CHAPTER XXVI.
VISIT WASHINGTON.—AGE, 35.
When slavery thought to reap the fruits of the war into which she had plunged the nation with Mexico, lo! there was a lion in her path, and not a Bunyan lion either, for this kingly beast wore no collar, no chain held him. The roused North had laid her great labor paw on the California gold fields and stood showing her teeth while the serpent with raised crest was coiled to strike, and the world waited and wondered.
Henry Clay, the synonym for compromise, was still in the United States Senate, and, with his cat-like tread, stepped in between the belligerents with a cunning device—a device similar to that by which the boys disposed of the knife they found jointly—one was to own, the other to carry and use it. So by this plan the lion was to own California, and the snake was to occupy it as a hunting-ground; nay, not it alone, but every State and Territory in the Union must be given up to its slimy purposes. In other words, California was to be admitted as a free State, upon condition of the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill, which authorized the slave-hunter to follow the fugitive into every home, every spot of this broad land; to tear him from any altar, and demand the services of every "good citizen" in his hellish work. Men by thousands, once counted friends of freedom, bowed abjectly to this infamous decision.
Daniel Webster, the leading Whig statesman, made a set speech in favor of thus giving up the whole country to the dominion of the slave power. It was another great bid for the next presidential nomination, which must be controlled by the South. The danger was imminent, the crisis alarming, and the excitement very great. I longed to be in Washington, so I wrote to Horace Greeley, who answered that he would pay me five dollars a column for letters. It was said that this was the first time a woman had been engaged in that capacity.
I went to Washington in the early part of '50, going by canal to the western foot of the Alleghenies, and then by rail to the foot of the inclined plane, where our cars were wound up and let down by huge windlasses. I was in a whirl of wonder and excitement by this, my first acquaintance with the iron-horse, but had to stay all night in Baltimore because the daily train for Washington had left before ours came.
I had letters to the proprietor of the Irving House, where I took board. Had others to Col. Benton, Henry Clay, and other great men, but he who most interested me was Dr. Gamaliel Bailey, editor of the National Era. The great want of an anti-slavery paper at the capitol had been supplied by five-dollar subscriptions to a publication fund, and Dr. Bailey called from Cincinnati to take charge of it, and few men have kept a charge with more care and skill. He and the Era had just passed the ordeal of a frightful mob, in which he was conciliatory, unyielding and victorious; and he was just then gravely anxious about the great crisis, but most of all anxious that the Era should do yeoman service to the cause which had called it into life. The Era had a large circulation, and high literary standing, but Dr. Bailey was troubled about the difficulty or impossibility of procuring anti-slavery tales. Mrs. Southworth was writing serials for it, and he had hoped that she, a Southern woman with Northern principles, could weave into her stories pictures of slavery which would call damaging attention to it, but in this she had failed.
Anti-slavery tales, anti-slavery tales, was what the good Doctor wanted. Temperance had its story writer in Arthur. If only abolition had a good writer of fiction, one who could interest and educate the young. He knew of but one pen able to write what he wanted, and alas, the finances of the Era could not command it. If only he could engage Mrs. Stowe. I had not heard of her, and he explained that she was a daughter of Lyman Beecher. I was surprised and exclaimed:
"A daughter of Lyman Beecher write abolition stories! Saul among the prophets!"
I reminded the Doctor that President Beecher and Prof. Stowe had broken up the theological department of Lane Seminary by suppressing the anti-slavery agitation raised by Theodore Weld, a Kentucky student, and threw their influence against disturbing the Congregational churches with the new fanaticism; that Edward Beecher invented the "organic sin," devil, behind which churches and individuals took refuge when called upon to "come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty." But Dr. Bailey said he knew them personally, and that despite their public record, they were at heart anti-slavery, and that prudence alone dictated their course. Mrs. Stowe was a graphic story-teller, had been in Kentucky, taken in the situation and could describe the peculiar institution as no one else could. If he could only enlist her, the whole family would most likely follow into the abolition ranks; but the bounty money, alas, where could he raise it?
Where there is the will there is a way, and it was but a few months after that conversation when Dr. Bailey forwarded one hundred dollars to Mrs. Stowe as a retaining fee for her services in the cause of the slave, and lo! the result, "Uncle Tom's Cabin." As it progressed he sent her another, and then another hundred dollars. Was ever money so well expended?
That grand old lion, Joshua R. Giddings, had also passed through the mob, and as I went with him to be presented to President Taylor, a woman in the crowd stepped back, drew away her skirts, and with a snarl exclaimed,
"A pair of abolitionists!"
