The key to this symmetrical eccentricity of friend Hopper is found in the counterbalancing qualities of his character. A powerful will was offset by a conscience equally imperative. A native bravery was balanced by softness of heart, so that he was at once incapable of fear and of cruelty; combativeness was mollified by simplicity of manner and frankness of speech. A genius for finesse was by an all-pervading benevolence and love of justice enlisted in the service of the slave and the convict; a lively sense of humor sweetened the austerities of a formal religion, softened the asperities of a life of warfare and informed great natural pride with geniality. With less love of abstract justice, he might have been a great lawyer; with less conscience and benevolence he might have been a great soldier; with less earnestness and dignity he might have been a great comedian; with less philanthropy he might have been a great business man; with less executive will he might have been a great preacher. Balanced as these qualities were, he was a rare Eccentric—being lawyer, soldier, comedian, business man and minister combined.
“The boy was father of the man,” in his case. Born in 1771 to poor parents, farmers in New Jersey, he early made manifest extraordinary qualities.
Bravery.—A cosset lamb which he had reared was seized by a foraging party of British soldiers from Philadelphia and cast bound into their wagon. The lad of ten years ran and climbed into the vehicle, cut the cords with a rusty jack-knife, and then stoutly resisted the captors, until the officer in command, attracted by the outcry, rode up and ordered the lamb restored, out of admiration for the wee patriot’s pluck and devotion. He would fight any man on behalf of all of his pet animals, of which he always had a menagerie, caught and tamed by aid of a certain brute free-masonry which he possessed.
Justice.—Isaac and his brother trapped partridges. One day the former found one in his brother’s trap and none in his own; first removing the bird to his own trap he carried it home, saying he took it out of his trap—the little lawyer! But before morning conscience asserted itself, he confessed the deception and restored the game—the little justice!
Humor.—His love of mischief kept him in continual disgrace, and the house and school in continual turmoil—albeit his love of justice usually led to reparation of damages; if he got others into scrapes he was quite willing to shoulder the consequences; he could fill a schoolmate’s dinner pail with sand, and then dry all tears by giving up his own lunch. One night he went to see old Polly milk. Fun soon got the better of the boy, he got a twig, the cow got a sensation, and Polly got a surprise. There was a lacteal cataclysm and a tableau vivant; mingled strains of wild juvenile laughter and wilder feminine screams, accompanied by a rude barbaric clangor of cow-bell and tin pail. The boy went slippered and supperless to bed, but he lay there hungry and happy, waking the wild echoes of his raftered chamber with shouts of laughter over the persisting vision of how the maid turned pale and flew, and the cow turned pail and ran, with altitudinous tail and head. The artless sports of our childhood are often our most enduring joys, and Father Hopper never forgot this chef d’œuvre of his childhood, though he was only five years old when he thus essayed the part of Puck; for he afterward secured the cow’s bell, and for fifty years used it as a dinner bell, refusing to substitute a more melodious, but less memorial monitor. He immensely enjoyed reviving at once the household and his own thoughts with it, and often with a sedate Quaker chuckle told the story when he tolled the bell.
Not the least curious antithesis in this mixed character was his open-heartedness and cunning; his simplicity of speech and shrewdness of management. From the age of nine years he marketed the farm produce in Philadelphia, and there was known as “The Little Governor,” for his precocious dignity. When asked the price of a pair of fowls, he replied, “My father told me to sell them for fifty cents if I could, if not, to take forty.” He got the fifty before he would part with them, however—just as, years on, he would frankly give up his plans to an antagonist and still beat him.
Isaac’s sympathy with the enslaved was aroused as early as the age of nine by listening to the harrowing narrative of a native African captive; and he was only sixteen years old when he assisted to liberate a slave who had acquired the right of freedom by residence in Philadelphia. The lad was at that time apprentice to a tailor, his uncle, in the city. Slavery still existed in all the states of the union, though the movement for its gradual abolishment had been begun in several of them. Pennsylvania had taken a long step in this direction by enacting the gradual emancipation of her own citizens’ slaves, and decreeing that any slave from another state, coming by his owner’s consent into Pennsylvania and there abiding continuously for six months, should be free; and that any slave landing there from a foreign country should immediately become free by that fact. It was in enforcing this law, as also in preventing the kidnaping of free negroes from Pennsylvania, that Hopper soon distinguished himself. Philadelphia became a modern city of refuge, and Friend Hopper a recognized deliverer of fugitives and freedmen, from either Southern or Northern states. It is thus a fact, not often remarked as to the relation of human slavery to our government, that the first blows at the institution were the work of state rights; and that the remedy provided for this trenching of one state upon the institutions of another, in the fugitive slave law of Fillmore’s time, was an encroachment of federal power over the previously reserved rights of the states. The National Anti-Slavery Society was formed many years later; the national conscience was not yet quickened on this question; but Philadelphia had even then a local anti-slavery society, and with it Friend Hopper identified himself. He made himself master of all the laws, findings, decisions and proceedings relating to slavery and manumission, as well as, incidentally, an adept in the proverbially intricate Pennsylvania laws of contracts, property, evidence, and general processes, so that he soon became the best authority thereon in Philadelphia. In fact, he was the embodiment of that enigma which, it is alleged, could “puzzle a Philadelphia lawyer.” His standing in court became so well recognized that no lawyer was anxious to take a case against him. “You had better consult Mr. Hopper,” said a judge to a veteran counselor who asked his opinion on a slave case before him, “he knows more law on these cases than you and I both together.” “I thought I knew something of law, but it seems I do not,” said a magistrate petulantly, upon being tripped up in a slave case by Friend Hopper, a layman. The latter did not scruple to use in behalf of freedom all the technicalities and delays of law; and his craft in these devices was not the less effective because his openness of manner made him seem an unsophisticated and rather simple fellow. His dignity, simplicity and directness of speech in quaint Quaker phraseology, compelled the respect of courts and won the confidence of juries. If needs were he would procrastinate and continue a case in court three or four years, until the master would tire out and sell the manumission of the slave for a nominal sum. In case of attempted kidnaping he took the aggressive against the abductors, and forced them to pay roundly for the benefit of the negroes; generally those who came to carry off others were glad enough to escape themselves. Hopper and other friends advanced large sums of money for the purchase of manumissions, which were invariably repaid, in part or entire, from the subsequent earnings of the freedmen.
Unbroken success at length brought Friend Hopper a factitious reputation, insomuch that it was difficult to enlist Philadelphia officers of law heartily against him; if a magistrate reluctantly granted a process, the constables more timidly executed it. “Did you say I dared not grant a warrant to search your house?” demanded the Mayor upon one occasion.
“Indeed I did say so, and I now repeat it,” rejoined the imperturbable Quaker. “I am a man of established reputation; I am not a suspicious character.” (This was what the world calls “bluffing.” The slave was at that moment locked in his house.)