Often he would bring a negro or two with him, who would act as his slaves, and whom he would pretend to treat very roughly. These would act as his intermediaries with the men he hoped to rescue. On one occasion he rescued a large number of men from the salt-works on the Kanawha River in Virginia. He assumed the character of a salt-dealer, and had two large boats built on the river for his business. When the boats were finished, a crowd of negroes escaped in them down the river towards the Ohio. As soon as the alarm was given, he pretended to be very anxious to aid in recapturing his boats and the escaped slaves. He rode off at the head of the pursuers, directed the chase, and when they found the abandoned boats on the river-bank, he suggested that they should scatter in various directions, and meet in a few hours to report if they had got any traces of the fugitives. He never appeared at the rendezvous; he had joined the slaves at a previously appointed spot, and was conducting them to one of the stations on the Underground Railroad en route for Canada. He generally marched at night, and rested in concealment in the daytime.
Often on these journeys he had to fight his way through patrols of slave-hunters. One moonlight night he had a narrow escape. The patrollers had found his track, and gathered a body of armed men, and lay in ambush waiting for him at both ends of a bridge which his party of fugitives had to cross. Fairfield always armed his men with revolvers, and told them that he would shoot down any one who would not fight for his freedom. On this occasion he was taken by surprise. As the party gained the centre of the bridge they were fired upon from both ends of it. ‘They thought, no doubt,’ said Fairfield, ‘that this sudden attack would intimidate us, and that we would surrender; but in this they were mistaken. I ordered my men to charge to the front, and they did charge. We fired as we went, and the men in ambush scattered and ran like scared sheep.’ Fairfield’s clothes were torn by balls, and he and one of his party were slightly wounded. Levi reproved him for trying to kill any one, and told him that we should love our enemies. Fairfield’s reply was characteristic. ‘Love our enemies, indeed! I do not intend to hurt people if they keep out of the way; but if they step in between me and liberty they must take the consequences.’ Levi naïvely adds: ‘I saw it was useless to preach peace principles to Fairfield.’ Such a man could only have one end. There is reason to believe that shortly before the outbreak of the war in 1861 he was detected arming the negroes in Tennessee, and was lynched by a Southern mob. He had been twelve years engaged in his daring work among the plantations.
The abolition of slavery by the war did not put an end to Levi Coffin’s labours for the negroes; it only gave them another form. It became necessary to provide for the thousands to whom a sweeping measure of emancipation had given their freedom and nothing more, in many cases casting them adrift upon the world without any resource, for at the end of the war trade was bad and employment scarce. Relief societies for the freedmen were formed throughout the States. Levi Coffin took a leading part in this work; and when it was decided to send a delegate to ask for aid from England, he was chosen for this important post. In the summer of 1864 he arrived in London with credentials and introductions to various public men. At his first meeting held in London for the freedmen he was supported by Messrs John Bright, W. E. Forster, Samuel Gurney, and other members of parliament. A second meeting followed at Mr Gurney’s house. Levi Coffin notes with satisfaction that ‘it was quite aristocratic in character, being largely composed of lords, dukes, bishops, and members of parliament.’ A London Freedmen’s Aid Society was organised with several prominent men upon its committee. Branches were established and meetings held throughout England and Ireland. Levi Coffin spoke at all these meetings. Perhaps many of our readers will remember having heard him.
Having finished his work in England, he went over to France and continued it there; and when, after having been more than twelve months in Europe, he returned to Cincinnati in 1865, he had the satisfaction of knowing that his journey had borne rich fruit for the freedmen. He paid another visit to Europe in 1867 as a delegate to an Anti-slavery Congress in Paris. With the account of this journey his book of interesting Reminiscences concludes. We heartily recommend it to our readers. If nothing else, it shews how much one earnest man can accomplish in a lifetime for a cause that he has thoroughly at heart.
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.
CHAPTER XXIX.—FOUND.
By some seeming irony of Fate, it is when our fortunes have ebbed to their lowest, and all seems cold, bleak, and dreary in the threatening horizon before us, that light begins to break in upon the oppressive darkness. That we are never so likely to fall as when we deem ourselves to stand in boastful security, proud of our seeming strength, is a truth which the historical student will not be slow to recognise. Down comes the thunderbolt from a clear sky, toppling over to shameful ruin the gilded image propped on feet of sorry clay. But there is a substratum of fact whereon is reared the homely proverb which declares that when things are at the worst they will mend.
For all that, we cannot wrap ourselves in a comfortable mantle of indolent fatalism, assured that our shortcomings will be compensated by some extraordinary turn of Fortune’s wheel. It so happens that we are often too dull of vision to know the heavenly messenger when we see him. Our deaf ears fail to catch the strain of hope. We miss the tide that offered to bear our argosy to port. The grass grows, but the steed, all unwitting of the green meadow hard by, starves within a stone’s throw of plenty. Chatterton was not the only one who, goaded by despair, has taken the leap in the dark at the very moment when kind hands were held out to lead the truant into the goodly fellowship of honest men. A great hush and stillness had fallen upon those who were shut up in the Hunger Hole. There was that in the situation which forbade useless words. It was getting late. There was every probability of spending the night and the morrow in that dismal place. That amount of imprisonment entailed cold and misery, perhaps an attack of marsh-fever, since the air from Bitternley Swamp was likely to be fraught with the seeds of ague. But twenty-four hours—thirty-six hours—might not see the end of the captivity of Ethel and Lady Alice, and in that case——
How strange that any one should run the risk of being starved to death, in this blatant nineteenth century of ours, when road and rail, gas and press, have opened up so many an old-world nook, and dragged so many an abuse into the killing light of day. Yet Dartmoor remains Dartmoor, and it is quite possible to be smothered in its snows, sunk in its swamps, or to wander among its blinding mists until the deadly chill of fatigue benumbs the wearied limbs, for there are wildernesses yet where Nature is more than a match for man.