THE NEGRO BOND AND FREE.
We have been permitted to examine the manuscript of a projected book, the subject and the style of which will, we think, prove extremely interesting to the general public. It is the work of a Colored man, a resident of this city, and an employe of the Pension Office—Henry C. Bruce, a brother of Hon. B. K. Bruce, once United States Senator from Mississippi, and latterly Recorder of Deeds from the District of Columbia. It is the unpretentious story, simply and directly told, of a Colored man twenty-nine years a slave. The earlier chapters contain the record of his life during ante-bellum days, his experiences under slavery as a child, youth, and a grown man, the joys, the sorrows, the privations, the pleasures, and the vicissitudes which came to him in turn. The closing chapters tell of the conditions with which emancipation confronted him, what helps and hindrances he encountered in his new career, through what changing fortune he made his way to comfort and independence.
We doubt whether there is to be found in literature anything of its kind at once as authentic and as entertaining. The writer is not a professional Colored man. He is not conspicuous in protest against the attitude of the white people toward the race. He does not claim to have been a bleeding martyr during his term of slavery. He does not picture the old southern proprietor class as monsters and tyrants—quite the contrary—or pretend that all the virtue, kindness, worth, and loyalty of that section was to be found in the Negroes. The fact is, that Mr. Bruce writes of the period during which he lived in bondage in Virginia, Mississippi, and Missouri, very much as his own master would have written—truthfully, fairly, philosophically. It is evident that he cherishes no resentful feeling toward those in whose service he spent the first half of his life. Indeed, one can see that he has for them the truest affection and regard. If there be one sentiment which, more than any other, runs through the whole narrative from beginning to end, it is the sentiment of pride in the old southern aristocracy, and contempt for every other type and variety of white man. He is loyal to his own people, in the highest and truest meaning of loyalty, but for the slave owners as he knew them, he has the sense of gratitude and justice strong within him.
The book is full of wisdom and kindness. Here and there are touches of shrewd observations which the Colored people will do well to ponder and reflect upon. And not the least valuable and creditable feature of Mr. Bruce’s work is to be found in the candid, generous, and fair comment he indulges as to the management of the Pension Office under Messrs. Black, Raum, and Lochren. It is refreshing, indeed, to find a Colored man writing so intelligently of slavery during his own term of bondage, and of race issues and politics, in which for thirty years past he has been an active, if a modest and unostentatious participant.—Washington Post, April 14, 1895.
