Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe Part 33

Stand away dere, Stand away dere, And let my people go!"

As we were leaving, an aged woman came and lifted up her hands in blessing. "Bressed be de Lord dat brought me to see dis first happy day of my life! Bressed be de Lord!" In all England is there no Amen?

We have been shocked and saddened by the question asked in an a.s.sociation of Congregational ministers in England, the very blood relations of the liberty-loving Puritans,--"Why does not the North let the South go?"

What! give up the point of emanc.i.p.ation for these four million slaves?

Turn our backs on them, and leave them to their fate? What! leave our white brothers to run a career of oppression and robbery, that, as sure as there is a G.o.d that ruleth in the armies of heaven, will bring down a day of wrath and doom? Remember that wis.h.i.+ng success to this slavery-establis.h.i.+ng effort is only wis.h.i.+ng to the sons and daughters of the South all the curses that G.o.d has written against oppression.

_Mark our words!_ If we succeed, the children of these very men who are now fighting us will rise up to call us blessed. Just as surely as there is a G.o.d who governs in the world, so surely all the laws of national prosperity follow in the train of equity; and if we succeed, we shall have delivered the children's children of our misguided brethren from the wages of sin, which is always and everywhere death.

And now, sisters of England, think it not strange if we bring back the words of your letter, not in bitterness, but in deepest sadness, and lay them down at your door. We say to you, Sisters, you have spoken well; we have heard you; we have heeded; we have striven in the cause, even unto death. We have sealed our devotion by desolate hearth and darkened homestead,--by the blood of sons, husbands, and brothers. In many of our dwellings the very light of our lives has gone out; and yet we accept the life-long darkness as our own part in this great and awful expiation, by which the bonds of wickedness shall be loosed, and abiding peace established, on the foundation of righteousness.

Sisters, what have _you_ done, and what do you mean to do?

We appeal to you as sisters, as wives, and as mothers, to raise your voices to your fellow-citizens, and your prayers to G.o.d for the removal of this affliction and disgrace from the Christian world.

In behalf of many thousands of American women.

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, _November_ 27, 1862.

The publication of this reply elicited the following interesting letter from John Bright:--

ROCHDALE, _March_ 9, 1863.

DEAR MRS. STOWE,--I received your kind note with real pleasure, and felt it very good of you to send me a copy of the "Atlantic Monthly"

with your n.o.ble letter to the women of England. I read every word of it with an intense interest, and I am quite sure that its effect upon opinion here has been marked and beneficial. It has covered some with shame, and it has compelled many to think, and it has stimulated not a few to act. Before this reaches you, you will have seen what large and earnest meetings have been held in all our towns in favor of abolition and the North. No town has a building large enough to contain those who come to listen, to applaud, and to vote in favor of freedom and the Union. The effect of this is evident on our newspapers and on the tone of Parliament, where now n.o.body says a word in favor of recognition, or mediation, or any such thing.

The need and duty of England is admitted to be a strict neutrality, but the feeling of the millions of her people is one of friendliness to the United States and its government. It would cause universal rejoicing, among all but a limited circle of aristocracy and commercially rich and corrupt, to hear that the Northern forces had taken Vicksburg on the great river, and Charleston on the Atlantic, and that the neck of the conspiracy was utterly broken.

I hope your people may have strength and virtue to win the great cause intrusted to them, but it is fearful to contemplate the amount of the depravity in the North engendered by the long power of slavery. New England is far ahead of the States as a whole,--too instructed and too moral; but still I will hope that she will bear the nation through this appalling danger.

I well remember the evening at Rome and our conversation. You lamented the election of Buchanan. You judged him with a more unfriendly but a more correct eye than mine. He turned out more incapable and less honest than I hoped for. And I think I was right in saying that your party was not then sufficiently consolidated to enable it to maintain its policy in the execution, even had Fremont been elected. As it is now, six years later, the North but falteringly supports the policy of the government, though impelled by the force of events which then you did not dream of. President Lincoln has lived half his troubled reign.

In the coming half I hope he may see land; surely slavery will be so broken up that nothing can restore and renew it; and, slavery once fairly gone, I know not how all your States can long be kept asunder.

