 
 sentence with some allusion to " freedom," and the people 
 clap and stamp. That the blood should tingle in our 
 veins at so slight a cause, makes him think that we are 
 certainly in need of something worthy of our great ex 
 citability, and that we are thankful for small favors in 
 that way. He does not think less than we of liberty 
 where an occasion makes that name and idea appropri 
 ate ; but that the condition of his slaves should reconse 
 crate for us all the old battle-cries of freedom, seems 
 to him pitiably weak. It shows him how incompetent 
 we are to deal with the acknowledged evils of slavery ; 
 and there are those at the South who are stirred up by 
 us to take extreme views of an opposite kind, which good 
 people there very generally deplore. 
 
 A Southern lady here tells me that some time since, 
 
104 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 being on a visit at the North, she received through the 
 post-office anonymous letters with extracts from news 
 papers containing little items of woe, declared to have 
 been experienced at the South, with here and there de 
 lirious abuse of slave-holders and frenzied words about 
 freedom. She could have matched every one of them, 
 she said, with wife-murders at the North, during her visit. 
 In dealing with people like the slaves, of course men of 
 brutal passions, provoked by their stupidity and negli 
 gence, or exasperated by their crimes, and, in cases of 
 ungovernable anger, venting their displeasure upon their 
 negroes under slight or merely imaginary affronts, give 
 occasion to tales of distress which are nowhere mourned 
 over more deeply than at the South. These cases are 
 the natural results of a superior and inferior class of 
 society, standing in the relation, the one to the other, of 
 proprietor and dependant, and such evils are not peculiar 
 to this institution. Human nature is the same every 
 where. The South is willing to have the abuses of irre 
 sponsible power among them compared with abuses, dis 
 comforts, disadvantages elsewhere. Grant that an owner 
 may abuse his liberty ; ownership leads to more, of care 
 and protection than of abuse and cruelty. The slaves 
 are here ; the question is not, What would be the best 
 possible condition for these people under the sun, but, 
 What is best for them, being on this soil. " Set them all 
 free," is the answer of some. Half the ministers at the 
 North every Sabbath pray for the slaves thus : " Break 
 every yoke ; let the oppressed go free." If this means, 
 Give the slaves their liberty, this would be their most 
 direful calamity ; they would be chased away from every 
 free state, in process of time, and the Dred Scott decision 
 would be invoked, even in Massachusetts, by its present 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 105 
 
 most bitter opposers, and in its most misrepresented 
 forms, as a defence of the American white race against 
 the blacks. " Set them free and hire them ! " is the re 
 ply of others. This, among other effects, would make 
 them a far more degraded people than they now are. 
 Slavery keeps them identified with the whites ; they are 
 more respectable and respected by far, in this relation, 
 than they can be, in the circumstances of the case, if 
 they are detached from the whites. There is no ex 
 pression which conveys a more absolute error than this, 
 and we often meet with it : " He ceased to be a slave, 
 and became a man." I read lately the report of a lecture 
 at the North, by an eminent gentleman, of great moral 
 worth, and highly respected. He said, " A man cannot 
 be, voluntarily, a slave, without having his manhood 
 crushed out of him." That might be true in our case ; 
 but having seen manhood forced into benighted natures 
 here, and splendid specimens of man as the result, I 
 was, by this remark, reminded again of the delusiveness 
 which there is sometimes in the best of logic. You gave 
 us a good specimen in your admirable illustration of no 
 water in the moon. A comparison of the slaves with 
 the free negroes of the North, and in Canada, and with 
 the free colored population in some of the Slave States, 
 will satisfy any impartial spectator that manhood is full 
 as conspicuous in the slaves, as a body, as in the free 
 negroes. 
 
 Here are two extracts from Northern papers, which, 
 true or false, awaken compassion in every human bosom 
 toward the free colored people. Indeed, allowing these 
 statements, so unfavorable to them, to be mostly false, 
 it reveals the antipathy of the white to the colored race 
 when the blacks come to seek equality with the whites. 
 5* 
 
106 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 Let these free blacks be mixed up in large proportions 
 with society in England and Scotland, and if Canadians 
 feel as they are here represented, we may be sure that 
 the present tone of the British people with regard to 
 American slavery and the blacks, would also be modi 
 fied. But here are the extracts : 
 
 " GETTING SICK OF THEM. The colored persons of 
 Toronto, having had a meeting to denounce Colonel John 
 Prince, a member of the Canadian Parliament, for speaking 
 against them, he publishes a reply, in which he says, 
 
 " It has been my misfortune, and the misfortune of my 
 family, to live among those blacks (and they have lived upon 
 us) for twenty-four years. I have employed hundreds of them, 
 and with the exception of one, named Richard Hunter, not 
 one of them has done for us a week s honest labor. I have 
 taken them into my service, fed and clothed them, year after 
 year, on their arrival from the States, and in return have gen 
 erally found them rogues and thieves, and a graceless, worth 
 less, thriftless set of vagabonds. This is my very plain and 
 simple description of the darkies as a body, and it would be 
 indorsed by all the Western white men, with very few excep 
 tions. " 
 
 " UNDERGROUND R. R. RETURN TRAINS. The Cleve 
 land Plaindealer states that every steamboat arriving at that 
 place brings back from Canada families of negroes, who hare 
 formerly fled to the Provinces from the States. They are prin 
 cipally from Canada West. They describe the life and con 
 dition of the blacks in Canada as miserable in the extreme. 
 The West is, therefore, likely to have large accessions to its 
 colored population. The Canada folks do not want them, and 
 have shown a disposition in their Parliament, and otherwise, to 
 discourage their coming to, or remaining in the Provinces. In 
 some instances, the question of ejecting those now resident 
 there, has been discussed. Our Western States will be likely 
 ta experience a similar attack of the black vomito, when they 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 107 
 
 shall have become satisfied with this peculiar Southern luxury. 
 In some localities the superabundant free negro population has 
 already become a burden, while in others they are under se 
 vere restrictions, which amount almost to an exclusion from 
 the limits of the state. 
 
 " Should this exodus from Canada continue to any great ex 
 tent, it would throw such a burden upon those states which 
 have adopted the most liberal policy towards the negro, that it 
 would occasion a reaction in the public sentiment which would 
 compel them to abandon their abolition doctrine and practice, 
 for their own self-protection. We should then hear of fewer 
 attempts to abduct slaves from the slave-holding states ; and 
 abolitionists would be content to allow slaves to remain under 
 the care and protection of their masters. Even though at 
 heart sympathizing with the oppressed and task-worn negro, 
 and yearning towards him with all the love of the professed 
 philanthropist, he would still be permitted to toil and bleed ; 
 for now that the route to Canada has been closed, there is no 
 alternative but -to take them to their own bosoms." 
 
 Compare with this the condition of the free blacks in 
 South Carolina. The amount of property held by them 
 is $1,600,000 ; their annual taxes, $27,000 ; and the free 
 blacks own slaves to the amount of $300,000 in value. 
 
 The above statements teach us that any attempts to 
 force the Southern slaves away from their present rela 
 tion, are in violation of the laws of Providence concerning 
 them. If they become free in a natural way, and can 
 provide for themselves, or be provided for, it is well ; 
 otherwise, the South, and their present relation to the 
 white race, are the bounds of their habitation fixed for 
 them by an all-wise God, till his purpose concerning 
 them as a race shall be made manifest. The people of 
 the Free States ought to thank God that the South is 
 willing to keep the colored people. Instead of inflaming 
 our passions against the abstract wrongfulness of holding 
 
108 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 fellow-men in bondage, we should consider that theo 
 retical justice to the slaves as a whole would be practical 
 inhumanity. The destiny of the colored race here is a 
 dark problem. But it is not for us to penetrate the 
 future. When God is ready to finish his purposes with 
 regard to their continuance with us, He will open a way 
 for their liberation ; in the mean time it is our duty to 
 protect them from their own improvidence and from the 
 neglect and degradation which they would suffer at the 
 hands of the Free States. Instead of aiding slaves to 
 escape, or rejoicing when we hear of runaways, I say we 
 should feel grateful, on our own account, and for the 
 slaves, that the South is willing to harbor them, and we 
 ought to consider that the very best thing to be done for 
 them is to encourage the South in treating them well, 
 mitigating their trials and sorrows, and, in short, comply 
 ing with the Apostle s doctrine and exhortations as to the 
 duty of masters. 
 
 But we have a way, at the North, of delivering over 
 our Southern brethren to supposed terrible liabilities in 
 their relation to the slaves. " They are sleeping on a 
 volcano ; " " they keep weapons under their pillows ; " 
 " they are always in fear." And when a servile insur 
 rection takes place, many close their eyes and lift their 
 hands, and say, " Perhaps the day of retribution is 
 come ! They have been sinning against the North 
 ern conscience ; they have been resisting our well- 
 meant efforts for their good ; we would not stir up the 
 slaves against them," (some kindly say,) " but if they rise, 
 did not Jefferson say, There is not an attribute of the 
 Almighty that would take part with the whites ? " Thus 
 we prefer to take Jefferson s opinion on this subject, 
 though, hundreds as good and wise as he, and quite as 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 109 
 
 decided in their acceptance of the Christian religion, dif 
 fer totally from him. In strictly political matters, many 
 of the same people who love to quote Jefferson against 
 modern slave-holders, are of opinion that time and expe 
 rience give modern statesmen some advantages in their 
 judgments. As to Jefferson s oft-quoted remark r above 
 cited, it appears to me that if the Almighty has any 
 where set the seal of his divine blessing, clear and broad, 
 it is on the Christian influence of our Southern friends 
 upon this colored race. 
 
 It is humiliating to me, in looking back to the North, 
 to see how injudicious and weak we are in pouring out 
 our sympathy upon a fugitive slave, without discrimina 
 tion. The lecture before the Boston audience, already 
 mentioned, contains a perfect illustration of Northern 
 credulity in the case of fugitive slaves. The lecturer 
 tells us that while reading the printed report of Mr. 
 Everett s Oration at the inauguration of the Webster 
 statue, a fugitive slave appeared at his door, and, baring 
 his breast and back, showed him the marks of the brand 
 ing-iron, and the scars from the lash. At the sight, he 
 says, the paper dropped from his hand. He " thought 
 of Webster and the Fugitive Slave Law." 
 
 Now this negro was, just as likely as not, one of those 
 characters whom we call jail-birds. If so, and he had 
 lived at the North, instead of branding-iron and stripes, 
 he might have had parti-colored pants, and manacles, and 
 a record of ten or twenty years in the state s prison. But 
 because he ran away from the South, he straightway 
 became, as a matter of course, a martyr and a saint. 
 Perhaps he was, truly, a saint ; and perhaps he was 
 not. 
 
 Looking out of the window in a hotel the other day, 
 
110 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 we saw two white men leading up a black man with a 
 leather bridle around his neck. 
 
 " Here, Hattie," said your Uncle, " here is slavery ; 
 now you have it in full bloom." 
 
 The poor fellow was crying and protesting and beg 
 ging to be released. Your Uncle stepped out and spoke 
 to a very respectable gentleman whom he met on the 
 piazza. He could not refrain from expressing some feel 
 ing at the sight of a fellow-creature so literally " reduced 
 to the level of the brutes." I did not hear the whole of 
 the conversation, for my attention was diverted by two 
 roosters who just then flew at each other and were 
 assailed by a troop of black urchins who tried to scare 
 them apart, pulling their tail-feathers and uttering ludi 
 crous cries. 
 
 " You are from the North, sir, I take it," said the gen 
 tleman, in reply to your Uncle. 
 
 " I am, sir," said your Uncle. "Do you often bridle 
 your slaves in this way, in these parts ? I am seeking 
 for information on the subject of slavery." 
 
 " I shall be happy to give you any," said the gentle 
 man. " I am here as a magistrate." 
 
 " I am one at home," said my husband. 
 
 " One of these white men who led the negro," said the 
 gentleman, " was riding on horseback, and was attracted 
 to a by-place by the screams of a child, and found this 
 black man attempting violence upon a black girl ten 
 years old. He knocked the fellow down and held him, 
 and called for help. A white man who came up took the 
 bridle from the horse, to secure the villain with it. They 
 have with difficulty kept the negroes from putting him to 
 death." 
 
 " We are all ready, sir," said a sheriff to the gentleman. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. Ill 
 
 " Will you walk into the hall ? " said the magistrate to 
 your Uncle. 
 
 But the stage-coach was waiting for him, and we were 
 soon on our way. Your Uncle was silent for nearly fif 
 teen minutes, when he said, 
 
 " What is that passage, Hattie, about answering a mat 
 ter before you understand it ? " 
 
 I gave Hattie my Bible, and, after a while, she read : 
 
 " He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is 
 folly and shame unto him. The spirit of a man " 
 
 " That will do, child," said your Uncle, " I wanted only 
 that one verse." 
 
 I should be glad to transfer some of this Southern ease 
 and beauty of manners to the North. I wish that we 
 could see more of these Southern ladies and gentlemen 
 there. They stay away very much, because they cannot 
 bring servants with them. Whole families would rejoice 
 to visit our Northern shores and mountains for summer 
 residences, were it not for this. When our passions sub 
 side, and we can look at this subject fairly, we shall 
 repeal the statutes which prevent , a Southerner from 
 residing in a free state for a season, with his or her ser 
 vant. The people of Massachusetts, for example, can 
 easily appreciate the hardship of "being kept away from a 
 clime which they would visit for health or recreation, by 
 the fear of being set upon by a mob of whites and blacks 
 seeking to drag a wet-nurse, for example, before a court 
 to be interrogated whether she does not wish to leave 
 us. How long will our warm-hearted, hospitable peo 
 ple allow such things ? The answer, from ten thousand 
 tongues, will be, So long as Southern people imprison 
 colored seamen from the North ! If Southern slaves 
 
112 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 should come here and make trouble between our domes 
 tics and us, and we should forbid their coming, the cases 
 would be more nearly parallel. Moreover, it will be 
 said that the manner in which people from the North 
 have in many instances of late been treated at the South, 
 does not encourage the hope and prospect of amicable 
 intercourse. This is certainly so ; and therefore what 
 have we to look for but everlasting hatred and strife ? 
 and that whether we be one nation or two confederacies. 
 
 A distinguished Southern gentleman came home from 
 his visit to the North, where he had received great atten 
 tions, and he filled his hearers with his enthusiastic ad 
 miration of us for our wonderful ingenuity in all the arts 
 of life. 
 
 " It is astonishing," said he, " how they work every 
 thing into shape, and create instruments for their pur 
 poses. But," said he, " there is one thing in which they 
 are deficient. They are omnipotent with matter, but they 
 do not know how to govern men. If they did," said he, 
 " there would be no chance for us in any form of contest 
 with them." 
 
 I was much entertained, and I said to him that I sup 
 posed his remarks would need qualification on both sides ; 
 but I was greatly impressed, as I often am here, with the 
 secret, strong attachment which there is in Southern 
 hearts to the North as a part of the country, irrespective 
 of its anti-slavery views and feelings. Its climate and 
 institutions and arts and scenery are adapted to their 
 diversified wants. "The North and the South, Thou 
 hast created them." God made the North for the South, 
 and the South for the North, and our acts of non-inter 
 course are in violation of his will. We are in a war of 
 " conscience," inflamed by doctrinal error on our part. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 113 
 
 It allows no " conscience " to the other side. The state 
 of our " consciences " at the North is jury, judge, and 
 executioner. There is no " conscience," we think, in 
 Southern churches, ministers, judges, citizens ; except that 
 which is defiled. Probably there is not on earth this 
 day a greater despot, or one more prepared for inquisi 
 torial proceedings, than " Northern Conscience." 
 
 No doubt I should be contented and happy to be a 
 slave-holder, had I been born and bred here, but I re 
 joice that I belong to a free state. I love to think of 
 my capable girls, my " help," at home, who make the 
 household go like clock-work, instead of having a swarm 
 of servants who do only half as much, and only half as 
 well. I am glad, too, that my children live in a climate 
 favorable to labor, and are not born to be waited upon. 
 But I am ashamed of those who erect these things into 
 an invidious comparison, and with a supercilious, re 
 proachful spirit. God, who made us of one blood, has 
 fixed the bounds of our habitations. I love these South 
 erners as I never loved new acquaintances before. But 
 I prefer a state of society free from slavery : yet this 
 makes me love those to whom God has given a South 
 country, and imposed upon it a necessity, at present at 
 least, to employ the African race as cultivators of the 
 soil. It has often disturbed my feelings to hear some 
 people inveigh reproachfully against the Southern coun 
 try, as comparing unfavorably with neighboring free 
 states. Going up the Ohio River one day, a Northern 
 gentleman pointed to some poor-looking lands in Ken 
 tucky on the one hand, and some flourishing fields of Ohio 
 on the other. " There, ladies and gentlemen," said he, " is 
 slavery," pointing to Kentucky, " and there," turning to the 
 other side, " is freedom." 
 
114 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 " Now," said an intelligent Ohioan, " if you will excuse 
 me for saying it, I regard that as clear humbug. What 
 is cultivated on either side ? The products of Kentucky, 
 if raised in Ohio, would give the same look to her lands. 
 It is not slavery and freedom that make the difference ; it 
 is the difference between large staples sown over large 
 territories, and smaller staples raised on smaller fields. 
 Kentucky s soil would be exhausted just as fast under 
 free labor, so long as she cultivated her present crops." 
 
 I long to see some clear running water. Our streams 
 and brooks in New England are not appreciated till one 
 comes to this part of the land. I long to see some good 
 grass. I yearn for some hills. I would sail again along 
 our rock-bound coast ; Oh for a walk on its beaches, to see 
 the tunnellings of the sea in the rocks, and the spouting- 
 horns. But what a relief it is to be in a section where 
 the Christian religion is so generally accepted, and the 
 swarms of errorists and sectarians which abound else 
 where are comparatively unknown. Here, the lowest 
 class, in which error would be prolific, is under instruc 
 tion, to a great degree. I see now why it is that false 
 views about slavery are a great stimulant to heretical 
 views and feelings ; they are a convenient substitute 
 for the love and zeal which true Christianity supplies. The 
 human mind, where it is accustomed to act freely, must 
 be impelled by some master-passion ; and when true re 
 ligion does not supply it, error stands ready to satisfy the 
 demand. 
 
 On the whole, I am persuaded that our Northern peo 
 ple behave full as well under the anti-slavery excitement 
 as Southerners would if their consciences were perverted 
 like ours, and we were the objects of their opposition. 
 I think that a change will come over us. At the North, 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 115 
 
 you have heard the wind, at midnight, after a warm 
 rain, in winter, haul out to the north-west, and you know 
 what a piping time we then have of it, and how the clear 
 cold air, the next morning, and the bright, sun, excite 
 and cheer us. There has been with us for a long time 
 at the North, in our political and religious atmosphere, a 
 warm, foggy, unwholesome drizzle of weak, fanatical feel 
 ing, with now and then gusts of wind and scud, a kind 
 of weather most abhorred by mariners. But we hope that 
 the wind is changing, and that " fair weather cometh out 
 of the North." God will not suffer us to live long, we 
 earnestly hope, in this condition of misunderstanding and 
 hatred, for it would be contrary to his established laws 
 that we should long continue to be one nation with such 
 feelings toward each other. The change will be in the 
 North. Slavery will come to be regarded as not in itself 
 a sin, and the evils incident to it will be left for those 
 immediately concerned to bear them or seek their re 
 moval. Or, if we become divided, the Southern sec 
 tion may extend its conquests into the whole southern 
 part of the American continent, and spread the institu 
 tion of slavery over that vast domain. God may have 
 purposed that the good which has flowed to the African 
 race in this land by its connection with us, shall be extended 
 to millions more, not by importation, we may suppose, 
 but by propagation here. I say this to show that fanati 
 cal opposers of slavery may be employed under God as 
 the instruments of extending slavery to the very limits of 
 habitable land in the southern parts of our continent. 
 We have tried in vain at the North, for thirty years, to 
 abolish slavery. It is time either to cease, or to try some 
 entirely different influences. 
 
 But I must close my long letter. When you write 
 
116 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 again, I have no doubt that you will have seen some 
 things in a new light. Tell me more about your studies. 
 I was interested in your way of describing things. I only 
 wondered that, with your occasional sense of the ludi 
 crous, you should not have been aware of the impression 
 which you yourself must have made on others. Burns s 
 " giftie," " to see oursel s," etc., we all, more or less, need. 
 I told Hattie the other day that I thought some parts 
 of your letter did you very great credit, but that the 
 monomania of the North has fallen upon you, and that 
 you have it, as it seemed to me, in one of its worst forms. 
 Some it makes fierce, others, flat, according as the victim 
 is, naturally, more or less amiable. 
 
 Your mother gave you in charge to me in her last 
 sickness, and I must do all in my power for your best 
 good. I have, therefore, told you some things which I 
 have seen and considered. These you must now add to 
 the facts of your " inductive philosophy." Your defini 
 tion of " pro-slavery," and " friends of oppression," is a fair 
 illustration of a prevailing state of mind at the North : 
 " Pro-slavery i. <?., do not agree with me in my man 
 ner of viewing and treating the subject." This you will 
 correct. Excuse my freedom, but you have no father 
 nor mother now, to advise and guide you, and you must 
 let me be your Mentor in some things. I shall keep 
 your letter and let you see it perhaps ten years hence. 
 Be careful what newspapers you read. Those which 
 abound with low, opprobrious language about the South 
 and Southerners, avoid. There are some low Southern 
 ers about here who go around buying up refractory and 
 vicious negroes ; they are the dregs of society ; but I 
 have listened, with others, at the North, to men, on the 
 subject of " freedom," who, I think, would take kindly to 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 117 
 
 this business, and they would be as hearty in it as they 
 are now in vilifying it. The " Legrees " are not con 
 fined to the South. Do not incline your ear to those 
 who systematically inveigh against slavery, making it 
 their principal business. You will invariably find that 
 there is something false and wrong in their principles as 
 well as spirit. Be careful to what influences you commit 
 your thoughts and your taste. 
 
 You need not become a friend of oppression ; you need 
 not approve of " auction-blocks," and " separation of 
 families ; " slavery can exist when these are done away. 
 Until you are appointed and commissioned as a minister 
 of righteousness to Southern Christians and ministers, I 
 advise you to blot slavery out of the list of topics about 
 which you are called to express the least concern. The 
 South will work out the problem for herself, with the 
 help of that God who has evidently appointed her to do 
 a great work for the African race, and all the more per 
 fectly and speedily as our Northern people let her entire 
 ly alone as to the moral relations of the subject. 
 
 You subscribe yourself, " Yours for the slave ; " I shall 
 subscribe myself, " Yours for preaching the Gospel to 
 every creature." 
 
 With the strongest love, 
 
 Your affectionate Aunt. 
 
118 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS. 
 
 " The sages say dame Truth delights to dwell, 
 Strange mansion ! in the bottom of a -well. 
 Questions are, then, the windlass and the rope 
 That pull the grave old gentlewoman up." 
 
 PETER PINDAR. 
 
 MY friend, Mr. North, having read the foregoing let 
 ters, wrote me a note requesting me to come and 
 spend an evening with him and his wife, and answer 
 some questions occasioned by these letters. The lady 
 was earnest that I should do so. 
 
 After being seated before a cheerful fire in my friend s 
 house, while it was raining violently, so that we felt de 
 fended from all interruption, my friend said, 
 
 " Here, first of all, is the Southern lady s letter to her 
 father, which, I suppose, belongs to him, and which you 
 may wish to send back." 
 
 "I do," said I. 
 
 " But, please," said Mrs. North, " let it be published. 
 Add to it the incident of the Southern lady nursing the 
 sick babe of a slave." 
 
 " O my dear," said her husband, " that would create a 
 false impression. It would be a pro-slavery tract. It 
 would abate Northern zeal against the sum of all vil- 
 lanies. Something should go forth with such representa- 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 119 
 
 tions to correct their influence in the Free States. What 
 would become of the cause of freedom should such sto 
 ries make their impression upon the minds of our peo 
 ple ? " 
 
 " You might," said I, " make a heading of an auction- 
 block, or slave-coffle ; add the last pattern of a slave- 
 driver s whip ; picture a panting fugitive on his way to 
 the North ; give us a ship s hold, with a black boy just 
 detected among the stowage. You would thus, perhaps, 
 keep these beautiful, touching illustrations of loving-kind 
 ness in slave-holders from having the least effect." 
 
 " It is very important," said he, seriously, " to keep 
 up a just abhorrence of slavery here at the North, be- 
 
 " Excuse me," said I, " but what do you mean by an 
 abhorrence of slavery ? " 
 
 "Why," said he, "is not the Christian world agreed 
 that * slavery is the sum of all villanies ? " 
 
 " By no means, in the United States," said I ; " you 
 might with as real truth say that here slavery is the sum 
 of all the loving-kindnesses." 
 
 " Is not that letter of the Southern lady to her father," 
 said he, " as rare a thing almost as a white crow ? " 
 
 " O husband," said Mrs. North, " what an opinion you 
 must have of Southern society ! " 
 
 " Is not Gustavus," said I, " a perfect representative 
 of the North, on the subject of slavery ? Does not ultra 
 anti-slavery find or make everybody, as the Aunt says, 
 either fierce or flat ? " 
 
 " You do not believe so," said he. 
 
 " Neither do you believe," said I, " that where Chris 
 tianity has exerted the same influence on the hearts of 
 men and women as on yours, and all the humanizing and 
 
120 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 elevating influences of society prevail, that letter is a rare 
 product." 
 
 " I cannot believe," said he, " that one can own a fel 
 low-creature, hold God s image as property, and be a 
 true Christian. This lady is an exception which does 
 not destroy the general rule." 
 
 " My dear sir," said I, " you are an abstractionist. 
 You make the best possible condition under the sun 
 your standard, to which you would make all men and 
 things conform, instead of allowing for the vast inequali 
 ties, the necessities, the mutual dependence, the long his 
 torical conditions of men, as individuals and races. A 
 race or class of human beings may be in such a condi 
 tion, that being owned by a superior race will be, in 
 their circumstances, a real mercy and a great blessing." 
 
 " my dear sir," said he, " I weep over the degrada 
 tion of your moral sense. * Owning a fellow-creature ! 
 I would not hold property in a human being for all the 
 wealth that sinews bought and sold have ever earned. " 
 
 " Thousands of men and women," I replied, " as good 
 in the sight of God as you or I, think otherwise. There 
 is nothing in the relation of ownership to a human being 
 which in itself is sinful, or wrong." 
 
 " If it is your purpose," said he, " to argue in favor 
 of oppression, perhaps we had better not pursue the con 
 versation." 
 
 " Uncharitableness, false judgments, self-righteousness," 
 said I, " condemning a whole people for the sins of a 
 few, are as truly oppression as anything can be. I 
 plead for no wrongs ; I justify no selfishness in the rela 
 tion of master and servant ; I regard the golden rule of 
 Christ as the law by which slave-holding should be regu 
 lated in every instance." 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 121 
 
 " I never expected," said he, " to live long enough to 
 hear of the golden rule being applied to slavery ! It 
 would be like applying light to darkness, truth to false 
 hood, holiness to sin." 
 
 " By what rule," I inquired, " do you think the lady 
 is habitually governed who wrote the letter which has 
 interested you so mueh ? " 
 
 " Why," said he, " there are good people under every 
 iniquitous system. These exceptional cases are not the 
 rule of judgment with regard to the nature and effect of 
 a system." 
 
 " Can you not imagine one man owning another," said 
 T, " under circumstances, and with motives, and in a tem 
 per and spirit which will make the relation most desir 
 able ? " 
 
 " I go further back," said he, " and I deny that it is 
 right for one human being to own another." 
 
 " Has not God a right," said I, " to place one human 
 being over another as his owner ? " 
 
 " Has God a right," said he, " to countenance theft 
 and oppression ? " 
 
 I said to him : " I might follow your example, and 
 answer you by asking, Has God a right to countenance 
 war ? But I will relieve all your disagreeable apprehen 
 sions as to our conversation at once, by saying that I am 
 not to argue in favor of oppression. If holding a slave 
 is oppression, it is a sin. And if it be inconsistent with 
 the golden rule, it is a sin." 
 
 "If that be your doctrine," said he, "we shall soon 
 agree. Now apply the golden rule to slavery. Are 
 there any circumstances in which you would yourself be 
 willing to be owned ? " 
 
 " Certainly," I replied. 
 
122 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 He rose, and put some lumps of coal upon the fire with 
 the tongs, and said, " I presume you mean what you say, 
 and that you do not wish to trifle with the subject." 
 
 " Mr. North," said I, " would you be willing that any 
 one should make you head-cook in a hotel, engineer in a 
 steamboat, or keeper of a floating light ? " 
 
 " No, Sir," said he. 
 
 " You would, Mr. North," said I, " under given cir 
 cumstances. You would petition for such places, get 
 recommendations for them, and count yourself perfectly 
 happy, if you succeeded in obtaining them. 
 
 " Now look at the slaves. They are a foreign race, 
 we are their civil superiors, and unless we amalgamate, we 
 intend to remain so. While we are in this relation, it is 
 a privilege to the blacks to have owners, but they must 
 use their ownership according to the golden rule. When 
 this is done, the condition of the blacks, in their present 
 relation to us, is happy." 
 
 " How often," said he, " do you suppose that it is 
 done?" 
 
 " That," said I, " is another and a very interesting 
 question, which we will consider soon. You took the 
 ground, as I understood you, that the law of love would 
 prevent any one from holding a fellow-creature as a 
 slave. I reply that it would be in perfect accordance 
 with it, as the blacks at the South are now situated, for 
 the whites to be their humane owners. But pray what 
 do you mean by * owning a human being ? " 
 
 " I mean," said he, " having the right- to abuse them, 
 domineer over them, work them as cattle, sell them, 
 and " 
 
 " Did this Southern lady," said I, while he paused for 
 more words, " ever acquire a right with her ownership 
 to treat Kate so ? " 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 123 
 
 " Pier laws," said he, " give her a right to punish her ; 
 and such irresponsible power is fearful. She could whip 
 her to death and" 
 
 " And be punished for it," said I, " as surely as you 
 would be for whipping a servant to death." 
 
 " She is at liberty to punish more severely than the 
 case warrants," said he, " and then she can shield herself 
 under the laws." 
 
 " I presume," said I, "a Northern parent never gives 
 a hasty box on the ear, never strikes one passionate blow 
 in the chastisement, never shakes a child a single trill 
 beyond the due harmony of parental affection, never 
 scourges it with the tongue to momentary madness ! 
 What a dreadful thing parental authority is ! Would 
 it not be well to abolish the authority of parents over 
 children ! Indeed, would it not be well to go further, 
 and interdict the public lands of the United States from 
 being settled ; for as surely as men live there, every form 
 of wickedness will, in its turn, be perpetrated. How 
 much better the calm and holy silence of the woods and 
 fields, than if the tumultuous passions of men should roll 
 over them ! " 
 
 "But, my dear sir," said he, "I maintain that oppres 
 sion is inseparable from the holding of a slave. I insist 
 that this Southern lady, if all her feelings and conduct 
 toward her servants are like her letter, is an exception 
 among her people." 
 
 " No, Sir," said I, " she is the general rule among all 
 decent people, and there is as much sense of decency and 
 propriety there as with us, as many good people, kind, 
 humane, generous, and it is as rare a thing for a servant 
 to be ill-used there, as for our apprentices, and servants, 
 and even our children. How kind and good you would 
 
124 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 be, Sir, if Providence should place a human being under 
 you as his owner, for the mutual good of both of you." 
 
 " Dear me," said he, " I should try to feel and act just 
 as I suppose those Southerners do who, you say, are 
 fairly represented by this lady s letter about the slave- 
 babe." 
 
 " Mr. North," said I, " suppose that the State should 
 make you the absolute owner of some of those boys who 
 set fire to the Westboro and Deer Island institutions. In 
 consideration of your personal responsibility for them, 
 there is ceded to you all right and title to their services, 
 and absolute control over them, subject, of course, to the 
 laws against misdemeanors and crimes against the person. 
 My only point is this : Where would be the sinfulness of 
 that relation ? All that would be sinful about it would 
 be in your neglect or violation of your duty as a master." 
 
 " How glad all this makes me feel," said he, " that 
 I am not troubled with slaves. If we do not like our 
 servants or apprentices, we can get rid of them." 
 
 " Then," said I, " you surely ought to pity those who 
 are bound to their slaves and have to put up with a 
 thousand things which you say we can escape by chang 
 ing our help." 
 
 " But," said he, " can they not sell off their slaves 
 when they please ? " 
 
 " Suppose, however," said I, " that they happen to be 
 humane, as Mr. North is, and as we all are in the Free 
 States ! and that they are unwilling to turn off a poor 
 helpless creature for her faults, to be sold, and to go they 
 know not where ! " 
 
 " Slavery," said Mr. North, " is surely a great curse. 
 I am so glad that I live under free institutions." 
 
 " Who made us to differ from the South in this 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 125 
 
 respect ? How came those blacks there ? Whose ships, 
 whose money, imported them ? You remember that it 
 was by the votes of Free States, that the importation of 
 slaves was continued for eight years beypnd the time 
 when the Southern States had voted in the Convention 
 that it should cease. And now what would yon have 
 the South do with the slaves, to-day ? " 
 
 " Set them all free," said he, " break every yoke ; pro 
 claim liberty to the captives, the opening of the prison- 
 doors to them that are bound. " 
 
 " Allow me," said I, " to smile at your simplicity, for 
 you are very child-like, not to say childish, in your feel 
 ings. You would have the colored people universally go 
 free. Do you really think that Kate is worse off in be 
 ing what you call a slave, than that young, free black 
 woman who keeps a stall and sells verses and knives 
 near our Park ? " 
 
 " O dear sir," said he, " liberty is a priceless boon ; 
 liberty " 
 
 " Liberty to what ? " said I. 
 
 " Why," said he, " liberty not to be sold, nor to be 
 beaten, nor to be subject to the wicked passions of a 
 master." 
 
 " Would you rather," said I, " have your daughter a 
 servant in a Southern family, brought up as a playmate 
 with the children, a sharer in many of their gifts, a part 
 ner with their parents, as the children grew up, in the 
 pride and joy of the parents, an honored member of the 
 wedding party when a daughter is married, one of the 
 principal mourners when the bride departs, identified with 
 the history of the family, provided for in the will, a sup 
 port guaranteed to her by law in sickness and old age, 
 and that, too, not in a pauper establishment, but in her 
 
126 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 owner s home, and when the parents die, if she survives, 
 taken by some branch of the family or neighbor from re 
 gard to her and to them ; her moral and religious char 
 acter improved under their training, a respectable stand 
 ing in society conferred upon her by her connection with 
 them, her religious privileges sacredly secured to her, 
 any insult redressed as though it were the family s per 
 sonal affair ; she a partaker of their food and of all their 
 comforts, and followed to her grave with respect and 
 love ; or, for the sake of priceless liberty, heaven s 
 best gift to man, would you prefer to see her seated 
 under the iron fence of a park, an old umbrella tied to 
 the pickets for her shelter, and she, in rain and sunshine, 
 selling * Old Dan Tucker, Jim Crow, Illustrated, and 
 pea-nuts, and sleeping you know not where ? Which 
 lot would you choose for a child ? Which is best for this 
 world and the next? In one case, she is owned, she 
 is a slave ; and in the other, she is a free woman." 
 
 " You have no right," said he, with some warmth, " to 
 take the best condition in slavery, and the very worst in 
 freedom, and compel me to choose." 
 
 " Best condition in slavery ! " said I ; "is there any 
 * best in being a slave, in not being free ? Does it ad 
 mit of degrees ? Is not being * owned such a curse, 
 such an unmixed iniquity in its essence, that to compare 
 its best estate with the worst in freedom, is like compar 
 ing the best devil with the most inferior saint ? Is not a 
 devil s nature incapable of comparison as good, better, 
 best, with anything which is not, in its nature, devilish ? 
 According to your conversation just now, it seemed as 
 though being owned always implied an unmitigated 
 transgression ; and now when I inquire whether you 
 would prefer degradation to the iniquity of being owned* 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 127 
 
 in comfort and usefulness, respectability and happiness, 
 you shrink from the question. If freedom in the ab 
 stract is the best thing under the sun, of course you will 
 prefer it to everything else. No happy condition, no 
 happy prospect for this life, and the life to come can, in 
 your view, make being a slave, as you call it, capable of 
 being compared with this abstract privilege of being free. 
 In this you and your friends labor under a huge mis 
 take, and it poisons all your views and feelings about 
 slavery. When you denounce slave-holders and sla 
 very, and depict the condition of the slave in your awful 
 colors, they at the South know that in hundreds of thou 
 sands of instances, as it regards masters and slaves, all 
 that you say is practically false ; you are carried away 
 by your zeal against a theoretical wrong. 
 
 " Now suppose that instead of starting with the theo 
 retical wrong and getting only such facts as illustrate it, 
 you sholild travel through the South to pick up such 
 letters as you consider this, respecting Kate, to be ; what 
 a pleasing view might be presented of the slaves condi 
 tion in cases without number!" 
 
 " But," said he, " there are terrible evils underlying 
 these fair features of slavery." 
 
 " True," said I, " but why, in the name of truth and 
 love do you never hear such a letter as this read on 
 the platforms of Northern abolition societies ? What 
 mingled groans and hisses and shrieks for freedom, and 
 then what an emptying of the demoniacal epithets there 
 would be, if such a letter should be offered. One case 
 of whipping would have more effect than a thousand 
 such letters, in your assemblies and newspapers. No 
 one from the continent of Europe would infer from those 
 meetings that such beings as Kate and her little babe, 
 
128 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 and this lady and her husband and father, existed even in 
 fiction, but that slave-holders are Legrees, and the slaves 
 their victims. What a beautiful effect it would have on 
 us and on the South, if touching tales of loving-kindness 
 between masters and slaves, instances of perfect happi 
 ness in that relation, should be cited, and then you should 
 enter your candid, but decided opposition to the system, 
 to its extension, to its evils where it exists. How soon 
 we should all be found working together, so far as we 
 might, for the amelioration of the colored race here, with 
 a view to the extinction of slavery, in every form of it 
 in which it is an evil, or a greater evil than anything 
 which might properly be substituted." 
 
 " Well," said Mrs. North, " husband, what do you say 
 to that?" 
 
 " I like it," said he. 
 
 " But now," said I, " the language of the place of de 
 spair is exhausted in describing and denouncing the 
 South. If a man among us lifts up his voice to say good 
 things about Southerners, one universal hiss goes up 
 from all your conventions and anti-slavery prints. He 
 may be seeking the same end with you, namely, the 
 peaceful removal of slavery, with due regard to the high 
 est- good of all concerned ; but let him utter a word in 
 arrest of your unqualified condemnation of slavery as it 
 actually is, and there are no persecutors, nor scourges, 
 nor intolerance on the earth, more fierce and cruel than 
 you and your denunciations." 
 
 " Take it patiently, husband," said Mrs. North, " you 
 know that you deserve it." 
 
 " I know from this," said I, " if from nothing else, that 
 your theory is wrong. The truth does not excite such 
 passions in those who love and seek to promote it. We 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 129 
 
 see that, in cases without number, the present condition 
 of the slaves is a blessing for both worlds, and that if all 
 who possess slaves were, as many are, slavery would 
 cease to be any more of a curse than any dependent con 
 dition in this world. There must always be those who 
 will do every sort of menial work. The great Father 
 of all, who himself says that he has deprived the 
 ostrich of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her un 
 derstanding, so arranges the capacities of some that their 
 happiness consists in leaning upon superior intelligence 
 and capability. 
 
 " The serving people, in some districts of country, are 
 volunteers from all races ; at the South, they consist of 
 one inferior, dependent race, who for ages have been 
 slaves in their own country, and would be such even now, 
 if they were there. We will not shut the door of hope 
 forever upon any part of the human family, as to their 
 elevation among the tribes of men, but this race has, for 
 a long period of its history, evidently been undergoing 
 a tutelage and discipline at the hand of Providence. 
 There is some marvellous arrangement of Providence, 
 it seems to me, designing that this black race shall lean 
 upon us. Let the same number of any other immigrant 
 race have gone from us to Canada as of this colored 
 race, and the world would have heard a better report 
 from them ere this. They thrive best in connection with 
 us as their masters, whether it be right or wrong for us 
 to be in such relation to them." 
 
 " But now," said he, in a persuasive tone, and evi 
 dently wishing to turn the drift of the remarks, "just 
 set them free, and hire them ; we shall agree then. The 
 slaves will be as well off, and so will their masters." 
 
 " Mr. North," said I, " being owned is, in itself, irre- 
 
 G* 
 
130 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 spective of the character of the master, a means of pro 
 tection to the negro. Somebody then is responsible for 
 him as his guardian and provider, and is amenable to the 
 State for his sustenance. You can easily see that, let 
 the colored people come to be a hireling class, and their 
 interests and those of their masters are disjoined. There 
 would be conflicts and oppressions among themselves ; they 
 would fall into a degraded, serf-like condition ; but now 
 each of them partakes of his master s interests, and rises 
 with him. I am not here pleading for slavery in the 
 abstract, but, the blacks being on the soil, it is far better 
 for them to be owned than to be free. Why are the 
 Southwestern States, one after another, passing laws, or 
 framing their constitutions, to shut out from their borders 
 free negroes, people in the very condition into which you 
 would reduce by wholesale all the blacks in the South ? 
 I pray you look and see that you are an abstractionist, 
 setting what you deem a theoretical wrong against a 
 practical good, and under the circumstances, a real mercy." 
 
 " But/ said Mr. North, " slavery impoverishes the soil, 
 makes the whites shun labor, feeling it to be degrading, 
 and it keeps the white children from industrial pursuits, 
 and " - 
 
 " Please stop," said I, " my dear Sir, and think of what 
 you are saying, and be not carried away by that popular 
 flood of cant phrases. Now you know that God has given 
 our Southern friends a south country, nearer than ours 
 to the tropics. Out-of-door labor there is injurious to the 
 white people, as you know. They are not to be blamed 
 for this. God has not given them strength to endure ex 
 posure to the sun. Had they a northern climate, in 
 which the labor required by the mechanic arts could be 
 performed with safety and comfort, do you not suppose 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 131 
 
 that they would have the same aptitude and relish as we 
 for handicraft ? Their children cannot be brought up to 
 manual labor to the extent that ours are, because the God 
 of heaven has ordained their lot in a land less favorable 
 than ours to toil. His providence, making use of the sins 
 of men, has placed the blacks here ; you and the rest of 
 the world, who depend upon their cotton, are willing 
 enough to use it in its countless forms, while you re 
 proach your Maker, as I think, for having caused it to 
 be raised as he has seen fit to do." 
 
 " But Oh," said Mr. North, " free labor is more profit 
 able than slave labor. You well know how it affects the 
 soil, and that the great price of slaves will in time make 
 the system oppressive to the masters, especially if they 
 are all as considerate as you say they are about selling." 
 
 " The good Aunt has replied to you as to the soil, and 
 we need not distress ourselves about the price of slaves ; that 
 will regulate itself. You well understand," said I, " that I 
 am not arguing in favor of slavery perse, nor for the slave- 
 trade, nor for the extension of slavery ; but I contend that 
 where slavery now exists, no one has yet proposed a scheme 
 which is better than the continuance of ownership, the 
 blacks remaining on the same soil with their present 
 masters. Nor do I mean to say that the present system 
 must inevitably continue forever. We must leave future 
 developments in other hands. Of course there are dif 
 ficult problems on such a subject as this. Intelligent 
 Christian gentlemen at the South say that the best 
 schemes which have been proposed by Europeans for 
 the substitution of apprenticed negroes for slaves would 
 make the condition of the negro as far worse than our 
 slavery as the condition of a degraded negro here is be 
 low that of his master. Who will care for him when he 
 
132 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 is old, or sick ? Granting this apprentice scheme to be 
 arranged without oppression or sin of any kind, I hold 
 that the condition of our slaves owned by masters and 
 mistresses, is better than such a hireling condition, though 
 it have the appearance of liberty." 
 
 " Why so ? " inquired Mr. North. 
 
 " The slaves are not treated as hired horses are liable 
 to be treated," I replied. " We know how a man is likely 
 to treat his own horse, compared with the horse which he 
 hires. Men nurse their slaves when they are sick ; they 
 provide for them when they are old. By their care and 
 responsibility for them, and in relieving them from respon 
 sibility, they pay them wages whose market-value, if it 
 could be reckoned in dollars, would be higher wages than 
 are paid to the same class of laborers in the land. There 
 are not four millions of the lower class of the laboring 
 people in any one district of the earth whose condition is 
 to be compared with that of the Southern slaves for 
 comfort and happiness." 
 
 " I presume," said Mrs. North, " that you would not re 
 gard exemption from responsibility as in itself a blessing. 
 You know how it educates us, how it sharpens the facul 
 ties, how it makes a man more of a man ; therefore is it, 
 after all, any kindness to the slaves, that they are relieved 
 from responsibility ? " 
 
 " I thank you," said I, " for that question. Does it con 
 cern us that our domestic servants are relieved, for the time, 
 of all responsibility for house-rent, taxes, political duties ? 
 
 " Every condition of poverty and toil has its peculiar 
 hardships and sorrows. But putting together, respective 
 ly, all the advantages and the disadvantages of our slaves, 
 he who looks upon a population with enlarged views of 
 liabilities and of the inevitable results in the working of 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 133 
 
 different schemes of labor, and is not so weak or morbid 
 as to dwell inordinately on real and imaginary wrongs and 
 miseries, which, after all, if real, are compensated for by 
 advantages or surpassed by aggregated smaller evils in 
 other conditions, must admit that, the colored people being 
 here, their being owned is the very best possible thing 
 for their protection, and the surest guarantee against all 
 their liabilities to want in hard times, sickness, and old 
 age. 
 
 " Speaking of hard times leads me to say, that if you 
 could put four millions of laboring people in the Free 
 States, for a winter or during commercial distresses and 
 the stagnation of every kind of business, in a position 
 where, while they were still active and useful, a single 
 thought or care about their sustenance would not visit 
 them, you would be deemed a philanthropist and public 
 benefactor. There will not be the same number of peo 
 ple in the laboring class throughout our land next winter, 
 in any one section, whose comfort and happiness will ex 
 ceed that of our slaves." 
 
 " Oh, well," said Mr. North, " all this may be true, but 
 this does not reconcile me to slavery. Our horses here at 
 the North will all be comfortably provided for, notwith 
 standing any money pressure. But I would rather be a 
 human being and fail, every winter, than be a horse." 
 
 " Husband," said Mrs. North, " do you consider that a 
 parallel case? Mr. C. is not arguing, as I understand him, 
 that slavery is better than freedom. He is not persuading 
 us to be slaves rather than free. He takes these four mil 
 lions of blacks as he finds them, in bondage, and he asks, 
 What shall we do witli them ? You say, Set them free. 
 He says, They are better off, as a race, in their present 
 bondage, than they would be if made free, to remain here. 
 Not that they are better off than four millions of colored 
 
134 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 people, who had never been slaves, would be in a com 
 monwealth by themselves." 
 
 " I thank you, Mrs. North," said I, " for your clear and 
 correct statement of my position. And now I will take up 
 Mr. North s parable about the horses, and apply it justly. 
 Let hay and grass be exceedingly scarce, and I had rather 
 take my chance with an owner and be a horse, in a sta 
 ble, and at work, than a horse roaming in search of food, 
 chased away everywhere. The comparison is between 
 horse and horse, and man and man." 
 
 " You make me think," said Mrs. North, " of an interest 
 ing passage in a late magazine, written by a lady. She 
 was on a voyage to Cuba. She arrived at Nassau. She 
 says, There were many negroes, together with whites 
 of every grade ; and some of our number, leaning over 
 the side, saw for the first time the raw material out of 
 which Northern Humanitarians have spun so fine a skein 
 of compassion and sympathy. You must allow me one 
 heretical whisper, very small and low. Nassau, and 
 all we saw of it, suggested to us the unwelcome ques 
 tion whether compulsory labor be not better than none. " l 
 
 " There is," said I, " this great question of right, with 
 some, as to slavery : As the State has a right to inter 
 pose and send vagrant children to school, has the world 
 a right to interpose, in certain cases, and send certain 
 races to labor for the good of mankind ? This was the 
 question which broke upon the lady s mind. It is very 
 interesting to see the question thus stated, and to notice 
 the graceful touch of apology, and of playfulness, in the 
 manner of stating it. There was risk, and even peril, in 
 making the suggestion, but, withal, some moral courage. 
 Still a lady may sometimes venture where it might not 
 be safe for a gentleman to go. 
 
 1 Atlantic Monthly, May, 1859, p. 604. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 135 
 
 " But the question between us is not, Freedom or sla 
 ver^ in the abstract, nor, Whether it is right, in any case, 
 to reduce a people to slavery ; but, What is best for our 
 slaves ? All your proofs that freedom is better than 
 slavery in the abstract, are nothing to the point," 
 
 " It is the foulest blot on our nation in the eyes of the 
 world," said Mr. North, " that we have four millions of 
 human beings in bondage." 
 
 " Have you read Uncle Tom s Cabin ? " I inquired. 
 
 " Ask me," said he, pleasantly, " if I know how to 
 read. Every lover of liberty and hater of oppression 
 has read Uncle Tom. " 
 
 " That is very far from being true," said I ; " but still, 
 you like Uncle Tom as a character, do you ? " 
 
 " You astonish me," said he, " by making a question 
 about it. He is the most perfect specimen of Christianity 
 that I ever heard of." 
 
 " Among the martyrs," said I, " have you ever found 
 his superior ? " 
 
 " No, Sir ! " was his energetic answer. 
 
 " Now," said I, " what made Uncle Tom the paragon 
 of perfection ? " 
 
 " What made him ? " said he. 
 
 " Yes," said I, " what made him the model Christian ? 
 You do not reply, and I will tell you. SLAVERY MADE 
 UNCLE TOM. Had it not been for slavery, he would 
 have been a savage in Africa, a brutish slave to his fe 
 tishes, living in a jungle, perhaps ; and had you stumbled 
 upon him he would very likely have roasted you and 
 picked your bones. A system which makes Uncle Toms 
 out of African savages is not an unmixed evil." 
 
 " But," said he, " it makes Legrees also." 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Sir," said I, " it does not make 
 Legrees. There are as many Legrees at the North as at 
 
136 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 the South, especially if we include all the very particular 
 friends of the slave. Legree would be Legree in Wall 
 Street, or Fifth Avenue ; Uncle Tom would not be Uncle 
 Tom in the wilds of Africa." 
 
 " And so," said he, " it is right to fit out ships, burn vil 
 lages in Africa, steal the flying people, bestow them in 
 slave-ships, and sell them into hopeless bondage ! " 
 
 " So you all love to reason," said I, " or seek to force 
 that conclusion upon us. No such thing. If God over 
 rules the evil doings of men, this is no reason for repeat 
 ing the wrong. I am insisting that slavery as it exists in 
 the South has been a blessing to the African. This does 
 not warrant you in perpetrating outrages on those who 
 are still in Africa. 
 
 " But the result has been, through the mercy of God as 
 though we had taken millions of degraded savages out of 
 Africa, and had made them contribute greatly to the in 
 dustrial interests of mankind. 
 
 " We have raised them from heathenish ignorance and 
 barbarism to the condition of intelligent beings. Look at 
 them in their churches and Sabbath-schools. Slavery 
 has done this. See the colored population of Charleston, 
 S. C., voluntarily contributing, as they do, on an average, 
 three dollars apiece, annually, for the propagation of the 
 Gospel at home and abroad. See the meeting-house of 
 the African Church at Richmond, Va., a place selected for 
 public speakers from the North to deliver their addresses 
 in it to the citizens of Richmond, because it is more com 
 modious than any other public building in the city. Think 
 of the membership of slaves in Christian Churches ; of the 
 multitudes of them who have died in the faith arid hope 
 of the Gospel. Slavery has done this. The question is 
 whether slavery has been, or is, such a curse, on the 
 whole, to the African race, that we must now set free the 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 137 
 
 whole colored population ? Please let us keep to the 
 point. The reopening of the slave-trade is a question by 
 itself. 
 
 " It seems that God had chosen to redeem and save 
 large numbers of the African race by having them trans 
 ported to this Christian land. Philanthropists would not 
 be at the cost and trouble of all this. God has, there 
 fore, used the cupidity of men to accomplish his purposes, 
 and he punishes the wicked agents of his own benevolent 
 schemes. His curse has for ages rested on the African 
 race, and the laws of nature have, to a great degree, in 
 terposed to prevent Christian efforts in their behalf. God 
 saw fit to change the prison-house, and prison yards and 
 shops of this race from one continent to another, and 
 New England merchantmen, in part, have been allowed 
 to be the conveyers. In the process of transferring these 
 future subjects of civilization and Christianity, vast mis 
 ery is endured, as in opening a way by the sword for the 
 execution of his decrees, great slaughter is the inevitable 
 attendant. I look at the whole subject of slavery in the 
 light of God s providence. And I do not see that his 
 providence yet indicates any way for its termination con 
 sistent with the interests of the colored people. 
 
 "As to the extension of slavery, in this land, if the 
 Most High has any further purposes of mercy for the 
 African race in connection with us, he will not consult 
 vou nor me. He will open districts of our country for 
 fiem ; if my political party refuses to be the instrument 
 in doing this, from benevolent motives, or from any other 
 cause, He will make that party to be defeated, it may be 
 by a party below us in moral principle, as we view it. 
 This question of slavery, its extension and continuance, 
 is therefore among the great problems of God s provi- 
 
138 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 dence. I shall do all that I properly can to prevent it, 
 and to encourage, and, if called upon, to aid my brethren 
 now in immediate charge of the slaves, to fulfil their sol 
 emn trust ; but anything like impatience and passion at 
 the existence of slavery, I hold to be a sin against God. 
 I pity those good men whose minds are so inflamed by 
 the consideration of individual cases of suffering as not 
 to perceive the great and steadfast march of the divine 
 administration. Politicians and others who get their 
 places, or their bread, by easy appeals to sympathy for 
 individual cases of suffering, are the causes of much 
 misplaced commiseration and of a low, uninstructed view 
 of the great interests involved in slavery. Yet these very 
 men who, for selfish purposes, stir up the passions of our 
 people, by dwelling on cases of hardship in slavery, are 
 greatly disappointed when Napoleon III., at Villafranca, 
 prematurely terminates a war of unparalleled slaughter. 
 They would have preferred, for the cause of constitu 
 tional liberty and for its possible influence against the 
 Pope, that the fighting had continued a month longer ; 
 we hear no pathetic remonstrances from them on the 
 score of the killed and maimed, the widows and orphans 
 and the childless, of homes made desolate, by this addi 
 tional month of battle. Such is man, so inconsistent, so 
 blinded by party prejudice, so ready to maintain that 
 which, in a change of persons and places, he will de 
 nounce. He will be wholly blinded by individual acts 
 of suffering to all that is good in a system ; and again, 
 the good to be effected by a war will blind him to the 
 hundreds of thousands of dead or mutilated soldiers, with 
 five times that number of bleeding hearts, rifled by the 
 sword of their precious treasures." 
 
 I saw that I had prolonged my remarks to an undue 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 139 
 
 length. We sat in silence for a little while, looking into 
 the fire, and listening to the rain against the windows, 
 when Judith called Mrs. North to the door ; and, after 
 some whispering between them, Mrs. North said to her, 
 
 " Oh, bring them in ; our company will excuse it." 
 
 The cranberries, it seems, were not doing well over the 
 fire in Judith s department, and she had hesitatingly pro 
 posed that they should be promoted to the parlor grate 
 where, after due apologies, they were placed. They sooi 
 began to simmer ; then one would burst, and then another, 
 we pausing unconsciously to hear them surrendering them 
 selves to their fate, while one mouth, at least, watered at 
 the thought of the delicious dish which they were to fur 
 nish ; the rich, ruby color of their juice in the best cut- 
 glass tureen, and the added spoonful, as a reward for not 
 spilling a drop on the table-cloth the last time they were 
 served, coming to mind, with thoughts of early days. 
 And here I was discussing slavery. Now, while the 
 cranberries were over the fire, making one feel domestic 
 and also bringing back young days, it was impossible to 
 be disputatious, had we been so inclined. The North 
 ern cranberry-meadow and the Southern sugar-planta 
 tion seemed mixed up in my feelings on this subject, 
 qualifying and rectifying each other. Perhaps the sooth 
 ing presence of the cranberry saucepan was timely ; for, 
 without any design, a phase of our subject next pre 
 sented itself which was not the most agreeable. I broke 
 the silence, and said, 
 
 " Mr. North, what do you think is the mission of the 
 abolitionists as a party, and of all who sympathize with 
 them ? " 
 
 " Why," said he, " to abolish slavery, to be sure. What 
 else can it be ? " 
 
140 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 u You are mistaken," said I. " The real mission of 
 the abolitionists, thus far, is, To perpetuate slavery till 
 Providence has accomplished its plan. You know what 
 Southern synods, and general assemblies, and many of 
 the ablest men at the South have said about slavery ; 
 how they deplored it, and called upon Christians to seek 
 its extinction. The South would probably have tried to 
 abolish slavery ere this, if left to themselves. But they 
 would have failed ; and Providence prevented the use 
 less effort. The influence of those sentiments which pre 
 vailed in the General Assembly of 1818 would have 
 been to remove all the objectionable features of slavery, 
 at least, preparatory to its final extinction, if that could 
 be reached. It looked as though Churches generally 
 would, in obedience to the General Assembly, have made 
 it, in certain cases, the subject of discipline. Abolition 
 ism, however, began about that time. It had the effect 
 to make the South defend themselves and slavery too. 
 Providence saw that the South was weary of the system, 
 and wished to throw it off. But the years of the captivity 
 appointed of God had not come to an end. Purposes of 
 mercy for the African race had not been accomplished ; 
 the South must be made willing to hold these poor people 
 for the time, times, and half a time, ordained of God. 
 To encourage them, the God of Nature makes the great 
 Southern staple, cotton, to be in greater demand for the 
 supply of the world ; the cotton-gin is invented, and im 
 mediately the slaves are thereby assisted to retain that 
 hold upon the South which was about to be broken off. 
 All this seems to me designed, as it certainly has the 
 effect, to perpetuate slavery until Providence shall indi 
 cate measures for the removal of the colored people 
 among us. This may be delayed for centuries to come. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 141 
 
 In the mean time, we at the North, by keeping up our 
 agitation of the subject, have impressed the South with 
 the importance of being united against us ; but if any of 
 our schemes of emancipation had divided them, it would 
 not have been for the good of the slaves. So the abo 
 litionists have been fulfilling their destiny by fighting 
 against Providence to help perpetuate slavery till the 
 Most High shall disclose his will concerning it." 
 
 " And helped the South," said Mr. North, " perpetuate 
 violations of the marriage relation, and to separate fami 
 lies, and to countenance all the sins in slavery ! " 
 
 " Yes, to some degree," said I ; " for should we treat 
 them with common candor and truthfulness, make them 
 feel that we appreciate the perplexities of the subject, 
 admit for once, and act upon it, that they are better and 
 more competent friends of the slave than we, it would 
 be the surest way to put a stop to every evil in slavery. 
 Now they have little power over a certain class of men 
 among them, who, when measures are proposed for the 
 relief of the slaves, raise the cry that they are abolition 
 ists, and excite an odium which deters them from doing 
 many things which would otherwise be attempted." 
 
 " They might all certainly join," said Mr. North, " one 
 would think, to prevent the violation of the marriage con 
 tract by the slaves, and the sundering of the marriage tie 
 by the auctioneer." 
 
 " Now," said I, " there are two allegations, and I will 
 answer them. As to the violation of the marriage cov 
 enant by the slaves, are you aware how many divorces 
 for the same cause are granted in your own state yearly ? 
 You will find, on inquiry, that freedom has nothing to 
 boast of in this respect. As to the auctioneer, and the 
 separation of the marriage tie by him, how often do you 
 
142 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 think that an honest black man, for no crime, is taken 
 from his wife and sold, or she from him ? How often, 
 do you suppose, are families divided and scattered at the 
 auction-block ? If you will inquire, you will find that 
 the cases are extremely rare ; that in some large districts 
 it has not occurred for several years ; and that in other 
 cases, where it has occurred,, regard has been had to the 
 neighborhood of the purchasers, so that members of the 
 same families have been within reach of one another. 
 You seem to think that a great feature, and the most 
 common effect, of slavery is to separate families. Such 
 is the general belief at the North. Let me remind you 
 that there is no form or condition of service in the world 
 which has more effect than slavery to keep families to 
 gether." 
 
 " Well," said Mrs. North, dropping her work in her 
 lap, "I never thought of that before." 
 
 " Why," said I, " where will you find in the Free 
 States husband and wife and children living together as 
 servants in the same family ? " 
 
 Said Mrs. North, " It is rather uncommon with us to 
 find two sisters living together as help in a family. At 
 least, it is always spoken of and noted as pleasant and 
 desirable." 
 
 " What would Northerners think," said I, " of gathering 
 the old parents and all the brothers and sisters of their 
 domestics together, in small tenements near their own 
 dwellings ? He who should do this would be regarded 
 as a very great saint. So that you may as well say that 
 slavery is a system by which a serving class is kept to 
 gether in families, as to say that its purpose and effect is 
 to break up families." 
 
 " Just think," said Mrs. North, " of the serving class 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 143 
 
 in our families here at the North, how they are sepa 
 rated by states, by oceans, from one another ! " 
 
 " Be careful, Mrs. North," said I, " how you even hint 
 at such mitigations. in slavery, for you will be denounced 
 as a friend of oppression if you discern anything in the 
 system but villanies. You never hear such a feature of 
 slavery, as that of which we have just spoken, recognized 
 here at the North by our zealous anti-slavery people." 
 
 " Do you not think," said she, " that if we were can 
 did and less passionate, and viewed the subject as anti- 
 slavery men at the South do, we should exert far more 
 influence against slavery?" 
 
 " If we exerted any," I replied, " it would be far 
 more than we do now. If we would only cease to 
 1 exert influence in that direction, and begin to learn 
 that the people of the South are as Christian, benevo 
 lent, and good in every respect as we, this first, great 
 lesson, which we all need to learn, would do us all great 
 good. Self-righteousness is the great characteristic of 
 the Northern people with regard to the South. Fifteen 
 States declare that they are justified before God in con 
 tinuing the system of slavery. The other States would 
 be ashamed to condemn those fifteen States for immoral 
 ity in the discussion of any other subject ; but here they 
 assume that one half of the American nation is convicted 
 of crime. I take the ground that, if the Churches and 
 the ministry of those fifteen States say, With all the evils 
 of slavery, it is right and best that we should maintain it, 
 I will so far yield my convictions as not to feel that they 
 are less righteous than I." 
 
 " Oh," said Mr. North, " but they have been born and 
 educated under the system. Of course they must be 
 blinded by it, and their moral sense perverted." 
 
144 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 " There," said I, " Mr. North, is the Northern Evil 
 again. Oh, what a shame it is for intelligent people to 
 decry Southern Christians in this way, and to erect their 
 own moral sense into such self-complacent superiority ! 
 
 " You will see in your church one excellent brother, 
 whose heart is filled with anguish at the thought of the 
 poor slave. One sits by him who knows full as much 
 on this and on all subjects as he, who feels that the peo 
 ple at the South are perfectly qualified to manage this 
 subject, and that we have no need to interpose. He 
 thinks that if one wishes to be excited with compassion 
 at the sorrows and woes of men, a short walk will bring 
 him to certain abodes such as no Southern slave would 
 be allowed by any human master to inhabit. If he would 
 benefit men as a class, our own sailors need all his phi 
 lanthropy. But the good anti-slavery brother is pos 
 sessed with the idea that the Southern slave is the imper 
 sonation of injustice and misery, and that those who stand 
 in the relation of masters are guilty of crimes, daily, 
 which ought to shut them out of the Church. 
 
 " I have often thought that the most appropriate prayers 
 in our public assemblies, with regard to slavery, would 
 be petitions against Northern ignorance and passion with 
 respect to Southern Christians. It is we who most need 
 to be prayed for. When I think of those assemblies of 
 Christians of all denominations in the South, with a cler 
 gy at their head who have no superiors in the world, and 
 then hear a Northern preacher indicting them before God 
 in his prayers, what shall I say ? The verdict of a cor 
 oner s inquest, if it were held over some of his hearers at 
 such a time, might almost be, Died of disgust." 
 
 " Now I desire to know," said Mr. North, " if we are 
 never to pray in public about slavery? Is it not the 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 145 
 
 great subject before the country, and are not all our in 
 terests in Church and State deeply involved in it ? " 
 
 " While we believe," said I, " that holding slaves is a 
 sin, I take the ground that praying for the Southerners is 
 a false impeachment. When we are rid of this error, we 
 do not feel their need of being prayed for any more than 
 all men, for whom Paul says, *I will that men pray 
 everywhere, * lifting up holy hands without wrath or 
 doubting. Our * hands must be holy when we lift 
 them up for i all men, including Southerners ; there must 
 be no wrath in our prayers, which I am sorry to say 
 is too easily discerned in prayers against the South ; and 
 there must be no doubting in the petitioners whether 
 their feelings and motives are right before God. There 
 is as much in the relation of officers and crews in our 
 merchant vessels, to say the least, to enlist the prayers 
 of ministers, as in slavery. But this relates to ourselves, 
 and has not the enchantment of a distant sin. 
 
 " You must bring yourself to believe, Mr. North, that 
 Southern hearts are in general as humane and cultivated 
 as ours. This, it is true, is a great demand upon a 
 Northerner." 
 
 " But oh," said he, (we happening to be alone just 
 then,) " the cruelty of compelling virtuous people, mem 
 bers of Churches, to commit sin, under pain of being sold." 
 
 " Mr. North," said I, " how do you dare to open your 
 lips on that subject, you, with myself, a member of a 
 denomination in which men, eminent in our pulpits, have 
 so many of them of late years fallen. One would 
 think that we would never cast a stone at the South on 
 that subject. 
 
 " Some among us seem to think that the power and the 
 opportunity to commit sin must necessarily be followed 
 7 
 
146 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 by criminal indulgence. They do themselves no credit 
 in this supposition. They also leave out of view a natu 
 ral antipathy which must be overcome, sense of degrada 
 tion, probability of detection, loss of character, conscience, 
 and all the moral restraints which are common to men 
 everywhere ; and they only judge that all who exercise 
 authority over an abject race must, as a general thing, be 
 polluted. 
 
