RESTLESS SLAVES.
"O! das Leben, Vater,
Hat Reize, die wir nie gekannt. Wir haben
Des schönen Lebens öde Kütse nur
Wie ein umirrend Räubervolk befahren.
Was in den innern Thälern Köstliches
Das land verbirgt, O! davon—davon ist
Auf unsrer wilden Fahrt uns nichts erschienen."
Schiller.
"We ask
But to put forth our strength, our human strength,
All starting fairly, all equipped alike,
Gifted alike, and eagle-eyed, true-hearted."
Paracelsus.
The traveller in America hears on every hand of the fondness of slaves for slavery. If he points to the little picture of a runaway prefixed to advertisements of fugitives, and repeated down whole columns of the first newspaper that comes to hand, he is met with anecdotes of slaves who have been offered their freedom, and prefer remaining in bondage. Both aspects of the question are true, and yet more may be said on both sides. The traveller finds, as he proceeds, that suicides are very frequent among slaves; and that there is a race of Africans who will not endure bondage at all, and who, when smuggled from Africa into Louisiana, are avoided in the market by purchasers, though they have great bodily strength and comeliness. When one of this race is accidentally purchased and taken home, he is generally missed before twenty-four hours are over, and found hanging behind a door or drowned in the nearest pond. The Cuba slaveholders have volumes of stories to tell of this race, proving their incapacity for slavery. On the other hand, the traveller may meet with a few negroes who have returned into slaveland from a state of freedom, and besought their masters to take them back.
These seeming contradictions admit of an easy explanation. Slaves are more or less degraded by slavery in proportion to their original strength of character or educational discipline of mind. The most degraded are satisfied, the least degraded are dissatisfied with slavery. The lowest order prefer release from duties and cares to the enjoyment of rights and the possession of themselves; and the highest order have a directly opposite taste. The mistake lies in not perceiving that slavery is emphatically condemned by the conduct of both.
The stories on the one side of the question are all alike. The master offers freedom—of course, to the worst of his slaves—to those who are more plague than profit. Perhaps he sends the fellow he wants to get rid of on some errand into a free state, hoping that he will not return. The man comes back; and, if questioned as to why he did not stay where he might have been free, he replies that he knows better than to work hard for a precarious living when he can be fed by his master without anxiety of his own as long as he lives. As for those who return after having been free, they are usually the weak-minded, who have been persuaded into remaining in a free state, where they have been carried in attendance on their masters' families, and who want courage to sustain their unprotected freedom. I do not remember ever hearing of the return of a slave who, having long nourished the idea and purpose of liberty, had absconded with danger and difficulty. The prosecution of such a purpose argues a strength of mind worthy of freedom.
The stories on this side of the question are as various as the characters and fortunes of the heroes of them. Many facts of this nature became known to me during my travels, most of which cannot be published, for fear of involving in difficulty either the escaped heroes or those who assisted them in regaining their liberty. But a few may be safely related, which will show, as well as any greater number, the kind of restlessness which is the torment of the lives of "persons held to labour," the constitutional description of the slave-class of the constituents of government.
Slavery is nowhere more hopeless and helpless than in Alabama. The richness of the soil and the paucity of inhabitants make the labourer a most valuable possession; while his distance from any free state—the extent of country overspread with enemies which the fugitive has to traverse—makes the attempt to escape desperate. All coloured persons travelling in the slave states without a pass—a certificate of freedom or of leave—are liable to be arrested and advertised, and, if unclaimed at the end of a certain time, sold in the market. Yet slaves do continue to escape from the farthest corners of Alabama or Mississippi. Two slaves in Alabama, who had from their early manhood cherished the idea of freedom, planned their escape in concert, and laboured for many years at their scheme. They were allowed the profits of their labour at over-hours; and, by strenuous toil and self-denial, saved and hid a large sum of money. Last year they found they had enough, and that the time was come for the execution of their purpose. They engaged the services of "a mean white;" one of the extremely degraded class who are driven by loss of character to labour in the slave states, where, labour by whites being disgraceful, they are looked down upon by the slaves no less than the slaves are by the superior whites. These two slaves hired a "mean white man" to personate a gentleman; bought him a suit of good clothes, a portmanteau, a carriage and horses, and proper costume for themselves. One night the three set off in style, as master, coachman, and footman, and travelled rapidly through the whole country, without the slightest hinderance, to Buffalo. There the slaves sold their carriage, horses, and finery, paid off their white man, and escaped into Canada, where they now are in safety.