Believe me very sincerely yours,

JOHN BRIGHT.

It also called forth from Archbishop Whately the following letter:--

PALACE, DUBLIN, _January_, 1863.

DEAR MADAM,--In acknowledging your letter and pamphlet, I take the opportunity of laying before you what I collect to be the prevailing sentiments here on American affairs. Of course there is a great variety of opinion, as may be expected in a country like ours. Some few sympathize with the Northerns, and some few with the Southerns, but far the greater portion sympathize with neither completely, but lament that each party should be making so much greater an expenditure of life and property than can be compensated for by any advantage they can dream of obtaining.

Those who are the least favorable to the Northerns are not so from any approbation of slavery, but from not understanding that the war is waged in the cause of abolition. "It was waged," they say, "ostensibly for the restoration of the Union," and in attestation of this, they refer to the proclamation which announced the confiscation of slaves that were the property of secessionists, while those who adhered to the Federal cause should be exempt from such confiscation, which, they say, did not savor much of zeal for abolition. And. if the other object--the restoration of the Union--could be accomplished, which they all regard as hopeless, they do not understand how it will tend to the abolition of slavery. On the contrary, "if," say they, "the separation had been allowed to take place peaceably, the Northerns might, as _we_ do, have proclaimed freedom to every slave who set foot on their territory; which would have been a great check to slavery, and especially to any cruel treatment of slaves." Many who have a great dislike to slavery yet hold that the Southerns had at least as much right to secede as the Americans had originally to revolt from Great Britain. And there are many who think that, considering the dreadful distress we have suffered from the cotton famine, we have shown great forbearance in withstanding the temptation of recognizing the Southern States and to break the blockade.

Then, again, there are some who are provoked at the incessant railing at England, and threats of an invasion of Canada, which are poured forth in some of the American papers.

There are many, also, who consider that the present state of things cannot continue much longer if the Confederates continue to hold their own, as they have done hitherto; and that a people who shall have maintained their independence for two or three years will be recognized by the princ.i.p.al European powers. Such appears to have been the procedure of the European powers in all similar cases, such as the revolt of the Anglo-American and Spanish-American colonies, of the Haytians and the Belgians. In these and other like cases, the rule practically adopted seems to have been to recognize the revolters, not at once, but after a reasonable time had been allowed to see whether they could maintain their independence; and this without being understood to have p.r.o.nounced any decision either way as to the justice of the cause.

Moreover, there are many who say that the negroes and people of color are far from being kindly or justly treated in the Northern States. An emanc.i.p.ated slave, at any rate, has not received good training for earning his bread by the wages of labor; and if, in addition to this and his being treated as an outcast, he is excluded, as it is said, from many employments, by the refusal of white laborers to work along with him, he will have gained little by taking refuge in the Northern States.

I have now laid before you the views which I conceive to be most prevalent among us, and for which I am not myself responsible.

For the safe and effectual emanc.i.p.ation of slaves, I myself consider there is no plan so good as the gradual one which was long ago suggested by Bishop Hinds. What he recommended was an _ad valorem tax_ upon slaves,--the value to be fixed by the owner, with an option to government to purchase at that price. Thus the slaves would be a burden to the master, and those the most so who should be the most valuable, as being the most intelligent and steady, and therefore the best qualified for freedom; and it would be his interest to train his slaves to be free laborers, and to emanc.i.p.ate them, one by one, as speedily as he could with safety. I fear, however, that the time is gone by for trying this experiment in America.

With best wishes for the new year, believe me

Yours faithfully,

Rd. Whately.

Among the many letters written from this side of the Atlantic regarding the reply, was one from Nathaniel Hawthorne, in which he says:--

I read with great pleasure your article in the last "Atlantic." If anything could make John Bull blush, I should think it might be that; but he is a hardened and villainous hypocrite. I always felt that he cared nothing for or against slavery, except as it gave him a vantage- ground on which to parade his own virtue and sneer at our iniquity.

With best regards from Mrs. Hawthorne and myself to yourself and family, sincerely yours,

NATH'L HAWTHORNE.