 " As to opportunities for evil-doing at the South com 
 pared with the North, no one who walks the streets of a 
 Northern city, by day or night, with the ordinary discern 
 ment of one who sets himself to examine the moral con 
 dition of a place, will fail to see that we need not go 
 to the South to find humiliating proofs of baseness and 
 shame. There is less solicitation at the South ; here it 
 is a nightly trade, without disguise. At the South the 
 young must go in search of opportunity ; here it confronts 
 them. The small number of yellow children, in the inte 
 rior of the Cotton States, on * lone plantations, is positive 
 proof against the ready suspicions and accusations of 
 Northern people. Let all be true which is said of 
 * yellow women, i slave-breeders, and every form of 
 lechery, he is simple who does not believe that the sta 
 tistics of a certain wickedness at the North would, if 
 made as public as difference of color makes the same 
 statistics at the South, leave no room for us to arraign 
 and condemn the South in this particular. Their clergy, 
 their husbands, their young men, if they are no better, 
 are no worse than we. But there is nothing in which 
 the self-righteousness created by anti-slavery views and 
 feelings is more conspicuous than in the way in which the 
 South is judged and condemned by us with regard to this 
 one sin. Had the pulpits of the South afforded such 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 147 
 
 dreadful instances of frailty, for the last ten or fifteen 
 years, as we have had at the North, what confirmation 
 would we have found for our invectives against the cor 
 rupting and barbarous influence of slavery ! 
 
 " How the morbid fancy of a Northerner loves to gloat 
 over occasional instances of violence at the South, and is 
 never employed in depicting scenes of betrayal and cruel 
 ty which our policemen in large cities could recount by 
 scores." 
 
 " I saw," said Mr. North, " in a recent paper, that a slave 
 in Washington County, N. C., was hanged by the sheriff 
 in the presence of three thousand spectators, for the mur 
 der of a white man, whom he shot with a pistol because 
 he suspected him of undue familiarity with the wife of the 
 black man. Poor fellow ! no doubt he swung for it be 
 cause he was a slave. He must let his marriage rights be 
 invaded by the whites, and bear it in silence, or die." 
 
 Said I, " What a perfect specimen of Northern anti-sla 
 very feeling and logic have we in what you now say. If a 
 man, on suspicion of you, takes the law into his hands 
 and shoots you with a pistol, does he not deserve to die ? 
 He does, if he is a white man ; perhaps, if he be a slave, 
 that excuses him ! Even where a man is known to be 
 guilty of the crime referred to, and the husband shoots 
 him, he is apt to have a narrow escape from being pun 
 ished. As to bearing such violations of one s rights in 
 silence under intimidation, there is no more power in 
 intimidation to save a villain at the South from disgrace 
 and abhorrence in his community, than at the North." 
 
 " But he can evade prosecution under the statute," said 
 Mr. North, " more easily at the South than here." 
 
 " When you have served on the grand jury a few 
 terms," said I, "you will be more charitable toward 
 
148 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 Southerners. Human nature is the same everywhere. 
 It makes, where it does not find, occasion for sin. 
 
 " Now you will not understand, in all that I have said, 
 that I am pleading for slavery, that I desire to have this 
 abject race among us, that Southerners are purer and 
 better than we. We are both under sin. We all have 
 our temptations and trials ; each form of society has its 
 own kind of facilities for evil ; but the grace of God and 
 all the influences which bear on the formation and the 
 preservation of character, are the same wherever Chris 
 tianity prevails." 
 
 " Well, after all," said he, " it must be a semi-barbarous 
 state of society, where such a system is maintained." 
 
 " I shall have to send you," said I, " to the < Hotel des 
 Incurables/ I think that your judgments are more than 
 semi-barbarous. If you please to term even the Southern 
 negroes semi-barbarous, you may do so ; but you are 
 bearing false witness against your neighbor. 
 
 " My dear friend," said I, " sum up all the evils of the 
 laboring classes, of foreigners and the lower orders of 
 society. Take their miseries, vices, crimes, with all the 
 blessings of freedom and everything else. Get the pro 
 portion of evil to the good. Remember that these classes 
 will continue to exist among us. Then take the slaves, 
 the lower order at the South, as foreigners are with us, 
 and say if, on the whole, the proportion of evil among the 
 slaves is any greater than among the corresponding 
 classes elsewhere. Do not be an optimist. Acknowledge 
 that society, in this fallen world, must have elements of 
 evil, by reason at least of imbecility, want of thrift, mis 
 fortune, and other things. You will not fail to see that 
 slavery with all its evils is, under the circumstances, by 
 no means, the worst possible condition for the colored peo 
 ple." 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 149 
 
 " Well," said he, " I will think of all you have said. I 
 do not wish to be an ultraist, nor to shut my eyes against 
 truth. You will wish to go to bed ; there are some further 
 points on which I would know your views, and we will, 
 if you please, resume the subject to-morrow." 
 
150 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OWNERSHIP IN MAN. THE OLD TESTAMENT SLAVERY. 
 
 " Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do 
 ye even so to them; FOR THIS is THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS." 
 
 HOLY WRIT. 
 
 THE rain still poured down in the morning, making it 
 agreeable to us that we had the prospect of an unin 
 terrupted forenoon for our conversation. 
 
 So when we found ourselves together again in the 
 course of the forenoon, by the fire, we opened the dis 
 cussion. 
 
 Mr. North inquired what I understood by the term 
 "owning a fellow-creature." 
 
 " I understand by it," I replied, " a right to use, and to 
 dispose of, the services of another, wholly at my will. 
 That will must be subject to the whole law of God, 
 which includes the golden rule. I do not mean by it 
 that a man owns the body of a man in such a sense that 
 he can maim it at will, or in any way abuse it. Owner 
 ship in men is power to use their services and to dispose 
 of them, at will." 
 
 " Now," said he, " who gives you a right to go to 
 Africa or to a slave auction and to say to a human being, 
 * I propose to own you. How would you like to have a 
 black man come to you in a solitary place and say, My 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 151 
 
 dear Sir, I propose to own you. Henceforth your ser 
 vices are subject to my will. ? " 
 
 "As to Africa," said I, "and making slaves of those who 
 are now free, we cannot differ. As to the other part of 
 your question, I will carry the illustration a little further, 
 and in doing so, will answer you in part. How would 
 you like to have some Michael O Connor come to you 
 and say, Mr. North, I propose to hire you and pay you 
 wages as my body-servant, or my ostler. Why should 
 you not consent ? If you do not, why should you hire 
 Mike himself to serve you in either of those capacities ? 
 What has become of the golden rule, if you hire a man 
 to do work for you which you would not be hired to do ? 
 
 " You are feasting with a company of friends ; and 
 your domestics, below, hear your cheerful talk, and feel 
 the wide difference between your state and theirs. Why 
 do you not go down and say, * Dear fellow-creatures, go 
 up and take our places at table, and let us be servants ? 
 Does the golden rule require that ? Inequalities in 
 human conditions are a wise and benevolent provision 
 for human happiness, so long as men are dependent on 
 one another, as they are and ever must be. Some are 
 so constituted by an all-wise God that they are hap 
 pier to be in subordinate situations. Mind is lord ; and 
 they, seeing and feeling the superiority of others, gladly 
 attach themselves to them as helpers, to be thought for 
 and protected, and to enjoy their approbation. There is 
 nothing cruel in this, unless it be cruel not to have made 
 all men equal. There are important influences grow 
 ing out of these relationships of superiors and inferiors, 
 gentleness, kindness, benevolence, in all its forms, 
 on the one hand, and on the other, respect, deference, 
 love, strong attachments and identification of interests. 
 
152 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 " As to the remaining part of your question, let me 
 ask, What nation or tribes are capable of such bondage as 
 the Africans at home inflict and bear ? We never had a 
 right to go and steal them, nor to encourage their captors 
 in their pillage and violent seizure of the defenceless 
 creatures ; nor do I think that all the blessings which 
 multitudes of them have received, for both worlds, in con 
 sequence of their transportation from Africa, lessens the 
 guilt of slave-traders; nor are these benefits any justifi 
 cation of the trade, nor do they afford ground for its con 
 tinuance. Nothing can justify it. Such is the voice of 
 the human conscience everywhere except where covet- 
 ousness or controversy prevail. 
 
 " But finding these colored people here, the question 
 upon which you and I differ, is, What is our duty with 
 regard to them ? 
 
 " You say, Set them all free. I reply, The relation of 
 ownership on our part toward them is best for all con 
 cerned. You say, It is wrong in itself. To say this, I 
 think, is to be more righteous than God." 
 
 " Then you maintain," said he, " that the Most High, 
 in the Bible, countenances all the atrocities of American 
 slavery." 
 
 " What a strange way," said I, " of arguing, do we very 
 generally find among anti-slavery men, when their feel 
 ings are enlisted, as they are so apt to be. They take 
 unwarrantable, extreme inferences from what we say, and 
 oppose these as logical answers to a statement or argu 
 ment. Auction block and * Bunker Hill, are sufficient 
 answers with them to most of our reasoning on this sub 
 ject. But let us look at this point in a dispassionate 
 manner. 
 
 " But," said I, " before I begin I wish to be distinctly 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 153 
 
 understood as holding this doctrine ; namely, The Bible 
 does not justify us in reducing men to bondage at our 
 will. God might appoint that certain tribes should be 
 slaves to others ; but before we proceed to reduce men to 
 slavery, our warrant for it must be clear. 
 
 " If, however, slavery is found by a certain generation 
 among them, and it is not right and just nor expedient to 
 abolish it, may we not safely ask, How did the Most 
 High legislate concerning slavery among the people to 
 whom he gave a code of laws from his own lips ? 
 
 " Learning this, we must then consider whether cir 
 cumstances in our day warrant, or require, different rules 
 and regulations. 
 
 " But our inquiry into the divine legislation respecting 
 slavery, will disclose some things which draw largely 
 upon one s implicit faith in the divine goodness ; and 
 if a man is disposed to be a sceptic and his anti-slavery 
 feelings are strong, here is a stone on which, if that anti- 
 slavery man falls, he shall be broken, but if it falls on 
 him, it shall grind him to powder. 
 
 "You will acknowledge this, if you will allow me to 
 speak further on this subject. 
 
 " Did you ever notice," said I, " with what words Christ 
 concludes his enunciation of the golden rule ? They are 
 a remarkable answer to our modern infidels, who im 
 pugn the Old Testament as far behind the New in its 
 moral standard. After declaring that the rule by which 
 we should treat others is self-love, the Saviour says, 
 * for this is the Law and the Prophets. So there was 
 nothing in the Law and Prophets inconsistent with the 
 golden rule. The golden rule therefore marks the his 
 tory of divine legislation from the beginning ; and if God 
 appointed slavery, he ordained nothing in connection with 
 7* 
 
154 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 it which was inconsistent with equal love to one s self 
 and to a neighbor. 
 
 " This deserves to be considered by those who, finding 
 slavery in the Old Testament appointed by God, begin, 
 as it were, to exculpate their Maker by saying that the 
 Hebrews were a rude, semi-barbarous people, and that di 
 vine legislation was wisely accommodated to their moral 
 capacity. Now it is singular, if this be so, that the Mosaic 
 code should be the basis, as it is, of all good legislation 
 everywhere. The effort to make the Hebrew people 
 and their code appear inferior, in order to excuse slavery, 
 is one illustration of the direful effect which anti-slavery 
 principles have had in lowering the respect of many for 
 the Bible, and loosening its hold upon their consciences. 
 Now it is to me a perfect relief on this subject of slavery 
 in the Old Testament, to know that God appointed noth 
 ing in the relation of his people to men of any class or 
 condition which his people in a change of circumstances, 
 might not be willing should be administered to them. If 
 slavery was ordained of God to the Hebrews, it must, 
 therefore, have been benevolent. If we start with the 
 doctrine that Slavery is the sum of all villanies, no 
 wonder that we find it necessary to use extenuating words 
 and a sort of apologetic, protecting manner of treating 
 the divine oracles. After all it is evidently hard work, 
 with many anti-slavery men to maintain that reverence 
 for the Old Testament and that confidence in God which 
 they feel are required of them. So they lay all the re 
 sponsibility of imperfection in the divine conduct, to the 
 * semi-barbarous Hebrews ! a people by the way, 
 whose first leader combined in himself a greater variety, 
 and a higher order, of talent, than any other man in his 
 tory. As military commander, poet, historian, judge, 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 155 
 
 legislator, who is to be named in comparison with the 
 man Moses ? 
 
 " We must come to the conclusion," said I, " that the 
 relation of ownership is not only not sinful, but that it 
 is in itself benevolent, that it had a benevolent object ; 
 for its origin was certainly benevolent." 
 
 " What was its origin ? " said Mrs. North ; " I always 
 had a desire to know how slavery first came into exist 
 ence." 
 
 " Blackstone tells us," I replied, " that its origin was in 
 the right of a captor to commute the death of his cap 
 tives with bondage. The laws of war give the conqueror 
 a right to destroy his enemies ; if he sees fit to spare their 
 lives in consideration of their serving him, this is also his 
 right. Thus, we suppose, slavery gained its existence. 
 
 " True, its very nature partakes of our fallen condition ; 
 it is not a paradisiacal institution ; it is not good in itself; 
 it is an accompaniment of the loss which we have in 
 curred by sin. In that light it is proper to speak of the 
 Most High as adapting his legislation to the depraved 
 condition of man ; but that is no more true of slavery 
 than of redemption ; everything in the treatment of us by 
 the Almighty is an exponent of our departure from our 
 first estate." 
 
 " Now," said Mrs. North, " all this is a relief to me ; 
 for I have always been sorely tried by remarks seem 
 ingly impugning the divine wisdom and goodness, 
 whenever slavery in the Bible has been under discus 
 sion." 
 
 " Please give us an outline," said Mr. North, " of the 
 Hebrew legislation on this .subject." He handed me a 
 Bible. 
 
 " I will try and not be tedious," said I, " and will repeat 
 
156 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 to you in few words the principal points of the Hebrew 
 Code, with regard to involuntary servitude. 
 
 " Slavery is the first thing named in the law given at 
 Sinai, after the moral law and a few simple directions as 
 to altars. This is noticeable. In the twenty-first chap 
 ter of Exodus, and in the twenty-fifth chapter of Le 
 viticus, we find the Hebrew slave-code. The following 
 is a summary of it : 
 
 " 1. Hebrews themselves might be bought and sold by 
 Hebrews ; but for six years only, at farthest. If the 
 jubilee year occurred at any time during these six years, 
 it cut short the term of service. 
 
 " 2. Hebrew paupers were an exception to this rule. 
 They could be retained till the year of jubilee next en 
 suing. 
 
 " 3. Hebrew servants, married in servitude, if they went 
 out free in the seventh, or in the jubilee year, must go 
 out alone, leaving their wives which their masters had 
 given them, and their children by these wives, (if any,) 
 behind them, as their masters possession. If, however, 
 they chose to remain with their wives and children, the 
 ear of the servant was bored with an awl to the door 
 post, and his servitude became perpetual. 
 
 " 4. Hebrew servants might also, from love to their 
 masters, in like manner and by the same ceremony, be 
 come servants forever. 
 
 "5. Strangers and sojourners among the Hebrews, 
 * waxing rich, were allowed to buy Hebrews who were 
 1 waxen poor, and who were at liberty to sell them 
 selves to these sojourners or to the family of these stran 
 gers. The jubilee year, however, terminated this servi 
 tude. The price of sale was graduated according to the 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 157 
 
 number of years previous to the jubilee year. The 
 kindred of the servant had the right of redeeming him, 
 the price being regulated in the same way. 
 
 " 6. In all these cases in which Hebrews were bought 
 and sold, there were special injunctions that they should 
 not be treated with rigor, the reason assigned by the 
 Most High being substantially the same in all cases, 
 namely, For unto me the children of Israel are ser 
 vants ; they are my servants whom I brought forth out 
 of the land of Egypt : I am the Lord your God. 
 
 " 7. Liberal provision was to be made for the Hebrew 
 servant at the termination of his servitude. During his 
 term of service, he was to be regarded and treated as 
 an hired servant and a sojourner. 
 
 "8. Bondmen and bondmaids, as property, without 
 limitation of time, and transmissible as inheritance to 
 children, might be bought of surrounding nations. The 
 children of sojourners also could be thus acquired. To 
 these the seventh year s and the fiftieth year s release 
 did not apply. 
 
 " Now, Mr. North," said I, " let me proceed to try 
 your faith somewhat. I will see whether your confidence 
 in divine revelation is sound, for nothing at the present 
 day has overthrown the faith of many like the manifest 
 teachings of the Bible with regard to slavery. You have 
 felt that the Hebrew code is better than ours, so far as 
 it relates to slaves who were Hebrews. As to the slaves 
 from the heathen, we infer that they met with rigor, 
 or at least were liable to it ; for God continually enjoins 
 it upon the Hebrews that they shall not use rigor with 
 their brethren. 
 
 " Now let me mention some things which will try your 
 faith in revelation, if you are an abolitionist. 
 
158 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 " The Hebrews were allowed to sell their servants to 
 other people. 
 
 " Thus they traded in flesh and blood. This was pro 
 hibited in the case of a Hebrew maid-servant, whom a 
 man had bought and had made -her his concubine. If she 
 did not please him, it was said that to sell her unto a 
 strange nation he shall have no power. The inference 
 is that they sold their Gentile slaves, if they pleased, to 
 a strange nation. Again. When a father or mother 
 became poor, their creditor could take their children for 
 servants. Thus you read : * Now there cried a certain 
 woman of the wives of the sons of the prophets unto 
 Elisha saying, Thy servant my husband is dead, and 
 thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord ; and the 
 creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be 
 bondmen. This was according to the law of Moses, in 
 the twenty-fifth of Leviticus ; bondmen, however, mean 
 ing here a servant for a term of years. See also the 
 New Testament parable of the unforgiving servant. 
 
 " This was hard, it will seem to you and to all of us, 
 that if one became poor in Israel, his children could be 
 attached. Thus the idea of involuntary servitude, where 
 no crime was, prevailed in the Theocracy. 
 
 " But we come now to something which draws harder 
 upon our faith. 
 
 " We find the Most High prescribing, Exodus xxi. 20, 
 21, that a master who kills his servant under chastise 
 ment shall be punished (but not put to death) ; and if 
 the servant survives a day or two, the master shall not 
 even be punished for the death of his slave ! 
 
 " The reason which the Most High gives is this : For 
 he is his money / 
 
 " A human being, money ! An immortal soul, 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 159 
 
 money ! God s image, money ! And this the rea 
 soning, these the very words of my Maker ! Is it not 
 astonishing, if your principles are correct, that there has 
 been no controversy for ages against this ? and that the 
 Bible, with such passages in it should have retained its 
 hold on the human mind ? He is his money ! It 
 would have been no different had it read : He is his 
 cotton. You see that the Most High recognized owner 
 ship, property in man. Why is it said, He is his 
 money ? Poole (Synopsis) says, that is, his pos 
 session bought with money ; and therefore 1. Had a power 
 to chastise him according to his merit, which might be 
 very great. 2. Is sufficiently punished with his own 
 loss. 3. May be presumed not to have done this pur 
 posely or maliciously. 
 
 " Either and all of which explanations, or any other 
 which can be given, only bring more clearly to view the 
 idea of money as a reason why the master is not to be 
 punished, for causing the death of a slave by whipping, 
 if the slave happens to continue a day or two, no matter 
 under what mutilations and sufferings. 
 
 " Furthermore. We find the Most High decreeing 
 perpetual bondage in certain cases, and more than all, 
 as we have seen, the forcible separation of husband and 
 wife among slaves. Let me turn to Exodus xxi. and 
 read : 
 
 " 1. Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set be 
 fore them. 
 
 " 2. If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall 
 serve : and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. 
 
 " 3. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: 
 if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. 
 
 " 4. If his master have given him a wife and she have 
 
160 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be 
 her master s, and he shall go out by himself. 
 
 " I have not finished my reading," said I ; " but what 
 do you say to that, Mr. North ? " 
 " Read on," said he. 
 
 " 5. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, 
 my wife, and my children, I will not go out free : 
 
 " 6. Then his master shall bring him unto the judges, he 
 shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door-post, and his 
 master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall 
 serve him forever. 
 
 " God decreed, therefore, that the marriage of a slave 
 in bondage, in those days, was dissoluble, as no other 
 marriage was. Divorces among the Hebrews, allowed 
 for the hardness of their hearts, were not parallel to the 
 forcible separation of a slave from his wife under the hard 
 necessity of choice between perpetual bondage with a 
 wife, or freedom without her. The merciful God who 
 kindly enacted, No man shall take the nether nor the 
 upper millstone to pledge : for he taketh a man s life to 
 pledge, and that a garment pawned should be restored 
 before sundown, that wages should not be withheld over 
 night, yes, the God who legislated about bird s-nests 
 ordained the dissolution of the marriage tie between 
 slaves in certain cases, unless the slave husband was 
 willing for his wife s sake, to be a slave forever ! 
 
 " What do you say to this, Mr. North ? " I asked again. 
 
 Said Mrs. North, " I begin to see the origin and cause 
 of infidelity among the abolitionists." 
 
 " Tell me," said Mr. North, " how you view it." 
 
 " On stating this, once," said I, " in a public meeting, 
 I raised a clamor. Three or four men sprung to their 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 1G1 
 
 V 
 
 feet, and one of them, who first caught the chairman s 
 eye, cried out, his face turning red, his eyes starting from 
 their sockets, his fist clenched, * I demand of the gentle 
 man whether he means to approve of all the abominations 
 of American slavery ! Is he in favor of separating hus 
 bands and wives, parents and children ? Let us know it, 
 Sir, if it be so. No wonder that strong anti-slavery men 
 turn infidels when they hear Christian men defending 
 American slavery from the Bible. No wonder that they 
 say, " The times demand, and we must have, an anti- 
 slavery constitution, an anti-slavery Bible, and an anti-sla 
 very God." Mr. Moderator, will the gentleman answer 
 my question, Do you mean to approve all the atroci 
 ties of American slavery, on the ground that the Bible 
 countenances them ? 
 
 " I was never more calm in my life. I replied, Mr. 
 Chairman, taking for my warrant an inspired piece of 
 advice as to the best way of answering a man according 
 to his folly, it would be just, should I reply to the gentle 
 man s question, Yes, I do. But the gentleman, I per 
 ceive, is too much excited to hear me. 
 
 " He had flung himself round in his seat, put his elbow 
 on the back of it, and his hand through his hair ; he then 
 flung himself round in the opposite direction, and put his 
 arm and hand as before, and he blew his nose with a 
 sound like a trombone. 
 
 " I then said, Mr. Chairman, if all that the gentleman 
 meant to ask was, Do you find any countenance under 
 any circumstances, for the relation of master and slave in 
 the divine legation of Moses, and this was all which, 
 as a fair man, not carried away by a gust of passion, he 
 should have asked me, my answer was correct and 
 proper. If he wished to know my views of what is right 
 
162 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 and proper as to the marriage relation of our slaves, he 
 should have put the question in a different shape. But 
 first, Sir/ said I, if he dislikes the twenty-first chapter of 
 Exodus, his controversy must be with his God, not with 
 me. Sinai was, let me remind him, more of a place 
 than Bunker Hill. I am not a friend of " oppression " 
 any more than the gentleman ; but I trust that had I 
 lived in Israel, I should never have thought of being 
 more humane than my Maker. 
 
 " I then proceeded to say that (as before remarked to 
 you) we are not warranted by the Bible to make men 
 slaves when we please ; nor, if slavery exists, are we 
 commanded to adopt the rules and regulations of Hebrew 
 slavery. 
 
 " But we do learn from the Bible that property in man 
 is not in itself sinful, not even to say of a man, * He 
 is my money. 
 
 " Were it intrinsically wrong, God would not have leg 
 islated about it in such ways ; for granting, if you please, 
 the untenable distinction about his * not appointing sla 
 very, but i finding it in existence and legislating for it, 
 what necessity could there have been for making such a 
 law as that relating to the boring of the ear, rather than 
 giving the slave his wife and children and suffering them 
 all to go free ? 
 
 " No, Mr. North," said I, continuing our conversation, 
 " I cannot oppose the relation of master and slave as in 
 itself sinful ; for then I become more righteous than God. 
 But I must inquire whether it is right, in each given 
 case, to reduce men to bondage : shall that be, for exam 
 ple, the mode in which prisoners of war shall be disposed 
 of? or a subjugated people? or criminals? or, in certain 
 cases, debtors ? In doing so, there is no intrinsic sin ; 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 163 
 
 the act itself, under the circumstances, may be exceed 
 ingly sinful ; but the relation of ownership is not neces 
 sarily a sin. This, I hold, is all that can be deduced from 
 the Bible in favor of slavery : The relationjs not in itself 
 sinful." 
 
 " But," said Mr. North, " we sinned in stealing these 
 people from Africa ; all sin should be immediately for 
 saken ; therefore, set the slaves free at once." 
 
 I replied, " Let us apply that principle. You and I, 
 and a large company of passengers, are in a British ship, 
 approaching our coast. We find out, all at once, that 
 the crew and half of the passengers stole the ship. We 
 gain the ascendency ; we can do as we please. Now, as 
 all sin must be repented of at once, it is the duty of the 
 passengers and crew to put the ship about, and deliver it to 
 the owners in Glasgow ! Perhaps we should not think it 
 best to put in force the ruat ccehim doctrine, especially 
 if we had had some ruat ccelum storms, and it was late 
 in the season. But then we should actually be enjoying 
 the stolen property the ship and its comforts for sev 
 eral days, with the belief that benevolence and justice to 
 all concerned required us to reach the end of the voyage 
 before we took measures to perform that justice, which, 
 before, would have been practical folly. 
 
 " Now, please, do not require this illustration to go on 
 all fours. All that I mean is this : A right thing may 
 be wrong, if done unseasonably, or in disregard of cir 
 cumstances which have supervened. 
 
 " But to go a little further, and beyond mere expe 
 diency : Can you see no difference between buying 
 slaves, and making men slaves ? While it would be 
 wicked for you to reduce people to slavery, is that the 
 same as becoming owners to those who are already in 
 
164 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 slavery ? In one case, you could not apply the golden 
 rule ; in the other, the golden rule would absolutely com 
 pel you, in many instances, to buy slaves. Go to almost 
 any place where slaves are sold, and they will come to 
 you, if they like your looks, and, by all the arts of per 
 suasion, entreat you to become their master. Having 
 succeeded, step behind the scenes, if you can, and hear 
 them exulting that they fetched more than this or that 
 man. Is there no difference between this and reducing 
 free people to slavery ? " 
 
 " Say yes, husband," said Mrs. North, " or I must say 
 it for you." 
 
 " So that, let me add," said I, " in opposing slavery, I 
 am necessarily confined to the evils and abuses commit 
 ted in the relationship of master. But, even in doing 
 this, why should I be meddlesome ? We have a most 
 offensive air and manner in our behavior towards South 
 erners, in connection with their duties as masters. It 
 is perfectly disgusting. I may oppose slavery, on the 
 grounds of political economy or for national reasons. 
 But if I mix up with it wrathful opposition to the sin, 
 so called, or the unrighteousness of holding property in 
 man, it has no countenance in the Bible. If I speak of 
 it publicly, as a system fraught with evil, I must discrim 
 inate ; or they whom I would influence, knowing that I 
 am mistaken, will regard me as an infatuated enemy, 
 who will effect more injury than I can repair. As to 
 Mr. Jefferson s testimony, there are as good and con 
 scientious men at the South in our day as Thomas Jef 
 ferson. Mr. Calhoun was as worthy a witness in all 
 respects." 
 
 "Now tell us," said Mrs. North, "your sober con 
 victions, apart from this Northern controversy, about 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 1G5 
 
 that twenty-first chapter of Exodus, where God directs 
 that slaves, in certain cases, shall be slaves forever ; and, 
 moreover, in certain cases, that slave husbands may have 
 their wives and children withheld from them, and the 
 husbands leave them forever. How do you reconcile this 
 with the justice and goodness of God ? " 
 
 I said to her, " To make the case fully appear, before 
 we converse upon it, hear this passage, Leviticus xxv. 
 44-46 : Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which 
 thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round 
 about you ; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bond 
 maids. So, in the next verses, The children of the 
 strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye 
 buy, and of their families that are with you, which they 
 begat in your land ; and they shall be your possession : 
 And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your chil 
 dren after you, to inherit them for a possession ; they 
 shall be your bondmen forever ; but over your brethren, 
 the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another 
 with rigor. 
 
 " Here, and in all the divine legislation on this sub 
 ject, a distinction is made between Hebrews who became 
 slaves, and slaves who were foreigners, or of foreign ex 
 traction, though resident in Israel. Slaves of Hebrew 
 extraction might go free after six years, and upon the 
 death of the owner ; and in every jubilee year they must 
 all return to freedom, and be free from every disability by 
 reason of bondage, except where the ear was bored. 
 
 " Not so with the slaves of foreign extraction ; nor 
 even with the Hebrew whose ear was bored, provided 
 his wife was given him in slavery, and he had elected to 
 live with her rather than be free. Not even upon the 
 death of the owner could such slaves be manumitted, as 
 
166 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 was the case ordinarily with regard to Hebrew slaves ; 
 but property in these Gentile slaves, and in Hebrew- 
 slaves reduced to the same condition, God ordained 
 should be an inheritance, passing down forever from 
 father to child. 
 
 " No jubilee trumpet was to cheer their hearts. Think 
 what the jubilee morning must have been to those slaves 
 in hopeless bondage, if bondage were necessarily such as 
 many fancy. Our abolitionists represent the bells and 
 guns of our Fourth of July to be a hideous mockery in 
 the ears of the slaves ; and multitudes of our good peo 
 ple ludicrously fancy them as most miserable on that 
 day, by the contrast of their enslaved condition with our 
 boasted Independence. Let us borrow this fancy, and 
 apply it to the Hebrew slave. 
 
 " The jubilee trumpets, and all the joyous scenes of the 
 fiftieth year in Israel, caused multitudes of slaves in Is 
 rael, we will suppose, to reflect, This Jehovah, God of 
 Israel, has doomed us to hopeless bondage. We are 
 guilty of having been born so many degrees south or 
 north, east or west, of these Hebrews. We, by God s 
 providence, are Gentiles. Our chiefs sold us, and these 
 Hebrews bought us. We were betrayed ; we were 
 driven out of our homes ; unjust wars were made upon 
 us, to make us captives, that we might be sold. And 
 * the Lord s people bought us, by his special edict (Lev. 
 xxv. 44). Our brother-servants, unfortunate Hebrews, get 
 released in the jubilee year, except these poor creatures 
 who were so unfortunate as to be married in slavery, and, 
 not being willing to be divorced, had their ears fastened, 
 with the ignominious awl, to their master s door-post. 
 God could have ordained that they, with their wives and 
 children, and we, with ours, should have release in the 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 167 
 
 fiftieth year. But, no ! our bondage is forever, and so is 
 theirs ; and our children and their children are to be 
 servants forever. But we hold it to be a self-evident 
 truth that all men are born free and equal, and have an 
 inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi 
 ness. Slavery is the sum of all villanies. Our .master s 
 will is our law ; we are subject to his passions ; we are 
 chattels ; we are his money. This is the language of 
 your God, the God whom you worship ; and not only 
 so, but you circumcise us to worship Him ! 
 
 " Some benevolent Levite, jealous for the character of 
 his Maker, replies, l But God did not institute slavery ; 
 He focmd it in existence, and he only legislates about it, 
 and regulates it. 
 
 " A thousand groans are the prelude to the withering an 
 swer which the slaves make to this apology for oppression. 
 
 " He broke your bonds, it seems, they cry, in Egypt, 
 and in the Red Sea. Did He "find slavery" on the 
 opposite shore of the Red Sea? Why did he not 
 merely " legislate for it, and regulate it ? " No, He en 
 acted it. How dare you apologize for your God with 
 such a miserable pretext ? He made the ordinance sepa 
 rating a husband from wife and children, unless the 
 husband would submit to the indignity of having his ear 
 bored and to the doom of perpetual bondage, in case his 
 wife was a Gentile. If he goes away, he must leave his 
 wife and children. Great indulgence have you in multi 
 plying wives ; that is winked at " for the hardness of 
 your hearts ; " but the poor Hebrew must abandon his 
 wife and family if he chooses freedom ! They are his 
 master s "property," "his money," and God gave the 
 servant these children, knowing that they would be the 
 " property " of another, and that he would have no un- 
 
168 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 encumbered right to them ; and down through all ages 
 they and their descendants must be servants. And now 
 you tell us, " God did not institute " this ! He only " found 
 it ! " He " regulated it ! " Come, blow up your trumpet, 
 reverend Levite ! Go, worship the God of whom you feel 
 half ashamed. Do not ask us to worship and love a 
 Being who is bound by the laws of fate so that he can 
 not do otherwise, if he would, than make one of us a 
 slave forever, while the man who grinds with me at the 
 same mill, goes with his wife and children, forever free ! " 
 
 " Those remarks have the true Boston tone," said Mrs. 
 North. 
 
 "Yes," said I, "there were brave men before Aga 
 memnon, Horace tells us. There is slavery forever," 
 said I, "or the separation of husband and wife, father 
 and children, unless the man would be a slave forever. 
 What * partings there must have been ! What strug 
 gles in those who concluded to take the fatal awl 
 through their ears, before they could make up their 
 minds to be slaves forever. See the hardship of the 
 case. If the man loves his wife and children, he may 
 be a slave ; that love would make him spend and be 
 spent for them in freedom, in his humble home, amid 
 the sweets of liberty ; but no ; if he loves his wife he 
 must take the bitter draught of slavery with his love. 
 But if he hates her and his children, he may be free ! 
 What a bounty on conjugal fickleness, on unnatural treat 
 ment of offspring ! " 
 
 " Was there no Canada ? " said Mrs. North, biting off 
 her thread. " O, I recollect; Hagar went there. I 
 wonder if the angel who remanded her was removed 
 from office, on his return to heaven." 
 
