FRANCIS SMITH
Was a young man of small stature, but of keen eye and intelligent countenance. While a lad, in the time of the last war, he and his master were taken prisoners at sea and carried to Nova Scotia. His servile condition becoming known to the British officers, they compelled his master to give him free papers. But when the prisoners were exchanged, his master persuaded him to return with him to Virginia, by the promise that he should still be free. But he was sold. In Richmond he for some years had hired his time, and kept a well known fruit shop. At last he became the marriage portion of his master’s daughter, and was speedily to be removed as part and parcel of the set out of the bride. To this he demurred, threw himself upon his inalienable rights, and came to New York. Here he occupied himself for some months as a waiter, much to the satisfaction of his employer. The object of his affections, a very worthy and industrious free colored girl, had found her way to New Haven, Connecticut. Thither it was fixed that Francis should follow, and after their marriage they should proceed with their united means to a place of greater safety. But the kind Christian white bridegroom had come on from Virginia to search for his runaway property, and by the aid of a professed slave taker in the city, discovered the retreat of Francis and his intended movements. At the appointed hour for the steamboat to start, the colored young man came quietly on board with his little bundle. The fell tigers were in ambush—the slave-taker Boudinot, a constable, and the lily-fingered white bridegroom aforesaid. The latter delicately pointed at the victim. A pounce was made upon him by Boudinot. Smith, after a scuffle of a moment, in which his antagonist received a scratch from his knife, darted on shore, cried “kidnappers,” and fled. The pursuers raised the cry of “murderer, stop the murderer.” The crowd thus deceived ran after him. Clubs, stones, and brickbats, were hurled at the poor fugitive without mercy, and he was at last brought to the ground, weltering in his blood. The owner took care to save his “property” from farther injury by having it conveyed to the old Bridewell. Thus was the happiness of this humble pair frustrated, that the delicate fingers of another pair might be spared the vulgar necessity of doing something for the support of their owners. And all this was done by law. During the law’s delay, Francis for months occupied one of the coffin cells, the heat and smothering stench of which, added to his disappointment and his galling manacles, were too much for his brain. Often were his wild ravings heard by the passengers on the outside.
His intended bride, in the bitterness of her grief and disappointment, offered her little all, amounting to about $300, for his ransom, but it was of no avail.
SLAVERY A SIN.
[From the Declaration of Sentiments of the Ohio Anti-Slavery Convention.]
We believe slavery to be a sin—always, every where, and only sin. Sin in itself, apart from the occasional rigors incidental to its administration, and from all those perils, liabilities, and positive inflictions to which its victims are continually exposed, sin in the nature of the act which creates it, and in the elements which constitute it. Sin, because it converts persons into things; makes men property, God’s image, merchandise. Because it forbids men to use themselves for the advancement of their own well being, and turns them into mere instruments to be used by others solely for the benefit of the users. Because it constitutes one man the owner of the body, soul, and spirit of other men—gives him power and permission to make his own pecuniary profit the great end of their being, thus striking them out of existence as beings possessing rights and susceptibilities of happiness, and forcing them to exist merely as appendages to his own existence. In other words, because slavery holds and uses men, as mere means for the accomplishment of ends, of which ends their own interests are not a part,—thus annihilating the sacred and eternal distinction between a person and a thing, a distinction proclaimed an axiom by all human consciousness—a distinction created by God,—crowned with glory and honor in the attributes of intelligence, morality, accountability and immortal existence, and commended to the homage of universal mind, by the concurrent testimony of nature, conscience, providence, and revelation, by the blood of atonement and the sanctions of eternity, authenticated by the seal of Deity, and in its own nature, effaceless and immutable. This distinction, slavery contemns, disannuls, and tramples under foot. This is its fundamental element,—its vital constituent principle, that which makes it a sin in itself under whatever modification existing. All the incidental effects of the system flow spontaneously from this fountain-head. The constant exposure of slaves to outage, and the actual inflictions which they experience in innumerable forms, all result legitimately from this principle, assumed in the theory and embodied in the practice of slave holding.
THE KIDNAPPED GIRL.
That our readers may know familiarly the horrors of the American “Middle passage,” we extract from the report on the free colored population of Ohio the case of Mary Brown. Let the dainty sentimentalists, who tremble to approach the “delicate” subject, stand off; but if there are any who wish to help their suffering fellow creatures, let them come and look at the naked ugliness of things as they are, till they feel something like an honest and practical indignation against the whole system of man-driving.