CHAPTER XVII.

FLORIDA, 1865-1869.

LETTER TO d.u.c.h.eSS OF ARGYLL.--MRS. STOWE DESIRES TO HAVE A HOME AT THE SOUTH.--FLORIDA THE BEST FIELD FOR DOING GOOD.--SHE BUYS A PLACE AT MANDARIN.--A CHARMING WINTER RESIDENCE.--"PALMETTO LEAVES."--EASTER SUNDAY AT MANDARIN.--CORRESPONDENCE WITH DR. HOLMES.--"POGANUC PEOPLE."--RECEPTIONS IN NEW ORLEANS AND TALLAHa.s.sEE.--LAST WINTER AT MANDARIN.

In 1866, the terrible conflict between the North and South having ended, Mrs. Stowe wrote the following letter to the d.u.c.h.ess of Argyll:--

HARTFORD, _February_ 19, 1866.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--Your letter was a real spring of comfort to me, bringing refres.h.i.+ngly the pleasant library at Inverary and the lovely days I spent there.

I am grieved at what you say of your dear mother's health. I showed your letter to Mrs. Perkins, and we both agreed in saying that _we_ should like for a time to fill the place of maid to her, as doubtless you all feel, too. I should so love to be with her, to read to her, and talk to her! and oh, there is so much that would cheer and comfort a n.o.ble heart like hers that we could talk about. Oh, my friend, when I think of what has been done these last few years, and of what is now doing, I am lost in amazement. I have just, by way of realizing it to myself, been reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin" again, and when I read that book, scarred and seared and burned into with the memories of an anguish and horror that can never be forgotten, and think it is all over now, all past, and that now the questions debated are simply of more or less time before granting legal suffrage to those who so lately were held only as articles of merchandise,--when this comes over me I think no private or individual sorrow can ever make me wholly without comfort. If my faith in G.o.d's presence and real, living power in the affairs of men ever grows dim, this makes it impossible to doubt.

I have just had a sweet and lovely Christian letter from Garrison, whose beautiful composure and thankfulness in his hour of victory are as remarkable as his wonderful courage in the day of moral battle. His note ends with the words, "And who but G.o.d is to be glorified?"

Garrison's att.i.tude is far more exalted than that of Wendell Phillips.

He acknowledges the great deed done. He suspends his "Liberator" with words of devout thanksgiving, and devotes himself un.o.btrusively to the work yet to be accomplished for the freedmen; while Phillips seems resolved to ignore the mighty work that has been done, because of the inevitable shortcomings and imperfections that beset it still. We have a Congress of splendid men,--men of stalwart principle and determination. We have a President [Footnote: Andrew Johnson] honestly seeking to do right; and if he fails in knowing just what right is, it is because he is a man born and reared in a slave State, and acted on by many influences which we cannot rightly estimate unless we were in his place. My brother Henry has talked with him earnestly and confidentially, and has faith in him as an earnest, good man seeking to do right. Henry takes the ground that it is unwise and impolitic to endeavor to force negro suffrage on the South at the point of the bayonet. His policy would be, to hold over the negro the protection of our Freedman's Bureau until the great laws of free labor shall begin to draw the master and servant together; to endeavor to soothe and conciliate, and win to act with us, a party composed of the really good men at the South.

For this reason he has always advocated lenity of measures towards them. He wants to get them into a state in which the moral influence of the North can act upon them beneficially, and to get such a state of things that there will be a party _at the South_ to protect the negro.

Charles Sumner is looking simply at the abstract _right_ of the thing. Henry looks at actual probabilities. We all know that the state of society at the South is such that laws are a very inadequate protection even to white men. Southern elections always have been scenes of mob violence _when only white men voted_.

Mult.i.tudes of lives have been lost at the polls in this way, and if against their will negro suffrage was forced upon them, I do not see how any one in their senses can expect anything less than an immediate war of races.

If negro suffrage were required as a condition of acquiring political position, there is no doubt the slave States would grant it; grant it nominally, because they would know that the grant never could or would become an actual realization. And what would then be gained for the negro?