 " Come, wife," said Mr. North, " there is such a thing 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 169 
 
 as being converted too much. Please, Sir, will you an 
 swer the question as to the consistency of all this with 
 the divine wisdom and goodness ? " 
 
 " That," said I, " is not the question which you wish 
 to ask." 
 
 " I do not understand you," said he ; " please to ex 
 plain." 
 
 "You wish to ask," said I, "how I reconcile these 
 things with your notions of wisdom and benevolence." 
 
 " Why," said he, " I have my ideas of divine wisdom 
 and goodness, and I wish to make these things square 
 with them." 
 
 "And that," said I, "is just the rock on which you all 
 split. Your ideas of the divine goodness must be based 
 on a complete view of the revealed character and con 
 duct of God. But you and your friends say, * this and 
 that ought to be, or ought not to be, and you try your 
 Maker by that measure. Now I say, he that re- 
 proveth God, let him answer it. Are not the things 
 which I have quoted, parts of divine revelation, as much 
 as the flood and the passover ? " 
 
 "I see that they are," said Mr. North. 
 
 " Do you believe that God is a spirit infinite, eternal, 
 unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, 
 justice, goodness, and truth ? " 
 
 "I do," said he. 
 
 "You believe this notwithstanding the apostasy, the 
 destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the flood, and the 
 extirpation of the Canaanites." 
 
 " I do," said he, " so long as I receive the Bible as the 
 Word of God." 
 
 "I think," said Mrs. North, "that the loss of the 
 Central America with her four hundred passengers, 
 8 
 
170 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 tries my faith in God full as much as a heathen s having 
 his ear bored to spend his days with his wife and children 
 among God s covenant people." 
 
 " Then you do not worship the Goddess of Liberty, Mrs. 
 North," said I. " Art thou called being a servant ? Care 
 not for it. But if thou mayest be made free, use it 
 rather. " 
 
 " That," said she, " seems to express my idea about 
 bondage and freedom. Of course it is not, theoretically, 
 a blessing to be a slave. It may be, practically, to some. 
 But what strikes me oftentimes is the utter inability of 
 an abolitionist to say to a slave, under any circumstan 
 ces, Care not for it. His doctrine, rather, is, Art thou 
 called being a servant ? If thou hast a Sharpe s rifle, or 
 a John Brown s pike, use it rather. Or, * Art thou called 
 being a servant ? If thou canst run for Canada, use it 
 rather. Paul had not an abolitionist mind, that is very 
 clear. But," she continued, " do relieve my husband and 
 enlighten me also, by giving us your views about the Old 
 Testament slavery, which I presume you can do without 
 seeming to arraign the character of God." 
 
 I replied, " This is a sinful race, and we are treated 
 as such. Slavery is one of God s chastisements. In 
 stead of destroying every wicked nation by war, pesti 
 lence, or famine, he grants some of them a reprieve, and 
 commutes their punishment from death to bondage. 
 Those whom he allowed to be slaves to his people 
 Israel were highly favored ; they enjoyed a blessing 
 which came to them disguised by the sable cloud of 
 servitude ; but in their endless happiness many of them 
 will bless God for the bondage which joined them to 
 the nation of Israel. 
 
 " I look upon our slaves as being here by a special 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 171 
 
 design of Providence, for some great purpose, to be dis 
 closed at the right time. Unless I take this view of 
 it, I am embarrassed and greatly troubled ; perplexed, 
 but not in despair. The great design of Providence 
 in no wise abates the sin of those who brought the slaves 
 here, nor does it warrant us in getting more of them. 
 While this is true, I cannot resist the thought that God 
 has a controversy with this black race which is not yet 
 finished. I believe that God withholds from them a 
 spirit and temper suited for freedom till he shall have 
 finished his marvellous designs. His destiny with the 
 Jew, as a nation, to the present day, is another illus 
 tration of his mysterious providence with regard to a 
 people. 
 
 "As to the enactment which made the Hebrew ser 
 vant a slave for life, thus dooming even one of the cove 
 nant people to perpetual bondage, if he had married in 
 slavery, I see in it several things most clearly. 
 
 " You will have noticed that in every case in which a 
 Hebrew was made a servant, poverty was the ground 
 of it. * If thy brother be waxen poor, he could sell him 
 self, either to a Hebrew or to a resident alien. He and 
 his children could also be taken for debt. This seems 
 to us oppressive. 
 
 " Let a family among us be reduced, from any cause, 
 to a condition in which they cannot maintain themselves, 
 and what follows ? The children find employment, some 
 of them in families, in various kinds of domestic service. 
 Indented apprenticeships in this commonwealth are with 
 in the memory of all who are forty or fifty years of age. 
 We remember the very frequent advertisements : One 
 cent reward. Kan away from the subscriber, an indent 
 ed apprentice/ etc. The descriptions of such fugitives, 
 
172 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 all for the sake of absolving the master from liability for 
 the absconding boy, and sometimes the hunt that was 
 made, with dogs to scent his tracks, when his return was 
 desired, are far within the memory of the oldest inhab 
 itant. 
 
 " In Israel, this descent of a family from a prosperous 
 to a decayed state, and the consequent servitude, were 
 used by the Most High to cultivate some of the best feel 
 ings of our nature. It touched the finest sensibilities of 
 the soul. Let me read from the fifteenth of Deuteron 
 omy : 
 
 " And if thy brother, an Hebrew man or an Hebrew 
 woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years, then in 
 the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. 
 
 " And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou slialt 
 not let him go away empty. 
 
 " Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out 
 of thy floor, and out of thy wine-press : of that wherewith the 
 Lord thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him. And 
 thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of 
 Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee : therefore I 
 command thee this thing to-day. 
 
 " And if it shall be, if he say unto thee, I will not go away 
 from thee ; because he loveth thee and thine house, because he 
 is well with thee, 
 
 " Then thou shalt take an awl and thrust it through his ear 
 unto the door, and he shall be thy servant forever. And also 
 with thy maid-servant thou shalt do likewise. 
 
 " It shall not seem hard unto thee when thou sendest him 
 away free from thee : for lie hath been worth a doubled hired 
 servant to thee, in serving thee six years ; and the Lord thy 
 God shall bless thee in all that thou doest. 
 
 " Is not this very beautiful and touching, Mrs. North ? " 
 She said nothing, but hid her face in her little babe s 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 173 
 
 neck, pretending to kiss it. But Mr. North wiped his 
 eyes. " There is not much barbarism in that," said he. 
 
 "The golden rule," said I; "for this is the law and 
 the prophets. 
 
 "The people to whom these touching precepts were 
 given by the Most High, and who were susceptible to 
 these finest appeals, are, as we have said, sometimes 
 represented as a semi-barbarous people, so gross that God 
 was obliged to let them hold slaves ! Now, could any 
 thing be more civilizing, refining, elevating, than such 
 relationships as this limited servitude of poor Hebrews 
 created ? What scenes there must have been oftentimes, 
 when the six years were out, and the servant was about 
 to depart, laden with gifts ! And what a scene when, 
 with strong attachment to the family, the servant de 
 clined to be free, and went to the door-post to have his 
 ear pierced with the awl, to be a servant, and not only 
 so, but to be an inheritance forever ! 
 
 " Is this the sum of all villanies, Mr. North ? " said 
 I. " Yet it is slavery. * Auction-blocks, whippings, 
 roastings, separations of families, are not ( slavery. 
 They are its abuses ; slavery can exist when they cease. 
 I pray you, is such slavery as the God of the Hebrews . 
 appointed, in such cases as these, forever, an unmiti 
 gated curse ? 
 
 " Now," said I, " go through our Southern country, 
 and you will find in every city, town, and village just 
 such relationships between the whites and the blacks as 
 must have existed where these Hebrew laws had effect. 
 Think of the little slave-babe, and the Southern lady s 
 letter, which have given occasion to all our conversation. 
 The Gospel, as it subdues and softens the human heart, 
 
174 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 will make the relationship of involuntary servitude every 
 where to be after this pattern. Instead of exciting ha 
 tred and jealousy, and provoking war between the whites 
 and blacks, I am for bringing all the influences of the 
 Gospel to bear upon the hearts of the white population, 
 to convert them into such masters as God enjoined the 
 Hebrews to be, and such as the Apostle to the Gentiles 
 enjoined upon Gentile slave-holders as their models. 
 And I am filled with sorrow and astonishment as I see 
 some of the very best and most beloved men among us 
 at the North withholding missionaries and tracts from the 
 Southern country, and as Gustavus s aunt said some 
 of these do calling it l standing up for Jesus ! 
 
 " Now," said I, " if such were the injunctions of the 
 Most High as to the manner in which the Hebrews 
 should treat their Hebrew slaves, it is easy to see that 
 such a habit with regard to them would serve greatly to 
 mitigate the sorrows of bondage on the part of Gentile 
 slaves. And thus the curse of slavery, like sin, and even 
 death, is made, under the influences of religion, a means 
 of improvement, a "source of blessing. Let but the sun 
 shine on a pile of cloud, and what folds of beauty and 
 deep banks of snowy whiteness does it set forth, and, at 
 the close of day, all the exquisite tints which make the 
 artist despair are flung profusely upon that mass of va 
 por which but for the sun were a heap of sable cloud. 
 
 " The minister," said I, " who, Hattie tells us, classed 
 Abraham the slave-holder with the murderer, and the 
 liar and swearer, knew not what he did. People who 
 laugh and titter at the patriarchal institution, need to 
 peruse the laws of Moses again, with a spirit akin to their 
 beautiful tone ; and those who say that to hold a fellow- 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 175 
 
 man as property is sin, are not wiser than Daniel, but 
 they make themselves wiser than God. 
 
 " All who sustain the relationship of owner to a human 
 being," said I, u do well to read these injunctions of the 
 Most High, as very many of them do, applying them to 
 themselves. And it is also profitable to read how that a 
 violation of these very slave-laws was, in after years, one 
 great cause of the divine wrath upon the Hebrews. 
 You will find, in the thirty-fourth of Jeremiah, that, not 
 content with having Gentile slaves, the Hebrews violated 
 the law requiring them to release each his Hebrew slaves 
 once in seven years. 
 
 " I made a covenant with your fathers, God says, * in 
 the day that I brought them forth out of the land of 
 Egypt, saying, At the end of seven years let ye go every 
 man his brother an Hebrew which hath been sold unto 
 thee. But ye turned and polluted my name, and caused 
 every man his servant to return, and brought them unto 
 subjection. Ye have not hearkened unto me in pro 
 claiming a liberty every one to his brother ; behold, 
 I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, 
 to the pestilence, and to the famine. 
 
 " Thus it is evident that the relation of master and 
 servant was originally ordained and instituted by God as 
 a benevolent arrangement to all concerned, not winked 
 at, or suffered, like polygamy, but ordained, that it 
 was full of blessings to all who fulfilled the duties of the 
 relation in the true spirit of the institution ; and, more 
 over, it is true that there are few curses which will be 
 more intolerable than they will suffer who make use of 
 their fellow-men, in the image of God, for the purposes 
 of selfishness and sin ; while those who feel their accoun- 
 tableness in this relation, and discharge it in the spirit of 
 
176 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 the Bible, will find their hearts refined and ennobled, and 
 the relationship will be, to all concerned, a source of 
 blessings whose influences will bring peace to their souls 
 when the grave of the slave and that of his owner are 
 looking up into the same heavens from the common 
 earth." 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 177 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE TENURE. 
 
 " One part, one little part, we dimly scan 
 Through the dark medium of life s fevering dream ; 
 Yet dare arraign the whole stupendous plan 
 If but that little part incongruous seem ; 
 Nor is that part, perhaps, what mortals deem ; 
 Oft from apparent ill our blessings rise." BEATTIE, Minstrel. 
 
 MR. North then said, " Let us change the subject a 
 little. Please to tell us why, in your view, any 
 slave who is so disposed may not run away. Would you 
 not do so, if you were a slave, and were oppressed, or 
 thought that you could. mend your condition? Where 
 did my master get his right and title to me ? God did 
 not institute American slavery as he did slavery among 
 the Hebrews. If I were a slave to certain masters, 
 South or North, I should probably run away at all haz 
 ards. I should not stop to debate the morality of the 
 act. No human being would, in his heart blame me. It 
 would be human nature, resisting under the infliction of 
 pain. We catch hold of a dentist s hand when he is draw 
 ing a tooth. Perhaps there may be found some moral 
 law against doing so ! " 
 
 " But we are apt," said I, " to take these exceptional 
 cases, and make a rule that includes them and all others. 
 I have been present when intelligent gentlemen, North- 
 8* 
 
178 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 erners and Southerners, have discussed this subject in 
 the most friendly manner, though with great earnestness. 
 Once I remember we spent an evening discussing the 
 subject. I will, if you please, tell you about the conver 
 sation. 
 
 " I must take you, then, to an old mansion at the South, 
 around which, and at such a distance from each other as 
 to reveal a fine prospect, stood a growth of noble elms, 
 a lawn spreading itself out before the house, and the 
 large hall, or entry, serving for a tea-room, where seven 
 or eight gentlemen, and as many ladies were assembled. 
 
 " A Southern physician, who had no slaves, took the 
 ground that all the slaves had a right to walk off when 
 ever they pleased. He did not see why we should hold 
 them in bondage rather than they us, so far as right and 
 justice were concerned. Some of the slave-holders were 
 evidently much troubled in their thoughts, and did not 
 speak strongly. My own feelings at first went with the 
 physician and with his arguments ; but I saw that he was 
 not very clear, nor deep, and his friends who partly 
 yielded to him, seemed to do so rather under the influ 
 ence of conscientious feelings, than from any very well 
 defined principles. This is the case with not a few at 
 the South, and it was very common in Thomas Jefferson s 
 days. But the large majority, who were of the contrary 
 opinion, got the advantage in the argument, and it seemed 
 to me went far toward convincing the physician, as they 
 did me, that he was wrong. 
 
 " The company all seemed to look toward a judge who 
 was present, to open the discussion with a statement of 
 his views. He did so by saying, for substance, as fol 
 lows : 
 
 " I will take it for granted, said he, that we are 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 179 
 
 agreed as to the unlawfulness of the slave-trade, past and 
 present. We find the blacks here, as we come upon the 
 stage. "We are born into this relationship. It is an 
 existing form of government in the Slaye States. 
 
 " Ownership in man is not contrary to the will of God. 
 I also find it written that " Canaan shall be a servant. 
 Hear these words of inspiration : " Cursed be Canaan ; 
 a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And 
 he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem ; and Canaan 
 shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he 
 shall dwell in the tents of Shem ; and Canaan shall be 
 his servant." As the Japhetic race is to dwell in the 
 tents of Shem, for example, England occupying India, 
 so I believe the black race is under the divine sentence 
 of servitude. Moreover, being perfectly convinced of the 
 wrongfulness and the infinite mischief to all concerned of 
 the forcible liberation of our slaves, I am assisted in set 
 tling, in my own mind, the question as to the right of 
 individual slaves to escape from service, and our right to 
 continue in this relationship, conforming ourselves in it 
 always to the golden rule. 
 
 " * If it be the right of one, under ordinary circum 
 stances, to depart, it is the right of all. But the govern 
 ment under which they live, in this commonwealth, rec 
 ognizes slavery. The constitution and the general gov 
 ernment protect us in maintaining it. The right of our 
 servants to leave us at pleasure, which could not of course 
 be done without violence, on both sides, implies the right 
 of insurrection. It is impossible to define the cases in 
 which insurrection is justifiable, but the general rule is 
 that it is wrong. Government is a divine ordinance ; 
 men cannot capriciously overthrow or change it, at every 
 turn of affairs which proves burdensome or even oppres- 
 
180 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 sive. God is jealous to maintain human government as 
 an important element in his own administration. Men 
 justly in authority, or established in it by time, or by con 
 sent, or by necessity, or by expediency, may properly 
 feel that they are God s vicegerents. He is on their 
 side ; a parent, a teacher, a commander, in short, he who 
 rules, is, as it were, dispensing a law of the divine gov 
 ernment, as truly as though he directed a force in nature. 
 Hence, to disturb existing government is, in the sight of 
 God, a heinous offence, unless circumstances plainly jus 
 tify a revolution ; otherwise, one might as well think to 
 interfere with impunity and change the equinoxes, or the 
 laws of refraction. It is well to consider what forms of 
 government, and what forms of oppression under them, 
 existed, when that divine word was written : " Let every 
 soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no 
 power but of God : the powers that be are ordained of 
 God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth 
 the ordinance of God ; and they that resist shall receive 
 to themselves damnation." This was written in view of 
 the throne of the Caesars. 
 
 " But it is very clear that when a people are in a con 
 dition to establish and maintain another form of govern 
 ment, there is no sin in their turning themselves into a new 
 condition. In doing so, government, God s ordinance, 
 evolves itself under a new form, and provided it is, really, 
 government, and not anarchy, no sin may have been com 
 mitted by the insurrection, or revolution, as an act. The 
 result proved that government still existed, potentially, 
 and was only changing its shape and adapting itself to 
 the circumstances of the people. If a man or body of 
 men assert that things among them are ready for such 
 new evolutions, and so undertake to bring them about, 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 181 
 
 they do it at their peril, and failing, they are indictable 
 for treason ; they may be true patriots, they may be con 
 scientious men ; the sympathies of many good people may 
 be with them, but they have sinned against the great law 
 which protects mankind from anarchy. 
 
 " To apply this/ said the Judge, to our subject, 
 When the time comes that the blacks can truly say, " We 
 are now your equals in all that is necessary to constitute 
 a civil state, and we propose to take the government of 
 this part of the country into our hands," we should still 
 make several objections, which would be valid. The 
 Constitutions of the States and of the United States must 
 be changed before that can be done, and we will pre 
 sume that this would involve a revolution. Moreover, 
 this country belongs to the Anglo-Saxon race, with which 
 foreigners of kindred stocks have intermingled, and they 
 and we object to the presence of a black race as possess 
 ors of some of the states of the Union, even if it were 
 constitutional. We do not propose to abandon our right 
 and title to the soil, without a civil war, which would 
 probably result in the extermination of one or the other 
 party. If you are able to leave us at pleasure, the proper 
 way will be to do it peaceably, and on just principles, to 
 be agreed upon between us. 
 
 " No such exigency as this, said the Judge, is possi 
 ble. It would be prevented or anticipated, and relief 
 would be obtained while the necessity was on the increase 
 and before it reached a solemn crisis. 
 
 " One of three ways will, in my opinion, said he, 
 * bring a solution to this problem of slavery. 
 
 " One is, the insurrection of the slaves, the massacre 
 of the whites, and the forcible seizure and possession of 
 power by the blacks throughout the South. This would 
 
182 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 be a scene such as the earth has never witnessed. I have 
 no fear that it can ever happen. But, said he, address 
 ing me, I presume that I know, Sir, how your people in 
 the Free States, to a very considerable extent, think on this 
 point. I will speak, by-and-by, of the other two ways 
 in which slavery may find its great result. One, I say, 
 is, by insurrection and then the extermination of the black 
 race ; for that would surely follow their temporary suc 
 cess if I can trust my apprehensions of the subject. 
 
 " Please, sir, said I, let me hear what you think is 
 1 very considerably the sentiment at the North on this 
 subject of insurrection. 
 
 " * I presume sir, said he, if the slaves should, some 
 night, take possession of us, and demand a universal 
 manumission, and we should refuse, and fire and sword 
 and pillage and all manner of violence should ensue, and 
 our persons and property should be at their will, vast 
 multitudes of your people, including clergymen, would 
 exclaim that the day of God s righteous vengeance had 
 come, and they would say, Amen. 
 
 " So we interpret Thomas Jefferson s idea, said I. 
 
 " I think, Sir, said he, that very many reasonable 
 people of the North are of opinion that all the attributes 
 of God are against any such procedure. 
 
 " * In the large sense in which nations speak to each 
 other when they are asserting their rights, there is no 
 objection to the first clause in the Declaration of Inde 
 pendence ; but when you come to the people of a state, 
 and one portion of that people rise and assert their right 
 to break up the constitution of things under which they 
 live, there is no more pertinency in that clause in the 
 Declaration than there would be in giving us the reason 
 for a revolution that all men are not far from five or six 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 183 
 
 feet high. What they say may be true in the abstract, 
 but it does not prove that men, having come into a state 
 of society, involuntarily, if you please, have all the free 
 dom and equality which they would have, if they were 
 each an independent savage in the wilderness. Society 
 is God s ordinance, not a compact. We have, all of us, 
 lost some of our freedom and equality in the social state ; 
 now how far is it right that the blacks, being here, no 
 matter how or why, should lose some of theirs ? and how 
 far is it right that we should take and keep some of it 
 from them, whether for the good of all concerned, or for 
 the good of ourselves, their civil superiors? whose 
 welfare, it may be observed, will continually affect 
 theirs. 
 
 " The Judge said that he believed that God had, in his 
 mysterious providence, and of his sovereign pleasure, 
 making use of the cupidity of white men, placed these 
 blacks here in connection with us for their good as 
 a race, and for the welfare of the world. He said that 
 his mind could feel no peace on the subject of slavery, 
 unless he viewed it in this light. In connection with the 
 great industrial and commercial interests of our globe, and 
 as an indispensable element in the supply of human. wants, 
 this abject race had been transported from their savage 
 life in Africa, and had been made immensely useful to 
 the whole civilized world. We agree, as I have said/ he 
 continued, as to the immorality of those who brought 
 them here ; but he is not fit to reason on this subject, 
 being destitute of all proper notions with regard to di 
 vine providence, who does not see in the results of sla 
 very, both as to the civilized world arid to negroes them 
 selves, a wise, benevolent, and an Almighty Hand. Here 
 my mind gets relief in contemplating this subject, not in 
 
184 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 abstract reasoning, not in logical premises and deductions, 
 but by resting in Providence. There are mysteries in it, 
 
 as truly so as in the human apostasy, origin of evil, 
 permission of sin, which confound my reasonings as to the 
 benevolence of God ; in which, however, I, nevertheless, 
 maintain my firm belief. Here was the great defect in 
 Mr. Jefferson s views of slavery. In the highest Chris 
 tian sense, he was not qualified to understand this sub 
 ject ; he reasoned like one who did not take into view 
 the providence and the purposes of God, even while he 
 was saying what he did of there being " no attribute in the 
 Almighty that would take part with us " in favor of sla 
 very. Standing as I do by this providential view of the 
 great subject, the assailants of slavery at the North seem 
 to me, some of them, almost insane, and others, even minis 
 ters of the Gospel, shall I say it ? more than unchristian ; 
 
 there is a sort of blind, wild, French Jacobinical athe 
 ism in their feeling and behavior ; while as to the rest, 
 good people, they are misled by what Mr. Webster, in 
 one of his speeches in the Senate, called " the constant 
 rub-a-dub of the press," " no drum-head," he says, " in 
 the longest day s march, having been more incessantly 
 beaten than the feeling of the public in certain parts of 
 the North." I cannot reason with these men, continued 
 the Judge, for I confess, at once, that I cannot demon 
 strate, either by logic or by mathematics, a modern quit 
 claim or warranty in holding slaves. In combating their 
 illogical and unscriptural positions, I seem to them to be 
 an advocate of the divine right of oppression, which I 
 am not. That it is best, however, and that it is right, 
 for this relation to continue until God shall manifest some 
 purpose to terminate it consistently with the good of all 
 concerned, I am perfectly convinced and satisfied. I be- 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 185 
 
 lieve that it has reference to the great plan of mercy 
 toward our world, and that when the object is accom 
 plished, the providence of God will, in some way, make 
 it known. It may be the case, no candid, man and be 
 liever in revelation and divine providence will deny it to 
 be possible, that this dispensation with regard to this 
 colored race will continue for long ages to come, in the 
 form of bondage. That they are now under a curse, 
 and have been so for centuries, is apparent. When the 
 curse is to be repealed, God only knows. I like to cher 
 ish the idea that some development is to be made of im 
 mense sources of wealth in Africa, that we have an em 
 bryo nation in the midst of us, whom God has been edu 
 cating for a great enterprise on that continent, and when, 
 like California and Australia, the voice of the Lord shall 
 shake the wilderness of Africa, and open its doors, it 
 may appear that American slavery has been the school 
 in which God has been preparing a people to take it into 
 their possession. 
 
 " EMIGRATION, then, said he, is the second of the 
 three ways in which this problem of slavery may have 
 its solution. 
 
 " * In preparation for this, I say, God may keep these 
 Africans here much longer. He may need more territory 
 on which to educate still larger numbers ; and we may 
 see Him extending slavery still further in our land and 
 on our continent. So that there may be one other way 
 in which the purposes of God will manifest themselves 
 with regard to the colored race here, and that is by EX 
 TENSION. 
 
 " It may be that still greater portions of this land and 
 continent are to be used, for ages to come, in the multipli 
 cation of the black race. I feel entirely calm with regard 
 
186 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 to the subject, believing that God has a plan in all this, 
 and that it is wise and benevolent toward all who fear 
 Him. While our relation to this people remains, the law 
 of love, the golden rule, must preside over it. That does 
 not require us to place the blacks on a level with us in 
 our parlors, nor in our halls of legislation ; and there may 
 be disabilities properly attaching to them which, though 
 they seem hard, are the inevitable consequence of a de 
 pendent, inferior condition. All this, however, has a 
 benign effect upon us, if we will but act in a Christian 
 manner, to make us gentle, kind, generous; and when 
 this is the case, no state of society is happier than 
 ours. Let Jacobinical principles, such as some of our 
 Northern brethren inculcate, prevail here, and they at 
 once destroy this benevolent relation. This relation will 
 improve under the influence of the Gospel ; it has wonder 
 fully improved since Jefferson s day ; and though the 
 time may be long deferred, we shall no doubt see this 
 colored race fulfilling some great purpose in the earth. 
 I trust that our Northern friends will not precipitate 
 things and destroy both whites and blacks ; for a servile 
 war would be one of extermination. Many of the North 
 ern people I fear would acquiesce in it, provided espe 
 cially, that we should be the exterminated party. This is 
 clear, if words and actions are to be fairly interpreted. 
 
 " * The colored people here, as a race, said a planter, 
 are under obligations to us as partakers in our civiliza 
 tion. No matter, for the present, how their ancestors 
 came here ; that does not at all affect their present ob 
 ligations to us for benefits received. Now it is not a 
 matter of course that, having been thus benefited by us, 
 they are at liberty to go away when they please. This 
 we assert respecting them as a whole. Are not the blacks, 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 187 
 
 as a race, so indebted to us that we ought to be consulted 
 as to the time and manner of their departure ? We say 
 that they are. They do not morally possess the right, 
 we think, to sever the relation when they please. 
 
 " Said an elderly, venerable man, * A white woman in 
 the cars, in Pennsylvania, begged me to hold her infant 
 child for her, while she fetched something for it. She 
 ran off, leaving the child to me. My wife and I took the 
 child home, and have been at pains and expense with it. 
 I question the child s right to say, whenever it pleases, 
 Sir, I propose to leave you. I have invested a good deal 
 in him, have increased his value by his being with me, 
 and he has no right to run off with it. 
 
 " But, said the physician, how long should you feel 
 that you have a right to his services ? 
 
 " I will answer that, said the gentleman, if you will 
 say whether my general principle be correct. Have I, 
 or have I not acquired just what all intelligent slave 
 holders call " property " in that youth, that is, a right to 
 his services, not dominion over his soul, nor a right to 
 abuse him, nor in any way to injure him, but to use his 
 services r Have I not acquired that right ? 
 
 " * I think you have, said the physician, but with cer 
 tain limitations. 
 
 " The limitations, said Mr. W., certainly are not the 
 wishes, nor caprices, nor the inclinations, of the boy ; 
 c!o you think so? 
 
 " I agree with you, said he. 
 
 " That is all I contend for, said Mr. W. 
 
 " But/ said the physician, where is your title-deed 
 from your Maker to own these fellow-creatures ? Trace 
 their history back, and they are here by fraud and vio 
 lence. 
 
188 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 " Thank you, Sir, said Mr. W., that is just the case 
 with my Penn. I came into possession of him through 
 fraud and violence ! I did not sin when he was thrown 
 upon my hands ; though I confess I said, he was what 
 we call slavery an incubus. My right and title to the 
 boy I have never been able to discover in any handwrit 
 ing; the mother, surely, had no right to impose the child 
 upon me ; Providence, however, placed it in my hand. I 
 might have given it immediate emancipation through the 
 window, or at the next stopping place ; or, I might have 
 left the child on its mother s vacant seat, declining the 
 trust ; but I felt disposed to do as I have done. 
 
 " Now, said the physician, will you please tell me, 
 Sir, how long you feel at liberty to possess this boy as a 
 satisfaction to you for your pains and expense ? 
 
 " In the first place, said Mr. W., I have a right to 
 transfer my guardianship over him to another, if circum 
 stances make it necessary. In doing so, I must be gov 
 erned not by selfish motives, but by a benevolent regard 
 to his welfare, allowing that he is not unreasonable and 
 wicked. If when he comes of lawful age, he is judged 
 to be still in need of guardianship, or it is expedient for 
 the good of all concerned that he should be my ward in 
 definitely, the law makes me, if I choose, his guardian, 
 with certain rights and obligations. Even if he could 
 legally claim his freedom at his majority, circumstances 
 might be such that all would say he was under moral ob 
 ligations to remain with me. If I abuse him, he must 
 consider before God how far it is his duty to bear afflic 
 tion, and submit to oppression. There are cases in which 
 none would condemn him, should he escape. But the 
 rule is to " abide." He has not, under all the circum 
 stances of our relation to each other, a right to walk 
 off at pleasure. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 189 
 
 " The company agreed in this, though the physician 
 made no remark. We conversed further on the antip 
 athy of the Free States to a large increase among them 
 of the colored population, ungrateful and perfidious 
 Kansas, even, withholding civil and political equality 
 from them ; their condition in Canada ; their relation to 
 the whites in every state where they have gone to re 
 side ; and we concluded that the South was the best 
 home for the black man, that home to become better 
 and better in proportion as the law of Christian benevo 
 lence prevailed. We agreed that if the South could be 
 relieved of Northern interference, the condition of the 
 colored people would be greatly improved, in many re 
 spects ; especially, we regretted that now we did not have 
 an enlightened public sentiment at the North to help the 
 best part of the Southern people in effecting reforma 
 tions and improving the laws and regulations. Now, the 
 Northern influence is wholly nugatory, or positively ad 
 verse. The opinions and feelings of calm and candid neigh 
 bors and friends have great influence. This the South 
 does not enjoy. The North is her passionate reprover ; 
 she is held to be, by many, her avowed enemy. In re 
 sistance, and in retaliation, compromises are broken, and 
 every political advantage is grasped at in self-defence, by 
 the South. Recrimination ensues, and civil war is threat 
 ened. The only remedy is the entire abandonment by 
 the North of interference with this subject ; but this 
 cannot take place so long as the Northern people labor 
 under their doctrinal error that it is a sin to hold proper 
 ty in man. Here is the root of the difficulty. We agreed 
 that if reflecting people at the North would adopt Scrip 
 tural views on that point, peace would soon ensue ; for 
 all the discussions of the supposed or real evils in sla- 
 
190 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 very, which would then be the sole objects of animadver 
 sion, would elicit truth, and tend to good. If the South 
 felt that the North were truly her friend, they would 
 both be found cooperating for the improvement and eleva 
 tion of the colored race. Every form of oppression and 
 selfishness would feel the withering rebuke of a just and 
 enlightened universal public sentiment. But now that 
 the quarrel runs high as to the sinfulness and wrongful- 
 ness of the relation itself, there is nothing for the South 
 to do but to stand by their arms. 
 
 " One gentleman made some remarks which interested 
 and instructed me more than anything that was said. 
 He confessed that the whole subject of the relation of 
 master and servant, in a word, slavery, was, for a long 
 time, a sore trouble to him, because he constantly found 
 himself searching for his right, his warrant to hold his 
 slaves. At last he resolved to study the Bible on the 
 subject. He naturally turned to the last instructions of 
 the Word of God with regard to it, and in Paul s in 
 junctions to masters and servants, he found relief. 
 There he perceived that God recognized the relation 
 ships of slavery, that the golden rule was enjoined, not 
 to dissolve the relation, but to make it benevolent to all 
 concerned. He found the Almighty establishing the re 
 lation of master and servant among his own chosen peo 
 ple, and decreeing that certain persons might be servants 
 forever, being, as he himself terms them < an inheritance 
 forever. 
 
 "Hereupon, he said, his troubles ceased. He gave 
 up his speculations and casuistry, and concluded to take 
 things as he found them and to make them better. He 
 became more than ever the friend and patron of his ser 
 vants, rendered to them, to the best of his ability that 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 191 
 
 which was just and equal, felt in buying servants and in 
 having them born in his household, somewhat as pastors 
 of churches, he supposed, feel in receiving new members 
 to be trained up for usefulness here, and for heaven. He 
 said that he had a hundred and seventy-five servants, 
 and that he doubted whether there was a happier, or 
 more virtuous, or more religious community anywhere. 
 
 " But, said the young Northern lady, who had recent 
 ly come to be a teacher in the family where we visited, 
 * what will become of them when you die ? 
 
