In speaking, he is most effective when in his loftiest flights. Losing sight of his audience, and wrapped up in his theme, his features beaming with the beauty of inspiration, he seems to address himself directly to the great injustice which towers above him, no longer himself, but the spirit of some martyr-hero of his race in the cause of right, bursting the cerements of the grave to renew the combat on earth. To all conscious of his life-long earnestness, and how closely the orator and the man are allied, his efforts are not without their effect.
He conformed to no conservatism for interest’s sake, nor compromise for the sake of party or expediency, demanding only the rights meted out to others. His sentiments partaking of the most uncompromising radicalism, years before the public were willing to listen to such doctrine, caused his speeches and writings to be considered impracticable and impolitic. While they were never characterized by violent or incendiary expressions, they consequently rendered him less popular than many others of inferior ability. He was considered impolitic for what men talked with abated breath; when slavery had her myrmidons in church and state, he held up, in all of its deformities, and denounced without fear or palliation, depending more upon the cause than the time to justify him. “Setting his foot always in advance of fate,” his views were deemed impracticable; but, proud in the strength of his opinions, and wrapped in the consciousness of their ultimate adoption, he bided his hour.
As an advocate of moral reforms his influence finds abundant scope. His habits being as simple as they are temperate, adhering rigidly to physiological rules, they render him successful in presenting such measures. In early youth he espoused total abstinence; conforming first from principle, it afterwards became an established habit to eschew the use of liquors, or even tobacco, in any form, and from these early principles he has never been known to swerve. While his labors and sympathies are more strongly put forth in behalf of his own race, as more needful of them, yet no one exhibits a more catholic spirit, even to the enemies of his race, than Martin Delany. In his present sphere, his untiring efforts to ameliorate the condition of every class, irrespective of former condition and politics, and to advance the prosperity of an impoverished and prostrate section of our country, will render his name acceptable, not only as the able and incorruptible executive officer of the government, but as a humanitarian in its widest acceptation. To sum up his character, there will be found a strong individuality permeating it, as though aiming always to be himself in all things; possessing all the pride, fire, and generous characteristics of the true negro, without the timidity or weakness usually ascribed, as resulting from their condition in America.
There is every evidence that he possesses in an eminent degree the elements of the true soldier, and under more favorable auspices would have made a reputation worthy of record beside the great names which the late rebellion has produced. Fearless without being rash, at all times self-possessed and fully equal to emergencies, a lover of discipline; an iron will and great strength of endurance and perseverance bestowed by Nature, while she circumscribed his limits for exercising them; hence the record of his services in the late rebellion will be more of his achievements as an organizer of movements tending to advance the progress of freedom in reconstruction than of his martial accomplishments.
While the true place of the distinguished colored man is among the “self-made men” of our country, still it must be admitted that their surroundings being less favorable to insure success than white men of the same class, in proportion, their achievements are as great. And while many of this class were fostered by the Anti-slavery Society,—its patronage being always extended to the talented and meritorious of the race,—still its immediate support was never held out to him. Solely upon his own will, perseverance, and merits can be based the secret of his success wherein others have failed.
His mother was considered a most exemplary Christian, active and energetic, with quick perceptions and fine natural talents, inheriting all the finer traits of character of her Mandingo origin. The Mandingoes, from their love of traffic, are nicknamed the “Jews of Africa.” An incident which is related of her shows the force of character which she transmitted to her son. An attempt was made to enslave herself and children, five in all, in Virginia, where they resided. Being informed of it, she at once determined to test or avert it. Taking the two youngest, she set out on foot, with one lashed across her back, and the other in her arms; she walked, the distance from Charlestown to Winchester in time to meet the court, consulted her lawyer, entered suit, and when all difficulties were satisfactorily adjusted, she returned to her children triumphant. “Some Roman lingered there,” that neither the miasma of slavery, with which the atmosphere about was impregnated, nor the uncertain future of her children, could crush out; but a slow and steady fire burnt forever in her soul, and gleamed along the pathway of her youngest born to guide him to duty in the unequal strife of his race. She lived long enough to witness the overthrow of the oligarchy against which she had contended in Virginia. She died at Pittsburg, in the family of her son, Samuel Delany, in 1864, at the age of ninety-six.
This family attained great longevity, as is again shown in the father of Major Delany, who gave every indication of a hale old age, when he was carried off by the cholera which swept over Pittsburg at one time, when he had reached his eighty-fourth year. In life he was known as a man of great integrity of character, of acknowledged courage, and was remarkable for his great physical strength. He was well known in Martinsburg, where, for a stipulated sum, he obtained his freedom, thence went to Chambersburg, whither his family had preceded him. He bore a scar on his face, the result of a wound, which adds another testimony to the “barbarism of slavery.” It was inflicted by the sheriff of the county, who, with eight men, went to arrest him one morning, because he had nine times torn the clothes from off the person of one Violet, as he was endeavoring to inflict bodily punishment on him. Each time, as he dashed the man Violet from him, he assured him he had no wish to injure him.
The sheriff and his men, approaching, were warned by him to keep off. He then fortified himself behind a wagon in a lane, and, being armed with its swingle-tree, bade defiance to the authority attempting to surround him. The better to effect a retreat, if necessary, by climbing backwards he raised himself to the top of the fence, his face to his persecutors. At the moment the top was gained, he was brought to the ground, senseless and bleeding, by a skilfully-directed stone. He was then secured and taken to prison at Charlestown.
The sheriff was desirous of shooting him; but Violet, with a view to his market value rather than appreciation of his determined courage, objected most decidedly to this, adding that he was “too good a man to be killed.” The stone was thus substituted for the bullet. With this mark of brutality daily before the eyes of his children, and in its train all the humiliations and bestial associations to which their hapless race was subjected, it is no matter of wonderment that Martin Delany should watch every enactment concerning his race with exactness, and his bitterness against their oppressors and abettors would sometimes outrun his sense of the politic, or that all his efforts should, through life, converge to the same end to contribute his aid to root out every fibre of slavery and its concomitants.