The whole air of Freedom's capital thrilled and palpitated with hatred of her and her cause. On the question of the pending Fugitive Slave Bill, the feeling was intense and bitterly partisan, although not a party measure. Mr. Taylor, the Whig President, had pronounced the bill an insult to the North, and stated his determination to veto it. Fillmore, the Vice-President, was in favor of it. So, Freedom looked to a man owning three hundred slaves, while slavery relied on "a Northern man with Southern principles." President Taylor was hated by the South, was denounced as a traitor to his section, while Southern men and women fawned upon and flattered Fillmore. Webster, the great Whig statesman of the North, had bowed the knee to Baal, while Col. Benton, of Missouri, was on the side of Freedom.
The third, or anti-slavery party, represented by Chase and Hale in the Senate, was beginning to make itself felt, and must be crushed and stamped out at all hazards—the infant must be strangled in its cradle.
While abolition was scoffed at by hypocritical priests as opening a door to amalgamation, here, in the nation's capital, lived some of our most prominent statesmen in open concubinage with negresses, adding to their income by the sale of their own children, while one could neither go out nor stay in without meeting indisputable testimony of the truth of Thomas Jefferson's statement: "The best blood of Virginia runs in the veins of her slaves." But the case which interested me most was a family of eight mulattoes, bearing the image and superscription of the great New England statesman, who paid the rent and grocery bills of their mother as regularly as he did those of his wife.
Pigs were the scavengers, mud and garbage the rule, while men literally wallowed in the mire of licentiousness and strong drink. In Congress they sat and loafed with the soles of their boots turned up for the inspection of the ladies in the galleries. Their language and gestures as they expectorated hither and thither were often as coarse as their positions, while they ranted about the "laws and Constitution," and cracked their slave-whips over the heads of the dough-faces sent from the Northern States.
Washington was a great slave mart, and her slave-pen was one of the most infamous in the whole land. One woman, who had escaped from it, was pursued in her flight across the long bridge, and was gaining on the four men who followed her, when they shouted to some on the Virginia shore, who ran and intercepted her. Seeing her way blocked, and all hope of escape gone, with one wild cry she clasped her hands above her head, sprang into the Potomac, and was swept into that land beyond the River Death, where alone was hope for the American slave. Another woman with her two children was captured on the steps of the capitol building, whither she had fled for protection, and this, too, while the stars and stripes floated over it.
One of President Tyler's daughters ran away with the man she loved, in order that they might be married, but for this they must reach foreign soil. A young lady of the White House could not marry the man of her choice in the United States. The lovers were captured, and she was brought to His Excellency, her father, who sold her to a slave-trader. From that Washington slave-pen she was taken to New Orleans by a man who expected to get twenty-five hundred dollars for her on account of her great beauty.
My letters to the New York Tribune, soon attracted so much attention that is was unpleasant for me to live in a hotel, and I became the guest of my friend Mrs. Emma D.E.N. Southworth. It was pleasant to look into her great, dreamy grey eyes, with their heavy lashes, at the broad forehead and the clustering brown curls, and have her sit and look into the fire and talk as she wrote of the strange fancies which peopled her busy brain.
Among the legislative absurdities which early attracted my attention was that of bringing every claim against the government before Congress. If a man thought government owed him ten dollars, the only way was to have the bill pass both houses. In my Tribune letters, I ventilated that thoroughly, and suggested a court, in which Brother Jonathan could appear by attorney. Mr. Greeley seconded the suggestion warmly, and this, I think, was the origin of the Court of Claims.
There was yet one innovation I wanted to make, although my stay in Washington would necessarily be short. No woman had ever had a place in the Congressional reporter's gallery. This door I wanted to open to them, called on Vice-President Fillmore and asked him to assign me a seat in the Senate gallery. He was much surprised and tried to dissuade me. The place would be very unpleasant for a lady, would attract attention, I would not like it; but he gave me the seat. I occupied it one day, greatly to the surprise of the Senators, the reporters, and others on the floor and in the galleries; but felt that the novelty would soon wear off, and that women would work there and win bread without annoyance.
But the Senate had another sensation that day, for Foot, in a speech alluded to "the gentleman from Missouri." Benton sprang to his feet, and started toward him, but a dozen members rushed up to hold him, and he roared:
"Stand off, gentlemen! Unhand me! Let me reach the scoundrel!" Everyone stamped, and ran, and shouted "Order!" The speaker pounded with his mallet, and Foot ran down the aisle to the chair, drawing out a great horse-pistol and cocking it, cried:
"Let him come on, gentlemen! let him come on!" while he increased the distance between them as fast as time and space would permit. After the hubbub had subsided, Foot explained:
"Mr. Speaker, I saw the gentleman coming, and I advanced toward the chair."
I have never seen a well-whipped rooster run from his foe, without thinking of Foot's advance.