 " Why, Miss/ said he, what will become of any 
 household when the parents die ? The truth is, said he, 
 I believe in a covenant-keeping God. I make a prac 
 tice of praying for my servants, by name. I keep a list 
 of them, and I read it, sometimes, when I read my Bible, 
 and on the Sabbath, and on days set apart for religious 
 services. I have asked God to be the God of my ser 
 vants forever. I shall meet them at the bar of God, 
 and I trust with a good conscience. Many of them have 
 become Christians. 
 
 " Do you ever sell them ? said she. 
 
 " I have parted with some of my servants to families, 
 he replied, where I knew that they would fare as well 
 as with me. This was always with their consent, except 
 in two or three cases of inveterate wickedness, when, in 
 stead of sending the fellows to the state-prison for life, 
 as you would do at the North, I sold them to go to Red 
 River, and was as willing to see them marched off, hand 
 cuffed, as you ever were to see villains in the custody of 
 the officers. But had any of your good people from the 
 North met them, an article would have appeared, perhaps, 
 in all your papers, telling of the heart-rending spectacle, 
 three human beings, in a slave-come ! going, they knew not 
 
192 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 where, into hopeless bondage ! And had they escaped 
 and fled to Boston, the tide of philanthropy there, in 
 many benevolent bosoms, would have received new 
 strength in the grateful accession of these worshipful 
 fugitives from Southern cruelty. Whereas, all which 
 love and kindness, and every form of indulgence, in 
 struction, and discipline, tempered with mercy, could do, 
 had been used with them in vain. One was a thief, the 
 pest of the county, and had earned long years in a peni 
 tentiary ; but slavery, you see, kept him at liberty ! 
 Another was brutally cruel to animals ; another was the 
 impersonation of laziness. Two of them would have 
 helped John Brown, no doubt, had he come here, and 
 they might have gained a Bunker Hill name, at the 
 North, in an insurrection here, as champions of liberty. 
 
 " This led to some remarks about the great economy 
 which there is in the Southern mode of administering 
 discipline and correction on the spot, and at once, instead 
 of filling jails and houses of correction with felons. But to 
 dwell on this would lead me too far into a new branch of 
 our subject. 
 
 " This planter asked the young lady, the school-teacher, 
 if tare and tret were in her arithmetic ? Upon her say 
 ing yes, in the older books, he told her that there 
 was, seemingly, a good deal of tare and tret in God s 
 providence, when accomplishing his great purposes ; and 
 that to fix the mind inordinately on evils and miseries 
 incident to a great system and forgetting the main design, 
 was like a man of business being so absorbed by the deduc 
 tions and waste in a great staple as to forego the trade. 
 He said that he thought the Northern mind ciphered too 
 much in that part of moral arithmetic as to slavery. 
 
 " A very excellent gentleman from the District of Co- 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 193 
 
 lurnbia who had held an important office under government, 
 gave us some valuable information. He said that the 
 extinction of slavery in New England was not because 
 the institution was deemed to be immoral .or sinful, but 
 from other considerations and circumstances. It was 
 abolished in Massachusetts, without doubt, by a clause, in 
 the bill of rights, copied from the Declaration of Inde 
 pendence. In Berkshire, one township, he believed, sued 
 another for the support and maintenance of a pauper 
 slave, and the Supreme Court decided that the bill of 
 rights abolished slavery. The question was as incidental, 
 he said, as was the question in the Dred Scott case which 
 the United States Supreme Court decided. This Massa 
 chusetts case was previous to any reports of decisions, 
 and he had some doubt as to the form in which the suit 
 was brought, but was sure as to the decision. The ques 
 tion as to abolishing slavery was not submitted to the 
 people, nor to a Convention, nor to the Legislature. 
 
 " I was specially interested in his account of the way 
 in which the slave-trade was prohibited by our excellent 
 sister, Connecticut. It was done by a section prohibiting 
 the importation of slaves by sea or land, preceded by the 
 following preamble : And whereas the increase of 
 slaves in this state is injurious to the poor, and incon 
 venient, Be it therefore enacted. Another section of 
 the same statute, he said, was preceded by the follow 
 ing words : A.nd whereas sound policy requires that 
 the abolition of slavery should be effected, as soon as 
 may be consistent with the rights of individuals, and the 
 public safety and welfare, Be it enacted, etc. Then fol 
 lows the provision that all black and mulatto children, 
 born in slavery, in that state, after the first of March, 
 1784, shall be free at twenty-five years of age. Selling 
 
 
194 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 slaves, to be carried out of the state, was not prohibited 
 before May, 1792 ; thus allowing more than eight years 
 to the owners of slaves in Connecticut to sell their slaves 
 to Southern purchasers ! There seems to me, he said, 
 no evidence of superior humanity in this ; nor was it 
 repentance for slavery as a sin. He thought that if we 
 feel compelled, by our superior conscientiousness, to re 
 quire any duty of the South, all that decency will allow 
 us to demand is, that she tread in our steps. 
 
 " I think, said a planter, that if pity is due from 
 one to the other, the South owes the larger debt to the 
 North. There needs to be a great reformation, namely, 
 The Gradual Emancipation of the Northern Mind from 
 " Anti-slavery " Error. 
 
 " Our English friends, in their zeal against American 
 slavery, said a young lawyer, seem to forget that the 
 English government, at the Peace of Utrecht, agreed to 
 furnish Spain with four thousand negroes annually for 
 thirty years. 
 
 " Poor human nature ! said the Judge. What should 
 we all do, if we had not the sins of others to repent of 
 and bewail ? 
 
 " There was a strong friend of temperance in the com 
 pany from a north-western state. Travelling in the South 
 for pleasure, some time ago, he was immediately struck 
 with the comparative absence of intemperance among the 
 slaves. On learning that the laws forbid the sale of in 
 toxicating drink to them, and thinking of four millions of 
 people in this land as delivered, in a great degree, from 
 the curse of drunkenness, he says that he exclaimed : 
 Pretty well for the " sum of all villanies." The class 
 of people in the United States best- defended against 
 drunkenness are the slaves ! Some admonished him 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 195 
 
 that the slaves did get liquor, and that white men ven 
 tured to tempt them. *I don t care for that/ said he; 
 of course, there are exceptions ; the " sum of all vil- 
 lanies " is a Temperance Society ! 
 
 " A Northern gentleman, travelling through the South, 
 said, As to the feelings of the North respecting a pos 
 sible insurrection, I am satisfied, since visiting in differ 
 ent parts of the South, that a very common apprehen 
 sion with us, respecting your liability to trouble from this 
 source, is exaggerated by fancy. 
 
 " We have a theoretical idea that you must be dwell 
 ing, as we commonly hear it said, with a volcano under 
 your feet. Very many regard your slaves as a race of 
 noble spirits, conscious of wrong, and burning with sup 
 pressed indignation, which is ready to break out at every 
 chance. They think of you at the North as having guns 
 and pistols and spears all about you, ready for use at any 
 moment. But when I spend a night at your plantations, 
 the owner and I the only white males, the wife and seven 
 or eight young children having us for their only defend 
 ers against the seventy or hundred blacks, who are all 
 about us in the quarters, the idea of danger has really 
 never occurred to me ; because my knowledge of the 
 people has previously disarmed me of fear. 
 
 " Emissaries, white and black, said a planter, can 
 make us trouble ; but my belief is that we could live 
 here to the end of time with these colored people, and 
 be subject to fewer cases of insubordination by far than 
 your corporations at the North suffer from in strikes. 
 Your people, generally, have no proper idea of the black 
 man s nature. God seems to have given him docility 
 and gentleness, that he may be a slave till the time comes 
 for him to be something else. So He has given the Jews 
 
 
196 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 their peculiarities, fitting them for His purposes with re 
 gard to them ; and to the Irish laborer He has given his 
 willingness and strength to dig, making him the builder 
 of your railways. If we fulfil our trust, with regard to 
 the blacks, according to the spirit and rules of the New 
 Testament, I believe God will be our defender, and that 
 all his attributes will be employed to maintain our au 
 thority over this people for his own great purposes. We 
 have nothing to fear except from white fanatics, North 
 and South. 
 
 " I have no idea, said the Judge, of dooming every 
 individual of this colored race to unalterable servitude. 
 I am in favor of putting them in the way of developing 
 any talent which any of them, from time to time, may 
 exhibit. More of this, I am sure, would be done by us, 
 if we were freed from the necessity of defending our 
 selves against Northern assaults upon our social system, 
 involving, as. these assaults do, peril to life, and to things 
 dearer than life. But I see tenfold greater evils in all 
 the plans of emancipation which have ever been pro 
 posed than in the present state of things. 
 
 " The pastor of the place, who was present, had not 
 taken much part in the discussion, though he had not 
 purposely kept aloof from it. He was Southern born, 
 inherited slaves, had given them their liberty one by one, 
 and had recently returned from the North, where he had 
 been to see two of them the last of his household 
 embark as hired servants with families who were to 
 travel in Europe. 
 
 " Some of us asked him about his visit to the North. 
 Said he, * I went to church one day, and was enjoying 
 the devotional services, when all at once the minister 
 broke out in prayer for the abolition of slavery. He 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 197 
 
 presented the South before God as " oppressors," and 
 prayed that they might at once repent, and " break every 
 yoke," and " let the oppressed go free." I took him to be 
 an immediate emancipationist, perhaps peculiar in his 
 views. But in the afternoon I went into another church, 
 and in prayer the minister began to pray " for all classes 
 and conditions of men among us." I was glad to see, as I 
 thought, charity beginning at home. But the next sen 
 tence took in our whole land ; and the next was a down 
 right swoop upon slavery ; so that I regarded his pre 
 vious petitions merely as spiral movements toward the 
 South. If the good man s petitions had been heard, woe 
 to him and to the North, and to the slaves, to say nothing 
 of ourselves. 
 
 " I stopped after service, and, without at first introduc 
 ing myself, I asked him if he was in the habit of praying, 
 as he had done to-day, for slave-holders. He said yes. 
 I asked him if it was a general practice at the North. 
 He thought it was. I inquired if he would have every 
 slave liberated to-morrow, if he could effect it. " By all 
 means," said he. " Would they be better off? " said I. 
 
 " Undoubtedly they would," said he. " But that is not 
 the question. Do right, if the heavens fall." " What 
 would become of them ?" said I. "Hire them," said he; 
 " pay them wages ; let husbands and wives live together ; 
 
 abolish auction-blocks, and " " But," said I, " some 
 
 of the very best of men in the world, at the South, are de 
 cidedly of the opinion that such emancipation would be the 
 most barbarous thing that could be devised for the slaves." 
 
 "Are you a slave-holder? " said he. "I was," said I ; 
 " but I have liberated my slaves, and I am in your city 
 to see the last two of my servants sail with your fellow- 
 citizens, and " (naming them). "You don t 
 
198 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 say so ! " said he. " What did you liberate them for?" 
 " I could not take proper care of them," said I, " situated 
 as I am." " But," said he, " did you do right in letting 
 them go to sea as you did ? One of them will get no 
 good with that man for a master. I would rather be 
 your dog than his child." " Then," said I, " you have 
 1 oppressors at the North, it seems." " Well," said he, 
 " some of our people are not as good as they ought to be." 
 " It is so with us at the South," said I. " Preach for 
 me next Sabbath, Sir," said he. " Are you going to stay 
 over ? " " Why," said I, " my dear Sir, would you and 
 your people like to hear a man preach for you whom 
 you, if you made the prayer, would first pray for as an 
 oppressor? " "But you are not an oppressor," said 
 he. " But I am in favor of what you call * oppression, " 
 said I. "One thing I could pray for with you," said I. 
 " What is that ? " said he. " Break every yoke," said I. 
 " This I pray for always. But how many yokes, " said 
 I, " do you suppose there are at the South ? " "I forget 
 the exact number of the slaves," said he, in the most art 
 less manner. 
 
 " Hereupon the company broke out into great merri 
 ment. After they had enjoyed their laughter awhile, 
 my Northern lady-friend said, Did you preach for him ? 
 
 " Yes, said the pastor ; and prayed for him too. 
 
 " Walking through the streets of that place in the 
 evening, I saw evidence that no minister nor citizen there 
 was justified in casting the first stone at the South for 
 immorality. I lifted up my heart in thanks to God that 
 my sons were not exposed to the temptations of a North 
 ern city. Being in the United States District Court there, 
 several times, I had some revelations also with regard to 
 the treatment and the condition of seamen in some North- 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 199 
 
 ern ships, which led me to the conclusion which I have 
 often drawn, that poor human nature is about the 
 same, North and South. 
 
 " So, when I conducted the services of public worship, 
 I prayed for that city and for the young people, and al 
 luded to the temptations which I had witnessed ; and I 
 referred also to mariners, and prayed for masters and 
 officers of vessels who had such authority over the wel 
 fare and the lives of seamen ; and I prayed that Chris 
 tians in both sections of our land might pray for each 
 other, considering each themselves, lest they also be 
 tempted, and that they might not be self-righteous and 
 accusatory ; and that our eye might not be so filled with 
 the evils of other sections of the land as not to see those 
 which were at home. 
 
 " After service the good brother said, " I suppose you 
 referred in your prayer to my praying against the South, 
 as you call it. Well," said he, confidentially, " the truth 
 is, some of our people make this thing their religion, and 
 they will not abide a man who does not pray against 
 slavery." Some gentlemen, with their ladies, stopped to 
 speak with me. One shook me by the hand most cor 
 dially. " We are glad to see our good Southern breth 
 ren," said he ; " thankful to hear you preach so, and pray 
 so, too," said he, with an additional shake and a signifi 
 cant look, while the rest were equally cordial with their 
 assent. One of the gentlemen took me home with him. 
 " This is most of it politics," said he, " and newspaper 
 trade, this anti-slavery feeling. The people generally 
 are not fanatics ; they are kind and humane, and their 
 sensibilities are touched by tales of distress." " Espe 
 cially Southern," said I. " Last eve I read in your papers 
 four outrages which happened within fifteen miles of this 
 
200 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 city, and two in your city, which equalled, to say the 
 least, in barbarity anything that ever comes to my knowl 
 edge among our people." 
 
 u The next Sabbath, as I have since learned, my good 
 brother was very comprehensive, discriminating, and im- 
 impartial in his supplications. He really distinguished 
 between those at the South who " oppress " their fellow- 
 men, and those who " remember them that are in bonds 
 as bound with them." But, said the pastor, the most 
 of those who use that latter expression at the North really 
 think the Apostle had slaves, as a class, in mind. I have 
 no such belief. I suppose that he referred to persecuted 
 Christians, suffering imprisonment for their religion, and 
 to all afflicted persons. 
 
 " My landlord said to me, he continued, " They tell 
 us you are afraid of free discussion at the South, that you 
 are afraid to have your slaves hear some things, lest it 
 should excite them to insurrection. How is this ? " 
 
 " I told him that the slaves, being the lower order of so 
 ciety with us, were not capable of so discriminating in that 
 which promiscuous strangers should see fit to say to them 
 as to make it safe to have them listen to every harangue 
 or to every one who should set himself up to teach. " Of 
 course," said I, " there are liabilities and dangers in our 
 state of society. We must use prudence and caution. 
 We have some loose powder in our magazine. No one 
 denies this. What if one who was rebuked for carrying 
 an open lamp into the magazine of a ship, should re 
 proach the captain with being an enemy to the light, 
 and as loving darkness rather than light ? " 
 
 " While at the North, said he, 1 1 read Mr. Buckle on 
 civilization, and I reflected upon the subject. Being in a 
 great assembly, once or twice, listening to abolitionist 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 201 
 
 orators, lay and clerical, and hearing their vile assaults 
 on personal character, their vulgar and reckless ridicule 
 of fifteen States of our Union, their affected, oracular 
 way of saying the most trite things as though they were 
 aphorisms, but reminding me of the piles of short stuff 
 which you see round a saw-mill, and hearing the great 
 throng applaud and shout, I asked myself whether we 
 have really made any decided advances in civilization 
 since the Hebrew Commonwealth. I really doubted 
 whether those orators could have collected an audience 
 of Hebrews even in the wilderness. Under the "Judges," 
 the people were, at times, low enough to enjoy such 
 drivelling. The willingness at the North to hear these 
 men, and to applaud them, gave me a low idea of the 
 state of society. 
 
 " But, said I, confess now that you found specimens 
 of cultivated life there such as you never saw sur 
 passed. 
 
 " I did, said he, many times. And I must tell you/ 
 he added, of my enjoyment in looking on your pastures 
 in autumn, the sun shining aslant upon them of an 
 afternoon, and in noticing what shades of scarlet and 
 crimson were given to the picture by the whortleberry 
 leaves, which, I found, contributed most to the coloring 
 of the landscape. I also saw a peculiarity of the whortle 
 berry s flower, which, when stung by an insect sometimes 
 swells to twenty-five times its natural size, and becomes 
 a fungus. 
 
 " Now, said I, why not apply this, perhaps you 
 were intending to do so, and say that society at the 
 North is generally like our whortleberry pastures in au 
 tumn, which pleased you so much, with here and there a 
 fungus, made by the sting of radicalism. 
 
 9* 
 
202 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 " A planter s Northern wife said, I should like to 
 move the adoption of that simile. 
 
 " We will have it so, said the Judge to me, * if the 
 lady and you tell us that we must. 
 
 " A fungus, said I, gets more attention from one half 
 of the people who go into the woods, than all the pure 
 and beautiful garniture of the pastures. 
 
 " The ladies of our company having been rallied for not 
 having done their part in the conversation, and also, of 
 course, having been complimented for keeping silence so 
 long, the wife of one of the planters, a Northern lady, 
 made this remark that considering how God, in his prov 
 idence, had made such provision for the welfare of the 
 human family through slavery in our land, and, in doing 
 it, had shown mercy and salvation to so many hundreds 
 of thousands of Africans, she thought it both ungrateful 
 and narrow-minded in people anywhere to confine all 
 their thoughts to the incidental evils of the slaves. She 
 said that in the North she was not an abolitionist, but on 
 coming to the South and finding things so different from 
 that which her fancy had pictured, she had concluded to 
 be very charitable toward the most of her Northern 
 friends who she said were no more in the dark than she 
 herself had been all her days, from reading newspapers 
 and tales which had concealed one whole side of slavery 
 from the view of Northern people. She added that she 
 preferred life at the North without the blacks, but had 
 found more disinterested benevolence toward them in one 
 year at the South than she had charity to believe existed 
 in the hearts of all the good people at the North toward 
 them, counting in even the professional benevolence of 
 the friends of the slave. 
 
 " After refreshments, the pastor was called upon to read 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 203 
 
 the Scriptures, and to offer prayer. He read the fifteenth 
 chapter of Revelation. Never can I forget the impres 
 sion which one of the verses in that chapter made upon 
 me, in connection with some of the thoughts awakened 
 by our conversation about the sovereignty of God as 
 displayed in his dark and awful dispensations towards 
 races, nations, and men : * And the seven angels came 
 out of the temple, having the seven plagues, clothed in 
 pure and white linen, and having their breasts girded 
 with golden girdles. Those who are in any way as 
 sociated with the administration of God s great judg 
 ments towards their fellow-men, said he, have need of 
 special purity; and their honor should be like the un 
 tarnished gold. 
 
 " This pastor told me, during the repast, that one day, 
 returning suddenly from his study in the church just 
 after breakfast, to the house of one of the gentlemen 
 present, with whom he lived, and who was one of the 
 wealthiest men in the South, and passing through the 
 parlor to get a book, he found the room darkened, and 
 the lady of the house kneeling in prayer with her ser 
 vants. He of course withdrew at once, but he learned 
 afterward from one of the slaves, that it was the 
 lady s daily custom. He often thought of that in 
 cident when reading Northern religious newspapers 
 and noticing their lamentations over slave-holding pro 
 fessors. " 
 
 So much for my Southern visit. 
 
 Mrs. North said that in our next conversation she 
 would suggest that we consider the relation of Chris 
 tianity to Slavery. I told her that I had some night 
 
204 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 thoughts on that subject, which I would with pleasure 
 submit, at another time. 
 
 As the rain continued, Mr. North and I resorted 
 to the wood-pile in the shed for exercise, till dinner 
 time, Mrs. North following us to the door, and charg 
 ing us not to converse upon this subject till she should 
 be present. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 205 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 DISCUSSION IN PHILEMON S CHURCH AT THE RETURN 
 
 OF ONESIMUS. 
 
 " My equal will he be again 
 
 Down in that cold, oblivious gloom, 
 Where all the prostrate ranks of men 
 Crowd without fellowship, the toinb." 
 
 JAMES MONTGOMERY. 
 
 " T WILL now relate to you," said I, as we resumed 
 -L our conversation, " the thoughts which came to me 
 
 one night as I lay awake meditating on this subject. I 
 
 wrote them down the next day. 
 
 " The subject in our conversation which suggested them 
 
 was, The relation of Christianity to slavery. 
 
 " About the year A. D. 64, two men, travellers from 
 Rome, entered the city of Colosse, in Phrygia, Asia 
 Minor, both of them the bearers of letters from the 
 Apostle Paul, then a prisoner at Rome. 
 
 " A Christian Church had been gathered at Colosse. 
 Its pastor was probably Archippus. Some think that 
 Epaphras was his colleague. This church, according to 
 Dr. Lardner and others, was most probably gathered by 
 the Apostle Paul himself. Mount Cadmus rose behind 
 the city, with its almost perpendicular side, and a huge 
 chasm in the mountain was the outlet of a torrent which 
 flowed into the river Lycus, on which the city was built. 
 
206 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 standing not far from the junction of this river with the 
 Moeander. 
 
 " One of the two men who bore these letters was a 
 slave. His name was Onesimus. He robbed his mas 
 ter, Philemon, of Colosse, fled to Rome, heard Paul 
 preach, was converted, and now by the Apostle is sent 
 back to his master with a letter, in charge of Tychicus, 
 who, with this Onesimus, was the bearer of a letter to 
 the Colossian Church. 
 
 " Let us attend the church-meeting. The pastor, Ar- 
 chippus, presides. Epaphras is at Rome. 
 
 " What an interesting company do we behold as we sit 
 near the pastor s table, in full view of the audience ! The 
 inhabitants of this place were noted for the worship of 
 Bacchus, and Cybele, mother of the gods; hence her 
 name, Phrygia Mater. Every kind of licentious lan 
 guage and actions was practised in the worship of these 
 deities, accompanied with a frantic rage called orgies, 
 from the Greek word for rage. This was a part of their 
 religious worship. From among such people, converts 
 had been made to Christianity, together with some who 
 had been turned from Judaism. 
 
 " The letter from the Apostle Paul is brought in and 
 is laid on the pastor s table, and some account is given of 
 the manner in which it was received. The letter is read. 
 It refers the Colossians, at the close, to the bearers, for 
 further information and instructions. i All my state shall 
 Tychicus declare unto you, who is a beloved brother and 
 a faithful minister and fellow-servant in the Lord. Whom 
 I have sent unto you for the same purpose, that he might 
 know your estate, and comfort your hearts. With Onesi 
 mus, a faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you. 
 They shall make known unto you all things which are 
 done here. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 207 
 
 " Tjchicus relates his story, and, when he has finished, 
 Philemon, a member of the Church, addresses the meet 
 ing. He was evidently a man of distinction in that com 
 munity, as we infer from the large number of persons in 
 his household, (ver. 2,) his liberality to poor Christians, 
 (ver. 5, 7,) and from the marked respect and deference 
 paid to him by the Apostle. He also had received a let 
 ter from the Apostle, and he asks leave to read it. 
 
 " He then tells them that Onesimus is present ; 
 that he has been sent back by the Apostle Paul, and 
 with the full, cordial consent of Onesimus himself. He 
 would ask permission for Onesimus to say a few words. 
 
 " l Come hither, says the pastor, and tell us what 
 the Lord hath done for thee, and how he hath had mercy 
 on thee. 
 
 " Let me wash the saints feet, says Onesimus, but 
 I am not worthy to teach in the church. 
 
 " He proceeds to tell them, in full, of his escape from 
 his master, after robbing him ; of his meeting the Apos 
 tle at Rome ; of his conversion ; of his voluntary return 
 to spend his days, if such be the will of God, as the ser 
 vant of Philemon. 
 
 " The account of these proceedings reaches Laodicea, 
 not far distant, to which place Paul had also sent a letter, 
 and the Colossians, agreeably to the Apostle s charge, 
 exchange letters, and no doubt the letter to Philemon is 
 also read to the Church which is at Laodicea. 
 
 " Whereupon, we will suppose, a controversy at once 
 springs up. There had already appeared in this region 
 of Phrygia, as we infer from the Epistle to the Colos 
 sians, serious errors, among them a kind of angel wor 
 ship and asceticism, or abstinence from things lawful, and 
 a state of things called Gnosis, (Eng. knowledge,) or 
 
208 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 Gnosticism, a pervading spirit of worldly wisdom, sci 
 ence, philosophy, which treated the simplicity which was 
 in Christ as too rudimental and plain for the human 
 mind, and therefore sought to furnisli it with speculations 
 and mysticism, to gratify its desires for a more extensive 
 spiritual knowledge than it seemed to many of them was 
 provided for by Christianity. 
 
 " Among the speculations and theories of those days, 
 we will suppose that the idea began to prevail that 
 Christianity was inconsistent with holding a fellow-being 
 in bondage. A motion is made in the Laodicean Church 
 that a committee be appointed to confer with the Colossian 
 Church on the return of Onesimus into slavery. Such 
 a motion would have found ready advocates in the Church 
 at Laodicea, if, as at a later day, they were neither cold 
 nor hot in religion ; in which case any collateral subjects 
 wholly or partly secular, would have a charm for them. 
 These supplied that lack of warmth which they were 
 conscious of as to religion ; their church-meeting, no 
 doubt, seemed to them dull, unless a subject was introduced 
 which gave opportunity for discussion, and for things 
 which gendered debate, whereof cometh envy, strife, 
 railings, evil surmisings. 
 
 " The result of the conference on the part of the Laod 
 icean Committee with the Colossian Church was, that a 
 general meeting was appointed to discuss the subject of 
 the return of Onesimus into slavery. It was a private 
 session of members of the two churches. They claimed 
 the privilege as Christians of discussing any question re 
 lating to the government and the laws, taking care that no 
 spies were present ; still, with all their precautions, false 
 brethren made trouble for them by giving private infor 
 mation to the civil authorities against some of their num- 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 209 
 
 her, whom they disliked ; and this led to some oppression 
 and persecution. 
 
 " But the meeting was fully attended. Two members 
 of the church who were faithful servants to slave-holding 
 brethren were set to guard the doors. The slaves were 
 allowed to be present and listen to the discussion. This 
 was carried after much debate, some contending that it 
 would expose the Christians to just reprehension from the 
 civil authorities ; and others maintaining that it would do 
 the slaves good to hear such doctrines advanced and en 
 forced as would be quoted from the Apostle relating to 
 masters and servants. 
 
 " The discussion was opened by a brother from Laodicea, 
 an office-bearer in the church, a private citizen, devoted 
 to study, and an author of some repute. He was for 
 merly odist at the festivals of Cybele. His pieces were 
 collected and published under the title of Phrygian 
 Canticles. His name was Olamus. 
 
 " He took the ground that Christianity abrogated 
 slavery. He quoted the well known words of Paul, so 
 familiar to all who had heard him preach : l In Christ 
 Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scyth 
 ian, bond nor free ; but all are one in Christ. The 
 Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath sent me 
 to preach deliverance to the captives, the opening of the 
 prison doors to them that are bound. * Whatsoever ye 
 would that men should do unto you, do you even so to 
 them/ 
 
 " He maintained that to own a fellow-creature was in 
 consistent with this law of equal love ; that it was giving 
 sanction to a feature of barbarism ; that, practically, sla 
 very was the sum of all villanies ; an enormous wrong ; a 
 stupendous injustice. 
 
210 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 " If any one should reply that the Mosaic institutions 
 recognized slavery, he had one brief answer : which 
 things are done away in Christ. Moses permitted this 
 and some other things for the hardness of their hearts. 
 Polygamy was allowed by Moses, not by Christianity ; 
 its spirit is against it ; the bishop of a church must be the 
 husband of one wife ; slavery is certainly none the less 
 contrary to the spirit of the gospel. 
 
 " But inasmuch as it is inexpedient to dissolve at once, 
 and in all cases, the relation of master and slave, he con 
 tended that while the relation continued, it should be reg 
 ulated by the laws which God himself once prescribed. 
 Every seventh year should be a year of release ; every 
 fiftieth year should be a jubilee. And as to fugitives, 
 he would refer his brethren to that Divine injunction: 
 Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant 
 which is escaped from his master unto thee ; he shall 
 dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he 
 shall choose, in one of thy gates, where it liketh him 
 best ; tliou shalt not oppress him. 
 
 " That a slave having escaped from his master could 
 not rightfully be sent back into bondage, was evident 
 from these considerations: 
 
 " All men are born free and equal, and have an inal 
 ienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 
 If a slave sees fit to walk off, or run off, or ride off on 
 his master s beast, or sail off in his master s boat, he has a 
 perfect right to do so. Slavery is violence ; every man 
 may resist violence offered to his person, except under 
 process of law ; the person cannot be taken except for 
 crime, or debt, or in war ; every man owns his body and 
 soul ; the person cannot become merchandise, except for 
 the three causes above named, which he acknowledged 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 211 
 
 were justifiable causes of involuntary servitude at pres 
 ent. But to forcibly seize a weaker man, or race, and 
 hold them in bondage he declared to be in violation of 
 the laws of nature, and contrary to the - Christian re 
 ligion. 
 
 " If it should be replied that Paul the Apostle counte 
 nanced slavery by sending back Onesimus, he would an 
 swer, that Paul was a Jew, and was not yet freed wholly 
 from Jewish practices and associations of ideas. Gnosti 
 cism has supervened upon the rudimental childhood of 
 spiritual truth. He believed in progress. It was con 
 trary to the instinct of human nature to send back a poor 
 fugitive into bondage, and he was glad for one that he 
 lived in an age when the innate moral sentiments, under 
 the lucid teachings of our more transcendental scholars 
 were becoming more and more the all-sufficient guide in 
 the affairs of life. He would, therefore, publicly disclaim 
 his allegiance to the teachings of the Apostle Paul, if, 
 upon reflection, Paul should insist that he was right in 
 remanding Onesimus to be Philemon s property * for 
 ever ; it was well enough that he should be sent back 
 to restore what he had taken by theft, provided Phile 
 mon would immediately release him ; otherwise, to steal 
 from Philemon was doing no more than Philemon had 
 done to him, in taking away that liberty which is the 
 birthright of every human being ; and Onesimus proba 
 bly stole merely to assist his escape. He was justifiable 
 in doing so. 
 
 "If one should insist that there can be no intrinsic 
 wrong in holding a fellow-being as property because God 
 allowed Hebrews to sell themselves, and in certain cases 
 to be servants forever, and directed the Israelites to buy 
 servants of the heathen round about them, who should 
 
212 THP: SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 be an inheritance to the children of the Israelites, he 
 would simply say either that the whole pentateuch which 
 contained such a libel on the divine character, is thereby 
 proved to be a forgery, or, that if the pentateuch is to be 
 received, it only proves that in condescension to a race 
 of freebooters who were employed, as the Israelites were, 
 in bloody wars of extermination, slavery was allowed 
 them, to prevent, perhaps, worse evils, and in consistency 
 with their dark-minded, semi-barbarous condition. In 
 this enlightened age when Greece and Rome had shed 
 superior light on human relationships and obligations, and 
 especially since Christ had promulgated the golden rule, 
 the idea that man could own a fellow-creature was so 
 preposterous that he would be an infidel, nay, he would 
 go farther, he would be an atheist, rather than believe it. 
 Our moral instincts are our guide. They are the highest 
 source of evidence that there is a God, and they are a 
 perfect indication as to what God and his requirements 
 should be. He was for passing a vote of disapprobation 
 at the act of Paul the Apostle in sending back Onesimus 
 into bondage. Tell me not, said he, that the Apostle 
 calls him a brother beloved, and one of you ; these 
 honeyed phrases are but coatings to a deadly poison. Sla 
 very is evil, and only evil and that continually. Disguise 
 it as you will, Philemon holds property in Onesimus. 
 By the laws of Phrygia, he could put Onesimus to 
 death for running away. He deplored the act as a 
 heavy blow at Christianity. It would countervail the 
 teachings of the Apostle. He sincerely hoped that the 
 Epistle to Philemon would not be preserved ; for should 
 it be collected hereafter, as possibly it may, among Paul s 
 letters, unborn ages might make it an apology for slavery, 
 it would abate the hatred of the world against the sum 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 213 
 
 of all villanies. He would even be in favor of a vote 
 requesting Philemon to give Onesimus his liberty at once, 
 even without his consent, sending him back, with this 
 most unwise and unblest epistle to Philemon, to Paul, 
 who says that he would have retained him, but would 
 not without Philemon s consent. He did hope that the 
 brethren would speak their minds, be open-mouthed, and 
 not be like dumb dogs. For his part he wanted an anti- 
 slavery religion. He acknowledged that the truths of 
 the Gospel needed the stimulant of freedom to give them 
 life and power. 
 
 " His remarks evidently produced a great sensation, for 
 a variety of reasons, as we may well suppose. 
 
 " A man took the floor in opposition to this Laodicean 
 brother. He was a Jewish convert, a member of the 
 Colossian Church. His name was Theodotus. Born a 
 Jew, he had renounced his religion and became a Greek 
 Sophist, practised law at Scio, and heard Paul at Mars 
 Hill, where, with Dionysius the Areopagite, with whom 
 he was visiting, he was converted. He had established 
 himself at Colosse, in the practice of law. He was un 
 usually tall for a man of his descent, had beautifully reg 
 ular Jewish features, and was a captivating speaker. 
 
