"LEMUEL JACKSON."
As far as my father was concerned, then, it seemed that we were safe. From him, at least, we had nothing to fear.
[CHAPTER II.]
Beulah's Journey to New Orleans—Rescues Her Mother From Slavery, and Mother and Daughter Return to Buffalo on the Good Boat Columbia, by Way of Havana, in the Island of Cuba, West Indies and New York City.
The present was a great time among all classes of the abolition party, the "Underground Railroad," and all that sort of thing. There were the border ruffians in Kansas, where John Brown, that hero of fame, led on the fray, and fugitive slaves escaped over the lines into the free States, whence their owners were unable to get them back. The Fugitive Slave Law was a dead letter, for the great gospel guns over all the North had denounced it as a shame and a disgrace to a Christian nation; and when the South found that fugitive slaves would resist their pursuers unto death, and that their messengers were likely to be shot down, they ceased to send them, at the same time making the slave laws worse than ever before. However, the tighter and more oppressive they made them, in greater numbers did the slaves escape from the house of bondage, for who can stem the spirit of the brave? Slavery is an abomination before the Lord!
We had at this time all the anti-slavery leaders coming round the country—the greatest speakers I ever heard. I never had a more wonderful experience than turning out with Tom at night to the halls and churches to listen to such arguments and eloquence as I had never dreamed had any existence in this or any other country. William Lloyd Garrison came to Buffalo, and Fred. Douglass, and all the rest were there. We listened to men and women who had seen slavery in all parts of the South, people who had been in Kansas, and almost everywhere else, and such tales of truth and horror I never heard before in all my life.
It is true that even slavery had its backers in the North, and too many of them at that, but the entire Christian portion of the population was determined that slavery should come no further, although the South seemed to demand, with the most unblushing impudence, that they should carry their slaves into every State and territory under the stars and stripes. The South acted like a violent, high-strung woman, whose husband tries to reason with her in vain. She seemed to say, "I shall have my own way, or I will fight with you, Sam! I'll be no submissive wife! I'll be master and mistress, too! I'll fight and have my own way!"
At this time, freemen from Europe were pouring into the United States in legions. They had no slavery in those countries from which they came, and coming here while the tidal wave of anti-slavery sentiment was at its height, they were ready not only to attempt to stem the encroachments of slavery, but to resist them by force, if the worst came to the worst. The Quakers were also in the field, and they gave Congress no rest. The Southern senators and representatives resisted them at Washington, and demanded that the whole subject be laid upon the shelf. Here they were opposed by such men as Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, and a host of others. Thus things went on from bad to worse in the halls of Congress, and all over the free North. The heavens grew darker and darker as the months rolled by, and the South prepared to leave the Union unless she had her own way.
There was very little sign, indeed, of her ever getting it, for how could freedom and slavery ever be dominant in the United States at one and the same time? It is very true that slavery was a legacy left the thirteen original States by England, but we had gone ahead and spread the iniquity ourselves, after the disposal of it was left entirely in our hands; whereas England had long since abolished both slavery and the slave trade throughout her dominions. She had even paid the owners full indemnity for the loss of their slaves.