Old Grimes is dead, that good old soul,
We ne’er shall see him more;
He used to wear an old blue coat
All buttoned down before.
This happened in the early days, but we would fain believe that the song was a favorite by the Parsonage fireplace.
The Beechers considered their dark-skinned household helpers as members of the family, and absent children invariably included them when they sent messages of affection back to the home. When the Beecher party were pausing in New York on their way to Ohio, the faithful Zillah came to call upon them; Harriet said that she was quite unchanged, her voice soft as ever, as she told them that she was now in very comfortable circumstances. Harriet said that she would be glad if she were quite sure to fill up her chink in this mortal life as well as Zillah did!
All of these negroes were the descendants of the slaves of an earlier period, long since freed, who had lived for many generations on terms of equality and industrial exchange among gentle, high-born people. Harriet had known and met them on terms of mutual respect. It would have been inconceivable to her to enter into relations as owner and slave with that companionable “Dine” or that soft-voiced, ladylike Zillah.
As a result of her experience, she approached the slave question not as a mere theorist. It is evident that it cannot with truth be said that her study of it dated from the time of her settlement in Cincinnati; but it is certain that when she did come to live in Ohio, further opportunities were given her to know the conditions in her own country in regard to this matter. In New England she had been in a land of theories of human freedom; now she was to come into contact with facts; she was to have her heart bleed for the human misery and oppression which she saw.
The Belle Rivière was the dividing line between slave country and free country, Kentucky on the south being a slave state and Ohio on the north being ardently anti-slavery. And after the movement for freeing the slaves began, there was formed an “underground railroad”—that is, a series of farmhouses and homes that served as stations, at convenient distances from each other, where friendly people lived with whom the escaping slaves could find shelter, from Cincinnati all across the state to Canada. By this means any fugitive could be taken by night on horseback or in a covered wagon from station to station, until he passed beyond the Canadian boundaries where he was under the protection of the British power.
It is evident that there was at that time scarcely a spot in the United States where the excitement and irritation of the slavery agitation ran so high. People in Cincinnati had “property” (consisting of slaves) over the line in Kentucky and people in Kentucky were seeking their “property” that was running off to Ohio.