 " He said that they had heard strange things to-day. 
 If they are true, we have no foundation underneath our 
 feet. Every man s moral sentiments, it seems, are to be 
 his guide. Where, then, is our common appeal ? For 
 his part he believed that if God be our heavenly Father, 
 he has given his children an authentic book, a writing, 
 for their guide, unless he prefers to speak personally 
 with them, or with their representatives. When he 
 ceased to speak by the prophets, he spoke to us by his 
 Son ; and now that his Son is ascended, I believe, said 
 
214 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 he, that inspired men are appointed to guide us, and 
 seeing that they cannot reach all by their living voice, I 
 believe that the evangelists and apostles are to furnish us 
 with writings which shall be inspired disclosures of God s 
 will and our duty. The Old Testament is as truly God s 
 word as ever ; Christ declared that not one jot or tittle 
 should pass from it, till all be fulfilled. Some of it is 
 fulfilled, in him, the end of the types ; parts of it refer 
 to local and temporary things ; all which is not local and 
 temporary is still binding upon us. At least, the spirit 
 of its laws is benevolent and wise. Damascus and its 
 scenes are too fresh in the memories of the brethren to 
 need that I should argue the inspiration of the Apostle to 
 the Gentiles. His miracles are known to us. Nay, what 
 miracles are we ourselves, reclaimed from the service of 
 the devil, once the worshippers of Bacchus and of our 
 Phrygian mother ; now, clothed, and in our right minds. 
 The Apostle claims to speak and act by divine authority. 
 We must question everything, if we set aside this claim. 
 
 " I maintain, said he, * that the Apostle Paul regards 
 the holding a fellow-creature as property to be consis 
 tent with Christianity. To prevent all misunderstanding, 
 however, let me declare that he insists on the golden rule 
 as the law of slave-holding, as of everything else ; that 
 he discountenances oppression, that he warns and threat 
 ens us with regard to it ; and that he considers slave- 
 holding as consistent with the Christian character and 
 happiness of master and slave. 
 
 " * In the very Epistle just received by our Church, and 
 by the hands of Tychicus and Onesimus himself, from 
 the Apostle, we find these words : " Servants, obey in all. 
 things your masters according to the flesh ; not with eye- 
 service, as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fear- 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 215 
 
 ing God ; and whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as unto 
 the Lord, and not unto men, knowing that of the Lord ye 
 shall receive the reward of the inheritance : for ye serve 
 the Lord Christ. But he that doeth wrong shall receive 
 for the wrong which he hath done ; and there is no re 
 spect of persons. Masters, give unto your servants that 
 which is just and equal ; knowing that ye also have a 
 Master in heaven." 
 
 " Where, in this, is there a word that countenances 
 the wrongfulness of being a slave, or of holding men as 
 slaves? He directs all his exhortations to the duties 
 which are to be performed in the relation, and he leaves 
 the relation as he finds it. He does not enjoin slavery ; 
 he treats it as something which belongs to society, to gov 
 ernment, and he leaves Christianity to regulate it as cir 
 cumstances shall make it proper. If any one says that 
 the Apostle was afraid to meddle with it, I reply, that 
 there was never anything yet that Paul was afraid to 
 meddle with, if it was right to do so. He " meddled * 
 with Diana of the Ephesians and her craftsmen ; he 
 " meddled " with the " beasts " there ; he " meddled " with 
 idolatry on Mars Hill at Athens, I being witness ; he has 
 been beaten, stoned, imprisoned, and is now the second 
 time before Nero for his life. Afraid to " meddle " with 
 slavery ! I am ashamed of the man who makes the sug 
 gestion. He who thinks it, has never yet understood him. 
 
 " Now, where in all his teachings has he ever inti- 
 mate d that it is wrong to hold property in man ? No 
 where ; I repeat it, nowhere. But is he ignorant of the 
 nature of slavery ? We all know what has lately hap 
 pened at Rome, in connection with slavery. The very 
 year that Paul arrives at Rome, the prefect of the city, 
 Pedanius Secundus, was murdered by his slave ; and 
 
21 G THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 agreeably to the laws of slavery all the slaves belong 
 ing to the prefect, a great number, women and children 
 among them, were put to death indiscriminately, though 
 innocent of the crime.* Such is slavery under the Apos 
 tle s eye ; and yet 
 
 " And, therefore, interrupted the Laodicean brother, 
 the Apostle approves of murdering innocent slaves for 
 the sin of one. That is the conclusion to which your 
 reasoning will bring us. 
 
 " Excusing the brother for interrupting me, I ask, Is 
 that agreeable to the plain facts in the case ? said the 
 speaker. Are the abuses of parentage chargeable upon 
 the relationship of parent and child ? Moreover, does 
 not the Apostle expressly teach us, in this Epistle, that 
 such things are wrong ? but still, does he condemn the 
 relation of master and slave ? 
 
 " The tale of that horrid butchery was present to the 
 mind of the Apostle when he sends Onesimus back into 
 slavery. Moreover, he knew that by our laws Philemon 
 could put Onesimus to death ; yet he sends him back. 
 
 " It is said by my brother that Paul enunciated prin 
 ciples which in time would kill slavery, and therefore he 
 did not care to denounce it, but prudently let it alone. 
 What else, I inquire, did Paul fail to denounce ? and 
 why is this "enormous wrong," this "stupendous injus 
 tice," alone, left to die, without being attacked ? No, Paul 
 treated slavery as he did all other forms of government ; 
 he did not denounce government, not even its despotic 
 forms ; for he knew that a despotism may be the best 
 form of government in some circumstances. But he 
 gpoke against the abuse of power by rulers, and in the 
 
 * Tacitus, Annals, xiv. 42. A thrilling tale. See Bohn s Classical 
 Library, 53. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 217 
 
 same way he speaks against the abuse of power by the 
 master. 
 
 " * My brother tells us that slavery is " the sum of all 
 villanies." A comprehensive term, truly. Let us admit 
 the correctness of the phrase. " All villanies " includes 
 all " the works of the flesh," and the Apostle enumerates 
 the principal of them, where he says, " Now the works 
 of the flesh are these ; " concluding his account with 
 the expression, " and such like." With unsparing de 
 nunciation, he portrays each and every " villany," and 
 shows how the wrath of God is revealed from heaven 
 against it. 
 
 " * But while he is thus bold and faithful with regard 
 to " all villanies " in particular, we cannot but think it 
 strange that a thing which is said to be the " sum " of 
 them all, is nowhere spoken against by the Apostle ! On 
 the contrary, he recognizes the duties which grow out of 
 slave-holding. 
 
 " v Let us suppose him to do the same with regard to 
 each villany which he does to that which my brother 
 calls the " sum " of them all. Then we should hear him 
 say ! Murderers, do so and so ; thieves, do so and so ; 
 and ye that are mutilated, do so and so ; and ye that are 
 pillaged, do so and so. I am curious to know how my 
 brother will answer this. "What are the religious " duties " 
 of murderers and thieves, but to repent, to forsake their 
 evil ways at once, and to make lawful reparation ? And 
 what are the " duties " of those whom murderers and 
 thieves assault, but to resist, and to seek the conviction 
 of the evil-doer ? Oh how strange it seems for the 
 Apostle to counsel masters and slaves to imitate their 
 " Master which is in heaven," in their relation to each 
 other, if holding men in bondage be " the sum of all vil- 
 10 
 
 
218 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 lanies," and how strange for him to send Onesimus back 
 to the system to behave in it as Christ would act in his 
 place ! 
 
 " Onesimus escapes, we will say, from a gang of mur 
 derers, or from a company of thieves, and the Apostle s 
 preaching is the means of his becoming a good man. 
 Paul writes a letter to the chief murderer of the gang, 
 or to the captain of the robbers, sends Onesimus back, 
 and " beseeches " the brigand for " his son Onesimus," 
 telling him that now he receives him " forever," and then 
 calls the desperado " our dearly beloved fellow-laborer " ! 
 "Why not, with equal propriety, if slavery be, necessarily, 
 as our brother describes it ? There is some mistake in 
 our brother s theory. 
 
 " I venture to state the distinction which I think he 
 overlooks, and which, if observed, will relieve his diffi 
 culty. Paul never denounces government ; " the powers 
 that be are ordained of God." He appeals to " Cresar " ; 
 he goes before " Nero " ; he never counsels insurrection, 
 nor denounces government, in whatever hands or under 
 whatever forms it may be ; but he enjoins principles 
 and duties which, if observed, would make " Caesars," 
 even though they be " Neros," blessings, and their despot 
 isms even would cease to be a curse. So with slave- 
 holding. It is incorporated into the state of society ; it 
 is, moreover, a relation which can exist and no sin be 
 committed under the relation ; hence, it is not sin in 
 itself, any more than the throne of Nero is sin in itself ; 
 and the Apostle speaks to the slave-holding Philemon as 
 he would to a father receiving back a wayward son. 
 
 " The claim of Philemon to Onesimus rests only on 
 his having purchased him. Who had a right to sell 
 him ? Trace the thing back, and you come to fraud or 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 219 
 
 violence, or some form of injustice to Onesimus in mak 
 ing him a slave. Paul knew that this is the case with 
 regard to every slave ; yet he does not " break every 
 yoke," even when, as in this case, he had one so com 
 pletely in his hands, and could have broken it in pieces. 
 
 " But we will suppose, with my brother, that the laws 
 which God ordained for slavery should prevail under 
 Christianity, if slavery is to exist. Let every Phrygian, 
 then, a fellow-countryman who has lost his liberty, go 
 free at the end of six years ; and at every fiftieth year, 
 whether six years be completed or not, since the last 
 seventh year of release, let all such go free. This, for 
 argument s sake, we approve. But we must take the 
 whole code. Every foreigner who becomes a slave, and 
 the child of every such slave, was to be an " inheritance 
 forever." Husbands, who are Phrygians, must choose, 
 in certain cases, whether to go out free by themselves, or 
 remain in perpetual bondage with their wives and their 
 offspring. Paul knew the Jewish laws with regard to 
 slavery ; he knew how favorably they compared with 
 our code ; but he says not a word on that score, and sim 
 ply sends Onesimus back to his bondage. 
 
 " * Yet see how beautifully the spirit of Christ works 
 itself into the relation of master and slave, and into Paul s 
 views and feelings with regard to it. In his letter to our 
 Church, he expressly names Onesimus as one of the bear 
 ers of the epistle. He speaks of him as "one of you," a 
 resident with us ; and he calls this slave " a faithful and 
 beloved brother." He speaks to Philemon about him as 
 " my son Onesimus whom I have begotten in my bonds ; " 
 " thou therefore receive him, that is, mine own bowels." 
 " Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother 
 beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, 
 
220 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 both in the flesh and in the Lord." " If thou count me, 
 therefore, a partner, receive him as myself." 
 
 " * What a comment is this on the words : " In Christ 
 Jesus there is neither bond nor free." Not that there 
 shall be " no bond," according to the brother s interpreta 
 tion ; for then it would be equally right to interpret the 
 other part of the passage literally, there is no Jew, no 
 Greek, and none free ! How perfectly does the relation 
 become absorbed by that state of heart which makes it 
 proper for Paul to say : " Art thou called being a ser 
 vant, care not for it; but if thou mayest be made free, 
 use it rather." Notwithstanding this advice, he sends 
 back this man-servant. 
 
 " Paul might have manumitted Onesimus by his au 
 thority as an apostle ; this, however, would have been 
 rebellion against government, for our laws recognize 
 slavery. 
 
 " My brother says that the Hebrew law forbade the 
 surrender of a fugitive slave. Yes, if the slave fled into 
 Israel from a heathen master, he must not be sent back 
 to heathenism ; but 
 
 " But, said the brother from Laodicea, there is no 
 limitation of that kind. I insist that it was of universal 
 application to slaves of all kinds. 
 
 " Find the passage, if you please (in Deut. xxiii.), 
 said the Colossian speaker. 
 
 " The passage was found by the pastor, and was read, 
 as already quoted: Thou shalt not deliver unto his 
 master the servant that is escaped from his master unto 
 thee. He shall dwell with thee even among you, in that 
 place which he shall choose in one of thy gates where 
 it liketh him best ; thou shalt not oppress him. Deut. 
 xxiii. 10, 15. 
 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 221 
 
 " * Now, said Theodotus, it is absurd to say that God 
 proclaimed to all the servants throughout Israel, If any 
 of you are dissatisfied, for any cause, and wish to run 
 away, you may do so ; and wherever you wish to live, 
 the people of that place shall provide a residence for 
 you. After being there for ever so short a time, if you 
 do not like it, you may flee again ; and so keep moving 
 all your lifetime, the people everywhere being obliged to 
 allow you a place of abode. Did the Most High mean 
 to encourage such vagabondism? 
 
 " No ; He merely provided that a fugitive from a 
 heathen master should not be sent away from the wor 
 ship of Jehovah into heathenism/ 
 
 " That is undoubtedly the true meaning, said the 
 pastor, if Theodotus will allow me to put in a word. 
 " Thee," in that passage, means Israel as a nation, not 
 each man/ 
 
 " I thank you, Sir, said Theodotus ; * and now I 
 maintain that the injunction not to give up a fugitive to 
 his heathen master, but to keep him in Israel, is a pow 
 erful argument in favor of retaining slaves where they 
 will be most benefited in their spiritual concerns. God 
 thus makes the soul of man and its eternal welfare para 
 mount to all external relations, including slavery. 
 
 " May I inquire, then, said the Laodicean : * Suppose 
 that Philemon had been a cruel heathen master, and 
 Onesimus had fled for his life, would Paul have sent 
 him back ? 
 
 " If the case were clear and beyond doubt, I am not 
 sure that he would, said Theodotus. While he would 
 not counsel Onesimus to run away, yet I can only say, 
 that, fleeing from certain cruelty and death, I doubt if he 
 would have been remanded. But Paul told servants to 
 
222 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 be " subject to their masters," " not only to the good and 
 gentle, but also to the froward." He speaks to them of 
 " suffering wrongfully ; " of " doing well, and suffering for 
 it ; " and he refers the suffering slave to Christ, " who, 
 when he was reviled, reviled not again ; when he suf 
 fered, threatened not." Moreover, he says : " For even 
 hereunto were ye called ; because Christ also suffered for 
 us, leaving us an example that ye should follow his 
 steps." That is certainly death/ 
 
 " If Paul did not send Onesirnus back to Philemon, 
 however, it would not be because it was wrong, in his 
 view, for Philemon to hold him in bondage ; please ob 
 serve this distinction ; but, judging the case by itself, 
 he would decide whether the slave ought not, under the 
 circumstances, to have the right of asylum, Paul him 
 self having once been " let down by a basket," to escape 
 from the Damascenes. Paul and any other man would, 
 in certain cases, protect even a fugitive son or daughter 
 from a father ; and this consistently with his recognition 
 of the parental and filial relation. 
 
 " Let me remind my brother, and you, my pastor, and 
 my brethren, of one fact which occurs to me at the moment. 
 Manslayers, in cities of refuge, were to go free at the 
 death of the High Priest then in office ; no such release, 
 however, was granted to the Gentile slaves, showing that 
 slavery was not a crime in the estimation of the Most 
 High. Otherwise, He would have legislated for the de 
 parture of slaves from their Hebrew masters, as He did 
 for manslayers fleeing from the avenger of blood. Ex 
 cuse the digression. The thought struck me at the mo 
 ment. 
 
 " I put it to the brother, said the Laodicean, whether 
 he himself would not flee to Rome, were he a single man, 
 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 223 
 
 if he should be made a slave to that monster in human 
 shape, Osander of Hieropolis ? 
 
 " * I cannot say, replied the Colossian, what my temp 
 tations might be, nor how well I should resist them ; but 
 slavery being incorporated into the government, and I 
 being, in the providence of God, sold into bondage to 
 Osander, I being either the child of a slave, or one of 
 those who are called " lawful captives," my race, or my 
 capture in war, or my indebtedness, or my crimes, subject 
 ing me to bondage according to the constitution of govern 
 ment, I ought to consider my slavery as the mode which 
 God had chosen for me to glorify him, by my spirit and 
 temper, by my words and conduct, by my Christian ex 
 ample in everything, for the good of Osander s soul, and 
 the honor of religion. I believe that I should please God 
 more by staying to suffer, and even to die, than to run 
 away. I doubt even the expediency of running away, 
 as a general rule. It implies a want of faith. He is 
 the Christian hero who stays where God has manifestly 
 placed him. 
 
 " I know, continued he, how easy it is to make 
 this appear ridiculous ; and also how often cases occur 
 in which flight, and even the taking of life, are proper, 
 under extreme hardships. It is frequently the case that 
 a servant sees and feels his mental superiority to the man 
 who owns him. Now one may be so disgusted, and be so 
 constantly vexed and chafed at this, as to make out a 
 strong case for escaping ; another, in the same circum 
 stances, will feel that God has placed him in charge of 
 his master s soul, to please him well in all things though 
 he be "froward." Whether is better, to run off or to 
 " abide " ? There can be no doubt how the Apostle would 
 answer the question. Exceptional cases of extreme dis- 
 
224 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 tress do not make a rule ; the rule is for each one to 
 " abide " in the calling in which he is called of God. See 
 what perfect insubordination would everywhere follow 
 if every one who is oppressed, or believes himself to be 
 oppressed, should flee : children would desert their par 
 ents ; husbands and wives would flee from each other, 
 at any supposed or real grievance. This is not the 
 Christian rule. Patience and all long-suffering, obe 
 dience, endurance, committing one s self to him that judg- 
 eth righteously, is the temper and spirit of the Gospel. 
 This is the tone-note of the Sermon on the Mount. At 
 the same time, who blames or judges harshly a man in 
 peril of his life if, in self-defence, he flees ? I say that 
 Paul would probably judge every fugitive slave case by 
 itself. One thing is clear : It is not his rule to help a 
 fugitive from slavery in his flight, as a matter of course. 
 His rule is evidently the reverse of this. I cannot argue 
 with regard to the exceptions. They generally provide 
 each for itself. The New Testament rule is for slaves 
 not to run away ; and for us, and for all men, not to en 
 courage them to do so ; but to encourage them to return, 
 and to deal with the masters on such principles, and in 
 such a fraternal, affectionate way, that the appeals to their 
 Christian sensibilities may permanently affect their con 
 sciences and hearts. 
 
 " I stand by the record. Let me forsake it, and I am 
 like Paul s ship when it was driving up and down m 
 Adria, and neither sun nor stars appeared. My im 
 pulses were not given me as my guide. They are to 
 be compared with the divine will. Many questions may 
 be asked which I cannot answer, and many difficulties 
 encompass this subject of slave-holding which I cannot 
 solve. I abide by the example and teachings of inspired 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 225 
 
 men, and am safe in following them, even if I cannot 
 explain everything connected with their principles and 
 conduct to the satisfaction of others. I only know that 
 if our masters and servants would take the Apostle 
 Paul s Epistle to Philemon as the rule of their spirit and 
 life, there would be no such thing as oppression, nor fugi 
 tive servants. Now, as to revolutionizing society to 
 eradicate slavery, I would no more attempt it than I 
 would try to dig down Cadmus to dislodge yonder snow 
 and ice upon his top. The sun will in due time melt 
 them and pour them into the Lycus and the Moeander. 
 So the Gospel, when it has free course, will dissolve 
 every chain, break every yoke, and sorrow and sighing 
 shall rice away. 
 
 " Philemon was now the first to rise. 
 
 " I am the master to whom Paul the Apostle sends 
 back my fugitive servant. This man, Onesimus, is my 
 brother in Christ ; in heaven, it may be, I shall see him 
 far above me as a faithful servant of our common Lord. 
 He has given a proof of obedience to the Gospel, of 
 submission, of patience and long suffering, of implicit 
 compliance with the rules of Christ, which excite my 
 Christian emulation. My endeavor shall be to imitate 
 Onesimus as he has imitated Christ, and to surpass him 
 in likeness to that Lord who is rneek and lowly in heart. 
 The bonds which hold Onesimus to me are no stronger 
 than those which bind me to him. (Great sensation and 
 much emotion.) Can I ever treat this servant in an un 
 feeling manner ? Can I recklessly sell him ? Can I 
 deprive him of comforts ? Can I fail to provide for his 
 highest happiness ? God do so to me and more also, if I 
 prove deficient in these particulars. 
 10* 
 
22 G THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 " Let me ask, What would be the state of things 
 among us if the benign influences of Christian love per 
 vaded every case of slave-holding as, by the grace of 
 God, I hope it will in my case ? We must have a serv 
 ing class ; our customs and laws ordain the relationship 
 of involuntary servitude, property in the services of 
 others, by purchase of their persons. While this is so, 
 suppose that every servant is an Onesimus and every 
 master such as I ought to be, under the influence of the 
 Apostle Paul s directions ! It is plain that in no way can 
 we better promote the spiritual and eternal good of cer 
 tain men, as the times are, than by standing in the relation 
 of Christian masters to them. This is the great thing 
 with Paul. We can mitigate the sorrows of their bond 
 age ; we can compensate for the appointments of provi 
 dence reducing them to slavery, by making them the free 
 men of Christ. While this state of things continues, it 
 may be a blessing to both parties. God will open a way 
 for any change which he decrees in our social relation, in 
 his own time and manner. 
 
 " Now, let us suppose what would happen if, depart 
 ing from the rule and example of Paul, we follow the 
 counsels of our good brother from Laodicea. The com 
 munity would be in constant excitement by the departure 
 of servants asserting each his natural liberty ; laws 
 would become rigid ; hardships would be multiplied ; 
 cruelties would be perpetuated ; insurrections would be 
 come frequent ; sacrifices of servants, the innocent with 
 the guilty, would be made to deter from insubordination. 
 Instead of the spirit of the Gospel in our dwellings, aliena 
 tions, suspicion, jealousy, wrangling, strife, and every 
 form of evil would prevail. He is no real friend of 
 servant or master who would enforce the principles of 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 227 
 
 our Laodicean brother. I adhere to the Apostle. If 
 questioned as to my right to hold Onesimus in bondage, 
 the answer immediately suggested is that an inspired 
 Apostle sanctions it in my case. If right in my case, 
 it is right in principle ; for if slave-holding be a violation 
 of rights, I am guilty of that violation, however humane 
 a master I may be. The Apostle does not reprove me, 
 nor require me to manumit Onesimus, but tells me that I 
 now receive him " forever," and he teaches me how to treat 
 him. I could occupy your time by arguing the abstract 
 question relating to property in the services of men, 
 but I rest my case for the present on the letter of Paul 
 the Apostle, brought to me by the hand of my fugitive 
 servant, returning to what the laws call his bonds. 
 
 " * Let me add a few words, however, on the general 
 subject, to the argument of Theodotus. 
 
 " * Our good brother from Laodicea tells us that sla 
 very and polygamy are "twin barbarisms." Pie argues 
 that slavery was winked at, like polygamy ; was " suffered," 
 by the Most High. But I propose to refute this, and I 
 will throw myself on your candor to judge if I succeed. 
 
 " God, in Eden, appointed the marriage of one man 
 and one woman to be the law of matrimony. " And 
 wherefore one ? " says the prophet. " He had the residue 
 of the spirit," and could have ordained otherwise. "Where 
 fore one ? " The answer is, " that he might seek a godly 
 seed." The arrangement was for the highest elevation 
 of the race. 
 
 " Polygamy is in direct conflict with the ordinance of 
 God. Of course God never ordained it. On the con 
 trary, the appointment in Eden was equivalent to a pro 
 hibitory act, which Jesus Christ revived, forbidding po 
 lygamy, and the Apostles have enjoined upon us that we 
 observe the law of marriage as given in paradise. 
 
228 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 " So much for polygamy. God never recognized it. 
 The edict requiring the marriage of a childless widow to 
 the brother of her husband, takes it for granted that a 
 man would leave but one widow. 
 
 " But how is it with slavery ? God never forbade it ; 
 he recognized it ; when He framed the Jewish code it was 
 perfectly easy to exclude slavery; but hardly are the 
 Ten Commandments out of his lips when He ordains 
 slave-holding, gives particular directions about it, -de 
 crees that certain persons shall be an inheritance forever. 
 Jesus Christ never uttered one word against slavery, 
 though he did against polygamy ; the Apostles have 
 never written nor preached to us against slavery, but on 
 the contrary here is the Apostle to the Gentiles sending 
 back a servant escaped from his master ; and in that let 
 ter on the pastor s table he enjoins duties on masters and 
 slaves. I have confidence that my brother will not again 
 class slavery with polygamy, for it would be a reflection 
 upon divine wisdom and justice. 
 
 " One thing more. My brother says slavery is the 
 sum of all villanies. 
 
 " But did not the Most High God place his people in 
 slavery for seventy years, in Babylon ? This does not 
 prove that slavery is a good thing, in itself; for by the 
 same proof heathenism might be shown to be a blessing. 
 Slavery was a curse, a punishment ; but still, God would 
 not have made use of slavery to punish his people, if, 
 theoretically and practically, it is by necessity all 
 which my brother alleges. It surely did not, in that 
 case, prove a " villany " to Babylon. They were the 
 best seventy years of their probationary state, when that 
 people held the Jews in captivity. Now I beg not to be 
 misunderstood nor to have my meaning perverted. I 
 am not pleading for slavery. I simply say that God 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 229 
 
 would not have put his people, whom He had not cast 
 off forever, into slavery, if slavery, per se, were the sura 
 of all villanies, or, if the practical effect of it on them 
 would be, necessarily, destruction, or inconsistent with his 
 purposes of benevolence. I will add, that every people 
 and every man, who hold others in bondage, should be 
 admonished that when God puts his captives, his bond 
 men, into their hands, He is most jealous of the manner 
 in which the trust is discharged. I do think, I say it 
 here with all possible emphasis, it is the most delicate, 
 the most solemn, the most awful responsibility, to stand 
 in the relation of master to a bondman. 
 
 " No further discussion was had at that time, the hour 
 being late, and so the meeting was closed with prayer and 
 singing. Masters and servants joined to chant a hymn, 
 of which the following, written many years after by 
 Gregory of Nazianzum, might almost seem to be the 
 expansion : 
 
 " Christ, my Lord, I come to bless Thee, 
 
 Now when day is veiled in night, 
 Thou who knowest no beginning, 
 Light of the eternal light. 
 
 " Thou^hast set the radiant heavens, 
 
 With thy many lamps of brightness, 
 
 Filling all the vaults above ; 
 Day and night in turn subjecting 
 To a brotherhood of service, 
 
 And a mutual law of love. 
 
 " Own me, then, at last, thy servant, 
 
 When thou com st in majesty ; 
 Be to me a pitying Father, 
 
 Let me find thy grace and mercy ; 
 
 And to Thee all praise and glory 
 Through the endless ages be. 
 
230 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 " Leaning on the arm of Onesimus, Philemon returned 
 to bless his household. 
 
 " Thus far," said I, " you have my Night Thoughts." 
 
 I asked Mr. North if he accepted the present New 
 Testament Canon as correct ? He said that he did. I 
 then inquired if he regarded the Scriptures as the only 
 and sufficient rule of faith and practice. 
 
 To this he also agreed. I then asked him if he did not 
 think that, in making up the canon, that is, in directing 
 what books and epistles should go into it, God had refer 
 ence to the wants of all coming times ? He signified his 
 assent. I then asked his attention to a few thoughts con 
 nected with that point. 
 
 " Plere is the Epistle to Philemon, placed by the hand 
 of the Holy Spirit himself in the Sacred Canon. It is 
 on a small piece of parchment, easily lost ; the wind 
 might have blown it from Philemon s table out of the 
 window, beyond recovery; it was not addressed to a 
 Church, to be kept in its archives ; it is a private letter, 
 subject to every change in the condition of a private citi 
 zen. Yet, while the epistle to Laodicea, sent about the 
 same time, is irrecoverably lost, this little writing, ad 
 dressed to a private man, goes into the Bible, by direction 
 of God ! 
 
 "Do you not suppose," said I, " that God had a mean 
 ing in this beyond merely informing us how a master re 
 ceived a servant back to bondage ? " 
 
 " What further purpose do you think there was in it?" 
 said he. 
 
 " I only know," said I, " that slave-holding was to be a 
 subject, as has proved to be the case, which would involve 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 231 
 
 the interests of at least two of the continents of the earth, 
 one of them being then unknown. Here the Church of 
 God was to have large increase. Here, too, slavery was 
 to exist, and to thrill the hearts of millions of citizens 
 from generation to generation. It is very remarkable 
 that one book of the Bible, which was to be made known 
 to all nations by the commandment of the everlasting 
 God, for the obedience of faith, should be exclusively on 
 the subject of slavery, and that the whole burden of the 
 Epistle should be, The Rendition of a Fugitive Slave ! " 
 
 " This never occurred to me before," said Mr. North. 
 
 " Suppose," said I, " that instead of sending back Ones- 
 imus, the epistle had been a private letter from Archip- 
 pus at Colosse to Paul at Rome, clandestinely aiding 
 Onesimus to escape from Philemon, and that Paul had 
 received Onesimus, and had harbored him, and had sent 
 him forth as a missionary, and that not one word of com 
 ment had appeared in the Bible discountenancing the 
 act. What would have happened then ?" 
 
 " Then," said Mrs. North, " one thing is certain ; the 
 business of running off slaves to Canada would now have 
 been more brisk even than it is at present." 
 
 "Why?" said I. 
 
 " Simply because," said she, " the New Testament would 
 have sanctioned the practice of running off slaves." 
 
 " Why, then," said I, " does it not now equally coun 
 tenance the * running of slaves back to their masters ? " 
 
 " Please answer that for me, husband," said Mrs. 
 North. 
 
 He smiled, and rose to put some coal on the fire. We 
 waited for his words. 
 
 " Well," said he, " I do not know but it is all right, 
 provided the master be in each case a Philemon." 
 
232 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 " That is a good word," said I. " You show that the 
 Bible has an ascendency in your mind. You will be safe 
 in following the Bible wherever it leads you, even into 
 slave-holding, if it goes so far. But I must now ques 
 tion you a little. You may answer me or not, as you 
 please. 
 
 " One day a black man appears at your door, and says, 
 1 1 have just escaped from the South. I was owned by 
 Rev. Professor A. B. of New Orleans. I preferred lib 
 erty to slavery, and here I am. Would you shelter him, 
 and encourage his remaining here, and, if necessary, send 
 him to Canada ? " 
 
 " What would you have me do ? " said he. 
 
 " Take him in," said I, " if you please, and give him 
 some breakfast. You would not object to this. After 
 breakfast you have family prayers. Can you read, 
 Nesimus? you inquire. ( O yes, master; missis and the 
 young missises taught us all to read/ Your little boy 
 hands him, with the rest, a Testament, and names the 
 place of reading. Strange to say, yesterday you finished 
 Titus, and the portion to be read in course is Phile 
 mon! " 
 
 " Almost a providence," said Mrs. North. 
 
 " How would you feel, Mr. North ? " said I. 
 
 "Why, feel? How should I feel?" said he. "You 
 will answer for me, perhaps, and say, Read Philemon ; 
 pray ; and then say, Come, Nesimus, I am going to send 
 you back to Professor A. B. I will write a letter to him, 
 and pay your passage. " 
 
 " What objection would you make to this ? " said I. 
 
 He thought a moment, and in the meanwhile his 
 shrewd wife said, 
 
 " Why, husband, do you hesitate ? Say this : What ! 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 233 
 
 I ? and Bunker Hill within a day s march of my house, 
 and grandfather s old sword over my library door ? 
 
 <; I am sick of hearing about Bunker Hill in this con 
 nection," said lie. " Any one would think that it is one 
 of the sacred mountains in Holy Writ." 
 
 " But," said his wife, " If some of Paul s ancestors had 
 had Bunker Hill privileges and influences, do you think 
 Paul would have written the Epistle to Philemon ? Un 
 fortunate Apostle ! Say," said his wife again, before he 
 spoke, " that you believe in progress, that that epistle 
 might have been right enough in its day, but that now 
 * we need an anti-slavery Bible and an anti-slavery 
 God. " 
 
 She made up a very expressive smile as she said it 
 and stretched her work across her knee. 
 
 " Yes," said I, " the Bible is antiquated ! God never 
 gave a written revelation to be a perpetual guide to the 
 end of time ! I can supersede the Epistle to Philemon : 
 Mrs. North, Hebrews ; you, James ; and another the 
 whole of the Old Testament." 
 
 " Now," said Mr. North, " I will tell you what I have 
 been thinking of all this time. 
 
 " I will put you into bondage in Algiers or Tunis. 
 Somebody has bought you or captured you. But by 
 some means you escape to me at Gibraltar. Now I will 
 read Philemon to you, and send you back to your 
 Algerine master. What objection can you make to this, 
 as a believer in inspiration ? " 
 
 I answered, " If I were a slave in my own country, and 
 slavery existed in Algiers, you would need to consider 
 the relation which existed between this country and Al 
 giers. If the governments had treaties with each other, 
 the surrender of persons held to service in either of the 
 
234 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 countries would probably be provided for, and then you 
 would have to consider whether you would obey what is 
 called the higher law, or yield me to the requisition of 
 the proper authorities. This brings up the question of 
 the rendition of fugitive slaves, which we have just con 
 sidered. 
 
 " But being free in my own country, and having been, 
 therefore, unlawfully sold into Algerine Slavery, or hav 
 ing been captured, or stolen, you would, I trust, make 
 proper resistance in my behalf." 
 
