"Are you not afraid of breaking the laws by assisting this man to escape?" remarked Squire Loomis.
"I care not for laws when they stand in the way of humanity," replied the colonel.
"If you aid him in reaching Canada, and we should ever have a war with England, may be he'll take up arms and fight against his own country," said the squire.
The fugitive eyed the law-abiding man attentively for a moment, and then exclaimed, "Take up arms against my country? What country, sir, have I? The Supreme Court of the United States, and the laws of the south, doom me to be the slave of another. There is not a foot of soil over which the stars and stripes wave, where I can stand and be protected by law. I've seen my mother sold in the cattle market. I looked upon my brothers as they were driven away in chains by the slave speculator. The heavy negro whip has been applied to my own shoulders until its biting lash sunk deep into my quivering flesh. Still, sir, you call this my country. True, true, I was born in this land. My grandfather fought in the revolutionary war; my own father was in the war of 1812. Still, sir, I am a slave, a chattel, a thing, a piece of property. I've been sold in the market with horses and swine; the initials of my master's name are branded deep in this arm. Still, sir, you call this my country. And, now that I am making my escape, you feel afraid, if I reach Canada, and there should be war with England, that I will take up arms against my own country. Sir, I have no country but the grave; and I'll seek freedom there before I will again be taken back to slavery. There is no justice for me at the south; every right of my race is trampled in the dust, until humanity bleeds at every pore. I am bound for Canada, and woe to him that shall attempt to arrest me. If it comes to the worst, I will die fighting for freedom."
"I honor you for your courage," exclaimed Squire Loomis, as he sprang from his seat, and walked rapidly to and fro through the room. "It is too bad," continued he, "that such men should be enslaved in a land whose Declaration of Independence proclaims all men to be free and equal. I will aid you in any thing that I can. What is your name?"
"I have no name," said the fugitive. "I once had a name,—it was William,—but my master's nephew came to live with him, and as I was a house servant, and the young master and I would, at times, get confused in the same name, orders were given for me to change mine. From that moment, I resolved that, as slavery had robbed me of my liberty and my name, I would not attempt to have another till I was free. So, sir, for once you have a man standing before you without a name."
SAMUEL R. WARD.
Few public speakers exercised greater influence in the pulpit and on the platform, in behalf of human freedom, than did Samuel R. Ward, in the early days of abolition agitation. From 1840 up to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, in 1850, he either preached or lectured in every church, hall, or school house in Western and Central New York. Endowed with superior mental powers, and having, through the aid of Hon. Gerrit Smith, obtained a good education, and being a close student, Mr. Ward's intellectual faculties are well developed. He was, for several years, settled over a white congregation, of the Presbyterian order, at South Butler, N. Y., where he preached with great acceptance, and was highly respected. As a speaker, he was justly held up as one of the ablest men, white or black, in the United States. The first time we ever heard him, (in 1842,) he was announced in the advertisement as "the black Daniel Webster." Standing above six feet in height, possessing a strong voice, and energetic in his gestures, Mr. Ward always impressed his highly finished and logical speeches upon his hearers. No detractor of the negro's abilities ever attributed his talents to his having Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins. As a black man, Mr. Ward was never ashamed of his complexion, but rather appeared to feel proud of it. When Captain Rynders and his followers took possession of the platform of the American Anti-Slavery Society, at their anniversary, in New York, in the spring of 1852, Frederick Douglass rose to defend the rights of the Association and the liberty of speech. Rynders objected to the speaker upon the ground that he was not a negro, but half white. Ward, being present, came forward, amid great applause, and the rowdy leader had to "knock under," and confess that genuine eloquence was not confined to the white man. William J. Wilson says of Ward, "Ideas form the basis of all Mr. Ward utters. If words and ideas are not inseparable, then, as mortar is to the stones that compose the building, so are his words to his ideas. In this, I judge, lies Mr. Ward's greatest strength. Concise without abruptness; without extraordinary stress, always clear and forcible; if sparing of ornament, never inelegant,—in all, there appears a consciousness of strength, developed by close study and deep reflection, and only put forth because the occasion demands it. His appeals are directed rather to the understanding than the imagination; but so forcibly do they take possession of it, that the heart unhesitatingly yields."
Mr. Ward visited England in 1852, where he was regarded as an eloquent advocate of the rights of his race. He now resides at Kingston, Jamaica.