“Oh, my daughter Ruth! Could any plan be devised whereby you could let Henry go ‘to school’ (as you expressed it in your letter to him while in Kansas), I would rather now have him ‘for another term’ than to have a hundred average scholars. I have a particular and very important, but not dangerous, place for him to fill in the ‘school,’ and I know of no man living so well adapted to fill it. I am quite confident some way can be devised so that you and your children could be with him, and be quite happy even, and safe; but God forbid me to flatter you in trouble!”[[165]]
To his friend Sanborn he said: “I believe when you come to look at the ample field I labor in, and the rich harvest which not only this entire country but the whole world during the present and future generations may reap from its successful cultivation, you will feel that you are in it, an entire unit. What an inconceivable amount of good you might so effect by your counsel, your example, your encouragement, your natural and acquired ability for active service! And then, how very little we can possibly lose! Certainly the cause is enough to live for, if not to—for. I have only had this one opportunity, in a life of nearly sixty years; and could I be continued ten times as long again, I might not again have another equal opportunity. God has honored but comparatively a very small part of mankind with any possible chance for such mighty and soul-satisfying rewards. But, my dear friend, if you should make up your mind to do so, I trust it will be wholly from the promptings of your own spirit, after having thoroughly counted the cost. I would flatter no man into such a measure, if I could do it ever so easily.
“I expect nothing but to endure hardness; but I expect to effect a mighty conquest, even though it be like the last victory of Samson. I felt for a number of years, in earlier life, a steady, strong desire to die; but since I saw any prospect of becoming a ‘reaper’ in the great harvest, I have not only felt quite willing to live, but have enjoyed life much; and am now rather anxious to live for a few years more.”[[166]]
CHAPTER IX
THE BLACK PHALANX
“Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion.”
The decade 1830 to 1840 was one of the severest seasons of trial through which the black American ever passed. The great economic change which made slavery the corner-stone of the cotton kingdom was definitely finished and all the subtle moral adjustments which follow were in full action. New immigrants took advantage of the growing prejudice which found a profitable place for the Negro in slavery, and was determined to keep him in it. They began to crowd the free Northern Negro in a fierce economic battle. With a precarious social foothold, little economic organization, and no support in public opinion, the Northern free Negro was forced to yield. In Philadelphia from 1829 to 1849 six mobs of hoodlums and foreigners cowed and murdered the Negroes. In the Middle West and, especially in Ohio, severe Black Laws had been enacted in 1804 to 1807 providing that (a) No Negro should be allowed to settle in Ohio unless he could within twenty days give bond to the amount of $500 signed by two bondsmen, who should guarantee his good behavior and support; (b) The fine for harboring or concealing a fugitive was at first $50, then $100, one-half to go to the informer and one-half to the overseer of the poor in the district; (c) No Negro was allowed to give evidence in any case where a white man was a party.[[167]]
These laws, however, were dead letters until 1829, when increased Negro immigration induced the Cincinnati authorities to enforce them. The Negroes obtained a respite of thirty days and sent a deputation to Canada. They were absent for sixty days, and when the whites saw no effort to enforce the law further, they organized a riot. For three days Negroes were killed in the streets until they barricaded their homes and shot back. Meantime the governor of upper Canada sent word that he “would extend to them a cordial welcome.” He said: “Tell the republicans on your side of the line that we royalists do not know men of their color. Should you come to us you will be entitled to all the privileges of the rest of His Majesty’s subjects.”[[168]]
On receipt of this, fully two thousand Negroes went to Canada and founded Wilberforce; while a national convention of Negroes was called in Philadelphia in 1830—the first of its kind. This convention at an adjourned session in 1831 addressed the public as follows:
“The cause of general emancipation is gaining powerful and able friends abroad. Britain and Denmark have performed such deeds as will immortalize them for their humanity, in the breasts of the philanthropists of the present day; whilst as a just tribute to their virtues, after-ages will yet erect imperishable monuments to their memory. (Would to God we could say thus of our own native soil.)
“And it is only when we look to our own native land, to the birthplace of our fathers, to the land for whose prosperity their blood and our sweat have been shed and cruelty extorted, that the convention has had cause to hang its head and blush. Laws as cruel in themselves as they were unconstitutional and unjust, have in many places been enacted against our poor unfriended and unoffending brethren; laws (without a shadow of provocation on our part) at whose bare recital the very savage draws him up for fear of the contagion, looks noble, and prides himself because he bears not the name of a Christian. But the convention would not wish to dwell long on this subject, as it is one that is too sensibly felt to need description....