 " But," said Mr. North, " The ancestors of my fugitive 
 friend Nesimus, were taken from freedom in their own 
 land and were reduced to slavery. Must he and his 
 descendants be slaves forever for the sin of the original 
 captors, or for the misfortune of his ancestors ? " 
 
 " Birth in slavery long established makes all the dif 
 ference in the world, Mr. North," said I. " If I am born 
 in slavery, under a government ordaining slavery, that is 
 a different case from that of one taken out of a passenger 
 ship and sold as a slave." 
 
 " Then if you and your wife," said he, " were taken out 
 of a passenger ship, and you should happen to have a 
 child born in slavery, that child must remain a slave, even 
 if you go free ? " 
 
 " No, Sir," said I ; " the child born under such circum 
 stances is as rightfully free as its parents. But take this 
 case : I, being captured and held as a slave, my master 
 gives me a wife, lawfully a slave. Then, the child born 
 of her is lawfully a slave. You see the distinction. God 
 recognized it. The condition of both is a limitation and 
 qualification of natural rights. So the lapse of time 
 qualifies the right to collect debts, bring suits for libel, or 
 slander, and for the right of way, or for the possession of 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 235 
 
 land. Will we live under law ? or shall each man or any 
 set of men set up laws for their own conscience ? " 
 
 " Then," said he, " If a slave-trader lands a cargo of 
 slaves from Africa, at Florida, I have no right to buy 
 them ; they are not lawfully slaves. Is that your belief?" 
 
 " Assuredly," said I ; " and if the fugitive whom I 
 have supposed you to be sending back to the gentleman 
 at New Orleans, were a fugitive from the cargo just im 
 ported from Africa, you would be sustained by the law 
 of the land in delivering him from bondage ; he was pirati- 
 cally taken ; the laws would make him free, and punish 
 his captors, if the laws were faithfully executed." 
 
 " But a poor fellow born in slavery must remain a 
 slave ! " he replied. 
 
 " He is not lawfully a slave," I said, " if his parents 
 were both of that cargo. But if his father had received 
 a wife from his master, then the child is lawfully a slave." 
 
 " How do you establish that distinction ? " said he. 
 
 " The child is born of one known to be, herself, lawfully 
 a slave. It is born under a constitution of government 
 which recognizes slavery ; while that government pro 
 vides for slavery, the child must submit or violate an or 
 dinance of God, unless freedom can be had by law, or by 
 justifiable revolution." 
 
 "I feel constrained," said Mr. North, "to hold that 
 liberty is the inalienable right of every human being, ex 
 cept in cases of crime." 
 
 " You mean," said I, " that every human being is enti 
 tled to all the civil rights and immunities which others 
 enjoy." 
 
 " Yes," said he, " in proportion to his age, and his ca 
 pacity. Minors, and the imbecile, are entitled to protec 
 tion, but may not be oppressed." 
 
236 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 " Ah," said I, " how soon you find your general rules 
 intercepted and qualified by circumstances. Minors, 
 and the imbecile, then, may not be admitted to equal 
 privileges with us. But are not all men born free and 
 equal ? " 
 
 " Now let me add to minors and the imbecile one 
 more class. There are two races existing together in a 
 certain country. One has always been, there, a servile 
 race. The other are the lords of the soil ; the institutions 
 of the country are by their creation ; they have acquired a 
 perfect right and title to the government. 
 
 " You know, from all history, that two races never could, 
 and never did live together on the same soil, unless they 
 intermarried, or one was subject to the other. You ad 
 mit this historical fact. 
 
 "It is proposed, now, by some, to give the subject race a 
 right to vote and to hold office, so that their equality in all 
 things shall be acknowledged." 
 
 " Pray," said Mr. North, " will you object to this ? Has 
 not God ( made of one blood all nations of men ? " 
 
 " Yes," I replied, " but read on, in that same verse : 
 1 and hath determined the bounds of their habitation. 
 There is a law of races ; races must have antipathies, 
 unless they intermarry ; he who seeks to confound them 
 may as well labor for the conjugation of all the tribes 
 of animals. He and his results would prove to be mon 
 sters. 
 
 " The Anglo Saxon race on this continent properly say 
 to the Negro, If by conquest you get possession of the 
 land, we must, of course, succumb to you. We are now 
 in possession, and mean so to continue. Hard, therefore, as 
 it seems not to let you vote in parts of the country where 
 your numbers are such as to endanger our majority, or 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 237 
 
 afford temptation to demagogues to inflame your prej 
 udices and passions by historical appeals to them, and 
 severe as it may seem not to let you form military com 
 panies, (which would also be mischievous in the same 
 way) we nevertheless propose to exclude you from this 
 right of suffrage, and from separate organizations, for 
 our own defence, and that we may preserve our institu 
 tions for our proper descendants. We are very sorry 
 that our English ancestors began to impose you upon u>, 
 and that Newport and Salem vessels brought so many of 
 you here into slavery ; but we cannot think of requiting 
 you for this by jeoparding our own peace ; nor would it 
 be kind to you, as things are, to be made prominent in 
 any way as a class. When the Northern people are, 
 generally, your true friends, and cease to use you in an 
 offensive manner, to excite civil war, we shall join to 
 elevate you in every way consistent with your true in 
 terests. 
 
 " There will be cases of extreme hardship," said I, " if 
 a slave, fleeing from the South, however unjustifiably, 
 nevertheless becomes surrounded here with a family, and 
 the owner comes and claims him. There are principles 
 of natural humanity which come into force at such a time 
 to modify or set aside a claim. I know, indeed, that to 
 build a valuable house on land not mine, does not vacate 
 the land-owner s title ; and, moreover, I know what may 
 be alleged on the principle illustrated by Paley, who 
 speaks of a man finding a stick and bestowing labor on it 
 which is more in value than the stick itself. These cases 
 of slaves who have gained a settlement here, call for the 
 utmost kindness and forbearance between the sectional 
 parties in controversy ; clamor will never settle them, 
 nor the sword ; but the reign of good feeling will cause 
 
238 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 justice to flow down our streets like a river, and right 
 eousness like an overflowing stream." 
 
 " As we have conversed a good deal upon this subject," 
 said Mr. North, " perhaps we may bring our conversation 
 to a close as profitably as in any other way by your telling 
 us, summarily, what you think of this whole perplexing 
 subject ; what would you have me believe ; how ought a 
 Christian man, who desires to know and do the will of 
 God, to feel and to act with regard to it ? Good men, I 
 see, are divided about it ; I respect your motives, I ap 
 prove many of your principles, I cannot object to your 
 conclusions, in the main. Let us know what you con 
 sider to be, probably, the ultimate issue of the whole 
 subject." 
 
 " I will do so with pleasure," said I. 
 
 "But," said Mrs. North, " let us wait till after dinner." 
 
 " As the storm is over," I said to her, " I must go 
 home, but we will have one more council fire, if you 
 please, and end the subject." 
 
 So in the afternoon, my kind friends gave me their at 
 tention while I made my summing up in the next and 
 concluding chapter. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 239 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE FUTURE. 
 
 " It is heaven upon earth to hare a man s mind rest in providence, more in 
 charity, and turn upon the poles of truth." 
 
 LORD BACON. 
 
 * CJL AVERT, as human nature now is, cannot be 
 O otherwise than one of the Almighty s curses upon 
 any race which is subject to bondage. 
 
 " True, it may nevertheless, be an amelioration of their 
 original state ; they may fall into the hands of a Chris 
 tian people, and hundreds of thousands of them be civil 
 ized, and be converted to Christianity; redeemed from 
 a barbarous condition they may contribute immensely to 
 the general good of the race both as producers and con 
 sumers. Wherever commerce needs them, unquestion 
 ably they will do more good to the world by being com 
 pelled to work than by wearing out their miserable and 
 useless existence in Africa. 
 
 u All this may be true ; still, is it not a curse to be 
 hewers of wood and drawers of water ? Does not God 
 say to Israel that if they sin, they shall be the tail 
 and not the head ? National degradation, exposing a 
 people to be the prey and the captives of a superior race, 
 is, of course, a curse, though, like death itself, and even 
 sin, it may, by the grace of God, turn to good. Still, it 
 is a curse. 
 
240 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 " But in governing a fallen world like ours, God now 
 and then ordains the subjection of one race to another ; 
 and he makes bondage one of his ordinances as truly as 
 war. The extermination of the Canaanites by the sword, 
 was an ordinance of Heaven. War is a part of God s 
 method in governing the world ; as well as sickness and 
 death. 
 
 " I never had any sympathy for that amiable but weak 
 concern for the character of God which represents him 
 as finding slavery in existence and merely legislating 
 about it, and doing the best he can with an inevitable 
 evil. This view belongs to a system which makes God, 
 as it seems to me, the most unhappy Being, continually 
 striving to destroy that which sprung up . contrary to his 
 plan. To dwell on this, however, would lead us too far 
 into theological questions. 
 
 " I tremble to think of our responsibility as a nation in 
 being put in charge of a people with whom God has 
 some terrible controversy for their own sins and those of 
 their ancestors. 
 
 " Through our abuse of power, God may say to us, I 
 was a little angry, and ye helped on the affliction. God s 
 purposes in having the chastised nation afflicted, will be 
 accomplished, but He will punish every one who inflicts 
 the chastisement with a selfish, unchristian spirit. 
 
 " Our people generally take it for granted that slavery 
 is like one of the self-limiting diseases of childhood, to 
 be outgrown, and to cease forever, in process of time, 
 and before many years have passed away. 
 
 " The ground of this conclusion is a doctrinal error, 
 namely, that slave-holding, the relation of master and 
 servant, ownership, property in man, or by whatever 
 name slavery may be designated, is in itself wrong, and 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 241 
 
 that as soon as practicable it will be abjured and no man 
 will stand to another in the relation of master, or owner. 
 But whether for good or for ill, slavery will be in exist 
 ence at the last day. We read that every bondman 
 and every freeman will see the sign of the Son of Man. 
 " But should slavery be at any time, or in any country, 
 or part of a country, utterly extinguished, it will ever 
 remain true that ownership, or property in man is not in 
 itself wrong, and that it may be benevolent to all con 
 cerned. It is interesting to recollect that in proportion 
 as human relations are cardinal, or vital, they approach 
 most nearly to ownership, as in the case of parent and 
 child. The highest relation of all, that between man 
 and God, finds its most perfect expression in terms con 
 veying the idea of ownership on the part of God. For 
 ye are not your own ; therefore glorify God in your 
 body and spirit which are God s. If God should send 
 one of us to a distant part of the universe, under the 
 charge of an angel, where superior intelligence and wis 
 dom were needful for our safety in temptation and amid 
 the bewildering excitements of new scenes, ownership for 
 the time being, absolute dominion over us, on the part of 
 the angel, would be in the highest measure benevolent. 
 In those days when universal love reigns, ii is just as 
 likely as not that there will be more ownership in 
 man than ever before. By ownership I mean such 
 relationships as we see in the households of those who 
 are represented in the letter of the Southern lady to 
 her father. There we see the weak, the unfortunate, 
 the dependent nature clinging to the stronger, and 
 receiving support and comfort, and even honor, from 
 those who in rendering kindness and in receiving ser 
 vice have their whole being refined and cultivated to the 
 11 
 
242 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 highest degree. There are no rigors in those relation 
 ships ; everything which contributes to the welfare and 
 happiness of a serving class is enjoyed, and all its liabili 
 ties to care and sorrow are removed, to as great a degree 
 as ever happens in this world. 
 
 " Allowing that there are always to be inequalities of 
 mind and condition, and that what we call menial services 
 will need to be performed ; that there must be those who 
 will have a disposition and taste to work over a fire all 
 day and prepare food ; and that men of business or study 
 will not all be able to groom their own horses and wash 
 their vehicles ; and that possibly the Coleridges and 
 Southeys, and their friends the Joseph Cottles, may, 
 from being absorbed in their ideal pursuits, still be igno 
 rant of the way to get off a collar from a horse s neck, 
 and must call upon a servant-girl to help them, we shall 
 need those who will be glad to be servants forever, and 
 who will require for their own security that their employ 
 ers shall * own them, and thus be made responsible for 
 their support and protection. This may always be neces 
 sary for the highest welfare of all concerned. But the 
 history of this relationship in connection with our human 
 nature has been such, to a great extent, that we associate 
 with it only the idea of pillage, oppression, cruelty. Al 
 ready there are cases without number in which no such 
 idea would ever be suggested to a spectator, and they 
 will increase in proportion as Christianity prevails. 
 There is more real freedom in thousands of these 
 cases of nominal slavery than in thousands who are 
 nominally free. How did it happen that the Hebrew 
 servant, who chose to stay with his master rather than 
 leave his wife and children, was not made nominally free, 
 and apprenticed or hired ? Why was his ear bored, and 
 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 243 
 
 perpetual relations secured between him and his mas 
 ter ? " 
 
 " For the master s security, I presume," said Mr. 
 North. 
 
 " I should say," said I, " for the mutual benefit of both. 
 The master then became responsible for him ; his sup 
 port was a lien on his estate, the children must always 
 be responsible for his maintenance. The awl made its 
 record in the master s door-post, as well as in the ser 
 vant s ear. 
 
 " Now, suppose," said I, " that God chooses to supply 
 this nation with menial servants to the end of time. 
 Suppose that lie has designed that one race, the African, 
 shall be the source from which he will draw this supply, 
 and that down through long generations he proposes to 
 make this black race our servants, seeking at the same 
 time, by means of this, their elevation, by connecting them 
 with us, and keeping up the relation ; and that for the 
 permanence of the relation, and for the security of all 
 concerned, there should be ownership, such as he him 
 self ordained when he prescribed the boring of the ear ? 
 For my part, I cannot see in this the sum of all villa- 
 nies, * an enormous wrong, a stupendous injustice. 
 Yet this would be slavery. I am not arguing for such 
 a constitution of things. As was before observed, the 
 whole black race may, in a few years, be swept off from 
 the country ; but who will undertake to say that, as the 
 people of other nations have been employed by Provi 
 dence to make our railroads and canals, the black race 
 may not be employed for a much longer term to be our 
 servants, both North and South, both East and West ? 
 And who will say that the tenure of ownership may 
 not be the wisest and most benevolent arrangement for 
 
244 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 all concerned ? I repeat it, I am not arguing for this ; 
 I am only trying to show you that the present abuses 
 in slavery are no valid argument against the relation 
 itself; that this may remain when the abuses cease, and 
 therefore that at the present time we ought to discrimi 
 nate in our arguments against slavery, and direct our 
 assaults, if we continue to be assailers, against its abuses." 
 
 " On one disagreeable subject," I said to him aside, 
 " I will make this general remark : The Southern slaves 
 are, as a whole, a religious people ; their religion, indeed, 
 is of a type corresponding to their condition. But still, if 
 the South were one festering pool of iniquity, as many at 
 the North fancy, would the colored people show such evi 
 dences as they do of moral and spiritual improvement? 
 Look at Hayti. A very large majority of the children 
 are not born in wedlock. Slavery is a moral restraint 
 upon the Southern colored people. Evil as slavery is, it 
 is, in many things, taking the slaves as they are, a com 
 parative blessing." 
 
 " But," said Mr. North, " our people generally insist 
 that abuses, oppression, cruelty, are so inherent in sla 
 very that they cannot be removed without destroying the 
 relation itself." 
 
 " Here," said I, " is the mistake under which South 
 erners perceive that we labor, and which prevents us 
 from having the least influence with them. 
 
 " This, however, is unquestionably true : as human na 
 ture is, we would not choose to give men unlimited power 
 over their fellow-men who are slaves. If, in the course 
 of events, it is found by good men that the abuses flowing 
 from such power are inevitable, that legislative enact 
 ments and public opinion cannot control the relation, 
 their consciences will not be quiet till it is abolished. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 245 
 
 I am willing to confide this to men as good as \ve, acting 
 as they will on their responsibility to God. It may be, 
 that the system, stripped of everything which can be 
 taken away, will be perpetuated, for the best good of the 
 slave and his master. 
 
 " But," said I, " while this perpetual relation of the 
 black race to us is possible, and may be the design of a 
 benevolent God for our happiness and that of the Afri 
 cans, and while I love to use it in replying to those who, 
 with short-sighted and somewhat passionate reasoning, as 
 I think, contend that slavery must utterly be rooted out 
 of the land, I confess that my own thoughts turn to the 
 Continent of Africa as the great object for which an all- 
 wise God has permitted slavery to exist on our shores. 
 
 " I love to look at American slavery in connection with 
 the future history of that great African continent, con 
 taining one hundred and fifty millions of people. History 
 and discovered relics make the Ethiopian race to be older 
 even than Egypt. The once powerful nations of North 
 ern Africa, Numidia, Mauratania, as well as the Egyp 
 tian builders of pyramids, have disappeared, or they exist 
 only in a few Coptic tribes ; and even they are of doubt 
 ful origin. But the Ethiopian people, notwithstanding 
 the slave-trade which has extended its degrading influence 
 far and wide among them, and though civilization long 
 since departed from their tribes, have continued to in 
 crease till now they are the most numerous of the human 
 families except the Chinese. The slave-holding nations 
 which have pillaged them for ages, have not been able to 
 destroy them. Ethiopia may well say, stretching out 
 her hands to God, Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and 
 thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. It is sublime 
 to think what triumphs of redemption there are yet to be 
 
246 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 on that African continent. But how little, apparently, 
 from all that they ever say, do some of our abolitionist 
 friends seem to think about Africa as a future jewel in 
 Immanuel s diadem ! Utterly foreign from all their 
 thoughts appears to be the great plan of Providence 
 which by means even of slavery in this land, has done 
 so much to extend the work of human salvation among 
 the African race. And there are some ministers of the 
 Gospel and professed Christians, I regret to observe, who 
 reply to all that you say about the vast proportion, to 
 white converts, of converts among the colored people, in 
 a manner which would awaken great fears in the most 
 charitable breast with regard to their own personal in 
 terest in the salvation by Christ, did we not all know 
 how far we may be blinded by passion. If you visit in 
 the South, you will find that African missions take the 
 deepest hold on the hearts of Southern Christians. The 
 time will come, God hasten it ! when they and we will be 
 united in plans and efforts for the good of the African 
 race. 
 
 " But I am not in favor of stealing Africans from their 
 native land to bring them here, even though it were cer 
 tain that the majority of them would be converted to God. 
 We are not to do evil that good may come. If Provi 
 dence makes it plain that tribes of them shall be removed 
 to new districts of our country, suitable measures can and 
 will be devised for that purpose. That they are better 
 off here, even in slavery, than in their own land, under 
 present circumstances, I do not see how any one can 
 question ; but that does not justify man-stealing. I re 
 member to have seen a letter from a Missionary in Af 
 rica, in which he says, speaking of the slaves and of the 
 South, Would that all Africa were there; would that 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 247 
 
 tribes of this unhappy people could be transferred to the 
 privileges which the slaves at the South enjoy. I would 
 rather take my chance of a good or bad master, and be a 
 slave at the South, than be as one of those heathen 
 people. In saying this, I refer both to this world and the 
 next. I need not say, he is an enemy to the slave- 
 trade. 
 
 " A missionary who had spent much time among the 
 Zulu people, was appealed to by a zealous anti-slavery 
 person to commiserate our slaves as being so much worse 
 off than the Zulus. Madam, said he, if our Zulus 
 were in the condition of your slaves, eternity would not 
 be long enough to give thanks/ 
 
 " Mrs. North," said I, " you will not impute it to mere 
 gallantry when I appeal to you if we may not generally 
 measure the refinement and elevation of society by the 
 position of woman, and by the sentiments and manners 
 of the other sex with regard to yours. The deference, 
 the delicate attentions, the gentleness, the refinement of 
 behavior, in word and act, which you inspire, are both 
 the means and the evidence of the highest cultivation. 
 In public and in private life, in assemblies, public con 
 veyances, at table, around the evening lamp, in all the 
 intercourse of the family, the susceptibility of impression, 
 the restraints and the chastised utterances, in word and 
 action, of husbands, fathers, brothers and friends, which 
 are due to the presence of woman, are a correct gauge 
 of civilization and refinement." 
 
 " All right," said Mr. North, bowing very politely to 
 his wife. 
 
 " Nowhere," said I, " do we see this more conspicuously 
 than in Southern society. Chivalry there seems to blend 
 with the genial influences of Christianity, and together 
 
248 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 they give a tone and manner to Southern life which is 
 peculiar. 
 
 " I am often struck with a Southern gentleman s rev 
 erence, here at the North, for the female sex. He is dis 
 pleased at seeing daughters serving at table in boarding- 
 houses kept by their worthy parents or widowed mothers. 
 We, indeed, respect a young woman who serves us in 
 this manner, (if we reflect at all,) and we resent rude 
 ness or an unfeeling mode of addressing those who are 
 in such situations. But the Southern gentleman goes 
 further. He has, perhaps, not been accustomed to see 
 the daughter of a white family serve. When a respect 
 able young W 7 oman, therefore, at a boarding-house, brings 
 him his tea, he feels impelled to rise and ask her to be 
 seated, and to wait upon her. I have been an eye-wit 
 ness to scenes of this kind, and -have been much pleased 
 and not a little amused at some exhibitions of the feel 
 ing. If our sentiments toward the sex, and their posi 
 tion in social life, mark the degree of civilization and cul 
 tivation in a community, I am compelled to accord a high 
 degree of it to Southern society, in its best estate. 
 
 " This is one effect of slavery. It takes mothers, wives, 
 daughters, away from occupations which, though honor 
 able, do not always elevate them in the eyes of the other 
 sex. Perhaps there is no value (and some will say it) 
 in all this ; that every labor and service is right and good 
 for woman ; and that we are to prefer a state of society 
 where woman does these things with her own hands, in 
 stead of having them done for her, and that this is our 
 only safeguard against luxury and degeneracy. I will 
 not debate it. I am only showing that, tried by an ordi 
 nary test, the position of woman, Southerners are 
 really net barbarians." 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 249 
 
 " I verily believe," said Mrs. North, " that if you take 
 the Southern constitution and give it a Northern training, 
 the result is as perfect a specimen of man or woman as is 
 to be found on earth." 
 
 "People at the North," said I, "may, in their zeal 
 against slavery, make light of the abounding sustenance 
 which the slaves enjoy, and call it a low and gross thing 
 in comparison with * freedom ; but, in the view of all 
 political economists and publicists, how to feed the lower 
 classes is a great problem. It is solved in slavery. 
 
 " There is another topic," I added, " which is interest 
 ing and important. 
 
 " Here," said I, taking a newspaper-slip from my 
 wallet, " is something which fairly made me weep. It 
 is a picture of one of our poor, virtuous, honest New 
 England homes, in which I would rather dwell and suf 
 fer, than be an * oppressor with my hundreds of slaves, 
 and wealth counted by hundreds of thousands. A slave 
 holder, blessed be God, is not a synonyme of oppressor ; 
 nor are the slaves as a matter of course oppressed. 
 Our people to a great extent think otherwise, and it is 
 useful to see how we appear to others when this error 
 leads us into folly. This little picture in the newspaper- 
 slip gives us a transient look into an abode whose honest 
 poverty and want are made more painful by evil-doing 
 under the influence of fanaticism." 
 
 I then read to my friends the following from a Southern 
 paper ; I here omit the names which are given in full : 
 
 " The touching letter which was found on the body of 
 
 , one of the insurgents, from his sister in , 
 
 , has been published. The following paragraph in 
 
 that letter is a suggestive one : 
 
 " Would you come home if you had the money to 
 11* 
 
250 THE SABLE CLOUD 
 
 come with ? Tell me what it would cost. Oh ! I would 
 be unspeakably happy if it were in my power to send 
 you money, but we have been very poor this winter. I 
 have not earned a half-dollar this winter. Mattie has 
 had a very good place, where she has had severity-five 
 cents a week ; she has not spent any of it in the family, 
 only a very little for mother. Father has had very small 
 pay, but I think he has more now ; he is a watchman on 
 
 the , that runs from here to . 
 
 " Here, says the Southern editor, is a family, one of 
 thousands of families in New England in similar circum 
 stances, where one daughter thinks it a very good place * 
 where she can get seventy-five cents a week ; another 
 has not earned a half-dollar during the winter, and all are 
 1 very poor ; yet the son and brother goes off and deserts 
 a mother and sisters thus situated, a mother and sisters 
 who, though poor, have evidently the most affectionate 
 feelings and tender sensibilities, for the purpose of lib 
 erating a class of people, not one of whom knows any 
 thing of the want or privation from which his own family 
 is suffering, or who would not look without contempt upon 
 such remuneration as seemed the height of good fortune 
 to the destitute sisters and mother of this abolitionist. 
 When we bear in mind the intelligence and sensibilities 
 which characterize the wives and daughters of the poorest 
 classes equally with the richest in New England, it is 
 most amazing that men should overlook such misery at 
 their own doors nay, should forsake their own kitli 
 and kin who are suffering under it the mother who 
 bore them, the sisters who love them with all a sister s 
 tender and solicitous love, and run off to emancipate the 
 fattest, sleekest, most contented and unambitious race 
 under heaven." 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 251 
 
 " This shows," said I, " how God has set one thing 
 over against another, in this world. You and Mrs. North 
 and myself would rather be the poor honest watchman/ 
 or earn our seventy-five cents a week, with Mattie, 
 or even, with the loving sister who writes this letter, not* 
 have earned a halt-dollar this winter, than be the sleek 
 est of well-fed slaves. 
 
 " Yet, when we are summing up the evils of slavery 
 in the form of indictments, we must honestly confess that 
 it is no small thing to feed a whole laboring class in one 
 half of a great country with bread enough and to spare." 
 
 Mrs. North asked if I had ever seen a slave-mart, or 
 if I knew much by observation of the domestic slave- 
 trade. 
 
 " Yes," said I, " and it is in connection with this feature 
 of slavery that we at the North are most easily and most 
 painfully affected. Some of the most agonizing scenes 
 are enacted at these auctions. They are a part of sla 
 very ; so is the domestic slave-trade, which is the neces 
 sary removal of the slaves from places where they cannot 
 have employment, to regions where their labor is in de 
 mand. In no other way can they be disposed of, unless 
 they are at once freed; and with many the evils of the 
 domestic slave-trade are the most powerful argument in 
 favor of emancipation. That there are grievous trials 
 and sorrows, as well as wrongs and violence, in the dis 
 posal of slaves, is known to all. As to those who are to 
 remain within the State, we are told to go, if we will, and 
 inquire into the history of slaves who are to be publicly 
 sold, and take the number of cases in which a wanton dis 
 regard of a slave s feelings can be detected. An owner is 
 compelled to part with his property in his slave ; or, the 
 slave is taken for debt ; estates are to be divided ; an 
 
252 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 owner dies intestate; titles are to be settled, mortgages 
 foreclosed, the number of the household is to be reduced ; 
 and for these and numerous other reasons new owners 
 are to be sought for the slaves. Here is a man and his 
 wife and children to be sold. There is a general interest 
 felt in arranging the sale so that the family may be in 
 the same neighborhood. This is for the interest of the 
 owners ; it promotes contentment and cheerfulness in the 
 servants. Cases of hardship are the exceptions to the 
 general rule in disposing of servants. Admitting all that 
 can properly be said of such cases, and of the various 
 other evils connected with it, the question recurs, What 
 is to be done but increasingly to mitigate the sorrows of 
 the bondmen, to cultivate a kind and generous disposition 
 toward them, and to prepare them, as far and as fast as 
 the good of all concerned will warrant, for any other con 
 dition which Providence may in time point out ? My 
 belief is, that if you take four millions of laboring people 
 anywhere under the sun, and put down in separate col 
 umns the good and the evil in their conditions, the bal 
 ance of welfare and happiness, from the supply of their 
 wants, will be found to be greater among our Southern 
 slaves than elsewhere. But, still, this leaves them slaves. 
 My reply to myself, when I say this, is, They were so in 
 their own land ; gr, they were in a condition of fearful 
 degradation and misery. Their God is their judge ; we 
 have not increased their degradation ; woe to us if we 
 add needless sorrows to their lot. But as for thrusting 
 them up to an ideal state of elevation, before their time and 
 ours has come, I am not disposed to aid in it. Moreover, 
 Southern Christians are doing all that we would do if in 
 their place ; I will not affect to be more humane or just 
 than they ; this is our great error. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 253 
 
 " Here," said I, " is another view of the subject " : 
 
 " In the sale of slaves (in America) nothing hut labor is 
 transferred. It passes from master to master, as it passes, in 
 countries of hired labor, from employer to employer. The 
 mode in which the transfer is made differs in the two systems 
 of labor. The slave-laborer is never compelled to hunt for 
 work and starve till he finds it. Is this an evil to the laborer ? 
 Would it be thought an evil, by the hired man in Europe, that 
 his employer should be obliged, by law, to find him another 
 employer before dismissing him from service ? 
 
 " But, it is said, the slave is too much exposed to the mas 
 ter s abuse of, power ; he is liable to wrongs without a rem 
 edy ; and, so far, his condition is below that of the hired la 
 borer. 
 
 " If this be true at all, it is true as regards the able-bodied 
 hired man only. But take into the account children and 
 women, those, for example, that work naked in coal-mines, or 
 wives whose sufferings from the brutal treatment of husbands 
 daily fill the reports of police courts ; take these into the reck 
 oning, and the difference in the consequences of abused power 
 will be very small. The negro-slave is as thoroughly protected 
 as any laborer in Europe. He is protected from every other 
 man s wrong-doing by the ready interference of his master ; he 
 is guarded from the master s abuse by the laws of the land, 
 and a vigilant, earnest public opinion. Let all cruelty be 
 punished ; let all abuse of power be restrained ; but to 
 abolish the relation of master and slave, because there are 
 bad masters and ill-treated slaves, would not be a whit wiser 
 than to abolish marriage, because there are brutal husbands 
 and murdered wives. 
 
 " Yet, surely, it will be said, it must be admitted, after all, 
 that slavery is an evil. Yes, certainly, it is an evil ; but in 
 the same sense only in which servitude or hired labor is an 
 evil. To gain one s bread by the sweat of one s brow, is a 
 curse. But it is a curse attended with a blessing. It is an 
 evil that shuts out a greater evil. Labor for wages, labor for 
 
254 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 subsistence, and subjection to the authority of employer or 
 master, are the conditions on which alone the laboring masses, 
 white or black, can live with advantage to themselves and to 
 society." De Bow s Review, Jan. 1860, pp. 56, 57. 
 
 Mr. North asked if I did not think that the colored 
 people should be assisted in their efforts to get an education. 
 
 " There are collegiate institutions," I told him, " for 
 colored people, in Oxford, Pa., and in Xenia, 0. With 
 great sorrow have I observed, that applications to aid 
 these institutions and to endow others for similar pur 
 poses have been received with coldness and distrust by 
 many who could have made liberal contributions, for no 
 other reason than the suspicion that they were designed 
 by Abolitionists to thrust forward the colored man in an 
 offensive manner. I have known the name of a leading 
 Abolitionist to be the death of a subscription-paper for 
 such an institution. This was a bitter prejudice. When 
 philanthropy with regard to the colored race among us 
 falls into its natural channel, we shall see the South and 
 the North opening wide the doors of usefulness in every 
 department for which the colored people shall, any of 
 them, manifest an aptitude. The idea that this race is 
 to be debarred from any and every development of which 
 it is capable, is not entertained by any respectable people 
 at the South. The negro at the South is not doomed, by 
 the Christian people, to an inexorable fate. They will 
 help him rise as .fast and as far as God, in his providence, 
 shows .it to be his will to employ any or all of that race 
 in other ways^ than those of servitude. 
 
 " If American slavery/ says one, be the horrid sys 
 tem of cruelty, ignorance, and wickedness represented by 
 some writers of fiction and paid defamers of our institu 
 tions, how happens it that those who have been reared 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 255 
 
 in the midst of it, when freed and planted in Africa at 
 once exhibit such capacity for self-government and self- 
 education, and set such examples of good morals ? 
 
 " Have the negroes under British care at Sierra 
 Leone made similar progress in improvement ? Do 
 the free colored subjects of Britain in the West Indies 
 show the capacity, industry, and intelligence manifested 
 by the Liberians, whose training was in the school of 
 American servitude ? Nor have the best specimens 
 of this tutelage been sent out. Thousands and tens 
 of thousands of colored servants in the Southern States 
 are church-members, instructed in their duties by faithful 
 Christian teachers, and the children are trained in the 
 fear and love of God. I then observed, 
 
 " I have come to this conclusion : if Southern Chris 
 tians say to us, as they do, Auction-blocks, separation of 
 families, and similar features of slavery, in the limited 
 and decreasing extent to which they prevail, are as 
 odious to us as to you ; we tolerate these things as parts 
 of a system which we all feel to be an evil, and which 
 we are constantly striving to ameliorate ; I will leave 
 the whole subject in their hands ; I will trust them in 
 this as I would in anything and everything ; I feel ab 
 solved from all responsibility to God or to them witli 
 regard to the matter." 
 
 " Pray tell me," said Mrs. North, " what is all this dis 
 cussion about * the territories, and keeping slavery out of 
 them ? " 
 
 " I told her that slavery, which fifteen States of the 
 Union maintain as a part of their domestic life, is, by 
 many of the people in the Free States, regarded as they 
 regard the plague and death ; they prescribe certain de 
 grees of latitude as barriers to it, as though they enacted 
 
256 THE SABLE CLOUD* 
 
 thus: North of 36 30 whooping-cough is prohibited, 
 measles are forbidden, cholera-morbus is forever inter 
 dicted. They regard slave-holders as living in a moral 
 pestilence, and seeking to carry it with them into new 
 districts. 
 
