Up to this point, we have spoken of Mrs. Harper as a laborer, battling for freedom under slavery and the war. She is equally earnest in laboring for Equality before the law—education, and a higher manhood, especially in the South, among the Freedmen.
For the best part of several years, since the war, she has traveled very extensively through the Southern States, going on the plantations and amongst the lowly, as well as to the cities and towns, addressing schools, Churches, meetings in Court Houses, Legislative Halls, &c., and, sometimes, under the most trying and hazardous circumstances; influenced in her labor of love, wholly by the noble impulses of her own heart, working her way along unsustained by any Society. In this mission, she has come in contact with all classes—the original slaveholders and the Freedmen, before and since the Fifteenth Amendment bill was enacted. Excepting two of the Southern States (Texas and Arkansas), she has traveled largely over all the others, and in no instance has she permitted herself, through fear, to disappoint an audience, when engagements had been made for her to speak, although frequently admonished that it would be dangerous to venture in so doing.
We first quote from a letter dated Darlington, S.C., May 13, 1867:
"You will see by this that I am in the sunny South.... I here read and see human nature under new lights and phases. I meet with a people eager to hear, ready to listen, as if they felt that the slumber of the ages had been broken, and that they were to sleep no more.... I am glad that the colored man gets his freedom and suffrage together; that he is not forced to go through the same condition of things here, that has inclined him so much to apathy, isolation, and indifference, in the North. You, perhaps, wonder why I have been so slow in writing to you, but if you knew how busy I am, just working up to or past the limit of my strength. Traveling, conversing, addressing day and Sunday-schools (picking up scraps of information, takes up a large portion of my time), besides what I give to reading. For my audiences I have both white and colored. On the cars, some find out that I am a lecturer, and then, again, I am drawn into conversation. 'What are you lecturing about?' the question comes up, and if I say, among other topics politics, then I may look for an onset. There is a sensitiveness on this subject, a dread, it may be, that some one will 'put the devil in the nigger's head,' or exert some influence inimical to them; still, I get along somewhat pleasantly. Last week I had a small congregation of listeners in the cars, where I sat. I got in conversation with a former slave dealer, and we had rather an exciting time. I was traveling alone, but it is not worth while to show any signs of fear. * * *Last Saturday I spoke in Sumter; a number of white persons were present, and I had been invited to speak there by the Mayor and editor of the paper. There had been some violence in the district, and some of my friends did not wish me to go, but I had promised, and, of course, I went. * * * * I am in Darlington, and spoke yesterday, but my congregation was so large, that I stood near the door of the church, so that I might be heard both inside and out, for a large portion, perhaps nearly half my congregation were on the outside; and this, in Darlington, where, about two years ago, a girl was hung for making a childish and indiscreet speech. Victory was perched on our banners. Our army had been through, and this poor, ill-fated girl, almost a child in years, about seventeen years of age, rejoiced over the event, and said that she was going to marry a Yankee and set up housekeeping. She was reported as having made an incendiary speech and arrested, cruelly scourged, and then brutally hung. Poor child! she had been a faithful servant—her master tried to save her, but the tide of fury swept away his efforts. * * * Oh, friend, perhaps, sometimes your heart would ache, if you were only here and heard of the wrongs and abuses to which these people have been subjected. * * * Things, I believe, are a little more hopeful; at least, I believe, some of the colored people are getting better contracts, and, I understand, that there's less murdering. While I am writing, a colored man stands here, with a tale of wrong—he has worked a whole year, year before last, and now he has been put off with fifteen bushels of corn and his food; yesterday he went to see about getting his money, and the person to whom he went, threatened to kick him off, and accused him of stealing. I don't know how the colored man will vote, but perhaps many of them will be intimidated at the polls."
From a letter dated Cheraw, June 17th, 1867, the following remarks are taken:
"Well, Carolina is an interesting place. There is not a state in the Union I prefer to Carolina. Kinder, more hospitable, warmer-hearted people perhaps you will not find anywhere. I have been to Georgia; but Carolina is my preference. * * The South is to be a great theatre for the colored man's development and progress. There is brain-power here. If any doubt it, let him come into our schools, or even converse with some of our Freedmen either in their homes or by the way-side."
A few days later she gave an account of a visit she had just made in Florence, where our poor soldiers had been prisoners; saw some of the huts where they were exposed to rain and heat and cold with only the temporary shelter they made for themselves, which was a sad sight. Then she visited the grave-yards of some thousands of Union soldiers. Here in "eastern South Carolina" she was in "one of the worst parts of the State" in the days of Slavery; but under the new order of things, instead of the lash, she saw school books, and over the ruins of slavery, education and free speech springing up, at which she was moved to exclaim, "Thank God for the wonderful change! I have lectured several nights this week, and the weather is quite warm; but I do like South Carolina. No state in the Union as far as colored people are concerned, do I like better—the land of warm welcomes and friendly hearts. God bless her and give her great peace!"
At a later period she visited Charleston and Columbia, and was well received in both places. She spoke a number of times in the different Freedmen schools and the colored churches in Charleston, once in the Legislative Hall, and also in one of the colored churches in Columbia. She received special encouragement and kindness from Hon. H. Cadoza, Secretary of State, and his family, and regarded him as a wise and upright leader of his race in that state.
The following are some stirring lines which she wrote upon the Fifteenth Amendment: