Since colored passengers were not allowed in the cabins, the bride and groom had to pass their first night on the deck. But what mattered whether they were cold or hot, wet or dry; whether they stood leaning over the rail, jammed against sticky kegs, or sat on the hard boards? They were free—they were young—they were on their way, to make a home, to build a life together.
Oh, how bright the stars shone that night! Anna saw Frederick’s lips move as he gazed at them. She leaned closer and he tightened his arm about her. “I must not forget!” he murmured.
The nights on the open deck—they had two of them—enfolded them and shut out all the world. The ache of all their lonely years dissolved before the new happiness in their hearts. Then, out of the gray mist and the darker shadows, emerged the gaunt shores of their new world. Anna gripped her husband’s arm and trembled. But he lifted her face to his and kissed her.
As the boat approached New Bedford, the crowded harbor, with its stained, weather-beaten ships and dirty warehouses, was a golden gate—let down from the clouds just for them. Frederick wanted to shout.
“Look! Look!” He was pointing at an imposing house that stood on a hill behind the town. “That’s the kind of house we’ll have. A fine, big house! I’ll make it with my own hands. I’m free, Anna, I’m free to build a house like that!”
Her eyes laughed with him.
So it was that they landed on the rocky shores of New England, where free men had set their feet before them. Leif, son of Eric the Red, touched this coast with his Norsemen. In 1497 and ’98 John Cabot, Venetian navigator, explored here and gave England her claim to the region. Cabot under the British flag, Verrazzano under the fleur de lis, and Gomez under the flag of Spain, all of them had come even before the Pilgrim Fathers.
It was from Rhode Island—from Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, all part of the rising winds of rebellion—that New Bedford got its start. Time and again this salty breeze had blown through the Massachusetts commonwealth. It rose and blew steadily during most of the eighteenth century, bringing gains in political freedom and education and religious tolerance. Impoverished farmers had followed Daniel Shays; and an early governor, James Sullivan, had been stirred to say, “Where the mass of people are ignorant, poor and miserable, there is no public opinion excepting what is the offspring of fear.” The winds had died down during the rise of Federalism, but now once more a little breeze fanned the cheeks of the mill girls in Lowell and the mechanics in Boston. It rustled the dead, dry leaves piled high in Cambridge and Concord. It was scattering the seeds of Abolitionism.
Boston had William Lloyd Garrison, whom neither jails, fires, threats, nor the elegant rhetoric of William Ellery Channing could stifle. He waved his paper, the Liberator, high in the air, whipping the breeze higher. He stood his ground and loosed a blast destined to shake the rafters of the nation.
“Urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest. I will not equivocate. I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard!”