 " But, practically," I said, " the thing will now regu 
 late itself, and both sides are contending very much for 
 an abstract right. It is a war of feeling, and no one 
 knows where it will end. If the North would say, Free 
 labor, which cannot thrive where slavery exists, requires 
 an amicable division and allotment of the territorial 
 regions ; let us agree where our respective systems shall 
 prevail/ there would be no difficulty. But the effort 
 has been to shut out slavery, as men use sanitary legis 
 lation and quarantine to keep out a pestilence. This 
 is treating fifteen States of the Union as polluted and 
 polluting. Hence they say, We cannot live together as 
 one people, and we will not." 
 
 " What do you honestly think," said Mr. North, " is 
 the true cause of our present national calamities ? " 
 
 " They are owing," said I, " originally, to the peculiar 
 state of feeling on the part of the North toward the 
 South. This was not in consequence of injury experi 
 enced ; for slavery had not inflicted injury upon the 
 North ; but, right or wrong, Northern disapprobation 
 of slavery, and the ways of manifesting it, are the foun 
 tain-head of our present national trouble. Let great 
 numbers in one section of such a nation as this con 
 scientiously disapprove of their brethren in another 
 section, and not only so, but hold them guilty of an 
 immoral and an inhuman system, and deal with them 
 in such ways as Conscience, that most merciless of 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 257 
 
 inquisitors and persecutors, alone employs, and if the 
 indicted section be not exasperated, it will be be 
 cause the accusation is true, that their system has 
 destroyed their manhood." 
 
 " But my hope and belief," said he, " are, that all 
 these changes are to result in the overthrow of slavery." 
 
 " I can only say," said I, in answer to such a re 
 mark, " that he who expects relief from our trouble 
 through the eradication of slavery, and urges on seces 
 sion and division as the means to effect it, is in danger 
 of having his enthusiasm counted as fanaticism, if not 
 madness." 
 
 " How I wish," said he, " that we could join and buy 
 up these slaves and set them free." 
 
 " Kind and well meant as this proposal is," said I, 
 " nothing is really more offensive to the South. It im 
 plies that her conscience is debauched by self-interest, 
 and that by offering to remunerate her if she will part 
 with what we call her ill-gotten booty we shall assist 
 her to become virtuous. Such a proposal makes her 
 feel that fanaticism has assumed the calmness which is 
 its most hopeless symptom." 
 
 " Then," said he, " is the North to change all its 
 opinions ? " 
 
 I said, " If this implies the abandonment of moral or 
 religious principle in the least degree, Never. Our 
 only hope lies in our possibly being in the wrong, and 
 ii magnanimously changing our views and feelings, and 
 our behavior. This, upon conviction, it will be most 
 noble to do for its own sake, leaving the effect of it to 
 Him by whom actions are weighed, and to those who, 
 we shall have concluded, are naturally as magnanimous 
 and just as we, and who, if guilty of oppression, were 
 
258 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 liable to the very same accusation when we first con 
 federated with them, and when Northern slave-import 
 ers put their hands with Southern slave-holders to the 
 Declaration of Independence, both averring that all 
 men are created free and equal. 
 
 " We seem now to have concluded that we have 
 put ourselves entirely right, and that our Southern 
 brethren are entirely wrong." 
 
 " I cannot feel," said Mr. North, " that we are to 
 blame for having our opinions, and for expressing them 
 honestly and fearlessly. What more have We done?" 
 
 I replied, " They say that" we have held them up to 
 universal execration ; that we have quoted, with readi 
 ness, the testimony of foreign nations against them, 
 of nations who know nothing of domestic slavery like 
 ours, mixed up with the qualifying influences of our 
 own civilization ; that our imaginative literature has 
 made them odious, associating cruelty and vulgarity 
 with the relation of slave-holding ; that we have labored 
 to cripple their Institution, hoping to destroy it ; that we 
 have striven to save the District of Columbia from their 
 system as from corruption ; that a thousand millions of 
 dollars of their property we have treated as contra 
 band, and have made it perilous for them to recov 
 er it ; that we have lain in wait and molested them 
 in their transit through our borders, with their ser 
 vants, to embark for sea. We dispute their right to 
 go with their servants into territories jointly acquired, 
 and belonging by constitutional right equally to them 
 as to ourselves. This, they say, has not been a just 
 and sincere demand for an equitable division of terri 
 tory in view of the naturally conflicting interests of 
 slave labor and free, but rather a vindictive determina- 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 259 
 
 tion to hem in the slave-holder, to force the scorpion 
 into fires where he shall die of his own sting, or, 
 to borrow the metaphor, with the language, of a pres 
 ent Senator from Massachusetts, where the * poi 
 soned rat shall die in his own hole. 
 
 " Two confederacies or one, our prospect is fearful 
 if we continue to feel and act toward each other after 
 this temper, and to cherish our respective grievances." 
 
 " There is another side to all this," said Mr. North. 
 " I ascribe the excitement at the South to the loss on 
 their part of political power, or to a grasping spirit 
 which breaks compromises, and which requires that the 
 national legislation be always shaped in its favor." 
 
 " But," said I, " if we can trust the convictions of 
 just men, in private life, at the South, men removed 
 from* all suspicion as to the purity of their mo 
 tives, it is certain that our Northern feelings toward 
 slave-holders, and the expressions of those feelings in 
 ways which have been applauded among us for many 
 years, are the real causes of the irritation and exas 
 peration which have brought us to the present brink. 
 
 " Now, as these two sections must continue to exist, 
 side by side, they will go on to repel each other until 
 either slavery ceases, or a change of feeling takes 
 place in the non-slaveholding section. Secession and 
 permanent division will not cure the trouble, but will 
 increase it. Moreover, the contrariety of feeling be 
 tween people in the non-slaveholding States, made 
 intense by the departure of the Southern section, 
 may inaugurate hostilities among ourselves more fear 
 ful than those which drive away the Southern people. 
 
 " Perhaps we are to be two nations. I cannot but 
 regard this as the greatest calamity which will have 
 
260 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 happened to the cause of human improvement. Nor do 
 I see how it will help Northern philanthropy, nor the 
 negro ; but it may be greatly for his injury. The truth 
 is, we must live together for self-defence against each 
 other, if from no other consideration. Israel began its 
 downfall in secession, which was compelled by Reho- 
 boarn. 
 
 " But," said I, " let us contemplate a different issue. 
 Let us think what a result it will be if such a govern 
 ment as ours, whose speedy ruin has been so often pre 
 dicted and is still confidently looked for, shall pass 
 through these trials and dangers without bloodshed, 
 and we become again a united people. Self-gov 
 ernment will then have vindicated itself; constitu 
 tional liberty will have triumphed; arms and coercion 
 will lose their old authority and power ; for there will 
 be an example of a republican people recovering 
 from convulsions which would have demolished any 
 throne or power which trusted in the sword. The 
 serf-boats in ports of the Bay of Bengal, which ride 
 the swift, enormous surges, are not nailed, but their 
 parts are lashed one to another, and thus the boats 
 yield easily to the force of the water. Our govern 
 ment has been likened to them ; and now, by yield 
 ing, one part to another, where a theoretically strong 
 er government would have used coercion, we shall, 
 if it please God, pass safely through these fearful 
 hazards, furnishing a demonstration, which God may 
 have been preparing by us for the instruction of 
 mankind, that fraternal blood is not the best nour 
 ishment of the tree of liberty, and that wisdom/ 
 resulting in the victories of peace, is better than 
 weapons of war. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 261 
 
 " I look, therefore, toward some change in Northern 
 feelings with regard to the South. A change in this 
 respect will end our troubles. Opinions may not be 
 wholly reversed ; people born and bred under totally 
 different institutions may not, for they cannot wholly, 
 yield their convictions on controverted sectional topics, 
 even when they cherish mutual respect and deference; 
 but, the belief that the North will change its feelings 
 toward the South and its institutions, under a modifi 
 cation of views entirely consistent with independence of 
 judgment and self-respect, and that the South will not 
 be wanting in a corresponding temper, rests on the 
 same conviction as that God does not intend to de 
 stroy us by each other s hands, nor to make the 
 life of the two sections weary with perpetual hatred 
 and strife." 
 
 " Our form of government, Mr. North," said I, " is the 
 very best on earth if it goes well, and the worst if it 
 goes ill. We have no standing army to fight for an ad 
 ministration as for a throne or dynasty ; so that if a State 
 secedes, the question is how to coerce that people, if it be 
 best to attempt it. Citizens do not like to march against 
 their brethren. Think of our taking up arms against our 
 correspondents ; against people that have gone from our 
 churches and settled in that State ; against cousins, and 
 brothers-in-law, and people who lived or did business un 
 der the same roofs with us." 
 
 " It is awkward, indeed," said Mr. North, " especially 
 if they simply withdraw and hold the fortifications of the 
 general government, in their own territory, to keep the 
 government from destroying their lives." 
 
 " Why, yes," said Mrs. North, " it would be simple in 
 
262 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 them, after seceding, to suffer themselves to be bombarded. 
 But have they any right to secede?" 
 
 " As to that," said Mr. North, " my mind has been much 
 exercised of late with this thought : I have always advo 
 cated the right of the negroes to make insurrection, or to 
 flee from oppression. But now their masters complain of 
 being oppressed by the North. Why have not the mas 
 ters the* same right to secede from their government as the 
 negro from his ? " 
 
 " Well, husband," said his wife, " I think that you are 
 getting on fast." 
 
 " Why," said I, " Mr. North, is not slavery the sum 
 of all villanies? Did the negro ever consent to his form 
 of government ? " 
 
 " Well," said he, " I never consented to be born ; I find 
 myself in existence ; I have no more consented- to the 
 government of the United States than I suppose the 
 negroes, generally, have submitted to their civil condition. 
 My question is, Who shall decide when the Southern 
 masters say, We are intolerably oppressed ; we are under 
 a yoke ; break every yoke ! let the oppressed go free ! 
 If I interpose and say, * You are not oppressed ; you are 
 better off as you now are, is not this the reply of the 
 masters when we seek to free their slaves ? Do we not 
 say that the oppressed must be the judges of their ne 
 cessity ? And why may I coerce the master, if it be 
 wrong for him to coerce the negro ? " 
 
 " I must let you work out that question at your leisure, 
 and on your own principles," said I. " We were speak 
 ing of seizing and holding the forts and arsenals. The 
 French proverb says, It is the first step that costs. Se 
 ceding involves the necessity of seizing the forts. If they 
 who do this embarrass other persons in their lawful rights, 
 
n 
 
 i 
 
 THE SABLE CLOUD. 263 
 
 they must risk the consequences ; but if they secede from 
 the government, the question is, Do circumstances justify 
 a revolution ? for secession is revolution. Is revolution 
 justifiable in the present case ? 
 
 " But not to discuss that question," said I, " all that I 
 wished to say was this, that our government seems ad 
 mirably suited for a people who will behave well under 
 it. We can take care of isolated cases of rebellion. But 
 if any important part of the country rises up and departs, 
 it is exceedingly difficult to know what to do. Preven 
 tion is excellent ; but cure is next to impossible. So long 
 as there is a general acquiescence in the exercise of ex 
 ecutive power against insurrectionists, one or more, we 
 have a general government ; but when States depart, we 
 are a house divided against itself. We find that we have 
 been living, as it were, not so much under paternal au 
 thority, as under fraternal rule. If broken irretrievably, 
 the alternative is to be divided, or for one part of the 
 country to coerce its neighbors and brethren. This we 
 find to be extremely inconvenient and really impractica 
 ble without civil war ; and after the war, whose hor 
 rors, in our case, can never be pictured, we would 
 either find ourselves in the same divided state as before, 
 r if politically united, it will have been effected at a cost 
 which it is fearful to contemplate. 
 
 " So that we are illustrating the question, whether 
 such a government as ours is really practicable, wheth 
 er a people can govern themselves. Already we hear it 
 said, We have no government. The explanation is, 
 We are not disposed to destroy each other s lives to pre 
 serve the confederation. We can have a monarchy, with 
 its divine right, and with its standing army, if we 
 choose ; or, if we remain as a republic, we must be liable 
 
264 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 to just our present exigency. Our only defence, then, 
 consists in mutual conciliation and agreement. 
 
 " What a land this is," said I, " with its diversified in 
 terests and its unparalleled variety of products, its 
 agriculture, mechanic arts, science, and literature. Sep 
 aration will embarrass every form of intercourse, and 
 make us hostile." 
 
 " Jews and Samaritans," said Mrs. North. " And all 
 for an idea ! " 
 
 " Yes," said I, " and for an idea which to one whole 
 section, and to a very large part of the people in the 
 other section, is false. Four millions of negroes are 
 destroying us. As a foreign writer said, In trying to 
 give liberty to the negro, we are losing our own. " 
 
 Said Mrs. North, " Can nothing be done to save 
 us?" 
 
 " Bishop Butler tells us, Mrs. North," said I, " that a 
 nation may be insane as well as an individual. But 
 reason seems to be returning in some quarters. Seces 
 sion and its consequences are having a wonderful effect 
 to open the eyes of people. John Brown s foray and its 
 end were a providential demonstration of certain errors, 
 which we may conclude will not soon be revived. Se 
 cession is now leading the world to look more narrowly 
 into the subject of negro slavery. Let me read to you 
 these extracts from a recent number of Le Pays, Paris. 
 The writer is. arguing that Europe must recognize the 
 Southern confederacy : 
 
 But in awaiting these results which would flow from the 
 cordial welcome given by Europe to the new confederation, 
 let true philanthropists be assured that they are wonderfully 
 mistaken in regard to the real condition of the blacks of the 
 South. We willingly admit that their error is pardonable, for 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 265 
 
 they have learned the relations of master and slave only from 
 " Uncle Tom s Cabin." Shall we look for that condition in 
 the lucubrations of that romance, raised to the importance of 
 a philosophic dissertation, but leading public opinion astray, 
 provoking revolution, and necessitating incendiarism and rev 
 olution ? A romance is a work of fancy, which one cannot 
 refute, and which cannot serve as a basis to any argument. 
 In our discussion, we must seek elsewhere for authorities and 
 material. Facts are eloquent, and statistics teach us that, 
 under the superintendence of those masters, so cruel and so 
 terrible, if we are to believe " Uncle Tom," the black popu 
 lation of the South increases regularly in a greater proportion 
 than the white ; while in the Antilles, in Africa, and especially 
 in the so very philanthropic States of the North, the black race 
 decreases in a deplorable proportion. 
 
 4 The condition of those blacks is assuredly better than that 
 of the agricultural laborers in many parts of Europe. Their 
 morality is far superior to that of the free negroes of the 
 North ; the planters encourage marriage, and thus endeavor to 
 develop among them a sense of the family relation, with a 
 view of attaching them to the domestic hearth, consequently to 
 the family of the master. It will be then observed that in 
 such a state of things the interests of the planter, in default 
 of any other motive, promotes the advancement and well-being 
 of the slave. Certainly, we believe it possible still to amelio 
 rate their condition. It is with that view, even, that the South 
 has labored for so long a time to prepare them for a higher 
 civilization. 
 
 In no part, perhaps, of the continent, regard being had to 
 the population, do there exist men more eminent and gifted, 
 with nobler or more generous sentiments, than in the Southern 
 States. No country possesses lovelier, kinder hearted, and 
 more distinguished women. To commence with the immortal 
 Washington, the list of statesmen who have taken part in the 
 government of the United States shows that all those who 
 have shed a lustre on the country, and won the admiration of 
 Europe, owed their being to that much abused South. 
 12 
 
266 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 Is it true that so much distinction, talent, and grandeur of 
 soul could have sprung from all the vices, from the cruelty and 
 corruption which one would fain attribute now to the Southern 
 people ? The laws of inflexible logic refute these false impu 
 tations. And strange coincidence while Southern men 
 presided over the destinies of the Union, its gigantic prosper 
 ity was the astonishment of the world. In the hands of 
 Northern men, that edifice, raised with so much care and 
 labor by their predecessors, comes crashing down, threatening 
 to carry with it in its fall the industrial future of every other 
 nation. For long years the constant efforts of the North, and 
 a certain foreign country, to spread among the blacks incen 
 diary pamphlets and tracts have powerfully contributed to 
 suspend every Southern movement towards emancipation. Its 
 people have been compelled to close their ears to ideas which 
 threatened their very existence. " 
 
 " But," said Mr. North, " here we have been, for thirty- 
 years or more, living on an anti-slavery -excitement. 
 Grant that it is all wrong ; will you ask or expect that 
 we shall change all at once ? in a week ? or in a month ? 
 or in a year ? We will not kneel to anybody ; if we 
 change, it must be upon conviction." 
 
 " I strike hands with you there," said I, " most heartily. 
 Our Southern friends must understand this ; they must 
 now approach us once more with reason and persuasion. 
 The people at large are in a frame to be reasoned with 
 and persuaded ; for if we can do anything within the 
 bounds of reason to retain the South in the Union, it will 
 be done. We will say of concession as the antithesis of 
 secession, as was said of two other things : Millions for 
 defence, but not a cent for tribute. I think that both 
 sections need forgiveness of God, and of each other." 
 
 " Well," said Mr. North, " after all we shall get along 
 and get through, even if there should be a separation." 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 267 
 
 " Mr. North," said I, " -when you were studying Cicoro, 
 could you understand for I could not how he and 
 other patriots could feel so strongly about the fortunes 
 of their country as to declare which they frequently 
 do that they would rather die than survive their coun 
 try s honor ? It has come to me vividly of late. I see 
 it and feel it. The sunshine will seem to have gone out 
 of our life when we become two unfriendly nations. 
 
 " It is easy," said I, " for it gratifies some of the lower 
 passions, to ridicule a whole section of the country for 
 their act of secession or a disposition towards it ; to boast 
 that the South cannot do without us ; to prophesy that 
 they will get sick of it, and wish to return ; to express 
 wonder that they should feel so much hurt ; to remind 
 them that, if they will do as we have always counselled 
 them, there would be no trouble ; and there is a tempta 
 tion to say, as friends in a quarrel will hastily say, Let 
 them go. But when they are irrecoverably gone, justi 
 fiably or not, I tell you, Mr. North, there will be mourn 
 ing in our streets. I know, indeed, that there are some 
 among us to whom it will be a carnival ; but " 
 
 " They will have a long Lent after it," said Mrs. 
 North ; " pray excuse me." 
 
 " Ties of kindred," said I, " patriotism, Christian friend 
 ships, will not go down to hopeless graves without leaving 
 behind them sorrows ending only with life. 
 
 " It appears to me," said I, " that our ship is where 
 nothing but an immediate calm and then a change of the 
 wind, can save us. If we become two nations, it may be 
 for judgment and destruction ; and it may be for some 
 great, ultimate good. But it will be hard parting. To 
 think of having no South ! and of their having no North ! 
 We shall each become provincial. We are wonderfully 
 
2G8 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 fitted to qualify and improve each the other. How 
 strange it would be to have these two sections love each 
 other ! No one among us under twenty-five years of 
 age, has probably ever thought of us but as in contro 
 versy." 
 
 " Speaking of Southern life," said Mrs. North, " I have 
 not seen our friend Grant since he came back from the 
 South." 
 
 " I have seen him," said I, " and have heard his story. 
 He made his home with an old friend, a clergyman. It 
 was known that he was a stranger, and at once he was 
 made to feel at home by many of the citizens. The morn 
 ing after he arrived, Jack, a servant of a neighboring 
 family, came into the break fast- room, with a waiter filled 
 with dishes, which he deposited on the side-board. Mas 
 ter and Missis send their compliments, and want to know 
 how the family is, and how Mr. Grant is this morning. 
 Now they had never seen Mr. Grant; but they knew 
 that he had arrived the night before. Well, Jack, 
 
 says Mrs. , I see you have got some good things for 
 
 us. 0, not much, Missis ; but they thought you and 
 Mr. Grant would excuse em for sending it. So there 
 were deposited on the breakfast-table, big hominy in 
 one or two shapes, rare fish, puff-muffins, and several 
 dishes which called for Jack s interpretations. And Mas 
 ter says, shall he send the carriage round for you this 
 forenoon ? and he will call himself. The evening talk 
 was interrupted by a black woman, all smiles, bearing a 
 waiter of ice-cream and other refreshments, from another 
 house ; and so the visit was a succession of surprises from 
 families who, at the South, count each other s guests their 
 own. Mr. Grant was a strong anti-secessionist, and he 
 spent much breath in arguing with the people in private. 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 2G9 
 
 On his return to his room, one day, he found a glass dish 
 on the table, filled with japonicas, camellias, roses, and 
 other early flowers, with the card of a married lady, with 
 whom he had had a debate, inscribed, * From the hot 
 test of the Secessionists. He seems modified in his views 
 a little about the sum of all villanies, since his return." 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs. North, "and the people here explain 
 it by saying, O, he was feted, and flattered/ 
 
 " Yes," she continued, " some of our people will sacri 
 fice their confidence in man or angel, rather than believe 
 anything good about slavery." 
 
 I said to her, " Add the Bible to those witnesses, Mrs. 
 North." 
 
 " Husband," said she, " please reach me that long, thin, 
 brown-covered book on the what-not." She then read 
 an extract from the sixty-third page ; it was a book 
 by one now deceased, called, " Experience as a Minis 
 ter": 
 
 " I had not been long a minister, before I found this 
 worship of the Bible as a fetish hindering me at every 
 step. If I declared the Constancy of Nature s Laws, and 
 sought therein great argument for the Constancy of God, 
 all the miracles came and held their mythologic finger up. 
 Even Slavery was of God, for the divine statutes in the 
 Old Testament admitted the principle that man might 
 own a man, as well as a garden or an ox, and provided 
 for the measure. Moses and the Prophets were on its 
 side ; and neither Paul of Tarsus, nor Jesus of Nazareth, 
 uttered a direct word against it." 
 
 " But here is the sun ! " said I. 
 
 " "We are all more cheerful," said Mrs. North, " than 
 we were when he left us ; for we have been able to con- 
 12* 
 
270 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 verse on a trying and perplexing subject with good feel 
 ings." 
 
 " Now," said I, " here is the Southern lady s letter, which 
 has given occasion to all our conversation." 
 
 " It has also introduced us," said Mr. North, " to that 
 goose, Gustavus, and to his good aunt." 
 
 " What shall I say to the Southern lady," said I, " if I 
 write to her father ? " 
 
 " Tell her," said Mrs. North, " that if she comes to the 
 North she must come directly to our house and make it 
 her home. If you will allow me, I will put a note into 
 your envelope to that effect. I shall beg her to bring 
 Kate with her. Wouldn t I love to see Kate ! " 
 
 " My dear," said Mr. North, " do you know what a time 
 there would be if the lady should bring Kate with her ? " 
 
 " The good time coming ! I think it would be," said 
 his wife, " to see the Southern lady and her Kate under 
 our roof." 
 
 " Why," said he, " we should all have to go to court ? " 
 
 " Well, that would be interesting," said she ; " but for 
 what ? " 
 
 " Why," said he, " you know that this is free soil : 
 Kate is a slave ; she can have her freedom for nothing 
 if she comes here. Some of our Massachusetts gentle 
 men are as chivalrous and attentive to Southern colored 
 people, as our good friend tells us Southern gentlemen 
 are to a white woman : a committee would wait on Kate, 
 with an officer of the peace, and invite her to visit the 
 court-house with them, to be presented with freedom ; 
 and Kate s mistress must go with her, to show that she 
 is not restraining Kate of her liberty." 
 
 " Why," said Mrs. North, " if I could not be allowed, 
 in visiting Sharon Springs, to take Judith with me to 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 271 
 
 give me my baths, because she is free, I should call 
 it barbarism. Who was that gentleman that broke his 
 collar-bone and sent to you, husband, JLo get him a 
 nurse ? " 
 
 Mr. North said it was a student in a medical school, 
 from the South. 
 
 " Did you find him a nurse ? " said she. 
 
 "Yes," he replied; "but he groaned and said, Mother 
 wanted to send on my mammy that nursed me, but your 
 laws will not allow her to come. Now, said he, * mam 
 my will not tamper with your servants here, and entice 
 them away, as free colored men might do to our slaves 
 if they landed at the South from your vessels. O, mam 
 my, said he, * if I had your arbs and your nursing, what 
 a pleasure it would be to be sick. " 
 
 " Poor fellow ! " said Mrs. North. " What did you 
 say to him ? " 
 
 " 0," said he, " I told him that we lived under differ 
 ent institutions ; and that when we are among the Ro 
 mans we must do as the Romans do." 
 
 " Well," said Mrs. North, " if all such prohibitions 
 are not downright impertinence, then I will give up." 
 
 " It s the law of the land, here," said her husband. 
 
 " Is there no Higher Law in such a case ? " said she. 
 " Higher Law, I believe, is sometimes the rule in Mas 
 sachusetts." 
 
 " Some of our most estimable colored fellow-citizens 
 would attend her," said I, " and tempt her by their own 
 prosperity and happiness in freedom, at the North, to 
 cast in her lot with them and abandon her Southern 
 home, her mistress, and her little charge, Susan ; and her 
 own little Cygnet s grave. They would send her, if she 
 
272 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 wished, free of charge, to Canada, and leave her there. 
 She could be perfectly free." 
 
 " Now, what is all this for ? " said Mrs. North. " Do 
 the people here really believe that Kate is oppressed ? 
 that her mistress is a tyrant ? that Kate is a victim to the 
 sum of all villanies ? that she suffers an enormous 
 wrong? that her mistress does her a stupendous injus 
 tice ? If they wish for objects of charity, and will go 
 with me, I will engage to supply them with the op 
 pressed in any quantity, with some of the down-trodden 
 also." 
 
 " But, my dear Mrs. North," said I, " tis distance lends 
 enchantment to the view. Besides, to get a slave away 
 from a Southerner is worth unspeakably more to the 
 cause of human happiness than to help scores of North 
 ern people." 
 
 " But to be serious," said Mr. North, " we are afraid 
 that slave-holding may get a foothold in Massachusetts ; 
 so we have to challenge every one who comes here with 
 a slave, to show proof that he or she is not holding the ser 
 vant to involuntary servitude among us." 
 
 " But," said Mrs. North, " are the people so consci 
 entiously fearful lest bondage should get established here 
 in Massachusetts ? Is that the true reason for hurrying 
 every colored servant, who travels here with his or her 
 invalid master or mistress, before a court to know if he or 
 she would not prefer to quit the family and the South ? 
 It seems to me we are sadly wanting in good man 
 ners." 
 
 " Now, please do not smile at your good wife for her 
 simplicity, Mr. North," said I, " for I suppose that you are 
 thinking, What have good manners to do with the 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 273 
 
 * cause of freedom ? She is right in her impressions ; a 
 lady s sense of propriety against all the world." 
 
 " Do publish the Southern lady s letter by all means," 
 said Mrs. North. 
 
 " How surprised she would be," said I, " to see it in 
 print, or to know that it had wandered here, and was tak 
 ing part in the discussions about slavery." 
 
 " The letter," said Mrs. North, " would, just now, seern 
 like Noah s poor little dove, wandering over wrecks and 
 desolations." 
 
 " True," said I, u and to finish the illusion, it might 
 come back to her after many days, and lo ! in its mouth 
 an olive-leaf plucked off! " 
 
 " Give my love to her," said Mrs. North ; " her letter 
 has made me a better and happier woman. Now I love 
 my whole country. I do justice in my feelings to hun 
 dreds of thousands whom I have hitherto regarded as 
 perverse. I now see God s wonder-working providence 
 in connection with the slave. It seems plain to me in 
 what way the Union can be saved, and that is, by the 
 general prevalence at the North of such views about 
 slavery as the very best people at the South declare to be 
 just and right." 
 
 " You would be deemed simple for saying that, Mrs. 
 North," said I. " But you are right." 
 
 u Three tilings," she continued, after a moment s pause, 
 " are more strongly impressed on my mind ; please see if 
 I am right : That the relation of master and slave is 
 not in itself sinful ; That good people at the South feel 
 toward injustice and cruelty precisely like us ; and, That 
 Southern Christians can correct all the evils in slavery, 
 or abolish it, if necessary, better without our aid than 
 with it." 
 
274 THE SABLE CLOUD. 
 
 " Mrs. North," said I, " unless we accept those propo 
 sitions, the North and South never can live together in 
 peace ; and if we separate, the Northern conscience will 
 be in a worse condition than ever, and we shall have long 
 wars." 
 
 " It is a marvellous thing to me," said she, " as I now 
 view it, that our good Christian people here are not willing 
 to confide in that which good Southern Christian people 
 say about slavery. We should trust their judgments, their 
 moral sentiments, their consciences, on any other subject. 
 How is it that when men and women, who are the excel 
 lent of the earth, tell us the results of their observation, 
 experience, and reflections, with regard to slavery, we 
 treat them as we do ? When ill-mannered people, who 
 must be vituperative and saucy to every body and in 
 every thing, behave thus, it is not surprising; but I can 
 not explain why truly good men should not either adopt 
 the deliberate sentiments of good people at the South, or 
 at least consent to leave the subject, if beyond their faith 
 or discernment, to the responsibility of Southern Chris 
 tians. I condemn myself in saying this. But having 
 myself been converted, I have hope for everybody." 
 
 During this talk, Mr. North was affected somewhat as 
 he said his wife was when he first read the Southern la 
 dy s letter to her. He was a little incoherent by reason 
 of his emotions ; but he made out to say something about 
 the sweetness and the strength of reconciled affections, 
 and of the happiness which there would be when it should 
 be proclaimed that the North and the South are once 
 more friends. 
 
 " What is your whole name, Mrs. North ? " said I ; 
 " for I shall wish to speak of you to the Southern lady, if 
 I write to her father." 
 
THE SABLE CLOUD. 275 
 
 " My Christian name," said she, " is Patience." 
 " PATIENCE NORTH ! " I said to myself, once or twice, 
 as I stood at the parlor door. I was musing upon the 
 name perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, and when I looked 
 up, they were each both smiling at me and crying. 
 
 We shook hands, and I went my way. 
 
 THE END. 
 
By the same Author. 
 A SOUTH SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY. 
 
 Fourth Edition. Price, 75 cents. 
 
 NOTICES. 
 
 From the Presbyterian Witness, Nashville, Tenn. 
 
 Upon the whole we regard it as the most calm, truthful, 
 mauly, and sensible book that has ever yet appeared from the 
 Northern or Southern press, on the subject of Slavery. 
 
 From Chancellor JOHNSTOX, South Carolina. 
 I have read Dr. Adams s production with care, and, besides, 
 I have the opinion of one or two friends in whose hands I placed 
 it ; and our unanimous judgment is, it is one of the best works, 
 if not the very best, on the subject to which it relates, that has 
 emanated from the press. It manifests exceeding candor, dis 
 criminating and penetrating observation, and an uncommon pow 
 er of setting the conclusions to which he has come, as well as 
 the reasons of them, in a clear light. He has shown himself a 
 true philanthropist, a just man, a genuine patriot, and a sincere 
 and fearless lover of the truth. His sagacity in so completely 
 seeing through the workings of a social system so entirely dif 
 ferent from any that had ever before fallen under his personal 
 observation, is indeed wonderful. The whole country, North 
 and South, the whole of this great Federal Republic, owes a 
 deep and inextinguishable obligation to Dr. Adams for his noble 
 effort and his masterly performance of it. 
 
 From Hon. RUFUS CHOATE, Boston. 
 
 It is a most manly, conscientious, and admirable testimony, 
 soothing, wise, and wholly right. I admire its spirit, its Chris 
 tianity, its nationality, its love of white men and black men, 
 and I am most proud of its author. 
 
 From REV. DR. SPRAGUE, in the Puritan Recorder. 
 No candid reader will doubt that the author intended to make 
 a fair report of both the good and the evil of Slavery, as it came 
 under his observation, without regard either to the partialities or 
 prejudices of other people. lie was evidently a careful observer, 
 and had good opportunities for forming an accurate judgment. 
 He has written with marked ability and exemplary moderation, 
 
2 NOTICES. 
 
 and in a deeply serious and earnest tone, which we think must 
 secure to the work an extensive circufation. It is strongly 
 monitory both to the North and to the South. It is a model 
 in point of style. 
 
 From REV. HENRY NEILL, Detroit, Michigan, (formerly of 
 
 Lenox, Mass.) 
 
 I know of no achievement equal to it, in the last ten years, in 
 the field of morals or of intellect. And it is because of the evi 
 dence which it gives that an American mind can be sufficiently 
 controlled by candor and religion to look at even the subject of 
 Slavery without passion, and with manifest intent to know and 
 announce the truth, that the book stands out to me not only 
 above other books, but above most other mental products on 
 that subject. 
 
 From the Boston Daily Advertiser. 
 
 There is no danger that people at the North will fall in love 
 with the peculiar institution; but if they learn to look with 
 more charity and forbearance on their Southern brethren, no 
 harm will be done. It is not amiss to have a sensible man 
 show that there are some compensating circumstances in the 
 system. 
 
 From the Boston Transcript. 
 
 "We are glad the work is published. There is an air of sin 
 cerity and candor in the chapters. The views of honest men 
 of all sects are much heeded. 
 
 From REV. DR. PRIME, of the New York Observer. 
 I regard it as incomparably the best book the Slavery-question 
 has ever called forth. 
 
 From Hon. Judge ROST, Louisiana, (Convention Speech at Baton 
 
 Rouge.) 
 
 It should be read by every man, woman, and child in the 
 country. 
 
 By the same Author. 
 
 OUR FAMILY OF STATES: 
 
 A PHI BETA KAPPA ORATION. 
 Price, 15 cents. 
 

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